Monday 23 February 2009

Film Review 3: Night Of The Vampire



"Night of the Vampire" is a short film by Ale Camargo, based on the book "The Evening of the Vampire" by Wilhem Von Gottenblargh. This film is an interpretation of German Expressionism, and like German Expressionism films, it has got a great use of mise en scene to add mood and meaning. I especially like the establishing shot of the city, with the big moon. Everything is design with darkness and evil in mind, with lots shadows too. The narrative of the film has got a funny aspect to it, which is the idea of a bloodsucking creature, the mosquito, sucking the blood of another bloodsucking creature the vampire. The vampire is a generic vampire, he doesn't have any specific personality, and he reminds me of the vampire in the old classic movie "Nosferatu". The narrative of the movie is fairly simple, when the vampire goes to sleep; the mosquito comes in and starts sucking the vampire's blood. The vampire then wakes up and tries to kill the mosquito with insecticide, destroying his house in the process. As the vampire tries to kill the mosquito he breaks the window, and then when he thinks he's got the mosquito the sun comes up, the light comes though the window and the vampire is burned to ashes. The moral of story is, don't under estimate your enemies however big you are.

youtube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiIAq4SB5EY

Wednesday 11 February 2009

10 Interesting Links

Some interesting website that I found:

http://www.johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

The John Kricfalusi blog is an excellent blog for people who are into cartoons and love the art of animation. John has a great knowledge about cartoons and explains how the art of animation has degenerated over the decades. He posts new stuff almost every day, explaining things about cartoons such as character construction, layout, storyboards, different animation styles and other interesting facts about animation.
This blog is a gold mine of knowledge, and what's most incredible is that its free.

http://animationpodcast.com/

Animationpodcast is a site where you can find podcasts of Clay Kaytis interviewing top animators in the industry. Personally these are very inspirational to me, listening to all the great life stories of how did they get into the industry and how it was for them working as animators at top studios it's just incredible.
Animation Archive is the site where you can find great animation art work.
This organisation is fully dedicated to preserving the great work done by the finest animators, illustrators, story artists and other amazing people who worked in animation.
Imagineanimation is great site where you can find the la tests independent animations, University profiles, jobs, news, and where you can find one of biggest animation community on their forum. You can also sign up for their monthly newsletter, its free, so your always up to date with the latest news.
On this website you can find another very enthusiastic animation community on their forum, but more important than that, is the monthly animation competition. That's right every month they provide you with a soundtrack that you have to animate to, it can be any animation style whether 2D traditional, CGI, puppet animation or any other. You can also find reviews done by professionals reviewing animation shots that other people did. It's a great learning resource.
This website as you might have guessed the name, is the online official animation magazine with all the latest news about animation.
Here I also found that Frederick "Tex" Avery was born on the same day as I was.

This is Shawn Kelly's blog one of the three AnimationMentor founders, here you can ask Shawn animation related questions, you can also find a link for his free ebook where he put together all the interesting questions that people asked him and the answers that he wrote, you can sign up for his newsletter.
Cartoonbrew is where you can find out lots of interesting links for animation sites and blogs, so it works more like a door for other sites, however it also has its own articles about cartoons and animation news.
This blog is one of those that you have to take a look. Here you can find the most beautiful animation backgrounds. It's got backgrounds from the Disney movies, amazing pieces of art I have to say. the simple but very stylized Warner Brothers backgrounds and others. You can learn a lot about composition by copying these backgroups.
Here is an amazing tutorial to helping you learn how to draw from life, understanding what's beneath the skin, which the structure, the anatomy of living creatures and using that to help you draw more realistically.

Monday 9 February 2009

Film Review 2: Ratatouile


Ratatoulie is a story of a rat called Remy who loves food, and constantly puts his life in danger because of it. One day as he enters the kitchen of an old woman to get an ingredient, but the old woman sees him and starts shooting at him with a shotgun, destroying the roof where Remy's colony was living, so they end up fleeing into the sewers. Even though nobody got hurt, Remy is separated from his colony. Nevertheless this unexpected event in our little friend's destiny comes with a big surprise, as Remy discovers he's been living in Paris the whole time. Somehow he manages to find a restaurant, where a young fellow called Linguini has just start working as a garbage boy. Accidentally Linguini spoils a soup, and Remy puts his life in danger once again in attempt of saving it. It happens that Remy puts in some special ingredients and the soup becomes a great success. While everybody thinks that Linguini was the one to cook that special soup, Remy convinces Linguini that if they work together Linguini can keep his job and Remy can finally become a chef as he always dreamed. In the end Remy gets to be chef himself while running one of the finest restaurants in Paris.
The most interesting thing about about this movie is the journey of Remy on his quest to becoming a chef in Paris. The idea of something as small as a rat becoming an honorable chef its incredible, especially when rats are stereotype as being disgusting creatures.

Wednesday 4 February 2009

FILM Review The Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers


In the second part of this epic adventure of the Lord of the Rings trilogy our friends have been separated by the forces of evil, and the Fellowship of the Ring has been broken. The title of the movie "The Two Towers" signifies what the movie is about, the alliance between the two towers, or more specifically the forces of Mordor and the wizard of Isengard.
While these two forces prepare to destroy the world of men, two small hobbits travel across middle earth to take the ring of power into the fires of Mordor to the destroy it, for this is the only way to save Middle Earth from being over taken by the evil forces. At other fronts of the battlefield, the kingdom of Rohan flees to the fortress of Helms Deep to protect their people from the orcs of Isengard.

The main inspiration of this film was of course the novel written by J.R.R. Tolkein. Tolkein himself said that this novel would be impossible make it into a movie because it was so long and the narrative structure was too complicated. Nevertheless director Peter Jackson made the impossible possible, creating what is probably one of the greatest movies of all times.
The performances of the actors were astonishing, Gollum was the most realistic motion captured, 3D animated character ever created for a movie. The atmosphere that was created from the beginning of the movie was incredible, with the characters relationships, especially Frodo and Sam. The main aspect, and probably what made this film so powerful was definitely the attention to detail in every aspect of the film because this made it so much more believable.

Monday 2 February 2009

ART REVIEW 2



In contrast to the previews poster that I reviewed, this one is a lot more serious. On this piece I believe the artists was going for a more inspirational message to the audience, and in my opinion the message that the artist was trying to get across is that the men are ready to fight for their country with all their soul and heart. This poster is really clever since it shows the leaders on the top from different eras, showing that the Russians fought for their country since medieval times and it won't be any different now, which I think is very inspirational. The red color is the most meaningful because it’s the color of the Russian flag. The artist used negative spaces very well, and I also like the way the leaders are all pointing the same direction, because it's telling the audience to follow them. I can see how this kind of propaganda shares common things with advertising because everything is so well set up and you can read the picture straight away like a comic strip.

ART REVIEW

After doing some more searching in hope of finding a picture of the piece that was at the Art gallery that I wanted to review, however I still couldn't find it... so I decided to review the ones that I found the other day. The only downside is that I don't know by who it was or the year that it was produce. On this one it says 1944 but I'm not sure if that is accurate.





On this piece of propaganda the artists used Hitler himself to symbolise the enemy, putting him right on the center with the Nazi broken symbol. The symbol actually looks like its coming out of Hitler's head and it helps to show the power of the puches. In my opinion this piece of propaganda is very strong because the message that it presents is that the three nations are going to crush the enemy, and therefore it gives a sense of victory, and what I would of thought, if was living in those times, a sense of hope. The artist chose to keep Hitler's head black and white in contrast with the colour of the flags, this gives the flags importance and makes them stand out. The expression on Hitler's face is of despair, and he looks hopeless. It also has a comical sense to it, and that is something that I noticed, so far all propaganda pieces depicting Hitler that I've seen use comedy, ridiculing Hitler, making him look like a clown. This piece is similar to the "Thunderbolt no504" because it shows the 3 flags and it shows Hitler being destroyed, so they are both very similar on the message they present that together they can overcome this evil and win the war.