Reviewing the literature

Animations

(extract)

Animation is the visual language of change. From its early beginnings, animators have drawn the simplest lines to draw the most complex cycles of change and transformation.

Emile Cohl's 1908 film, Fantasmagorie is less than two minutes long. In that short time we can see a whole cycle of destruction and transformation simply hand drawn in black and white. Seeing the artist's hand drawing the transformations, suggests we are seeing into the creator's mind. Esther Leslie describes Fantasmagorie as

...an illogical narrative of cruelty and torture executed by people and things at war with each other. But the violence is painless, dreamlike, as if it were more of a utopian transfiguration of actuality's discord. And, at the end, the clown, suffering no after-effects from being decapitated twice in one minute, floats off in an undefined spatial void. From the very first, animation, self-reflexive and unmasking, establishes a circuit of life and destruction.

Leslie, 2002, p.2

Animation appealed to the sciences for visualising the material world in new ways.

Animation also appealed to the arts. As Paul Wells writes (2002, p.1), Animation '...embraced all other forms in the arts; its inclusiveness part of its distinctive vocabulary.

In the 17th century, the optical phenomenon of persistence of vision had been explored by Isaac Newton in his experiments with light. Peter mark Roget, author of the familiar Thesaurus (Roget, 1901), also experimented with this phenomenon.

A Fantasmagorie, or magic lantern, was one of several mechanical devices made before film was invented, used to entertain with moving pictures and light effects. In 1797 a Belgian showman called Robinson ran a magic lantern show in Paris, called the Fantasmagorie.

Like film, animation is a fleeting medium. As such it is ideal for conveying fleeting thoughts and feelings. For this reason, animation is difficult to write about. With its combined use of image, gesture, sound, the immersive language of animation cannot easily be translated into the linear language of words. Standish Lawder asks how best to write about the fleeting nature of film,

...even when complete familiarity is attained through repeated screenings, how can one describe in words this complex experience of continuously changing image content and visual design?

Lawler, 19775, p.vii

Lawler solves the problem visually, including strips of screen shots in series to reference to films he writes about. His solution demonstrates that words can talk about, but not speak directly for, the essentially multimodal language of animation.

Film was a relatively uncomplicated and reasonably accessible medium in the beginning. For the general public, it was yet another miraculous invention which, like the telephone, the radio and the airplane, irrevocably altered on's perception of the world. But for the modern artist, its technology offered a unique promise: film could extend the art of painting into dimensions of movement through time.

Lawler, 19775, p.viii

Two animated films have been made recently that connect us with polar regions, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello Lucas, 2005) and Happy Feet (2006). Both are concerned with our disconnection from the natural world. Their commercial success indicates that the public responds to these concerns.

Anthony Lucas's dark study of human kind is set in the Arctic. The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello evokes issues familiar in Frankenstein, (Shelly, 1999) 'that the greatest horror of all lies within man himself.' (Lucas, 2005) Each scene in the film emerges like a Bruegel painting. Intricate details of human, mechanical and natural forms combine as sweeping landscapes. These landscapes are two dimensional, yet the subtle motions between foregrounds, middle grounds and backgrounds create an other-worldly depth. Stark black forms contrast within subtle whispy vapours. Like the visual artist, Fred Elliott, Lucas draws on black and white to reflect a harsh place. And, as in Elliott's images, there is a sense of space and time to reflect one's own meanings into this other world. Morello's landscape, like that of Frankenstein, at once external and internal. One striking moment, however, is coloured: red blood spills as a man meets death on the ice.

Set in a dark and crowded future world, Morello takes us with his scientist companion, into a world indifferent to humans. Here we are confronted with the scientist's lust for glory, and his ultimately tragic end. Hope is suggested, however, in the love conveyed, through voice and gesture, between the lost Morello and his wife at home.

Unlike Lucas's more painterly work, Happy Feet (2006) is a 3D digital cartoon, fully rendered in colour, with many special effects. A dancing penguin called Mumble is its star. He charms and entertains with the message that his fellow Antarctic creatures are suffering. However, few indications of this suffering are seen. A penguin strangling on plastic tape, and a trawler boat fishing Antarctic waters are some examples, but the overall impression of the film is that a penguin, tap dancing through an exaggerated Antarctic landscape, makes everyone is happy.

Animation, Lucas shows us, can mean more than cartooning; it can profoundly connect us with environments. Animation can do more than entertain.