The Adventures of Sudsakorn (raw on YouTube)

If you've been looking for The Adventures of Sudsakorn, but haven't been able to find it, I discovered it unsubtitled on YouTube. I posted this the moment I found it, so I don't have any comments yet. It turns out that Payut Ngaokrachang's film has been available since March, but I didn't discover it until now. Hopefully somebody else is inspired by this news. More posts are coming soon, and I have quite a bit to talk about after such a long break.

The nuance in CGI

In CGI, the technology keeps evolving and the look of the films from major studios get progressively more advanced every year. But these advances in technology have come at a very steep price, that filmmakers have used live action as a guide to further the advancement of the medium and have gotten a bit too successful.

It goes without saying that not every CGI film attempts a more realistic style, but even the ones that don't usually try to look like something else. There's the faux-clayish preschool style, the silvery tech commercials/music videos/art films(I can't tell which is which), chinese ink, technological noir, crooked and rundown eyesores, and quite a couple of others.

With just about every approach now, the computer is used as a sandbox tool that largely mimics something else with a few concessions to computer physics. There isn't much of a computer look nowadays that stands out from the real world, and virtual reality has become virtually reality. There still are the rare films that look like they're made on a computer, but mostly from filmmakers who can't afford better rendering or who are aiming to break the mold somewhat self consciously. Earlier computer animators did their best to express their vision within quite restrained technology, and being blatantly computerized was inevitable for every approach.

Nowadays it seems like animation is going through a transitional period where computer animation is considered such a force in and of itself. The other important thing to keep in mind, though, is that even more traditional animators are using computers in their traditions. With computer drawn animation, flash, and computer use in stop motion, media forms are being divided every day. I think that computers are going to be incorporated more as a single essential tool of an overall technique. With the advances in robotics, I suspect that robotic animation will some day develop out of the traditions of stop motion, CGI and animatronics.

The 2D approaches to computer graphics are now effectively overwhelmed by old traditions, except for a few rebels taking inspiration from old video games. It's hardly even considered to be computer animation anymore to work in a 2D format on a computer, since the technology's become so good.

The progress of CGI to me is like a process where box that keeps getting carved into 8 smaller and smaller boxes of the same shape. First it isn't all that interesting because you can easily count the boxes, then it gets a little more interesting because there's enough to be interesting without being overwhelming, then it becomes impressive but unrelatable as there's many boxes to see but far too many to count. Eventually the boxes are microscopic in size, and you're still amazed when you can tell it's there. Finally, as the boxes get perpetually smaller, you work your way down to atoms and you're left with the same box you started with.

Two New Discoveries

There are so many good animated films that don't get enough recognition that it's absolutely tragic. Thanks to the timeline on the website Animation Podcast, I've discovered a couple gems, one relatively new and one old.
First is a Romanian live action/animation hybrid, Maria Mirabela which has some lovely if slightly zany songs which make me feel like a young child again. The film hasn't been released in English as far as I've been able to tell, but what a joy! Here's one of the song segments posted:



The other film is more dreamlike, a Spanish film from Miguelanxo Prado, a Spanish director with more experience in art outside of the animation industry. I'll let the visuals speak here, as they speak louder than any of my words.



More discoveries are going to come soon, I hope. Maybe some actual readers, too.

Features of The Hubleys

I've now seen all three of the feature films directed by the Hubleys, and my opinions seem to differ quite a bit from those of the masses, with Everybody Rides the Carousel being my initially least favorite of all three. To refresh the memory of readers or let them know for the first time, the other two are Of Stars and Men, and The Cosmic Eye. Time will tell if this remains my opinion, but I found the other two Hubley films to be severely underappreciated while Everybody Rides the Carousel feels a little bit overpraised.

Of Stars and Men was my favorite film of all three, the most inspiring, entertaining, and ethereal. It was a collaboration between John and Faith Hubley, directed by John. It's an analysis of humans as a species and our nature in space, time, and size. I'll admit that the material didn't feel completely new, and the treatment of the subjects was rather simplistic and dated, but it felt the most coherent and well developed of all three Hubley films. The narration provided an amount of structure that the other films didn't have and needed. It should also be noted that of all three films, this was the one with the least amount of character development and the one most accessible to younger children. It was the oldest, from 1964, eleven years before Everybody Rides the Carousel, and twenty two years before the completion of The Cosmic Eye.

Everybody Rides the Carousel was also a collaboration between John and Faith, a television film made for CBS, inspired by Erik Erikson's Eight Stages of Man theory, and is the most educationally valuable of all three. It's the most artistically restrained and minimalistic, which I found rather refreshing after seeing the other two. The biggest problem in my view, as that the movie is much too akward in the initial stages and end where it could have had some of the most impact. The scene of birth just doesn't feel right, and not because of the akward feeling but the lackluster execution. Near the end of the movie, too many shots are reused which gives the whole film a cheap TV feeling that starts to ruin the mood. Nevertheless, the theory in the film is very compelling and the animation is suited for it, and few animated films revolve around such a valuable but relatable concept. It's certainly a very good film, but my least favorite of the three.

The Cosmic Eye is a genuine oddity, probably the most whacked out unusual animated film I've ever seen, and I've seen enough to make a long list which I'll post when I add a couple more titles to top it off. The film uses a large amount of prior footage, short films intended to become part of the feature, but made many years beforehand to gain funding for a large project. By the time of the film's completion, John Hubley had unfortunately died prematurely in 1977, though many of the segments he worked on beforehand, so his influence is still felt. Of all three, this film is the most artistically unrestrained, and is guaranteed to leave the average viewer very cold. The film deals with myths, environmentalism, pacifism, and doesn't have a strong plot, but for the keen viewer, it's a goldmine of semi-abstract interpretation and deep, personal thought. The film feels incredibly dated and doesn't succeed completely as a serious piece of work, but if you take it with a grain of salt, you'll be more than satisfied. The audio is quite akward, but that's part of what I like about the movie The film's faults are what makes it so enjoyable or completely throw you for a curve if you're easily bored and not paying serious attention.

In my opinion, all three films are worth seeing, but the better films here are the ones that get less respect. It's also quite clear just how underappreciated Faith Hubley's work is, that it gets such little respect in comparison while having such comparable artistic merit and its own charm.

Everybody Rides the Carousel is available on a disc with A Doonesbury Special and Faith Hubley's short film My Universe Inside Out. The Cosmic Eye and Of Stars and Men are available on a disc called Art and Jazz in Animation. Both are going for rip-off prices on Amazon, but you can get the latter through Netflix if you have an account or likely through your library.

What's the Real Point of the Entertainment Industry?

I realize that this post is of a wider scope than animation itself, but it's an important can of worms that somebody needs to open. Why are we paying money to imagine that we're doing something interesting when we're just playing with a piece of plastic, punching keys on a keyboard, or simply staring at a screen? What's the point of periodically deluding ourselves in worlds of fantasy when there's a perfectly good real world that's staring us in the face? We entertain ourselves with preconceived constructs, come up with new innovations for these constructs to better suit or delusions perpetuated by our perceptions of our environment, and animation cinema seems to be one of the forms of entertainment which goes furthest off the deep end.

Animation represents a fictional world that is thrust upon the audience in a way that allows the viewer to knowingly delude their self into believing that it is true and false at the same time. We know that we're seeing something contrived, but don't seem to care so long as it entertains us enough to wish that it were real. Doesn't it take time to adjust to this artificial reality and come back to normality afterwards? On top of that, there's the irony that what we're seeing is somehow based on our environment or we wouldn't be watching it and wouldn't have been made in the first place. When you start getting into the subject of obscure entertainment, the subject gets even more complex.

It's quite obvious that I'm deluding myself while watching animated films, but how does this relate to the entertainment industry as a whole? It's quite obvious, at least to me that in the United States, the desire for profit and other forms of self perpetuated illusions of contentment have overshadowed the desire to create unique films and that the simple minded greed is on both sides of the board, the consumers and the financially motivated entertainers. The self demeaning nature of our industry however, has spread around the world largely thanks to us, and now thanks to greed, artistry has developed where there was none and we've developed fancier and fancier ways of self delusion through animation. But are we really any more entertained than ever before? Since there's an industry selling entertainment, are we working for play?

Uproar in Heaven online with English subtitles

For those who've long waited patiently to see one of China's greatest animated features, it is now finally online with English subtitles on Crunchy Roll. I'll wait until later for a larger write up, but am I the only person who finds it rather odd that Nezha is a villain in this movie and the hero in Nezha Conquers the Dragon Kings? There seems to be a bit of inspiration from The Adventures of Prince Achmed, particularly with the style of the layered backgrounds, the shape shifting battle sequence, and the aura around Sun Wukong after the mountain crumbles which looks like the effects of Aladdin's lamp.

The link for Uproar in Heaven:
http://www.crunchyroll.com/group/CRSeries_-_Uproar_in_Heaven_-_Movie

There's also the English dub of the later movie, Nezha on Youtube, though it has some major changes from the Chinese version. It's easy enough to find with a one word search.

Chromophobia's Influence on Yellow Submarine

Last night I read a the biography of Raoul Servais on his website, and came across a claim that Chromophobia was an influence on Yellow Submarine. At first I brushed it off, thinking that the two weren't exactly similar, even if they did have some psychedelic themes in common. Then some of the obvious similarities sunk in between these two films, one short and one long, that had somehow eluded me beforehand. Before I go further into this discussion, see if you can find Chromophobia on You Tube, though I won't link to it as you may be visiting this blog from another country where the film is legally sold.

The first, most glaring similarity is that the basic plot is almost exactly the same. Horrible, evil, selfish, mean people invade a colorful land of happiness and content, turning it into a dreary land devoid of self expression. Through an inherent miracle, several unfamiliar figures save the land and its people by witty gags that supported current youth attitudes. If you look closely at the poses of The Beatles while they're saving Pepperland, you'll notice incredibly unsubtle similarities to the Flower Jester(s) from Chromophobia. Also, there's the little cute looking girl in Pepperland that is an obvious reference to the girl in Chromophobia who helps bring the town back to its colorful old life. Then there's the artist in Chromophobia who the Nowhere Man in Yellow Submarine seems awfully similar to, including the gleeful laugh. Then there's the flowers appearing on villains, the depressed expressions on people's faces, the...

Granted, Yellow Submarine is enjoyed more for the music and bizarre visuals than for the plot. The characters are far more developed than those in Chromophobia, as it is a full length movie. There are some moderate tweaks to the basic storyline, and the characters most similar to the ones in Chromophobia are relatively minor. The Blue Meanies are much more interesting to me than the soldiers from Chromophobia. Well I'll cut myself off before I overanalyze everything, but the bottom line is that Yellow Submarine and Chromophobia are as comparable as The Thief and the Cobbler and Aladdin. I'll be back soon with another post when somebody starts reading this blog.