Zemni Moving Image

Author: Linda Mayoux

  • Research 2.2 Debate on the use and misuse of sound in animation

    Should animations be:
    – purely visual
    – mostly visual but supplemented with sound
    – an integral combination of the two
    – sound as the driving force for the visuals
    ?

    “A truth whispered among animators is that 70% of a show’s impact
    comes from the sound track.”

    Michael Dougherty, Sound in Animation (2015)

    “I think really for the art of the film, sound is an aesthetic error… if the major consideration of film is the visual then the reason sound is a blind alley is that it cuts back on sight so that the very instance that sound is removed or that it is relatively silent, it becomes more possible to see…

    I sometimes think the real reason that movies plaster mood music all over the soundtrack, so that there is never a moment of silence is because people are afraid. With sound pouring into the ears they feel more comforted, lullabied in some sense.”

    Stan Brakhage, Dog Star Man (1970)

    For my first observations on combining visuals and sound from listening to animations with or without the sound turned on see:

    See also my post on:

    TASK: The following two animators hold very opposing views on animation and the use of sound. Consider your own viewpoint – Search for animations that supports or challenges your viewpoint in someway.
    Try listening to animations before you watch them, or watching them without the sound to help reflect on the relationships between image and sound.
    Produce a short blogpost that outlines your research and supports your
    viewpoint on the relationship between sound and image in animations. You could do this through writing or by creating a short audio/moving image piece.

    I do not think there are any hard or fast rules. It depends on what one is trying to do. The important thing is to be aware of the interactions and interrelationships. And emphasis can shift in the course of any one animation.

    Sound only

    Slow down thought processes to focus on what is being seen

    Stanley Brakhage

    Visual with sound
    • Sound effects or ambient music to support the mood or give occasional comic effect or emphasis
    Sound and visual equal
    • Voiceover or sound effects can change or alter the meaning

      Michael Dougherty

    Sound as driving force
    • Voiceover narrative can be the main story
    • Music videos and soundscapes

    What is done first? Sound, then suggest visuals and the visuals are carefully timed to follow the sounds? Or the visuals and the sound effects chosen to support them. Depends partly on which elements require continuity and which can be split and cut.

    Some element of serendipity and disruption can enhance the meaning. Too much often becomes just cliche and boring in my opinion. But it depends on what one is trying to say – and whether specific rules are essential to one’s ‘signature style’ or key area of exploration eg in the case of Brakhage.

    For my own explorations see:

    • I Love Red Peppers E2.2 and E2.3 where I experiment with different approaches to using music track and sound effects.
    • Summertime E2.5 Sound and image animatic: an animated music video of Summer from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
    • Summer 2020: Assignment 2 where I integrate different approaches.

    Stanley Brakhage

    Stan Brakhage explored a variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. His films are for the most part silent. He thereby sought to reveal the universal, in particular exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality, and innocence. For more on his work with a collection of his videos see full post: Stan Brakhage.

    https://walkerart.org/magazine/stan-brakhage-1999

    Dog Start Man was one of Brakhage’s first experiments. I think on a big cinema screen it could be quite mesmerising and engrossing. But on a smaller You Tube or even large TV screen I find it far too long and soon switch off. My brain is trained to see patterns and meanings. Where I don’t I soon get bored.
    I find the colours and textures in this much shorter piece much more interesting to watch.
    Visually I find this quite captivating with the Zoom movements sucking me into the intriguing colours and textures.
    This animation has sound – though a soundless version of part of it called ‘Night Music’ also exists. I find these textures interesting, and my interest is increased by the music.

    Michael Dougherty

    One in a series of ‘Trick or Treat’ videos about Halloween designed for different locations. For more details of the background and reasons to create this animation See:
    https://youtu.be/PVHraE8WclE

    Michael Dougherty mostly creates horror animations: a series about Halloween called Seasons Greetings, Krampus an alternative mythology of Christmas and Godzilla.

    He uses a lot of scary music and sound effects, often exaggerated cliche of Disney. But I actually find them distracting from the poignancy of the visuals and narrative. Watching the animation without the sound, I slow down and notice a lot more.

    It is the contrast between sound and image that is the central element in this animation.
    The constant rhythmic movement supports the visuals. The visuals have been carefully times to correspond to changes in tempo.

    E1.2 Observing Cycles

    Here the Tango sound track plays continuously, hypnotically as a distraction, but also intensification of the feeling of life as just one long repetitive and absurd dance.
    Here the relationship between sound and visuals fluctuates. The sounds themselves are symbolic – squeaks and creaks and horses hoofs evocative of a time gone by. Then dance music becomes dominant to fluttering visuals. Then drum beat and hinted music to amplify the cycles of endless working life.
    Here the sound counterposes the visuals to show the relationship as a Hollywood Fantasy.
    The visuals are dominant, but without the sound effects have little impact.

    Materials that Move

    Use sound to create suspense and wonder what one is seeing
    Starts sound of audience on title sequence.
    Incidental sound effects and music to create atmosphere and mood.

  • Research 2.1: Exploring Material Precedents

    TASK:
    Identify animations that explore materials and use interesting techniques that you find visually engaging.
    Document your choices by creating a folder of animations you find interesting on your Vimeo page or list them in your learning log. Choose at least two animations and provide a critique of their method. Try to choose one animation that you think is successful/enjoyable and one that you think is less so.

    Compare them in terms of technique and material approach. Some questions to consider when critiquing:
    ● How do the textures and particular qualities affect the feeling and idea of the animation? How could this be improved?
    ● How is lighting and movement used in the animation and what is the intended purpose? Does the animator achieve this purpose?
    ● Could the animations be simpler or is something lacking?
    ● How is sound used in the animation? Does it heighten elements of the material or is it a distraction? To what extent does the experience and meaning of the animation change when played without sound?    “

    Materials in motion

    Oskar Fischinger, Wax Experiments (1921-1926) https://vimeo.com/54587174 See Research 2.3 Visual Music

    Alice Dunseath, You Could Bathe in this Storm (2014)

    I found this animation very beautiful and evocative – eerily disturbing rather than enjoyable because of its enigmatic approach to the apparent subject matter. The info on vimeo by the sound designer says ‘space, form, colours and sounds symbolise a recognisable world ‘Do we shape as much as we are shaped’ suggesting an underlying philosophical intention.

    For me – before reading the vimeo caption – the Title suggests an animation about global warming and climate change, and there are obvious symbols of melting icebergs, pink civilisation blistering and drying out and crumbling to dust and heat and lifeless chemistry of minerals and crystals taking over. The colours are beautiful, as are the images at the end of lifeless minerals and crystals growing like trees and coral.

    The music and sound effects generally support the dystopian effect. The voice soundtrack is like a meditation Ap, trying to soothe the viewer into an apathetic complacency. Without the sound, the animation has less impact – it is too slow and seems more just like pretty pictures.

    But I thought sections were too didactic in the voice over and too long and drawn out. In particular the middle Stop Motion section with the ‘human’ cube and pyramid I and the end section. Possibly I would prefer something shorter, slower and without sound for showing on a large pc screen.

    Sophie Clements, How We Fall (2017)

    This is a beautiful black and white video animation suggesting contrast between beauty and horror of war and nuclear explosion – like the slow motion film of a nuclear mushroom cloud. But applied to more conventional bombing from modern day wars.

    The vimeo description informs us ‘Making reference to the physical structure of the Barbican itself, the film uses cement (the main constituent of concrete) as a symbol of construction and destruction.’ It was created using a circular rig of 96 cameras that capture a moment in time in 360 degrees, using bespoke triggering systems with cameras firing milliseconds apart to give a dynamic and filmic result. The sound by Jo Wills is created solely from audio recorded during the shoot.

    I prefer this animation without the sound played on a large pc screen. Then I really notice the beauty of the light and suspended animation particles and apparent huge boulders captured as they fall. I like the fact there is no voice over narration, but the muffled voices make the sound track too much like a mock lunar landing or war video and the sound explosions are unnecessary and distract my attention too much from what I am seeing. I also got a bit dizzy, and would have preferred some variation in the frame speed of rotation to focus in more on specific points in the action.

    Restricting the tools:
    animation without a camera

    Animation without camera, also known as drawn-on-film or direct animation is a
    technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on a film
    stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects
    are photographed, scanned or constructed digitally.

    This technique originated with the entry of avant-garde painters into filmmaking,
    in the early 1900s. The Italian futurist Arnaldo Ginna made four abstract films
    based on chromatic experiments in 1910. Sadly, these short films are no longer
    in existence. Seminal animators such as Len Lye and Norman McLaren took up
    this technique and developed it.

    Artist filmmakers in the 1960s expanded on the idea of animation without
    camera and subjected the film stock to increasingly radical methods, up to the point where the film was destroyed in the process of projection. These artists, such as Stan Brakhage worked directly on film in such a way that the outcome was not planned: scratching, painting, cutting and collaging the film stock. For example, in Brakhage’s Garden Path (2001). The technique continues to be used by contemporary artists, such as Bristol based artist Vicky Smith, whose Noisy, Licking, Dribbling and Spitting was made with ‘the mouth alone’.

    See Posts:

    Len Lye

    • Trade Tattoo (1937): http://www.ubu.com/film/lye_tattoo.html
    • Free Radicals (1958): “Regarded as Lye’s greatest film. He reduced the film medium to its most basic elements – light in darkness – by scratching designs on black film. On screen his scratches were as dramatic as lightning in the night sky. He used a variety of tools ranging from dental tools to an ancient Native American arrow-head, and synchronized the images to traditional African music (“a field tape of the Bagirmi tribe”)…Stan Brakhage described the final version as “an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece (a brief epic).” The Len Lye Foundation on Free Radicals (1958), (2018)

    Norman McLaren

    https://blogs.iu.edu/aplaceforfilm/2017/06/19/painting-pinning-sculpting-sanding-4-experimental-animation-techniques/
    Vicky Smith, Stacklip2 (2015)

    Move It on Vicky Smith, Noisy, Licking, Dribbling and Spitting (2014): “She used her stained tongue as a tool and stamping pad, the first impression is made 40 frames (1 foot) into the film and then reduced by one frame with each new stamp, accelerating until the marks overlap. Mechanistic control is then rejected in favor of spitting and dribbling as random action, painterly like splats and dense swirling tangles roll along the filmstrip and spill into the audio track, generating noisy rasps and skidding sounds.”

  • Research 1.6: Observing replacement animation

    TASK: Find examples of replacement animation to consider. Write short reviews accompanied by any screenshots or drawing onto your learning log that reflects on the meaning that is created through the use and disruption of eye-trace/registration. As a starting point, look at the following animations:

    Paul Bush, Furniture Poetry (2000)

    Jonathan Hodgson, Rug (2015)

    Lisa Pau, Tiny Lisa (2017)

    http://www.ubu.com/film/weiss_studieIV.html

    Toby Cornish, Sarejevo Vertical (2004)

  • Research 1.5: Observing emotion

    TASK: View the following animated shorts with the sound turned off. Write a paragraph on the emotional impact of three of the films. Identify the animation techniques used and the degree to which the emotional effects are achieved through the approach to movement. Theno play each with the sound turned on and note whether the impact of each film is changed, heightened or lessened by the soundtrack.

    Extend this research task by considering the relationship of sound, movement, and emotion within other animations.

    Adam Becket, Dear Janice (1972)

    This animation somewhat baffled me. Looking up on Wikipedia I found ‘Beckett developed a unique technique that involved creating a loop of images that continued to evolve with each loop cycle. With only a handful of images, the film itself appears as a growing and expanding abstract loop. This was augmented with phasing of the imagery, changing the area of view, and other sophisticated uses of the optical printer.

    Without sound I found this dreamy and whimsical, but much too long. I did not know if it was serious, or a spoof on saccharine romanticised femininity of cheap Greetings cards. Looking at some of his other animations I suspect the latter.

    See https://www.awn.com/animationworld/infinite-animator-remastered-iotacenter-and-adam-k-beckett-project

    Tadanori Yokoo, KISS KISS KISS (1964)

    http://www.ubu.com/film/yokoo_animations.html

    Ward Kimball, Escalation (1968)

    This caricature of Lyndon Johnson presents him as getting sexually aroused and then at the end ejaculating and burned out by a rising tide of escalation of the products of US corporations, women, war and nuclear bomb. an is immediately comprehensible without sound – and short to the point. It uses stop motion cutout animation for the man, and photo sequences.
    The soundtrack attracts attention by slow drumming, followed by Glory Glory Halleluja by brassband, with a seties of explosions at the end. These illustrate and reinforce rather than significantly add to to the visuals.

    Mary Ellen Bute, Abstronic (excerpt) (1952)

    Walter Ruttman, Lichtspiel Opus 1-4 (1925)

    http://www.ubu.com/film/ruttmann_licht.html

  • Research 1.4: Materials that move

    TASK: Stop-frame animation involves the application of a movement to inanimate materials and objects. Animators such as Jan Svankmajer and The Brothers Quay make use of this technique to an unsettling, uncanny effect. Whereas artists Fischli & Weiss and architects Charles & Ray Eames apply movement to objects and materials but they do not animate them and the results are very different.
    Find a range of films that use animated movement in different ways. Consider the mood or feeling these techniques suggest. Produce a short review with accompanying screenshots, that compares your choices, the different techniques used, and reflecting on their mood.
    As a starting point, you may want to look at the following films and animations:

    Jan Svankmajer, Dimensions of Dialogue (1982):

    Dimensions of Dialogue
    A Game with Stones
    Meat Love
    The Brothers Quay, Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987)

    Fischli & Weiss, Der Lauf Der Dinge (1987)

    https://vimeo.com/41630032
    Charles & Ray Eames, Black Top:
    The Washing of a School Play Yard (1952)
    Blacktop

  • Research 1.3: Observing ‘Scratch video’

    TASK: Scratch video manipulates the order of the frames in a filmed sequence. The film Death Valley Days: Secret Love, cited in the previous research task is an example of ‘scratch video’. Look at the following examples and consider whether scratch video can be a form of animation or not, and what it can offer as a technique?
    Write up your thoughts in the learning log and include any other examples of scratch video you might want to reference.

    George Barber, Absence of Satan (1985)

    http://www.georgebarber.net/video_pages/satan.htm

    Emergency Broadcast Network, Comply (1993)

    Martin Arnold, Passage à l’acte (1993)

    http://dangerousminds.net/comments/watch_a_mind_bending_video_manipulation_of_to_kill_a_mockingbird

  • Research 1.2: Observing ‘Cycles’

    TASK Watch and compare the animated shorts below. Pay attention to the technique used by each animator as well as the reasons why the cycles are obscured or accentuated. Make notes on the variation of the cycles that are used. Can you identify the different ways that the animations are made? Write this up onto your learning log along with any screenshots or your own drawings to illustrate your point (approximately 350 words).

    Cycles can loop, oscillate, or even appear to be stationary. The use of cycles is often motivated by economy because it saves on drawing time. But the type of cycle used can also make up the meaning of your film.

    Cycles and loops can make up an entire film (as in the GIF versions of the projects so far) or parts of the film. All the films viewed in Research 1.1 Obesrving ‘Boil‘ had sequential elements that repeated and looped. In Gertie the Dinosaur when Gertie raises her feet, right and left in a little shuffle dance approximately 8 minutes into the film, the same sequence of drawings were used in a loop.

    Looped cycles are most commonly employed on particular layers within a frame, such as in artist Katie Dove’s Luna (2013). Sergei Eisenstein described this layered looping within a frame as ‘vertical montage’:
    “The simultaneous movement of a number of motifs advances through a succession of sequences, each motif having its own rate of compositional progressions, while being at the same time inseparable from the overall compositional progression as a whole” Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein Volume 2: Towards a Theory of Montage (London: BFI Publishing, 1991)

    Zbigniew Rybczynski, Tango (1980)

    This animation is a montage of numerous short film sequences of one or two characters in the room. Each character/pair of characters is filmed separately (black line and no shawdows) in the room, then cut/masked out and overlaid in multiple cycles for each character in multiple permutations in a separate film of the room itself.. The repetition of cycles for each character is obvious – a tango of life repetitions. The different cycle layers means each cycle is in its own little bubble of separation. The different combinations and permutations of multiple character bubbles are chaotic and often surreal. The only interaction is where the old woman picks up the ball at the end after everyone else has gone, making that a very poignant moment.

    Disney, The Skeleton Dance: Silly Symphonies (1929)

    Here the animated drawings are done separately and overlaid onto the background. This enables the amount of drawing to be reduced through repeating and flipping/reversing cycles while making them seem different because they gonin different directions on the static background.
    The repetitions are obvious because of repetitions in the music – all part of the dance.

    Jerzy Kucia, Parada (1986)

    A very evocative Polish black and white film animation about Harvest.

    • Uses variations in abstract framing, focus and timing to evoke memories and reflections.Film grain, light and shadow plays evokes the time that has passed. Subtle monochrome colour shifts and selective colouring eg shirts of harvesters as the main things remembered.
    • Dreamlike reflections are produced through eg drawn/overlaid animation of birds.
    • Music and sound effects re-inforce the feelings of dreamy nostalgia, noise or threat.
    Jordan Wolson, Con Leche (2009)

    Animated cartoon Diet Coke bottles filled up with milk walk alone, in groups or march in formation through video of desolate streets in Detroit Michigan. The frame rotates, wobbles, and flips. Texts from the internet referencing identity, technology, memory and mortality spoken by a commercial voice over actress are interrupted evert few minutes by formal instructions and adjustments telling her to distort her tone, volume, and “sex”.

    http://ubu.com/film/wolfson_leche.html

    The background is continuous video of desolate streets shot on location in Detroit. Looped walk cycles of the Coke bottle characters

    A commercial voice over actress speaks from texts collected from the internet referencing identity, technology, memory and mortality most of which are personal accounts spoken in first person. Every few minutes Jordan Wolfson interrupts her giving basic formal instructions and adjustments distorting her tone, volume, and “sex”.

    Mark Leckey, Flix (2008)

    http://www.ubu.com/film/leckey_flix.html

    Gorilla Tapes, Death Valley Days: Secret Love (1984):

    Peter Millard, Fruit Fruit (2013)
    Katie Dove’s Luna, 2013
    ‘Dumbland’ (2000), David Lynch

    Purposely used cycles of animation to represent the breakdown of social structures depicted in his film.

    https://youtu.be/GNVASdUxPvQ?list=PLETlpWUQNf7q2HGvossBMbQZulUplYIjZ&t=2
    https://youtu.be/qA6WO_stHS0?list=PLETlpWUQNf7q2HGvossBMbQZulUplYIjZ&t=19
    https://youtu.be/MWvNkVUaAIg?list=PLETlpWUQNf7q2HGvossBMbQZulUplYIjZ&t=2
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omJ7x8XdMZ8&list=PLETlpWUQNf7q2HGvossBMbQZulUplYIjZ&index=3&t=29s
    https://youtu.be/YzKSEGYpktU?list=PLETlpWUQNf7q2HGvossBMbQZulUplYIjZ&t=2
    https://youtu.be/I6b285aYP5g?list=PLETlpWUQNf7q2HGvossBMbQZulUplYIjZ&t=2
    https://youtu.be/7EDP507O-ZM?list=PLETlpWUQNf7q2HGvossBMbQZulUplYIjZ&t=2
    Francis Alÿs, Exodus

    Francis Alÿs, ‘Exodus’, a 16-second hand-drawn animation made from over one thousand pencil drawings. #Exodus is another variation on the recurring theme in the artist’s practice of doing and undoing, or doing without doing. Other examples of employing this method are seen in video works, such as Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing) (1997), in which the artist pushes a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melted. The work depicts a woman whose face is averted from the viewer while she braids her mid-length hair. The simple act of doing and undoing is based on what the artist views as a “blind faith in the need for the action to happen.”

    Jordan Wolfson

    https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-xpm-2012-dec-14-la-et-cm-jordan-wolfson-raspberry-poser-redcat-20121211-story.html

    A translucent, animated condom filled with red candy hearts is an animated protagonist in Jordan Wolfson’s marvelous video installation at REDCAT, the New York-based artist’s solo debut in Los Angeles. Projected onto a white screen suspended on the diagonal in a white room carpeted in wall-to-wall white rug, the non-narrative video feels unmoored and adrift in a languorous state of liquid reverie. We soon float along with it.

    Owen Land

    OWEN LAND was born George Landow in New Haven in 1944 and began making films in high school. He spent many years of study in drawing, painting and sculpture with teachers in a direct line from the French artist Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), who is remembered for his historically accurate scenes of life in ancient Rome. Land’s films of the 1960s and 1970s are widely acclaimed as amongst the most perceptive and important works of the period.

  • Research 1.1: Observing ‘Boil’

    ‘Boil’ is the term used to describe an animated effect in which the outlines or surface of an otherwise still character or object are made to wiggle or quiver in drawn animation. Even when an object, character or scene is at rest it is not still or motionless, it ‘boils’.This is often achieved by the looping together of several tracings of the same image (usually between 3 to 8 drawings). Boiling movement – in combination with unlooped variation in drawings as figures move – is used to sustain the illusion of movement in the animation overall and provide the impression of life or liveliness.

    In traditional animation (like Winsor McKay’s Gertie below) boiling is almost inevitable because of the nature of the analogue drawing and/or filming process. In old film there has been some degradation in the film chemicals that make us aware that this is an ‘old’ film, evoking a sense of nostalgia. In drawings there are always variations in thickness, tone and colour of drawn lines and colouring in some media. These variations can be emphasised or exaggerated eg in the textboards and specific parts of the dinosaur drawings below to direct the eye.

    In contemporary animation like Peter Millard and John Hodgson where technology gives greater control over production and editing there is often very conscious use of boil to direct the eye in ways that reinforce the narrative, and for emotional effect. Sometimes this is ‘boil’ in the sense if looped animation, other times it is variation in drawings as frames are drawn and/or painted. It is often quite difficult to separate the effects of the two or make out what is due to drawing, and what is achieved through processing with filters in digital software. Often there is a combination of all three types of flickering in an animation.

    The eye would be drawn to very still objects if everything else is moving. So in Millard even the blank background at the beginning boils to maintain interest and give a sense of anticipation. Probably the only true looped boil. The apparent boiling in the thin pencil drawing of the face is probably not always looped. But the effect of the continuous small variations as it moves across the screen makes us try to constantly see and interpret emotions in every slight variation in shape and size of outline, eyes and mouth. But as there are several sources of movement happening we cant quite grasp it, emphasising the feeling of powerlessness and transcience in the title.

    In ‘Dogs’ Hodgson varies the type and extent of boil significantly in his expressive drawing to create feelings of nervous anticipation, energy or chaotic movement and lack of control. But for moving objects central to the narrative, boiling in outlines is reduced with more subtle variations in colour shading and crosshatching to create atmosphere without detracting from our understanding nuances of narrative and expression.

    Questions about boil:

    • What ‘boil’ technique is used? Why do the lines move and what elements, if any are allowed to be still?
    • Does the pace of the boil emanate throughout?
    • What emotional or narrative purpose does the use of boiling serve? Does it make for a more lifelike effect or is the boil deployed humorously?

    Peter Millard, Since the Better (2015)

    This animation starts with a blank screen that shimmers with slight variations in white/cream while a shrill cild/female/robot/alien? distorted voice sings a vaguely familiar melody. This creates tension and anticipation waiting for something to happen. Then the voice suddenly changes to the more familiar deep male opera voice as the childlike simple pencil drawing of a man’s face moves slowly at the same speed and horizontal position across the screen. This drawing ‘boils’ with slight apparently random changes in the drawing as a whole – size and shape of the face circle, eyes and pupils and length of the line of the mouth. This creates a real poignancy of sameness, thinness of the line and blank expression in contrast to the heavy emotion of the ‘we will overcome’ vincera aria that also references the masculinity and tribalism of football matches as well as the operatic strength itself.
    The title ‘since the better’ then adds a layer of loss and past ‘glory’.

    Jonathan Hodgson, Dogs (1981)

    In this animation all elements are on the same layer and constantly in motion but at different paces of boil. The drawings seem to pulsate with the anticipatory and upbeat music. There is a constant shimmering/flickering of expressive crayon lines based on variations of the thickness, tone and colour of the drawn lines and crosshatched shading. Occasionally the figures are quite and the lines quiet. Other times the figures are still but the lines vibrate energetically to show anticipation. Sometimes the figures move and there is less pulsation on the lines to throw attention on the narrative. Sometimes cthe colour shapes pulsate and shift more than the lines, sometimes figures, shapes and lines all move energetically and dissolve into chaos.

    Winsor McCay, Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

    This is a silent movie with narrative textboards. The beginning is black and white video where dust, scratches and irregularities in tone of the film frame produces a constant flickering boil. This continues on the textboards that are also shaken and moved out of register to continue the feeling of movement. All this reinforces the knowledge we are looking at old film. These effects continue on the drawn dinosaur animation. In the drawing itself there are variations in the amount of boil on different elements eg leaves on the tree and the sea lines move more than the outline of the dinosaur. The dinosaur itself moves but the outlines are very carefully drawn over each other. On the seaserpent the neck outline is still but the crest moves. The eye is drawn to places of greatest movement ie generally the moving figures of the dinosaur and animals. But the boil just preserves the sensation of the whole frame being in movement together.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGXC8gXOPoU

  • Kevin Parry

    Stop Motion magic

    https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/go-inside-fruits-and-vegetables-with-stop-motion

    https://m.youtube.com/user/kevinparry/videos

  • Cut paper animation

    Uses rotoscoped Photoshop images cut out.