What follows are two very different approaches for using animation to teach history. Both films successfully condense long periods of time and information into digestible length. While neither of these animated projects should be viewed as substitutes for actual historical study, they go a long way toward making history appear exciting and accessible.

An Animated History of Poland is an eight-minute CGI history of the country. The film’s nationalist bombast is obvious but understandable considering that the government commissioned it for the Polish Pavilion at Shanghai’s 2010 Expo. It was directed by Tomasz Bagiński at Poland’s Platige Image.

A more curious project is “A Complete History of the Soviet Union…Arranged to the Melody of Tetris”, which is a music video for Pig with the Face of a Boy. Director and animator Chris Lince uses a mixture of live-action and animation, but it is the latter animated elements which make this a memorable and effective piece of storytelling.

This week in the Cartoon Brew TV Student Animation Festival: Artichoke Hearts by Kazimir Iskander. To read Kazimir’s notes about the film or to make comments and ask him questions about it, visit Cartoon Brew TV.

An experimental animated short by Brooklyn-based animator Andy Kennedy, Accumulonimbus depicts various objects moving around in a spin cycle. The sophisticated patterns and rhythms of movement are mesmerizing, and a reminder of how animation can create moods and experiences that are not possible in any other medium. Kennedy’s website has an extensive behind-the-scenes section that shows how he made the film in stop-motion as well as the incredible amount of pre-planning that went into its making. The music, which I felt worked against the visual timing in certain instances but which grew on me during the second viewing, was composed by Kennedy too.

(Thanks, Mike Rauch)

The seventh annual Animation Block Party wrapped up in Brooklyn last Sunday. The event’s organizer, Casey Safron, has created a unique and worthwhile event. When I attended on opening night (my first time at Animation Block), there was an enthusiastic crowd of over one thousand people who had gathered on the lawn of the Automotive High School to watch animated shorts on two big screens.

I served as a member of the jury along with Rachel Simon of World Leaders Entertainment, Dave Schlafman of CloudKid, and Ramin Zahed of Animation Magazine. The judging procedure for Animation Block differed from other festivals I’ve judged in that the jury’s picks were averaged instead of attempting to form a consensus amongst all the members. Below you’ll find our choices, each of whom will receive various software packages and other prizes

Two of the winners—Barbara Benas’s Always Only Ever and Kyu-bum Lee’s Death Buy Lemonade—will also be appearing shortly on Cartoon Brew TV’s Student Animation Festival. The Best in Show prizewinner, Old Fangs, is embedded above.

ANIMATION BLOCK 2010 WINNERS
Best in Show: Old Fangs by Adrien Merigeau, Ireland
Original Design: Paper Daydream by Jun Iwakawa, United Kingdom
Computer Animation: Urs by Moritz Mayerhofer, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Experimental Film: Pink Spray Paint by Carly White, ENSAD, France
Music Video: Spacious Thoughts by Fluorescent Hill, Montreal, Canada
Narrative Short: Bygone Behemoth by Harry Chaskin, USA
Student Film: Always Only Ever by Barbara Benas, CCAD, USA
Minute or Under: How to Lose Weight in 60 Seconds by Dave Carter, Australia
Documentary: Perista by Kim Weiner, RISD, USA
Audience Award: Death Buy Lemonade by Kyu-bum Lee, Sheridan College, Canada

The best part about Eran Hilleli’s Between Bears is the distinctive style he crafted using Maya and After Effects. The graduation short was made at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. If you can read any meaning into the film, I’d be curious to hear your take; all I took from this short is that old men love butterflies made out of bear fur. Then again, I may still be a bit slow after my weekend getaway.

(Thanks, Nate Pacheco)

A couple of bits of news from the stable of The Brothers McLeod. They’ve uploaded a trailer for their new short film The Moon Bird (a 15 minute dark fairytale) and, below that, they just finished their latest run of Fuggy Fuggy shorts:

Usually, the posts about Famous Studios are reserved for Jerry, but just this once, I have to share a Famous short. I ran across Think or Sink (1967) last night and it’s a really goofy piece of animation. Shamus Culhane, the director, proudly proclaimed years later that it was the only Famous short which ever screened in competition at Annecy. The story was written by the crazy-man of East Coast animation Jim Tyer, who according to IMDB, hadn’t written a short since 1942’s You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap (can anybody confirm that?). Tyer appears to have modeled his short after Ernie Pintoff’s Flebus, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to note that Tyer was the primary animator of that earlier pop psychiatry-themed cartoon, not to mention that Tyer also animated the neurotic Terrytoons elephant Sidney.

There’s plenty of good stuff happening in this film. The Bobcat Goldthwait-esque voice of Roscoe the elephant, provided by Lionel Wilson, is a unique and funny choice. The film has three (!) designers—Hal Silvermintz, Dante Barbetta and Gil Miret. I don’t know how they divided the work up, but it looks fresh. The animation by Al Eugster is also a treat. There are some ridiculous moments—look at Roscoe’s forehead at the one-minute mark when his hat pops up. As simple as the animation is, Eugster’s poses are expert and move just enough to get the personalities across. I won’t go so far as to proclaim this a great cartoon, but it’s better than a lot and its obscurity is undeserved. Below is a layout drawing by Dante Barbetta found in Culhane’s Talking Animals and Other People:

Whereas the age of a live-action film, no matter how classic, can always be discerned by the appearance of its actors, the cinematography, and the style of acting and direction, great animation has the capacity to be timeless. Take Yoji Kuri’s short AOS. It was made 46 years ago, yet the visuals feel as raw and disturbing today as when it first appeared.

A synopsis of the film can be found in Amos Vogel’s 1974 book Film as a Subversive Art:

This extraordinary animation—already a classic—projects a universe of bizarre and frustrated lusts, in which monsters, voyeurs, and misshapen objects engage in nightmarish and often sadomasochistic outrages amongst Freudian symbols of anxiety. Max Ernst and Bosch come to mind, but the rage against repression is entirely Japanese and ideological:sexual anti-puritanism as a liberating device.

When you’re ready to take it a step further, check out Kuri’s 1970 film The Bathroom:

Melbourne-based artist Darcy Prendergast, explains that his latest film, News!, was “inspired by my constant hatred for news and current affair programs on TV. It’s essentially a film about nothing, as I find myself less intelligent, with no new knowledge acquired at the end of the viewing.”

Darcy’s multi-frame approach is an effective way of illustrating the cacophonous assault on viewers, and the short is a funny and clever statement about TV news, which is apparently just as vacuous and pathetic in Australia as it is in the US. True story: A CNN producer who was trying to get me to appear on the network once told me point-blank that they’re in the business of entertaining viewers, not informing them. That’s unfortunate because they’re not very good at entertainment either.

Polish animator Piotr Kamler (b. 1936) won the Grand Pix at Annecy in 1975 for his film Le Pas, but I’ve chosen to display an earlier film of his called Heart of Refuge (Couer de Secours, 1973). The visual imagery in this 1973 film is breathtaking, and it is cited by Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet as the film that inspired him to pursue a filmmaking career. I discovered more about Kamler on this blog though I’m unsure of the original source of the write-up:

Piotr Kamler was born in Warsaw in 1936. He is a graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art. In 1959 he went to Paris to continue his art studies. it was there that he came into contact with Research Department at ORTF( directed by Pierre Schaeffer) and began to collaborate with “concrete” musicians such as Xenakis on experimental shorts( musical abstract films and “fables”) The ORTF Research Department which was later taken over by INA, was a hothouse for talent, enabling diverse artists such as Peter Foldes, Robert Lapoujade , Jacques Espagne, Jacques Rouxel, Andre Martin and Michel Boschet, Jacques Colombat, Jean-Francois Laguionie, Henry Lacam and Kamler to carry out a large number of bold and innovative personal projects. With astonishing regularity, Kamler came up with no less than eight unusual short films between 1962 and 1973…Kamler’s animated cinema suggests a singular variety of science fiction; it was he who provided the original idea for the Shadoks TV series. Completely unalike to more conventionally linear and text-based narratives, Kamler’s films instead explore a series of dynamic visual motifs. Typically, the conclusion of these films is less suggestive of resolution, than it is of recurring episode. What is most striking in all his films is the variety of visual invention that Kamler brings to each work.

Kamler made a feature in 1982 called Chronopolis which is viewable online in its entirety at UbuWeb. There’s plenty of information about the film on Wikipedia.

Here’s one more of his films—The Spider Elephant. The short is from 1967, but with visuals as fresh and relevant as anything being produced today.

New week, new film in our Cartoon Brew TV Student Animation Festival: August by Matthias Hoegg was created at the Royal College of Art. To read Matthias’s notes on the making of the film or to make comments and ask him questions about it, visit Cartoon Brew TV.

Tons of artists create photo cut-out animation using After Effects, but few do it as creatively as Brighton, UK-based Cyriak. Be sure to also check out Powers of Ramsay and his most recent reel.

(via Boing Boing)