For our final project, we were allowed to research into any topic we were interested in and come up an interesting thesis and studio piece. As for myself, I decided to look into animation and the differences in the depictions of morality and narratives between eastern and western children’s animated films. In order to focus this, I narrowed down my range to only compare Princess Mononoke (1997) by Studio Ghibli and Tarzan (1999) by Disney. For the studio aspect, I decided to create an animation that featured elements of nature as they entrapped the girl, only for there to be an ending that was deliberately left vague.

Why this project?

I initially came up with the idea for this project while watching Disney’s newest film,  Moana. I was undoubtedly enjoying the film; the songs were catchy, the quality of the animation was more beautiful than it has ever been, and Disney movies have always been a major part of my childhood such that watching one always brings up a strong sense of nostalgia. However, as I watched, a realisation began to dawn on me that the story I was watching was a story that I had seen dozens of times in other Disney films. Over and over, Disney have created stories that feature a very basic and linear premise: the antagonist causes trouble, the protagonist saves the day despite the odds stacked against them, and everyone lives happily ever after (sometimes with the addition of a handsome prince or princess). No one goes into a Disney film expecting anything but a happy ending, and this had me reflecting on other animated films that I had seen in my childhood, most notably from Studio Ghibli and its visionary, Hayao Miyazaki. It then occurred to me that the approaches that each respective studio had in telling stories were vastly different despite sharing a similar audience. In a way, Disney chooses to dumb many of its stories down, and showcase narratives that are more linear, clearly drawing the lines between good and evil. This approach is most notably seen in it adaptations of classic folk fairy tales such as The Little Mermaid  where various story elements were removed to fit into Disney’s narrative. In contrast, Studio Ghibli has always refused to talk down to its audience no matter who it might be, and whose films do not shy away from portraying death and other more adult themes, in order to tell a interesting and complex story.

 Museums/Lecture:

I chose to visit The Mary Griggs Burke collection of Japanese art in the MET. The exhibition featured Japanese art that heavily showcased Japan’s main religions: Shinto and Buddhism. While this particular exhibit did not help in a direct understanding of  animation, I felt that I gained a better perspective on religion in Japan and how it has influenced their mindset as compared to western societies.

Thesis:

Moral simplification cheapens narrative. Through firmly dividing a film’s cast into ‘good’ and ‘evil’, Disney has constantly made a promise to the viewer on how the story will end, thereby taking away any genuine tension from any conflict in the narrative.

WEEK ONE:

During the first week, I came up with a character sketch that detailed how I wanted the protagonist of my animated short to look like. For her design, I tried to draw influences from Disney films, most particularly notable in her hair which was inspired by Ariel from The Little Mermaid. I also came up with the opening scene for my animation which was drawn and inked traditionally, before being scanned into Photoshop to be coloured. With this, I very early on decided on a style and colour scheme that I would keep throughout the project; A black and white background with the use of colour only to highlight and bring focus to certain elements in the foreground.

I also didn’t want to come up with a traditional storyboard as I had many ideas for this animation that wanted to go to different places. As such, I sketched some of these ideas such that I would have a reference when I actually decided to make the whole animation.

WEEK TWO:

This was the first pass I did at my animation, which features a very bare bones version of the final piece. It is very sketchy in execution, but was important in helping me figure how I should proceed with it. As I did not have a proper storyboard, I created the story as I went along, drawing inspiration from my previous sketches and letting the narrative flow where it seemed natural. In laying it all out from the start, it made it very easy for me later on when it came to refining the art and making small changes in the story line. Having never done animation before, it also helped me to figure out how to actually create one through Photoshop.

WEEK THREE:

In the final week, I redid the line work from my first pass at the animation, coloured it in, and added a lot of extra frames to make the animation more smooth. I changed the ending scene slightly, by increasing the size of the flowers that surrounded her. I also put it through Premiere in order to do some post-editing of the colours to mute them a little bit, as well as add some music, of which I chose to combine two tracks – one with a darker, more sinister tone and one that was more hopeful sounding in order to create these clash of tones throughout the video.

In terms of narrative, my animation features a girl as she is attacked by her surroundings. I chose to use a more surreal environment as I felt that this would add to the whimsical aspect of this piece. She struggles through, only to find herself surrounded by a red liquid, of which flowers grow out from before being infiltrated by black waves. The ending of the animation is deliberately left vague, such that the viewer is hopefully left asking themselves what happened to the girl. In reality, her fate really is up to the viewer, and even I keep changing what happens to her in my mind,

Execution wise, I’m not very happy with how it turned out. Some parts were fine, but the quality of my drawings and number of frames dropped especially towards the end due to a rush for time. For example, I initially wanted to animate all the flowers growing out from the red liquid but due to time constraints, was only able to do one. Also, the quality of the animation itself was not as smooth as I wanted it to be. However, for a first try, I am somewhat happy with how it turned out and animation is definitely something that I want to try and pursue in the future.

Synthesis of Studio and Seminar:

 For my seminar essay, I focused on the concept of how morality was treated by Disney and Studio Ghibli; coming to the conclusion that Disney chooses to use simple, linear narratives that usually have happy endings, thus making the stories predictable and to an extent, repetitive. As such, I chose to create an animation that reversed this idea through forming an ending that was intentionally left vague, such that the viewer is unaware of whether it is happy or sad and hopefully conveys the idea of a more complex narrative.