Carol Mui

One of the conflicts between man and the natural world is pollution. This shows up in Studio Ghibli’s 2001 film, Spirited Away. Sen’s first customer is the spirit of a polluted river. They smell so bad that practically all of the staff are forcibly trying not to gag in front of the spirit. When Sen finds a bike handle sticking out of the spirit, she understands that the bike is not supposed to be there, and all of the workers work together to pull the bike , and consequently other garbage, out of the spirit.

The fight to pull the garbage out of the river spirit makes it obvious that in order to clean a river, it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. All of the workers and guests in the bathhouse had to take a part in pulling the garbage out of the river spirit, whether it was to help pull or offer encouragement. Pollution is a man-made issue, and everyone has to participate in cleaning up the pollution for an effective solution.

The garbage is pulled out of the river spirit, and they leave Sen with a vomit-inducing dumpling as a reward. They pay the bathhouse in gold pellets.

There are several routes to boost sales in the children’s toy department. Some companies choose to make a show in conjunction with a toy manufacturer. Sometimes the toy already exists, all that’s needed to boost the toy sales is to tie it to a show.

Paw Patrol is an example of where a show is made in collaboration with a toy manufacturer. Preschool kids haven’t had a new series made for them somewhat recently, so when this opportunity was noticed, someone took advantage of it. Each dog has been slapped on as many food products as they have been slapped onto and made into toys.

Lego reported a 25% increase in sales in 2015 after the Lego Movie (2014) was released. Legos existed long before the movie, but it doesn’t hurt that the movie raised brand awareness and revitalized the Lego community after several follow up blockbusters like the Lego Batman Movie (2017) and Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019).

“Rooty Tooty Toot” uses flat, graphic shapes to represent their characters. Various characters could be simplified into the shapes as the rest of the line art just allows characters further expressiveness. The bartender could easily be represented with a burgundy round, squat blob. Frankie is represented by her pink hat brim and dress. Nellie Bly can be reduced into an elongated blue dress with blue eye shadow and lipstick. Designating certain shapes to different characters allows the viewer to know at a glance what is going on. Shapes tend to have inherent characteristics that are associated with them. I think that distinguishing the characters like this is really effective because the inherent characteristics of certain shapes are bestowed on the characters, which allows the storyteller to have a shorthand for the audience to quickly understand.

It’s interesting to note that when a character is telling a highly biased story, the background color of the scenes changes colors to match the character telling the story. When Nellie Bly tells her story, the entire scene is depicted in blue. It appears to allow the storyteller to disappear into the scene. When the lawyer spins his tale, the majority of story appears in bright white. I think it provides a very distinctive way to differentiate stories from each other.

I thought it was particularly interesting that throughout the film, the background had a particular spongy pattern for some of the backgrounds. The appearance of the pattern is somewhat minimized in the courtroom and in Nelly Bly’s tale. In these locations, they seem to just provide texture to add interest in the scene. However, the pattern seems to be particularly prominent in the tales of the bartender and lawyer. In the bartender’s tale, the pattern is partially muted and just generally seems to suggest a sense of seediness. In the lawyer’s tale, when he talks about the part that concerns Nellie Bly, the pattern is extremely prominent since it is colored indigo in contrast to the white background. The sponge pattern somehow makes everything seem seedier and more disreputable. The contrasts in the sponge texture is an interesting way to emphasize dishonesty and give a subtle way to communicate grime and possibly disrepute.

After WWII, differences between the Western and Eastern animation became heavily divided by political factors.

In the West, particularly in America, animators found it relatively easy to recover. America had not experienced as severe losses that most of Western Europe had experienced. With the rise of Nazi power, many creatives found it in their best interest to flee elsewhere, with a lot of creatives ending up in America. Some of the industries in western Europe had to be rebuilt from the ground up as a result of warfare. Animation in North America flourished because studios were owned by private companies, so animators were free to experiment as they wished. However, there were limits to their freedom; many people were hunted down and made unemployable by the government and their neighbors if they expressed any opinions that could be perceived to be communist or sympathetic to communists.

Any celebrity, intellectuals, and those that chose to disagree with certain politicians’ opinions were marked as Communists. These people were deemed to be unemployable. In America, those that were suspected to be Communists were kept track of by the FBI. In Canada, suspected Communists were investigated and deported. Despite these limitations, animators were able to work on advertising projects that would fund their personal projects.

The USSR and China suffered heavy losses directly before and after WWII. Russia, in particular, had undergone a bloody civil war directly before WWI. They would also experience heavy civilian losses due to famine under Stalin’s rule. China would experience their own civil war shortly after WWII. Combined with the effects of WWII, many civilians would die, leading to severe brain drain. As a result of the brain drain, some countries had to rebuild their animation industries from scratch.

Communist governments would financially sponsor their artists. However, the animators were hampered from telling the stories they wanted to tell by their governments. In the USSR, governments would dictate that all movies made must have a moral. Because it was important to foster nationalism, animators were obliged to explore traditional art styles. They were also obliged to tell traditional stories that were unquestionably nationalistic. The animators were warned against relying too heavily on Western styles.

In “Bust the Axis,” British propagandists portrayed their Axis enemies in an unflattering light as much as possible. Hitler is portrayed as a zombie-like man with very severely skeletal face. He has high cheekbones, tiny eyes (one of which that seems to be lazy), with dark circles around them, a large nose, huge ears, and incredibly gaunt cheeks. He appears to be cruel to his allies, the geese, as he constantly kicks and abandons them. He is constantly shouting, pulling out his hair, and he seems to be blitzed out on drugs. Mussolini is portrayed as bulldog. He has an underbite, his eyes are bulging, nose is flat against his face, with a huge chin, and he appears to be wearing a studded dog collar. Mussolini seems to be constantly crawling and barking on the floor, not unlike a dog. He appears to be acting cowardly at every opportunity he is presented. Hirohito is suggested at being a snake, a backstabber, and being someone laughable, as he is introduced by performing a variety of circus acts. He has bespectacled eyes that are like slits, one eye appears to be lazy, a small nose, and a grotesquely smiling mouth. The short appears to be animated via stop motion.

In “Momotarō no Umiwashi,” Japanese propagandists portrayed their American enemies as bumbling, sobbing, drunken, disorganized, unable to swim, and generally incompetent. The Americans always seem to have bottles of booze coming out of various places of their uniforms. They are always scrambling around as if they are bamboozled. They do not seem to have orders on how to operate if attacked, which I think is very odd. They are drawn via traditional animation.

The sound is used in every single possible way to emphasize the action. There’s various stretching noises, some that emphasize the rubber hose bodies of the characters and some that help emphasize the silliness or weight of the action that is happening. The first of the stretching noises I noticed occur when Mickey Mouse is distorted by Pete after Mickey is caught steering the boat. The noise serves as an emphasis to the stretchiness of Mickey. The second stretching noise occurs when Pete lifts his lower body up and then quickly releases it. It seems to give weight to Pete’s… fatness. The next stretch noise occurs as Mickey and the goat fight over the ukulele fingerboard. I think it really gives emphasis to how hard Mickey and the goat are fighting over what’s left of the ukulele.

The music, as a whole, seems to tie the entire short into a lighthearted piece of animation. Watching Minne twist the goat’s tail, Mickey pull the cat’s tail, strangle the duck, yank the piglets’ tails, and use the cow’s teeth as a xylophone doesn’t feel as nearly as sociopathic when the music is playing. I’m not sure that the sound places equal emphasis on giving all the characters their own personalities. Pete and Mickey have the most obvious differences. Pete’s approximation of a voice seems to be really gruff and low, giving him a stern character. The pantomimed voices of Mickey and Minnie are, in my opinion, rather indistinguishable from each other. Their voices are higher than Pete’s, but it doesn’t lend that much to characterization. There’s a section where Minnie is frantically calling, “Yoo hoo! Yoo hoo!” which tells the audience that she is panicked, but it doesn’t lead to characterization.

I think that the appeal of translating comics into animated films was a mix of three main reasons: animators didn’t need to worry about story telling, the nature and appearance of the characters had already been determined, and most importantly, comics come with a built-in audience.

As someone who dabbles in the arts, you can be really good in a few areas, but maybe not so much in some others. Hand drawn animation is already a daunting and time consuming task. If you’re animating something someone already wrote a story for, all you need to do is focus on making the character move and do the action. It’s already a lot of effort to make a character pick up and drink a glass of water; it’s also not much of a story. Why waste time drawing a character drinking a glass of water when you can focus on making them go on some wacky adventure that someone else wrote?

Having to design what multiple characters should look like is also a daunting task. Each character ought to have their own personality; if you spend the time to design each character, give them their own wardrobe and personality, and end up not using them, that just feels like wasted effort. It’s highly inefficient to do that. Why spend the time designing each character when you can use a pre-made character from a comic?

Finally, comics often have their own fans, which is super important in helping the animators turn a profit. Why waste time, effort, and money on a character that might fail? Comic characters are like celebrities. Would someone be drawn to a movie featuring Mickey Mouse or a random mouse? By making an animated feature on an established character, they are ensuring that they will earn some profit to make up for the time, effort, and money spent on animating the comic character. By featuring a comic celebrity, the animator is ensuring their success.