07: Bedshaped, Keane / Butterfly

Bedshaped, Keane
Butterfly
Corin Hardy, 2004

When I think of my favourite animated music videos I think in particular of this one. I saw this when I was 14 and I was just starting to wonder about what I wanted to do with my life, and an absurd idea forming in the very back of my head whispered "I want to do THAT."

Bedshaped is one of many creepy stop motion videos that are floating around out there. Another one that pops to mind is Insanity (Which I have pondered blogging but it seems redunant seeing as I love the song more than the mind-boggling video), but of course this is a full on model based animation, rather than toys.

What I didn't know about Bedshaped at the time is that the models and the story ( I haven't seen the whole movie yet but I really want to now) is that they're from a previous movie directed by Corin Hardy.

In the interests of being a good blogger I found the trailer, and oh my...is it beautiful. When you watch Bedshaped you always wonder what the rest of that world is like outside the stall, and the trailer gives you a very good idea of what horrors are out there.

It's a very perfectly imperfect style. It's a very fine-artsy approach to an unrealistic world. Stop motion in general is supposed to be Jerky and incomplete movement, which is what gives it its charm. When you watch old movies like Jason and the Argonauts for example, especially the scene with the skeletons, you get the feeling the animator is trying too hard to be realistic. When you watch the tears fall jerkily from Boy's face in Bedshaped, you geniunely feel sad but its detatched in a way that feels real.

Heartbreakingly beautiful...I only hope that I can achieve such a wonderful work of art one day.

Go to Colin Hardy's Myspace to find out about more of the music videos he's produced for some very popular english bands.
Or to his website.

06: Flowers, Emilie Simon

Flowers, Emilie Simon
Cosa Productions, 2003

Oh god is it hard to find information about this video- I've had problems with it before, and its what made me give up the dA version of this blog. But that's all behind me now. I have completed the task, after completely forgetting everything the first time I tried finding it all out- I just ended up going back to the exact same blog I got the production company name from the last time. Oy Vey...
Anyway, Flowers is possibly my favourite video I've stumbled across this year. And it's easy to see why right? I'm only going to mention the Burton connection ONCE because its everywhere else I've come across people going on about it. YES it has that creepy cuteness that His Stopmotion pieces have- a child could point that out.

Being a music video, it has ALOT more detail, and dare I say skill in it. I'm also going to throw it out there and ask; Is this ACTUAL stop motion? I rather want to disagree, because even if it is only 2:47 long, Stop motion has a hell of alot of work involved. Considering the small amount of time between single release and the video coming out, I'm gunna say no. It's a very masterful imitation of StopMotion but it just can't be- Look how long Coraline is taking!

The video features some stunning settings, and has a very charming feel around it which echoes the timeless yet modern music. And has some very cute and creepy character design. Including...
...A Frankenstein Monster who plays the upright bass...
...A werewolf on the guitar...
...A Vampire on the Keyboards...

...And this guy who I love, but does nothing but play with his steampunky toys.

It's a beautiful video, and I urge you too go take a look- or if you've already seen it, another.
That song will stick in your head all evening.

05: BeetleJuice; Second TV Opening

BeetleJuice, Second Opening
1991

This post could border on the ranting side slightly, but you know, it’s only really when this show gets knocked into the same category as some of the worst 1980's animation that I get defensive. I have to try and defend this as much as I can without letting my Burtonite instincts get the better of me.

I, like many, follow John K and Cartoon Brew. And as much as those Blogs are a wealth of information, I tend to disagree with alot of the opinions from John and Amid (of course, I should probably just bow down and accept they know alot more than I do. But fuck that, this no-body has an opinion, and I'm going to HAVE it damn it). Certainly this is already starting to tread ever so slightly into the ranting side of things, so I'll cut this train of thought off now, and just say this entry is meant to disagree strongly with the fact that the BeetleJuice cartoon is being lumped in with the bad animation stick currently in John's latest tirade of "Everything that’s good has to be made before the 60's and NOTHING ELSE HAS ANY CHARACTER WHATSOEVER" blah. (That wasn't an attack of any kind by the way, but you look at his posts objectively and just tell me he's not tooting that horn).

Anyway, BeetleJuice the TV show. Well, if your looking at this show from a design point of view, then you'd better be prepared to accept the fact that the show follows the mantra that most Burton movies (Especially in the case of his stop-animated features); Duality. All that is Alive and Pleasant is flat, boring and incredibly dull. Characters are dressed in Pastel and the shapes are either round (Lydia's father) and subdued, or Sharp and angular (Lydia's stepmother). All that is Dead and Strange is much more detailed, they leave trails of dust or colour, and the shapes are more complex. In the way of backgrounds, things follow the same rule. The Living world is set out in the country and suburbia and everything is fairly straight, ordered- the land of the dead (or Neitherworld) is a parody of that. The roads float in a greenish or orange haze, and therefore every building and person then contrasts strongly against those colours.

I love this show, but I have to say that it's actual writing sucks. Pun-based humour is only good when used sparingly. All the characters are dumped down to be kid-friendly from the movie and two of them are missing all together (The step-mother aspect is removed entirely because apparently that dynamic was seemingly too much for kids? And whatever DID happen to the Maitlands? Why is Lydia suddenly 13 years old? What made them think having her hang out with an adult male ghost was a good idea?).
However, As much I dislike gross-out humour it was rather cutely used in the show, and Lydia is still one of the most Iconic Goth Girls of our time (a stereotype I'd rather like to explore in later posts), and BeetleJuice...is pretty much one of my favourite cartoon characters ever.

04: Shiva, Austin TV

Tandem Post with 03: Viva Calaca!!

Shiva, Austin TV
Alberto Cerriteño, 2008

I paired this one for this Tandem post (in that I'm writing the two posts together, and the two posts have pretty direct comparisons) with Viva Calaca!! for several reasons.

First of all, the two are both illustrative flat motion style music videos. Whilst Viva was done for a personal project, Shiva was a paid gig. And I do think it makes all the difference. For instance, the detail is so much more evident and secondly is alot smoother moving- partly methinks, because the animator had someone else to help that part of the job while he could focus more on the more tedious design aspect.

Also, Skeletons.
The designs are wonderous and the animator's blog has alot of the individual parts saved on his blog, so do go have a look.

Viva Drawn!

03: Viva Calaca!!

Tandem Post with 04: ShivaViva Calaca!!, Voltaire
Ritxi Ostáriz

I paired this one for this Tandem post (in that I'm writing the two posts together, and the two posts have pretty direct comparisons) with Shiva for several reasons.

First of all, the two are both illustrative flat motion style music videos. Whilst Shiva was a paid gig, Viva was done for a personal project, and I do think it makes all the difference. For instance, the detail is very beautifully done as is the character design, but in comparison to Shiva, Viva's detail is hard to make out because the rate of the "camera" swings around its almost impossible. This however, could just be a personal quibble at best, because alot of Ritxi's work has the same kind of movement. It makes me a little sea-sick to be honest. And although I do love this video, I do prefer the story telling of Shiva to this one in retrospect.

But then skeletons make everything better.

Be sure to visit his website to check out his other videos.

Via Drawn!

02: Mary, Scissor Sisters

Mary, Scissor Sisters
Don Bluth, 2004

Animated music videos are usually a really good estimate of how good the animator is. Because usually the animator won't have a structured storyline or plot to rigidly follow, but rather a vague idea of what the band wants. Then you have to factor in how much money is being thrown at it- usually its not that much. At the end of the project you come out with around 2-3 minutes of animation that probably months and months has gone into. Singles, especially these days have a limited shelf life, and with supposed Music Channels like Mtv moving on to more mainstream "entertainment" rather than actually showing music videos, and other channels following suit, and Animated featurette is going to catch people attention- even if its rubbish. But of course, if that music video is good, it'll live on through requests and classic video reruns, or even in the back of our heads.

Of course, Mary has the wow factor. But would you expect less of Don Bluth? His distinctive, edgy-Disney (if you'll pardon the comparison) has been used to great effect in alot of my childhood favourites; Rock-a-Doodle (1992), Anastasia (1997) and Titan A.E (2000) aren't exactly Disney level in terms of popularity perhaps, but I know for certain I'm not the only one who remembers them (Yes, I COULD mention All Dogs go to Heaven, but I really didn't enjoy it as a child, so I never mention it). So a familiar style that draws in all the kids of my Era.

Then there’s the quality of the animation itself. All the backgrounds are simple and look a little weird in comparison to the actual characters- but I think that’s because they look a bit too bright- I would have toned the contrast down a touch but they look fabulous because their such parodies of the medieval style fairy tale backgrounds- like the ones in Sword and the Stone for example. And I love the tower and the outside of the castle...it looks all mysterious and foreboding but still whimsical.

The characters themselves- I have no idea what going on with the three troll women (I do love them, but they don't have as much character as the humans do), but "Mary" and her rescuer remind me alot of Anastasia’s humans, and they have that really lovely pretty but flawed feel about them, which makes them alot more interesting to watch than say any of the Disney princesses and their card-board cut out princes'.

I really could have sat through a full-length movie of this. As it is, Mary is a lovely insight into the daydreams of a bored and lonely office worker- and one of my favourite Animated music videos.

01: 1928 Koko's Earth Control

The Inkwell Imps in Koko's Earth Control
By Fleischer Studios, 1928

So, for the first cartoon, I thought it'd be fun to to revisit the cartoon master list I was hosting over on dA and pick out the one cartoon I had that featured that was apart of the series that I took this blog name for.

The Inkwell Imps (or at least the version I'm talking about) was a series of animated shorts from 1919 to 1929 featuring the adventures of a clown called Koko and his best friend Fritz the dog. The series was the first work to be produced by Max Fleischer, and is notable because it was one of the first to feature live action and drawn animation together- several decades before the more commonly associated major feature of Who Framed Rodger Rabbit.

I picked this cartoon at the time, because it’s a part of the Fleischer history that I skipped over quite a bit during my essay at college, and I was actually rather afraid of. The cartoons I usually prefer from the studio are the more refined and well-developed era of 1930 to 1934. The characters by this point are fleshed out (to the extent they were ever going to get, but I'll get to that later), the animation has settled into a beautifully surreal stride and the backgrounds are lushly painted, even for a black and white cartoon (again more on that in later posts) But I was actually pleasantly surprised with this short.

For one thing, the Interaction is limited and in a way that’s good. There’s a much later short, where Betty and a (horribly racist stereotyped) Janitor share words, and its poorly done and I didn't really care for it. There’s also the famous Rise to Fame short that’s included on every dvd release has, that seems cute at first, but it is after all, a clip show.

The interaction in these early shorts are limited usually, and in this case, to the human hand drawing out the characters. And I really love how it looks. Obviously very inventive in its day, in retrospect it looks almost phython-esque. Creator/creation relationships are hard to establish, whether it’s real or not (ala Duck Amuck for instance), and keeping it so limited is a nice way to start a cartoon.

Enjoy this one, and keep a look out for more gems in future posts.