"Free Radicals" - 1958 & 1979 A scratch film by Len Lye. Enjoy.
Couldn't find my favourite film shown in class yesterday, which was "Composition in Blue," (the first stop-motion film done in colour!) by the amazing Oskar Fischinger in 1935. But man does this very contemporary stop-motion remind me of it. If this video is not a reference to Oskar Fischinger, I do not know what is.
Even back in animation's early days, there was a rivalry of animation styles between Disney Studios and Warner Brothers Studios. While Warner Bros had Looney Tunes, Disney had Silly Symphonies. This is the first of those animations, titled "The Skeleton Dance," done in 1929 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks (he who is responsible for the Mickey Mouse we know today). Music by Carl Stalling. Surprisingly dark material for Disney, and fascinating if looked at within the context of the ongoing theme of "the skeleton dance" throughout history.
This man was a genius! NOT the first man to ever make animated drawings (although he claimed he was), but he was definitely the first of this level of quality, which wasn't caught up to until Disney came along 20 years later. This is his first animated film, Little Nemo. Beware of the 8-minute-long live-action prologue. Made from 1907-1911, 4000 drawings done on rice paper and then stuck to cardboard, and coloured by hand. He presented this during his Vaudeville act, but it didn't receive the reaction he had hoped for. People thought it was live action!
Fellow Concordians, take this class if you haven't already! Or feel free to hang out in the class with me this semester, from 8:45 to 12:45 on Thursday mornings, LB-125.
I'm so damn excited! I'm gonna try to post video clips seen in this class when I can.
Here is an example of one of the various videos that the (awesome) teacher showed us today. They were all cool, but can't find all of them very easily. This is an claymation done by the Czechoslovakian Jan Svankmajer, called Darkness, Light, Darkness (1986). This video makes claymation look like so much fun, I'd love to try it one day (and most of my friends already know that I love to do stuff with clay). Enjoy! (It's kinda weird). The class made some interesting observations about its various possible meanings; let me know what you think!
This is gonna be the sexiest class ever! Almost as sexy as this guy.
