Month: December 2021

Disney Animation

The artistic style of Disney’s animated films includes: mainly drama, storyline twists, distinctive characters, vivid and exaggerated action, beautiful music and suitable for the aesthetic taste of most audiences. In terms of scripts content, Disney tends to depict gorgeous dreamscapes with a focus on children’s feelings.

• Disney animation conveys the love of different races, the harmony between man and nature, and the love between men and women, giving children an earlier sense of some philosophical truths and humanistic concerns. The humor, enthusiasm, childishness and playful spirit embodied in the animation are precisely what satisfies this psychology of adults, giving them an energetic and optimistic mindset.
• Disney animation is characterized by a strong sense of humor and entertainment, with both early modern and serious witty productions bringing the audience into a light-hearted and humorous environment.
• Disney animation also has a strong traditional familyism to it. <Finding Nemo> is a story of a single father who tries everything to find his lost son, and <The Incredibles> is not about Superman saving the world, but about how families should stick together, overcome obstacles and love each other. “Family” is almost the core theme of American cartoons.
• Disney animation attaches great importance to personal values, affection, the environment and the harmonious relationship between human beings and nature, and it makes this American spirit, the American mindset and values to the widest extent and can be well integrated into the entertainment of cartoons, which is recognized by animation audiences all over the world and thus becomes popular worldwide.

<Lotus Lantern>

An animation film produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1999, this film is based on the Chinese myth of the same name.

• Story line

It was originally forbidden for a heavenly god to fall in love with a mortal. However, the Three Saints’ Mother in the Heavenly Palace was determined to fall in love with Liu Yanchang, a scholar on earth. Despite the objections of Erlang Shen, the Three Saints’ Mother took her divine weapon, the Lotus Lantern, to the mortal world and married Liu Yanchang, giving birth to a son named Chen Xiang. The seven years of peace and happiness soon passed, but one day Erlang Shen suddenly came down to earth and threatened her with the precious lotus lantern and was crushed under Mount Hua. A beautiful family is shattered. Chen Xiang learns of his origins from the God of the Land and sets out on a difficult journey to find his mother in order to retrieve the lantern and save her. After years of trials and tribulations, Chen Xiang grows up to be a brave young man, and with the guidance of Monkey Sun, he acquires a divine axe. In the end, lotus lantern and Chen Xiang become one, defeating Erlang Shen, splitting Mount Hua and rescuing his mother.

• Similarities

In terms of the story script, although the film is based on traditional Chinese mythology, it encourages individual thought and will, such as the Three Saints’ Mother who bravely pursued her true love because she loved Liu Yanchang so much that she defied the rules of heaven. This is similar to Disney’s emphasis on personal values. Chen Xiang’s struggle to defeat Erlang Shen to save his mother after being separated from her, and Monkey Sun’s willingness to help Chen Xiang even though he is an outsider because of his origins, all stem from the human heart’s love for his mother, which is also highly compatible with Disney’s strong family values. From the point of view of character performances, this is the first fully commercial animated film from Shanghai Animation Film Studio, and they refer to a lot of Disney’s performance style to make each character’s personality distinct through their acting. Monkey Sun’s performance is more smooth and humorous, highlighting the monkey’s spirited and quirky symbolism. Erlang Shen, the villain of the film, is given a relatively small range of movement by his creators, in an attempt to show as much of the maturity and arrogance of Erlang Shen’s character as possible.

Notes for this week

3 Golden Rules of editing

• Editing should remain invisible to the eye, only the effect is to be experienced – the best cut is the one you do not see
• The storyteller should never let the audience get ahead of them – less is more
• The audience has to be a participant, not just a spectator

Continuity

• Graphic relations
• Rhythmic relations
• Spatial relations
• Temporal relations

Continuity Editing

• Spatial continuity
• Temporal continuity

• Take 2 films you enjoy and break down the character development and story development throughout the film:
• Analyses how the main characters evolve
• Analyses how the characters drive the story
• If there are similarities between your films point this out and why you think they are following a similar structure if so.

<Good Hunting>

This short animation film is episode 8th of < Love, Death and Robots> , and the narrative could be separated into 2 parts: the ancient age of magic and the modern age of technology.

The protagonist is Liang, a man who is curious about the unknown and willing to take on new things and dig into them. The first part is happened on ancient times still filled with the power of magic. Liang follows his father to catch a Hulijing, and on the way he meets Yan, a young Hulijing and he has been with her ever since. As time passed, and at the same time as technology advanced by leaps and bounds magic was disappearing, and gradually Yan lost the magic to transform into a fox. However Liang is brave enough to embrace the great changes in technology, and he begins to learn about steam engines and mechanical construction, and to create small animals that are given life by technology and mechanical. In the end, Liang gives Yan also regains her magic-age powers through the power of machinery —– turning into a mechanical Hulijing and starting her hunting at night.

The whole story evolves with the changing times and the growth of the main character and it’s a liner narrative. The main character Liang moves the narrative from indecision about the whole macrocosmic era to a later glad acceptance. At the first, due to his father’s admonition, Liang was always wary of Hulijing and curious as a teenager. It wasn’t until he met Yan and realised that hulijing wasn’t essentially trying to harm people that he began his change and was willing to support Yan as an exorcist. Then in the great age of technological advancement, he began to abandon his old knowledge of exorcism and began to learn about scientific mechanics, and he began his change again to drive the whole story forward to the second part. Yan lost her powers in the new era, Liang sets out to help Yan transform her body to make her a hunter again. From the view of the old age, Liang has done something unbecoming of an exorcist. But from the second part of the new era, the old time demons have become capitalists and colonists, and Liang is still holding on to his beliefs in his own way.

<Zima Blue>

This short animation film is episode 14th of < Love, Death and Robots> and it mainly talked about the renowned artist Zima recounts his mysterious past and rise to fame before unveiling his final work.

The story begins with a journalist named Claire who on her way to visit Zima, tells how his work became famous and his signature technique ‘zima blue’. ‘Zima blue’ is a colour that is difficult to describe precisely and Zima would always add this shade of blue shadow to his huge artworks. When she met Zima, Zima wanted her to help himself spread the truest story about Zima to the public. Zima told Clare  he paid a visit to a planet called Kharkov 8. There he underwent a physical transformation of the human body to the extent that it gave him god-like powers, he could breath without oxygen, he could physically withstand any environmental condition without protection and so much. From that moment he began to ponder the truth of the universe. He travelled through it and finally understood that it spoke a truth that even his great artworks could not express.

At this point Zima takes Claire to an excavated swimming pool at the construction site which is his final work. He claimed that this was his quest for the truth about the universe and that he was not a man who had been transformed into a machine. He was invented a long time ago by a young inventor to clean his family’s swimming pool. The inventor created many robots but his favorite was this swimming pool cleaning robot. Out of interest, the inventor experimented with further modifications until the robot became fully autonomous. After the death of the inventor, he was passed on to a number of people and eventually became Zima after many modifications and upgrades. The pool in front of her was where Zima had first worked, and Claire understood that the inspiration for ‘Zima blue’ had come from the pool tiles Zima had seen before.

At the end of the night, the stage was filled with spectators, Zima switched off his brain control system in front of the public and dismantled himself step by step in the water until the original robot reappeared and started his original job. This is the truth of Zima’s exploration of the universe, the artist’s evolution from humble origins as a pool washer. In this way, he claims, he can appreciate his surroundings so that he can experience the satisfaction of a job well done. Zima Blue’s quest for the truth is finally over. “He’s going home”.

This impressive short film is told in interstitial narrative, the author pieced together a complete story of Zima through Claire’s recollections and Zima’s own recollections. Because of the different people recalled before and after, the viewer is always left wondering about the image of Zima, which can give a sense of contrast to the whole narrative.

Notes for this week

Things need to keep in mind:

• A good story need to be read, engage and surprise.
• Structure and treatment of the production needs to be the backbone of storytelling. They are the means conveying the story to the audience.
• The design, movement, staging and performance of the characters should drive the narrative.
• It is important to relate a universally experience to the character or story development so that the audience will immediately associate with those characters and their dilemma.

Character Weakness

1. Psychological – A weakness that only affect the hero
2. Moral – A weakness that immorally hurts the characters surrounding the hero

• Hero always has both moral weakness and psychological weakness.
• The weaknesses hero encountered need others to exist to be weaknesses such as prejudice, impatience, greed, pride, and dishonesty. Because it’s easy to create both moral and psychological need for the character.
• Make sure at least one other character is harmed by the protagonist weakness so that the audience will notice that weakness.
• It is necessary to enable the audience to pick up the lessons that embedded within the story on the audience own. It is not advisable to make the audience feel strongly preachy.