Recent Animations

Alec Bray

I love animations.  And a  couple of them have come my way recently.

The first is an Advert! 

It is for the Great Western Railway, and apparently there are going to be a whole series of these adverts, based on the adventures of Enid Blyton’s classic children’s favourites, "The Famous Five". 

The first adventure  takes them through the stunning backdrop of the South West and Wales as part of GWR’s new marketing campaign for the Intercity Express Train (er…  that’s the Hitachi dual mode (electric and diesel) trains to replace the HSTs or 125s.)

Advert here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sQvlBPFZgE

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A nice representation of the bridge at Maidenhead:

     
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but I’m not sure where this is…

     
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and of course the advert goes where no Hitachi Inter City express yet goes.

That animation is what I would term a “traditional animation” – and with artwork (and Fonts) reminiscent of the illustrations of the books of the 1950s (and I think worked better in the cinema than on the telly) .

The other animation is "Loving Vincent".  I went to see it on Tuesday (17th October 2017).  Having read a lot about it, I was somewhat concerned that it would be "jerky" as they apparently shot each frame twice, giving an effective "picture change rate" of 12 frames a second (and by artists, not be trained animators).  However, I thought it was very good. To keep the train theme, here is a still from the film:

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On some of the sequences, you could see that the artist had erased part of the previous frame and repainted the new piece: one sequence was of the windmill, and even on the still you can probably make out the rework:

     
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but it didn’t matter! 

I wonder whether this film should be called an "oilymation"  (that is, like "claymation"?)

I don’t think the film would have been as effective if done as a straightforward animation of Van Gogh’s pictures: there was definitely a different feel to the pictures and I think it worked very well indeed.

Official trailer here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0oHf_yoQec

Mind you, I still prefer "Cameraman – The Movie"!

 

ianfootersmall