Some Interesting Animation

A look at some animations and some brief thoughts and analysis on them.

1. Neighbours / Norman McLaren

In this classic pixilation (live-action stop-motion) film, two neighbours go to war over a flower. The stop motion of the live actors allows for comedic, cartoon-style movement including the actors sliding on the ground, spinning around as if on ice and floating in the air. The whole film plays out like a Warner Bros. cartoon, with the neighbours building and tearing down the fence by waving their hands and having it appear post-by-post. This all works very well and is expertly synced to the soundtrack which emphasises their actions and furthers the cartoon aesthetic. There are some sequences filmed at a full frame-rate and these feel out-of-place and unwelcome next to the stop-motion aesthetic. The stop-motion helps to blend obviously fake elements such as the houses (made of paper cut-outs) and the artificial flower, which when filmed at a full frame-rate may appear more incongruous. There's something about the low frame-rate of stop-motion that allows for more suspension of disbelief - a wider tolerance for make-believe.

2. Wax Tailor Time to Go / Oh Yeah Wow

There's an incredible sense of being underwater achieved simply through the motion of the main character, with no attempt made to otherwise change the urban environment, which drives home the point how powerful convincing movement can be. There's a lot of fun in seeing unusual or impossible movement through a familiar space, and so the filmmakers get a lot of mileage out of a single character and an urban setting that could easily be quite boring. The instant changeovers (when objects become painted blue and later grey) work really well, playing into stop-motion's ability to make such transformations so effective. The inconsistent lighting caused from shooting outdoors, usually a no-no in animation, actually doesn't detract much from the animation, often just providing some visual interest and in one scene watching the moving shaft of light in the background becomes part of the appeal. There is perhaps not the greatest agreement between audio and visuals, with the visuals seeming to be telling a different and more compelling story. The paper seaweed reminds how important motion is to the reading of objects, with no attempt made to get the right texture or even colour, the seaweed still reads very well simply through shape and movement.

3. Tiny People Tribe / Motomichi Nakamura

Projections are used to place animations in space. As a resulted there's a wonderful sense of place and of the characters inhabiting the space through the reflected light that is seen in the environment. Most shots are fixed, but a few moving shots really convey the idea that these beings are actually there. Unfortunately the moving shots are not particularly well shot, and the film could do with more moving shots to give a sense of motion and pacing to it. There's a great match between sound and image, with the music evoking a playful otherness that befits the tiny people and the little jump sound effects keeping with the spirit of the music and the visuals.

4. The Seed / Johnny Kelly

This beautiful animation deftly combines 2D animation with papercraft stop-motion. The 2D elements are restrained to simple monochromatic line work which emphasises the contrast with the papercraft elements rather than trying to combat it and works very effectively with the diagrammatic presentation of the whole clip. Slow panning zooms are used extremely well to add subtle dynamism to the animation. As is a running theme with all effective animation, the sound design is very well suited and synced to the animation, little touches like the music being muffled when the seed goes underwater do an awful lot to sell the effect that the image is going for. As is the case for most animation, the sound can actually exist purely on its own while the animation without sound is quite lacking.

5. Limitless / Sofles

The strength of this animation rests on a rather simple idea - that of mismatched timing. The camera pans around the large warehouse space in a visually engaging manner at a pace that will be comfortable to viewers of cinema while the action occurs much faster, racing ahead in front of us as a time lapse. A fixed position timelapse would certainly be far less dynamic and visually engaging. There are a couple of "tricks" pulled off in the video such as the couch-sailing, the bike-pedaling and the spray-paint-levitating which prove to be quite visually interesting. Perhaps it's just personal preference but I don't find the live-action scenes to work well with the stop-motion and wish it was all stop-motion. It's worth noting that the pace of the music is a better match for the action than for the motion of the camera, and that this subtly influences what the audience pays attention to.

6. Hunted Dreams / Yannay Matarasso & Daniella Meroz

This surreal pixilation video demonstrates so much of what is great about the technique. There's a liberal usage of special effects such as cloning characters and teleporting characters into and out of existence combined with dynamic and engaging camera moves. The low framerate works in its favour by lending a great cadence to the motion and thereby to the pacing of the whole film itself. It never breaks from the stop-motion process so the illusion is maintained throughout. The swimming scene is remarkably effective, just about perfectly conveying an illusion of swimming while the action is well-matched to the music. As with the Wax Tailor Time to Go video, changes in outdoor lighting from shot-to-shot don't actually detract that much from the animation, while changes in positions of leaves in the background lend a sense of uncanny movement.