Animated Movies

I just wanted to express my love for classically animated movies. The traditional animation techniques that were used so often for such a long time have, mostly, been passed up recently for (equally amazing) more contemporary digital animation. I recently saw Kung Fu Panda, which was beautiful and unique and incredibly graceful and harkens back to older movies. But still I have a real love for movies where you can see the inconsistencies in the line, and some human error. I watched The Iron Giant a few years back for a class with Daniel Krall at M|I|C/A for a class. We watched it because of the ingenious use of colored line to express a mood or a situation. The animators changed only the color of the line to imply a mood change or a temperature change in the characters, and it was very effective. Subtle color shifts are incredibly influential in expressing something in a composition and its a lesson that i call on quite a bit now when i'm painting, be it food, or a celebrity likeness piece.


But this morning i turned on Cartoon Network (which used to be one of my favorite channels, i think it has sort of gone downhill a little bit, but that's for another post). They were airing Cats Don't Dance, an animated film about animals trying to get into movies in 1930s hollywood. It's a thinly veiled commentary on the historic racism in the film industry, and a very good movie, albeit a little silly at times (but that's the point of animated musicals, yes?).

Anyway, the character design and animation is really beautiful, and it's incredibly entertaining. If you like animated entertianment, and classic story lines (a la "the Aritocats," "All Dogs Go To Heaven," or "Iron Giant") then you might really enjoy this one.

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