Frosted cel was the big discovery in London in the 80’s - I guess Back’s film - & the work of Caroline Leaf & Joan Gratz - inspired a great deal of very painterly TV commercials in London at the time.
Richard Williams Studio pushed a lot of more painterly / illustration styles from the late 70’s & into the 80’s, starting with “A Christmas Carol” - incredibly labour intensive but possible in large part due to the revenues from commercials that funded experimentation.
This is an incredibly rich article that's I'll be milling over for days.
I've woken up in the night and have been watching a remastered version of Greenaway's 'Prospero's Books' (1991) on Youtube, which was edited in Japan using Hi-Vision video inserts and Quantel Paintbox , clearly Greenaway's attempt to move beyond the linearity of film editing and splicing... but which was a limitation imposed by a very human materiality. It ends up feeling abstracted and metaphysical where Stanislav Sokolov's stop-motion 'Animated Tales' version of 'The Tempest' (1993) feels earthy and fibrous.
I really appreciate how much attention you give here to form - especially having gone to university in a period in which the Humanities were still pretty beholden to the textual turn of the 1990s.
Thanks very much for the kind words, and for this super thoughtful comment. We get a lot out of studying animation from the angle of its material conditions/context -- and the artists themselves tend to have a lot to say about that topic! We've found that it can really help to unlock the work and let readers understand it in a new light. The point you made about those two different takes on Shakespeare is a good one (we looked up Prospero's Books to see what you meant for ourselves): creative decisions and outcomes influenced by the tools that were available. It's great food for thought. Thank you again!
Interesting that you omit films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” where pretty much everything animated was analogue cel animation with a great deal of analogue multi pass compositing to achieve the required level of dimensionality to the 2D characters so that they would seem to “sit” convincingly in the live action backgrounds.
Those short-lived excursions into live-action combined with animation might be a good future subject to explore, from the Tom & Jerry + Gene Kelly to “Mr Limpet” onwards.
Roger Rabbit is absolutely the gold standard for that kind of hybrid moviemaking. We've looked a bit into the process they used to get around the limitations of their tech back then, and it's hard to believe. But you're right that there's probably more to explore from here. Thank you!
You got an amazing blog, wish I found it sooner!
Thank you! Glad you're enjoying it -- there's a lot more in the works from here!
About to go watch Bill Plimptons new feature at the Am Doc and Animation festival! He’s doing a Q&A afterwards too!!!!
Hope you enjoy it! And there may be gems of wisdom in that Q&A, especially from someone who's made a career as an independent for so long.
Frosted cel was the big discovery in London in the 80’s - I guess Back’s film - & the work of Caroline Leaf & Joan Gratz - inspired a great deal of very painterly TV commercials in London at the time.
Richard Williams Studio pushed a lot of more painterly / illustration styles from the late 70’s & into the 80’s, starting with “A Christmas Carol” - incredibly labour intensive but possible in large part due to the revenues from commercials that funded experimentation.
This is an incredibly rich article that's I'll be milling over for days.
I've woken up in the night and have been watching a remastered version of Greenaway's 'Prospero's Books' (1991) on Youtube, which was edited in Japan using Hi-Vision video inserts and Quantel Paintbox , clearly Greenaway's attempt to move beyond the linearity of film editing and splicing... but which was a limitation imposed by a very human materiality. It ends up feeling abstracted and metaphysical where Stanislav Sokolov's stop-motion 'Animated Tales' version of 'The Tempest' (1993) feels earthy and fibrous.
I really appreciate how much attention you give here to form - especially having gone to university in a period in which the Humanities were still pretty beholden to the textual turn of the 1990s.
Thanks very much for the kind words, and for this super thoughtful comment. We get a lot out of studying animation from the angle of its material conditions/context -- and the artists themselves tend to have a lot to say about that topic! We've found that it can really help to unlock the work and let readers understand it in a new light. The point you made about those two different takes on Shakespeare is a good one (we looked up Prospero's Books to see what you meant for ourselves): creative decisions and outcomes influenced by the tools that were available. It's great food for thought. Thank you again!
Interesting that you omit films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” where pretty much everything animated was analogue cel animation with a great deal of analogue multi pass compositing to achieve the required level of dimensionality to the 2D characters so that they would seem to “sit” convincingly in the live action backgrounds.
Those short-lived excursions into live-action combined with animation might be a good future subject to explore, from the Tom & Jerry + Gene Kelly to “Mr Limpet” onwards.
Roger Rabbit is absolutely the gold standard for that kind of hybrid moviemaking. We've looked a bit into the process they used to get around the limitations of their tech back then, and it's hard to believe. But you're right that there's probably more to explore from here. Thank you!