Animation Theory

Animation Theory and the Horror Within Through the Eyes of Tim Burton

Content

1. History of Animation

2. Shklovsky

3. Animation Styles

4. Horror Animation

5. Bringing the dead to life

6. Tim Burton

Shklovsky and Animation

Horror animation a new style?

STEAMBOAT WILLIE

History of Animation

"Art is thinking in images... without images there is not art"

Shklovsky wanted to create a new ideal... he wanted to focus less on the content and more on the technical/stylistic/formal features

"ART = TECHNIQUE"

In his article he started off with comparing ordinary language to poetic language. Convert that into movies and we can use his article to compare normal everyday movies to animation movies.

Ordinary Language = Everyday movies

Poetry = Animation

YES!

When you think of the horror genre you think of movies like The Exorcist or Halloween and when you think of animation styles you think of movies like Cinderella and Toy Story. But what movie makers have now done is combine the two to form a new unique style where anything is possible because it is not the "real world".

Paranorman

Frankenweenie

These are styles that only happen in horror movies but now we have the chance to enjoy them in a scary but also a comical way.

1910- simple drawings photographed to create early animations

1913- creation of celluloid made animation easier to handle

1928- Disney creates Steamboat Willie

1937- Disney first full length feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

1995- Toy Story becomes first animation to have been created only on computers

GERTIE THE DINOSAUR

FANTASMAGORIE

Animation Styles

Bringing the dead to life: Animation and the Horrific

Animation is known to have 3 elements

1. A specific technique (Drawings on celluloid sheets)

2. A special aesthetic mode utilizing a set of conventions (the comic or the child friendly)

3. a delimited spatial and temporal arena of presentation (a one- or two-reel item on a theatrical program)

Different Animation styles all contributing to the technique-

1: Classical 2D Animation also known as hand-drawn 2d animation

2: Digital 2D Animation

3: Digital 3D Animation

4: Stop-motion Animation

5: Clay Animation

6: Cut- out Animation

7: Paint-on-glass Animation

8: Drawn-on-film Animation

9: Experimental Animation

Tim Burton- Horror animation and exercising the imagination

These two conventions have normally not been seen to work together but recent movies have married the two of the animated and the horrific together. These two styles are evoking the uncanny through the clash. Within this an aesthetic of the familiar/unfamiliar, notions of the real and fantasy help guide a classification of terror, this unites the genre forms of the film with the theme of remembrance.

Recent Horror animations have been using stop-motion animation, a form of film making with its horror ancestry closely linked to the 1930s version of King Kong.

e.g Tim Burton's- Corpse Bride

Gil Kenan's- Monster House

It is said that animation is a way for Tim Burton to occupy his hads when he is not busy directing or making movies. In most of his movies you can find a nurtured engagement with his past. It is what drives him to create his characters. He has always been fascinated with the playful aesthetics of drawing and animation. He is seen to be an uncompromised visionary- a modern auteur because his films thus far have resulted in a new style so unique that it is referred to as "Burtonesque".