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The world of animation is much bigger than it might appear to us at first glance. We are all familiar with the films we grew up with, but Hollywood wasn’t the only place that produced great cartoons… Poland, Japan, Russia, China and Europe all have their own traditions and a rich history of animated film making. Animation Resources’ archive contains many foreign films that are rarely seen in the United States. We feature a sampling of interesting animation from around the world in each Reference Pack.
SD VIDEO:
A Quiet Glade
Boris Dyozhkin / Soyuzmultfilm, Russia / 1946
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In past RefPacks, we’ve featured several films by Boris Dyozhkin, including "Cipolino The Onion Boy", "Goal! Goal!" and "Snowy Roads". Dyozhkin is best known for his sports cartoons, and this time, we’re sharing the first film he made on that theme, "A Quiet Glade".
Boris Dyozhkin was one of the most respected and prolific animators in Russia. In the 1930s, he broke with other Soviet artists who rejected the Western style, studying Fleischer and Disney films frame by frame to break down the techniques being used. His study led him to an unique understanding of the synchronization of rhythm between music and motion, which made him one of the most sought after timing directors at the studio. During WWII, he was staying at the home of fellow animator Roman Davydov when the Nazis bombed the area from the air. He threw himself over his wife to protect her from the blast, saving her life, but he lost his left eye to a shell fragment.
"A Quiet Glade" starts off as a typical three bears cartoon. They look for a quiet place to hang their hammocks and nap, but noisy woodland creatures prevent that. It seems as if Dyozhkin discovered this story was too thin to sustain a whole cartoon, so halfway through, he introduces a soccer game with rabbits. The fast action perfectly suits Dyozhkin’s style of snappy timing, and this sequence established the format for many of his films to follow.
Make sure to still frame through this film to break down the timing of the action. It isn’t as tightly polished as "Snowy Roads", but there’s plenty to learn here.
MP4 Video File / SD / 10:36 / 184 MB Download
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Silhouetten Opernhaus: Carmen
Lotte Reiniger / Germany / 1933
Lotte Reiniger is one of the most important figures in the history of animation. She made the oldest surviving animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, she pioneered the merging of animation and music, and developed a multi-plane camera stand over a decade before anyone in Hollywood built one.
In 1923, Reiniger and her husband and business partner, Carl Koch began work on an ambitious project… a feature length silhouette puppet film based on One Thousand and One Nights titled The Adventures Of Prince Achmed. She worked with animator Bertold Bartosch and background artist Walter Ruttman for three years on the film. The paper cutouts were jointed using wires and delicately arranged on top of a lightbox, where it was photographed frame by frame. Reiniger continued to animate her distinctive silhouette films up into the mid-1970s. She passed away in 1981.
This film is a fantastic example of the way Reiniger merged motion and music seamlessly. Her puppets never feel flat or stiff, and their movements never feel limited. In fact, the characters are able to dance, run, jump and act as well as any animated character in any technique of animation. The staging is flat, yet she employs camera moves alternating left and right to create a visual rhythm to match the music. Even if the characters can’t move deeper into the stage in perspective, Reiniger pushes background elements into the distance below her camera platen to give a feeling of depth. Look at how the timing is so natural and specific to the character. She is expressing personality with the way the character moves. The scenery and costumes are beautifully designed. There is a very good reason for this… if you are going to be showing the audience one puppet or a single background over and over from frame to frame and shot to shot, it should at least be as beautiful as you can possibly make it to maintain visual interest.
An animator working in the field of limited animation would do well to study and break down how Reiniger achieves her effects. She knows how to get the most out of her puppets, and she knows when to use a special pose to keep the movement from becoming robotic. All of this is useful reference for animators who work with asset libraries in Flash animation.
MP4 Video File / SD / 9:43 / 244 MB Download
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Revolt Of The Toys
Hermina Tyrlova / Czechoslovakia / 1947
Hermina Tyrlova isn’t mentioned often when people refer to female animators, but her impact on the art form in Czechoslovakia was significant. Born in central Bohemia in 1900, she initially wanted to be an entertainer in vaudeville, but when she was a child, her father had been a woodworker and had taught her how to carve puppets and wooden figures. She had many creative talents. She wrote for magazines and did illustrations for a time before being hired by Studio AB, a company that produced animated advertising films. She met Karel Dodal there (see our previous Reference Packs for examples of his films) and married him. They became a team, animating five films together, including the first Czech stop motion film.
When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, Dodal fled to America and then Argentina, but Tyrlova remained behind, relocating to Moravia to work at Bata Studios.Over the next 40 years, she produced over 60 animated films, working well into her 80s. Tyrlova is commonly referred to as the “mother of Czech animation”. She received a lifetime achievement award in 1981 at the Paris International Film Festival.
"Revolt Of The Toys" is unique among her work because it combines live action and animation. It’s also unique because of its use of violence. Tyrlova said that she didn’t care for the American style of animation, with its slapstick pratfalls. She preferred to animate characters as objects existing in their own worlds outside of our awareness of them. Her films aren’t overtly political like those of her contemporaries. Instead, they are targeted to children and exhibit a sense of discovery and wonder, rather than gags and action. Even though this film is different from her other work in many ways, it is still an excellent example of her simple, appealing design style and clever stop motion techniques.
MP4 Video File / SD / 13:50 / 120 MB Download
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Dog, Cat And… Ep 5
Alina Maliszewska / Studio Miniatur Filmowych, Poland / 1972
In this Reference Pack, we are sharing another short cartoon from a series produced by Studio Miniatur Filmowych, Pies, Kot I… which translates to Dog, Cat And… The episode is titled "Tape Recorder".
This series is a different sort of take on the Tom & Jerry model, with the opponents outsmarting each other instead of just chasing each other out of hate or hunger. There is more to the relationship between the characters than just rivalry. The relationship of the characters makes it easy to see how it relates to slapstick comedy teams like Laurel & Hardy and Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The dog and cat are not just generic animals, but individual personalities with a dynamic relationship that is much more engaging than most “cat and mouse” or “dog and cat” cartoons.
These cartoons are almost devoid of dialogue with the focus on loose, funny animation. In fact, the drawings are often hilarious on their own, even removed from their context within the gag sequence. The facial expressions are well observed, and the poses employ clear silhouettes that form funny graphic shapes.
Well, Just You Wait!, and Dog, Cat And… both are very efficient at what they do. They could easily serve as a model for internet animation. The internet encourages repeat viewing more than television does. When you watch a dialogue driven cartoon on TV, once you’ve heard the jokes, you don’t need to watch it again. However, a short cartoon that looks and moves funny is entertaining no matter how many times you watch it. And for the animator who is making the cartoon, it’s a lot more fun to animate simple funny characters than it is to animated a lot of tedious lip-sync.
Dog, Cat And… looks like it was a lot of fun to make. The film makers at Studio Miniatur Filmowych didn’t feel constrained by the ordinary lives of animals. Their characters can drive cars, build their own houses and go to exotic places. That freedom allowed the animators to keep their series fresh, and gave them the opportunity to experiment within a 10 minute format. Simple drawings, funny movement and no rules… these are the kinds of series that would work well as episodic internet cartoons.
We will have more episodes from this series in upcoming Reference Packs.
MP4 Video File / SD / 09:22 / 154 MB Download
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