Summary of Death of the Author

In today's lecture we learnt the meaning of ‘auteurship’ and what an auteur actually is. An Auteur is basically an author or creator of something. We studied the article ‘Death of the Author’ and this is my summary. The writer of the article is cynical of the idea of the author and argues the point that once something has been created it is then somewhat owned by the person who has read or ingested whatever the author has created. For example, once a director has directed a film and released it to the public, it is then no longer there’s to posses, it now belongs to the audience of the film. Furthermore, the writer of Death of the Author Roland Barthes states that “for him, for us too, it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality (not at all to be confused with the castrating objectivity of the realist novelist), to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’ and not ‘me’. What this means is that when the reader reads a book for example it is not the writer that is speaking to them, it is in fact the language used to tell the story that is speaking to them.

This article is just as relevant to today's culture as it was in it’s time of publication because one could argue that the author is becoming less and less a dominant figure. There is an ever expanding input of audiences on works that are proving that audiences are a vital part of literature and the creative arts. For example a television series cannot sustain itself with just the auteur alone. If no one is watching it, it will be cancelled. Furthermore, it is imperatively important that the audience connects with a television show otherwise it will still be cancelled as people will no longer want to watch it. Television networks are reliant on audience testing, positive reviews and positive word of mouth to survive. With a television series comes reviews and in the internet age everyone can be a critic. There is becoming less and less say of who should be classed as an auteur of reviewing because with websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB anyone can do it. Everyone can have they’re say, people can comment on auteurs and people can comment on the people who comment on auteurs.

‘The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as the past of his own book: book and author stand automatically on a single line divided into a before and after. The author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child.

In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing’.

What Roland Barthes is saying here is that the author is often thought to be like this father like figure to a work they have created. When in actuality he ceases to exist after the works publication and that to think that the author is just as relevant to the work after it has been absorbed by the public is ignorant. In fact the author cannot stay as important as the book itself because how audiences interpret a work such as a book changes over time.

For example with the film ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, Walt Disney was the auteur but in the case of the film, he is no where near as important part of the film’s existence as the film itself. How the film continues to exist after more than half a decade is due to the film itself and the audiences that continue to watch it. Walt Disney himself does not show every single person that’s seen it his work, not only due to him not being around anymore but also he didn't individually show everyone the film when he was alive. After he released the film, it took on it’s own life and it’s meaning has changed over time. People look at it in a different way than they did fifty years ago. For example, Snow White is more commonly seen as as a negative female stereotype as she does all the house cleaning and waits around for the prince to rescue her. Therefore the films meaning has changed, Walt Disney played no part in that change, that is entirely due to the audience and audiences ever changing perception of the film.

Seminar on Animation in the Commercial Realm

Animation is not only used for purely entertainment purposes. Due to it's incredible accessibility for people of all ages, especially children it is often used for the purpose of consumerism in advertising. In a way this kind of animation could be viewed as propaganda as it is getting people to still think a certain way by wanting to buy a product. We see it all the the time, often without realising it. Particularly on daytime kids television we see animation presented in the form of an animated brand mascot and due to the appeal of these brand mascots I feel we do not always entirely understand the effect these things have on viewers.

500 Words of Extra Reading on Genre in Animation

I read the article on Genre in Animation and the point of it I got from it was that the definition of genre is what makes a film a type of film. So, for example a film is defined as a western because it might contain certain traits that are associated with the western genre. For example; gun fights, cowboys and desert waste lands and a Sci-Fi film is defined as Sci-fi because it contains traits such as spaceships, over worldly settings and ufos for example. The article also contained a list of genres, for example, horror, sci-fi, comedy etc. and underneath each category, examples of films which fit that category so films such as Ghost in the Shell, Akira and Superman fitted under Sci-Fi.

But, film categorisation is not always this clean cut, there are many films that contain traits that can be associated with multiple genres. For example, I've seen many action films, but many of these action films that I've seen have been very comedic, therefore to title these films as simple action films I feel is doing the film a disservice and ill-advising the viewer. That is where sub-genres come into play. That is why on a website such as wikipedia, you will find films that are listed under actionSci-Fi thriller for example. The article asks the question of whether than can be a 'pure' definition of genre if there are so many exclusions to the rule.

I feel the idea of genre is something no film fan can be without, this to is the case for the film makers producing a film. Not every film needs to fit inside the margins of a genre but I feel it acts as a good, reliable, rough guideline as to what type of film you are watching/making. For example if a studio is going to make a film, there is no indication as to what kind of budget their going to need, unless they are given the rough guideline that it is going to be in the action genre. Chances are it is going to be a bigger budget film that will require more funding. There are traits in the action genre that give filmmakers/ fans the idea of what they are going to see in a film, for example a helicopter or a police chase, therefore more money to produce the film is required. Conversely, if the film is going to be a romantic-comedy, technically a sub-genre, then it is likely to be made for a far smaller sum of money. This is not for definite, but we know, due to our knowledge of other films we've seen that follow traits of a certain type of genre that we are probably not going to see any police chases in this film.

In conclusion genre is an incredibly important part of film categorisation but it is not the definitive categorisation for all individual films made.

Seminar 5: Gender in Animation

The gender in animation seminar is the seminar I most enjoyed out of all of them. This is because I felt I knew the most about the subject than any of the others. Firstly, we spoke about how successfully gender has been represented in animation. The answer to this question for me was basically that the female gender has been poorly represented in most contemporary animations such as the big Pixar/Disney films.

Gender representation is an issue that has effected all areas of film and the film industry and is definitely not just an issue in animation but for me there are more of a percentage of live action films that successfully represent gender/ the female gender than animated movies.

Seminar 3: Auteurship and the Avante-Garde

Admittedly, when I had this seminar and came to then writing about it I was slightly lost, but anyway here goes. Auteurship is basically the idea that anyone who is involved in the filmmaking process is not automatically an artist. There are certain directors that are artists because f the way they meticulously orchestrate a shot and direct a film, these individuals are auteurs.

Avante-Garde sounds really complicated, to me anyway, but in actuality it's a pretty simple idea. It is basically the idea of something that is created that is new and original. So, if someone creates something that hasn't been done before, for example Richard Linklater's film Boyhood that is filmed over the period of twelve years that hasn't been done before, to that extent anyway is avante-garde. That is not to say something that is avante-garde is completely one hundred percent original, avante-garde artists do take inspiration from others to use in their own works. But this is expected as an entirely original idea with no outside inspiration is almost entirely impossible to come by.

Seminar 4: Politics and Propaganda

Politics and propaganda is a subject I have been aware of for a long time. This is due to having studied history in school where I learnt about propaganda cartoons in mediums such as posters, less so in actual animation so this was going to teach me new things. I learnt that animation is actually a very successful tool for propaganda. We looked at a Donald Duck cartoon produced by Disney that shows Donald living in a parallel USA where Germany have won World War Two.

I really enjoyed this animation and is something I did not expect from a piece of propaganda, to be as entertained as I was. But I feel this is the reason for why propaganda in animation is so successful. We watch Donald Duck, anyone of any age knows who Donal Duck is and we basically watch him with only the purpose of being entertained, we then do not expect to think a certain way as  result of having watched tis cartoon.

Context of Practice Character Design Development

When developing character designs for my Context of Practice Visual Response, I looked to other animations for inspiration; for example, Hanna-Barbera and The Ricky Gervais Show. As I've said before I wanted my visual response to be in a recognizable style but I did not want to go with a style I felt would be a more obvious choice, for example Disney. That is when I decided on creating my animation in a kind of Hanna-Barbera cartoons style.

The male characters in the above and below images are the interviewers in my animation and the female character (below) is the actress auditioning for a role in an animated television series. I didn't want the designs of each character to be too complicated as I felt what was more important was the message the animation would try to communicate. I felt it necessary to have the two male characters look physically very different (to highlight that when you watch cartoons, the male characters often look very diverse). But then I wanted the female character's character design to look entirely uninspired and hardly original. This is entirely intended as I wanted to highlight the idea that to me anyways I feel like the male characters in cartoons such as Hanna-Barbera cartoons the female characters often seem less thought out than the male characters.

Overall, I am pretty happy with how the character designs worked out. I kind of wish I had made each character look a bit more original looking but I worry if I did that it might distract attention away from the main message of the animation.

Final Context of Practice Animatic

Above is my animatic for Context of Practice. Overall I am happy with how the animatic turned out. I also hope that hypothetically if someone were to watch this animatic and were given the task of animating this short they would understand how to do it. What the animatic is missing is much dialogue and directions. Therefore I understand it is only a rough guideline for personal use, and not an exact blue print of how to create this animation.

The animatic was created with basic pen and paper, then scanned, resized and coloured with a simple grey colour on top to make the characters and what is occurring on screen bolder. I always like creating these sort of things with simple pen and paper because to me it allows me to be looser with my drawing therefore in the early stages of animation development I can suddenly decide if I dislike an idea, ditch it and draw something new in a very short space of time.

Below are each individual image for my animatic presented in a sequence.

I wasn't very confident about the ending. I wanted it to end with a point but I didn't want the point to be too on the nose. I wanted to visually represent the idea that in animation, male characters are many and often quite diverse whereas female characters are few and of a narrow margin, without actually saying what I just said.

How successfully has animation been used to represent gender and/or otherness?

Whereas sex is biological, gender is how one is preserved socially. There are certain characteristics and behaviours that have been linked with a certain sex, which would identify a gender but would not necessarily identify a sex.

According to the World Health Organisation defines gender as follows ‘”Gender” refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. To put it another way: “Male” and “Female” are sex categories, while “masculine” and ‘feminine” are gender categories”. Sex and gender are often confused but the World Health Organisation state that men and women are defined by physiological and biological characteristics.

In this essay I will be primarily focussing on gender, in particular how the female sex is represented in animated movies. The types of films I will be talking about will often be Disney films but I will also talk about smaller studio films such as the films by Studio Ghibli.

Gender representation has evolved in animation and there are a few examples where it has been very successfully represented in animation. But in mainstream cinema live action films have been far more successful in representation of gender and otherness. Perhaps this is due to the fact that whereas live action films are aimed at people of all ages, mainstream animated movies for example are pretty much always aimed at a younger audience and therefore film producers think that a character’s gender representation needs to be as obvious as possible; for example, a female character is featured and she is one of the heroines, in a Disney film especially she is likely to fit into a very narrow gender specification; she would most likely be beautiful, thin, young, white, have long hair and wear a dress.

The same could be said for male protagonists in animated movies, they are usually handsome, but it is not as marginalised as the female sex. For example, in animated Disney movies we have often seen a variety of male protagonists such as in Atlantis, The Hunchback of Notre dame and Up.

What the protagonists all have in common is they all break out of the margins of what is typically classed as a male hero. In Atlantis the protagonist is not strong and wears glasses, the hunchback protagonist in The Hunchback of Notre dame is not a character typically thought of as handsome and in Up, the protagonist is in his seventies, far older than the typical male hero.

There is a complete imbalance with gender representation between the two sexes, Hollywood loves an underdog protagonist, someone who is outside the margins of ‘a typical hero’ yet most female heroines have stayed firmly in their margins and in recent history not a lot has changed.

Studio Ghibli in Japan are an example of an animation studio that in the past has been very successful in its portrayal of female characters. For example, in the film Spirited Away the main female protagonist becomes a strong character and throughout the film is never sitting around waiting for the male hero to rescue her.

‘I created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathise. It's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish’.

— Hayao Miyazaki

But that is not to say Chirio is by any means perfect. What Miyazaki is able to do with his female protagonists is make them strong characters but also represent them honestly. She has flaws, at the start of the film she is winy, a bit spoilt and sulky but then as the film goes on she harnesses not supernatural powers, but powers she already has deep inside her to overcome the obstacles she faces. Miyazaki wanted to represent an ordinary ten year old girl that is as realistic as possible to give other ten year old girls who watch the movie a positive role model.

Another Studio Ghibli film with strong female protagonists is the film Princess Mononoke. The film is set in a very exterior environment. A girl (San) is raised by wolves in the forest does not trust humans. The reason for this distrust becomes evident when the humans who are out for industrialisation begin using the forest for their own economic gains. Not only is the protagonist a strong female, but the entire cast is made up of strong females. Plus they are all multilayered, even the character Lady Eboshi who could be seen as the villain because she is the leader of the humans and fights for industrialisation of which is harmful to the forest. But She is sympathetic because she is fighting a cause she believes is best for the humans and the entire city love and respect her, men and women alike, the fact that she is a women is not even mentioned.

Then there’s San who throughout the film is entirely self reliant, never needing a man to come to her aid. There is a the male protagonist in Ashitaka, and even though he is a central part of the film throughout, he is often sidelined due to the film being primarily about the battle of two strong women who are honest to their causes. One wants what’s best for her family, a pack of wolves and the forest, and the other also wants what’s best for her people.

Strong female protagonists are very common in Hayoa Miyazaki’s films and unlike Disney films they are not primarily concerned with romance. Occasionally Disney films break out of their narrow margins.

For example, in the film Lilo and Stitch, the primary protagonists are not typical Disney heroes. The elder sister who is in a relationship is not primarily focussed on her boyfriend; instead she is focussed on looking after her sister and playing the role of the responsible adult. In fact the boyfriend is simply represented as that, the boyfriend, not the hero who comes to save the woman from the baddy, conversely the boyfriend is frequently a side note in the story. That is not to say that Lilo and her sister Nani are completely strong and sensible. Lilo is rambunctious and enjoys photographing strangers, a hobby that could be considered odd. This breaks out of the margins of which animation falls into in which the female characters have to be sensible and boring to counter balance the silly male character. Nani, although a strong female character is also not perfect, she struggles with finding a job to support herself and her sister leading to a social worker feeling like she might be able to look after Lilo.

Not only are the personalities and traits of these characters atypical for Disney heroines, but so are their physical appearances.

Compared to Belle from Beauty and the Beast, the Lilo and Nani definitely do not fit the ‘Disney Princess look’ that has become so common in Disney films. Yet, the physical appearance of what has become the norm for female Disney heroines is entirely unrealistic. Belle’s waistline is far narrower than any normal human being and she is also unrealistically skinny. Lilo and Nani’s physical appearances might look outside the norm compared to other typical Disney films but in real life, their physical appearances are realistic.

It seems Disney do now go against tradition to some extent. Frozen is a film where typical gender representation barriers are broken. To what extent are these barriers broken is debatable because even though elements of this film go against the norm of typical Disney films, many aspects are very much traditional. For example towards the beginning of the film, the main female protagonist Anna falls immediately in love with Hans, a prince. The characteristics of Anna are often very similar to that of Snow White, a character who poorly represents the female gender. Snow White is one of the less successful examples of the female gender because she spends all her time doing housework and is very happy about that, this is fine if some people are generally like cleaning, but she is also taken in by the dwarves because she does all the cooking and the cleaning. Furthermore she represents the damsel in distress who instead of setting out to defeat the villain herself, waits around to be rescued.

Back to Anna, although she is like Snow White at the start and is very naïve. Towards the end of the film, she sets out to rescue her sister herself instead of waiting around for the male protagonists to do it for her.

Plus there is also an interesting spin on the traditional man kisses girl, true love’s kiss breaks the spell typical Disney ending, that was actually pioneered by Disney. Instead true love is given a different meaning. Instead of the true love between a man and a woman, which has become the typical norm in Disney films, true love is represented through sisterly love. Anna sacrifices herself to save her sister and this constitutes an act of true love, which then saves her.

Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For that ran from 1983 to 2008. In her strip a character comes up with the idea that when you watch a film, does it pass three specifications...

1)      Are there at least two women?

2)      Do these women talk to each other?

3)      About something other than a man?

This idea went on to become a tool to measure the gender bias in any movie, mainstream or independent. It is in no way a tool to measure how good a film is, but it does show how evident the issue of sexism is in modern cinema. To prove this, around round fifty percent of contemporary movies do not pass the test. One film studio that is particularly guilty of failing this test is Pixar.

Female gender representation is less successful in animated films than the male gender. However the male gender has not been completely represented successfully in animated features either.

Colin Stokes

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) I set of global conferences ran by the non-profit organisation Sapling Foundation. In each talk, a speaker is given a maximum of eighteen minutes to discuss their ideas regarding anything from science, philosophy to creativity to an audience. In his TED talk ‘How movies teach manhood’, Colin Stokes states that a common trait in animated films such as Shrek, Kung fu Panda and many of the Disney films are that the males are dopy animals who have basic goals, fight the villain and collect the reward. There are few opportunities for anything else such as other relationships and journeys.

He goes on to say that the Disney animated films do a terrific job of teaching young girls how to defend against the patriarchy but they are basically telling young boys that they are not the audience. Thus they are not being taught how to defend against the patriarchy.

Furthermore he said The New York Times published a study by the government that stated one fifth of women in America have said they have been sexually assaulted at one time in America. And while Stokes said he does not believe that has anything to do with kid’s movies but he does believe something is going wrong. Of all these men who are doing these acts of sexual violence, what lessons and are they observing the lessons that are common in movies that it is the job of the male hero to defeat the enemy with violence, collect a reward and win the girl who does not speak to anyone and has no friends. 

Gender representation has often been poor in animated films. But also gender representation has often been poor in animated television shows. In the last fifty years, gender representation has not come far. In 1960 The Flintstones premiered on our screens for the very first time. Fred Flintstone was represented as the husband with the job, overweight, dumb and irresponsible, whereas Wilma was represented as the attractive, thin, responsible, stay-at-home wife.

Then twenty years later The Simpsons premiered in 1989 and again Homer was represented as the working husband, who is over-weight, dumb and irresponsible, whereas Marge is represented as the thin, attractive, responsible stay at home wife.

These trends follow through into Family Guy which premiered ten years later in 1999 with both genders represented the same. And then again, another decade later, exactly the same trends occurred in the Family Guy spinoff The Cleveland Show. Very little has changed in the last fifty years, especially in the most popular animated shows.

In the gaming industry, animation has not been very successful in representing gender. Firstly, there are very few characters that let alone are of the opposite sex, but actually break the margins of the typical male hero. They are usually white, young, very athletically fit and are straight. There are very few female led video games. The most successful female led video game franchise is Tomb Raider. The franchises success with gender representation has improved significantly over the years.

In the early 1990’s, lead graphic designer Toby Gard was tired of female heroines in video games fitting into a narrow margin where they were often designed to be over sexualised. He wanted to fight this by creating a more realistic heroin with realistic physical proportions. But due to studio pressure, Lara’s physical proportions increased and the character’s physical appearance became less realistic and more sexualised.

That has now all changed with the long awaited reboot. In the new game the character was completely mo-capped by the actress Camilla Luddington which meant the character was modelled after the real person. Thus the character’s physical appearance was not exaggerated. Not only is Lara’s physical appearance in the game incredibly realistic but the character is also far more realistic than in previous carnations. Lara Croft is a very rare case of a realistic female heroin in a video game.

Sexuality is more commonly and successfully represented in more adult targeted animations. Cartoons aimed at children generally do not bring up the subject much and if it is brought up the characters are usually straight. A show that breaks this mould is SpongeBob SquarePants.

This TV series is centred on an anthropomorphised sea sponge that lives in a pineapple in the town of Bikini Bottom. In the book 'Queers in American popular culture, Volume 2’ chapter 14 ‘“We’ll have a gay old time!” : Queer Representation in American Prime-Time Animation from the Cartoon Short to the Family sitcom’ Jo Johnson states that shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants go against the typical ideals of male masculinity. He goes on to say that his popularity maybe somewhat down to his asexuality; furthermore his wardrobe reflects that of a bachelor/a schoolboy meaning he can switch ages any time, thus creating a broader appeal. Additionally, he says that what best represents an anthropomorphised character’s gender is the facial features and the character of SpongeBob posses features of both sexes; long eyelashes and red cheeks (features possessed by female characters) and a long nose and a wide toothed smile (typical features of a male character).

In conclusion I have found that representation of gender, particularly the female gender has not come as far as it should have. Whereas women roles in society have improved significantly in the last hundred years, female representation has not come that far. There are exceptions in animated movies. For example the female gender has been represented very successfully in studio Ghibli films and has been represented successfully for decades with Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away to name a few. It seems like gender representation is represented the least successfully in the biggest mainstream animations such as the films by Walt Disney Animation Studios.

But, what’s interesting is that the female gender has often been poorly represented, but what’s often gone under the radar is how the male gender is represented. In the last fifty years, the male gender on television I animation has gone from being the ideal, loving, respected husband to being the dopy idiot. You could say the male gender has been getting slowly more poorly represented in shows such as The Simpsons and Family Guy where the male protagonist is hopelessly incompetent. It’s interesting to now realise that even though gender representation of women is often poor, giving you girls poor role models, many female characters that have come out of mainstream animated movies have often been portrayed as characters who set out to go against the patriarchy. Characters such as Mulan in animated Disney films go against what society deems is expected of them giving young girls a good, positive ideal to strive for. Conversely male characters, especially in Disney films are often portrayed as far less complicated. Often these male characters are given no patriarchy to fight against. These male characters often just have the simple role of fight the bad guy through violence and win the film and the girl. In these mainstream movies the male protagonist often just has this one simple journey and there is no time for the male protagonist to form other relationships, thus male representation is also often just as poor as female representation.

Bibliography

Who.int 2015, available at http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/ (accessed March 10^th 2015)

Miyazaki, H (2001) An interview with Hayoa Miyazaki, Animage, May 2001, Available at http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/sen.html (Accessed 10^th March 2015)

Spirited Away (2001) Directed by Hayoa Miyazaki, Japan, Animation, Studio Ghibli

Frozen (2013) Directed by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee, United States, Animation, Walt Disney Animated Studios

Princess Mononoke (1997) Directed by Hayoa Miyazaki, Japan, animation, Studio Ghibli

Lilo and Stitch (2002) Directed by Chris Sanders & Dean DeBlois, United States, Animation, Walt Disney Animated Studios

Beauty and the Beast (1991) Directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, United States, Animation, Walt Disney Animated Studios

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) Directed by David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen, United States, Animation, Walt Disney Animated Studios

Dykes to Watch Out For (1987 to 2008) Alison Bechdel, Comic Strip

Ted.com (2012) available at http://www.ted.com/talks/colin_stokes_how_movies_teach_manhood#t-2102, Colin Stokes, accessed February 2015-03-10

The Flintstones (1960 to 1966) Created by William Hanna & Joseph Barbera, Hanna-Barbera Productions

The Simpsons (1989 to present) Created by Matt Groening, , 20^th Century Fox Television & Film Roman

Family Guy (1999 to present) Created by Seth MacFarlane, Fuzzy Door Productions, Fox Television Animation, 20^th Century Fox Television

The Cleveland Show (2009) Created by Seth MacFarlane, Richard Appel, Mike Henry, Person Unknown Productions, Happy Jack Productions, Fuzzy Door Productions, Fox Television Animation, 20^th Century Fox Television

Tomb Raider (1996), (2013) Created by Toby Gard, Crystal Dynamics

J, Elledge, (2010) Queers in American Popular Culture, Santa Barbara, Volume 2, Greenwood Pub Group,

Context of Practice: Creative/Animated Visual Response to Gender Idea Development

When it came to creating a visual response for Gender it admittedly took me a very long time to come up with any idea. Gender seemed to be a popular choice of subject amongst our group and to me I never had an idea that could successfully represent what I was wanting to talk about with gender. At the start I couldn't seem to get Disney out of my head. Every idea I had kept coming back to the idea of Disney princesses and how these fictional characters differentiate from reality.

But I knew satirising Disney would be a more obvious choice to go for and a very popular subject to work with. Therefore, I decided to stay away from Disney altogether as I knew if I came up with any idea that involved Disney, even if it was a really good idea, chances are it would have already been done.

I started to think about other animated studios with a very distinct, instantly recognisable style that i felt were also guilty of poor gender representation. That is when I moved over to Hanna-Barbera.

Even at first glance of the above image of some of the main Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, the gender representation and issue Hanna-Barbera cartoons have with gender immediately stands out. Firstly, the female characters seem very few in number compared to the amount of male characters and the female human characters all look very similar. They all fit under a sort of female cartoon character checklist; they are all thin, attractive, wear dresses and something else that stood out to me is that they all seem to be wives of a male character and these male characters are generally the stars of their respected shows. 

I found my findings, just by looking at one image very interesting, especially because it proved that to find out about the poor gender representation in Hanna-Barbera cartoons, you really do not need to look far. Plus the males in this image seem relatively diverse, physically they all appear different shapes and sizes, thin, overweight, short, tall. 

I then thought about cartoons of the modern age and how to me it seems women have to fit into these narrow margins; be thin, attractive, smart etc. whereas the male protagonists in these shows do not have to meet these high standards and are often typically overweight, dumb, lazy, rude. 

I found it humorous to imagine what a fantasy interview would be like for a modern cartoon. The female actress would have to pass dozens of specifications whereas the male actor could get the role by being completely incompetent, and probably wouldn't even need to be an actor. That is when I decided to develop a visual response with this narrative.

When I was designing characters for my visual response I wanted them to be very much in that Hanna-Barbera style but I also looked at other examples of animations that are also in that Hanna-Barbera style. 

The Ricky Gervais show is an example of a cartoon that is animated in that Hanna-Barbera style. What I love about the visual style of this show is that, yes it does have that traditional hand drawn Hanna-Barbera look, but it is also it's own thing because it's been modernised. The series appears to at least have been coloured and rendered on a computer in keeping with the 2D style so it gives the show a nice modern/traditional look. This is the style I want for my visual response.

Above is a mood board I created when I was coming up with ideas for how to go about creating my visual response. As you can see, there are images from subjects I spoke about in my essay and new images such as the Hanna-Barbera images and Ricky Gervais Show images that I took inspiration from. I haven't used mood boards as much in the past as I probably should have as they are very useful for finding inspiration. 

Genre Seminar

In this seminar we learnt about genre in animation and how we classify genre in animation. We also talked about how useful the idea of categorising animation and film into genre is. To me it is very useful because it helps viewers understand what they want to watch. There are so many movies out there and it can become confusing.

The idea of genre is to basically put all these films into set groups, for example, sci-fi, comedy, fantasy and horror to name a few. Then with genre we can go even more specific and start categorising films into sub-genres. This idea is often very useful because although the idea of categorising film into genre makes it easier to find certain films, not all films fit into one category. For example, an animated movie like Paranorman could be categorised as a comedy film. But to call it a comedy is unreliable because it might frighten younger viewers as there are elements of the horror genre throughout the film. Therefore, Paranorman cannot fit into one category alone and has to be placed into the sub-genre of horror-comedy.

I feel the genre system is very useful, especially in animation because for example it helps parents decide if an animation is appropriate to show to their children.

So, when we're watching a film, how do we know which genre it is placed into? Well often it wont be obvious but there are certain traits that appear in certain types of films. As P. Wells states after listing examples of movies and the genres they fit into; 'The films identified here all share common characteristics with established generic conventions. For example, the Western films include the iconography of the cowboy and/or Indian, saloon settings, gunfights, implied aspects of frontier history and so on.'

To elaborate, if we see a cowboy on screen, chances are we're watching a western. But this rule does not always apply, I believe the genre system is often very useful, and far more worth having than not. But categorising films into genres, even sub-genres to me doesn't always work. There are some films that are comedy-horror films, but these films may also have aspects of sci-fi in them for example, so to just categorise them under comedy-horror might be unreliable. But then doesn't categorising films under multiple genres begin to become confusing? Either way to me it's a useful system, but it is not a perfect way of categorising films.

Colour Theory Lecture 2

We were warned that if we did not attend the first lecture on Colour Theory that we would be slightly lost when it came to the second. That was definitely the case, in this lecture we learnt about complimentary colours and which colours work together as well as which most definitely do not.

This lecture was very interesting because it changed my perceptions on what colours I feel compliment and work well together. The colours I thought were supposed to work together were revealed to me that this is not always the case. We were shown some colours together that became very hard to watch on the eyes, this was interesting to me because I found out how important it is to use the right colours together.

What we learnt in this lecture can be applied to the animations we create because we now know slightly more how to stay away from colours that together can hurt the eye.

Postmodernism Lecture

This lecture was about Postmodernism. Postmodernism is the idea that there is no real truth, in fact there is only what we believe. This is the opposite of 'Objectivity' which is basically the idea that the truth is always waiting to be discovered. Postmodernism is also the idea that the earth does not get better, it changes without a doubt but there is nothing to say it has improved, that is just what some believe.



Whenever I see postmodern art I see it as quite futuristic but I still get confused differentiating between modernist and postmodernist art.

Modernism

This lecture was about Modernism and understanding exactly what modernism is in art. To simplify it, Modernism was a cultural movement that effected all kinds of media. The point of it was to outright reject tradition. Instead, modernism took the approach of doing old things in ways that are not thought of as obvious solutions. Examples of modernist artists are Picasso, Mondrian, Matisse, Kandinsky and Braque.


(Above) Mondrian


(Above) Picasso

I still slightly struggle to understand exactly what modernism is, I often got I confused with Art Deco, but I feel like if I ever saw a piece of modernist art I could know it was modernist art without being told, especially with modernist architecture.

 

Photography Lecture

This lecture was about Photography, but not just photography as a medium, but photography as a tool for documentation. The lecture talked about how photography has been used throughout history, but in documentation, not as a form of propaganda, but as a form of education. In the photos by Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, the people are seen to be of a lower social class and often appear to be living in poverty. But the people in the photos do not look sorry for themselves, but instead look often proud, the people in these photos have dignity.


(Russian Steelworkers taken by Lewis Hine)

The lecture spoke about how photography has remained prominent throughout history after its creation, often documenting war with the same purpose of visually communicating to and educating the viewer.

Communication and Mass Media

This lecture was about how a means of public communication can reach a large audience. And communication can cover any form of art from graphic design, to illustration to fine art. The lecture talked about how one use of visual communication can be communicated in one way at one point in time, then later communicated in another.



For example the above painting Bubbles 1886 has been communicated to the public in one way and then (below) it has been communicated in a different way, in this case an advertisement for Pears Soap.



Throughout history, communication and mass media has been used for propaganda purposes, for example posters that get people to sign up for the army. The power of mass media is incredibly powerful and the point I took away from the lecture was that how we perceive media is very deliberate and the power of the people who create this mass media should not be underestimated because it can make us do anything.

Illustration Lecture

This lecture was about Illustration and what exactly it is. We learnt that illustration is 'strategic image making, used within the context of visual communication to convey meaning of concept'. Although the lecture was not a chronology of illustration, we did learn about the earliest forms of illustration that were cave paintings.

We learnt that perhaps when illustration is of a very high quality, it is able to visually communicate an idea that is too specific and sophisticated for any other medium.



The above image was used in the lecture as an example of 'good' illustration, meaning not only does have a high visual quality, but it also effectively communicates the point behind the image. In this case to spread awareness about the 2008 democratic presidential campaign.

Advertising Lecture

This lecture was about advertising and how we as human beings perceive advertising. Advertising is often considered a tool of capitalism to change established views within society, but it is also considered an important tool in hanging our views about what we need and want. It spoke about the negatives of advertising, for example the sexism that is used to sell products.

But it also spoke of the positives; for example it drives economies, drives creativity, it is a very powerful form of art, it shapes popular culture; an example of this is Coca Cola. Coca Cola is a brand entirely fueled by advertising, we see it everywhere and the reason I for example associate the colour red with the soft drink is entirely down to advertising.



Furthermore it shouldn't just be perceived as something that gets people to buy stuff, it also can be used to inspire people to do good for the world with things such as awareness campaigns.

A History of Type Lecture

This lecture was about how far type has come from it's birth through to present day. It also showed us how something that we see everyday and possibly take for granted is in fact very important. If we want a job in the creative industry and create business cards or presentations for potential business partners then if we have a poor type face (comic sans was an example that was frequently brought up) then it will undermine ourselves and effect how seriously we are taken.

We were also introduced to a timeline of when in the last hundred years certain fonts were created. In conclusion, the lecture taught us that we see typography everyday and navigate our lives through text so how designers use text can help and change the world. It is the job of designers to make the world a nicer looking place.

Visual Literacy Lecture

This lecture was basically about visual communication and how the job of creatives is communicate through image and motion. The lecture also explained to us that when we see signs that contain no text we understand what they are because we've lived our whole lives with certain symbols being drilled into our brains.



For example when we see a sign on a lavatory it can be understood by anyone of any language because we see a line and a circle above it and we understand that to be a man. This image in itself does not look anything like a real man, yet we understand it to be a man because from the start of our lives, certain symbols become associated with certain things.

Animation: A Brief History

This lecture was a fast rundown of how far animation, particularly contemporary animation has come. Animation has existed on the screen for around a hundred years, but animation as a form has existed for thousands of years. Man drew images sequentially in the form of cave paintings.


(Egyptian mural created around 4000 years ago)

The lecture went through every kind of form of animation there is in chronological order beginning with these paintings through to one the very first 'modern' animations, Fantasmagorie by Emile Cohl in 1908, to the golden age of animation with Walt Disney, through to modern 3D CGI animation with Pixar.