Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Ramblings:

- I am an ardent fan of the work of Jiri Trnka, the brilliant puppet animator who died in 1969. His work was intelligent, artful and adult. He worked in a period before computer assistance or instant playback. There’s a wonderful book published by Artia, Jiri Trnka Artist & Puppet Master that is long out of print. If you can locate a copy anywhere, buy it. The book’s a gem.

I am particularly in love with Trnka’s 2D art: the storyboards, the preproduction drawings, the paintings and illustrations. To that end, I’ll post a couple of his pieces today.

- Unless things change this weekend, Hoodwinked seems to have celebrated its 15 minutes. The box office reports now put the film in 7th place.

Making any animated feature is an unbelieveable task. I have to give credit to Cory and Todd Edwards. They got the job done and competed with the big guns. And there’ll be a sequel to boot. We can hope that they’ll put some art into the craft.

- Michael Barrier has some good comments on his site today regarding Miyazaki‘s oeuvre. I do agree with much of what he has to say. Effects animation in the films generally serves as the climaxes of the films. This is particularly true of his earlier films, and I think it’s also endemic of most Anime.

Barrier‘s thoughts on the character animation are astute, but I find myself sucked into some of the human movement. Small moments like the girl going down all those stairs in Spirited Away make the experience exciting. The biggest problem I have with the animation is that I can’t personalize it – I don’t know who did what animation, and it’s doubtful I could find out even in doing enormous research. These sections that I love may all be done by the same person, but I don’t think I’ll ever know. Hence, I have to give credit only to the director, Miyazaki and focus on the elements that are unique to his work, and there’s a lot of it.

– One thing I can credit his films for is the movement of the children. Unfortunately, American animation usually features children who are either terminally cute or act like babies with all the characteristics of 15 year old boys. This has become the cliché, and I’d like to see us get past it.

One of the greatest animated scenes ever done is Bill Tytla‘s scene in which Dumbo runs playfully around the legs of his mother. It’s joyous, honest, and brilliant. Tytla studied his child and animated what he saw. He didn’t study other cartoons, and regurgitate that on the drawing board. But maybe that part of the art is lost. Isn’t it time to start charicaturing life instead of trying to recreate other cartoons. Enough with the animated homage.

Oberon from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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