Seminar 5: Gender in Animation

Today's seminar was all about gender in animation. Now, when it comes to debates on "sexism" I'm usually on the fence. I think it's wrong that women throughout history were considered inferior to men, resulting in many not being as successful as men in their artist careers and other situations along these lines, but when it comes to how women are portrayed in animations I couldn't really care less.

Let me explain what I mean.

I think people at the moment are going overboard when it comes to criticizing how women are being portrayed. Take Barbie for example. There's an uproar about how skinny she is and how there isn't a range of sizes for the doll, depicting all body shapes. Granted, there isn't a range, but should there have to be? The way I see it is that it's just the design of one female character. This doesn't mean that this is the "perfect" body form for a woman which we have to adapt. It's just a toy. It doesn't mean this is how we as women should look. It maybe hard to believe this because of how much thin people are idolized in the media, but we don't have to look like that, but really that should be a given.
I think it's crazy that people are saying that Barbie should be a "normal" weight or even plus size. Isn't that just "Skinny-bashing"? What about the people who ARE that thin, (maybe not to that extent, because the proportions of barbie means that if she was a real human being, she would cave in due to the weight of her head and she would have other problems along these lines)? Aren't we just "bashing" skinny people for saying that Barbie should be a "normal" weight? What annoys me about this is that if a plus sided Barbie was produced people would probably still moan about it because the doll would give others the impression that it's okay to be unhealthily over-weight. We would request smaller dolls to eliminate this, but if they'd just made a "normal" doll to begin with, it's likely we would have complained about there not being dolls to accommodate those who are skinner/larger. The company can't win really.

I don't see why we can't just accept Barbie for what she is, and move on. Some people are as skinny as this, others aren't and we should just leave it at that. Maybe I stand alone with this opinion; I know I'm definitely in the minority if not.

So to conclude I think people just need to calm down and take things with a pinch of salt. Yes it's bad that women are seen as inferior to men in most departments, but I don't think we need to get critical about how women characters are depicted in animations. Obviously not all women act or look like they do, and the artists aren't generalizing this image to ALL women.

Lecture 7: Advertising

I actually wasn't here for this lecture as I was at BAF, and to be honest I am quite disappointed because looking back at the slides it looked like it was going to be very interesting.

The lecture was all about Advertising, and whether we could class it as prostitution. As I've already said, I wasn't there so I'm unsure what was said on this subject and why this is may be a valid view point, but what I do know is that advertising is often considered to be a tool that changes values within a society as well as possibly change our perception of what we may need. I believe it to be successful of doing this because of how big advertising actually is. It's literally everywhere; billboards, posters, TV, the internet. Because of this and the fact that it is persistent, it's very hard to escape from it, which is why I deem it to be successful. Not just that, but there are also many different types and styles of adverts that can reach out to numerous audiences depending on what it is they're trying to sell or say.

Due to there being a variety of different styles and content, audiences generally have mixed opinions. A good example of what I mean is that some advertisements are often accused of being sexist, as they treat people as cultural stereotypes of their sex...

This being a good example

...Where as some people may not be effected by this (I know personally it doesn't bother me as I can see the humour in the advertisement), others maybe offended by it. So I can't understand why a company would want to use themes like this. Yes, people are going to be talking about the product or message because it has caused an uproar due to it's advertisement being offensive, but surely this will make people think negatively about the product. I guess it all just depends on the values and view points at the time of the advert. It is likely that this advertisement was made at a time when a vast majority of women were "typical housewives", so it was less likely to offend, but even so. It baffles me.

Even though advertising can change the values of an audience and it can sometimes be considered to be sexist and offensive, it isn't all negative. Advertising can be used as a powerful art form, and it can be entertaining and enlightening.

So yeah, advertising.

Lecture 6: Chronologies: Communication and Mass Media.

Yet again, I have sat through another lecture that I didn't understand. I understood that we were talking about graphics design and mass media & communication, but other than that a lot of the information just went over my head because I didn't really see the relevance of a lot of the points that were put forward. However there was one point raised that I thought was very interesting which was "By adding text to fine art does this instantly make it graphics design or advertising?". I'm very disappointed that we didn't look at this point in more detail because I thought this had the potential to be a very interesting discussion. Instead we talked about things I didn't quite understand.

John Everett Millais - Bubbles (1886) and Pears Soap advertisement

Picking up on the fine line between Fine art and Advertisement point, this is an example that was presented to us. On the left we have the original painting called Bubbles by John Everett and Millais in 1886 and on the right we have the same image, but "Pears Soap" has been added to it to advertise the product. Now the images are exactly the same but the only difference is the text, and this has completely changed the purpose of piece, so we could argue that there definitely is a fine line between the two subjects.

Other than that I don't really know what else there is for me to say, other than graphic design is a good way of mass communicating as we are all exposed to art everyday in some form or another, and it's rather easy to get work out there, especially that we now have the internet.

Lecture 5: MONK RHYMES WITH FUNK.

Finally! A lecture that I have understood!

Today's lecture title - well actually it had three because greedy - was Pictures at Work / Illusion in Action / Emotional Experience of Image.

So basically Illustration.

Illustration truly is a powerful form of communication, and is so much more than "just a drawing". It is the art of strategic image making, and conveys meaning or concept by using aesthetic and formal qualities. The way it communicates it's message depends on it's "tone of voice", and what I mean by this is how it jumps out at us and how it "feels". Whether it is elegant and sophisticated, loud, bold and friendly, innocent, bleek and sad. Because illustration can convey so many different emotions and meanings, there really isn't anywhere it can't be used, and can often put out a message more effectively than words. With illustration you can attach your own meanings, as there is room for interpretation and there is often the chance for you to relate images to yourself. I think that's why illustration is so powerful, because it can have an emotional impact and it can convey messages without actually saying anything or using words. 

Seminar 3: Auteurship and the Avant-Garde

Maybe one day I will understand what is being discussed in these seminars.

In today's seminar we were discussing Auteurship and the Avant-Garde, which are two concepts/terms that I have never heard of before, and I'm still not fully sure I understand what they mean. To my understanding Auteurship and Avant-garde is basically an individual's unique style, that is standard across their entire body of work, but then again I maybe wrong. I thought I understood the concept but then we would have a discussion that to me seemed completely irrelevant. Don't get me wrong, I found them interesting and even shared some views that were expressed in the discussion, but to me it seemed unnecessary and made me question my understanding because of it.

But is anyone really "Avant-Garde"? Artists and Directors are always taking inspiration from others, which is fine, it happens all around us all the time and we will take inspiration from real life, just like everybody else. Where else would we get ideas from? It doesn't mean we are copying other people's ideas, simply taking what we like from the work and making it our own by putting our own stamp on it. But does this make us original? I think this all depends on who took the first initial risk of stepping out, and being bold and different to anything that was around and the time.

There isn't really much more I can say because I really don't understand the majority of what was said in the seminar, that, and I've pretty much covered my view on Auteurship anyway. I think for something to truly be original it has to be the first of it's time, and to have no crossovers and inspirations taken from work before it. Yes, it may look completely different, and have a completely different meaning, but if it was inspired by something else then is it really an original idea or style?

My point of view might be completely an utterly wrong, but I'm going to stand by it. At the end of the day I think it is completely subjective whether something is Avant-garde, because you may see similarities and crossovers that other's don't pick up on, and it relies entirely on what your definition of the term is.

Lecture 4: Chronologies and Print

With like the majority of the information I receive in lectures, I'm not sure what to do with the very little I learnt in today's lecture. Not saying that it was bad or wasn't interesting, I'm just very confused with what I have been told. The gist of what I got was that Print was a more effective way of communicating over speech, and this was demonstrated by a large scale game of "Chinese Whispers". A message was passed around throughout so many people that it eventually got distorted and we ended up with information that was different to what was originally passed out. Whereas printed messages don't have the ability to distort, so everyone is going to get the same message without confusion. Because of this we can assume that Print and documentation & communication is correct and factual. There is no tone of voice and there is "no way" for the message to change.

I also got from the lecture that the invention of the Linotype Machine was a huge thing. Before Lino printing newspapers would be less than 8 pages long because of the length of time it took to create them. The Linotype allowed for people to document instantly, allowing for information to be accurate. There wasn't time for the information to be passed around and become distorted.

This is the part of the lecture that I got really confused at, simply because I know nothing about Politics, and things like democracy, consumerism and propagandas. But basically I think print became a method of manipulating people, especially around the time of the war. People great in wealth and authority would have access to equipment and so they could have a massive impact, and they did. They were able to produce posters that attempted to recruit individuals, in a light that made it seem that the war was going to be a great thing. They were able to manipulate people as people were still under the impression  that printed information must be true, whereas now-a-days we are more skeptical, especially with people being able to post what they like on social media sites, etc.

To summarise, I realise that Print was/is a very powerful invention and that we can take print to be more factual and correct than information that is just passed around.

Seminar 2: Genre

Today's CoP seminar was about Genre, and it's role within animation and cinema. We discussed briefly about the definitions of Genre (It is a categorisation of film, that can often become deficient and contradictory but can be useful to think how particular narrative structures work within different genres) and whether we thought it was useful or not…

My answer to this is yes and no. I think it's great that it can give you an insight to what the film or animation is going to be about, and can give you an idea about the narrative, but by putting a label on it - for example 'Sci-Fi' or 'Romance' - you will judge it before you even know what it's about. You immediately link it to other films of that genre, and make a snap judgement. You could also associate the genre with the 'fan bases' of a certain film or show within it and the stereotypes that are associated with them. For instance, "Trekkies" or "Whovians". You could think of them as stereotypical 'geeks' and be put off by the whole genre just for that reason, when you could actually really enjoy the content of the films. Just because movies have been put into the same categories, doesn't mean they are all going to follow certain stereotypes.

I also think that it's not that helpful in the sense that people will have different options on what certain films should be categorised as, and that genres can over-lap and be hard to differentiate between. For instance Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Now this maybe just me again being ignorant, but I think genre can be quite an subjective concept, and individuals may have different options on what features fall under what genre. I know I do. I think we should take genre less seriously, and use it quite loosely to describe animations and films, especially as the film industry is forever changing and how we perceive genre is changing alongside it. Something that once could have been considered a horror could now be viewed as a comedy, due to society and 'norms' evolving.

I think Paul Wells makes a very good point when he says "It is more useful to think of the ways in which particular narrative structures or values work within genres, or in the case we are addressing, within animations as a form." From this he proposed that there are seven generic plots/genres which I thought were very accurate; Formal (that the animated form is more important, and that the narrative or thematic concerns test and extend the aesthetic and technical parameters of said animated form), Deconstructive (Premises of own construction for comic or critical effect), Political (using the medium to make moral, ethical or political statements), Abstract (exploring new techniques to facilitate non-objective works, and resisting traditional conventions), Paradigmatic (pre-determined conditions of it's own making as the foregrounded terms of it's construction), Primal (defines and explores a specific emotion, feeling or state of consciousness) and finally Re-narration (The re-interpretation of established myths, fairy tales and stories)

I think I have rambled long enough now, so to summarise I think genre is a great thing as we can easily categorise animations and films, but I think we should take the label less seriously. Just because the film may seem to be aimed at children doesn't mean that it can't be enjoyed by adults. Heck, a lot of kids shows are actually quite dark and have adult themes, Tom and Jerry being a good example. In particular this episode:

So yeah. I'm done. 

Ruka by Jiri Trnka (1965) and Surogat by Dusan Vukotic/Zagreb Film (1961)

Right, I don't really know where to start with this BAD BOY, so apologies if I waffle.

Following on from our CoP Seminar featuring that utter train wreck of an album cover, we were shown two animations, as mentioned in the title.
The first was Ruka (or 'The Hand' in English) by Jiri Trnka. We weren't told anything about the animation before hand, other than the year it was released, and we just had to see what we made of it.

 

Ruka - Jiri Trnka (1965)

Oh my days did this make me feel uncomfortable. It was just so dark, and really frustraiting that the hand couldn't just leave the poor guy alone. To begin with I thought this could have been a metaphor (is that the right word to use here?) for depression, as the hand seemed to be getting on top of him, and stopping him from caring for his plant, something he deeply cared about. The hand was there at every turn and was beginning to control his life. The man kept trying to get away from it and hide, but he could never seem to do so, and it made me feel that he was losing a battle with a mental illness. It seemed quite likely as well, as there was nothing beyond the room he was in, so it could have symbolised how he felt trapped or isolated. The only thing that changed my mind was how he was then made to do work for the hand, and the coffin at the end. It seemed too ceremonial for me, and made me think that maybe this animation could actually be representing how people were forced to battle in the war, in particular World War II. Whereas I thought this could have been a possiblity, the dates were a little out. 

Having done a little research I found that the animation was supposedly based on how Czechoslovakian artists were treated at the time by the government, and how they weren't given the freedom to do things they loved. It was also suggested to be based on the Prague Spring and other things that I don't understand because I know nothing about communism and politics and what not.

With that being said, lets move onto the next animation...

 

Surogat - Dusan Vukotic/Zagreb Film (1961)

I found this to be generally more cheery, and I didn't feel ridiculously uneasy whilst watching it, but having said this I still prefer the first. It was more emotional and powerful, and I think it conveyed it's message very well (even if I didn't grasp it right away). I also think the overall style of the animation was greater. With that being said, I think the simplisty and quirkiness of this animation suits it well, and helps to entertain the audience, which is what I'm guessing it set out to do. Yes, it had some strong themes of jealousy and supposedly "love" (which to me seems unlikely, as he'd only just met the lass, and only favoured her because of her figure), but it doesn't seem to have an underlying message, which is fine, It definitely entertained me. I didn't think it was anything spectacular but I wasn't tearing my hair out over watching it. I even really liked the idea behind the inflating and deflating, and how easily things could be brought to life, and how it was demonstrated with just the use of geometric shapes.

I dont think it was fair to compare it to Ruka. I massively favour that by Jiri Trnka, but the two are very dissimilar and have separate qualities that can be appreciated in different ways. I find it hard to do so with Surogat because I'm having to compare it to something that is incrediblly powerful and meaningful, but as it stands on it's own, it's quite a nice little animation short.

Lecture 3: A History of Type

Today's CoP Lecture was all about Typography. I was told about the history of Typography and how it evolved, and I also learnt that there are different "type families". These include Old Style, Tradtional, Modern, Humanist, Swiss Modern/Bauhaus and Contemporary.

I'm not quite sure what to think of today's lecture. I was bored to death by a good percentage of the talk (sorry), but then again there were parts of it that I found really interesting. For instance, Helvetica is a font that was developed in 1957 by a man called Max Meidinger and that the aim of the design was to create a neutral typeface with great clarity and no meaning its form, and because of this is could be used on a wider variety of signage. Microsoft released "Arial" 25 years later (the maximum time that a design is protected by intellectual property before it lapses), "ripping off" Meidinger's design.
I also never realised that different fonts have different meanings and history behind them (trying not to sound too ignorant). I knew that different typefaces could be used for different purposes, and some were more appropriate for some jobs than others, but didn't realise they had meaning.

I think it might be nice to read a bit more into typography, because I think it has the potential to be quite interesting to me, especially now I have learnt it's more that just letters presented differently. I still don't know a great deal, but I do know to stay clear of Comic Sans.

Seminar 1: Context with 9/11

In yesterday's CoP seminar we were discussing how the context of an animaion is really important, and how we have to consider many different things when we are looking at a piece of work. For instance, the target audience, what it was used for and whether it was fit for this purpose, where and when it was produced, and what was happening at the time.

For an example to get us thinking about how important context is we were shown two images:

We started with the image on the left. It is the special edition copy of Time Magazine that featured the 9/11 terrorist attack on the world trade centre in 2001. We weren't given any context, but we decided as a class that the magazine was just broadcasting information on the attacks, or paying respect to those who had lost their lives, considering the way the photograph was presented, and that we knew it was a magazine.
We were then shown the second image, and there was a bit of an uproar, both at how offensive we found the photo, as well as how poorly the album cover was put together. After we had pointed out everything that was wrong with the cover, we then discovered that it was designed in July before the 9/11 attacks had even occured, and that they later retracted it and released the album with an alternate cover.

This example really made me realise that context is very important, and even the way you are presented with information can make you think differently about a piece of work. Had we had been shown the album cover first, we might not have found it as offensive as we wouldn't have been discussing our experiences of the 9/11 attacks and how we thought the attacks impacted the world. Back in July of 2001, if we would have looked at this album cover we would have thought nothing of it, why would we? Yes, we might have been appauled by the poorly edited cover, but we wouldn't have found it offensive as there was no reason at the time to get offended.

So in future, before I judge a book by it's cover, or more accurately in this case an album (I'll let myself out), I should try to think about the intended purpose or context of the work, at the time it was released or produced.

Lecture 2: Visual Literacy

I'm not going to lie, I had next to zero knowledge when it came to Visual Literacy, I'd never even heard the two words used together in a sentence before. The more I listened though, the more I noticed that I DID know about it but just didn't realise it. It was nice to learn about the different types (i.e. visual synecdoche, metonym and metaphor) but I'm not fully sure what to do with this newly acquired information. Then again, the lecture did make me think about the importance of my target audience, and that different signs, symbols and images can be interpreted differently depending on how they are presented and the cultural understanding of said things, so I can bare this in mind when I am planning out animations.