John Canemaker Screening

           There was a special lecture with a special guest; John Canemaker who is the Oscar awarded animator in MEDP 160 class. At the lecture, two animations of Canemaker were screened. One was the Confession of the Stardreamer and the other was the Moon and the Son: an Imagined Conversation.

          

           Both of the animations were amazing. The story is great but the thing that most stunned me was that the illustration used for each cut. Not the recent animations majorly done by computer works, all the illustration that screened were drawn (or painted) by hand on the paper in old fashioned way. Canemaker did not limit the way to represent his story by using various types of the medium in his illustration and colors. His organic process of making animation gives the animation life and vividness. In addition, the hand drawing delivers the sense of humanism, I mean by the feeling of the pencil line and brush stroke the animation alters the mood of the story even though it contains heavy dark stories.

 

           I remember some scenes that use the symbolic representations really well I though. One is the way the narrator’s father was depicted as a pointy arrow that represents his temper in the early of the film. Moreover, another memorable scene was that the father’s big fist heats the table hard and the son is scared of him and hiding under the table. It depicts that the relationship between the father and the son. After the screening, we had discussion time. Canemaker defines the animation is a technique that allows live action and it can be used in any kind of genre. He emphasizes that the reason why we use this technique in the work. To him, needs of animation is to be beyond the physical representation. He uses various mediums in variety of style by concepts for particular scene. By using symbolic representation and cliché, it conceptualizes ideas and brings it to the physical form.