Blog Post 3 (REVISED) February 8, 2010

For the Birds is a Pixar animation that the studio released in 2001 for the beginning of another one of their films, Monsters Inc. As with most of the shorts that were released alongside films in the theatres, For the Birds received a lot of attention, and laughs, from the Public. It won an Oscar for Best Short Animated film in 2002, and many other awards earlier. The thing that stuck out to me the most about this short, as with a lot of Pixar’s animations, was that none of the characters spoke. The message was conveyed through expression and sounds that the characters made. Pixar has mastered the ability to evoke different feelings of characters in situations purely through the technique in which they create those characters.

Pixar’s website states “For the Birds is deceptively simple. Take a closer look at the birds in this Academy Award-winning short film and you’ll notice each one has countless feathers that look natural and move like they would in real life, but Pixar was able to work with its existing technology to make it happen”. I noticed not only the movement of the feathers, which eventually get stripped off, but the eyes and the exaggeration of this feature. Much like in The Owl Collection, the eyes of the birds are exaggerated and show clear signs of emotions and feelings. The birds are enjoying an afternoon of chatting on a wire, when a larger, more awkward bird comes into the picture. He wants to make friends with the smaller birds, but they do not want him to be a part of their clique. Their eye movements and body language show this quite well. Their feathers move with them which, as stated above, is quite impressive and gives them a truly life like quality.   Not only do they show the emotions of the little birds, but they can show the ignorance of the large bird through facial movements. What sticks out to me…no pun intended…is the large beak placed on the big bird. It was put there to show the awkwardness and ignorance of the bird…and does it quite well.

This animation is a lot like the first one that Pixar released with Toy Story. The lamps do not speak, but it instead is with their movements that they evoke emotion and create a relationship. This animation has a one up on that with the fact that the small birds all look the same and the large bird looks dramatically different.

This cartoon, which is pretty sad until the very end, has the ability to evoke emotion in people through the characterization of these birds.  It is a classic story in the fact that this bird wants to be a part of the “cool” crowd and tries very hard to do so. The small birds make fun of him and dont want any part of his participation. But eventually the big bird wins, and the evil little birds get whats coming to them. With this we see the annoyance in the little birds, and the happiness in the big one. He is no longer an outcast…because he is the one in the feathers now!!

Alice in Wonderland… February 2, 2010

Disney’s 1951 version of the film left something to be desired when it first appeared on the big screen, but grew to be a cult film and soon a classic to children everywhere. The Film itself, according to IMDB, is actually based upon not one but three of Lewis Carrolls masterpieces. It depicts all the nonsense that Carroll wrote about, and touches on pretty much all the main topics of the three books, only leaving out a few details…and adding some in as Disney is so famous for doing. Being that the stories that Carroll wrote are some of my favorites, I grew up loving this film. Upon further inspection however, I can see how this movie was a flop when it first arrived on the scene.

Alice in Wonderland was not the first animated feature for Walt Disney, and you can see similar styles of the company in films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The exaggeration of features is predominate in this film just like all of Disney’s others. Eyes on people and animals were enlarged and the faces had memorable features. The flowers show this very well in their scene. Disney had the ablity to take an inanimate object and breathe life into it. This was done not only with faces, but in the scenes with the oysters, they were dressed up in clothes…giving the appearance of lifelike and relate-able qualities. The secondary action was thought of in almost every clip. However, sometimes it was TOO over-extended looking odd at times. Watch Alice’s hair and you will see what I am talking about. This could be a good or a bad thing depending on who is critiquing the film. It is deliberate, but it could also be that this was the way things were done at the time.

I am surprised however that a film like this came out AFTER the amazing Fantasia. So much was accomplished with that film, that this seemed lackluster compared to it. The scenery was flat and often different colors than plants or other things that Alice would walk through. At times the lighting was off, and I couldn’t differentiate night and day, and finally, the movements of the mouths on the characters were off…which could drive anyone insane. In the scene where Alice becomes trapped in the White Rabbits home, we hear her say “Oh no, not again”, but her lips never moved.

According to Wikipedia, Walt Disney had been toying with the idea of an animated Alice since 1923. There were many things that he did beautifully with this film, but I can see why critics would vote it a flop when it came after such great films like Fantasia.

Hello world! January 23, 2010

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