Semiotics – the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation
Authorship
You have the text
ideas
tools
And the author – (which is often forgotten)
Structure? Not going to explored right now but there is a difference between Plot vs Narrative.
Attention economy?
Point of view – what is motivating the character? its how we get invested. We can visual show what someone point of view looks like but i think thinks like written in hindsight stories.
A fisher in continuity
I would argue that style something that is a mixture of your short hand.
filming wax images on glass – similar vine lottie’s prince achmed
walked to berlin
open to working in advertising which gave him access to thing he would never get to do by himself
film called circles advertisement to cigarettes
moves to the us in 1936/ worked with mgm and paramount disney
FANTASIA (1940) – exploring line and colour and shape – left the production but was inspired by his concepts
Radio Dynamics (1942) -exploring, colour,shape again- to create a significant diversity in what each viewer imagines
felt that to many of Disney let the music be the dominant part of the animation so in retaliation he made this film without music (an opposite of mickymousing) – different from the silent film era where there were often still physical complement
Motion Painting No1 (1947) – explore the relationship between visual and sound and prioritizing the visual. – 9 months to make. – made it without video playback – avoiding following the music
Guggenheim foundation rejection
More often than not people are invested in the film and are actually watching
lesson on the dynamic absence of sound
Loving Vincent (2017) – emulating van gogh straight
Len Lye
moved to London in 1926
General post office film unit
A colour box (1925) – strip of film painted directly and makes the same illusion of motion
Mary Ellen Bute
Pioneer figure
worked in new york
played in movie theaters before
Tarantella(1940) – “A musical ballet”
Abstronic (1952) – first example of electronically generated animation. – using technology for not iis initial prepose.
Norman McLaren and the national fil Board of Canada
Storyboard & Animatic Angles – dynamic perspective, consistency, 180 degree rule (screen side) Composition Easily readable – what is the story? Does your audience understand what you’re making Character acting & posing – are they being expressive Pacing and timing of the animation – do we have the feeling of an introduction / ending (are you giving the audience a moment to breathe?) Do you have too many shots? Reduce, reduce!
Character designs Complexity – is this too hard to animate? Consistency in the turnaround – between poses using grid lines Having dynamic shape language in both front and side view
Backgrounds Mood – what is the intention of the piece and how is this supported through the mood Composition and staging – will the characters fit into it (links back to SB)
Aesthetic choices Background vs character – how will these be different/same? Colour palette – does it support the overall intention & mood
Mouth Shapes
Mouth shape sheets cover the basic shapes, providing reference for people to add new in-between shapes. We often have different mouth sets for different expressions (usually a different set for ‘happy’ ‘neutral’ and ‘sad’).
When creating your mouth shape sheet, try and cover the following:
Drawing the whole head, try and keep the eyes/brows in neutral and focus on the movement of the chin and cheeks to emphasize and accommodate the mouth movement.
Backgrounds design is really important it sets the mood, atmosphere of the scene. It guides the viewers gaze and it gives visual subtext to viewer.
Background artists work from the animation storyboard and guides from the art director, which they use to create detailed backgrounds that convey the feelings and emotions defined by the script and direction. In addition to color, shape, and light, they consider texture, movement, contrast, lines, and the rule of thirds. —- Being a background artist (background painter or layout artist) wasn’t something I had properly considered but it sound really cool and something i might enjoy
I just really love the painted backgrounds here the texture and the lighting
What Skills are Required?
Advanced illustration skills to allow them to create a variety of styles.
Extreme attention to detail.
Mastery of color theory and its related concepts.
Mastery of light, shape, and texture.
Understanding of 3D composition, proportion, and stage design.
Creativity to create and experiment.
The ability to turn abstract concepts into images and settings.
Colour Theory
Mood is set by the dominant and secondary colours.
Saturation – the measure of how pure the colour is. reduce the saturation by adding gray or a colour on the opposite side of the colour wheel.
Hue – Often used as a simile for colour. It refers to the dominate wavelength of colour out of the 12 colours on the colour wheel e.g The hue of burgundy is red
Tone – Used in to ways. one to describe the color. Two used to describe a feeling of an image
Value – how light or dark the color is, on a scale of black to white. Value is One of the most important variables to the success of a painting.
Make a painting or photograph greyscale (B&W) to see the value. It is vital as it sets the structure of your painting and can help guide the eye. – I find this super useful when figuring out colours, it is the first thing i do when I get stuck.
High Key vs Low Key
A high key painting has a high-value scale (light). A low key painting has a low-value scale (dark)
Usually paintings balance both lights and darks – the way we balance them to reduce or increase contrast and brightness enables us to change the mood of the image.
I tried to make high key value painting, as much as i love it i do think i stick to my mid tone a little to much. .
Colour Temperature Warm colours usually indicate activity and light, and cool colours tend to be used for calm, distance and soothing environments. White, black and grey are usually considered neutral colours. Adding them to our colours gives us a wider range of tones. A colour’s temperature is affected by the surrounding colours: a blue can look warm or cool depending on context.
Complementary They have an extremely strong contrasting, vibrant effect when used together. Overuse can create a painting that is uncomfortable to look at. Use one as the dominant colour and the other as an accent. eg red and green
Analogous – the one I think I’m going to use A relaxing combination, created by colours next to each other on the wheel. Famously used by impressionists to create harmonious paintings. Usually choose one dominant colour, a secondary colour, and an accent colour eg light blue, green and light green
Triadic – another one i was thinking of using Uses three colours which are evenly placed around the colour wheel. Results in a vibrant scheme, even with low saturation. One colour is usually dominant with the other two as accents. Balance with this colour scheme is key. eg green, orange and purple
Split Complementary Opposite each other on the colour wheel. They have an extremely strong contrasting, vibrant effect when used together. Overuse can create a painting that is uncomfortable to look at. Use one as the dominant colour and the other as an accent. eg light green, light orange, purple
My Backgrounds –
I was really inspired by Slawek Fedorczuk. He has a wonderful use of colour. I would also like to study the way ha paints light. It just shows his understanding of form.
I really wanna push out of my comfort zone and make very simple/stylized art style. I tend to default to something realistic and that is something i wanna break. I’m thinking of something like ‘bee and puppycat’
Get to know your character
Who are you drawing? What do they want?
The thought behind the character – what are the key ideas you want to the audience to take away?
Texture, clean line, lighting, expressive shapes, hard angles – what feels right for what you’re creating?
Structure: Shapes and composition
What basic shapes make up their body and head?
How we organise these can drastically change the feeling of the character (scary, little, loveable, wise, twisted, cute, strong)
These can also help us create more interest and intrigue if used unexpectedly – for example putting a timid character in a towering hulk of a body
The key when starting this is surprise yourself – don’t use your usual shape patterns!
Shape language
Shapes can be used to guide your overall character designs. Triangle to heighten fear, square to heighten strength, circle to heighten softness. – (feel free to subvert or ignore this guideline- its just a guideline.) Contrast is key to have interesting character design. narrow / wide, and in straight / curved.
Think about who you character is and and what i want to exaggerate. The face is something that is often neglected when it comes to interesting shapes.
AESTHETIC – Colour palettes, texture, lighting and line
Questions to Consider:
Line or no line? How does this change the tone? – Probably line on the character but painted backgrounds
Stylised or realistic? – Stylised
Lighting or flat colour? – flat for now lighting If i have time
Natural light or sharp shadows? – natural light
Texture or flat fills? – textured background flat fills for character
Limited colour palette or full range? – I want to use a full range of colours
(You may not know until you experiment, but keep coming back to the WHY of your character – who are they? What story are you telling?)
DIVERSITY IN DESIGN – Body types, hairstyles, outfits, accessories and more
Diversity in character also just makes for better characters. There are so many personalities and people and stories to be told – let’s do just that. Your characters will be more interesting and more memorable
Consider: size, shape, age, gender (designing for all gender expressions and sexual identities), sexuality, ethnicity, education level, income, culture, customs, disabilities, and more
What shoes would your character wear? What accessories help tell their story? How old or new are their clothes? What materials would the character gravitate towards?
Question your biases! Why are you drawing the way that you are?
Think beyond a Euro-American lens of the world: how can you signify diverse backgrounds and cultural details where appropriate?
Plot – how and when- the structure the story follows
Types of structure
Linear (e.g. most children’s books)
Non-linear – outside of traditional chronological sequences and may include flashbacks. Action is a theme rather than a driving force.
Fractured – does not follow chronology, contains uncertainty
Collage – multiple viewpoints, but cohesive due to a common theme or element
Braided – different viewpoints and characters that weave together throughout story
Types of conflict
Man vs Man – the main character struggles against another physical character (e.g. wicked witch in Wizard of Oz)
Man vs Nature – the main character struggles against a force of nature – external conflict (e.g. Cast Away, The Red Turtle)
Man vs Themself – the main character struggles with right and wrong / their decisions, etc (e.g. Up) – this is the most interesting one to me
Man vs Society – the main character struggles against ideas, practices, customs of the people (e.g. Handmaid’s Tale) There are loads of other different versions of types of conflicts but these are the main ones
Narrative building
Who is it about?
What do they want?
Why can’t they get it?
What do they do about it?
Why doesn’t it work?
How does it end?
You don’t have to use this type of narrative structure. Personally. I like it a lot.
We don’t have enough time to fully explore the narrative structure. So to still be able to take the viewer on a journey we need to focus on the start and the finish.
Where do we start
where do we finish
What does that feel like?
What does that look like?
How has the environment or character changed along the way?
How has our perception of them changed?
What has been revealed?
Platform We talked about that we should build a platform for our story to stand on. Then when conflict happens that’s when the platform tilts – that what interests the viewer, the tilt. Without a clear platform/foundation we get confused and likely remain detached.
Who + who = what is their relationship?
Where are they?
What is happening
What are they doing?
The Tilt If nothing happens to the platform that would make for a boring story. For such a short animation we only need one tilt and the back to equilibrium
Activity I really loved doing this activity with my classmates it made it took the pressure off have to have a “good” story as well as taking us is very fun drastic directions.
Scriptwriting Though this is not something I am going to be doing now. I plan on doing it the future.
The basics of script formatting are as follows:
12-point Courier font size
Each page should have approximately 55 lines
The dialogue block starts 2.5 inches from the left side of the page
Character names must have uppercase letters and be positioned starting 3.7 inches from the left side of the page
Page numbers are positioned in the top right corner. The first page shall not be numbered, and each number is followed by a period.
Don’t forget every scene has a number!
What is a beat sheet? Beat Sheets are a list of all the key plot points (or beats) in your film that help guide the narrative forward.
This really helped my have an idea of a concrete story to move forward with when I started thumb-nailing. Traditionally, beat sheets are used to keep production on the same page as well as funding application and pitches.
My platform and tilt right now
Who is it about?
Who + who = what is their relationship? – A mother, daughter and cashier talking
Where are they? – They are inside the corner store
What are they doing? – The mother is busy picking out treats for a birthday party and the daughter bounces as she talks to the person at the till.
What do they want? – the daughter want attention, the mother is trying to get out of here as quickly as possible. The cashier is trying to entertain the the child.
What do they do about it? – the mother wizzes around the store searching for the stuff.
How does it end? – the mother drops all the stuff on the table in front of the daughter
What does that feel like? – It should feel slightly humorous
What does that look like? – It should look very detailed and kind of messy
How has the environment or character changed along the way? – I imagine the the mother has hit and knocked over things in her frantic search.
How has our perception of them changed? – The mother might come off as disinterested but is actually really caring and attentive to her daughter
Character over camera Due to the short time limit and that I am working on this project alone focusing more on character, composition, posing and emotional beats opposed to complex camera moves will be very helpful
For Strong posing and beats
Break down the beats of the dialogue/story
what are the key emotional points?
Where is the emphasis?
This is where I can really push my acting and my staging and I can try the silhouette method to check my poses
(Do some sketches for the storyboard)
Composition tips
Composition and Negative space-How does space around your character change what you’re communicating? Generally it is in front of front of the direction the character is communicating in unless we are purposefully trying to hide something from the viewer
Rule of thirds
180 degree rule
Staging In narrative pieces we try to avoid straight or profile angle although flat staging could be used for comedic effect, a ‘diorama’/ calm effect, (Winnie the Pooh)
Generally, get in as close as possible to whatever is the most important thing at that moment, while leaving breathing room and enough room for any actions that might occur in that scene.
Shot angle Eye Level – Placing your character at camera eye level will build a sense of empathy with them.
Low Angle – Low Angles make your character’s feel powerful and important.
High Angle – High Angles look down on your characters making them feel powerless and insignificant. Often creating a feeling of sympathy for them.
Close-up – Close-ups allow us to study the character’s emotional state and get closer to what they are thinking.
Symmetry – achieved through balance in form and line Balance – measured through size scale and value, makes it easy for the viewer to read
I really loved this animation the balance of the difference scenes really shows the power dynamics at work between the characters
Leading lines – it leads the eye to certain elements in the frame whithout overwhelming the viewer.
Learn lip-sync techniques, character acting, and storytelling in animation.
Create a 10-15 mins animation to dialogue for a show reel.
Personal goals
I really wanna push my acting and character design and composition. I feel like these or all things I have been pushing to their extreme
I want to focus on learning pose to pose animation and stop relaying on straight ahead.
I wanna become proficient in Toon Boom
What is lip Sync?
Synchronising dialogue with lips and body movement(acting). We as audience member tend to look at the face of a character to good lips are important. But even without seeing a mouth we can get what the character is feeling through body language. We are trying to do both
Body – we are using pose to pose animation and emphasising key moments of drama in the dialogue.
Lips – emphasis in the talking, and creating mouth shapes that correspond with them. prioritise the loudest or most exaggerated moments first, and then spend the rest of the time working out how to get from one to another convincingly (much the same as with posing the character’s body). To help with this we use an ‘x-sheet’ to breaks down the individual sounds you hear in each frame, so you know what mouth shape to choose.
Free drawing
Had 3 audios I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to choose. And personally I thought that they were boring. This changed after a started doing the free drawing exercises.
We listened to the clip on repeat and sketching what came to mind. At this point I was really flustered and was kind of stuck in my head. Jess recommended using a scrap piece of paper instead of my personal book and continuous line drawing- so I actually ripped out some pages and to start a draw with my left head to I would worry about the drawing being neat. Once I started I really enjoyed the process.
I was trying really hard not to be super literal with what I was drawing but the moment they said an object it was my first instinct to draw it. But when I looked at the page as a whole it felt like a was building a world for where the charters are going to go. Then I thought maybe the objects at the characters? (Just food for thought)
Bus Stop Station Corner StoreFather Bus people
I had 4 different audios,
one from my dad to build courage to talk to strangers-(I actually like it though I think he speaks slowly and there isn’t any background noise)
one from a lady at the bus stop-( she was really sweet but she was really quite)
one from the corner store lady- ( I see her weekly to buy myself chocolate and she was cool)
one from a lady and her niece on the bus- (it was the nieces first time in London and the lady had been here for 10 years)
Choosing which audio I was going to use was the most stressful part. I felt like each on had their on merits and I don’t wanna leave any one behind.
Platform
We talked about that we should build a platform for our story to stand on. Then when conflict happens that’s when the platform tilts – that what interests the viewer, the tilt. Without a clear platform/foundation we get confused and likely remain detached.
Who + who = what is their relationship?
Where are they?
What is happening
what are they doing?
Research/Inspo
Nick Park’s Creature Comforts 1989 – I really love the acting and how the voices matches the animals. It feels like we are actually dropping into the interview them, as if we are actually interrupting their day.
The London pigeon Chronicles – loved the that they took this very common conversation that I have heard hundreds of time and applied it to pigeons. I also love the pause at the end of the laugh and to digest the conversation.
I am absolutely in love with the acting of this though the music carries a lot, I want to go for something dramatic
I love how the clean lip-sync is even with acting. I find its very hard to do both.
There are 3 types of Mood boards
Style research – Most common type of mood boards that are made. What style feel relevant to the project? Focus on line, Colour, Texture, Lighting, Shape language, Composition
Photography from life – looking for ideas of clothing, Hair, landscapes/environment from real life. I might even go out and take some photos
Colour and mood – gather image that creates mood but also deciding on what mood to make. colour palette
It is also important not to just make a mood board but to be purposeful with what images you use – to show this make sure to annotate each mood board. – (How are they influencing your work?)
It’s important to reflect on this as you’re creating designs and in your submission.)
These were the key words we decided on as a group, we wanted to continue on the themes of transformation that we had touched on during our rotations. we had a mis of different concept ideas.
->One was leaning hard into the transformation and being trans, i story of how scary it can be but to come out the other side better and happier. ->Another leaned into the environment and exploring things like a nuclear disaster. -> Or being trap by anxiety and a struggle with self. ecta ectra – we wnt through a lot of ideas.
As a group went though so many different iteration of the story but the is was the first draft.
https://pin.it/14YkHBFag -> creating a clear mood/arc to hep put everyone on the same page and kickstart the story.
Just from the vibe of all the imagery we have gather. I imagined the traveler as an explorer, as almost a god like creature that we don’t get to see the face of. I think if the traveler is a god like creature it would make sense why the environment is kind of its mindscape. They want to explore the forest picking up herbs-(imagine a witch or collector )
They come across a lake that they get to see the future – a glimpse of our ideas of solace– this is to show the travelers’ reaction and show them grasping for the future a, but it slowly fades into their reflection. Their emotional distress leads to the sort of decay of the environment around them.
They eventually calm down all the colourful decay stops. When they see this light orb that they can hold. They eventually absorb it into their body as their environment fall away
At this point i started to get worried about timing and splitting up roughly how log each things takes
At this point we got sort of stuck on the story and it went really progressing. We couldn’t find a way to make to lake make logical sense. The story felt split in to 2 sections and the climax was not purposefully enough. We took a break and started working on a character profile and environment.
Character profile Character name: Aether (they/them) Physical attributes: small, agile, has a cape, pretty lanky, has a cane (staff) and leg braces, carrying herbs, magical little fella, very wispy Hobbies: collecting a shiny things. Knitting, exploring thing, foraging Personality: Desperate, curious, easily overwhelmed, skittish, quiet but fascinating Their origins: some sort of spirit creature, woodland sprite who lives with their little villages hidden in the forest, the sprites aren’t well integrated into the rest of magical society and tend to keep to themselves.
Environment profile Dark trees sharp and annulare. Dark but has life to be decayed. Winter/autumn. Blue, purple is the colour of the forest. Set deep into the forest in mid winter. The sky is a dull medium shade of blue and it looks as though it might snow with the way the sky is quite foggy. It’s clear that it has snowed recently as the ground is still frozen and lightly dusted in snow meaning you can see Aether’s footprints yet the forest is resilient against the frost and you can still see grass and certain plants cropping up from underneath the snow. The trees are bare and sharp, a stark contrast against the white snow and the sky. The lake contrasts the background as it shimmers under the harsh winter light – indicating its potential magical qualities but it shouldn’t be too vibrant or else it will be too obvious. In the background in the trees you can catch glimpses of the frozen stone statues of other woodland creatures where they have been caught and petrified.
I really love this environment and i would love to use it make a painting or make a really detailed sound scape in the future
After taking a little break from the from the came back with wind in our sails
These are some of the initial character designs drawn by Rhianna cork as we spoke about the narrative. Though i didn’t play much of a role in this stage you can see all of the different version we went though before agreeing on a final design. All of these quick sketches really helped me plan how we would break up the animation and have a more concrete idea for the character and their personal story before the animation.
The Final Character designs and colours
At this point in the process we were till investigating the idea of decay as a scary but necessary thing that has to happen. To do this i was personally focusing on the colours using bright colours to contrast the world bleak work around but leaning towards uninviting shades and shapes. I loved the way it subverts what we normally associate with to cause fear. Another team member brought up the final scene from Paranorman where aggie emotion is linked ad reacts with the forest.
This was one of the paintings that I did for the painting of the forest before we made any concept art. as you can see i had a more wisp lighter forest in mind be for i so the concept art. I was also struggling to get the colours i wanted and had to get a lager pallet with a wider range of water colours
This is some of the concept that Rhianna cork made focusing around the environment. As you can see we are looking at a very dark forest in the winter. These art works also helped us decide that wanted a painterly style.
This was our first storyboard before our final story
This story-board has all the edit we needed to make to it was a more dynamic
This actually happens a lot Night club – jonathan hudgerson
big,small stories Why does your story matter?- as long as it means something to me. What do you do? What are you here to do? What do you understand by ‘practice’? Changing a hobby to something you get paid to do? What has happen to you/ in you to get to a place where you are confident and informed?
Storyboards How do you choose to show change or a threat? Using writing to push my work Giving character some ‘life’ – this affects the environment,
Artist Manifesto
Fail again.Fail better – Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
Grayson Perry – Manifesto Red Alan
Diverging Doris Salcedo – Shinsuke Yoshitake: it might be an apple
Interfere in the world
The Potemkin village. Gregor sailer
A pattern interrupted – is a short story
Our hearts or our intellects will have been moved of the page
Became interested in cutting out silhouettes as a child, and performed shadow theatres for her classmates.
As a teenager, Reiniger studied at the Max Reinhardt Theatre School – got the attention of her professors by making silhouettes of them.
Early work involved making intertitles and (initially static) silhouettes for films. This led to her being offered a position at the Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute for Cultural Research). (See Bastiancich, 1992, p. 5).
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
The offer to produce an animated feature was made by a banker who visited the Institute.
Reiniger adapted elements of the collected stories 1001 Arabian Nights. The film is presented as a number of ‘acts’, meaning that the narrative has a slightly disjointed structure. However, it was always intended to be screened in full.
The film took three years of work with a small team (including Lotte Reiniger’s husband Carl Koch, and the avant-garde artist Walter Ruttman).
First Musical score composed for a specific animation
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the first animated feature known to survive. Reiniger’s film is important not just because of its possible status as a ‘first’. Reiniger is an early example of a woman being given significant creative control over film projects. It took the majority of Hollywood studios several more decades to allow similar freedoms.
For many years, female employees at the Disney studio were ‘almost exclusively [put to work] in the Ink and Paint department (colouring the animation cels)’ (Griffin, 2000, p. 26
Reiniger developed a style of silhouette animation that she continued to refine throughout her life.
The film offers an alternative to the dominant cel animation system of the period.
Reiniger and her team experimented with various effects in conjunction with the silhouette technique.
Certain backgrounds created using combinations of glass, oil, sand, and multi-layered tissue paper
Silhouettes
Reiniger’s ‘trick table’th camera shots from the front with back lighting Silhouette puppetry dates back many centuries:
Artwork survives from as early as 600BC (Rutherford, 2009, p. 13). Reiniger’s animation is shot from above, whereas shadow theatres have historically been shot using frontal lighting (Bastiancich, 1992, p. 9).
Figures built with joints, giving flexibility to the animation and connecting the various parts of the body.
A more detailed version of the figure would sometimes be created for close-up shots, to give extra detail.
Some shots involved multiple cutouts, such as the transformation sequences.
Process
Reiniger would generally storyboard the scenes and draw the protagonists in detail before ‘reducing’ the image to a silhouette.
A notable challenge of silhouette animation is being able to convey information without relying on many of the elements we often take for granted – colour, facial expression, costume design, and so on.
The documentary Lotte Reiniger: Homage to the Inventor of the Silhouette Film (below) shows this technique by comparing production drawings for Reiniger’s Cinderella (1954) with the finished film.
Silhouette Precedents
Reiniger was not the first to create cinematic silhouette animation, although she is notable for committing to it as an ongoing technique.
Segundo de Chomón (who also directed The Electric Hotel [1908]) experimented with silhouette animation in several films, including Une Excursion Incohérente (1909), where it was blended with live-action footage (including some live-action shadow play)
J R Bray the silhouette fantasies
Silhouette Fantasies
Despite having already developed the cel animation system, the Bray studio (in conjunction with the artist C. Allan Gilbert) experimented with silhouette animation with the series Silhouette Fantasies in 1916.
At least six films were produced.
At least some were based around series subjects, such as ‘Greek myths and tragedies’.
Quirino Cristiani – The First Animated Feature Filmmaker?
It is believed that animator Quirino Cristiani produced at least two feature-length animated films that preceded Reiniger’s work.
El Apóstol (The Apostle, 1917) was a satire featuring a caricuature of the then-President Hipólito Yrigoyen.- none exist today
Sin dejar rastros (Without a Trace, 1918) was based around the real-life sinking of an Argentine ship by a German commander. The film was confiscated upon its release.
Cristiani made his films for a local audience. There was very little export appeal and so few (if any) copies were made.
Cristiani’s personal copies were destroyed in a fire (and Without a Trace was confiscated).
It is not known whether the films definitively featured animation all the way through – the only evidence is oral testimony from Cristiani (see Bendazzi, 1994, p. 50).
Michel Ocelot
Ocelot has occasionally criticized some of Reiniger’s works – calling them, for example, ‘rather archaic and not very attractive’ (in the DVD interview ‘Comment on Fait’) – but his techniques and style have many references to her work. Also like Reiniger, many of Ocelot’s stories refer to myth and legend.
Les Trois Inventeurs (1979)
Ocelot’s first independent production, produced in relative isolation over the course of a year.
Uses a series of cutout puppets.
A reaction in part to an unhappy experience working on a television production – his first professional role as director – where his fellow animators had claimed that ‘cut-out animation was for amateurs’. Ocelot aimed to use the film to place himself in ‘artistic tradition that made craftsmanship one of its main traits’ (Buono, 2024, p. 25, 18).
Unlike his later silhouette work, Les Trois Inventeurs uses white paper models. The paper is often twisted and embossed to purposely draw attention to the cutout aesthetic.
The film’s ending also draws attention to the ‘material’ nature of the protagonists and their world.
The film was a significant critical success and established Ocelot as a viable independent animator (Buono, 2024, pp. 29-30).
