Gender in Animation - Examples!

Before going any further with my visual response to my essay I wanted to look at actual examples of where gender is represented in animation and to see if there are any trends. As my essay mainly explored Disney I thought it would be best to make my visual response taking the characters of Disney and recreating them so I will be looking at Disney characters.




Here are some of the most recognisable characters to people and very influential to children female Disney characters and they all actually have similar features.






A lot of the characters feature very thin waists and I have found an image where someone has taken Belle's waist from Beauty and the Beast and made her a 'normal' size. I feel like this is something that is important as the characters have unattainable body types and this may be to make them more appealing as they are moulded around different shapes, but at the same time having the characters look like regular people wouldn't necessarily make them unappealing.\

Another thing I have noticed is that they have huge eyes and below I have found images that show what the princesses would look like if they had normal sized eyes. This is something I can take again in my visual response as I want to create my own disney characters and use the stereotypes to my advantage.

Digital Culture & Distribution

There is two different views towards digital culture: utopia and dystopia

Introduction of mechanical production (1436) - Johannesburg Gutenberg’s printing press

The integration of design and mass production (1919-1933)

The globalisation of digital production (1990) - First Apple Macintosh to sell for less than US$1000

The democratisation of digital distribution - First computer that brought digital to the homes of people, it was very simple

The mobilisation of digital communication - Smartphones became available to everyone

Blogging was the next big wave in communication after web activity and email

The Digital Aesthetic - Digital visualisation, clear and precise

The Mechanical Aesthetic

The Technological Aesthetic - Future view of how we aspire technology to look

The Analogue Aesthetic - Digital is starting to go back to the retro and handmade ways even though it's still digital

Nostalgia V Innovation - the innovation has a problem as it keeps going backwards to get ideas

‘All media exist invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values’ - Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980)

McLuhan believed that to fully grasp the impact of a new technology, one must examine figure (medium) and ground (context) together.

Where we are going has to be based on what we as a culture have experienced so far.

We have all of the aesthetics at our disposal to use, and the digital revolution is something that is the biggest advancement since writing or printing

1990 - Tim Berners-Lee : Created the World Wide Web and gave it away for free

1995 - Bill Gates : Created Internet Explorer and the first globally adopted web browser.

Colour Theory Lecture Notes

What do we mean by colour?

Physical → Physiological → Psychological

Spectral colour is a colour that is evoked by a single wavelength of light within a visible spectrum. A single wavelength, or a narrow band of wavelengths generates a monochromatic light.

Rods - Conveys shades of black, white ands gray.

Cones - Allows the brain to perceive colour. (When a single cone is stimulated, the brain receives the corresponding colour)

Joseph Albers (1888-1976) - Interaction of Colour

Johannesburg Itten (1888-1967) - The Art of Colour

Primary, secondary and tertiary colours.

Subtractive colour, subtracting the colour as you start to mix it, film and prints. (CMY)

Additive colour, adding colour as you start mix it, CRT monitors. (RGB)

Colour has dimensions, it has a range of different qualities and values.

Chromatic Value = Hue + Tone + Saturation

Make it darker = Shades

Make it lighter = Tints

Combination of both = Tone

The meaning of colour is presented by the way we see the other colours around it, it will affect how we perceive the colour.

Post-Modernism Lecture Notes

Modernism: initially born out of optimism, an inspirational reaction to WW1, with a view of embracing new technology and building the future.

Post-modernism: an attitude toward modernism, a rejection, exhaustion and pessimism, accepting that we can't know everything so what's the point in trying.

They somewhat overlap…

• Modernism - expression of modern life/technology/new materials/communication
• Post-modernism - a reaction to modern life/technology/new materials/communication

Origins of Post-modernism

• 1917: German writer Rudolph Pannwitz, spoke of ‘nihilistic, amoral, postmodern men’
• 1964: Leslie Fielder described a ‘post’ culture

Pop-Art (First post-modern art movement)

• Used found images and blew them up and printed them on a large scale

High-art / low art divide

• Andy Warhol - reveals the flaws in technology and he was anti-art, said it was ‘meaningless’

Modernism Lecture Notes

Modernity & Modernism

Terms - ‘modern’, & ‘modernity’

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Modernity - industrialisation, urbanisation, the city

1900 - Urbanisation, life is shifted into the clock of the factory and created a rationalised form of existence and things began to be invented to create leisure such as the cinema.

Railways started to come about and places were more accessible and there became a world time that everyone had to agree on.

Enlightenment - Period in late 18th century when scientific /philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds.

Human ditches God in favour of the modern and the new

The City - It almost becomes the major figure of modernity, modern is unapologetic and overtakes the historic.

The word modern makes things nowadays seem better and if that label is on something it's looked at in a different light.

Modern artists’ response to the city

Paris - Haussmann (city architect) redesigns Paris, created large boulevards in favour of narrow streets and this made it easier to police, a form of social control. The centre becomes an upper class zone as the dangerous elements of the working classes are moved away from the centre. A city design the accommodate the modern but also for control.

Caillebotte & Manet - art shows how life is becoming isolated and explores the alienation from the world and being overwhelmed.

The Flaneur - Wore their fancy modern clothes and walked round the city just to be seen

Modern art and photography

Kaiserpanorama (1883) - viewing machine, why would someone pay to see the world instead of going and seeing it themselves, technology takes over our senses and the idea of a reliance on technology.

Max Nordau - Degeneration (1892), (anti-modernist) and predicted his worries of the modern world.

If we think about subjective experience (the experience of the individual in the modern world) we start to understand modern art and the experience of modernity.

Modernism in design

• Anti-historicism
• Truth to materials
• Form follows function
• Technology
• Internationalism

Study Task 4

TRIANGULATION
Different authors have considered the idea of the modern world has been consumed by the advertising industry and this is having an impact on culture and society. Garland, (1964), Adbusters (2000) and Kalman (1998) have all discussed the fact due to this creatives in the world are having their talents exploited or wasted by corporation and advertising business. For example, Kalman in Fuck Committees (1998) writing in his account of individuals with 'jagged passion' facing the corporate world points out that 'creatives are now working for the bottom line'. This points to the idea that as the  corporate world gets larger and richer, it causes other parts of the industry lose creativity and individuality in order to use 'corporate strategies' and serve to make the riches richer (Kalman, 1998:1).

VISUAL ANALYSIS/SYNTHESIS - Starbucks Coffee Perfection
Here is an example of a stop motion animation that has been created for Starbucks Coffee. Ken Garland might say that the animators here have 'flogged their talent' and as it is so perfectly created this could possibly be the case. Each scene effortlessly flows into the next and makes use of the coffee cups as materials for the animation itself. The narrative is done by an american man who has a friendly voice, possibly a 'hidden persuader' and this could suggest the brands motif and message of being a company that audiences can trust. The colour theme is very in keeping with the brand and this is another way the animation is extremely branded and relative to the product it is promoting. I have also found that the characters involved in this animation are faceless, which could have been done so that the audience can put themselves in their place and it's easy to do so. Overall, I feel that this animation has been created very cleverly and doesn't include a single other suggestion of any other brand, focusing the audience on one thing; the coffee. 

Starbucks Coffee Perfection from Rogier Wieland on Vimeo.



EVALUATION
Adbusters' manifesto 'First Things First' (2000), explores the issues that surround the world of advertising and demonstrates the idea that artistic talents are being wasted on this consumerist industry where pointless garbage is pushed out each day, but we together should challenge this. In doing so Adbusters can help us to see the ways that sitting back and allowing this happen is actually making the situation worst and we as designers should looking for 'other things more worth using our skills and experience on' (Adbusters, 2000:1). The weakness in Adbusters' argument in that they fail to account for movements where people are trying to make differences and explain that 'designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits' (Adbusters, 2000:1). It is possible however, when exploring Kalman's (1998) argument on the ways that designers are being swept up into corporate committees that he accounts that it is 'only 99 percent true' (Kalman, 1998:1). This develops Adbusters argument on the generalisation of designers in the industry as other authors such as Kalman (1998) believe that it is almost entirely true as a judgement. 

PARAPHRASING & ANALYSING

Writing in The Guardian (1964), Garland claimed that consumerist culture was only concerned with the buying and selling of things and that design as a whole is not something that's course should be laid out for you by education, practice and industry. Garland also aims to demonstrate how important it is to not overlook the relationship between advertising and design and the need for 'reversal of priorities'. He does this by bringing a long list of examples to the readers attention including 'dog biscuits', 'diamonds' and 'butt toners' (Garland, 1964:1).

LINKS

http://www.manifestoproject.it/ken-garland/

http://www.manifestoproject.it/adbusters/

http://www.manifestoproject.it/fuck-committees/