Critical Analysis of Two Animation Pieces - Draft 2

Critical Analysis of Two Animation Pieces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljVDfgbSybA - Tom and Jerry Greatest Chases Volume 3 Dog Chase

Tom and Jerry is a classic animation and has been around since the 1940’s and was created by Hanna and Barbera. Within the scenes we see in this clip we can instantly tell it’s a drawn style of animation due to the fact that the background has been brushed and doesn’t have clean defined lines, that are typical of newer computer animated pieces that have clean crisp defined lines.

The actual piece itself while the title suggests it is no more than a chase between a cat and a dog, it uses a few of the twelve principles of animation to keep it interesting.

The main one we can pick up on here is slow out and slow in, purely because it is a chase. This also employs the use of anticipation. This is shown when Tom the cat is getting ready to run away from the dog that has turned the corner, and found him. Tom jumps away from the biting dog and hangs in the air for a minute spinning his legs before he jumps out the edge of the scene, with the dog swiftly following him. The characters are slowed down before they leave the scene because of the amount of actions that work together, so the dog biting and Tom jumping away, is the slow out before the speed up again to show that they’re leaving the scene, this also works because it creates anticipation for the audience because the action has been elongated to create tension and effect the audience to make them question what will happen next.

Within the same seen we also see the use of exaggeration along with squash and stretch. The exaggeration is seen when Tom opens his mouth to scream a lot wider than it should go, but this is then outdone by the dog who opens his jaws to almost the length of Tom before the both of them run out of the scene.
The squash and stretch is then seen at another point where, Tom who finally believes he has caught Jerry whom he has been chasing whilst avoiding the dog, goes to hit the hat Jerry is hiding under on his head with a large comic hammer, which also is another point for exaggeration. So when the hammer does finally come down on his head, it turns out he misses and hits himself in the process causing his head to squash and almost have a flat top, then once his head returns to normal shape, the top then stretches and cones in to a point, exactly where he has been hit.

Also on a smaller point there is small amounts of follow through and overlapping action, seen where toe dog finds Tom after he has tried to hit Jerry with the hammer. The follow through and overlap is found on the dog character who bounds up to them and stops, however the jowls around the bottom of his mouth move almost on a pendulum. This is also seen when the dog then jumps up and shakes his head vigorously but his jowls go in a different directions to his head turns showing the overlapping and also showing it as a secondary action.
There is a lot more examples prevalent in this piece however these are the ones that stick out the most.

However looking at this piece I have found that even though it uses the principles shown effectively, parts of the animation were lacking. For example the backgrounds are extremely blurred at certain points and some of the defining lines are indistinguishable from the characters making a large blended shape at small points in the clip. On the other hand apart from this is a very good animation for it’s time and the backgrounds can be forgiven considering they were all hand drawn.

http://youtu.be/Z7ay9YX6KKE?t=50s - Space Jam Michael Jordan goes to Looney Toons Land

Space Jam is mixed animation and live action film from 1996, created by Warner Bros. using one of their most famous cartoons the ‘Looney Toons’ which were created back in the 1930’s and still go on today.
In the clip we see Michael Jordan get sucked down a hole in to the magical world of Looney Toons Land.

This instantly opens us to follow through and overlap action and timing, also thrown in for good measure is a little bit of anticipation. Timing comes in to play first, because the audience is led to believe he is just retrieving a golf ball, then right as you think he is about to pull his hand back a small lasso pops out of the hole. This is where the anticipation come sin to play. It doesn’t grab him instantly; it stops, looks around and then pulls him straight down. Now this is where the follow through and overlap comes in to play because a dust outline is left where he was showing the audience how quickly Michael Jordan has moved down this hole.

In the next seen we see two examples of animation here the first being squash and stretch paired with slow out and then it finishes with slow in in the next scene.This is shown when Michael Jordan hits the barrier between the human world and Looney Toons land, which happens to be a large Warner Bros. logo, when he stretches it to a ridiculous amount before he pops through it and it then squashes back in to shape. This effect of having to break through the barrier also employs the slow out technique before he is then cannoned in to the ground in Looney Toon Land which is shown by an over exaggerated cloud of smoke rising in to the air once he hits the ground. However in the next scene where we see Michael again, it employs slow in to show us what is going on in that scene, which happens to be Michael sitting up and seeing Bugs Bunny.

The next example we can see properly is a mixture of techniques, those being; bounce, squash and stretch paired with secondary action. This is seen when a bouncing postbox, squashes and stretches it’s shape as it bounces on the sidewalk, but then explodes to reveal Taz who then bounces around and spins away causing the letters from the exploded postbox to flutter in the air.
The last small point in the clip is a small piece of exaggeration. This is shown when we see Daffy Duck, dressed up as a doctor, checking Michael and putting a thermometer in his mouth. The thermometer then shots up to the top before bubbling and then growing larger and exploding.

However beside all these good points there are a couple of bad points. Firstly is when Michael is first dragged down the hole. Even though he’s moving fast and the animators have given this effect they managed to make it go a little bit too fast. The background and the character are blurred the whole way, which is extremely difficult to follow and distinguish what is supposed to be happening. Furthermore the backgrounds are once again blurred and not massively well defined. Considering this was mainly a computer-generated animation as well it’s unforgivable to make the backgrounds not well defined.

So when comparing both animations against each other I would say they both have used the principles of animation in their respective pieces well, however the best one is Tom and Jerry purely because it produced a better quality animation for it’s time that is more watchable because they didn’t cut corners on certain sections like the Space Jam clip did for example when Michael Jordan is pulled in to the whole.

Sources:
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_principles.html

http://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/Warner_Bros_/Looney_Tunes/

http://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/MGM/Shorts/Tom_and_Jerry/index.html