Research

When looking for an idea for my project, I decided to research different animation studios and animators for some inspiration. Heres some quick bullet points about what I found interesting about each animator I studied. I first decided to study early Walt Disney animations which

• Perfected animation with synchronized sounds and music.


• The Animations explored various animation techniques, such as storyboarding, which helped in the plotting and development of the animation, and actions coordinated with musical score.


• Made the first feature length colour cartoon.


• Use rotoscopeing for rendering realistic human characters.
  

Another area of interest for me is Japanese animation, some of the main animators are Osamu Tezuka

• Began his career as a manga artist.


• revolutionized the Japanese manga industry by it’s use of cinematic art direction, such as dramatic camera angles, pans and close ups instead of static imagery


• produced over 150.000 pages of manga over his life


• began Japans TV animation industry


• made the first coloured Tv animation in Japan.

and Studio Ghibli.

• The type of animation it produces is traditional hand-drawn animation


• Uses many themes in their films such as environmentalism, good and evil, anti war etc.


• Critically acclaimed for realistic expressionisms in it characters and scenes


• Very high quality cel animations, with a slight use of 3d graphics.

However, the production process of their films are very complex and are industry standard, I realised that I would have to highly simplify my work method for this project. It was then that I came across William Kentridge's films, and realised that his method of animation might be more suitable for this brief,

• He is an artist as well as an animator.


• His animations are combined with installation pieces in exhibition and theatre.


• He uses a raw and basic style of animation with charcoal drawings overdrawn on one piece of paper.


• He also mixes cutout, stop motion, live action and puppetry with his animations.

For my research in weeks 1 to 4 I have created a folder in which I have stored all the information in small summarys about each Studio and Animator I have studied from my bibliography.