Tuesday, May 25, 2010

50 Most Intriguingly Bizarre Animated Films I've Seen

Now it's time to belatedly publish that list. I'd wanted to have a point system, but the points were in a notebook that was thrown away, so I can't remember all the points or how I'd scored everything. I remember that the scale was out of 40 points and that each film had to get at least 25 to qualify. The highest, The Cosmic Eye, got 38.

The general rules were:
1. Must be 45 minutes long
2. Must not be derivative of a television series
3. Must not tread too far on rotoscoping/live action
4. If it's just deliberately being strange for its own sake with no good reason, it didn't make the list.

The film must be 45 minutes long, meaning 45 minutes completed. One film on this list stretches the rule. Waltz with Bashir could be argued to stretch the rules on rotoscoping. I've discovered many films after the point system got screwed up, and will mention many of them at some point in the future. Many of the film's orders I'd reconsider, and the list is quite short on stop motion entries which would be fixed if I still had the numbers. Be forewarned that a very large number of these films are not suitable for children, and that this list was not made with druggies in mind. A couple films which you might like were originally on the end of the list but got knocked off when more suitable entries appeared. Enjoy the list, however patchy it is right now. Somebody will surely make a better one at some point in the future.

50. Little Nemo's Adventures in Slumberland


49. Puss 'n Boots


48. Sea Prince and the Fire Child


47. My Neighbors the Yamadas


46. Aladdin


45. Heavy Metal


44. Twice upon a Time


43. Yobi the Five Tailed Fox


42. Little Prince and the Eight Headed Dragon


41. Waltz with Bashir


40. The Triplets of Belleville


39. Wizards


38. The Tune


37. Alice in Wonderland


36. Everybody Rides the Carousel


35. Akira


34. Neo Tokyo


33. Hair High


32. Gwen the Book of Sand


31. Sita Sings the Blues


30. Fantasia


29. Johnny Corncob


28. A Soldier's Tale


27. Tekkon Kinreet


26. I Married a Strange Person


25. Robot Carnival


24. Uproar in Heaven


23. Night on the Galactic Railroad


22. Krysar


21. Hugo the Hippo


20. The District!


19. The Adventures of Mark Twain


18. Fantastic Planet


17. Nezha Conquers the Dragon King


16. Midori

No Footage Available

15. Of Stars and Men

No Footage Available

14. The Adventures of Prince Achmed


13. Angel's Egg


12. Dead Leaves


11. Time Masters


10. Yellow Submarine


9. The Thief and the Cobbler (recobbled)


8 Paprika


7. Beyond the Mind's Eye


6. Mind Game


5. Belladonna of Sadness


4. Son of the White Mare


3. The Cat who Walked by Herself


2. Chronopolis


1. The Cosmic Eye

No Footage Available

I'll see what I can find for these films, but for now I have to post this list because it's been so long. The next post will be about realistic character animation, and to a lesser extent, serious animation if anybody happens to stumble by this blog. I need to write a bit more about each one at some point, so I'll either edit this post or I'll describe them more in future posts.

edit-clip now available for Everybody Rides the Carousel
edit 2-Waltz with Bashir was not rotoscoped as I originally wrote.

10 comments:

Alberto said...

When i saw that woman get torn in half in the "Belladona of Sadness" trailer I thought to myself, "I have to watch this movie."

GW said...

I'd first heard about it on the IMDb forums before my interests leaned so much towards animation. I thought it was interestingly artistic, but grotesque. After forgetting about it mostly for a while, I'd rediscovered the film due to AniPages and found a subtitled version on Crunchyroll before the site became 'legitimate'. It took me several times to get past the opening sequence, but once I saw the whole film, I ended up enjoying it on the whole. I won't say too much about it, or I'll spoil the film.

Brenan said...

Hey I recommend you see the film Aachi and Ssipak if you havn't. Its a South Korean film that's violent, rude, funny, and above all, strange. Ive only seen a handful of the films on your list, but it was weirder than Mind Game I would say. The story revolves around poop, ice cream, and bad ass super heroes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w14kQlT8hjg

GW said...

I'd found out about it before I made the list but didn't care for it very much and shut it off early. A similar thing happened with Dead Leaves, and against common sense, I bought a copy and ended up enjoying the film.

I finally caught it thanks to the link you gave me last night. It's a bizarre film indeed, and would certainly make the list, but I find Mind Game much more bizarre. It has a wide variety of visual styles and a frankly more creative storyline. I think that two other films on this list, The District! and Dead Leaves have generally more expressive characters while Aachi and Ssipak's characters generally act theatrical but few boundaries are pushed in the way that they're portrayed. With The District! there's the awkward mix of photo cutouts with 3D models and Dead Leaves characters are extremely expressive with the scatterbrained animation and editing.

Thanks for the link, and I'll make sure to mention the film in the followup post though our opinions differ on its potential placement.

Elchinodepelocrespo said...

Thanks!! I didn´t know "The soldier´s tale".

Anonymous said...

This is a great list - very diverse, I own almost all of these films and would agree about their bizarreness.

One thing, though - "Waltz Wish Bashir" was not rotoscoped.

'Contrary to industry rumours, the animation in Waltz with Bashir was not achieved through rotoscoping techniques and Goodman actively fights this misconception whenever he can.
‘I’d like to state that the movie has absolutely zero percent rotoscope. Every time one of my animators hears or reads about someone on the other side of the planet saying the movie was in rotoscope, I get a phone call, regardless of the hours.’

Rotoscoping is an animation technique where animators trace over live-action footage, frame-by-frame, to create an animated version of the film movement. The original process involved the projection (rotoscope was the name given to the projection equipment) of images onto a frosted glass panel and these were then redrawn by the animator by hand. These days through the use of digital visual effects, rotoscoping now refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate for compositing over a background. The animators behind Waltz with Bashir feel that the misconception that their animation was created with this technique diminishes the quality of their work. Goodman says that, in a way, this is true.
‘Every movement in this movie was created and invented in the animator’s head, and not copied over live footage. Sometimes we watched the interviews for reference, but we never drew over them. Instead we tried to stylise and re-create them.’

Goodman describes the technique he and his animation team devised for Bashir as being a lot of hard work, but ultimately achieves the effect that aligned with Folman’s vision of his film.
‘While rotoscope is a legitimate technique, I’m not very fond of how it’s used in most cases,’ Goodman explains. ‘Most of the time it feels a bit like a Photoshop filter over live footage, and it lacks some spontaneity. Cutout was really our only option in terms of budget and manpower, and we tried to harness the disability of the cutouts technique to our advantage, making a simple and stylised movement, which allowed us to get different and rich results.’'

http://www.dgdesignnetwork.com.au/dgdn/dg-magazine-131/waltz-with-bashir/

... just something I thought you would like to know.

GW said...

You're right. I'd learned that some time after I typed this post but didn't remember I'd written this. I'll edit it.

Anonymous said...

Aparently, you haven't seen Foodfight, Space Jam, or Pom Poki

GW said...

Foodfight may be bizarre but it's not very good. Space Jam is good enough but it contains too much live action. I may have overlooked Pom Poko. Either that or it was one of the films that barely missed the list.

Unknown said...

Work by Priit Parn. check him out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vpn01DT0Fg