Birthday Weekend and Cinema Double-Whammy

Last weekend (23-25th) I traveled back home on the train for my birthday as well as my boyfriend's. It was a good journey with no changes on the train and it was quite cheap! It was lovely to see my family again and not have to cook!

I received some fab pressies as well, including the book of Simon's Cat from my younger sister, the new Kingdom Hearts game for the DS from my middle sister, several Disney DVDs and animated films, the Quentin Tarantino boxset from Alex, Resistance by Muse, Rebuilt by Humans by Newton Faulkner and Nation by Terry Pratchett from my parents. There was a duplicate of Kingdom Hearts DS, but I changed it the other day for Pokemon Diamond Version which I can't wait to play!

Monday morning however, the break came to an abrupt end as Alex and I had to get up at 5am to catch a train at 6:20am to get back to Newport for 9am so I could go to life drawing for 10am! It was a very barmy morning. >.<

When I got back to my flat, I entered the kitchen to discover posters from Fast Cars and Max Power all over the walls. In other words, half-naked girls and cars are now all over the walls. Hmm... I suspected in was the only guy in my flat that put them up, and I was right! >.<

My flatmates did make it up by coming into my room singing happy birthday with a chocolate muffin cake with a candle in it and a bar of Milka chocolate--yum! I also received a lovely gift from my animation friends, Jess, Bry, Vikki and Rob--an Eeyore bowl and a little Stitch toy! It was really nice of them. :)

I've also polished up my idea for our current 'Manifesto' project in which we must express a doing word using abstract imagery and sound without drawing ANYTHING figuratively. For example, one of my choices is playing the piano, meaning that I wouldn't be able to animate a piano, a person, the keys, pedals, or the hands. But I COULD have piano music going over it.

I didn't choose that option however, as I thought it too obvious. Instead, my keyword is to look through a keyhole. I will post some works in progress of it sometime this week. Basically I am expressing it through black pastel and trying to create an atmospheric piece that focuses on sound after a talk with Matthew. I'm going to be recording some sound for it today and tomorrow and begin animating as well!

But I digress. As my title implies I went to the cinema yesterday for two films back-to-back. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "9". They were both very different and very interesting in their own way.

The models, costumes and set-design in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" were astounding. The screenshot above might give some idea of the level of detail that went into them. The animation, although very good, was quite stiff at times. This was probably affected somewhat by the more old school approach to the entire process. Very few digital effects (if any) seemed to have been used. Effects like smoke are done with grey cotton wool and the fire looked like little flickering cut-outs.

This clearly lent itself to the very quirky style of the film, so it all fit in together somewhere. The voice acting was great and the script had some really lovely moments and character interaction. I think it is by far one of the most interesting Roald Dahl adaptations, although they had to add a lot of 'filler' into the story as the original book was quite short.

On the other hand, "9" was perhaps the opposite. It was far darker than any Western animation in recent years (even surpassing Coraline) and is actually rated a 12a, which is a first as far as I know (excluding anime of course!).

I liked this for not aiming itself at children and trying to show that animation can be enjoyable for older audiences as well. Set in a post-apocalyptic environment where mankind have been wiped out by their own technological advancements, only a group of 'sock puppets' brought to life by a scientist remain on Earth.

The story wasn't especially unexpected, but the art direction was very unique and different with cute canvas puppets and creepy-looking skeletal robots. It was actually based on a short student film by Shane Ackner in 2005 which Tim Burton saw and approached to make a feature film out of it. The film is on Youtube below...

The original is fantastic for a student film, and the feature definitely pushes it further, yet keeping it short and sweet at only 79 minutes long. It also continues the message that many previous films have established before in that should technology pursue artificial life and intelligence? Probably a bad idea says "9"!

Anyway, another day gone and I still haven't begun animating! Though I did see an interesting documentary on Walt Disney which could be summarised with this amazing quote: "as a producer and a filmmaker, Walt was brilliant, on the other hand, he was a son of a b*tch.". There was some pretty shocking stuff surrounding his success! Ah well, it hasn't tainted my enjoyment of his films too much I hope! >.<

Spaghetti bolognese tonight, work, maybe a film, then bed! Til next time, ciao! :)
Love Gemma xxx