⤷ Animation Skillz ୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ

WEEK 4 -

objectives:

- research into Lotte Reiniger

- do research into the animation principle straight ahead and pose to pose

LOTTE REINIGER ｀;:゛;｀;･(°ε° )

Lotte Reiniger, I have looked quite intensely at who she was because all different sources of hers that I looked into to find out who she was, many of them followed the same idea but all worded things differently and she is sort of a mystery on what she truly did. 

She was a German film maker/director. I say both because accordingly she either contributed or she made silhouette animation of her own. 

Silhouette animation by the time she had started was already something they did in places like China and other East Asian places but for the western side of the world silhouette animation sort of started and died with her. Unlike the rest of the people I have researched so far where their techniques are still super important or knowledge was born from them, Lotte's ideas aren't really heard of by anyone. (including me!! I didn't even realise it was her who did this animation technique as I remember in lockdown of 2020 in my secondary school we had to do a fake little play at our house using this silhouette technique and I had no idea why it was something we were doing or why it was even a thing because it was just difficult to do and hard to understand if you didn't cut the shapes correctly)

The animation technique that she did is literally just like puppet shows. Instead of using people or animal puppets on a stage, it is shapes that have been cut out with paper with bright light behind them and a sheet or something in front of the paper figures (not directly in front there is space in between the silhouettes) then the light makes the paper figures create a silhouette that you see, but it is moved around like a puppet show still with someone controlling them below, or in Lotte's case they were cut at the joints and manipulated in stop motion to move around and do actions that then created a animation!! Her background wasn't just a singular piece of paper she used loads of different colours of [a[er and foil to create elaborate and colourful backgrounds to go along with her animations to convey the subject matter or the story in an easier visual way!!

Now Lotte is said to have made around 50 animations and worked as an animator, film director, creator, writer and film actress (she actually wanted to be an actress but she was able to become more than that creating her own animation technique). But most of her animations didn't really survive because well, she was a woman, and she also had to flee Germany to England and different areas to stay safe (she was born in 1899 and lived until 1981 so she lived through the war).

But with what did survive she directed and helped make the longest documented feature film in animation history that survived and it is considered a huge leap in film making technology and inspired others to pursue film making or animation but none like hers. Paper animation is still a thing of course but her style of using light and silhouettes isn't really seen anywhere, anymore. Paper animation or Cell animation is totally still. thing take one the most popular and famous examples of it "South park" sure it isn't the same technique so to speak using the light but the original seasons of "South park" where literally different sections of paper were manipulated to a short animation film/episode. Lotte did stop motion with her paper puppets and stop motion is 100% something that is still used in modern animation. Maybe it isn't the normal animation you see everywhere but like it is still a thing and people have NOT forgotten about that!

Because Lotte Reigner was in the film industry she also did create things like costumes for theatrical plays and even though her preferred way of making animation was with stop motion and moving the puppets frame by frame she did do live puppetry with her silhouettes giving it the more puppetry feeling I was talking about earlier in this research. She also gave public lectures about animation and wrote poetry. When she lived in Nazi Germany her work didn't really earn her a lot of money because it wasn't considered brilliant art but as she got more popular in other countries when she moved to differnt places she did start earning money. Most of her animations are based off of Fairytales and old myths, but the way her animations are created it seems like it is more tailored to an adult audience than a child audience. 

The reason I know this is because to understand Lotte's process and how she made her work and just the overall leaps and bounds in film making she did I watched her most famous film (the one that is the longest it is an hour) "The Adventures Of Prince Achmed" (1926). Now I watched the animation from Youtube as it was the only place I could find to watch it and I will link it underneath all of this text with the rest of the sources that helped me create this research. 

Now I thought that this animation was going to be a really hard watch. I always find old animation to not be that engaging because well they were still figuring out animation and usually they are pretty short so there really isn't that much you can put in a 5 minute video. Not saying that the videos I've watched for the other animators I have watched were bad. It's just that they are short and sometimes have to be abstract to get across the point they want because of the short and quick story. This animation however was 1 hour and 5 minutes long (super long for an animation) every time I see an animation over 15 minutes I have so much respect for the creators. 15 minutes is hard, it must take ages and be so taxing. But honestly I don't know why more people haven't watched it. For something made in 1926 it is generally amazing. The story is engaging without people speaking.

The entire film is silent besides the music. I think it is better than way, I don't know it just sets the atmosphere pretty well especially considering sometimes the music that was being played a character would play the music with a n instrument so it just felt right with the music. Lotte made it seem like this is just normal, maybe they communicate in music it just felt natural for it to be in music.

I really, really, REALLY like how detailed the animation is. When I was researching into her I thought her animations wouldn't be to detailed because well cutting things out of paper is super hard and time consuming especially if you want to create an hour animation usually people find easier routes to complete an animation so it isn't too difficult, still hard but not having something with loads of detail other it will just take longer than needed. But this animation is so detailed.

Clothes have small holes cut into them to create the effect of gems, people have intricate outfits for being silhouettes. I always find making convincing silhouettes so be pretty difficult because well there not really much to see just a black bob. But after watching her animation I completely forgot about how when making my own characters the use of negative space for silhouettes is super important. It can be used to show detail in a minimal way but still be effective enough to make everything feel unique. I thought that maybe with the silhouettes it could be difficult to tell the difference between the characters especially the female characters because at the start there was a sort of introduction to the characters showing who they are/what they look like with their names and seeing them just by themselves surrounded by a very intricate background I originally thought that this animation was going to be super hard to understand because well if the background where going to be that intricate and pretty than it would be really hard to focus on the characters. 

Once the animation started even though there was a lot of detail it wasn't like the backgrounds were perfectly covered sometimes they were just singular colours though when it mattered there was some detail I really like how everything flowed together. The way when the focus was on the kingdom everything was much more detailed I believe to show off the richness of the place. Though when the main character was in the air there wasn't much detail until there was a storm and suddenly there was cloud everywhere in different lights to give the illusion of a 3d background. Same when everyone was in china everything was super detailed to show the richness the character had though when a different character was in the ocean the only focus was the sea that was the only detail. Even in the scene where there was a lot of detail the characters' silhouettes were much more detailed and more in your face and I just loved the way they moved. It was almost like they were moving along with the music creating a very calm atmosphere even when there was fighting happening it still had this relaxed but attention grabbing feeling. 

You can definitely tell that the audience is more for adults than children. A child might enjoy it but not understand the powerful message of love that was throughout the entire film as well as it was just silent with just musicI feel like children would need more sounds and more bright flashy colours to keep them interested. I generally loved this animation so much it depicted this male and female princess and prince getting separated and the prince falling in love with the demon woman butnot seeing her like seeing her like this wonderful and beautiful bride and the princess was actually the princess from Aladdin as the story was based off of Aladdin. The princess literally fell in love with Alddin and there was a magic lamp and everything. But what I really liked was how the focus wasn't on Aladdin and the adventure the princess had. It was the other side of the story, what was happening with her brother and what he was doing. I think the way Lotte created her animations was a very powerful way of story telling. Not only would it be definitely labour intensive, it was just a perfect way to tell a fairytale. It gave off the feeling of pictures you would see in a book when reading to a child.

The atmosphere created but Lotte was just amazing. It felt really but also so much like a fairytale and separate from this world. It's amazing how she managed to get me hooked on puppets that didn't even speak. I was generally so happy when everyone got a happy ending at the end. 

I really liked all the textures used not only in the outfits of the characters but when there were demons on the screenI liked how they were jagged and they looked scary and gave off a terrifying feeling with their eyes being cut out but the rest being all spikey. I especially liked it when the witch and the sorcerer in the story transformed. It was cool to see how Lotte Reiniger manipulated the paper to look like an animal transformation and magic flowing in the air. I loved the usage of when magic was in the air it felt all airy and well just magical. Of course this animation isn't perfect nor is it the best animation ever, there are better animations out there but for the time period it is astonishing and all of the techniques and skills used to create such a convincing story is amazing.

One of the flaws that I would say it has is being slightly racist, it's fine because of the time period it is made in but when characters were in china they used a lot of stereotypes for the Chinese population. They all had slit -like eyes and were short and looked a bit like goblins, really not nice at all but upsettlingly it was the time period so you can't change it also, the usage of stereotypes as much as how horrible it maybe it does help create silhouettes that people know. It is offensive but its world known stereotypes and its hard to break a world wide known stereotype.

Now the animation was a film she worked with people to create and she was just the director and writer. Other people helped with the music and the animation. I mean it is a super long animation. I would have been super shocked if she did it by herself. So to look at something she just did by herself I watched an animation that she did make just by herself. She had no help with the animation or the directing; she did it all by herself. The animation I watched is “Dr Dolittle’s Trip to Africa”(1928) The reason she had no reason to have help with the directing is because the story she animated is already a book so she followed along with that. 

This animation is a good juxtaposition to the one I just watched as it has no colour and as well as music this time it actually has speech. Of course the music and the narration was done by others but the rest of the animation was done by Lotte. I think I prefer the one with the colour more because it just has more life to it, the narrating sort of brings you out of the moment, sure it adds to the story but it gives me more of a storybook vibe instead of a story trying to play something real. The narrating did help though, it wasn't like a guessing game on what was happening I was able to just understand because there was a man telling me things. I could almost look away and not have to pay attention to it because someone was speaking to me about the story. Though just like the other animation I watched it was still super detailed for being paper and I really do like the style of this animation, it kind of sucks that it isn’t used anymore. From what I have learnt through Lotte Reiner I think for my own work I want to work on making better character designs. Back when I was in college I always struggle with making character designs recognizable and if you turned them into silhouettes it was sort of difficult to understand what character was what but after seeing these animation, I know that I ended work on making things recognisable and understandable for all audiences and characters that have god silhouettes people remember and it becomes more of an impact to the viewer. 

"The Adventures Of Prince Achmed" (1926)

“Dr Dolittle’s Trip to Africa”(1928)

Sources: -

A website I used that I can't figure out how to cite

Dastidar, Abhijit Ghosh. “Lotte Reiniger’s Silhouettes.” Frontier India. n.d. n.p. http://frontierindia.scriptmania.com/page30.htm

Kemp, Philip. “Reiniger, Lotte (1899-1981).” BFI Screenonline. n.d. n.p. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/528134/

Moritz, William. “Lotte Reiniger.” Animation World Network (1996): n.p. http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.3/articles/moritz1.3.html

The film I watched video link !! The Adventures Of Prince Achmed

The short film I watched video link!! Dr Dolittle's Trip to Africa

STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE (´ ˘ `).｡oO (♡)

Now I am pretty sure in my past weekly blogs I have mentioned that I was doing pose to pose which was animation just by animating frame by frame not doing the key frames first then doing the in betweens. In this weeks lesson I had I learn that I was completety wrong with that statement. Actually that technique is called straight ahead. I a not going to change the old blogs as I feel like it shows my understand progression in what the different animation techniques.

Straight ahead is where you animate frame by frame letting the action that is occurring happen spontaneously and without the plan you get by doing pose to pose. Pose to pose it where you plan out the action you are going to do so you don't have to go through the animation and fix it like you might have too do with straight ahead. Though straight ahead creates a organic feeling to the animation pose to pose is just overall better I would say because you plan the action, of course sometimes you don't always plan an action.

Like for a hand waving maybe you don't need to plan that so straight ahead could be used but for something like a fight scene you would need to o pose to pose to make sure everything flows without mistakes, as its a detailed action you need to focus on.

As I class we watched the video bellow and it was super helpful too se it visually what the different techniques where and how they might sound similar in phrasing of the words but they are completely different techniques that assist animators in doing different sections of work!!

Click here to see the video!!

Examples of when I have practiced both would be in the first 2 weeks of the animation skills work with the bouncing ball. I had to plan that action out to make sure that the ball would follow a path and wouldn't constantly change size or not bounce in the correct place. So if you want to see those examples look at week 1 and 2 blog!!!

A example that I did this week though of straight ahead animation would be the wave animation that I did. Making the animation I just went frame by frame to do the first part of the wave then copy and pasted that action sequence and flip it, it was quite hard to begin with to make sure that the wave cycle looked correct from the beginning and when coping and pasting it sometimes I realised I didn't need certain frames any more but thats what I like about straight ahead animation you can change the whole thing but if you find out that some movement's are wrong by simply getting rid of a couple of frames, without having to possibley change all of the keyframes and the way the animation flows.

For the straight ahead animation I have done this week; Last week with the work I said that I found the wave animation super duper hard and difficult. I believe that is because I set myself a urealistic goal for someone who is't super talaented at animation. I am no where near amazing nor brillliant at animation, I am still learning and setting my self the task to do a tail from a front facing angle was just something I should of realsied would of been too dificult. I didn't give up though and I am happy with the fact I did I managed to flat colour the animation that I did last week so atleast it looks somewhat finsihed and I didn't just completely scrap the whole animation as

I feel like it is an important learning curve.

So to redeem myself and made sure I had a good wave animation that I was proud of I decided to try something simpler, a worm wiggling on a fish hook. When doing is I felt more confident in my abilities to do the wave animation as I had already practiced it multiple times to create the other animation I made and because I had a freash mindet from last week I felt like it was much easier. When learning new skills I always panick that I am going to fail but once I've attempted it once I feel much better re doing it.

Re doing the animation actually porved to be wuite fun, I got to fcus more on the whip movment/drag feeling tat I wanted to create with the first animation I did and I also managed to acideently create a boucning affect with the worm I drew. I didn't mean to do tat at all but taking the whole movement that I did and flipping it vertically made some parts move around the screen slightly as the stationary point was now at the op of the screen instead of the bottom, so it created the affect I wanted to have and I didn't even have to do through and alter the whole thing I just changed it slightly.

Because I was really proud of the animation that I created I decided to completely go for it I added a starting scene with these children holding string above some water and then the worm wiggling was a close up to show my skills of the wave animation. I managed to ompletely finsih the animation, I thought because I was starting a new one I wouldn't be able to completely get it all coloured and look nice. But as I felty much more confident with this version of the wave animation it felt easier to make it look good and it didn't feel like a long task that I was failing at it felt like I was improving. I really like the new version and I am glad I learnt from my past mistakes wiht the last one. Having new eyes a week later to look at something really does help. This has totally taught me to keep asking what other people think of my work too get a different perspective and see the bigger picture and uderstand how to change my work. Even though I have only been at uni for 4 weeks I have gotten so much more confident at asking questions and I getting better at taking criticism because it really does help and improves my work and skill set I am building.

I know you cant see it on this version but to make sure that the worm was the correct length the whole time I did have the curve I had in my practices like last week I just turned the opacity really low and once I had decided it was good enough I just turned tat layer off.

This is the lining I really wanted to redeem myself with this animation compared tot the pothe one, I decide to do the birch trees because, I felt like it helped convery how it is a really lovely day but these kids are practically torturing this worm and the birch trees felt like eyes judging them !

Here is the final animation I am incredibly proud of it :D