Today, Were discussing Pixar's animated feature film 'UP'
(feel free to add your comments)
(feel free to add your comments)
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About Me
- Dr. Spacheman
- Lincoln, United Kingdom
- University of Lincoln 3rd year Digital Media and Animation My name is Ben Jennings I aspire to be an animator or digital effects supervisor in post production for films.
Jennings AKA Dr Spachemin
ReplyDeleteMy Twitter http://twitter.com/Jennings001
The current state of animation is an interesting subject.
ReplyDeletePersonally i have always been interested in live action film, what a film maker can do with one camera and a real human in real surroundings is always of interest to me because boundaries are always broken.
Animation is very interesting because you have total choice on any exotic background or extraterrestrial character, as the limits are endless i think sometimes storytelling can be left behind.
Now Mr Lasserter (who ironically shares the name of the Ken Loach's scriptwriter, obviously famous for his gritty realism of the 60's approach to filmmaking) has made some great films because the storyline may be based around characters not of the human origin but why should they be? However his stories always are very well written with a magnificent and most of the time flawless narrative flow.
When I was young i was intrigued and very drawn into animations such as Toy Story and the Nightmare before Christmas, however now i have gained an actual grip on reality and commercialism has ripped any kind of childlike imagination i have rendering me frightened as one can get to those pictures now.
Naturally i disregarded the medium for many years and personally pursued my career in film. I had my 'reasons' against animation. It seemed that to me the subtext was far too important, paranoid subjects i was fed such as anti-semitism and terrorism seemed far too apparent to me compared a family fuelled fun film.
Andrew Stanton's picture 'wall-e' topped it for me at the height of my cynicism, Gilliam blessed it as a masterpiece. Quickly losing faith in Terry Gilliam i watched it only to be disappointed only by the imminent appearance of human characters which in my mind rendered Pixar's potential useless. I felt cheated compared to my faithful and beautiful 'Toy Story (1995, Lasseter) which was the ultimatum in my generation's opinion of animation. Animation can create anything, so why are we commenting on the social context of the everyday human which we all know and are being bombarded with in the daily news? I am fully aware humans are aware of horrible things, i do not need a children's multi-million dollar produced cartoon to give me this subconscious message.
Even years before 'Wall-E' Stanton's 'Finding Nemo' was a great film and even self acknowledged itself in many ways beckoning the odd adult joke and cult voices.
However recently things changed, big style,
The thing that truly pisses me off about animation is 3D. As Danny Boyle rightly said in March's Total Film (2009), and i paraphrase, "We haven't even begun to conquer digital, one medium at a time'. I could never agree more. I think digital media and animation is the most money related and corrupted medium in the business, advertising at younger and younger audiences obviously dragging the parents in a different medium as a novelty twist such as '3d' just to aid the death of cinema at actual theatre-houses due to the cancer of internet downloads.
So I watched the new Lasseter picture 'Up' against my will kind of, well my conscious. It was great. Not even the great short and sweet animations before the picture, but the picture itself was purposely heartwarming and painfully funny from all angles. The 3D aspect wasn't a big deal. However it was a great picture and made my day.I just 'sunk' into it.
I will make my ultimate decision on Toy Story 3 i guess.
Unfortunately I still think of animation as a toy folly and a general disgrace against the medium of film. Why slave over computers when you go film the real beauty and stories in the world? It doesn't register in my mind. Though i cannot sit here and ask such questions, i have a passion for film, if you have a passion for animation, go for it with all your will. Or don't.
Thomas (07079402@lincoln.ac.uk)
Thanks for your view Thomas.
ReplyDeleteI can see where your coming from, film has that certain quality and production process that makes it a labour of love that perhaps animation cannot match, who knows. perhaps we should see animation as an extension or branch of film. Times are moving on and the advancements of technology and computer software means there is bound to be a point in the future where a film with footage and animated content looks seamless and indifferent of each other. We have to remember that it is early times for this type of animation and that the future holds a lot in store.
I'm with you on anticipating Toy Story 3, great films, it is true that animation has taken a sever jump towards the serious side of production and concept rather than the 'stereotyped' view of cartoons for children, i believe they make an effective bridge for generation gaps within 'UP'.
I too always enjoy the various animated shorts before the feature presentation, especially the quality concept art of John Lasster in his early career such as 'The Adventures of Andre & Wally B' as well as my personal favorite which was joint with John Lasseter and Jan Pinkava called 'Geri's Game' about the old man playing himself at Chess.
An added point:
The film 'UP' required Pixar to make additions to its Renderman software and the computers they used didn't have enough power to render all the balloons as they each had a large amount of actions to perform in relation to the others in certain scenes, therefore if the outer layers of balloons were to be taken away, in the middle would be a ball of darkness.
Anybody got a favorite character?
Dr.Spechemin ^.^
This may interest anybody out there who likes to see how the concept final illustrations looked:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.truschke.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/1.jpg
Dr.Spechemin ^.^