Lecture 7: Advertising

The first question that was presented to us was:

Is advertising prostitution?

My initial reaction was yes; I feel that a lot of companies use the opposite sex to sell their products (depending on the branding), which has been proven to work effectively with the general public over the years. This has meant stripping away everything except the model and product, which could be viewed as objectifying males or females in accordance.

Advertising is "often considered as a tool used by capitalism to change established values within society". A powerful advert could change our views on what we need and want - so if used in the right way, we could potentially persuade most of the general public to agree to good policies...

However, a lot of shops use advertising as a way to make people think they want objects/clothing that they don't really need, or will only wear once.
"No short term effect specific to product modifies us over a long period of time." I think Barbara Kruger expresses this quote well with her campaign 'I shop therefore I am', which was shown in shops as customers were browsing.

Previously, in the 50's, it was women who were objectified to sex. That's because society was different, nobody knew it was wrong to objectify women in this way; Nothing too obvious, just subtle comments or quotes that suggest women should have different values to men

However, more recently the roles seem to have changed, particularly in this poster:

It suggests that men are now being objectified to sex, being stripped naked whereas the women are standing dominant with clothing... But does using sex have an appeal amongst young adults?

The question asked in the lecture hall was if everything I've posted so far is negative (or perceived as negative) what's good about advertising?
1. It drives global economies. I guess this means it creates profits for our businesses,
2. Drives creativity. It allows artists to express their feelings with meaning; which could reach out to others.
3. It's a very powerful form of art. "Art feeds advertising, and vice versa". You can take the popular work of a great artist and use that to advertise something... It reaches out to a wider audience if they already recognise the work that's being shown.

An example of combining art with advertising is Salvador Dali's work with the car brand VolksWagen.

4. It shapes popular culture. Really good advertising can bring everyone together in harmony, sharing festivities or products that show us all as equals.

For example, creating Santa Claus to remind everyone of the festive period.

5. It's endlessly entertaining. You can create humorous, emotional, or relatable adverts that are memorable. The example shown to us during the lecture was this:



This brilliant advert for The Guardian newspaper suggests there's more to the story of 'The Three Little Pigs' and that the reporters of the Guardian are good at uncovering the truth. It's a captivating advert that makes you curious about what happened, which is why this is an example of good advertising.

6. It can enlighten or inspire. Speaking home truths makes a very thought-provoking advert;

For example I think this is an effective advert; The lack of physical harm in a book compared to a gun makes you assume the gun is banned, which is why this poster is so shocking. 

7. It reflects values, hopes and dreams. This could represent someone's ambitions to get into the Olympic Games, for example; if shoes are being advertised they could be the 'perfect' shoes to take you to complete your dreams.
8. Challenges you to to something.
9. Questions social norms and attitudes. This could categorise adverts for charities such as GreenPeace and United Colors of Benetton, who strive for human rights.
10. Raises social awareness. It shows how people should respect each other - and animals; using accidents as an awareness of road safety for example.

This question was asked again at the end of the session:

Is advertising prostitution?

I realised after hearing this lecture there's a lot more to advertising then I originally thought. It can unite people, challenge and encourage people to do things for the better, make people see home truths that we should be striving against. So I could potentially use animating as a way of advertising something meaningful, to get my views across.

Seminar 4 - Animation in the Commercial Realm

Commercial animation is the opposite of auteurism.

In the commercial realm you actually have a client with their own ideas, which have a subject to promote, such as an advertisement, where negotiations about the style, money, audience etc. take place; whereas auteurism - which we looked at in a previous seminar - gives the creator ownership over their work, more like a film.

This was the first ever animated piece of work, created as an advertisement for matches:



For its time, it's groundbreaking and inventive, since no one had tried it before, it wowed its audiences. Especially since it's a campaign to send matches to help the soldiers in the first World War.

It was 114 years since the British made this film, and since then animation has evolved into something much more...

A more recent advertising series is from Lloyds TSB:



This is an example of an advert with it's own style. Since Lloyds TSB work with the same animators, they can use the same character designs and have little stories for them. This in a way makes the animators for it auteurs themselves... However the difference between auteurship and commercial is they are restricted with what they can do with character development because ultimately it's for the client.

Ultimately, I think that animation used in advertisements is more appealing to audiences, because the characters, stories and styles are relatable and can be anything you want it to be, which is why there has been a higher usage of it in recent years.

Lecture 6 - Animation Part 2...

This is a follow on from my previous blog post, listing the chronology of animation history...

The Television Age arrived from 1958... This is where companies such as Hanna-Barbera became the centre of attention, with TV series such as "The Flintstones" and "Huckleberry Hound" (1960 onwards).

This is also where Bob Godfrey found his creativity, making "Do it yourself Cartoon Kit" (1961) through to the successful TV series "Roobarb and Custard" (1977) being just highlights of his career.
Then there's films such as "Ersatz (Surogat)" (1961) and Jiri Trnka's "The Hand" (1965) that address the issues of the modern age in subtle ways, which shows that animators were starting to use their skills as ways of sending messages to their audiences.

Ersatz (Surogat)

The Hand

Animators of this time were starting to experiment with different techniques, rather then just drawing in 2D; There was Stan Brakhage, who stuck real insects and leaves to a roll of film to create the piece "Mothlight"; Ray Harryhousen who dominated the stop motion and special effects areas with films such as "Jason and the Argonauts"; and Chuck Jones was one of the first to use only shapes to represent emotions in "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics" (1965).

The Dot and the Line

Jason and the Argonauts

Mothlight

There's also the first signs of Anime, in the series "Astro Boy", from 1963 onwards, telling the story of a robot boy with high intelligence fighting evil.

After Walt Disney's death in 1966, the TV series's and other artists became a lot more dominant with the public, with programmes, films and music videos such as:

The Clangers

Gordan Murray: "Camberwick Green" (1966)
Terry Gilliam: "Monthy Python's Flying Circus" (1966)
Oliver Postgate: "The Clangers" (1969)
Richard Williams: "A Christmas Carol" (1971)
Ivor Caprino's: "The Pinchcliffe Grande Prix" (1975)
Martin Rosen's: "Watership Down" (1979)
Roger Mainwood's: Autobahn music video (1979)
Yuri Norstien's: "Tale of Tales" (1979)
Tim Burton's first film "Vincent" (1982)

The Pinchcliffe Grande Prix

Don Bluth's: "The Secret of Nimh" (1982)
Steven Lisber's: "Tron" (1982)
Gerald Scarfe's: "Pink Floyd The Wall" (1982)

Tale of Tales

From the 1980's onwards, animators carried on refining their talents, and developing new technologies to try new ways of using the old techniques in the modern world; thus came the stages towards the digital age.
Cosgrove Hall's "Wind in the Willows" and Pixar's "Luxo Jr." are good examples of using two different, but advanced techniques to create animation.
Wind in the Willows uses a more detailed stop motion, using anthropomorphised creatures with human voiceovers. Whereas Luxo Jr showed the potential use of 3D Computer Animation, which was groundbreaking at the time.

Then came along Jimmy Murakami, Brothers Quay and Joanna Quinn; again all using different techniques, but are all equally as brilliant and innovative in showing others in the direction of the digital age.

When the Wind Blows - Jimmy Murakami

Street of Crocodiles - Brothers Quay

Girl's Night Out - Joanna Quinn

Jan Svankmajer is a big personality in the animation world. During the 80's he dealt with a range of subject matters using a whole range of techniques in a surreal way. He used a mixture of live action, pixilation, stop motion, and other traditional techniques to experiment and express his thoughts on particular subjects; one of his famous works that was pointed out is "Alice", which was made in 1988.

Alice

Also made in that year was "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" by Disney. It's a combination of live action and animation, which became one of the biggest budget movies of all time, since it used so much technology. Other animations have been made like this, but unlike them, the animation in this responded to the camera movements, rather then the other way round, which gave it a better sense of solid characters.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Then big feature films such as "My Neighbour Totoro", "Beauty and the Beast", and "Jurassic Park" were released between 1988 and 1993. They all use different techniques and were groundbreaking in their own ways.

After this Pixar upped their game and created the first fully computer generated feature film "Toy Story" (1995). This was yet another groundbreaking prospect for everyone to comprehend, as it created so many opportunities in later years.
This technique compared with Aardman using stop motion to create films such as "Wallace and Gromit", are both equally applauded and successful, which proves there are many ways to become successful in this industry!

Toy Story

Wallace and Gromit

Other countries around the world are starting to develop their technologies too; Manga Studios in Japan created big blockbuster movie "Ghost in the Shell" (1995), which combines 2D effects with computer generated graphics.

Ghost in the Shell

A few more shorts and feature length films such as "A Bug's Life" (1998) and Dutch film "Father and Daughter" (2000) bring us through to the 'Naughties'.

The Gorillaz, a music band, have had many successful animated music videos; their style is instantly recognised and it's yet another modern way to use animation.

A series of successful short films came next, using various techniques such as 2D, computer generated, stop motion and rotoscoping:
Narayan Shi's: "Freedom Song" (2000)
Sylvain Chomet's: "Le Triplettes of Belleville" (2003)
Run Wrake's: "Rabbit" (2005)
Pleix's: "Plaid-Itsu" (2006)
Blu's: "Muto" (2007) (using graffiti on walls)
Ari Folman's: "Waltz with Bashir" (2008)

Le Triplettes of Belleville

Waltz with Bashir

Rabbit

Muto

2009 was a year where a lot of stop motion animated feature films were released, including "Coraline", "Fantastic Mr Fox" and "9", all proving that animation is still very popular.


All of these films and many more have appeared throughout history, inspiring many people to showcase their talents to create such wonderful pieces of work. After learning more about when all of these animations are placed within history I have a better idea of what happened and when.

Lecture 6 - Animation

Animation is derived from the Latin word 'animare', meaning: To give life to.

A series of images that are played quickly in a sequence to create the illusion of movement, if played quick enough it fools our brains into thinking movement is taking place; it's officially called The Persistence of Vision

Sequential images have been illustrated on walls, bowls, vases etc for years, ever since the Greeks started making vases with designs like this:

A chronological order of the first inventions that allowed us to create animation in its simplest form:

1650: "The Magic Lantern" was the first piece of animating tech created by Christian Huygens. 

1824: "The Thaumatrope" is credited to John Herschel.

1831: "The Phenakistoscope" was invented by both Plateu and Von Stampfer independently of each other.

1834: "The Zoetrope" 

1868: "Kineograph"/"Flipbook" Pierre-Hubert Desvignes is usually credited for this invention.

1892: "The Praxinoscope Projection" from Charles-Emilie Reynaud.

"Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are drawn" said by Norman Mclaren. 

"In order to move forward, you need to know where you have come from" Michaela Pavlatova.

Both of these quotes are significant to understanding the history of animation and where we came from, because we have to understand what people have already done, and how they did it, so that we can move forward in our own practice.

Between 1900-1927 came the first ever drawn Frame by Frame animations... Including:

Georges Melies: A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Emile Cohl: Fantasmagorie (1908)

Windsor McCay: Sinking of the Lusitania (1918) 

Lotte Reiniger: The Adventures Of Prince Achmed (1926)

Fantasmagorie

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

My favourite categorised out of this time period was Windsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur.

Made in 1914, Windsor McCay is the first person to explore how keyframes work, and interacting with the drawings and music. This has inspired many in the years that followed this piece... Still inspiring many animators today!

By 1928, animation had developed technically, artistically and commercially enough to be valued more then just an art form; but as a profitable, popular culture that was able to amaze and entertain a new generation...
All the artists previously mentioned touched on the ideas of different aspects of animation, but one person pulled it all together...
Walt Disney.

The most iconic name in the world of animation today, he started out with a few animations such as "Steamboat Willie" (1928) and "The Skeleton Dance" (1929) which tied together the idea of animation interacting with music, which worked brilliantly to bring the drawings to life! Thus how Disney started off The Golden Age of Cartoons.

The Skeleton Dance

As well as drawings, artists were exploring the use of Stop Motion animation - a different technique using live models and puppets rather then 2D drawings.
The main pioneers of this technique were Aleksandr Ptushko's: "Novvy (the new) Gulliver" (1929), Ladislaw Starewicz: "The Tale of the Fox" (1930) and Willis O'Brien's 'King Kong' (1933).

King Kong

There are other great inspirations that came from this time period, such as:
Max Fleischer's: 'Dizzy Dishes' (1930) and 'Popeye' (1933)
Oskar Fischinger: 'Komposition in Blau' (1935) - using shapes to represent sounds.
ToyBox: 'Momotaro Vs Mickey Mouse' (1936)
Len Lye: 'Colour Box' (1935-6)

Dizzy Dishes

Colour Box

In 1937 came the first ever fully drawn feature length animated piece: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:. It introduced complex layered animation, and rotoscoping on the human characters, and there were up to 1000 people working on it! Seeing this made animation much more exciting and gave them a lot of prospects for the future...
Other films came after this such as 'Fantasia' (1941) and Wan Brothers's: 'Princess Iron Fan' - The first feature length Chinese Animation... Proving that animation was becoming popular on an international level.

Fantasia

Princess Iron Fan

Between 1943-1945 Disney was producing a number of films to support the war effort of the American government, which included: 'Education for Death: The Rising of a Nazi' and 'Victory Through Air Power'.

After the war, UPA Films came into light, with animated pieces and series such as: 'The Brotherhood of Man' (1945) and 'Gerald McBoing-Boing' (1951).

Gerald McBoing-Boing

Other animators appear in history, showing us famous peices such as:
Norman Mclean's: 'Neighbours' (1952)
Chuck Jones's: 'Duck Amuck' (1953)
Halas and Batchelor's: 'Animal Farm' (1954)
Saul Bass's: 'The Man with the Golden Arm' (1954) and 'Anatomy of A Murderer' (1959)

Neighbours

Duck Amuck

This is where The Golden Age of Cartoons ended, since the rise in popularity of television meant the broadcasters wanted large quantities of programmes on low budgets, which was difficult to achieve with animation unless some big changes were made... Simplifying the backgrounds and animation techniques meant that there was a slow decline of feature length animations (which were simply too expensive to make on mass!) So it was replaced by cheaper mass produced shorts and TV series;
This is when The Television Age began...

Due to the amount of information given to us in this lecture, I will split this chronology into two blog posts...

Lecture 4 - Chronologies 2: Illustration

What is illustration?

Strategic image making, used within the context of visual communication to convey meaning or concept.

It's formal qualities; media, composition, become just as important as the image, since the visual quality of the media changes the way we look at an image.

It was stated at the start of this lecture that this isn't a chronology, but rather looking at what illustration is and what makes a good image.

There are three qualities that make up a good illustration: Image, Context, and Concept. If you have an equal combination of all three then you're sorted.

An example of an illustration shown to us was the cereal box of "Frosties". This is because it has a purpose - to sell cereal, a target audience of children, a friendly, likeable character design, and a simple colour pallet.

This was compared with a drawing of someones face. Even though that is art, it isn't considered illustration, since it doesn't have a particular purpose.

The earliest signs of visual communications were pictures drawn by cavemen, which was the only way to communicate at the time since type hadn't been created. We are hardwired to intuitively respond to images.

I think choice of media is also important in communicating the right message in an illustration/advert, as different styles look better for different purposes. E.g. we were shown two different illustrations for two different zoos:

The one on the left is for the National Geographic Magazine, created by Jillian Tamaki. I like the use of ink, and I think placed next to text it would look really nice and stylised. 

The right is displayed at U.S National Zoo Washington, created by Lance Wyman; This simple silhouetted imagery looks better in this format at the zoo, as they're clear labels to direct viewers to the exhibitions, and they still look nice. Whereas the illustrations on the left would be too complicated for viewers.

We were shown loads of examples of illustrations, these are the ones that stood out to me because I like the styles that were used:

Malika Favre for Vogue Japan

Laura Carlin for The Guardian

Finn Dean - Folio Society Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Edward Bawden - The Titfield Thunderbolt Film Poster

Illustrations have also been developed into 3D models and other products, such as Mori Chack's Gloomy Bear: