Thanks for this long article on "The Snow Queen"! I hadn't been aware of its heavy influence on Miyazaki. I finally added the film to Animatsiya.net, so it's now possible to watch it online with subtitles in 8 languages, and included a mention of this article: https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=658
The first video is an AI-assisted HD version of it currently on Youtube that looks quite nice to my eyes (or as nice as we'll get until there is a proper HD release, which there surprisingly hasn't been yet).
This is one of those films that I (somewhat oddly) haven't paid as much attention to *because* it is so universally famous.
By the way, there is an earlier excellent 1946 Soyuzmultfilm animation, "The Song of Joy", that also features a young girl getting kidnapped by the queen of cold: https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=657 (although other elements of the story differ). Many of the Soviet cartoons of that immediately post-war era feel so cozy...
You're very welcome! And you're right about Spirited Away -- there are quite a few echoes of The Snow Queen in that film, including that old woman and the sequence that plays out with her right after the clip ends. It's amazing how much inspiration Miyazaki has drawn from this film throughout his career.
These retro ads are gems. In the vein of "they just don't make them how they used to," I feel there's a certain charm that we just don't see anymore in animations short or long (I've heard Miyazaki himself bemoaning this at least once during a crit session with young animators btw). Also, Snow Queen open in a tab waiting to be viewed...
Regarding animation, that can absolutely be the case depending on where you look. A tiredness of expression can set in, particularly at studios where the schedules and budgets are so inhuman that teams don't have a chance. Animators in India and Japan face that problem a lot. (By comparison, Hubley's studio charged the equivalent of $100,000+ for each minute-long ad, with three months of production!) Still, the more we explore, the more fresh and unexpected stuff we find -- so we have a lot of hope for the future.
Thanks for this long article on "The Snow Queen"! I hadn't been aware of its heavy influence on Miyazaki. I finally added the film to Animatsiya.net, so it's now possible to watch it online with subtitles in 8 languages, and included a mention of this article: https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=658
The first video is an AI-assisted HD version of it currently on Youtube that looks quite nice to my eyes (or as nice as we'll get until there is a proper HD release, which there surprisingly hasn't been yet).
This is one of those films that I (somewhat oddly) haven't paid as much attention to *because* it is so universally famous.
By the way, there is an earlier excellent 1946 Soyuzmultfilm animation, "The Song of Joy", that also features a young girl getting kidnapped by the queen of cold: https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=657 (although other elements of the story differ). Many of the Soviet cartoons of that immediately post-war era feel so cozy...
Great to see The Snow Queen on Animatsiya at long last -- and thank you for the shout-out!
Will check out The Song of Joy. It's always great to find new nooks and crannies of Soviet-era animation.
Thanks so much for the link to watch Snow Queen! That clip of the old woman pulling Gerda's boat put me in mind of Spirited Away.
You're very welcome! And you're right about Spirited Away -- there are quite a few echoes of The Snow Queen in that film, including that old woman and the sequence that plays out with her right after the clip ends. It's amazing how much inspiration Miyazaki has drawn from this film throughout his career.
These retro ads are gems. In the vein of "they just don't make them how they used to," I feel there's a certain charm that we just don't see anymore in animations short or long (I've heard Miyazaki himself bemoaning this at least once during a crit session with young animators btw). Also, Snow Queen open in a tab waiting to be viewed...
Hope you like it! The Snow Queen is quite a film.
Regarding animation, that can absolutely be the case depending on where you look. A tiredness of expression can set in, particularly at studios where the schedules and budgets are so inhuman that teams don't have a chance. Animators in India and Japan face that problem a lot. (By comparison, Hubley's studio charged the equivalent of $100,000+ for each minute-long ad, with three months of production!) Still, the more we explore, the more fresh and unexpected stuff we find -- so we have a lot of hope for the future.