New experimental animation

This is a small project that I made for a life drawing class. Only take two days to finish, so it's a little bit experimental. We need to build up a story by using 6 figure drawings done in class, so the story is kind of hard to make.
My "story" is about a homeless man, who got abandoned by his family, and unemployed. Therefore, he refuses to talk to his daughter on the phone, and then his daughter sends a text message to him for his birthday.
It looks weird, I know. But I like what I did for the light effects, that was successful.
Music is done by Tenmon.

Hana & Alice

In order to tell everyone that animators do not just live in the world of animation, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite live-action film, a Japanese film by Shunji Iwai, "Hana & Alice."

It's a love story, but the theme is not the topic "Love." Rather, it's about "life."
Iwai is a filmmaker who is very careful about the details and the entire look of his films, so in "Hana & Alice", every single shot is very carefully depicted, as you can see in this trailer. Its visual beautifulness impresses me the most at first sight.



It looks like a film about a typical "triangular Relationship," but it's not. The main two characters, Hana and Alice are two best friends, whereas Hana has a crush on one boy. One day, Hana is following secretly the boy, while the boy is walking back home, reading. Unexpectedly, the boy's head hits on the metal door and falls down, getting faint. Hana then talks to him after he wakes up: "Do you remember me? I'm your girlfriend." She makes up a story to lie to him that he has amnesia, and forgets the "fact" that she is his girlfriend. The boy then trusts it.
In order to make the lie more believable to him, Hana thinks of another idea of letting Alice be the boy's ex-girlfriend. The boy then begins his exploration of finding back his "memories" with these two girls who he actually has never seen before.
The concept of this story has created an extremely difficult situation to each character, so I find so interesting that the begining is not just visually depicted, but also thoroughly planed out. based on this complicated but exciting delimmas, each charcater starts their journey of solving this issue that is created by Hana.



Looking at the entire film, it has a perfect idea, but seeing closely, the details in this film also present the director's intention to imply or convey ideas for depicting these different characters in different situations. Iwai has focused so much on Alice's family background, at the same time, observing how she react to her friend Hana, the boy, as well as her effort for becoming a star in her real life. All these details of Alice are very naturally performed, as there does not seem to have an intentional set-up scene to let one specific event happen, in order for developing the story to the "climax." However, through this natural and flat style of storytelling, Alice, as a third personl in the beginning, begins to become the key man within this triangular relationship. As she is passivly to help Hana, meanwhile, she has her own problem and goal to deal with in her life. This interesting chaos shaping Alice to be a very outstanding character, who tells more about herself, as a person, instead of just what she does to help Hana. She helps this film to stand out from a love story to a life story. These scenes are all amazingly done and really enjoyable to watch carefullly.

Watch all of these if you have time...... or maybe just choose one clip to watch....





The real "climax" for this film is the ending scene where Alice dances her favorite ballet in front of the nerdy photographer during the magzine interview. As Alice has failed hundreds of times from other interviews and auditions, she finally decides to open herself, showing her real talent. Even though Ballet is totally irrelated to the photograph of the magzine, she insists on doing so and everyone in the room throws the attention on her. This dance goes for the entire 5 minutes, with no other events happening, but just her dancing in the room. The photographer was completely overwhelmed by her performance. However, rather than "performance," Iwai actually shows her passion and bravity towards her life, while confronting with difficulties of her single-parent family, best friend Hana and the boy, through this dance. Alice shines while dancing this Ballet, not for her perfect performance, but rather an inner power from her attitude. That's why the camera often looks at other people who forget about their work, staring at her.




This film has enlightened me so much that I do not want to make any critism on it.

Makoto Shinkai

Makoto Shinkai, the genius animator in Japan, was born in 1973 and graduated with Japanese Literature Diploma. He is my favorite animator and his work "The Place Promised in Our Early Days" inspired me so much that I finally made decision to get into animation. Here is the Video link for that animated film:



Although the english version trailer isn't really as good as the original one, I still want to show you how his film's style is like. It has a beautiful and almost realistic image and visual effect, with a cinematic style. You might say "well, they have the people and time," but what if I tell you he made most of the backgrounds and effects by himself? Makoto Shinkai is famous for his skill of independent working ability, not simply because he can do it, but also because he can do it really well.
I especially like the way he approaches his art work, even though people always question on his character animation that is often considered as the important part of animation in the western eyes. However, Makoto Shinkai looks at animation in a different perspective, and he uses the background, as his character, to tell the story as well as creating the atmosphere for his films.
He is hardworking on drawing the crazy details. However, he is genius at "cheating" in order to present a beautiful world that should require a huge amount of time. By using static images, lighting effects, and camera movements, Shinkai is always able to give you a realistic feeling with the minimum effort. His early film, "She and Her Cat", is completly done by himself, and is the best example to show how he uses a lot of still images and tiny detailed animation to create the beautiful world of a cat that no one has neven done before.

Makoto Shinkai is not only excellent on his technical skill, but also his artistic vision and voice. Through "She and Her Cat", you could probably see that he can write beautiful words in relation to his vision. Together with the music, he also knows exactly which camera angle can work and how to edit them. All those talents give him a capability of producing a master piece. And that is called "5 Centimeters Per Second":


I spent a lot of time trying to find his way of working on these unbelievable images and effects, and hopefully I will let you know more about his techniques later:).There are still some amazing videos that he made, for now I think these are enough for you to enjoy.