Swiss Animation Revisited

There aren’t too many books about Swiss animation. So whenever someone takes on the task of writing and publishing one, it is worth a look simply for being a rarity. Christian Gasser’s new book “animation.ch” (in German and English side by side) however goes far beyond that. Gasser attempts nothing less than an appraisal of Swiss animation of the last 20 years, a period that hasn’t been covered in any book so far. His account is not without drawbacks, but overall it’s worth reading and offers a lot of color stills.

Although most mainstream audiences still don’t really notice Swiss animated films, Christian Gasser is rightly pointing out that Swiss animation “is currently in one of its most productive, ambitious and successful historical periods. Never before have so many films been made and never before have these films enjoyed such international success.” 

The Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts has been one of the key factors in this development and the initiator of Gassers extensive baseline study. Since the Lucerne University decidedly educates authors and directors “who are able to develop and design their own characters” and not classically trained animators, the book focuses mainly on three active generations of film makers. Some of the interviews are compressed into short portraits, some are printed in full length and framed by three insightful essays.

Among the usual suspects such as Georges Schwizgebel and Ted Sieger a maverick like Yves Netzhammer pops up. His reflections about subjective perception and political art turn out to be the most interesting pages. Netzhammer examines his own work (which mostly consists of art installations) in a broader context than most other interviewees.

Circuit Marine (2003) by Isabelle Favez

“animation.ch” doubtlessly portrays a many-voiced and vital Swiss animation scene, mentions diverging production models and current debates. However, its concept does not seem to include any critical classification and emphasis (apart from selecting 20 film makers as representatives of the scene). Occasionally one gets the impression that creator driven short films are automatically of high quality and that festival prizes are the benchmark.

Since the reader is required to relate the interviews to one another all by himself, deeper insight is only accessible to those who read the whole book. When Ted Sieger – one of the Lucerne school’s self-taught professors – wonders whether his potential would be detected within the current animation schooling, an indirect answer is found in an essay by the director of studies: he mentions a student who didn’t turn in any drawings when applying but was accepted on the basis of his abilities to entertain and his convincingly demonstrated passion for all things animation. He has turned out to be one of the more successful short film makers.

Laterarius (2010) by Marina Rosset

It would have been interesting to have an external view on what formal and narrative characteristics were developed by the Lucerne University and how the bulk of student films among the total Swiss output affects the choice and depth of subjects.

Although short film making is still an unprofitable business around here, some at-a-glance portraits of graduates and autodidacts who cut their own path off the beaten track of doing their own short films raise hopes of being able to make a living in the animation field. Christian Gasser’s final essay on applied animation also fathoms where these paths could lead to eventually.

Even if “animation.ch” tends to bow to the portrayed film makers a little too low, this fluidly written tome is an important addition to the slim Swiss film history output and can be ordered here or here on Amazon.

ASIFA Switzerland can be found here.

Book Review: Color and Light. A Guide for the Realist Painter.

A book by James Gurney, creator of DINOTOPIA.

"This book examines the painter's two most fundamental tools: color and light. It is intended for artists of all media interested in a traditional realist approach, as well as for anyone who is curious about the workings of the visual world." (Introduction, p. 8)

I have rarely seen a book that is as clearly structured and at the same time as thoroughly informative as Color and Light by James Gurney. Even artists who have no interest in realism or oil painting benefit a lot from the extensive knowledge in this book.

Gurney's approach doesn't "contain recipes for mixing colors or step-by-step painting procedures." He sets out to "bridge the gap between abstract color theory and practical knowledge" and succeeds in giving us a set of tools which help us translate our observations into the pictures we're working on.

The book is divided into 10 chapters on specific topics like “Sources of Light” or “Color Relationships”. Each of these chapters is broken down into 6 to 16 double-page spreads devoted to one single subject.

After analyzing some acclaimed realist painting by old masters in the first chapter, Gurney then reverts to his own paintings. That way, without coming across as narcissistic, he is able to explain the thinking behind each picture.

Gurney's illustrations demonstrate that he knows what he talks about.

Limiting himself to just two to four paintings, some explanatory graphics and photographs and one spread per topic, his writing is very focused and precise: always enjoyable, never colloquial. The compressed but easily readable text alone offers a lot to chew over. It contains eye-openers (about color reflections in shadow areas) and reminders of well-known concepts that we too often tend to ignore when working in color (the virtue of using grays and neutrals).

A short 11th chapter summarizes the themes that came up in the previous chapters. The book is rounded off by a “Resources” chapter that contains among other things a guide to “modern, familiar, reliable pigments” and a commented “Recommended Reading” section – each filling exactly one double-page.

No matter whether I’ll be able to successfully incorporate the lessons into my future work, the book has already sharpened my perception and triggered my imagination. What more can I wish?

Fantastic Mr. Fox: The Book (1/5)

Now that Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) finally showed up on a few Swiss cinema screens (on Bluray, as there are no digital or 35mm prints available) I’ve been heavily digging into the works of Wes Anderson lately.

Since I don’t know too much about my readers, I’m curious how many of you have actually seen Fantastic Mr. Fox and if you liked what you saw. Please take a minute to answer the two questions on the right.


Roald Dahl’s children’s book “Fantastic Mr. Fox” came out in 1970 with Illustrations by Donald Chaffin. Nowadays most editions are illustrated by Quentin Blake (see picture on the left) whose style is rather different from Chaffin’s.

But Wes Anderson – claiming that “Fox” was the first book he owned – is very fond of Chaffin’s original illustrations and thus invited him to work on the production design.

As you can see in these 1970 illustrations, Chaffin and Anderson share a lot of stylistic preferences such as made-to-measure suits, central perspective, axially symmetrical compositions and cross-section views:

According to Wikipedia, this is the first edition cover (but it might as well be the one from 1978). Does somebody know about this?

The original cover illustration according to the film makers

Chaffin's concept art for the film

The actual title in the film

The tree and Mr. Fox in the beginning

Axially symmetrical and cross-section through Mr. Fox's hole

Cross-section through Mr. Fox's bedroom in the basement of the tree

Digging in cross-sectio

Central perspective

  

Chaffin's version of the farmers

On the left: the three farmers as puppets by Mackinnon and Saunders.

Concept art for the film...

...and actual framegrab.

Coming Soon: Inspiration from different sources

"The Audience Contract" by Roland Zag

“Sometimes you want to upset an audience so you can change them. I’ve done so-called Hollywood films, and I know that it’s all about wanting the audience to feel upbeat, give them a happy ending. But they also like complete stories. If your story’s complete it doesn’t have to be a happy ending.”

Morgan Freeman

We can always tell whether a film moved us or left us cold, but we can hardly explain why exactly this was the case. A German book about emotional screenwriting proposes a detailed framework to describe universally (for western audiences, that is) comprehensible emotions in stories. It is based on analyses of a wide array of successful films, not just Hollywood blockbusters with happy endings.
Should the book ever become available in English, the animation industry would certainly benefit from it.

Analysing the emotional impact of movies has always been of great interest to me. I even did my master thesis on David Lynch’s sound design (after being told that analysing color schemes of animated features was not a workable concept). But all those tools we usually associate with creating emotions in a movie – music, color, sound design, even acting – are merely artistic devices to emphasize emotions that are already in the screenplay. Sometimes they do work on their own, but that’s not what I’m after here.

Whenever there is a discussion about recent animated features, the term “heart” is used excessively. But people hardly ever manage to explain what they mean by “heart” or “emotional maturity” other than admitting that they fought tears during projection. So the basic question is: what conditions have to be fulfilled within a story to be able to cause emotional response from an audience?

German script doctors Roland Zag and Norbert Maass have been researching that topic under the premise that in order to be successful beyond the first weekend (which heavily depends on marketing budgets) a film has to generate word of mouth recommendation. In order to do so, it has to be emotionally accessible to people with different personal experiences.

In his book “Der Publikumsvertrag” (“the audience contract”), Roland Zag presents us with guidelines for emotional screenwriting based on what he calls “the human factor”. I’m usually very skeptical of these kinds of manuals because many of them try to sell you the secret of success based on very narrow normative assumptions by their authors. However, this one is not concerned with formal story structure (like plot points or three act theories) but with the actual content of stories: characters and their relationships.

Zag explains the subject matter of the “audience contract” as follows: In return for a leap of faith, the audience expects stories whose conflicts, which are more or less difficult to resolve, undergo more or less successful coping strategies. The author then presents detailed categories of interhuman relationships based on the empirical analysis of 200 feature films. Zag is always aware that box office success is no indicator of artistic quality, instead he attempts to explain why films and not only blockbusters are successful.

Some of the most important factors that trigger socially conditional emotions are: affiliation to social groups, commitment and an imbalance in give and take. Of course, emotional plausibility is also an issue, but never taste or artistic concepts. Unfortunately, the book and the accompanying blog where Maass and Zag continue to do market analyses of current films are only available in German. There is a general summary in English on the blog, though.

There are no animated features among those 200 films (a market analysis of Up! can be found on the blog), mainly because the author takes it for granted that animated family films depend almost completely on the human factor. Several examples have shown, though, that its basic rules have been violated which led to less successful films compared to production and marketing costs.

What the book ultimately provides us with is a framework that enables us to talk about the creation of emotional stories in more or less clear categories. They also serve as a set of useful tools to analyze any given movie or screenplay concerning emotional resonance and audience response. Of course, success is also dependent on other factors, but on a large scale, without “the human factor” there is little chance.

A Comprehensive Terminology for Visual Storytelling

I finally found time to read The Visual Story – Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV and Digital Media by Bruce Block. The main point of this highly normative book is to remind aspiring film makers of the importance of controlling every visual aspect of their movies.

Without getting bogged down in technical details Block offers a comprehensive overview of all the aspects that can and should be controlled in the creation of visual media content. In less than 300 pages he introduces a basic set of visual components and their respective categories that can be used to create contrast or affinity within shots, between shots or between whole sequences.

Thanks to the many pictures and diagrams (in full color for the first time) the text is reduced to a minimum that nevertheless is completely sufficient to get the concepts across clearly. At the end of each chapter Block suggests a couple of films to study.

“The wonderful aspect of studying pictures is that there are no secrets. The ingredients in food, for example, can be hidden. You eat a delicious meal but can’t guess the secret recipe. A picture’s visual structure can’t hide because everything is visible on the screen. The more times you watch a film, the more the visual ingredients will reveal themselves.” (page 83)

Although targeted primarily at film makers this book comes in handy for film scholars as well. After the tools are laid out, it is made clear that (in narrative media) the story structure should be the basis for every visual decision a director makes. In the end Block offers some case studies to show how successful movies make use of all these aspects to communicate their story visually.

The one thing that annoyed me a little was the lack of captions for frame enlargements. I found myself constantly browsing the index for precise information about the example pictures. Also there are some minor printing issues regarding the gray scale.

Granted, there are more academic and elaborate books on film analysis and many a thing about visual composition is illustrated more beautifully in the Famous Artists Course series, but I haven’t yet seen another book that unites all the aspects of visual storytelling in one coherent concept. Moreover, Block does not need to explain the technical processes or conventions of editing, cinematography and so forth to make his point.

My favorite chapter was – no, not the one about color (which is great, of course) – the one about movement which, in my opinion, is one of the most cinematic of all aspects and one that has often been neglected in film studies because the additional dimension of time can hardly be analyzed by looking at just one frame of a shot.

Of course, you could discover most of these concepts by analyzing a lot of movies on your own (which I, for my part, find very important and rewarding), however this book not only saves you a lot of time but also offers a useful terminology to describe what you’re looking for.