Watch Classical Music Get Perfectly Visualized as an Emotional Roller Coaster Ride

in Animation, Music | November 23rd, 2017

When the Zurich Cham­ber Orches­tra aka the Zürcher Kam­merorch­ester want­ed to pro­mote its new sea­son in 2012 it com­mis­sioned stu­dio Vir­tu­al Repub­lic to think about lis­ten­ing to a sym­pho­ny as a ride, or more exact­ly an emo­tion­al roller­coast­er. And it returned with this brief inter­pre­ta­tion of the first vio­lin score for the fourth move­ment of Fer­di­nand Ries’ Sec­ond Sym­pho­ny.

It might not be as easy to fol­low as the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine we post­ed about last week, but the build­ing crescen­do of the violin’s line makes for a love­ly ascent, but once over the peak, the furi­ous drop is all ver­tig­i­nous runs until its sud­den stop.

Or as Vir­tu­al Repub­lic described their own work:

The notes and bars were exact­ly syn­chro­nized with the pro­gres­sion in the ani­ma­tion so that the typ­i­cal move­ments of a roller­coast­er ride match the dra­mat­ic com­po­si­tion of the music.

The pro­duc­tion company’s Vimeo page shows a lot of domes­tic prod­uct com­mer­cial CGI work, from dish­wash­ers to paint, so the chance to jump on some­thing a bit more artis­tic must have been a relief.

Watch a Mak­ing-of video below…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Watch “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” the Abstract Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion Scored by Philip Glass (1979)

Philo­graph­ics Presents a Visu­al Dic­tio­nary of Phi­los­o­phy: 95 Philo­soph­i­cal Con­cepts as Graph­ic Designs

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Watch “Alike,” a Poignant Short Animated Film About the Enduring Conflict Between Creativity and Conformity

in Animation, Creativity, Life | November 21st, 2017

From Barcelona comes “Alike,” a short ani­mat­ed film by Daniel Martínez Lara and Rafa Cano Mén­dez. Made with Blender, an open-source 3D ren­der­ing pro­gram, “Alike” has won a heap of awards and clocked an impres­sive 10 mil­lion views on Youtube and Vimeo. A labor of love made over four years, the film revolves around this ques­tion: “In a busy life, Copi is a father who tries to teach the right way to his son, Paste. But … What is the cor­rect path?” To find the answer, they have to let a dra­ma play out. Which will pre­vail? Cre­ativ­i­ty? Or con­for­mi­ty? It’s an inter­nal con­flict we’re all famil­iar with. 

Watch the film when you’re not in a rush, when you have sev­en unbur­dened min­utes to take it in. “Alike” will be added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Design Taxi

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

William Faulkn­er Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spec­tac­u­lar Let­ter (1924)

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A Touching Animated Documentary About the Rise, Fall & Second Coming of the 60s Psych-Folk Musician Richard Atkins

in Animation, Life, Music | November 17th, 2017

One won­ders what might have become of Richard Atkins’ musi­cal career had he come of age in this mil­len­ni­um, when young­sters suf­fer­ing from acute stage fright reg­u­lar­ly attract sta­di­um-sized fol­low­ings on Youtube.

This was most def­i­nite­ly not the case in 1968, when Atkins, aged 19, took the stage in a small Hol­ly­wood club filled with music indus­try brass, there specif­i­cal­ly to see him.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, tal­ent could only take him so far. Hav­ing learned to play gui­tar only a cou­ple of years ear­li­er in the wake of a dis­fig­ur­ing motor­cy­cle acci­dent, he and part­ner Richard Man­ning had record­ed an album, Richard Twice, for Mer­cury Records. The pres­ence on that record of sev­er­al mem­bers of the Wreck­ing Crew, an infor­mal, but leg­endary group of LA ses­sion musi­cians, con­ferred extra pop pedi­gree. The Acid Archives lat­er called it “a vir­tu­al­ly per­fect pop album, the kind of thing that would have ruled the charts if the wind had been blow­ing the right way that month.”

Alas, one tiny tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty at the start of the gig caused Man­ning to flee, leav­ing the freaked out and fright­en­ing­ly ill equipped Atkins to deal with the yawn­ing chasm that had opened between him and the audi­ence. The only fix that occurred to him was a Bugs Bun­ny-inspired soft shoe, a move that appar­ent­ly went over big with his Mom, pri­or to the acci­dent, when he had two legs and could bal­ance with­out a crutch.

As recount­ed in Matthew Salton’s ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary, above, this soul crush­ing moment is not with­out humor. Atkins, affa­bly nar­rat­ing his own sto­ry, has had 50 years to mull that night over, and real­izes that blown oppor­tu­ni­ties are prob­a­bly more uni­ver­sal than suc­cess­ful­ly snagged brass rings (Amer­i­can Idol, any­one?)

Over the ensu­ing years, Atkins found ful­fill­ment as a wood­work­er and fam­i­ly man, but music remained a painful what-if, addressed large­ly through avoid­ance.

Salton’s exu­ber­ant­ly scratchy ani­ma­tion comes as Atkins is tak­ing steps to con­quer his stage fright, per­form­ing out at small cafes, fes­ti­vals, and potluck sup­pers near his Pacif­ic North­west home.

He’s been post­ing old songs, gen­tly remind­ing lis­ten­ers, “before I’m judged too harsh­ly, remem­ber that I was 18 and liv­ing in North Hol­ly­wood, prob­a­bly rag­ing hor­mones and in the music busi­ness to boot!”

He’s also writ­ing and shar­ing new songs, includ­ing the touch­ing “Life Is A Roller­coast­er,” above.

Per­form­ing on Face­book Live in con­junc­tion with Salton’s New York Times Op-Doc essay, he tears up when the inter­view­er informs him that his daugh­ter has just post­ed an encour­ag­ing com­ment, and eager­ly con­firms his avail­abil­i­ty when anoth­er com­menter asks if he’d be up for a gig.

It’s only too late when you’re in the grave.

Trav­el back in time with a cou­ple more psych-folk cuts from Richard Twice, above, or buy the album in dig­i­tal form on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

Syd Barrett’s “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant” Comes to Life in a New Retro-Style Ani­ma­tion

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Classical Music Come to Life in Artfully Animated Scores: Stravinsky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

in Animation, Music | November 16th, 2017

Stephen Mali­nows­ki has cul­ti­vat­ed his own patch of YouTube ground over the years with the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine, slow­ly scrolling visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of clas­si­cal music. The videos, like the one above, use shape and col­or to inter­pret pitch, dura­tion, and more recent­ly dynam­ics and inter­vals in a hyp­not­ic style that ref­er­ences both Oskar Fischinger and Gui­tar Hero.

Per­son­al­ly, I’ve been a fan for years and watched his style evolve from the basics of a “piano roll” scroll to these much more com­plex ani­ma­tions, just as sma­lin (his YouTube name) has gone from work­ing with solo piano works to the den­si­ty of Beethoven’s sym­pho­ny scores or the chaos of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Many music lovers who are not musi­cians but under­stand enough about com­po­si­tion will often fol­low a print­ed score when lis­ten­ing to clas­si­cal music; I would sug­gest that this is one bet­ter than the tra­di­tion­al nota­tion, as smalin’s method makes indi­vid­ual instru­ments in a quar­tet easy to fol­low; or show the inter­play between left and right hands in a Debussy piece; or lay out in visu­al terms the vari­a­tions on a theme or pat­tern (espe­cial­ly in Bach). For those who love but “don’t get” clas­si­cal music, these videos are a step towards clar­i­ty.

The Music Ani­ma­tion Machine start­ed long before the Inter­net. Mali­nows­ki (a grad­u­ate of my alma maters SBCC and UCSB!) dates the begin­ning to 1982, and the inspi­ra­tion came from a “hal­lu­ci­na­tion” he had while lis­ten­ing to Bach’s Sonatas and Par­ti­tas for Unac­com­pa­nied Vio­lin.

“As I lis­tened to the music, the notes on the page were danc­ing to the music — but at the same time, they were the music. It was so charm­ing and grace­ful — the flag of an eighth note extend­ing like a bal­let dancer’s arm; pairs of notes, mov­ing in par­al­lel thirds and sixths, like dancers step­ping hand-in-hand … I was delight­ed!”

The idea to ani­mate was sug­gest­ed by a friend and dove­tailed into the tech­nol­o­gy of the time, espe­cial­ly the birth of MIDI. Too self-crit­i­cal to be a per­former and too for­get­ful to be a com­pos­er, Mali­nows­ki turned to com­put­er pro­gram­ming and visu­al­iz­ing scores as the lis­ten­er, not the per­former, under­stands them. It’s been his life’s work. Explore his big col­lec­tion of ani­ma­tions and also his ani­ma­tion tech­niques.

Be wary, though. Watch­ing one isn’t enough–writing this arti­cle was a con­tin­u­al strug­gle between the dead­line and ani­mat­ed bliss. You just may find your­self sim­i­lar­ly and pleas­ant­ly lost.

Note: Here’s a list of Mali­nows­ki favorite and most pop­u­lar videos:

Grainger, Chil­dren’s March
Mozart, Sonata for Two Pianos, K 448, first move­ment
Bach, “Lit­tle” Fugue in G minor, Organ
Debussy, First Arabesque
Rim­sky-Kor­sakov, Flight of the Bum­ble­bee
Debussy, Pre­lude to ‘The After­noon of a Faun’
Beethoven, Sym­pho­ny 7, Alle­gret­to, mvt. 2
Stravin­sky, The Rite of Spring
Bach, Toc­ca­ta and Fugue in D minor
Sousa, Sem­per Fidelis
Debussy, Syrinx
Ligeti, 6 Bagatelles, III. Alle­gro grazioso
Bach, Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to 4, 3rd mvt.

Relat­ed Posts:

Opti­cal Poems by Oskar Fischinger, the Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tor Hat­ed by Hitler, Dissed by Dis­ney

Dis­cov­er the 1950s & 1960s Com­put­er & Cut-Up Ani­ma­tion of Pio­neer­ing Film­mak­er Stan Van­Der­Beek

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Journey to the Center of a Triangle: Watch the 1977 Digital Animation That Demystifies Geometry

in Animation, Math | November 8th, 2017

In 1977, Bruce and Katharine Corn­well used a Tek­tron­ics 4051 Graph­ics Ter­mi­nal to cre­ate ani­mat­ed short films that demys­ti­fy geom­e­try. The films have now reemerged on the Inter­net Archive. Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle appears above. You can also watch below Con­gru­ent Tri­an­gles, which fea­tures the mem­o­rable ‘Bach meets Third Stream Jazz’ musi­cal score. Enjoy them both. And find them in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” the Abstract Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion Scored by Philip Glass (1979)

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

The Geom­e­try of Sound Visu­al­ized

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The Inksect: Award Winning Animation Envisions a Dystopian Future Without Books, Paying Homage to Kafka & Poe

in Animation, Books | October 30th, 2017

“Where would we be with­out books?” That ques­tion, sung over and over again by Sparks in the theme song of the long-run­ning pub­lic-radio show Book­worm, gets a trou­bling answer in The Ink­sect, the ani­mat­ed film above by Mex­i­can Film­mak­er Pablo Calvil­lo. In the book­less dystopia it envi­sions, fos­sil fuels have run out — one premise it shares with many mod­ern works of its sub­genre — but the pow­ers that be found a way to delay the inevitable by burn­ing all of human­i­ty’s print­ed mat­ter for ener­gy instead. “Soon after,” announce the open­ing titles, “we, the human race, devolved into illit­er­ate cock­roach­es.”

But among those cock­roach­es, a few still remem­bered books, and not only did they remem­ber them, they “knew that their pow­ers could lib­er­ate our minds and help us evolve into human beings once again.”

Tak­ing place in a grim, gray, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly malev­o­lent, and elab­o­rate­ly ren­dered New York City, the sto­ry fol­lows the jour­ney of one such rel­a­tive­ly enlight­ened man-bug’s quest for not just a return to his pri­or form but to the rich­er, brighter world con­tained in and made pos­si­ble by books. He catch­es a glimpse of Edgar Allan Poe with the raven of his most famous poem perched atop his head, a sight that might look absurd to us but inspires the pro­tag­o­nist to put pen to paper and write a sin­gle word: lib­er­ty.

The Ink­sect’s lit­er­ary ref­er­ences don’t end with The Raven. Nor do they begin with it: you’ll no doubt have already made the con­nec­tions between the film’s notions of a book-burn­ing dystopia or men turn­ing into cock­roach­es and their prob­a­ble inspi­ra­tions. Even apart from the many visu­al­ly strik­ing qual­i­ties on its sur­face, Calvil­lo’s film illus­trates just how deeply works of lit­er­a­ture, from Ray Brad­bury and Franz Kaf­ka and many oth­er minds besides, lie buried in the foun­da­tion of our col­lec­tive cul­ture. Even a film so expres­sive of 21st-cen­tu­ry anx­i­eties has to under­stand and incor­po­rate the con­cerns that human­i­ty has always dealt with — and so often dealt with, in many dif­fer­ent areas and many dif­fer­ent ways, through books.

The Ink­sect, named the best exper­i­men­tal film at the Cannes Short Film Fes­ti­val in 2016, will be added to our list of Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Rec­og­nize a Dystopia: Watch an Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Dystopi­an Fic­tion

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee & More

Franz Kaf­ka Says the Insect in The Meta­mor­pho­sis Should Nev­er Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Any­way

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

Ray Brad­bury Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion (in Which Case We Need More Lit­er­a­ture!)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Calm Down & Study with Relaxing Piano, Jazz & Harp Covers of Music from Hayao Miyazaki Films

in Animation, Film, Jazz, K-12, Music | October 23rd, 2017

Call­ing all pedi­atric den­tists!

Cat Trum­pet, aka musi­cian and ani­me lover Cur­tis Bon­nett, may have inad­ver­tent­ly hit on a genius solu­tion for keep­ing young patients calm in the chair: relax­ing piano cov­ers of famil­iar tunes from Stu­dio Ghibli’s ani­mat­ed fea­tures.

The results fall some­where between pianist George Winston’s ear­ly 80s sea­son­al solos and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s sound­track for the film Mer­ry Christ­mas, Mr. Lawrence. Let us remem­ber that most of these tunes were fair­ly easy on the ears to begin with. Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi, who has col­lab­o­rat­ed with direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki on every Stu­dio Ghi­b­li movie save Cas­tle of Cagliostro, isn’t exact­ly a punk rock­er.

Many lis­ten­ers report that the playlist helps them stay focused while study­ing or doing home­work. Oth­ers suc­cumb to the emo­tion­al rip­tides of child­hood nos­tal­gia.

Ten­der pre­na­tal and new­born ears might pre­fer Cat Trumpet’s even gen­tler harp cov­ers of sev­en Ghi­b­li tunes, above.

Meawhile, the Japan-based Cafe Music BGM Sta­tion pro­vides hours of jazzy, bossa-nova inflect­ed Stu­dio Ghi­b­li cov­ers to hos­pi­tals, hair salons, bou­tiques, and cafes. You can lis­ten to three-and-a-half-hours worth, above. This, too, gets high marks as a home­work helper.

 

Cat Trumpet’s Relax­ing Piano Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Com­plete Col­lec­tion

00:00:03 Spir­it­ed Away — Inochi no Namae

00:04:14 Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle — Mer­ry Go Round of Life

00:07:16 Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice — Town With An Ocean View

00:09:31 The Secret World of Arri­et­ty — Arri­et­ty’s Song

00:13:29 Lapu­ta Cas­tle In The Sky — Car­ry­ing You

00:17:05 Por­co Rosso — Theme

00:19:55 Whis­per of the Heart — Song of the Baron

00:22:33 Por­co Rosso — Mar­co & Gina’s Theme

00:26:19 Only Yes­ter­day — Main Theme

00:29:07 From Up On Pop­py Hill — Rem­i­nis­cence

00:34:12 Spir­it­ed Away — Shi­roi Ryuu

00:37:06 Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind — Tori no Hito

00:41:14 Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind —  Kaze no Denset­su

00:43:25 My Neigh­bor Totoro — Kaze no Toori Michi

00:47:48 Cas­tle of Cagliostro — Fire Trea­sure

00:51:38 Princess Mononoke — Tabidachi nishi e

00:53:07 Tales From Earth­sea — Teru’s Theme

00:58:17 My Neigh­bor Totoro — Tonari no Totoro

01:02:35 Whis­per of the Heart — Theme

01:06:03 Ponyo — Ron­do of the Sun­flower House

01:10:34 Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle — The Promise of the World

 

Cat Trumpet’s Relax­ing Harp Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Col­lec­tion Playlist

00:03 Spir­it­ed Away — Inochi no Namae

04:01 Spir­it­ed Away — Waltz of Chi­hi­ro

06:43 Howls Mov­ing Cas­tle — Mer­ry Go Round of Life

09:45 Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle — The Promise of the World

13:15 Lapu­ta Cas­tle In The Sky — Main Theme

16:55 Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea — Main Theme

20:15 Tonari no Totoro — Kaze no Toori Michi

 

Cafe Music BGM’s Relax­ing Jazz & Bossa Nova Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Cov­er Playlist (song titles in Japan­ese)

0:00 海の見える街  〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

4:10 もののけ姫  〜もののけ姫/Princess Mononoke

7:28 君をのせて 〜天空の城ラピュタ/Laputa, the Cas­tle of the Sky

11:09 風の通り道 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

16:26 ひこうき雲 〜風立ちぬ/THE WIND RISES〜

19:48 空とぶ宅急便 〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

25:05 人生のメリーゴーランド

〜ハウルの動く城/Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle

28:07 いつも何度でも 〜千と千尋の神隠し/Spirited Away

32:08 となりのトトロ 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

36:40 さんぽ　〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

38:40 崖の上のポニョ 〜崖の上のポニョ/Ponyo

42:08 ねこバス 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

46:06 旅路 〜風立ちぬ/THE WIND RISES

49:16 アシタカとサン 〜もののけ姫/Princess Mononoke

53:38 おかあさん 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

58:19 旅立ち 〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

1:02:25 風の谷のナウシカ 〜風の谷のナウシカ/Nausicaa of the Val­ley of the Wind

1:06:59 やさしさに包まれたなら 〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

 

Tune in to Cat Trumpet’s Spo­ti­fy chan­nel for his relax­ing takes on Dis­ney and ani­me, as well as Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. They are avail­able for pur­chase on iTunes and Google Play, or enjoy some free down­loads by patron­iz­ing his Patre­on. He takes requests, too.

Tune in to Cafe Music’s BGM Spo­ti­fy chan­nel for Stu­dio Ghi­b­li jazz, in addi­tion to some relax­ing Hawai­ian gui­tar jazz and a selec­tion of nature-based mel­low tunes. They are avail­able for pur­chase on iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art of Hand-Drawn Japanese Anime: A Deep Study of How Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira Uses Light

in Animation, Film | October 18th, 2017

Ani­ma­tion before the days of mod­ern com­put­er graph­ics tech­nol­o­gy may impress today for the very rea­son that it had no mod­ern com­put­er graph­ics tech­nol­o­gy, or CGI, at its dis­pos­al. But if we real­ly think about it — and we real­ly watch the ani­mat­ed mas­ter­pieces of those days — we’ll real­ize that much of it should impress us on many more lev­els than it already does. Take, for instance, Kat­suhi­ro Oto­mo’s 1988 cyber­punk vision Aki­ra, one of the most beloved Japan­ese ani­mat­ed films of all time and the sub­ject of the Nerd­writer video essay above, “How to Ani­mate Light.”

Aki­ra, says Nerd­writer Evan Puschak, “is well known for its painstak­ing ani­ma­tion. Every frame of the film was com­posed with the clos­est atten­tion to detail, and that gives it an unmatched rich­ness and soul.”

But he points up one qual­i­ty of the pro­duc­tion in par­tic­u­lar: “I see the film’s many lights, their dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties and tex­tures, as a pow­er­ful motif and sym­bol, and a vital ele­ment of its genius.” But ani­ma­tors, espe­cial­ly ani­ma­tors using tra­di­tion­al hand-paint­ed cels, can’t just tell their direc­tors of pho­tog­ra­phy to set up a scene’s light­ing in a cer­tain way; they’ve got to ren­der all the dif­fer­ent types of light in the world they cre­ate by hand, man­u­al­ly cre­at­ing its play on every face, every object, every sur­face.

“The lines between shad­ow and light are dis­tinct and evoca­tive in the same way that film noir light­ing is,” Puschak elab­o­rates, “and like in film noir, light in Aki­ra is inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to the city at night.” In the dystopi­an “Neo-Tokyo” of 2019, elab­o­rate­ly craft­ed by Oto­mo and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, “author­i­ty is as much a blind­ing spot­light as it is a gun or a badge” and neon “is the bit­ter but beau­ti­ful light that sig­ni­fies both the col­or­ful radi­ance and the gaudy con­sumerism of moder­ni­ty.” And then we have Tet­suo, “at once the pro­tag­o­nist and the antag­o­nist of the film, a boy who gains extra­or­di­nary psy­chic pow­er” that “so often pro­duces a dis­rup­tion in the light around him.” When the end comes, it comes in the form of “a giant ball of light, one sin­gle uni­form white light that eras­es the count­less arti­fi­cial lights of the city,” and Aki­ra makes us believe in it. Could even the most cut­ting-edge, spec­tac­u­lar­ly big-bud­get­ed CGI-age pic­ture do the same?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy, Sto­ry­telling & Visu­al Cre­ativ­i­ty of Ghost in the Shell, the Acclaimed Ani­me Film, Explained in Video Essays

The Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Cow­boy Bebop, the Cult Japan­ese Ani­me Series, Explored in a Thought­ful Video Essay

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Free Online 64 Ani­ma­tions That Launched the Japan­ese Ani­me Tra­di­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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