Orthodox vs. Experimental Animation

While I agree with the opening paragraph to the extent that the normal Saturday morning cartoon animation and that of the Disney classics has overshadowed other, often more interesting and more engaging and creative, forms of filmmaking. However, even now I find myself longing for those old Disney classics because it seems now that the movies have been taken over by the new ways of computer animating everything a la Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Wall-E just to name a few. In the film world this is all we seem to be seeing anymore, and I fear due to the successes of Pixar, we may never see the likes of the Disney classics, let alone any other more interesting form of animation.

I then go on to agree with the comparison of orthodox animation and experimental animation where orthodox is certainly very narrative and planned out. There is certainly something to say for orthodox narrative, but I feel there is even more to say about experimental, be it animation or not. Experimental animation, or any other animation that is not orthodox, allows the artistry to come through. This artistry may be evident through what many may see as errors, but does anyone think the cigarette ashes dropped into Jackson Pollock’s paintings are errors? No, and neither does he. When doing our animations tomorrow the goal isn’t to make our objects look fluid and lifelike, if we wanted to do that we wouldn’t be animating, or we would be using an orthodox form. Experimental animation is like any other form of art besides realism. Regular animation is realism, coloring inside the lines, which after a while gets boring. Painting outside the lines, or without lines at all in a more abstract form can be a breath of fresh air for audiences.

Experimental animation seems to be more about the artist, the soundtrack, and the overall feel of the film, while orthodox animation is focused on mass production with a lack of an artistic feel and a focus on dialogue and narrative story. A hybrid that comes to mind would be Fantasia. I really have no idea what that movie was about, but I’m sure it had some form of narrative, it was very focused on the musicality of the score. Wells goes on to say in the reading that early narrative animation was often more focused on the music. What happened to that? Where did all of the Disney musicals go?! (On a side note, I know Disney is pretty much an evil corporation, but I can’t help but love those movies and those songs.)

Wells notes that abstract films are more concerned with rhythm and movement in their own right as opposed to the rhythm and movement of a particular character. I feel another sort of hybrid seen very often in today’s culture is that of the rarely seen, but existent, animated music video. The artist Knarles Barkley uses this abstract animation focused on the beat of the music as opposed to a character and a story. While the “Take On Me” music video by the group Ah-Ha is more realistically drawn and follows a bit more of a storyline, it is certainly not completely linear and focuses on the drawings themselves as art. It isn’t trying to be overly fluid or realistic.

So while I’m a fan of both types of animation, I am very excited to be working in the experimental form, and hope that more people are exposed to this sort of non-orthodox animation. Music videos may be the segue we need.