Animation Snob Thread (no Disney, no Pixar, no mainstream anime, mention Family Guy and you get kicked out a window), puppet films are allowed

Robert, just in case i'm the only one who flag posted you after the first sentence, it was me who flag posted you after the first sentence. cheers.

I love Angel's Egg.

Noodle Vague- why flag post?

tbf it was halfway thru the title. tbh, i think your premise is reductive, silly and distasteful. i celebrate yr right to disagree. the fp button is just underneath this post.

The Secret of Kells

i couldn't give a flying fuck about the premise so long as i pick up some tasty leads itt

Yep, same here

the new series based on the "Ping Pong" manga is worth checking out (there was also a 2002 live action film)
artstyle is kinda ugly but really expressive, directed by Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Kaiba, Tatami Galaxy)

http://i.imgur.com/Gp6t8JL.gif

the yuasa short upthread was cool, if not in the same league as mind game

i think we had an animation thread a while back, but i totally agree with the sentiment in the original post. animation's been hijacked for exclusively kid and family movies, when it has so much more potential.

remake jaws as an animated film, plz.

great animated films that aren't necessarily for kids

Noodle Vague- I'd prefer you disagreed with me in detail. I said I enjoyed many Disney films and Pixar films are generally good, so unless you work on Family guy(which just like many sitcoms, I still find a quarter of the jokes funny enough) or some associated cartoon, I don't know why you are offended. Surely not by my belief that animation has been neglected as a powerful expressive medium?

Maybe you are a 3d animator? I'm willing to be proved wrong about the possibilities of that style but from what I have seen so far, I think the strength of cgi is for rich colour and more abstract things, but I've always found character animation to be lacking. But I've been moved all the same by Pixar films.
I said I'm not completely against uniformity in animation because Simpson's, Futurama and South Park at their best work just fine.
I just think it's sad that the medium isn't really associated much with ambitious animation techniques.

I hesitated before creating the title because I don't find offending people constructive but since the word "snob" was jokingly in the title (who honestly calls themself a snob?), I thought it would be obvious that I wasn't being an elitist drawing a line in the sand by the end of the first post.

So what part of my premise was objectionable?

I mentioned it on the Adventure Time thread, but Masaaki Yuasa is directing an Adventure Time episode, too!

I just think it's sad that the medium isn't really associated much with ambitious animation techniques.

do you not think that this is tantamount to saying that writing isn't associated with ambitious techniques because the bulk of what's read isn't "ambitious"? by definition, within any medium, the less popular stuff is less popular.

i was just mildly snarking tbh but really, you can have an "i love this" thread without defining it in opposition to all that tawdry mainstream "that" that you don't dig. and it will probably make your appreciation all the stronger.

also you dismissed several nations' worth of animation in yr first two sentences which is like, gtfo

title wld've been fine with just the first three words, parenthetical and tbh 1st post just makes yr thread sound rockist son

but i guess you're guitarist from pink floyd right i guess i shouldn't expect more

and it is just silly to associate 'ambitious animation style' w/non-mnstrm stuff, have you seen One Piece that shit's ambitious as h*ck, and bigger studios have more freedom and currency to experiment on a big stage

and then 'letting in' miyazaki and akira cause you feel like it, come on. this is just taste, don't try to project all this other mnstrm/non-mnstrm stuff

but otherwise cool thread look forward to recs

Again, I think my elaboration shows that I don't at all mean to completely dismiss major animation houses, America or Japan. But I don't think it's totally crazy to say that a lot of their output is very poor and that there might be legitimate things in them to object to. A lot of Japanese animators are totally scathing about the general animated output of their country.

I'm guilty as charged that I made a sensational title to get attention and I probably shouldn't have because it is a rampant problem on the internet that I'm not proud to take part in but again, I thought there was enough in the first post to backpedal from the oppositional element.

The oppositional gut feelings come easy when you're bombarded by something that you think has significant or even major problems while so many great things are marginalized. Particularly when it comes to comics. I'm sure most people here have called things "total shit" that in a fairer, more constructive mood they would admit to having some good qualities. Ideally I'd like to criticize everything as if I were talking to the creators face to face in the most constructive, bluntly honest but encouraging way I could.
I'll often say I hate Friends, Big Bang Theory and Family Guy but a quarter of the jokes do make me laugh and some other things work occasionally.
I often get angered by superhero comics and movies but I have genuinely enjoyed them on occasion.

I like to try and be reasonable as possible but then I remember the time I tried to talk about wonderful animation and its potential, with people responding "no I don't like Family Guy, Pixar, Avatar or anime", RAAAAAAAAAGE!
I don't like snobbery and elitism because I think it is anti-intellectual in the way those things make people oversimplify, when the fact is that almost nothing can really be reasonably summed up as trash or shit. But if you really seriously care about culture, have starry eyed dreams about people believing in aspiring to greatness and raising standards, you'll know how easy it is to fall into dismissively oversimplifying things.

I assumed flagging posts was reserved for serious transgressions like horrendous racism, sexism, violent threats and legal boundaries being crossed. Not passionate disagreements about culture.

aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh nvm

Zachlyon says "bigger studios have more freedom and currency to experiment on a big stage"

Examples? Fantasia is the only time I can think of a major studio being really experimental. But there is loads and loads of low budget avant garde animation. A lot of people decide to avoid or leave big animation studios because lack of freedom. The big companies have the resources but how could they compare in this way with Piotr Kamler and Gyorgy Kovasznai?

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you.

Forgot to mention Watership Down and Plague Dogs. They are quite special to me.

^^^these are incredible and their making is also p incredible, michael rosen was a true one-off. watership down also one of my favourite films ever

am cool with this thread coz RAG seems to have a not dissimilar taste to me, lol

MARTIN rosen, even. michael rosen's the shitty kids' poet

Thanks for the link to the other thread Daniel Esq 2, I had forgotten Starewicz too until reading that thread.

There is a Japanese short piece that floats around on YouTube a lot called Mr Ando Of The Forest. It's quite funny and strange. When that thread came up about humanism being looked down upon, I think of that animation and the funny way a fish says "humanism".

anyone ever see lullaby to the big sleep (nido to mezamenu komori uta)? totally wild and amazing short from harada hiroshi. deals with bullying, the construction of an airport, lefty anti-govt views, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. this is one ANGRY movie. greeeeeeeat soundtrack too.

possibly drawn by one person? is that even possible? I read it was intense labor of love (hate?) but I never really found concrete info on it, so don't take my word for it.

hiroshi also did an adaptation of suehiro maruo's midori freak show manga. he's the guy zorn used for all the naked city art. haven't worked myself up to watch that one yet, sounds brutal.

Robert the flag post is sort of for serious transgressions and sort of - because the system means nobody ever really suffers for it - a way for inveterate drunks like myself to let off steam when I violently disagree with a premise, or because somebody likes something terrible, or because i have a toothache. so it's kind of a joke really and i look forward to reading all the posi contributions to yr thread as long as i can ignore the specious "art vs vulgar commerce" distinctions

peace

oh and i flagged imago while i'm on for dissing Michael Rosen

I've no beef with this thread really but it's funny that we've just had a period of particularly thoughtful & intelligent threads about mainstream animation and suddenly BUN DISNEY pops up in new answers

I've been enjoying the Disney threads, I should have thought how this might have seemed like a reaction against them. I'll go over and apologize.
Sorry to Noodle Vague for my dismissive oversimplifications.

flag posted everyone on this thread for experimental reasons.

i watched Street of Crocodiles yesterday for the first time and loved it! its atmosphere is similar to Eraserhead and especially David Lynch's earlier shorts, like The Grandmother.

Robert no worries, to be clear my tongue was halfway in my cheek thru-out

Did RAG contribute to the ilx animation poll? If not, maybe check out the discussion/results threads:

Animated Creatures: ilx animation poll nomination thread (closes June 10th!)
Animated Creatures: ilx animated film voting thread (polls close TUESDAY JULY 3RD, 8 PM EDT)
Animated Creatures: ILX's top 100 animated films (results thread)

I will say that if you realise your premise is specious and then spend most of your first post giving loopholes to things that don't fit, perhaps you should just do away with the inflammatory premise before hitting submit?

tbf the thread title is p funny

And most long thread titles can do one imo so there is that

I'm supposed to be getting ready for the second half of an all-day exam but felt I should pop in to stick up for Jan Lenica, Walerian Borowczyk (together and separately) and (depending on whether you consider him an animator) early Zbigniew Rybczyński. Boro's "Jeux des Anges" is one of the most eerily beautiful things ever.

Also nthing the praise for Yuasa- Mind Game, Kaiba, Cat Soup, etc. I'm excited as hell about the AT episode, but the Ping Pong anime is welcome news to me- Yuasa adapting Taiyo Matsumoto!

Speaking of Matsumoto, Michael Arias' film of Tekkonkinkreet is well worth your time. It suffers from the Akira problem, albeit not *quite* as acutely (it's easier to condense a single giant brick of manga int a feature film than a long-running serial that hadn't, IIRC, even concluded yet at the time it was adapted) and it can be quite sentimental but for sheer visual impact almost nothing can match it. And the sentimentality works well in places- the B-plot about the low-level yakuza working for the alien theme park mogul almost comes across like one of Miike's less gonzo gangster narratives.

I found this mentioned in the experimental film thread and really love it, so here's a youtube of Tusalava for the animation snobs: Tusalava

Thanks for those threads Emily, hopefully soon internet will be fixed and I can watch YouTube videos easier. I can only really be very picky because there is so much stuff and so little time.

These links had quite a few of the things I was aiming for with this thread. First is a video of all the animators and second is a recommended listing with images.
http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/video-100-masters-of-animated-short-films
http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/100-masters-of-animated-short-films-part-one-disney-barta-cohl-and-22-others

I've seen clips of Mind Game, I thought there might be an English subtitled DVD by now but I've heard something is preventing that from happening.

I partially made the thread to talk up these guys, so here I go. I was watching a lot of this last summer on YouTube binges and it made me feel really damn good, the way you'd hope a piece of creativity should make you feel.

GYORGY KOVASZNAI
Most of his short films use a technique where he gradually layers up globs of thick colourful paint. I'm really in awe of his best work. Apparently he was extremely different from the surrounding art scenes of the time. He did a bizarre hour long musical romantic comedy that didn't use much paint layering but did use other odd techniques, I watched it without subtitles and still enjoyed it a lot.

KEITA KUROSAKA
Easiest thing to find is his video for Dir En Grey's "Agitated Sceams Of Maggots". There is an uncut version that has somehow stayed on YouTube, featuring graphic content that many may find really disturbing, but his gorgeous soft rendering style makes it all a lot more palatable for many people (he talked about this in an interview).
He had a full length film out a while ago called Midori-ko (not to be confused with the Maruo adaptation) that looks really amazing, took him something like a decade to draw it. I think you might be able to import it from his site. Frustratingly, it hasn't had very wide showings.

NIKOLAI SEREBRYAKOV
I got my first taste of his work at school seeing his Macbeth episode of Shakespeare Animated (a BBC project full of Russian animators, you can get in on DVD but it's all on YouTube too, some really good stuff), it really blew me away with the weird unsteady shifting visuals. There used to be a really amazing cubist/surrealist short film on YouTube by him that looked like kind of a philosophical outpouring, I'd really love to see it again.
There is an easy to find stop-motion short about a wooly creature that changes the fortunes of its new owner.

IDEYA GARANINA
My favourite by her is called something like "Poor Lisa", a really gorgeous sepia blurred piece with sad looking models, it got taken down from video sites along with hundreds of other Russian stuff because a company called something like Funtik owns them , but they seemingly offer no alternate ways to view this stuff, so fans and creators were angered and have been reuploading more cautiously.
There is a full length version of Kipling's Cat Who Walked By Itself, it goes through loads of animation techniques, extremely impressive.

ALLISON SCHULNIK
A brilliant painter who uses very thickly layered paint but claymation for short films. Mostly pale mucky yet beautiful looking people, clowns and creatures. She did official Grizzly Bear videos, an unofficial Scott Walker and a couple of other things. I think she's a fucking genius, one of many underexposed great artists today.

Anyone know what Quay brothers have been doing in recent years?

http://www.awn.com/news/qa-director-michal-socha-discusses-new-simpsons-couch-gag

one of the Ping Pong animators has been tweeting his rough sketches, i'm always fascinated by this kind of stuff http://twitter.com/bahijd

http://abload.de/img/c218a_genga-akebx.gif

There is supposed to be an option to buy Kovasznai's films on a collection here but I can't find it.
http://www.kovasznaigyorgy.hu/

From the thread about DVD availability...

Just found that L'Ange/The Angel is available at this store, along with a short film collection for the same animator.
http://britishanimationawards.com/

Midori-Ko can be found at the official site with English subtitle options but I don't feel confident about buying from a Japanese language site.
http://www.midori-ko.com

after loving space dandy + his adventure time ep i'm really interested in checking out more masaaki yuasa. what should i see next?

mindgame!!

ping pong the animation is also GREAT

didn't realize he's working on space dandy now. cool! still haven't watched it since I heard s1 was so/so

is his adventure time ep streaming somewhere?

here?

ah, thanks, have been on the lookout for that.

and doubling down on my mind game recommendation. p sure you'll dig it going by that adventure time ep. character designs and the look in general took me some getting used to but it's really fluid, lots of extreme camera movement, w/lots of drastic stylistic shifts. just a joy to watch once I got acclimated.

mind game (mindgame?) is one of the best films i've ever seen in any medium

Is "A Cat in Paris" (currently on netflix) worth watching?

it's ok.

Ha, I was a big fan of the live action Ping Pong movie, haven't seen the manga/anime, definitely wanna check that out

xpost Looks beautiful. Torn between renting (and supporting it that way) and streaming it when it comes to Criterion (and supporting it that way).

Flow won the animated Golden Globe on Sunday - first indie film to do so, first Latvian film to be nominated for ANY Globe — and I’m hoping for an Oscar nom to push it back into theatres for a week to catch again. (Have been sending international release date FYIs to ppl since seeing it first time.)

Nightmare on Christmas style knock-off.

It’s some beyond-next-level snobbery to be mad at the director/co-writer/co-developer of Nightmare Before Christmas for originating, co-writing and directing a film with a style that reminds you of Nightmare Before Christmas.

I had no idea it was made by the guy that directed Nightmare Before Christmas, so sue me.

I still think the movie sucked and I don't see how that makes me a snob.

apparently I'm an animation snob.

I liked Flow a lot.

Ah. I'm really bad with names. I couldn't have told you the name of the guy that directed Nightmare Before Xmas, only that it wasn't Tim Burton.

It wasn't just that it seemed like a Nightmare ripoff, it was cheap looking and clunky. I liked no aspect of this movie. The fact that Henry Selick directed it makes it even worse because I would have expected something better from him.

Maybe he wasn't given the right amount of time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f19hF7-nT8g

Flow was wonderful. For the most part I try to buy Criterions that aren't on the Channel, but I'll be getting the Janus Contemporaries disc of this one. (I guess Flow will be in the permanent collection?)

I did a lil lol at the reference to that Fast Show sketch in the new Wallace & Gromit

Hell YES.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/03/oscar-flow-best-animated-feature

Gwen And The Book Of Sand from 1985. New to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKqTT4-f6ao

I really loved FLOW. Truly magical.

Haven't seen. How badly will I cry?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC96jCkUVl8
I posted a segment of this years ago but here's the whole thing. The Lubos Fiser music absolutely crushes me, just incredible

https://archive.org/details/the-international-tournee-of-animation-vol.-4-1991

Despite the URL, this is six volumes of the series of animated shorts, 1988-1994. I had the first two...some really great stuff, though the rips from VHS are pretty mediocre. Csaba Varga's "Augusta" claymation pieces are sentimental favorites.

That's really cool ty

This Soviet claymation take on "Little Red Riding Hood" is pretty rad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofQIK3FlOZ0

Anyone seen this? Worth seeking out?

https://deafcrocodile.com/products/the-tragedy-of-man-standard-edition

It's good but nowhere near as beautiful as Son Of The White Mare

The late Run Wrake's YT channel has been very busy lately

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oF23xbTkFk

While we wait on the follow-up to Flow, a delightful thing from its director involving his own recently adopted little cat:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DT2-iAoDSRp/

Real animation snobs doubtless already know this, but this short (and the substack that posted it) are A++ delightful.

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/a-film-for-all-times