Emily Ward

After examining Auteur theory, I would like to suggest that director and animator Mamoru Hosoda should be considered an auteur.

Technical competence: Hosoda has been working as an animator between 1991- 2024, demonstrating over thirty years of animation experience. His successes in his freelance work leading to the creation of his own animation studio would be strong evidence of his technical competency alone, even before considering that his 2019 work Mirai was nominated in 2019 for an Academy Award for best-animated feature. His work as an animator likely positively influences his work as a director.

Personal Style: Though Mamoda’s style could be argued to follow typical conventions of Japanese anime style animation, his work is visually distinct from other anime styles, with simple characters with thin line weights and rich fully rendered backgrounds. He embraces somewhat more realistic designs for his characters, embracing the typical rather than highly stylised characters, which is also reflected in the stories he tells.

Interior meaning: Mamoda’s narratives are deeply emotionally led, usually revolving around family stories or close interpersonal relationships, and also frequently uses futuristic or sci-fi elements on his works. There are often no distinct antagonists. Instead, the protagonists are often the makers of their problems, which adds to the more realistic style of the stories he tells- humans do not always encounter an arch-nemesis, but instead struggle because living involves struggle. 

The discussion for this week has asked us to examine an experimental short film. I’m going to discuss Shingo Tamagawa’s PUPARIA, a roughly three minute short film created over three years.

I believe this film utilises conceptual abstraction, through its open-to-interpretation plot, visual metaphor and uncommon creation practice. 

The film utilised intensely intricate and ornate environments, and much of the work was created using traditional media such as coloured pencils and then scanned and manipulated. The time-consuming nature of traditional media over digital emphasises the concept of visual luxury, of the blood-sweat-and-tears of creation born out of artistry rather than consumption. The environments are so ornate that I would argue it is almost impossible to absorb everything with only one watch.

 The rich, vibrant colours suggest luxury and indulgence, beauty for the sake of beauty, evocative of traditional wealth and riches with highly saturated jewel tones common throughout. My personal belief is that this film is an expression of the luxury of animation versus the consumerist pressures of modern media. The concept of a three-minute film took three years to make because the intricacy of the art is emphasised by the recurrent theme of eyes throughout the piece. 

The beautiful princely character, gawked at by a sea of unflinching, staring masses, ignoring the beautiful scenery behind them evokes feelings of a thirst for constant new media.

The man gazes down into the infinite corridor and is seemingly overwhelmed by the massive stature of the gargantuan insect that approaches, possibly a symbol of the cost of endless creation.  The recurrent symbolism of butterflies/moths, famously short-living creatures but loved for their beauty, I believe emphasises this concept.

 The fast, jingling music carries through each scene, removing any sort of distinction between scenes. This makes the piece as a whole feel almost like one concurrent moment, adding to the overwhelm of senses, the instinct to absorb everything in one look. The watcher is carried away before they can possibly absorb everything, the music evocative of the pace we’re carried through.

 Many other parts of the short film are unclear to me in terms of message or intention, but I find every element on the screen so rich in detail that I’m encouraged to look at something new with every watch. The level of detail in every shot of the work is a testament to the concept of quality over quantity, encouraging multiple viewings to digest the disjointed plot and enjoy the artwork for what it is.

This week gave some introduction to the formal elements and the principles of art.

The formal elements, which all can be used to communicate themes or narratives, are comprised of:
– Line
– Shape
– Form
– Value
– Colour
– Space
– Texture

This discussion really encouraged me to think about works that utilise these elements. I immediately thought about Sony’s Spiderman: Across the spiderverse. A recurring theme in the film are the differences in the different spider-heroes across a multitude of universes. Instead of forcing each supposed universe into one singular art style, every universe is expressed differently, particularly with colour, values, texture, and form. 

Miles, the central character, has a classic “comic book” style, but chromatic aberrations and deeper colours express his character and environmental interest, as a kid interested in hip-hop and graffiti. He’s animated to almost look stop motion, an emphasis of his existence as a comic book character.

The art language of his universe is an extension of how he sees the world. By contrast, Gwen,  the deuteragonist who in design is portrayed as an emotionally struggling, grieving, but caring character belongs in a universe drenched in pastel colours and blurred watercolour textures. These textures erase the world around her when she emotionally implores others or when she is lost in her grief. Her outlook on the world is different to Miles’, and so is the way she’s expressed in the film.

Thirdly, Hobie, a key supporting character, has an art style punctuated by his personality and intertwined with his political stance. Deeply involved in social justice issues and British punk culture, Hobie himself exists as a collage of newspaper cutouts, stickers, scribbled markers and acidic neon. he, like the others, is expressed in the film through his art style. His movement and rhythm are different from the others, a deliberate extension of the art style he’s portrayed with. 

This discussion was useful in helping me consider the deliberate choices in art style. Not every film can employ as many different styles as Spiderverse, but every film will consider colour palettes, textures and values, along with the other formal elements and principles.

This session was an introduction to Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language. Though this is the very start of the module, I’ve started to think about the topics I could potentially investigate for the thesis at the end of the module. All of these topics are likely to change and be refined as I learn more about the module, but I’m initially interested in a few broad topics;

• The disabled as villains- how has film changed the way it represents disabled people, particularly those with physical differences, and has it improved in recent years?
• “Animation is not a genre for kids. Its a medium for art.” (Guillermo Del Toro) – Considering attitudes towards animation in the west, has animation been dubbed as a genre only for children?
• Animation as a vessel for culture- Are consumers more likely to watch media from outside of their own culture if it is animated? (Bao, Turning Red, Coco, Grave of the Fireflies, My life as Courgette as examples)

I’m interested to see how the topics listed here change (or are replaced entirely) as the module goes on.