Animation - The Whole Story - Revised Edition (2003)

The book Animation The Whole Story is like a guide to creating animated movies. Written by animator, writer and director Howard Beckerman using sketches, photos, diagrams and step-by-step illustrations to guide the reader through a mixture of stages such as ‘Beginning to draw’, ‘Telling the story’ and ‘Building an animated sequence’. This book not only gives guidance to creating animations, but also back history the rise of animation, in terms of how and where it began.
The structure of the book is nicely balanced with easy to follow steps, which is why I plan to use this book for research upon for my essay question. Though there is not much information on comedy here, it is explained simply to the degree that you can even picture what the writer is trying to tell you. It gives you tips on the most important aspects of what makes something funny, such as the timing, the changing of colours, unusual situations to clever dialogue and narration.
From reading a good couple of pages of this book, anyone even thinking of becoming an animator or just thinking of animating, it is greatly advised you go and grab a copy. This is written by someone who drew characters such as Mighty Mouse, Popeye and Heckle and Jeckle, all of which had become successful animations, meaning this guy knows what he is talking about. Also because the format he’s written it in is simple enough for animators of all levels to understand and engage in.

Draw The Looney Toons ((2005) Review

The book Draw The Looney Toons contains information with background on Warner Bros, how they got started, the kind of character animations they used to do which is nothing like it is today and much more. It gives you plenty of tips on anatomy, physics and proportion. It also gives help on composition, staging and attitude, all of this which contains plenty of imagery.
Since this is a book from Warner Bros. they have also included a section which shows you how to draw Bugs Bunny, one of their most popular made characters even to present day. It tells you how to draw every part of his body step by step, but it is not recommended to do until you’ve tried other exercises that exist in previous pages of the book.
This book may seem at first that it will not be of any use, but in fact it will, because Warner Bros. created the characters ‘Tom & Jerry’ whom I will be analyzing for my essay question. Though the book doesn’t focus entirely on Tom & Jerry, it’s the company that I can really talk about, defining the way they make their characters and how they can generate comedy out of it, without any or very little use of dialogue, and the way that they exaggerate body movement as well, which is one of the keys to generating comedy.
I believe that I will find this book very useful for not just my research, but for also understanding the mechanics of one of the largest corporations of producers for film and television.

Cinema Studies - The Key Concepts - Third Edition (2006)

The Book Cinema Studies is a book that covers a huge variety of aspects related to film, cinema, film and even theatre. However it covers a lot more than meets the eye, it also contains information on points such as cultural studies, Disney productions and comedy. It also has a lot of sections that you wouldn’t think would be revised upon, such as photography or computer graphic imaging (CGI). They also focus on film industries in countries around the globe, on what genre they first emerged as when they came into the cinema and film world. For example, Brazil came to cinema in the 1950’s, producing documentaries blending history, myth and popular culture.
Though this book doesn’t really focus an animation what-so-ever, I thought that I would use this book for my research as a ways to compare the views and information gathered by two different sides of the industries. Even though I am looking at comedy in animation, the points made from say animators in the animation industry may be totally different to that of what the film makes in the film industry believe.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who needs to look up detailed information on cinema and film, or anything even related to it. Even animation students are advised to use this book when ever possible, even though it doesn’t have much information on animation itself, it’s still good to obtain knowledge of film and cinema because they are more or less two sides of the same coin.

Understanding Animation (Paul Wells 1998) Review

The book Understanding Animation is an informative book that gives the reader a variety of knowledge from what it is, its history all the way to how it is evolving today. To be more exact, it basically covers all the different areas of animation, with views from all aspects from different animators, to scientists and audiences responses to all this.
The book covers a range of topics such as ‘The problem with realism’ which focuses on how live action differs from animation on a number of levels, ‘What is animation?’ which goes into detail on exactly what animation is.
I will be covering question three of the essay assignment, in which this will cover the aspects of comedy. This book which covers many areas, no doubt has plenty of information in comedy, and black humour.
I have found this book useful to me in the past before, but I focused on a different factor in the book, that being ‘realism’ which was of interest to me because I wanted to define the differences between live-action and animation. The structure of the book is quite simple to navigate around, and with use of the index as well you get to see how much is contained in this reasonably sized book. I would defiantly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for information on the art form that is animation, as it covers a majority of fields in detail. I personally like this book very much and I no doubt feel that I will be going back to reading this book many times in the future for future help and reference.

Pierre Bonnard - The Window (1925) Review

Pierre Bonnard (2 October 1867 - 23 January 1947) was a French painter and printmaker, and was also a member of the Les Nabis, a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists in France in the 1890s. He is well know for using intense colours, in which he specifically targets areas built with small brush marks and close values. Most of his paintings would feature friends or family along with room interiors and gardens, making them both narrative and autobiographical. However it was his wife Marthe that was more or less the true subject of his paintings, in which she has been seen in a variety of situations, from sitting at a kitchen table, to being nude and also look out from a balcony as is featured in the painting that I am reviewing.
When it comes to landscapes and environments I can’t really help but like them, and this painting is no different. I especially like the way it shows how much depth there is, as you can see the window of a room for the foreground and then it just happens to expand outwards revealing a entire town and hills. This in my view creates it’s own ‘world’ within the painting, which somehow I can end up looking at this picture for hours and not get bored with it. Apparently Pierre intended to frame the landscape with the window and doorways, submitting the abundance of nature to human control, which when told this, you can actually see that meaning perfectly.

Jan Svankmajer - Meat Love (1988) Review

Jan was born and raised in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), and is a Czech Surrealist artist and is know for his surreal or some would say wired animations and features, influencing other artists of the likes of Tim Burton, The Brothers Quay and many more. A lot of his works consist of inanimate objects moving and coming to life though the use of stop motion, and clay animation, though he tends to use more live action than any of the previous two. It is because of these distinct features that he has gained a reputation for over several decades, and is even still admired to the present day.
The film short ‘Meat Love’ is a live action/stop motion short which is only just over a minute long and is as the title suggests, two pieces of meat that happen to fall in love, make love, and then end up getting cooked in a frying pan. A lot of different feelings and emotions are cramped in to just a minute short, for example it is wired because with two pieces of meat that have been cut you wouldn’t expect them to just start moving around on their own. Also he manages to create some comedy as well, which helps take away the tense moment when you first see the meats come alive.
I was a bit unpleased to see that it was only a minute long, but at the same time after I watched it at home a few times over I could see that Jan structured it very well, he didn’t beat around the bush in terms of the narrative. We got introduced to what was supposedly the characters (being the meat), an event or two happened and finally the conclusion or round up to the story, nothing more and nothing less. I recommend anyone I know to watch this, whether they want to watch something that will make them think ‘that’s wired’ or even just to get a little giggle out of it.

10 links to Amazingly interesting sites

http://www.3dstudiomaxtutorials.com/ - A 3D tutorial site, with a huge variety of sections to pick from.

http://www.arildwiro.com/ - Another 3D Tutorial site that goes into detail on creating the human body, from the whole body to sections like hands, feet, ears etc.

http://www.deviantart.com/ - One of the most popular community websites for submitting artwork, gaining feedback and meeting new people.

http://drawsketch.about.com/library/weekly/aa112402a.htm - usefull site on how to draw hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6vBrLAUjbA - Marek Denko's moving stills, an amazing 3d artist! you won't believe it was 3d created!! :S

www.sega.com/valkyria/ - Playstation 3 Game that I really enjoy and admire, not just because of its battle system that is uniqie to others, but because of the way they used watercolour based techniques to create everything from characters to the enviroment, taking animation to a different and fresh direction. They use what is called the 'Canvas Graphics Engine'.

http://www.imdb.com/ - Internet movie database for looking up movies or actors and actresses. Also of the directors, producers etc who worked on titles and what they done in the past.

http://www.gamershell.com/ - Games site that consists of game reviews, demo and patch downloads and community forums.

http://fierymonk.deviantart.com/gallery/ - One of the many members of devianart but has obtained copies of storybaords on 'Avatar - The Legend Of Aang' a very popular and recognised amercian cartoon, very good to see the works behind the scenes and how they develop their ideas.

http://forums.creativecow.net/ - A usefull website that features tutorials for many used programs, especially for animators and such alike. Features events, blogs, a newspaper and magazine along with podcasts.

Fight Club Review (1999)

Fight Club Review (1999)


The story revolves around a thirty something year old man who tries to seek a way out of his normal day to day life with the help of a soap salesman. They form a number of underground fight clubs, which at first appears to be nothing but boxing matches and harmless fun, soon gets out of hand that seals his and everyone’s fate around.
I had no clue as to the shocking surprise I would get when I watched the film, just looking at the cover made me think it would be about a fight club, and to a certain degree I was right. The narrative itself takes off just like you’d expect of most films to, we meet the protagonist, he wants to find a way to escape reality, and he gets a helping hand from a soap salesman. Now all seems normal for some duration of the film, but as more and more questions and clues arise, so to do the answers (warning spoilers). To find out why the events that previously took place occurred is mind boggling, the fact that he has a split personality that wants to take control. You think to yourself how could this have happened, and that’s where the smart arrangement of scenes take place, because we are then taken back to certain scenes within the film, but they have changed as to show what truly happened. For example, when he’s in the fighting club and he starts to fight the soap salesman , that’s not what truly happens, in fact, who he was really fighting was himself! The scene shows that he’s beating and punching himself consistently, and yet the crowd around do not stop him, in fact they continue to cheer on.
This is one of those films that likes to put questions on the table, that we actually want to find the answer to, and at times we may either get the answers or we may just end up with more questions, that become unanswered. It is because of this however that the film is still held as one of the greats to the present day, and even now it is still being produced to DVD for selling.

The Matrix Review (1999)

The Matrix Review (1999)


Thomas Anderson is your everyday person who works at a computer company, but at night he works as a computer hacker, codenamed Neo. For a very long time now he’s been searching for a man named Morpheus, to find out what is ‘The Matrix’. He later learns that the world he currently knows is a computer simulation known as the matrix which is used by the machines in the true world, to fool human beings and use them as a sort of battery for the machines to feed upon. With the help of Morpheus, Trinity and many other allies, Neo starts a mission to free people from the matrix and save all humankind from the machines.
This is a film that even though a decade has passed is still held as one of the greats, the amount of time and preparation towards this film was immense, the story itself is just as good. At first glance its got a cliché story, humans against machines to survive, but that is not really the case, because it’s the method used to portray the story is what really separates this film from others. In fact even the Wachowski brothers who wrote and directed the film(s) said that not even they knew what message they were trying to accomplish in this, the philosophy and back story behind it is all too great and complex. Even the actors were in a state of confusion, before they were to even act on their scenes they were given recommended philosophy books related to the film to read through. They didn’t know what the purpose behind it truly was but they read them nonetheless.
This is the first of the trilogy films and in my eyes I have no favourites as I like all three films, but the first is really good of course because it is where big events all start to happen. It really takes what you think you understand of the world and turn everything upside turn, questioning our very existence. If you haven’t seen this title yet, then it is recommended that you stop reading this and go grab yourself a copy this instance.

Full Metal Alchemist Review (2003)

Full Metal Alchemist Review (2003)


With their mother passed away and their father long since abandoned them, Edward and Alphonse Elric try to perform a human transmutation using alchemy to bring their mother back. This in turn fails, because they did not realise how big of a sacrifice they would have to make. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost, that is the law of equivalent exchange. As a result, Edward loses an arm and a leg, and Alphonse his entire body, with nothing but this soul tied to a suit of armour. They now begin a long and difficult journey to uncover and obtain the legendary Philosophers Stone, a very powerful alchemic stone which is said to hold immense power that it allows the user to perform alchemy but ignoring the principal of equivalent exchange. The quest these two brothers take will question their morals and ultimately decide the value of human life.
This is a series that has many types of genres, and can be enjoyed by people of all ages, it has plenty of action, drama, comedy, adventure, mystery and so forth, they all manage to co exist together and therefore amplify each other in the process. Also with a big cast of well known voice actors and actresses it only adds more to the enjoyment of the series, from people such as Vic Mignogna, Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham who have all worked on many other titles in the past, and are of course still working on more as we speak.
This series for me in my collection is defiantly in the top ten, with a successful series release, including the movie, it has gained many fans from around the globe, and with official conformation that a second series is in production, things can only get better for the anime world.

The Dark Knight (2008) Review

Review on Movie ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)


This is the latest instalment of the batman movies, where the protagonist Bruce Wayne AKA Batman with the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent are still on the quest to dismantle all criminal activity in Gotham City.
The film was directed by Christopher Nolan who had worked on a number of batman titles, including ‘Batman Begins’ which is still a favourite years after its release, and it can be no doubt said that he did a fantastic job on this title as well.
For me this was the first batman movie I got the chance to watch in cinema and I was totally blown away by it, especially with the incredible range of the cast, from Michael Caine to Morgan Freeman, Heath Ledger and many more. I was most impressed especially with Heath Ledger who played ‘The Joker’ alongside Christian Bale ‘Batman’, they truly brought out the word ‘Dark’ to true meaning. Even though the movie was a surprising two and a half hours at least, to me it felt more like two and a half minutes, because I was so enveloped into the film, the majority of friends I knew pointed out that one critical point. To summarise the film as a whole, I can only give it one word, ‘Dark’, because the narrative here is like a maze. Usually at certain points it can either go left or right, but in the duration of this film you really don’t know where it will go next, the amount of times I was surprised in the direction it took was unprecedented.

Tatte Art Review

Review On Claude Monet’s ‘Water-Lilies’


The piece of art that I’m writing a review on is Claude Monet’s ‘Water-Lilies’. The piece itself is made from oil on canvas, portraying a what appears to be a pond or lake with water lilies scattered around. These were actually in Monet’s own flower garden and she created around 250 oil paintings of the same theme.
The picture itself doesn’t appear to have any kind of narrative structure to it, one could say it’s just a study of the enviroment itself, but there is plenty of room though to be left for the imagination. It certainly brings it to life with the variations of colours used, especially from the lightest and darkest colours, which creates shadow and more amazingly reflection.
When I look at the painting, I can’t help but like it, because it’s a picture of an environment, sure its great to see others arts and pictures of figures, but what good could it be if there’s no world or scenery to support it. Every time I look at this painting, it’s like I’m just waiting for it to move, to come alive and show me it’s secrets. At a time when I was confronted face to face with the painting itself, my mind would actually play tricks and seem to start moving all on its own, that’s how much of an effect it had on me. To summarise this painting, I believe it has a very nice flow, as if to say it is always in constant movement, therefore I might go as to call it a ‘living painting’.