Art v Commerce or just all about Animation as it happens...

Animation is not the art of drawings-that-move, but rather the art of movements-that-are-drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame.

~ Norman McLaren

We started by watching the 2008 homage to Fantasmagorie to celebrate it's centenary. Bill dicussed how technological determinism isn't all it's cracked up to be as the 2008 version wasn't actually as good, let alone better as the 1908 origional, the CGI rendering didn;t have the same energy spontenaity, and aura as the hand drawn animation. Walter Benjamin touches on this in his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" talking about how mechanically reproduced art is lacking something, what he refers to as an 'aura'. In his opinion only unique and handmade art has a true 'aura'. For example if you go to Le Louvre and stand before the Mona Lisa, you get a "Holy-Crap Da vinci actually touched that! This was done with the masters very hand!" kind of feeling whereas when you see a photograph of her your reaction is much more like "meh, it's the Mona Lisa"

Bill then talked about how hand drawn animations have a metaphoric energy and interesting dynamics are created between the lines and their creator.  The Looney Tunes episode "Duck Amuck" is a great example of how this can be exploited. In the episode Daffy is being tormented by a sadistic unseen hand that constantly changes Daffy's clothes, location, voice and even body, ignoring or over literally interpreting Daffy's frantic yelps until at the end it is revealed that the animator is Bugs Bunny. It contains a lot of self referential humour and breaks the fourth wall but more importantly showed for the first time that you can create characters that are recognisable even when their voices are changed and bodies erased or metamorphosed.

We then watched Street of Crocodiles the renowned short film by the Brothers Quay. I'd never actually watched any of the Brothers Quay's work which is a bit shameful when i love Jan Svankmajer's work so much. I love this type of stop motion animation, it was very slow and metaphorical but i don't mind that. I loved the gloomy haunting atmosphere and creepy broken dolls are always good.  After seeing their work however i was immediately reminded of Tool's videos and thought that maybe they directed them but after researching this i found it's a common, but wrong, thought. Their video's are in fact often created by Adam Jones who is influenced by the Brothers Quay.

Nine Inch Nail's Closer is also heavily influenced by this animation as is, i feel, The Birthday Massacre's Blue with it's prevalent creepy dolls.