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The idea is that each week people will send me clips of animation regardless of the type or origin and I'll pick one at random each week, after which the idea is to have an open discussion regarding said clip. (so basically animation general?)

To start us off:

Quite obviously a music video – I'm fond of the song minus the autotune.

It's a really nice little example of traditional cut out animation. It may look like it's shaped wooden cuts, in actuality it's pieces of stiff card painted thick with most likely a wide brush and then cut into the necessary shapes. It's very aesthetically pleasing (or at least it is for me). The lighting is achieved by shooting a light from the front rather than a more traditional shadow puppetry lighting setup (ie. the back ). Finally the layering is achieved by placing the different cut out pieces on different layers of glass.

As I did already say, I find the overall designs to be aesthetically pleasing and overall quite cute, if I understood what the lyrics were the visuals would more than likely fit in with the lyrics. What do you guys think?

[Regarding next week]

Just PM me the clip and some information about it if you can, I will make an attempt to look further into it and discuss some of the techniques and principles being displayed in said clip. As for the clip it can be anything so long as it falls within the realm of animation (to bring the inanimate to life). I will select them at random each Wednesday but don't worry if your's isn't selected 1 week, more than likely it will appear shortly after or I'll include it as a sub to the main discussion (as I've done with the example of lighting I was talking about linked above). Finally if you'd like the clip could even be of your own making.

This week we're looking at one of Aleksandra Korejwo's works. First and foremost, the chosen medium is salt. In Carmen / Habanera the texture and aesthetic is achieved by animating salt on a piece of velvet and then back-lighting it. In sand animation the principles of morph and replacement are 2 of the most important ones employed in this genre.

I mentioned replacement animation in my last post so I won't go back into it but to elaborate on the principle of morphing in animation, it's simply taking one object and changing it into another – the main reasons these principles are employed are because changes in perspective in this type of animation are hard to achieve without cocking it up and because you don't employ fresh frame animation often in sand animation, you work with one panel (maybe layered with glass to keep background elements seperate).

I love this animation because of how well it melds music and motion together to create cinematic melody. The majority of her works are heavily inspired by the soundtracks accompanying them as her goal is to blend the two together so that they are not just aesthetically pleasing to the eye but also the other senses through texture, tonality and obviously audio. She uses different colours of salt (which is obviously achieved by dying the salt grains) – unlike traditional sand animation which struggles to gain diversity in colour due to the fact that sand is hard to dye and the alternative is to retrieve different coloured sands from different beaches.

Aleksandra Korewjo along with people like Caroline Leaf others act as pioneers in this type of animation as they'd pushed it further than it had been before.

Video Links

Aleksandra Korejwo – Carmen Suite

Aleksandra Korewjo – Carmen Torero

Aleksandra Korejwo – Łabędź

Aleksandra Korewjo – Ave Maria

Caroline Leaf – The Street

Caroline Leaf – The Owl Who Married A Goose

Caroline Leaf – The Metamorphosis Of Mr Samsa

On a final note, there wasn't much interest shown so far for this thread so if you do like this kind of stuff please tell me, unfortunately I won't continue with it past this week if there's no change.

The way motion is portrayed in Habanera is by far my most favorite aspect of the short, its fluidity really feels like I'm watching coloured ocean waves smash against each other, and how each movement smoothly bleeds into each other is quite cool. I also like how the form of the figure is defined by constant movement, and I find the moments of 1:20 to 1:23 and 2:30 to 2:32 to be very striking. The music fits the sensual, dramatic atmosphere (which I feel is also enhanced by the colour usage).

All in all, a very nice short. I love sharp and fluid montage-esque movement so this was pretty cool.

Unfortunately I won't be continuing this thread – it hasn't gained any further traction and I'd rather not waste my time on something it seems only I among 2-3 others are actually interested in.

I'm not sure whether it's something lost in translation but the intention of the thread was to discuss the topic of the week, instead I've received links but only one actual post has been made. I'll make one more post tomorrow (Animation through applied paints.) in regards to another niche animation method and that is all.

Ps. In my fervour from last weeks post I included a clip from The Street – I failed to remember that it is actually painted and not sand.

This final post will be a short one, each of these works are animated through the use of oil paints and such on panes of glass (for layering purposes). Starting with my personal favourite – Aleksandr Petrov. If you don't know who I am, I do most of my work using oil based paints however I do animate only using pen and paper along with digital works.

Aleksandr Petrov – Compilation of several works

Red and Black – Witold Giersz

BBC documentary for BTS on Loving Vincent, a film animated in its entirety with paint

Ishu Patel – Afterlife

This thread was fun for me to do but with the lack of interest shown it's just not worth it for me to do – if in future this does change I will consider continuing this thread.