hsu@eneevax.UUCP (Dave Hsu) (03/01/86)
In article <938@rlgvax.UUCP> oz@rlgvax.UUCP writes: >... >But what of the animation you say? I can't think of the words that I need >to get you to leap up from your terminals and run to see if there is a >showing of this film right now. > >When Steve Knight first raved about how incredible the facial expressions >were, I thought that he was exaggerating. After all Disney, and Warner >Bros were able to convey many emotions in the faces of their characters. I >owe Mr. Knight an apology and am glad to do it here publicly, I have never >been able to read what a animated character is thinking as well as I could >in this film. In Adam and Eve you watch Adam go from total enjoyment in >his paradise, to confusion in the arrival of Eve, to caring when he >discovers that he loves her, and finally to sorrow when he is left alone. >All of these emotions were shown SUBTLY in his face. It was incredible. >The sorrow on Mr. Twains face when he speaks of his late wife makes you >want to put your arm around his shoulder and comfort him. Animated >characters have made me laugh, cry and shrink back in my seat before, but >this is the first time that they made me feel empathic. >... > OZ > seismo!rlgvax!oz In those dim, dark years of high school so long ago (actually, circa '79-82) we maintained a film club in which the 6 of us would gather in the library and run through films. And the film we watched the most, more often than The Battleship Potemkin (4 times), more often than Hardware Wars (6 times), more often even than the collected works of Mike Jittlov (uncountably many times), we watched the first non-trivial Claymation film, a documentary about how the process was painstakingly executed. Naturally, it inspired us to spend many afternoons unsuccessfully constructing armatures, formless blobs, and outlandishly weird sets. And, of course, we spent a lot on clay. Just a reminder that such a documentary exists, from the late seventies. Although I haven't seen the Adventures of Mark Twain yet, what few clips I have seen indicate that while the process was just as developed those years ago, they DO seem to have improved a tiny bit on keeping fingerprints off the clay... :-) -dave -- David Hsu Communication & Signal Processing Lab, EE Department <disclaimer> University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 hsu@eneevax.umd.edu {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!eneevax!hsu "Godzilla has been spotted in Sector 5!"
ronc@fai.UUCP (Ronald O. Christian) (03/04/86)
>But what of the animation you say? I can't think of the words that I need >to get you to leap up from your terminals and run to see if there is a >showing of this film right now. ***** I haven't seen The Adventures of Mark Twain, so I can't say one way or another what the animation looks like. But in general, I am simply not impressed with Claymation. I've seen it in various Christmas specials, the Miracle of Claymation special (3 shorts, The Little Prince, Rip Van Winkle, and one I can't remember) and the Claymation sequences in Return to Oz. Nowhere did I see an example of animation with clay that in my opinion couldn't be done better in a different medium. I think it's partly the unnatural movement of start-stop photography (see footnote) and partly the liberties the artists take with the medium. (The Rip Van Winkle dream sequences, for instance.) That is: 'Special' effects with Claymation look like....clay photographed a frame at a time. I guess I just don't get it. (I'm sure people will tell me that cartoons look like drawings photographed one frame at a time. Nevertheless, there *is* a difference. The medium of con- ventional animation can be transparent to me in a way that Claymation can not.) Return to Oz is in my opinion a great movie somewhat spoiled by the 'Miracle of Claymation' sequences. I know that many people panned RtO for other reasons, and lots of people like the effect of Claymation. Just my opinion, folks. Footnote: The only example of start-stop photography I've ever seen that didn't *look* like it was the Imperial Walker sequence in The Empire Strikes Back. There were other parts where the effect was noticable, (like similar footage in Return of the Jedi) but for some reason the technique really worked in that one section of film. Ron -- -- Ronald O. Christian (Fujitsu America Inc., San Jose, Calif.) ihnp4!pesnta!fai!ronc Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: "If you are seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it."
ronc@fai.UUCP (Ronald O. Christian) (03/04/86)
Keywords: >But what of the animation you say? I can't think of the words that I need >to get you to leap up from your terminals and run to see if there is a >showing of this film right now. ***** I haven't seen The Adventures of Mark Twain, so I can't say one way or another what the animation looks like. But in general, I am simply not impressed with Claymation. I've seen it in various Christmas specials, the Miracle of Claymation special (3 shorts, The Little Prince, Rip Van Winkle, and one I can't remember) and the Claymation sequences in Return to Oz. Nowhere did I see an example of animation with clay that in my opinion couldn't be done better in a different medium. I think it's partly the unnatural movement of start-stop photography (see footnote) and partly the liberties the artists take with the medium. (The Rip Van Winkle dream sequences, for instance.) That is: 'Special' effects with Claymation look like....clay photographed a frame at a time. I guess I just don't get it. (I'm sure people will tell me that cartoons look like drawings photographed one frame at a time. Nevertheless, there *is* a difference. The medium of con- ventional animation can be transparent to me in a way that Claymation can not.) Return to Oz is in my opinion a great movie somewhat spoiled by the 'Miracle of Claymation' sequences. I know that many people panned RtO for other reasons, and lots of people like the effect of Claymation. Just my opinion, folks. Footnote: The only example of start-stop photography I've ever seen that didn't *look* like it was the Imperial Walker sequence in The Empire Strikes Back. There were other parts where the effect was noticable, (like similar footage in Return of the Jedi) but for some reason the technique really worked in that one section of film. Ron -- -- Ronald O. Christian (Fujitsu America Inc., San Jose, Calif.) ihnp4!pesnta!fai!ronc Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: "If you are seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it."