Seminar 6: Animation in the Commercial Realm

In this seminar we discussed how animation is being used more by the advertising sector and is becoming a popular tool in educating, rather than for entertainment purposes. Advertising is a large part of many industries these days and the animation industry is no exception, as animation is such a popular art form amongst today's society. Animation is also a very useful tool to be used for advertising, as it appeals to a very broad audience, ranging from children to old people, animation is enjoyed by all ages, despite the context of it. So yes, even an animated advert is enjoyed by many.

A good example of an animated advert is the 2013 christmas advert created for John Lewis. I feel that it is a successful advert because, first off, it has a beautiful art style and it is animated really well. This alone makes the advert stand out against other adverts because it is 'different' and unique. I also feel that it's successful because, although it's just an advert, it has a beautiful little storyline, which people will relate to. All of these aspects makes this advert memorable, it sticks in people's minds and gives them something to talk about, which in turn makes people think of John Lewis.

How successfully has animation been used to represent gender and/ or otherness?

Racial representation in animation is an issue that has always been present, especially in the early years of animation, in which racism was prevalent. However, it has only been over the last few decades that increasing attention has been directed towards racial stereotypes that are represented within animation, as racial representation was not an issue when these animations were created as it is in today’s society. With social views on racism changing throughout the decades, animations that have dealt poorly with racial representation are seen to be offensive and insensitive towards multiculturalisms. For instance, in animated shorts such as the Merrie Melodies’ Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, and Tom and Jerry, we see racial stereotypes being displayed. Not only do we see this in short animations, but it is also an issue that is prevalent in mainstream animated films created by Disney such as, The Lion King, Aladdin, Dumbo, Pocahontas, Mulan and also independent films such as The Triplets of Belleville – Belleville Rendezvous. Having said this there is also a number of animated shorts and films that also represent race in a healthy fashion such as, Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (fig.1), which “covered issues pertinent to inner-city black children” (Watson, 2010). Watson also stated that the “1970s witnessed a landmark for African American animation” and proved that cartoons could finally be “a point of pride”, particularly for African Americans. This kind of animation has been continued thirty years later with Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks (fig.2) series, which “exploits the limitless possibilities of its medium to provide the type of outrageous racial satire rarely seen”(Watson, 2010). Despite this however, (Rose, 2014) argues that racial politics within animation are “stuck in the 1970s” and states that modern animation is “teaching children the finer points of racial prejudice”. With many different views being given upon racial representation within animation, this essay will attempt to answer the question of whether or not animation is being used to successfully represent race. There are several issues that revolve around racial representation however, due to the word limit of this essay, not all of these issues will be discussed.

The most obvious issue of race within animation is how well non-white races are represented in animations that are created in predominantly white cultures, such as America, which is the home to Disney and other mainstream animation companies that have produced animated series such as the Merrie Melodies. During the 1930s through to the 1950s, it was the African-American culture that was the prime target for racial stereotyping. In 1943, Merrie Melodies produced an animated short film, Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, which is highly offensive and extremely racist towards black culture. The characters within this animation are “resolutely grotesque” (Watson, 2010), and extremely stereotypical. Characteristics such as their mouths, other facial features and some bodily features are exaggerated in an extreme fashion (fig.3). Not only are the appearances of these characters stereotypical, but the accents and the actions of these characters are also portraying an incorrect representation of the African-American culture. For instance, there is a very strong sense of a “ghetto” nature to the characters that is prevalent throughout the entire animation, ultimately encouraging an audience to assume that all African-American’s behave that way. It is also “notable that the cartoon demonstrates that black characters could get away with doing things that white characters never could” (Dubb, 2013), through the strong implication that “So White engages in some sort of sexual activity with the men of Murder Incorporated” (Dubb, 2013). One could argue that this implied that African-American people, at the time, were more likely to engage in activities and actions that White people would not, suggesting that black people were more immoral. However, Warner Bros was not the only animation company that was using stereotypes to entertain their audiences. Walter Lantz Productions, home to Woody the Woodpecker, created an extremely racist cartoon named Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat (fig.4), in 1941. This animation appears to have no apparent or obvious storyline or plot, leading one to believe that the main purpose of this animation was to simply portray the racial stereotypes that were prevalent in the 1940s. The animation implies that black people will “sleep the day away” (Dubb, 2013) in their town, which is offensively called Lazytown, until a young attractive female arrives on a riverboat and “motivates the lethargic populace to dance and shimmy” (Dubb, 2013); ultimately suggesting that music is the only thing that will motivate African-Americans.

At this point in history, Disney was one of the largest and most popular animation companies that were creating full length animated features that would be influential to many generations of children, yet this was also a company that had created many racially offensive characters and animations already. For instance, by 1941, Dumbo had been made, with its jive-talking crows (fig.5), and Fantasia had also been made, in which a black centaur named Sunflower (fig.6) was a “textbook example of the ‘pickaninny’ caricature” (Watson, 2010) (it can be noted that by the 1960 release of Fantasia, Sunflower the centaur was completely cut from the film due to a shift in civil rights sensibilities) and then Disney followed up with the Song of the South (fig.7) in 1946, in which we see a “romanticised view of post-slavery race relations” (Watson, 2010). Cohen (1997) states that despite the fact that Song of the South was recognised by The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People as having “remarkable artistic merit” the production “helps to perpetuate a dangerously glorified picture of slavery” giving a distortion of the true relationships between master and slave. During the production of this film, Disney had been warned several times about using black stereotypes (Cohen, 1997), which raises concern as to whether the Disney Studio were actually aware of the racial satires they were using and whether or not they were sensitive to the effects that these satires and racial connotations had on the audiences they were entertaining.

With the arrival of World War II racism within animation and cartoons increased greatly, as the Americans were portraying the “Japanese and the Germans in an unflattering light” (Dubb, 2013). For example, in Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (fig.8), the Japanese are “portrayed as yammering myopic, buck-toothed imbeciles” (Dubb, 2013). Not only does this animation portray the Japanese in a strong stereotypical way, but it also uses outright racial slurs and obscenities such as, “slant-eyes” and “monkey face”. The fact that such racism is so openly expressed within a cartoon aimed at children, suggests that the whole purpose of the animation itself was to instil racial prejudice amongst the audience and imply that such racism was acceptable. Another example of this can be seen in Disney’s Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943) (fig.9) in which the Germans are portrayed as stupid, clumsy and “big headed”, which only makes them appear inferior to other people, encouraging the audience to believe that is true and act accordingly. Stereotypes within animation were not the only thing that World War II changed however. In Los Angeles in particular, the world war brought about a large influx of immigrants that were predominantly black in order to work in the factories, which caused many riots due to racial stereotyping. Having said this, it was not long after the Second World War that there was an obvious “demise of racist images in cartoons” (Dubb, 2013). According to Dubb (2013), people were becoming rapidly aware of the problem of racism and were less inclined to pay to see a movie they deemed offensive. This lead to cartoons being made that “steered clear of anything that would potentially alienate any portion of the audience” (Dubb, 2013), as it was becoming more expensive to produce cartoons. Not only were people becoming more aware of the problem concerning racism but, advocacy groups were beginning to generate a voice and were becoming more vocal against racism. With such an awareness building for an issue that had already been going on for a very long period, it was safe to say that the face of animation was changing. At the same time as this newly found awareness was spreading, cartoon studios had found a new popular medium that was providing a new wave of income in the form of television. Throughout this time many cartoon studios were attempting to be more sensitive towards racial issues and edited many of the cartoons before re-releasing them on television.  For instance, any cartoons “where the black stereotypes were too pervasive” (Dubb, 2013) such as Little Lulu, were locked away and never shown again along with other cartoons that the studios deemed as the “worst offenders”. Blackface gags were also edited out and many of the voiceovers for black characters were re-done.

Having said this, one could argue that although many of the cartoon studios were becoming more aware of the effects of racism, they still were not doing enough to remove racial stereotyping from their shows. In particular, within the twentieth century Disney produced a number of animated feature length films that have been criticised and scrutinised for containing incorrect racial portrayals of a number of different cultures. In 1967 Disney created a film that portrayed the life of an Indian boy that is brought up by jungle animals. The Jungle Book was a film that children loved to watch however; it is also a film that “overtly invokes negative stereotypes” (Miller and Rode, 1995). The characters within the film, despite the fact that they are animals, are organized into certain racial stereotypes, for instance Baloo (fig.10) is a “scat-singing, bebop inflected bear” (Miller and Rode, 1995) and King Louie (fig.11) is a “potentate ape” (Miller and Rode, 1995) with a vain desire to be human. As stated by Miller and Rode (1995), this type of racial stereotyping finds its “fullest expression in a scene in King Louie’s jungle kingdom” (Miller and Rode, 1995), which is portrayed as a decaying, abandoned remain of “some now extinct, supposedly ‘primitive’ culture”. In this culture the monkeys speak in “jazz vocalese and everybody ‘swings’” (Miller and Rode, 1995). The fact that the monkeys are portrayed in this way leads an audience to believe that the monkeys can be associated with stereotypical African-American culture. Not only does it do this, but it also sets in motion the idea that black people should be associated with apes, which young children will pick up on almost immediately, as many children tend to be impressionable at young ages. Within this scene King Louie also sings the famous song “I Want to be Like You” to Mowgli in a familiar black-coded voice, which “reflects the most stereotypic African-American dialect” (Miller and Rode, 1995). When the connection is made between King Louie and African-Americanism, it becomes apparent that the lyrics within his song are a “humiliating revelation” (Miller and Rode, 1995), as King Louie expresses his desire to be a man. This raises the question of Disney’s view on African-American culture and of black people as a whole, as it appears that the film is implying that black people are an inferior race and not quite human even, as an “ape can learn to be human too”.  It is not only African-American culture that the film targets. The Jungle Book “invariably endows regal mannerisms and posh British accents to characters of power” (Miller and Rode, 1995) regardless of where their morals stand and characters of a lower “class” are given a lower-class British accent. Although this is more classist than it is racist the fact that the accents used are those of a stereotypical nature, it still raises the issue of the incorrect cultural portrayal of the British culture. According to Miller and Rode (1995) the film further “distinguishes among its entitlements, assuring the ultimate primacy of the ‘man’ whom Mowgli is to become”. Within the film King Louie is described as “beneath contempt” while Baloo is a “shiftless, stupid, jungle bum”. The fact that so much emphasis has been placed upon the fact that Mowgli is a man and that he is superior only to characters such as King Louie and Baloo, again suggests that the African-American culture within the film is not seen as an equal part of humankind and is more primitive than other cultures within the film.

Unfortunately, this was not the only case of strong racial stereotyping within their films. In 1992 Disney saw the release of Aladdin, which was a large success despite the fact that the film “draws into question issues of ‘identity’, especially related to...ethnicity” (Griffin, 1994). Upon the film’s release, Arab-Americans began to “loudly voice their objections to the portrayal of Arabic culture in the cartoon” (Griffin, 1994), protesting that the portrayal of Arabs as “cruel, dim-witted sentinels” and as “thieves and unscrupulous vendors” was a highly offensive and stereotypical account of Arabian culture. Throughout this film there are many racial stereotypes that are quite visibly present and that portray the Arabs to be a menacing, mischievous, devious and cruel people, which in fact is the opposite of the Islamic culture altogether. One scene within the film depicts an Arab merchant attempting to cut off Jasmine’s hand for feeding a small hungry child an apple from the merchant’s cart (fig.12). This alone is a direct stereotypical flaw, as it is known that within the Islamic culture it is the norm for people to give food to the hungry with no penalty. This portrayal is also incorrect, as theft is punishable by cutting off a hand in Saudi Arabia only, yet Disney still chose to portray this as an “Arabian thing” leading an audience to believe that this is the case within all variations of the Arabian culture. This leads one to believe that Disney intended for this stereotype to be there, as it helps to portray the Arabs as the “bad guys” making the main, Americanised characters appear to be the “good guys”. This then raises the question of the intentions behind the making of the film and what message Disney were trying to portray to their child audience at the time. There are also other issues within this film concerning the design of the characters. For instance, it is more than clear that the meaner, crueller Arabs (fig.13) are designed with darker skin tones and have stronger accents than the kinder characters (fig.14). This simply adds to the questions of Disney’s intentions when they made this film.

Other films created in the 1990s such as The Lion King and Pocahontas also contains strong racial stereotypes. However, it was not until the Hyenas (fig.15) within The Lion King appeared that the film was picked up for its racist connotations, up until this point the film appeared to be successfully representing race in a healthy way. As stated by (Vraketta), the hyenas within the film are portrayed as “slobbery, mangy, stupid poachers” and at the “bottom of the food chain”, which raises questions about what the characters potentially portray about the African-American culture to the child audience that this film is aimed at. The hyenas within the film are also considered to be brutish and aggressive and are seen to be bullying Simba, implying that black people, to which these animals are associated with throughout the film, are the same. The fact that they are referred to as at “the bottom of the food chain” is yet another example of how Disney appears to be referring to black people as an inferior race. Furthermore, the film’s opening song The Circle of Life conveys the films “self-confessed inability to represent Africa and masks the...reluctance to represent black people as people at all, African or otherwise” (Vraketta). This only strengthens the concept that Disney was very prejudice towards the African-American culture and that demonstrates the fact that racism was still an issue despite all the efforts made to reduce it within animation.  Pocahontas is another example of racial stereotyping. One could argue that the song Savages within Pocahontas teaches the audience that it is acceptable to alienate and have a strong distaste towards someone because they are of a different race. Not only this, but the song refers to the Native Americans as savages, implying that all Native Americans are aggressive and brutish, which is far from the truth.

As animation moved into the twenty-first century, it was apparent that efforts to remove incorrect cultural representations were being pushed however, taking a look at animated films that have been made today, one could argue that whilst the racial stereotyping isn’t explicit as it was in the twentieth century, there are still many animations that deliver racial stereotypes on a more subtle, implicit level. Take films such as Rio, Planes, Cars and Despicable Me 2 in which there are many racial stereotypes that are present that aren’t all that subtle in some cases. For instance, in Despicable Me 2, the main protagonist within the film is a “grotesquely caricatured Mexican” (fig.16) (Rose, 2014), who sports a large nose, big belly and a golden medallion around his neck. The fact that such blatant racial stereotyping is evident in such a recent film suggests that racial prejudice is something that still exists within the animation industry. Recent films also see another approach towards misrepresentation of race through the use of eradicating racial diversity altogether and using the time period the film is set in as an excuse. Frozen is a prime example of a story taking place in one of these “ethnically cleaned ‘historical’ realms” (Rose, 2014). Despite the fact that the film has become “the most successfully animated film of all time” (Rose, 2014), Frozen, is “probably the least diverse” (Rose, 2014). Rose (2014) argues that films such as Frozen and Frozen in particular, represent a step backwards in animation for campaigners such as the NAACP. However, despite this there are a few films, that one could argue, represent race in a healthy fashion, such as, The Lego Movie, which “felt no need to caricature along simplistic race lines (Rose, 2014). There is also Blue Sky Studio’s Epic, which features a brown skinned fairy queen (fig. 17) and a diversity of different accented characters that don’t follow the norms of racial stereotyping. Disney Pixar’s Wall.E is also another really good example of healthy racial representation, as the characters don’t contain any form of caricature or stereotypical accent.

It could be argued that animation has come a long way in terms of racial representation, as the racial stereotyping appears to be less offensive and explicit in the twenty-first century than when it appeared in the twentieth century. However, there are still a lot of animations out there that instil a more implicit sense of racial prejudice within their audiences. It is evident amongst modern day animation that racial representation is something that is thought carefully about in most cases, yet despite this move towards more diversity within animation, there still appears to be issues on how to approach this problem and attempts to solve the problem, more often than not, tend to miss the mark ultimately making the film incorrectly represent race. Having said this, a lot more effort could go into thinking about character design and how certain characters are voiced, as the voice of a character has a major impact on the race they are associated with. Racial stereotyping is something that will always be an issue within animation, but this hasn’t been a barrier to success for the animation sector nonetheless, there are many things the animation sector could do to reduce the misrepresentation of race that they simple aren’t and this is having a major effect on the way children, animations main audience, perceive the world. Overall, it appears that animation doesn’t represent race as well as it should, yet it feels as though the animation sector is on a very slow course in the right direction.

Bibliography

Aladdin (1992), Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, USA, Walt Disney Production, Animation

Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944), Directed by Friz Freleng, USA, Warner Bros. Pictures, Merrie Melodies, Propaganda Animation

Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs (1943), Directed by Bob Clampett, USA, Warner Bros Pictures, Merrie Melodies, Animation

Cohen, Karl F (1997) Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animations in America, London: McFarland and Co.

Dubb, Ruth 2013, “Racism in Animation”, Museum of Uncut Funk, 02 February, http://museumofuncutfunk.com/2013/02/02/racism-in-animation/, (Accessed 16.02.15)

Dumbo (1941),Directed by Samuel Armstrong, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts and Ben Sharpsteen, USA,  Walt Disney Production, Animation

Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943), Directed by Clyde Geronimi, USA, Walt Disney Production, Propaganda Animation

Griffin, S (1994), “The Illusion of ‘Identity’:  Gender and Racial Representation in ‘Aladdin’ in Furniss, M. (ed.) (2009), Animation – Art and Industry, New Banet, John, Libbey.

Hall, Phil 2001, Film Review, “The History of Racist Animation”, Film Threat, 13 November, http://www.filmthreat.com/reviews/2374/comment-page-1/, (Accessed 16.02.15)

Jungle Book, the (1967), Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, USA, Walt Disney Production, Animation

Lion King, the (1994), Directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, USA, Walt Disney Production, Animation

Miller, S. Rode, G, “The movie you see, the movie you don’t”, (Page 92 and 93) in Bell, E. Hass, L. Sells, L (eds.) (1995) From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of film, gender and culture, USA: Indiana University Press

Pocahontas (1995), Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, USA, Walt Disney Production, Animation

Rose, Steve 2014, “Repressed Brits, evil Mexicans, Arab villains: Why are Hollywood’s Animated Movies full of Racist Stereotypes?” The Guardian, 6 April (Updated on 9 April), http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/06/repressed-brits-evil-mexicans-arab-villains-hollywood-animated-movies-stereotypes, (Accessed 08.02.2015)

Song of the South (1946), Directed by Wilfred Jackson and Harve Foster, USA, Walt Disney Production, Animation

Watson, Richard 2010, “A Short History on Race in Animation”, The Guardian, 21 January, http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jan/21/race-disney-animation-brief, (Accessed 08.01.2015)

Vraketta, G, “The Representations of Gender, Sexuality and Race in Disney’s The Lion King”, Academia.edu, http://www.academia.edu/4893757/The_Representations_of_Gender_Sexuality_and_Race_in_Disney_s_The_Lion_King, (Accessed 03.03.16)

Extra Reading: The Illusion of "Identity" Sean Griffin (1994)

As I am focusing upon racial representation for my essay and my visual response, I have decided to read further into representation within animation, as I feel that it would beneficial to the work I am doing momentarily.

Unlike in live-action film, animated characters have the ability to transform into any shape, size, form, race and gender at the whim of the animator. However, in the 1930s, animators turned away from the transformative and moved towards rendering the human form in a more realistic manner, championed by Disney. Rather than emphasise the transformative dimension of animation, this tradition attempted to create the "illusion of life". Through this tradition, the 12 principles of animation were developed and one principle in particular is relevant to this topic; appeal. In order to achieve good appeal, Disney took onboard the techniques of rotoscoping, however, they would always "improved" upon the rotoscoped images to make them more appealing afterwards, and it is this demonstration of overly-gendered drawings that emphasised the process of fetishisation that took place within the studio in many instances when the female form is animated in Disney films. Many of these female characters, today, are seen to be extremely stereotypical and sexist, as they all appear to be damsels in distress who are attractive, slim, good natured and so on.

Despite this Disney had managed to create successfully appealing female characters it wasn't until Aladdin that the studio managed to finally create a male character that held as much appeal as Snow White. Disney's tradition of animated human forms, with its mixture of appeal and realism, consistently creates performances of gender. Throughout Aladdin the characters are constantly playing their engendered identities, for instance, as Prince Ali, Aladdin constantly flexes his muscles and flashes his smile to the girls, and Jasmine consciously performs femininity, purposefully batting her eyelashes and 'wiggling' her hips, and when she uses her gender to distract the villain. Although many believe that Aladdin was a successful animation because it stripped away 'identity' (particularly through the character of the Genie), many argue that Disney's tradition of creating the 'illusion of life" clearly portrays the problem of viewers taking these engendered performances as true, rather than seeing them for what they are, which is a performance.

A good example of this is the reaction many Arab-Americans had to the film Aladdin, who loudly objected to the portrayal of Arabic culture within the film. The film used stereotypical Arabian characteristics and even went as far as portraying the Arabs to be "cruel, dim-witted sentinels...thieves and unscrupulous vendors. They also generalised Arabian culture, which again would lead viewers who don't take the film as fantasy to believe that it was fact.

The representation of identity, gender and race within Aladdin can be said to be stereotypical portrayals of what we assume each asset to be like. The film doesn't necessarily intend to be sexist or racist, yet by using stereotypes of gender, race and identity, it does become quite offensive to viewers that take the film for reality rather than the fantasy that it is.

Lecture 11: Post Modernism

I didn't quite understand this lecture and I really struggled to make sense of the lecturer, which made it really difficult to figure out what postmodernism actually is. However, after reading further into postmodernism I feel that postmodernism is a reaction to modernists reducing everything to their basic purest form. Postmodernists would take this idea further and they also began to question the truth of everything. This also reached out to religion, philosophy, literature, etc.

Postmodernism was characterised by artists consciously using earlier styles and conventions and mixing different art styles and media. It was also characterised by people having a general distrust in theories that had been previously presented.

I'm still not sure that I understand Postmodernism, but I am aware that it involves creating a copy of the original, but then questioning the originality of the original, nothing is unique or original, but rather everything is a copy of everything.

Andy Warhol is a good example of this idea in his 100 Cans painting.

Visual Response: Animation

Before I can start animating, I needed to create the assets that I would place in After Effects. To do this, I found images of the characters I want to be in my presentation on the internet to use in Photoshop. Whilst I was doing this task, I decided to miss out some of the animations I was going to include within my animation, as I realised that I had way to many animations to represent in such a short time. I reduced the total number to 12, this will give me plenty of room to coherently portray my ideas and the issue I have explored.

Once I had all the images I needed, I then began to create the assets within Photoshop. I simply created compositions of the characters from the different animations by layering them up.   Placing them into After Effects and controlling the camera wasn't so simple though.

The first attempt I created went really well, considering this is the second time I have ever used 3D cameras within After Effects. I was really pleased with the outcome and I felt that it I had created a good visual response that coherently portrayed my ideas. I felt that the animation ran well and it was smooth enough and the camera flowed nicely through the space I had created.

However, after asking a few of my peers what they thought, it was brought to my attention that the animation ran a little too quickly. This meant that I had to go back and adjust some of the key frames within the animation (and I thought I'd done well). This proved to be an extremely difficult task and I was only able to slow the animation down to a certain degree. Some areas of the animation are running a little too quickly and I did try to sort it out but I could only do so much, as I didn't want my animation to run too far over the suggested running time. Having said this, I am still really pleased with my overall result and I feel that I have produced an animation that demonstrates what I have found about racial representation within animation. I am also really happy with how well I have managed to use the 3D cameras within After Effects.

Visual Response: Storyboard

Based on the animations I have decided to show within my presentation, this leaves me with 14 animations in total to present within my presentation, ultimately giving me approximately 2 seconds for each animation to make some kind of appearance. I'm not sure if this will be long enough at this moment and I need to experiment with how this will look and whether or not it's enough time for my message to be clear to those viewing it, but I'll deal with that later on.

Thinking about which method I want to use to animate my presentation I instantly thought about using 3D cameras within After Effects, as I have recently learnt how to use this technique and I feel that it would a really good technique to use for this task because it will allow me to pan through the many different animations I have chosen with ease.

I have also been thinking about how to make it obvious that I'm trying to point out racial representation within each animation, so I have decided to select certain characters from each animation to represent that animation and the general racial status of the entire film. For instance in Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs all the characters are racially incorrect, so I will attempt to create an asset that contains the majority of these characters to imply that there are a number of racially stereotypical characters within the animation. Whereas, in The Lion King the main problem within that animation is the hyenas, so I will simply take those characters and present them. I also feel that some text to state which animation the characters are from and what year will also help to showcase my ideas more coherently.

Based on my idea I have created a very basic storyboard to get an idea of how the animation will work and how I actually want my camera to move. However, I don't think I am going to create an animatic, as I feel that I would benefit more from just experimenting with animating it straight up. This way I know if the timing is okay and if not I can just remove some of the assets and adjust the camera movements.

I need to create my assets now so i can start animating.

Visual Response: Choosing my Animations

Thinking carefully about how to successfully show a chronology of animations whilst showing a change in racial representation throughout animation, I had to choose a selection of animations to present that I felt were racially unrepresentative. Keeping in mind that I have six animations that I feel are successfully racially representative I need to try and pick a similar amount for the other collection in order to make the presentation an example of change and chronology rather than a presentation all about racist animations.

This was extremely difficult to do, as I had to remember that my presentation will only last 30 seconds at most and there will be a lot of information for an audience to take in. I feel that choosing a selection of extremely unacceptable animations and animations that are less explicit would be a good call, as it will provide an insight into how racial stereotyping isn't always as obvious as people seem to think and that it is in fact quite implicit, particularly in more recent animation. I also want to portray the fact that more recent animations also completely disregard race altogether.

SO based on the things I want my presentation to convey I have decided to choose the majority of the animations I had investigated for my essay with the possibility of pairing some of the animations together when I present them, as they display similar problems.

By doing this it gives me 8 animations that represent racially unrepresentative animations and 6 racially representative animations throughout animation history. I feel that this is a good balance, as it will imply that racial representation is still an issue within animation better than it would if there was a clear, equal divide between the two. I'm not sure if this will work however, and I need to experiment with how I am going to present these animations and how long I will need to have them onscreen for it to be clear to the audience to see the message behind my presentation. I think a storyboard would be a good step from here. 

Visual Response: Idea Development

After some consideration, I have decided that I should focus upon creating a visual representation of racial representation throughout the last few decades of animation. This seemed to make the most sense because we have been focusing upon chronologies throughout out COP studies so far.

So in order to create an animated presentation of characters throughout animation I first need to consider the characters that I feel represent a change in racial representation within animation. I want to make sure that I get a good range within my presentation in order to show how race has been dealt with and how its representation has change in accordance with the findings I found from conducting my essay.

To get a starting point I spent some time thinking about the animations I researched for my essay and placing the characters within them into groups of racially representative and racially unrepresentative. This allowed me to think about how I was going to present this to an audience in a way that would coherently portray my ideas.

As it turns out I found over twice as many animations that are unrepresentative opposed to ones that are, which creates quite a dilemma, as it will make it difficult to show a range within my presentation. Having said this however, it will give an audience a feel for the reality of racial representation within animation and it might be a good thing that I haven't managed to find as many successful animations because it will raise awareness of the lack of fair racial diversity within animation. Nonetheless, it is still going to make it difficult for me to make my presentation appear to be showing a change throughout animation on this issue. In order to make it a little easier for myself I think it would be a good idea for me to choose a smaller collection for the unrepresentative animations, as I feel that this would help to convey the change in racial representation better rather than the presentation seemingly portraying racist animations.

Visual Response: Initial Ideas

I decided that I wanted to create a visual artifact relating to the issue that I discussed within my essay, which is racial representation. I feel that by doing this I will be able to make my work load slightly easier, as I have already done plenty of research into this topic, which will also give me a few good places to start from in terms of idea generation.

Throughout my essay I discussed how racial representation within animation has progressed throughout the years and pointed out how although racial representation has improved massively over the last few decades, it is still a problem that is present within today's animation. Taking this into account, I would like to go down this route and create something that will visually demonstrate this change throughout the decades, but that will also point out that misrepresentation of race isn't an issue that is solved. 

My first initial thought was to create an animated presentation that pointed out the change in the use of stereotypical character design throughout the last few decades. And I like the sound of this idea. However, I do only have up to 30 seconds of presentation time, so it may be difficult to show this as well get across the point that stereotyping still occurs within animation today. 

Having said this, I don't feel that creating my own racially representative characters would help get this point across any better, unless it was stated and made obvious that these characters differed from today's animated characters in some way. 

I think I need to focus on the chronological element, as my idea revolves around presenting the change in racial representation throughout animation history. However, I'm not quite sure what I actually want to do whether I want to create a storyboard of an animation, an animatic, an animation or an animated presentation. I need to go think about each of these different ideas and see which one I feel will be the most successful at portraying my ideas. 

Lecture 9: A History Of Animation

In this lecture we were given a not so brief, brief history into animation, which included its origins and its journey through the decades until today. With me being on an animation course I really enjoyed this lecture and found it extremely useful and beneficial, as it gave me an insight into how animation has developed over time and how it was done before we were introduced to technology.

It does well to remember that sequential storytelling isn't a modern concept, but rather a concept that has been around since and before the Egyptian's, who used to create burial chamber murals that depicted detailed sequential stories. However, it wasn't until the 1600s that people began to play around with the idea of persistence of vision. In approximately 1650 Christian Huygens created the first tool to be used to create animation, the Magic Lantern. The contraption involved placing a glass slide behind a magnifying lens and turning the lens to flip between the two different images to create the illusion of movement. This idea was developed further to create the Thaumatrope, which was created in the same way, however it was projected through a lens it was simply a card with two different images on either side and if it was spun quick enough the images would mere and you'd get a constant image because of persistence of vision.

Thaumatrope

Continuing with the development of the original Magic Lantern, the Phenakistoscope was created by two different men independently of each other. At this point, what we know as traditional animation was becoming more apparent in the way these mechanisms were made, as the Phenakistoscope would be made of a series of sequential images that when spun would merge together to create a moving sequence rather than a transition between just two images. This was then further developed into the Zoetrope and again into the Flipbook, which are both still used to create animations in today's society.

Phenakistoscope

With the advent of film, artists were able to record a sequence of images to create a moving image. This allowed for the creation of traditional animation and it was from here that animation really began to take off and would continue to do so throughout the decades. A great example of how this technique was being used to create fun, entertaining little moving shows is Émile Cohl's Fantasmogrie (1908), which was regarded as one of the first modern animations. To create this animation, Cohl used pencil to draw the initial images and then printed them onto negative film. Although animations like this lacked a clear story line, it is evident of the influence this has short animation has had on animation as a whole throughout the years. It opened eyes to the full potential of animation and the creative possibilities that could be found in this technique.

By 1928 the Golden Age of animation was upon us in which animation had developed its own 'language' and was on a commercial rise. Animation wasn't just seen as an art form anymore but as a tool for money making. With animators such as Fleischer Brothers, Reynaud and Starewicz portraying that animation could be used for entertainment purposes and could actually be very funny to watch, it allowed big name animators such as Walt Disney to charge forward into the Golden Age of animation and morph the future of animation. During this period many animations were being created worldwide that used significantly influential techniques such as stop motion animation and Pixilation. However, it was Disney that had possibly the most impact on how aesthetics were dealt with in animation with his release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in which different animation techniques were combined to create the longest running animation of its time.

In 1957 the Golden Age of animation came to end as TV was becoming more popular and the Television Age began. By this time broadcasters were demanding large quantities of programming on low budgets, which proved to be difficult for the animation industry and led to many changes being made to previous techniques and processes. Things such a walk cycles and backgrounds were recycled many times in order to keep up with the demand of the creating a large amount of animation on such a low budget and small time frame. Because of this pressure that was being placed on the industry to create animation in mass, the quality of animation was decreasing rapidly and feature length animations were being over taken by much cheaper mass produced animations such as the Flintstones. 

The Flintstones

Due to the time and budget restrictions placed upon animation, the industry turned towards a more experimental form and often combined animation with other methods such as live film. In the UK, the industry had decided to focus upon creating animations using stop motion, which turned out to be extremely popular. Towards the end of the Television Age, more animators were experimenting with digital animation and by 1985 the Digital Age of animation had begun. 

In 1986 John Lasseter and Steve Jobs showed the world the full potential of 3D animation with the production of Luxo Jr., which was ground breaking and completely changed the way animation was seen. From here there has been a new rise in animation and it has developed alongside today's technology to create animations that contain strong, moving story lines and that break the boundaries of combing techniques and methods to create animations not only for entertainment but for artistic purposes too. 

Lecture 10: Modernity and Modernism

In this lecture we were given an insight into modernity and modernism and the effects of the modern on our consciousness. I felt that there was a lot to take in in this weeks lecture and I struggled to form a simple, clear understanding of modernism however, I feel that I have a general understanding of how modernism has effected the art world and how and why we create the pieces of art that we do.

Generally speaking, to modernise something is to make something better than before; to make something more sophisticated or 'edgy'. However, a painting or piece of work can be described as modern but isn't actually an example of modernism. John ruskin was the first to use the term 'modern' to describe visual communication. Having said that, work was often described as modern, but would be seen by many today as not being modern in the slightest way at all. For example, The Hireling Shepherd by William Holman Hunt (1851) was described as being modern because of the bright colours used and the contrast created within the painting, which wouldn't be done by 'classic' artists.

Modernism, in truth, goes straight over my head and I have no idea what it is and if someone were to point it out to me I probably still wouldn't understand what it was. However, I do feel that I have a very basic understanding of why modernism emerges. Modernism is the result of an artist subjectively responding to modernity. The fact that it's a subjective response means that it is the artists' own opinion and interpretation of the changing world around him/herself. Modernism resulted in work that was true to the materials it was made from and function was placed over form. For example, Bauhaus style cutlery is simply that cutlery. It has no fancy pattern on it or any other material added to the stainless steel it is made from, the design is simple and the material it is made from is what colours the object. 

In terms of animation, the industry was slower than other art forms to get 'into' modernism and it wasn't until the 1950s that modernism influence became present within animation. A great example is Mr. Magoo. During this time the UPA studio were pushing their artistic boundaries more towards modernism and this led to backgrounds of the animations to be made of simple lines and bright colours, going back to using materials and methods for their function and letting the materials and methods do what they do best. 

Lecture 8: The Photograph as Document

In this lecture the topic of photography being used as a form of documentation was discussed. At first I didn't think I was going to get much from this presentation, but I was proved wrong and I was glad about it. Photography is something that I have always associated with capturing and documenting the things in life that mean something to the photographer, whether that be an issue they are trying to raise awareness for or just simple enjoyment of something. I have also always known that Photography can be used as a very powerful tool in helping to get peoples attention on important issues that are occurring throughout the world, as it provides people with the opportunity to see an event as it happens. And this is exactly what people were doing with Photography when it first came about, as it was a lot quicker and a lot more accurate to photograph an event than it was to stand there and paint it.

However, photographers weren't unaware of the creative possibilities that came with being able to capture moments instantly. Many photographers were beginning to realise that they could create messages just as powerful as before by using staged scenes rather than capturing the moment as it happened. The most powerful example we were shown throughout this presentation was Don McCullin's Shell Shocked Soldier (1968). McCullin staged this entire scene in order to convey the damage of the war that was happening at the time. I can't argue that it doesn't send across the same message as the image below which was taken in 1916 of another shell shocked soldier, because it does just that, I might even go as far as saying the staged image effects me more than the 'in the moment' image because there appears to be a lot more emotion within that image and it is a lot more atmospheric. With this new found creativity being used throughout photography it became aware that photography was and still is a very powerful tool at portraying a message on a large social basis.

Don McCullin's Shell Shocked Soldier

Shell Shocked Soldier from 1916

During the lecture a point about the photographer being unseen within the photographs caught my attention, as it is a similar situation for animators. Similarly to the photographer, the animator sits behind the scene and creates something for others to look at without actually being present themselves. It was brought to attention that the presence of the photographer within the picture had an effect on how the picture was perceived, which is also the same case within animation.

Seminar 5: Gender In Animation

This seminar was all about about gender in animation. I find the representation of gender in animation to be a bit of a tricky subject because my thoughts on the matter are a mix to be quite honest. Whilst I find it overly unnecessary to sexualise female characters, as emphasis on particular body parts don't actually add to the story in any way whatsoever, I also aren't concerned by the notion either. However, I am fully aware of the misrepresentation of both female and male genders within animation and I am also fully aware of the effects that this has on society.

Many people are concerned with how the female gender is represented within animation yet there are also a few examples of the male gender being misrepresented too. One example of this would be in Joanna Quinn's Girl's Night Out (1987). This animation can be praised for it's representation of the female gender, as it is quite accurate and there aren't any offensive stereotypes that are present within the animation. However, it's a different story for the male gender. Within the animation the males are either portrayed as 'slobs' slouching on the sofa, ignoring their wives preferring to pay mindless attention tot he TV screen. Or they are portrayed as big muscly men, with a great figure that use to earn money. Although this may be greatly overlooked, it is an issue that effects many people. Some may argue that males won't feel as pressured into believing this is how they should look or are expected to behave, but I feel that this isn't the case.

Regardless of what gender is within the animation I feel that it should be represented correctly if the issue of misrepresentation is to be avoided. People need to remember that females aren't the only gender that are affected by this either. Personally, the issue doesn't bother me all that much, as I am fully aware that this is one persons view on how a particular gender should behave and it's not the building blocks of any new rules on how to be a woman or a man. However, misrepresentation of gender is having that kind of effect on younger audiences and this is something that needs to be considered when gender is playing a large role in an animation.