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UPA uses a very modern simplistic technique in Rooty Toot Toot to accompany a jazz score to a popular song “Frankie and Johnny”. This studio was innovative in the 1950’s for doing a very diffeent style than the Disney realism. A lot of the artists working there had been stiffled and suppressed in their creativity and wish to drive their medium forward, They took influences from modern artists such as Picasso and Matisse so they relied on simple line drawings for backgrounds and stylized characters with an overall flat 2D look and aesthetic.

The idea was to convey the story without the extra detail and work involved which any storyline is not solely dependent on. For the sake of communicating a flow of a fictional narrative, this was effective. Until I saw this type of animation in class I was naively under the impression that The Pink Panther cartoons were the original popular works with this sort of style, the simple background and very 2D characters. With UPA there was an incorporatiin of using bold yet basic shapes for the foundation and main form for each of the individual characters. And the use of simple color themes for each character without much color in the background to compete with the movement of the characters and the overall visual palatte. I suppose it reminds me of Rocky and Bullwinkle as well. I also see a similariy to some art deco sensibilities as far as simple and stylistic line drawings and the use of few color variatiins within a specific piece or drawing.

Theodora Zarbis

The communist governemnt in Czechoslovakia would not distribute Trnka’s short film because it was seen to be criticizing the authoritarianism that people were subjected to and could potentially anger some viewers and maybe inspire some organized form of resistance. The hand that the main character cannot escape the control of, was to me a suffocating portrayal of having no right to self determinism and essentaially being some sort of hostage with no free will. Personally I was deeply disturbed by this tragic persecution of this one small character attempting to live a free life and have the ability to say no and have his own space and the right to enforce some boundaries around his existence. To watch this continuous violation was soul crushing as it leads to the inevitible demise of a person’s individuality until death. The hand is relentless and all I could wish for was the escape of the main character yet the situation is clearly shown to be a hopeless one with no intervention or resolution. It shows this person is doomed. I’m surprised how very bothered I was by this film and it’s power to affect me like that. It’s hard to watch oppression I guess, even if it’s happening to a puppet.

Theodora Zarbis

Week 12 prompt 2

One movie that I think has a blurred line between animation and live action is Space Jam from 1996. The movie stars a live action Michael Jordon, who is acting among the animated cast of the Looney Tunes characters. This movie was a commercial success and is still relevant and talked about today. I think that it’s very difficult to say which category this movie belongs in, because it fully contains elements of both. I think it should just be considered a hybrid film, to call it one or the other is just ingenuous and is ignoring the entire creative premise of the film.

Theodora Zarbis

Week 10, prompt 2

Today a very popular anime in the US is Beastars. It can be found on Netflix, which has made it very accessible to the general public. The genres are drama, mystery, romance, with some elements of thriller. It is set in a fantasy world where animals are anthropomorphic, and there is a cultural divide between herbivores and carnivores. The plot follows a gentle wolf boy who is battling with his own predatory urges, while a murder is being investigated in his school. This show is very popular in Japan as well, and it is based on a manga of the same name.

one example of product placement that always stuck with me was the power rangers. everything was marketable the characters the villain’s the mighty morph robots and the multiple variations is a early example of baked in product placement.

The reason I believe many early animated films were based on comics is because not only did comics already had their own stories ready to animate, but it also served as the perfect storyboard for animating. They also generally already have followings and audiences who would already be willing to watch it.

Comics already possessed a strong visual storytelling format. They combined imagery with text, making the next step animation. It’s also for people who don’t want to read or look at a comic to understand the story ( more visual). This visual similarity also made it relatively straightforward for animators to bring these stories to life.

Secondly, comics were immensely popular and widely accessible. They had a broad audience base, which studios could capitalize on by adapting familiar characters and stories into animated shows/movies. But this often ends in failure as seen in the movie death note, Dragon Ball, Avatar: the last air bender, all popular animated shows or comics turn to garbage because of a quick money grab.But it is possible for them to make good adaptations of comics or books as seen with Netflix Avatar: The last Airbender, Avengers: infinity war/endgame Spider-Man, Harry Potter, etc.

Prompt 2:

 I think the reason a lot of early animated films made in the US were based on print comics because they were really popular and familiar with the viewers. Comics were a good way to tell stories at that time, they were usually about superheroes and I think they were the best way to bring fictional characters to life. It was simple for animators to take the original comics and make them small animated films because since comics are already visuals, it is also easier to go from a still image to a continuous demonstration of multiple frames.