Research
To choose a film intro I made a mind map with some potential films and animations that I could use for this project. I had an idea of what film intro I wanted to work on, but I thought that looking at some other possibilities is good idea because that may give me some more inspirations.
Back to the Future
The first film I wanted to look at is "Back to the Future". This film is one of my personal top favourite movies. It is mainly a comedy and sci-fi, with some adventure and romance. Overall the movie is quite bright and light-hearted, with some tense moments. The special effects are quite impressive considering it was ,made over 30 years ago.
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The scene that I took a screen shot of is the one when where we are presented with the time machine, which is actually Delorean car, which later became one of the most recognisable features of the film, sometimes being mentioned in other movies. This is probably one of my favorite scenes from the film because this is the scene where the actual story starts.
Howl's moving Castle
The second film I wanted to discuss is Ghibli Studio's Howl's moving castle. What I love a lot about this film is the amount of details, and the realism that is present in all Ghibli films.
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The animation is quite smooth, realistic and detailed which is very typical for a Ghibli studios films.
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The scene starts dark and quiet, The fog is grey and dense so nothing else is visible. Just a moment later mechanical sounds can be heard, that foreshadow the steady appearance of the castle. In regards to the sound nothing changes, but the view moves from front to lower side view, showing the "walking" of the castle.
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The next shot shows a green field, with a cottage and a shepherd and herd of sheep. Beyond the the field the only thing is the fog, that is too dense to allow anything behind it to be visible from this particular angle. As the fog slowly clears up, the castle slow emerges from behind it, accompanied with slow and peaceful music.
The contrast between the first shot of a peaceful rural environment, and then it changes to a city view. In that way the opening scene shows the two main places where the story happens- the castle and Sophie's (the main character) home town.
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The movie was actually based on a book with the same title, and was written by Diana Wayne Jones. It has two more books in the trilogy called " Castle in Air" and "House of Many Ways"
James bond intros
I choose this intro mainly because it is very well know by generations of people, and it contrasts with the two previous films as it has very little comedy, Sci-fi or Fantasy , which is very significant part of the other two film pieces that I looked at.
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The two particular openings that I really liked was the 2006 Casino Royale opening and the 2012 Skyfall, as I like the music and composition.
The casino Royale is already quite minimalistic with some details, and limited palette in each new scene. The main details include card designs like spades, hearts jacks and others, that are very closely related to poker, and other card games that are associated with casinos. Even-though the background is quite simplistic, the character in the intro is quite detailed and realistic on occasions, which fits the name of the film. It seems that the intro has variety of of different designs and animation styles, which makes it very interesting, as every style brings different impressions and feelings with them. And that's why I find it very engaging.
The intro starts in a bathroom. A man tries to shoot and then the camera quickly shows the main character shooting the other person, from the inside of the gun of the shot person. After the gunshot sound a sudden, energetic music starts, that surprises the viewer. The genre of the song is Alternative/Indie, performed by Chris Cornell, and seems to fit the styles of the graphics that are mostly 2D.
Pirates of the Caribbean
I chose the pirates of the Caribbean, as it is one of the most popular recent franchises, and one of my favourite films. The film has a great cast and an interesting plot. The music is entertaining during the entire film/s.
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The trailer of the first movie is about 2 min long, showing some scenes that reveal what the movie is about, in order to interest potential viewer. It starts with a a scene where two of the main cast first meet, and various shots of an artefact, which suggests that it may be important for the plot.
Artists
Michael Craig-Martin
Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA is an Irish-born contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is noted for fostering the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, An Oak Tree.
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I like how vibrant and how simplistic his artworks are. Most of them usually include very bright colours, lacking any shading.
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During one of the drawing lessons we had his artworks were as an example for line drawings. I decided I will use this type of drawings for my work, by just not including the colour.
Will Scobie
The second artist we were introduced to was Will Scombie. He specialises in continuous line drawings.
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I like how simple the drawings look, and how symmetrical yet some part look asymmetrical.
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When I was trying to a continuous drawing it was very hard to keep the pencil on the paper. I liked the type of drawing, and I think that I will try this again at some point.
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Studio Ghibli
Studio Ghibli, Inc. is a Japanese animation film studio based in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. The studio is best known for its anime feature films, and has also produced several short films, television commercials, and one television film. It was founded on 15 June 1985. Studio Ghibli has also collaborated with video game studios on the visual development of several video games.
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Some of the most popular and highest grossing films produced by the studio are "Howl's Moving Castle" and "Spirited Away", standing on 3rd and 1st place, respectively, on the top highest-grossing (worldwide) anime films ranking.
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Founders: Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Toshio Suzuki, Yasuyoshi Tokuma
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Documentary: The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
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I really like the art style that is present in all of the Ghibli animated films. What I noticed is that usually the backgrounds and the environment is very detailed and realistic, which helps the bold and exaggerated characters stand out, as the background don't really attract attention. This is because the realism makes the colours blend, thus making it look smoother. In contrast the characters' shadows don't blend with the main colour.
Minimalistic animation example
This video is the end animation.
This video is the process of the making of the animation
This is a minimalistic version of the anime film Spirited Away, which is produced by the same studio as Howl's Moving Castle, Studio Ghibli. The minimalistic version was made by a youtuber called Jazza, that takes on all sorts of animating, drawing, sculpting and etc. challanges.
I decided to add this animation as I think it is a good example of a minimalistic animation. I think it is minimalistic as it uses very basic movements, gestures, backgrounds, voice acting and etc. This is because the challange was to recreate the animation in 5 hours, so it had to be simple, yet understandable.
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I've put two different videos, one of the end animation, and the other of the production of the animation. I added the production video, as I find it very useful, because it touches briefly on the techniques that were used to produce the animation, which I can go and research in more depth later on.
Research for stop motion animation
