Let’s go Polymanga!

Who doesn’t know about the POLYMANGA festival yet? … I didn’t until a few days ago. But now I know: It’s a manga festival in Lausanne that also includes a huge anime section and concerts. I guess it evolves all around anything Japanese pop culture and bande désinée. This year it’s taking place from April 7th to 9th. Now that I know about it I can’t help but go. Maybe you’ll have the pleasure to read more about in a later post! It seems that the French part of Switzerland has quite a vivid manga/anime and bande désinée culture. And it’s amazing how little we in the German speaking part know about it… So people: Communicate and get connected! Across and within national borders! So that our future may be more ANIME!!!
What I’m especially looking forward to:

BODACIOUS SPACE PIRATES: The Japanese title is MOURETSU PIRATES, or Moupai in short. Actually, it’s based on a novels series titled MINISUKA PIRATES. Both the anime and the novels titel would suggest a hentai story (minisuka referring to miniskirt and moupai sounding similar to oppai – breasts). But I’ve heard it’s  suprisingly different and good. Can’t quite think of in what way or how the story should go (female pirates in space?!?) but EXACTLY the reason why I’m so curious!

BLACK ROCK SHOOTER: I’ve actually seen this already. Or at least one season of it. Because I think there are more of this? And there’s also a video game. It totally had me hooked the first time I saw it, though. The story had a unique feeling to it, while in other animes there’s a tendency that the same plot gets reused again and again. And it has a nice visual look, especially some scenes set in the parallel world are really amazing. Towards the end I couldn’t help a certain frustrated, disappointed feeling, though. Maybe because it didn’t go any further than what it sets up in the beginning. And some important events in the story come very suddenly and are left behind again quickly without gong into the depth. But I might be wrong there. So I’m looking forward to seeing it once more with new eyes. Maybe I will change my mind afterwards…

RED LINE: If you want to know how the orgasm of a car might feel like, then whatch this film! When I saw it I had my jaw dropped on the floor over whole sections! And the end is just perfect in a wrong way… But I won’t say more!

5 CENTIMETERS PER SECOND: This film has become a strong influence on me! It’s the 1st film I’d seen by director MAKOTO SHINKAI and it seems that it shares some themes with his earlier films but I think I would still like this one best after I saw all of them. It’s just so nicely balanced out. Very sensitively told story that comes across mainly through the beautifully depicted sceneries and atmospheres. The film invites you to experience the moment so intensively and at the same time very calmly, making you almost forget about time and space.

NISEMONOGATARI: There are all kinds of these MONOGATARIS. I’ve seen a bit of BAKEMONOGATARI. The special thing about the title is that BAKEMONO means “monster” and MONOGATARI means “tale”. So MONO in the middle is used in two different contexts and they use this principal in the other titles as well. BAKEMONOGATARI was recommanded to me because I’ actually a huge fan of the same studio’s ARAKAWA UNDER THE BRIDGE, which is hilariously weird and self ironic. From what I’ve heard studio SHAFT is famous for building in many references in its films.

TIGER & BUNNY: The 1st time I’ve heard of this I was completely disinterested since it seemed like another of those action fueled films focused around battles and robots and superheros. But I think it’s very aware of this type of films and plays with the expectations you would have. The idea of a city where superheros are sponsored by big companies and they serve as advertisments for them seemes to prove also some awareness of our society nowadays. And one of the main characters being a father and struggling with his aging sounds like this film might have some really interesting twists, too.

AKIRA: I hope it will be screened in it’s original language because I’ve only seen it in German so far. And I hope I then will find it better. Somehow I wasn’t so awed out as I had expected to be judging from how everybody talks about it. I mean, its sort if punky frustration is so 80s! But when I had heard a track from its soundtrack recently creatd by XXX I was courious to see the whole film again. Maybe also focusing more the music this time.

COLORFUL: I must have seen or read something about this film because I had noted its title. But I haven’t seen anything from it and neither do I know anything I could possibly say about it. Hopefully I will know more to say about it once I’ve seen it.

Walking on anima-shine

What I’ve been reminded of when watching WALK by Sam Hogue and Augustus Benjamin is the huge topic of walking and walk cicles in animation. Those of you who were introduced to Richard Williams and his ANIMATOR’S SURVIVAL KIT might already have heard of the wonderful and endless possibilities of walk cycles and the many ways of characterizing a character through his walk (some people are excited by this idea… some start moaning, I know). It’s also been said that walk cycles are one of the earliest things you start learning and one of the last you will master. Of course animating walks constitutes a huge part of animation: If you want to have a character moving around a space, you have to make him walk – except if he’s a robot on wheels, a helium baloon, or superman. Of course there are ways to hide the walk (e.g. by framing the image differently).

But we’ve also seen beautiful examples of animation focusing on walks. Here are some of them:

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The classic: WALKING by Ryan Larkin

SATIEMANIA by Zdenko Gasparovic. It’s been selected amongst the 100 best animations and is one of my absolute favourites but still might not be known to a wide audience.

CLOUD by Mao Lamdao is one of the clips in the anthology ROBOT CARNIVAL, which includes other films worth watching.

I’ve found another interesting information on animating feet and legs (both are the same word in Japanese) concerning K-On! In the 198th episode of the そこ☆あに podcast (which I can recommend btw) they review the feature film K-On! and talk about how the director said that the personality and feelings of characters can be expressed nicely through their legs and feet. This way you can avoid going melodramatic by having to use overtly readable facial expressions. The emotions might look pushed onto the characters. This is a beautiful alternative way for communicating with the audience. I’ve observed that they actually quite often show feet (instead of faces) in animes and use slight movements to show the characters inner conflict or shyness. Or why not joy. Other wonderful examples can be seen in THE SENSUALIST. I can’t say if this is some kind of common theory in Japan. You could argue that they only want to save time by not saving some lip syncing. But then animating legs is not much easier. You know, drawing hands and feet…

Thomas Steyaert and Raul Maia at Tanzfilmfestival Luzern

The 1st issue of the newly found Tanzfilmfestival took place from Thursday 22nd to Sunday 25th in Luzern. I’ve been there every evening and on Sunday morning! It all dealt withe dance films. I’m looking forward to next year’s issue!

On Friday, Thomas Steyaert and Raul Maia were invited as special guests. They screened BLUSH (here’s a critic), in which they performed as dancers. In addition they showed two films of their Sam Hogue and Augustus Benjamin series (I just LOVE the intro going: “Yet another beautiful ballet by…” ).

I especially enjoyed watching WALK. It awakened a feeling of pure, naive pleasure in me! At some scenes I couldn’t help myself but smile from ear to ear, trying to hold back small noises of enjoyment, and I felt my eyes sparkling, watching closely at the odd but poetic happenings on the screen! One thought was: “The SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN of modern dance!” … maybe even better than that…

After all the compliments one critic (after all I want this to be an honest, critical blog): There were some scenes, mainly towards the end of the film, which I wasn’t sure if they didn’t affect the otherwise so brilliant film negatively. It builds up the kinetic dramaturgy wonderfully in the beginning, one step leading to an other (literally), taking us on a walk on the muddy paths of dance (quite lirerally). But towards the end some scenes led to a lengthy stagnation. For one they start adding voices. Not bad per se, but coming a bit surprisingly after all the silence (but the noise scape is reeeally nicely done). And the cows are a wonderful coincidence and interesting to see their reactions, but I actually lost my interest in them rather soon.

After all, two thumbs up (sadly don’t have more than two)! And I would have bought a DVD right away if they have had any. Definitely belongs into my dance film collection!

Adam K. Beckett – yet another great animator!

This is an other article on Adam K. Beckett that I’ve found by chance on AWN. Yet another great animator I didn’t know about. Go expand your animation horizon with his work.

Piet Kroon

I’ve found this really good article DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB, WORK THENIGHT SHIFT, written by Piet Kroon himself, on my search for interesting, possibly independent animaton filmmakers.

What’s so interesting about Piet Kroon? I don’t know if you’ve seen any of his artistic projects, like DADA and T.R.A.N.S.I.T., both really wonderful works. I’m saying artistic projects, because he regularly works for Warner as a storyboard artist and has been working on films like THE IRON GIANT, SHREK 2 and ICE AGE 4. It’s nice to read someone’s view who’s worked both on small artistic projects and big feature films and who agrees with both ways of working.

How did I find Piet Kroon? I actually first read his name in ANIMATION NOW and was attracted by the special visual look of T.R.A.N.S.I.T. While reading the end credits I realized that different parts (devided into the different locations) of the film seem to have been realized by different artists. I’m planning a collaborative animation film for my master project, trying to give the animators as much freedom for unique artistic expression as possible. It’s always interesting to see how other projects managed to unify different artists in one film and how that influences the result. Well, actually, every animation film is a collaborative work in some degree. What changes, though, is how much freedom is given to the individuals working on it.

Who doesn’t know AWN yet, you definitely should check it out! They do not only have AWNtv and a Blog section, but I’ve become a huge fan for when I’m researching on animation! They’ve got great articles – and you won’t find them with Google Search! So check it out!

I’m not bad. I just write that way!

Hello world! I’m an animation student at the University of Art & Design in Lucerne, Switzerland. I’ve finished my Bachelor in the summer if 2011. Now I’m in my Master studies. This blog serves partly to document my Master project. On the other hand I will post articles or links to articles, or links to films, or random thoughts and reflexions, mainly on animation. You will see!
You might wonder about posts on Japanese culture and animes. Well, I’ve spent most of my childhood in Japan, spending only two of my first 16 years in Switzerland. But my interest in manga and anime only started growing later during my studies.
So, read and enjoy!