Shoot 'Em Up

Post #13

I've never really been a huge video game person, but I was a child in the 1990s and 2000s so like most other American children I always had video games in my house. I remember playing Duck Hunt on Nintendo, Sonic on Sega, Mario Cart on N64, Tony Hawk on Game Cube, Crash Bandicook on Playstation, and so on. One game I always liked was the James Bond games. I had one for N64 and later two for Game Cube. The James Bond games were first person shooter games. I think the first person games like that mess with you in a different way than those that you can see the characters you are playing.

In the games, you could do missions as Bond or you could just play "who can kill 'em first" against the computer or against other people. James Bond was one of the few games that really sucked me in and I played all the time. Throughout the evolution of the game it became more and more realistic. I really got into the games and was determined to beat all the missions so I would play it a lot. And then there was playing with a group and just killing each other, so that was a lot fun too.

After a while I began having dreams that I was a secret agent on some mission running around different places killing guards and sneaking around. After I had a number of very intense dreams like this I began to feel like maybe I was playing the game too much. What I found interesting about it is this was the only game that has ever infiltrated my dreams. I liked other games while growing up like Mario, Sonic, or Tony Hawk but I never had dreams about any of those.

I think the first person games mess with you more because when you look at the screen it is your perspective. In other games like Mario, Sonic, or Tony Hawk you see who you are playing as. It is clearly not you because your not a blue hedgehog or short plumber in red overalls. In the James Bond games you may be playing as James Bond but you don't see him you just see what is happening as if you are there.

Post #12

This video is a music video for the song "Young Folks" by Peter, Bjorn & John. They are a Swedish indie rock band. I really like the video for this song (it also helps that this is one of my favorite songs right now.) I think animation works really well for music videos.

One of the things that I thinks make animation work with music videos is animation allows a certain fluidity that flows with the music. This music video in particular reminds me of some of the experimental animations we saw. A lot of the experimental animations played with the way images played with sound. The animations were fairly simplistic of just shapes and colors morphing. This video has that aspect but instead with drawn characters. They characters bob their head to the music and play and sing. Beyond this simplistic animation of the characters they are pretty stilted.

Another thing I found interesting is the use of word bubbles. It is very much like a comic that has been given a little bit of life to it. Like the song I find the video very stilted and repetitive but even so both the song and the video suck me in entirely.

It's interesting that foreign bands use animation for music videos much more often but I feel like animation works really well with it and should be utilized more often.

Archer

Post #11
I had heard of Archer but hadn't seen it until class on Monday. I really enjoyed it and plan to spend this summer catching up so I can watch it when it comes back on. I was struck by what an interesting style it has.

I really enjoyed all of the other shows and films it mimicked. I grew up watching James Bonds with my dad and of course noticed right away how much Archer looked and had a certain air of Bond. He's suave, egotistical, and a player. I liked that Archer paid homage to Bond but very had his own character.

Another thing that I liked that it did was had a sixties look with the wardrobe and set design. The fact that the used real models to model their animations help to give the show it's realistic look. I love sixties style and thought it played really well in the show.

I also liked that the animations had what I call the comic book style of animation. It reminded me of other things like Waltz with Bashir or the animated sequence in Kill Bill. That style worked really well with all the other aspects of the show.

Clay and Puppets Animated

Post #10

I've always loved claymation and puppet animation. I liked the cockney accents of Wallace and Gromit and Tim Burton's style of animation. One of the biggest differences I see between cell animation or computer animation with claymation and puppet animation is there is physicality to clay and puppet animation that other forms of animation just can't replicate.

Pixar is the closest thing I have seen to the 3D aspect of clay and puppet animation but even that can't re-create it. There is something very nice about how physical the characters feel in claymation and puppet animation. Because of how real they seem it is almost like they are right in front of you and you can reach out and grab them. Cell animation and computer animation does have that same trait.

If things like Wallace and Gromit were cell animated instead and I think that it would lose the wonderfulness that it has to offer. Wallace and Gromit do very physical things and I think the 3d physicality of them helps make their adventures more exciting. Any kind of animation is extremely hard and time consuming but claymation and puppet animation have always had my admiration.

Race in Anime

Post #9

I haven't been exposed to much anime prior to Monday's class. My main experience was with Sailor Moon when I was a kid. My cousins always watched it but I never really liked it that much.

One of the things I found interesting about it was that even though it is a Japanese style of animation it didn't appear to reflect Japanese.

A lot of the characters in anime are white. This surprised me because it is Japanese animation. I would have thought that Japanese animators would draw characters that reflected themselves. In Sailor Moon, for example, Sailor Moon is blonde and blue eyed. She has another blonde friend, a red head, and two with blue black hair. None of them appear to have any Asian descent in them.

Another characteristic that made all of the characters seem like they were Caucasian is many anime characters have really big eyes. Traditional Asian characteristics have smaller almond shape eyes. I would have liked to see more diversity in animation and I would expect Anime to at least bring in diversity of it's own culture. However, it still was very white washed.

The Sweater

Post #8

I was looking through the National Film Board of Canada's website and stumbled upon this short animation called The Sweater. It is a distinctly Canadian story about a little boy that is forced to wear the hockey jersey of another team. I found the flatness of the animation very interesting in it.

The film is based off of a children's book called The Hockey Sweater. The animation very much resembles a story book with how flat it is and the simplicity of it. The animation doesn't include a lot of details or any depth. I found the animation very similar to the drawings of Eric Carle's, who wrote and illustrated such children's books as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Color are very rich and the figures are solid. Even without the depth in both Carle's work and The Sweater the images hold a lot of weight. The simplicity and the fluidity of the work gives a weight to the images without having a great deal of depth.

The flatness and simplicity of the animation also plays with the simplicity of the story line. The animations is aimed toward children and has that simplistic flat children's story plot. The animation well reflects the nature of the story.

The animation has a beautiful quality to it. It has a fluid painting quality to it that leads you through the animation and keeps you locked in.

Stop Motion

Post #7