During the lecture, I found the most interesting technique to be incorporating text into animations. Adding text in frames is an easy way to add dialogue and allow a viewer to follow the plot line. I really liked the example that was in a documentary format, and had subtitles as voiceovers were played. It reminded me of the posts of movie screen grabs that have yellow text captions on the bottom that many people screenshot and post on social media today. I love that aesthetic very much and can see myself trying to use captioning in my own work to help narrate my own stories.
The mix between live action and cartoon animation was also a really intriguing concept. The concept “superimposing of reality” by creating two planes in one frame is fascinating and I never thought of mixed media animations in that way. The “empowerment of the animator” is strengthened when the animator includes their own hands or bodies moving their fictional creations. Aside from mixing “real” and drawn elements, the technique of rotoscoping helped expand the way animation was created. I believe that rotoscoping has both negative and positive effects. The concept is helpful because animators can trace movements and learn how to accurately portray actions. But I also thought about how tracing can be considered cheating, because the forms aren’t created originally from scratch.
I really appreciated Matthew’s points about traditional animation. Sometimes it is easier to maintain traditional materials and the process and final product are tactile items that prove the animator worked on it. Blinkity Blank is a perfect example of how physical animation can differ so greatly from digital animations. The frames are imperfect, but the grainy textures and rigid lines give it an authenticity, whereas some digital animations are so clean and sharp they don’t seem “human”.
