JapanVsAmericanVs3D Animation

In this weeks lecture we looked at the cultural and style differences in western and japanese animation.
The beloved film Bambi was shown as an american approach. Looking at it you can see there is definately a trademark style it has, as do most of Disnerys films from that time. Over time that style has changed slightly, but still keeps the aspects that make it recognisable
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Studio Ghibli's My neighbour Totoro was shown from the other perspective, and again this has a unique style as well, not just in the characters, but in the way its coloured, and the backgrounds are illustarted.

In the 21st century animated movies usually are completely CG, and its actually rare for a 2D blockbuster to come out. Pixar started this craze,and have since become the pinnicle of 3D movies, to which all others are meausre against.
Disney is of course part of Pixar, but has now started releasing films thats retain the style and flair that is seen in the studios prior releases, but has tarnsferred it in a CGI film. Its the natural step up, and from watching the trailer, i think that if it continues thius wasy, it could be a 'whole new world' for Disney.

Ba-Zing!

Here's the trailer for 'Tangled'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXFjjQ88uuA

Breaking the Boundries

We we shown some intersting animations in thsi weeks lecture; i found them pretty cool becaus eof the way they tried new things and ideas than what everyone has been used to before.
The example the Fantasmagorie film being reborn into a 21st century world, and the character inteacting with his past self. When 2D meets 3D intersting things can happen, but sometimes the results work better than others.
The other film by warner bros where Daffy Duck is eddited, changed and erased by the artsist that is aniamting him, is another really cool idea,. Ive alwyas liked when the outside world interacts with the animated one that is being drawn.

Here is a film that shows this, one that ive found pretty funny, and would like to create a similar version of myslef one day. It is just an example of one of many sorts of films made by proffessionals and amatures alike.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv1o_9S2iDk

Violence Genre

Todays lecture was on the genre of Violence, one that im not as on top of as a lot of other people, but the lecture was sort of interesting nonetheless.
Mostly due to to the tech failing and the lecturers having to act out the scenes of the films, but still.
Anyway, violence!
Violence has been in films since the beggining, and over time it has become alot more graphic, and in adult flms, quite extreme at times.
Looking back at films even 10 or so years ago, audiences view the violence as quite tame, or unrealistic.
Nowadays a film with a 15 certificate would have been classed as an 18 a decade or so ago.

Science Fiction Genre

The genre of science fiction has been around alot longer than you would expect, way back to the 1900's films were being produced that showed what the director believed was futurisic at that time.
And nowadays the genre is growing increasingly more popular, reaching new levels and showing so many different ideas within sci-fi.
In the beggining sci-fi was consided to just be about things like robots, flying cars, space and aliens etc. These things are still true today, but now there is a much broader spectrum of what science fiction can be.
And with the ever advancing world of tehnology, incredble things are becoming more possible, new worlds and stories for the audience to get lost in and be a part of.
Sci-fi is a genre thats usually one that guys seem to be more interested in, but the good thing is that over time the opposite sex have been able to relate more to this genre, and it has almost become something that doesnt have a specific audience.
James Camerons epic AVATAR is a good example of this. Its a sci-fi and a fantasy, and one that combines alot of original ideas and new elements, and shows what you can do with sci-fi when you think outside the box.
I could list all of my favourite sci-fi films but really there are so many that the list would be too long and not really relevant much.

New Media

This weeks lecture was about new media, and how in todays culture things in this area are quite different from that of a decade or so ago.
Ill talk about a little about the vidoes games aspect.
Back when games started there wasnt really any stroy, no narrative. Looking at games like pong, pac-man and space invaders will tell you that.
As time went on though, this changed, and games started to have much more to offer that just shooting aliens for some reason.
There was a reason for what was happening, 'cut scenes' were formed and integrated with the gameplay, and reallly made the whoile gaming experience much more rewarding.
This is such huge factor nowadays that without a narrative games would just not would do as well.
Its good to balance it though, showing whats happeing with the plot then switching to the action gameplay.
Though in th 21st century a lot of games now combine these 2 aspects with 'realtime' events.
Youll be watching a cutsence and and then the game will ask you to press a button or move the contriol stick to try and futher your involvment with the stary. Games like Heavy Rain are based soley around this premise.

Structuralism

Things aren't always black and white.
Though for some categories there are clear meanings- like Life and Death, you can only be either one or the other.
With good or evil though, theres a grey area; you cant be purely good or purely evil, most people can be mainly one or the other, but its natural to have a little bit of opposite within you. Its oine of the things that makes you human i guess, and the whole yin-yang idea applies there too.
There are games nowadays that actually replicate this whole idea; giving you that choice to do be one or the other, and like in real life you there are consequences for whether you are good or bad.
Games like fable, GTA or infamous for example, you actually change in appearance, and characters react differently to you depending on what you do.
So Structuralism is how we make meaning in the world,

Intertextuality

This weeks lecture was the most interesting so far in  my opinion, i guess mostly because i understood it well, and could relate exactly to what was being said.
Intertextuality is basically certain lines/movements/scenes or sounds that appear in different media (films and games mostly), that are actually from something else; intensionally put in,  and that some people will pick up and laugh to themselves, as they realised something that others might of missed or didnt know about. I also call them easter eggs, theyre sort of known as that too.
Things like this often occur in kids films, where characters say something that the kids just miss as they arent old enough to realsise what the ceartain line is from. Like the clip ivan showed us from madagascar.

Thinking about it this has happened seriouisly contless times to me, most recently in the awesome movie Scott pilgrim VS the world, which is filled with awesome bits of music, sound effects  and so on right from the get go,straight out of certain video games, that really made me and most of the cinema (as they were all gamers) chuckle.

like this, the 8-bit universal theme, the first thing you see. pure genius- (below)

and when Scott gets a life, (above) another classic reference to pretty much every game around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOWbWpNKS6s

Seeing and knowing these little things makes you feel clever for some reason, and its very cool idea that developers have to throw them in, as its something that they find funny themselves too, and hope that people will discover.

Annother film i saw recently was Flushed Away, which has loooads in it too, here are a couple of pictures as examples -

When Roddy is trying on clothes, he flicks past a Wolverine and a Wallace suit - wolverine because roddy is played by Hugh jackman, star of the x-men films, and wallace because the studio behind flushed away - Aardman, is responsible for the famous wallace and gromit stop motion series.

There litterally are many many films i could list here that use intertextulaity, but i'd be going on forever!

Still you get the idea, and i just think its awesome how the developsers do it, its adds a ceratin somthing, and makes you feel smarter ( or just more nerdy ) so thats always good :)

Semiotics

Todays topic was Semiotics, and through watching he presentation i found it quite interesting.

The fact of how something is portayed, and the signs it shows. People view it differently, it interepret the symbols in different ways.
 An example of this is if you see the word MARIO
that could just mean anything, and isnt as iconic or relatable as if i showed this picture..

Pictures say more than just words, theres no language barrier, so the world can recognise a certain thing or character.

Most of what we talked about other than this i found kinda hard to take in, apart from what you can tell from images before knowing about them, and the messages that certain pictures send intensionally or not.
But it was still worth learning about.

Realism Views

So we had a few interesting points raised in this weeks lecture, the topic being realism.

From my perspective, studying 2D animation; there are many comical animations all across the internet and such that ive seen and that i really enjoy, most of which aren't really realistic looking at all, but i think its because of that fact that they can be very funny; with the expressions and movement and so on. If drawn in a very relasitic way, wouldnt have quite the same effect, and your kinda limited with what you can do, everything has to be correct most of the time.Having said that they are exeptions, but generally this is what ive found.
It seems that its a fair bit harder to get the same sort of realistic effect shown in 3D films, in 2D animation.

As in 'Final Fantasy Advent children', this is obvously a 3D CGI film, and with this, and when other films, (2D or 3D) look realistic, theyre often more serious, and 'cool' because of it. If serious 'realsitic' looking animations characters started doing crazy faces and moving in unrealistic ways, that would seem kind of strange, and wouldnt work i dont think. In todays ever growing culture, the characters in games and CG films are often created to be as realistic and the given tech lets them be, as this is appealling in the 21st century, more relateable, and involving i think.

We were shown quite a few imges of how realism is portrayed in different mediums in todays culture, i found it so strange that people actually spend loads of money on lifesize, perfect representations of inanaminte babies, i can undertsand why, sort of, but still, i would of thought that would just be scary apart from anything else, how they dont move and all.
And how some adults get attached to those sex dolls, thats just weird, i dont dont why anyone would be desperate enough to buy one of those, rather then meeting and being with and real person, how is that any way the same? or even similiar?
They'll probably just get more and more advanced as time goes on; in looks and technology, that one day they might not even be recognisable from actual people.

Cant help but think of the awesome film 'Surrogates', how in the future people might be controlling thse beings remotely, being them and and customising them howere they want. Its just a film i know, but still i wonder if this is actaully a possibilty, and how far off are we from witnessing it.


Cant help but think of the awesome film 'Surrogates', how in the future people might be controlling thse beings remotely, being them and and customising them howere they want. Its just a film i know, but still i wonder if this is actaully a possibilty, and how far off are we from witnessing it.