Toy Story - Analysis

A more recent iconic moment in animation history is the first computer generated feature length film, 'Toy Story'.

One quote I found in 'Animation - From Pencils to Pixels' has an interesting theory about Lasseter's approach to 'Toy Story':

"But recognising the limitations of 3D character design and animation, Lasseter astutely chose toys as the first challenge to the Disney monopoly. Toys have a limited expectation of movement from the audience’s point of view and yet the shapes, surfaces, and textures of toys were within reach of the available knowledge and technology." (White, 2006, p.33)

After watching the film again, I can tell that using toys as the first character subject for a feature length film was a good idea, since toys naturally have a rugged movement, which is what the audience would expect to see from the characters, hence making CG look amazing since it can animate something really well.

It's an interesting theory because human characters were evident in Toy Story, however they didn't appear in it much, whereas in 'Toy Story 2' (2000) these background human characters become more prominent, which represents Pixar's development in animation.

I intend to include this quote in my dissertation, since I agree with the fact that the production team did really well to not go overboard on the idea, and to demonstrate what CG is capable of.

Snow White Analysis

'Snow White' was the first ever feature length animation film. This is a significant part of history, and a film that will be included in my dissertation. I decided the best way to analyse it would be to watch it and make notes, so here were my initial thoughts:

Compared to modern films, I found this to be quite slow, with the human characters being quite bland. However I can understand why it was such a phenomenon at the time; the animation of the dwarfs was particularly outstanding. Despite them looking very similar to each other, the emotion that they have been given makes them stand out as individual characters, making the sequences entailing the dwarfs interacting with each other particularly enjoyable.

After reading 'The World History of Animation' for research, it was interesting to find out the colour was toned down and the story cut shorter because the producers weren't sure if audiences would be engaged with an animated story for very long.

Watching it has made me realise that character animation is important, which I will apply to my practical work.

Initial Mood Board

After spending so much time thinking about my ideas, it was finally time to document them into a storyboard.

This is only an initial storyboard describing a range of ideas vaguely (mainly focusing on what order I want the techniques to play in), but due to the amount of time I have left on this module I will have to cut out some of the techniques I initially wanted to do.

For example in the 6th panel I wanted to stand the cut out character up and animate it in a stop motion style with a boarder, but since I have never used this technique before it would become even more time consuming.

I decided the best way to explain my ideas would be through images found on the internet, rather than drawing them all out, since a lot of the mediums I want to use involve stop motion and Maya.

History of Animation Timeline

After my second tutorial, I did some research into the history of animation to potentially create a timeline of information, which I can refer to later and display in exhibitions to inform audiences.

I found various timelines that have already been created, they all have some useful information that I could use, which I can combine into my own giant timeline.

As well as these dates, I will look into other significant contributions to the animation industry, which broke boundaries and inspire many people today to pursue their own contributions to society; this includes more stop motion pieces and maybe conferences/festivals where animation has been discussed and celebrated.

Another example of a detailed timeline is on this website: http://joshuamosley.com/UPenn/courses/Ani/AnimationHistory.html which describes some of the points in the photos above, as well as information going as far back as the year 1824.

The website joshuamosley.com

A piece of literature listed on my bibliography will be very useful for drafting out my timeline as well, The World History of Animation.

Once I have gathered all sources of information to one place, I feel I can document a detailed timeline of significant moments in animation history.

Tutorial 2

For my second tutorial, I discussed how to proceed with my practical ideas and suggestions on what to research deeper into.

First and foremost, I should create a storyboard. This can be in the form of a mood board with various images found from the internet, for the purposes of documenting my ideas.

I could create a timeline documenting the history of animation, exploring what exactly is so significant in history and why, which I can refer to and pick out information as and when I need it. This will allow me to find more facts about the box office results and budgets spent on various films, to compare what was successful in that aspect.

I also need to read through a few more text books, add my own notes to them and type them onto my blog, so that I can read through them more than once and compare what information I find in each. I'll do this so I can understand the information more clearly when writing it in my dissertation.

With all of this in mind, I think I'm ready to go onto the next stage of my project.

Scheduling My Time...

To start off this module, I mapped out a rough schedule of when I should spend time on which module for November and December:

This is only a rough draft, I still need to consider which animation festivals/events to go to and allow myself some time to be flexible with what work I do, but it's a start.

I unfortunately have already fallen behind, since I caught an unexpected cold I was unable to work for a week in October so I need to allow time to catch up, hence why flexibility to do work is important.

Tutorial 1

The feedback on my ideas and proposal form were generally good, the main issue I am having with it so far is figuring out exactly what my argument is; once I figure out what point I'm trying to make by writing this dissertation then I will be able to narrow it down easily.

Some interesting points were made during the tutorial, including to narrow down my examples to purely animation, rather than visual effects, which means talking about studios such as Laika and Aardman rather than Ray Harryhousen, since a lot of his work is based on visual affects.

It was pointed out that I should also speak to practitioners in the industry, such as Paul Wells, Barry Purves, Aardman, Laika, and small studios too. Not necessarily in person, I could send emails and tweets to get as many responses as I can, without taking up a lot of their time.

After showing my tutor my bibliography, I realised a lot of the books I am referencing from are 'How to' books instead of theoretical. I haven't managed to find many books that are purely about theory yet, but I will explore the Leeds college of Art library in more depth to see what I can find.

Re-Briefing/Presentation

After giving a presentation on my first official scheduled lesson for the new module, Context of Practice 3, on my initial ideas and plans for the next few weeks I got some feedback from my peers.

It was mostly suggestions on animations I could watch that would be good examples relating to my practical work, but overall they seemed to easily understand and be interested in the topic of my dissertation.

I pointed out that I find the TV industry quite interesting as well, so I have to decide if to change my chapters to incorporate this or stick with American blockbuster films throughout history.