Animation World History

No, i’m unsure if we are related

Ohara Hale is a Self-taught, multidisciplinary artist. Although she was born in Hollywood, she spent her formative years in the Midwest. She loves to write, paint, and dance. She has a particular affinity for writing children’s books.

Her work on the music video Philémon Chante – Je te mange won her a nomination for Best Video Of The Year for the L’ADISC awards. It’s a charming, rigged animation piece brought to life by Ohara’s illustrations and direction. it follows a rabbit on its journey through life.

Ella Dobson is an animator and designer born in New Zealand! She’s worked in a lot of different places, mainly big cities like LA and she’s currently working in NYC

She has a website: https://elladobson.com/About

She actually worked a lot for google and stuff, she has a lot of graphic design and minimalistic animations that have been used for marketing but she also does some creative stuff as well

So her animation is “The World” and it’s the one we showed in class- I couldn’t really find a different one that was linked to any poems!! But I learned she made it as a collection of poems from the On Being Project, and there’s a playlist linked on YouTube that has all of them (it also has a lot of the animations shown in class and I think Charlie showed one from this collection):

The World

Written by Rumi

Translated and read by Fatemeh KeshavarzListen

The world is a mountain
Whatever you say, good or bad, it will echo it back to you
Don’t say I sang nicely and mountain echoed an ugly voice…
That is not possible

The human intellect is a place where hesitation and uncertainty take root
There is no way to overcome this hesitation…except by falling in love

To reach the sea and be happy with a jug water is a waste
The sea that has pearls…
And a hundred thousand other precious things.

I feel like the poem is about appreciating the Earth. And a reminder to be kind because you have to first be kind to get something kind back- “Whatever you say, good or bad, it will echo it back to you”.

One interesting thing was the contrast between Dobson’s professional work and personal work, they have very different styles. Her professional work is much more generalized and minimalistic, while a lot of her creative works actually take on a bit of a colorful painterly style which I like!

Lottie Kingslake is an animator and creative director based in Bristol, UK. She specifically makes mostly commercial work for clients, informational + narrative animation and more experimental animations. Her work tends to be colorful and layered, almost looking like a collage. Lots of textures and patterns and little moving pieces.

In general, lots of her work actually does relate to climate, the environment and nature. her work has a very tactile feel to it, even with it being entirely flat. I think this is mostly because of the textures in the brushes she uses and the patterns in some of the cutouts. In her film “the blood of a bear” this is most pronounced, as the characters appear to be made of paper cutouts, with detailed patterns on each separate color and piece. However, out of all of the films of hers that I have seen, my favorites are still “Singularity- The universe in verse” (Due to the narration, mostly) and “Dear Friend”, as it has very charming animation and I liked the rhythm of the animation as well.

The significance of both of these films is to bring light and attention to not only the earth and the climate but also how special it is to be alive and how unique we are as humans to make a difference.

Sources: https://lottiekingslake.co.uk/work#/dear-friend-music-video-for-alpha-steppa-pupajim/ , https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4570384/ , https://uk.linkedin.com/in/lottie-kingslake-b76664106

Joan Gratz is an Academy Award winning director for animated short films and commercials. Her main medium for animating is clay painting, in which she puts down bits of clay and blends them together and etches details into them. in 1987 she created her own film studio named Gratzfilm. in 1992 she won an Oscar for her short film Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase. she also lives on a house boat Portland, Oregon.

The film im talking about today is The Second Coming. This short is based off of a William Butler Yeats poem by the same name. The poem talks about the Post-World war I anxiety in Europe and the loss of traditions. It describes the christian idea of the second coming

https://filmfreeway.com/1372866

William Butler Yeats was an irish poet. he was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. He also received the Nobel Prize in in 1923 for Literature. And he had founded the Irish Theatre, which later became the Abbey Theatre.

Katy Wang’s Earth Day animation is created using 2D animation, with like the soft and flowy visuals and this painterly style that gives the animation the handmade feel. Katy is a London-based animator known for creating emotional, thoughtful work that often focuses on nature and human connection. She pursued an art foundation course and later earned a BA in Illumination Animation from Kingston School of Art. After graduating in 2017, she begun building her portfolio with freelance commissions and was seen signed by Partizan, a production company, which helped her transient into directing. In the piece, she brings to life The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, a poet and environmentalist who writes abut finding comfort in the natural world. His poem is about stepping away from stressed and fear, instead turning into to the quiet and calm of nature, which was his message for Earth Day. Berry wrote the poem to express how even if life can feel so chaotic, nature continues to calm offer a space to breathe and reset. The animation was made in collaboration with illustrator Charlotte Ager and commissioned by the On Being Project.