Taniyah Chisolm

In “Rooty Tooty Toot”, colors and patterns are used in order to portray characters and their silhouette and also the mood of the scene, such as in the bar during the flashback. It also uses these colors and lineless patterns to give the characters distinct personalities that fit with their actions and voice. I believe it is highly effective in this matter and makes for a truly unique animation. I like the choice of lines and how they interact with color to tell a story. I also enjoy the patterns as background elements because they are so complicated compared to the character that they are not your main focus because of the pattern’s lack of color. It reminds me of the opposite way to draw characters and backgrounds.

Private Snafu – Fighting Tools used humor through movement and story to get its point across. Private Snafu’s main point in Fighting Tools is to take care of your gun. For example, when Snafu was shoot at a German solider and his gun began to cough and melt into a puddle, which is quite silly and comical because now Private Snafu is left with nothing to fight with. The solider says that their weapons are ultimately better because they take care of them, and implies that Snafu should be doing the same. These small gags along with the running story of wanting to beat the enemy help get the point across. You want to beat the German army and maintain your pride so you must maintain your guns and take care of them so they actually work.

In “Steamboat Willie”, the sound is used to emphasize gags and jokes. The introductory scene is very sound-heavy, as Mickey whistling is in tune with the rest of the music and so is the wheel of the steamboat. Both of the sound’s play off each other to create a catchy tune while still being completely relevant to the story. Additionally, Mickey’s sounds are very light and upbeat compared to Pete’s sounds which are a little more menacing compared to Mickey. Music is one of the most important roles in this movie because it is used to portray the mood of the scene through what is happening around them.

In the “Six Jewel River” by Sakai Ōho a lot of the color choices are reminiscent of anime. The colors on the characters pop out against the background but also work well with each other. They are lined with a medium size brush to separate the colors from each other but not be too distracting to completely take your focus away from them. The background is lineless and made sure to be desaturated to not be the main focus. As the scroll continues the background also fades out, adding even more emphasis to the characters instead of the background. The drawing style of the greenery also reminds me of how anime animators draw flowers and other background elements to enhance and add life to the scene without taking away from the characters.

I believe these studios decided to close their 2D studios because they saw the success and ease of 3D animation and it was also way less expensive and time consuming as it became more and more popular. I believe this was the worst decision made, especially Disney. I think 2D animation and 3D animation can co-exist, especially where movies use a mix of both such and the Netflix series, Arcane, where a lot of the cool effects and things are 2D animated while the characters are in a sketchy style but still 3D. Disney tried to replicate this with their new movie, Wish, but just from the trailer I can tell it will not work because the choices in what to make a stylized 3D watercolor style is just awful and makes the movie look unfinish. I believe they lost their talent with 2D and it is what many people hold near and dear to them and what made them. I prefer 2D over 3D just because there is so much that can be done with it. I believe that most anime movies have a great reception, even though they take so long to make, they are beautiful in their own ways and constantly draw people in and I believe its a risk that a lot of western studios should take.

Many early films were based of off adaptions for comics because they already had a pre-existing fanbase and an easy story to work with. Comics are similar to animation as they are both defined as different types of image sequences. There was not a lot of pre-production work that had to be done because the comic artists and creator had already done this for them. Additionally, it was generally cheaper for them to work with something already existing instead of making and developing characters for animation which was not a common thing to do back then.

Product placement in today’s media is used to influence younger audiences to buy and invest themselves in different brands and items. With the rise of social media, TV shows are looking now to put their products anywhere and everywhere that could possibly reach social media. An example of this is Scrub Daddy which is an abrasive cleaning sponge. A lot of their content revolves around trends and media that we see a lot on social media like TikTok. It seems a bit odd that a sponge would have a social media account as before the rise of social media, no one looked for any sort of specialized sponges. Now with social media’s popularity, simple items that we would not think about buying from a specific brand are way more popular because we see them on TV and media.