Cartoon Saloon Inspiration

Found some lovely animated snippets yesterday from Cartoon Saloon who made The Secret of Kells (2009) on their channel on Vimeo. The first one has a rough, textured pencil quality to the lines which you see rarely in 'cleaned' animation. Although the style is different, the line quality is very similar to what I am aiming for so is useful reference. The second I find very simple and sweet and features a young girl and a tree, so again, ideal inspiration for my film.


From Darkness - Promotional Trailer (By Cartoon Saloon) 

Greasai Blog (By Cartoon Saloon) 

Case Study: Father and Daughter

Last Monday, our group seminar did a case study of Michael Dudok de Wit's Father and Daughter (2000) looking at visual narrative and his construction of shots to tell his simple but powerful story.

Coincidentally, Father and Daughter is one of the inspirations for my film; its' use of non-dialogue driven narrative, emotive plot and visual poetry is exactly the kind of ideals I'm striving for.

So I will outline the use of composition and visual storytelling that Dudok de Wit uses to tell his story in order to benefit my own.

Father and Daughter Case Study

• An impression of 3D space through simple line drawings and textured backgrounds - despite inherent 'flatness' of design and a linear 'back and forth' narrative, a whole world is opened up to us in the space of 8 minutes. This is partly achieved by the sense of depth and through numerous cutaways (even seemingly unnecessary) that display great expanses of land, sky or the local bird wildlife that help believability of this world

• High contrast style creates deep, dark shadows and bright open spaces - calm, light, open shots give way to intense, dark, closed compositions and vice versa. This increases the emptiness and loneliness of the Daughter until friends and family fill up her life again. Often new abstract shapes can be seen through the nearly black/white image

• Balanced vs imbalanced: early shots are symmetrical or mirrored to show balance. Later, diagonal perspective, shadows and tilted camera angle shows imbalance

• Monochrome colour (warm sepia browns and oranges) suggests a nostalgic story from years ago

• A lack of close-ups concentrate focus on the action and scope of the world, but does not detract from emotion of characters, instead it creates a poetic type of viewing and allows you to put yourself in the shoes of the characters. For much of the film, characters are mere silhouettes, almost a blank canvas to place yourself

• Many shots are repeated (girl revisiting waterside throughout her life) and yet it does not feel repetitive because changes in characters and shot angles indicate the passage of time as well as weather (wind/rain affecting the Daughter) and the change of seasons

• Eventually the bicycle that was initially a method of transport, becomes a metaphor for the passage of time and growing old: one shot shows the young Daughter struggling with it up a hillside, and later as an old woman, she tries to stand the bike, only to have it fall over several times. The most obvious instance is the bicycle wheel appearing over the old woman at the end of the film, as it resembles a clock. In addition, the first person the girl meets by herself is an old woman--practically a prediction for the end of the film

• Visual mirroring: at the end before Father and Daughter embrace, they step towards each other and pause for a moment. Their lengthy shadows suddenly directly resemble the two long, elegant trees by the riverside. When they embrace, the shadows becomes one

Storybook Inspiration: Natalie Russell / Kristiana Parn

I found another author with a lovely storybook too, this one about a little white rabbit.

"Moon Rabbit" by Natalie Russell

I love the style, I think it's adorable and the simplicity really lends itself to the story and cuteness of characters, even without expressive faces.

Because of this, I stumbled upon another artist (Kristiana Parn) who paints on wood using acrylic. She paints lovely little woodland critters!

Kristiana Parn - http://www.kristianaparn.com/

I think they tell such poetic tales of passing seasons (through the use of the trees and colour) and the relationship between animals and nature. I find them very beautiful in their use of shape and colour and will be referring back to them in the creation of my film.

Storybook Inspiration: Oliver Jeffers

Looked at some children's books in Waterstones yesterday and found some really nice titles that have really good visual inspiration. My film is going to be suitable for and aimed at children, but also needs to be entertaining for older audiences too, so this is a good start for ideas.

"Stuck" By Oliver Jeffers

I was first drawn to this book by the simple tree and colours on the cover, then the visual style of the drawings and words upon looking through the pages. I've ordered the book online so can get some scans for reference soon.

"Lost and Found" by Oliver Jeffers

I find this book very simple in execution, but the unique visual style is too compelling to ignore. It's been made into a 40 minute CGI film by Studio AKA. I hope to watch it soon for inspiration. I would have preferred to see a 2D animation, but the CGI conversion of the designs is quite interesting. They've stripped down the detail which is good to see, but could have been pushed further:

Here is a trailer for the film.

And a great interview of the author in his studio with some of his work:

This is one of the many style inspirations for my film... more to come soon!