Fons schneidon- poverty
abstract, flat colour, describes story very well through symbolism. Visually interesting- shows poverty stricken people as small and insignificant and the rich and powerful as oversized and overbearing. The animation is smooth and flows very well.
Little monkey- the use of boiling lines makes the film interesting to watch as well as making it seem more alive. This is an effect i'd like to incorporate into my own animations in the future as it reminds me of the popular cartoons from years ago.
I also like the style of flat vibrant colour and texture used and how it produces the look of crayon colouring. It seems to look like a cut out animation.
The movements again are flowing and realistic, especially when the monkey is beating the drum.
Though I am unsure of what programme was used to create this animation, overall I liked the concept
In a Forest: "A film about believing in an illusion"
I really like the dark theme of this animation. It's character is small and vulnerable and you can empathise with the fear she feels whilst running through the dark forest away from something.
The use of dark sepia-like colour and lighting adds to the creepy ambience and the swirling mist suggests a frosty chill about the air. The camera angles were unusual too, my favourite including a shot from amongst the grass as we see the character hiding behind a tree.
The theme of suspense is constant throughout the film until the peak of the story becomes apparent and a monster begins to relentlessly persue the rabbit character.
We see that the character seems to be in a film set of sorts they are immersed in a green screen environment until the end when we see that she is human acting out the role of a scared rabbit.
The whole theme of illusion is brilliantly portrayed as we question whether the monster itself is the illusion only to see that the story itself was an act.
From this type of animation I can see that building suspense is important and letting the audience ponder the characters situation adds to it's appeal. The type of 3D animation used fit well with the narrative of the story because it brought an element of realism to the character in terms of expression and movement whilst heightening the detail of the forest around her.
But along the way theres danger: This 3D animation stands out among others because of the way it can be viewed through 3D glasses. This always adds a touch of excitement to any animation because we feel like a character has jumped off the screen to appear right in front of us.
Even without observing it through 3D glasses, I still found that I squinted and had to move back from the screen once the characters nose pointed a bit too far in my direction, I can only imagine what this would have been like to experience with the glasses on!
The stark background and eerie music adds to the ambiguous theme of this animation, whilst the character's head is continuously morphing and it's body parts are becoming enlarged over and over. The theme overall was unclear to me and so I cannot rate this animation in terms of narrative but visually it is very entertaining, well paced and interesting to watch.
MTS Ants: Before I even begin to watch the animation I am immediately immersed in a sea of popping colours, texture and smooth animation, I'm drawn in and it has caught my attention so I will watch it until the end. I find this very important when producing an animation that you grab the audiences attention from the first frame and so that is something I hope to bring to my own work.
This animation didn't paticularly have a narrative and stayed at a plateau in terms of action until he end when the camera zooms out to reveal two other characters who end the film.
Kitteh Kitteh Scatman- The textures used here were visually appealing such as the kittens fur and the gloss of it's big eyes.
It's overall appearance was interesting too since the character is in the spotlight you can immediately tell he is about to perform. By adding in the characters shadow, it made the scene believable but what I liked most of all was the vintage film quality of the camera and how it jumped now and then. This affected the characters animation which fit nicely with the dated look it was trying to achieve.
Revolver: Here I was instantly reminded of the film "A Scanner Darkly" because of the look of the animation, especially the shading on the character which had a comic book look about it.
A Scanner Darkly used Rotoscoping to animate their characters, From what I can see, it is likely that the 3D characters were animated here without the use of a rotoscope because the movement is not as smooth and realistic as it should be. I like the mixture of live action alongside animation because it creates another dimension to the film and story. By portraying characters with live actors one moment then seeing them animated the next was a fun way to tell a story and kept me interested throughout. This technique would be interesting to use in my own animations.
My favourite animation of David O'Reilly's is definitely The Adventures of Octocat.
Not only is it amusing to watch but the style of the amination fits it well. it's primitive looking drawings are surprisingly appealing to watch because the character of Octocat is hilarious.
The way this animation suddenly changes halfway through to a 3D at the peak of the story was an unexpected change but added action and comedy.
Golamondo- there is a lot of crowd detail as well as visual effects (confetti)
The characters all have the same uniform shape, small with their heads being nearly the same size as their bodies. It is advertising a world cup guide in the Guardian newspaper and presents it through quick fast paced, exciting animation as well as rapid camera changes. This makes the observer drawn in and interested as they try to catch the action going on.
I actually really dislike the look of the characters here, they remind me of primitive 3D animations before technology really advanced.
