American and Japanese animation

Even though it was about animation i found it really interesting to see the differences between the american and japanese animation especially the differences between the disney animation and the animation used in my neighbour toronto which i do not normally like animation like this but since seeing this i would now like to watch it.




This were two of the films we watched clips from and you can see with disneys bambi that it has alot more brighter colours than the japanese film my neighbour totoro i think this is to make it more reconizable to disney as they use this style in all there animation films.
My favourite thing from the lecture was the desk lamp from pixar

It was also interesting to know that this was John Lasseters first thing created using computers when he working for pixar and that the desk lamp shows so many emotions but does not have a face.
When you look at american animation you can see that it uses more brighter colours then the japanese animation  and that the american animation is more about family and the japanese is more fantasy which the two have a whole history of using this style but that is my own opinion and people will disagree but this is what i think splits the two animations (american and japanese).

Animation

I was hoping that the lecture wouuld involve stop-motion animation but i guess the closest thing to that was the puppets and the movie that was shown at the end but i am now starting to understand the signs much better and often find my self now starting to use them to describe things which brought so much to my attention but the animation film we watched was wierd with the babys head having cotton wool coming out the eyes and mouth and the music being played was wierd also which suited the film and i had no clue what was going on in the film.

Violence in media

The stuff that got me to learn more about this was the seminar in which we got split into groups and had to design daggers for different people one for a pantomine villian, spy, cowboy and a sci-fi bandit we quickly discovered that none of these would have the same design and had to think about the character and then think about the design for the dagger. The one i liked the best was i design i had for the sci-fi bandit where most people were going for the lightsaber idea i prefered the idea of a dagger that was more from another world. it was shaped a bit like a boomerang and then we had to think about putting the daggers into a scene which for this sci-fi bandit dagger we put that it was dark and that the moon was shining and the blade of the dagger reflected from the light from the moon. We also said this is all what you would see as the owner of the dagger is a bandit.



This is what you would only see in the dark for the scene with the sci-fi bandit, the other dagger designs we had was a very unrealistic comedy looking dagger for the pantomine villian one that had lots of jewels on it and was not practical, the spy had a mini dagger in a pen as it was like a gadget just incase they needed it when they was in trouble and it had to be disguised so it did not get reconized and for the cowboy we designed a practical dagger witha wooden handle and it had to be practical. This was a good group task i felt because it was interesting to see what other people came up with for there designs and i liked my idea for the sci-fi bandit dagger that in my spare time i am going to make it.

Science fiction genre

This was really helpful to me as my essay was on this question on orginality and repetition in a chosen genre but, the thing i found interesting the most was that in the alien film they used a puppet to get a better reaction from the actors and acctresses this is because they would have had used a tennis ball on a stick which would not have the same reaction because the actors and actresses would be imaging what they think it would look like and especially as they did it in one take and it was the first time they had seen what it looks like also since seeing this and it helping in my essay i have gone out and brought alien on dvd and it is the first time i have watched it properly but most of all it has really helped my work.

New Media

This lecture did not really seem like it was of benefit to me as the lecture did not talk about models but about games.
but i did find out some interesting things like that bruno lenski invented perspective which perspective is important and powerful as it showed us things in 3d on paper etc;.
I also learn't that we have changed the way of what superheroes we like as there is no superheroes like superman anymore we have iron man who upgraded himself so. we like people who have to create there own powers.
After the lecture in the seminar we were given a lesson on essay writing which was very helpful.

IMAP

The imap was a bit tricky to do at times but, i had quite a few of the research sources already like my model animation book, i think my imap could have been a lot better and i would have changed the question i did which was what is the relationship between orginality and repetition in a chosen genre which i choose model animation.
I then recieved a email through studynet by bill on wednesday saying that it would be better to do question 4 on intertextuality which i did think may be the better choice but i thought no i will go with the question i am currently doing, but now i look at it i can see that i should have choosen to do it on intertextuality and my research is more the intertextuality question than orginality and repetition.
Also i would of made a 3d island as some of the things i talked about happen on a island e.g. jurassic park and king kong and i would have my imap on the 3d island instead of using just normal a4 paper.

two sides to everything (and a bit in the middle)

In this lecture we were shown structurlism and binary opposition where we got shown opposites of things e.g.  the light is opposite to dark and then there are other ones these are ones that have something in the zone of anomoly which is in the middle so you could have someone like darth vadar in the middle of good and evil because he has good and bad sides.
After the lecture we had the seminar were we looked at structurlism and binary opposition in more detail we looked at some more opposites and then we looked at films. We looked at lord of the rings and we looked at the different hair styles for the film characters. We then moved on and talked about terminator were we did a moral map on the characters in the film and looked at sarah connor how she changed in the film from being good to being bad at the end we also found out that there is oppositess for the two terminators when one is on the screen is a blue colour and when the other is on its a orange colour this is a opposite for cold and warm. After talking about the terminator we went on and talked about bladerunner and used opposites to discuss it.
I then noticed when doing my imap that there was a moral map in jurassic park you have some characters who are good throughout then there is john hammond who is good at first then he turns more bad because he wants to have a incredible amusement park and does not stop to think of his actions, but he becomes good again later when he wants to save peoples lives and does not want to create a dinosaur park anymore. The main character that stood out to me was the t-rex as it comes across as this evil dinosaur which it is but right at the end it kind of saves the lives of people by showing up and killing the raptors which the raptors stay evil throughout.