Chuck Jones' Cartoons

What I really like about animation from the 60s is that a lot of it was very experimental and the narrative was often driven by a musical rhythm. Warner Bros. released a series of cartoons called "Merry Melodies" which fell under the brand "Looney Tunes". A lot of those were very inventive from an animation viewpoint, and gave us a bunch of very memorable characters such as Buggs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety and Sylvester and so on. The only thing that I didn't like much about them is that sometimes the narrative fell into the "cartoon cliche" trap. Especially, when a situation was resolved with the use of dynamite or an anvil falling on someone's head and thus achieving a comedic moment. Personally, that is a formula that has become too predictable and I much prefer something that doesn't have to rely on violence for comedy.

Chuck Jones was a very famous animator at Warner Bros. and he was one of the most experimental at the studio. The plots are very unusual and the characters are very well animated. It is also interesting to note how transitions are used to switch from one scene to another. I like how unpredictable the cartoons are, as they have a  certain surreal feel to them.

Here are some of my favorite of his cartoons.

Iconic Title Designers: Maurice Binder

What Saul Bass was to America, Maurice Binder was to England. Binder was another brilliant and iconic designer, best known for his James Bond titles. He created the infamous diafragm with bullet shot followed by a prologue sequence, that we still identify with James Bond today. His other signature motif in the James Bond franchise is the use of the silhouettes of the female body in each of the title sequences. It seems that Binder went further than just designing movie titles. When you think about it, he designed the packaging and a movie brand image that still lives on today and that is very facinating for me.

However, Binder's design work was not just limited to James Bond. He concocted some brilliant designs for films such as "Charade" (1963), "Two for the Road" (1967) and "Arabesque" (1966), to name a few.

Binder's style was effective because it was always very conceptual and employed a lot of different graphic experimentations, such as the use of texture, film overlay etc. He was also great at using colour. His visual experiments are particularly fun to compare to the current Photoshop era. The design process today is mainly digital whereas before it was largely manual.

Like Saul Bass, he liked to use geometric shapes that came together into a very rhythmic motion sequence. Here is some of his body of work.

I couldn't find the "Two for the Road" sequence on YouTube but I managed to find it on facebook. Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1097281038257&ref=mf

Iconic Title Designers: Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a graphic designer who became known as somewhat of a founding father of the movie title sequence. He had a unique geometric style with crisp shapes (often created out of paper) that logically came together into a balanced composition. The style was very minimal, yet modern. Simple, yet sophisticated. 

Over the course of his 40 year career he designed for high profile directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese.

Here are some of my favorite titles of his and some of his most famous body of work.

Self-Directed Project: "Suzie Doozy"

Remember these? Of course not because I never posted this but these characters are old and were part of my failed experiment to create an animation out of them. If anyone wants to have a read about my previous project, head to:

http://katerinacherrell.blogspot.com/2008/07/second-semester-and-my-project.html

Then I decided to make character driven animation shorts, but that task soon became too big for me and very quickly the project I set for myself became less fun.

So I went away to figure out my strengths and weaknesses. I know that I am strong visually and have a penchant for all things illustration. I also like to experiment with different media, both digital and traditional. I still have lots to learn technically and there is little time so its best to not give myself any tasks that I know that I would not be able to handle.

So, now I decided to update my previous project to better suit my strengths. The project is now fully about character development. I will use some of the existing designs from my previous project to develop a tv show title sequence and a trailer to advertise it and merchandise (a little plush toy comes to mind). The idea is to explore the strength of a character and its readability in different forms and mediums. The main character I am focusing on is "Little Girl". I am very happy with her design and I think that the character has a lot of potential, in terms of application in different media. As of now she will be known as "Suzie Doozy". The reason "Doozy" is Suzie's last name is because she always gets herself into trouble when she expects it least and it becomes a "doozy" of a problem for her!

For those that don't know what "doozy"means, here is a definition: 

Doozy (plural doozies)

1. (US) something that is extraordinary. Often used in the context of troublesome, difficult or problematic, but can be used positively as well.

2. Most of the test was easy, but the last question was a doozy.

I feel the name "Suzie Doozy" has a nice ring to it and it will be the title of my hypothetical animation series made for tv. 

Next we have the antagonist. "Bad Tyke Jake" is the neighborhood bully and everyone fears him and he always seems to pick Suzie as his victim. At times of crisis, Suzie seeks help from her mum, "Mother Doozy", who is part 50s housewife, part superhero who's job is to save and aid  Suzie in her moments of trouble. I will outline the characters in greater detail in later posts.

So, what will I be submitting:

1. Folio of concept art.

 - character development (characters in rotation, poses, etc)

 - style guides

 - color script

 - animatics (one for trailer, one for opening credits)

2. TV show advertising spot/s (trailer)

 - 2D animation produced in After Effects.

 - This piece will show the characters as they would normally appear in the animated tv series.

3. Opening Titles

-Aesthetic style reminiscent of legendary title designers Saul Bass and Maurice Binder

- The characters will be very stylised and stripped back to its most basic geometric form made out of cut out paper pieces. This piece will be a test of strength of the character design.

4. Merchandising

- a plush toy of "Suzie Doozy" to explore the character in 3d form, which is also tangible.

-a printed piece such as postcards or a poster.

More details later.

 

Installation Art: "Curious Murder"

We finally finished the video with our installation art concept. 

Our hypothetical exhibition runs for 5 days. There is a body outline on the floor on the first day and on each new day a new outline/s appear. The objective is to study human behaviour, that is, how do passers-by react to the installation. Are they curious? puzzled? camera shy? or just ignore the whole thing. It was interesting to see how people began to use the space with the new elements installed. 

"Crime" Outlines

Today we shot our footage for our Installation Art project. Technically we were supposed to do that tomorrow but another group has chosen the same location as us so we couldn't film.

Our chosen location is the Black corridor in the Architecture building. There were several reasons for our choice:

1. It is black and our subject/s contrast well against the background.
2. There is a constant flow of people travelling between buildings.
   
3. The corridor can be easily accessed, which allows us greater freedom whereas filming is         concerned.

Now to the concept. The installation is a mixture of social experiment and art. The objection is to explore human behaviour and in particular, the nature of curiosity. Members of our group lay down on the ground in a specific pose, which was outlined in masking tape. In the final piece we explain that the installation was exhibited for 5 days and on each day a new outline would appear. By the end of the week, the whole corridor is covered in body outlines. There is no specific order that the outlines need to appear on the ground - the more random the better. And we encourage them to overlap as that creates an interesting visual effect.

At first, we were planning to film the people's reactions to outlines only, but we quickly realised as we were setting up, that people seemed interested in what we were doing so we documented that as well.

As a result, our installation now has 2 experimental conditions: during set-up and post set-up.

Above are some photos of the outlines.

Installation Art

Now that we have finished with modular experimentation, it is time to move to part 2 of the project, which has nothing to do with part1! 

Our team (and the other teams) have to come up with an intallation art concept that uses a specific location (of our choice) anywhere on campus. Due to the lack of materials, funding, building permits, etc we are not suppose to actually build it but to make it just look real. 

As soon as we were given the brief, our group seperated for the weekend for brainstorming and came back on Monday to discuss ideas. It was easier to see what each individual in the group wanted to see in the final concept and to ultimately come to a final decision.

Notably, the gameshow that is known in Australia as "The Hole" came up and the whole idea of silhoettes or holes through which, people can climb through and this way people could use the space as a type of playground. The issue of practicality arose and we had to expand on the idea. Then the silhouettes got us thinking about crime scenes, for some reason, and how body outlines can look cool!! Weird. 

...And we settled on that. Our installation concept became art/social experiment. More on that later. :)