12 Comments

A wonderful introduction to an unappreciated genius - looking forward to gobbling up “Junko”! Where did you find the book on Kubal, though? I’ve been doing a wee trek for it online to no avail. It’s in Slovak but I’ll still want to have it in my library to drool over…

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Thank you so much! As for the book, a safe bet is the online bookseller Artforum, which has become an institution in Slovakia. They ship internationally -- that's how we got ours. The main downside is that their site is in Slovak, but the directions are pretty straightforward anyway: https://www.artforum.sk/katalog/61677/viktor-kubal-filmar-vytvarnik-humorista

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Thank you very much for this interesting piece of work. I was in particular caught by the Kubal process and the personal and fast production aspect of it. // overall your newsletters are dense & varied and I learn a lot. Thank you. This Sunday morning, I have been scrolling to see whether you had written a special paper on cut out animation. Maybe you have but I did not find it. I even asked chatGPT of this topic, but the granularity of this knowledge can only be dealt by animation specialists like your selves. chatGPT pointed out some landmark production but misses the pearls. No hurry, nor worries. Take care and have a great Sunday. Karim from Paris

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Really appreciate this comment, Karim! Thank you. We're happy to report that we *have* written a piece on the art of cutout animation from around the world -- you can find it here: https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/magic-paper

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Thank you ! It is great news. I’ll read it tonight🔥. 🙏

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could you tell about how do you curate all that you would share with your audience, and the ability to write well also any suggestion on trying to be a better write to be able to convey an idea very broad question but if have some insights to it, it was great to go through your newsletter. The animated movie is on TBW hopefully by the end of the day will watch it.

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Thanks for asking! Our curation is based mostly on our own personal taste. We write about the things we find interesting and hope that readers will find them interesting too. A lot of research goes into the newsletter, so we're always discovering new animation from around the world.

We find that one of the best ways to convey an idea is to turn it into a story. When we're preparing an article, a story arc is one of the main things we look for. Who is the main character? What is the main plot thread? Where does the story start, and how does it end? If you have a strong narrative with a hook at the beginning, and then add development, twists and a satisfying conclusion, it's easy for readers to follow along. It also helps to structure your writing. We do it a lot.

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The film wasn’t boring and I could see only one mistake.

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Nice piece, Kubal is as idiosyncratically fascinating as his work. There's a YouTube upload in much better quality than the one you guys posted here, and the channel also features many of the Slovak animator's films as well as interviews and documentaries. Despite lacking subtitles, it felt like something worth pointing out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uIcE69JdCE

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Thanks for this link it has really added breadth to my own knowledge, thank you. The piece, as always, has a real depth.

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Much appreciated! It's great to bring Kubal's work a little more attention in English.

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Thanks for the kind words -- and for sending this link our way. Definitely worth checking out even if some of the context is lost without subtitles.

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