BSA 106 WEEK 5

Review of 1970-1975 Animation

France:

Dougel and the Blue Cat 

Initial release: 1970

Director: Serge Danot

Narrated by: Eric Thompson

Review : 

Dougel  and the Blue Cat  was a series of 500 short stop motion animation directed towards a younger audience.  The Show shows many similarity to a lot of the children orientated shows we see today with each episode having a message behind the episode to teach children a life lesson 

Norway:

Ivo Caprino:

was an Animator famous for his perfection of manipulating characters in real time, this is considered an early version of animatronics . Later on in his career he switched to stop motion animation and created the The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix 1975 which took three and a half years to make. This animation was a master piece  and still holds up against modern stop motion. this film was so popular that it created box office records that still stand and was shown in some cinemas for 28 years.

Hungary:

William Feigenbaum & Jozsef Gemes:

William and Jozsef  were children animators  who created children films one of there most famous creations was Hugo The Hippo. This film was release and produced by Warren bros studios and was a cult favorite with parents.

UK:

Bob Godfey ( the naughty bugger). 

Bob created a Adult animation that received  X rating called Karma Sutra Rides again. This is comedy animation directed at adults and follows the story of what a middle aged couple does behind closed doors to keep the spark alive in there marriage through  Sex and it's  many many  possibilities. The approach to this topic is comedic and well portrayed and focus more on the humor than the actual sex.

This animation was Nominated for  an Oscar for best animation. 

Poland and France:

Piotr Kamler  made a experimental stop motion film that looks to resemble early 3D animation, the film lacks and meaning and story and instead focus on the representation of the stop motion.

Japan

From Japan we see the emergence of an animation titan Hayao Miyazaki & Isao Takahata who would form Studio Giblie which is a world renowned animation studio. During 1974 they created an tv series adaption  of a children's book Hedi. This Tv series has become a cult classic and a new 3D recreation is in the works.

Staying with Japan we also saw the creation of a powerful film about the Hiroshima bombing. The animation was created by Renzo & Sayoko Kinoshita. the animation is still considered on of the most harrowing representation of the Hiroshima event.

USA

Lillian Shwartz pioneer of computer animation.

Lillian was a famous artist and computer animator famous for her computer animator work for her new techniques and practices. the animations she created and produced are very basic and abstract animations using many mediums from lasers to images of birds in flight to help create her animations.

Ralph Bakshi

Ralph believed that because of the changes happening in society in terms of the new social power and economic freedom of young people that animation could be opened up to an adult audience. He took the comic character created by Robert Crumb Fritz the cat and create the first X rated American animation. The animation carries a huge  array of Adult themes from Sex and Drugs to Racism and discrimination of social classes. the animaton was a hit and connected well with a young adult audience and opened the door for some of the shows we see today like Family guy and South Park. 

France/ Czech Republic:
Rene Laloux

Rene created a fantasy animation called The Fantastic Planet in  1973. the films is based of the Novel Oms en Serie by Stefan Wul. The film follows the story of a society where humans have been taken to another planet to be pets. the film used a unique animation style that is very representative of Salvador Dali work. 

USA 1971 A Christmas Carol by Richard Williams Review: 

This Animated movie follows the classic story of MR Scrooge as he is visited by 3 ghosts who help to guide his bitter soul back down a path of happiness.

This animated version is a beautiful representation through it pencil like drawn art style we can see immense levels of detail and characteristic in the characters and the back grounds. the  use of shadowing and contouring black on white in some of the scene creates a truly harrowing appeal that connects the audience to the severity of scrooges situation well on the other hand in the scene that use a lot of colour the tones all still mute and natural never creating a high contrast and blending the scenes into the animation but still giving them a level of charm and unique appeal this is seen when we compare how the ghost of Christmas past and Christmas future are presented at the visions we see of both.