Other Animation Manifestos...

Thinking on from last week's Symposium discussion with John Parry on 'A Manifesto for Animated Filmmakers in the 21st Century', Donald Taylor Black has asked about other 'animation manifestos'. I responded immediately that most animators don't feel compelled to consider their practice identity in terms of manifesto creation, so animation manifestos are rare. Svankmajer's 1999 'Decalogues' is already quoted in my dissertation draft, but a cursory google search throws up a selection of other animation manifestos...

Walt Disney's 1995 8-page 'letter to himself' (actually a letter to Chouinard's Don Graham) lays out the fundamentals for 2D classically drawn animation pedagogy - how to teach animators to draw better, to analyse action systematically and to build comedy into animation performance. A seminal document, even if Uncle Walt can be forgiven for universally describing animators as 'men'.

Walt image from lettersofnote.com

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/how-to-train-animator-by-walt-disney.html

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A very different approach fro 1960's Japan 'The Three-Person Animation Manifesto: Toward the Creation of New Images' By Kuri Yoji, Manabe Hiroshi, and Yanagihara Ryohei. 'New processes and technologies must go hand in hand with new modes of consciousness. Therein lies the path to the creation of truly new images.'

http://post.at.moma.org/sources/3/publications/72

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Skip forward to Kyiv in 1986, where Aleksandr Tatarskiy wrote his 6,800 word 'Making Animation' manifesto.

Tatarskiy quotes pedagogue M. Gurevich in the journal "Children's Literature" [Detskaya literatura],  "...in today's production of animation a strange, yet characteristic trait is readily noticeable: a gaping chasm between the forays of select seekers and the routine production of most others, between the flood and the works which are marked with the stamp of individuality." Tatarskiy is very much arguing for the 'select seekers'. "Animated filmmaking is practically the first art form which is encountered by a child." He also points out some of the parallel track 'siloing' which has always formed the environment through which animation and animators must navigate... "but here's the tragedy: our animation, on one hand, and artistic criticism, pedagogy, psychology and sociology, on the other, seem to move through completely different spacetime boundaries, and they never meet..."

Igor Kovalyov and Aleksandr Tatarskiy from niffiwan

http://niffiwan.livejournal.com/9422.html

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And from Stuttgart two years ago (April 2013), a manifesto arguing that German commissioning bodies (especially broadcasters) to be clear and transparent in relation to budgets, programming and commissioning. This manifesto also calls for support for feature animation as a form, for adult animation and the maintenance of 'a diversity of cultural identity.'

http://www.ag-animationsfilm.com/stuttgart-manifesto-english-version/

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And finally, Svankmajer's 1999 'Decalogues', including...

Remember there is only one form of ‘poetry’. The opposite of poetry is professional expertise. 

Surrender to your obsessions. There is nothing better.

Use animation as a magical operation. Animation isn’t about making inanimate objects move, it is about bringing them to life.

Keep exchanging dreams for reality and vice versa. There are no logical transitions.

The deeper you enter into the fantastic story the more realistic you need to be in the detail.

Imagination is subversive, because it puts the possible against the real. That’s why you should always use your wildest imagination.

Always pick themes that you feel ambivalent about. This ambivalence has to be strong (deep) enough so you can walk on its edge and not fall to either side or even both at the same time.

Cultivate your creativity as a form of self-therapy. Such an anti-aesthetic attitude brings creativity closer towards the gates to freedom. If there is any purpose at all in creativity it is that it liberates us.

Always put the continuity of your inner vision or psychological automatism before an idea. An idea, even the greatest one, shouldn’t ever be a sole motivation for wanting to make a film.

And Svankmajer's parting suggestion is that such 'rules' are there to be broken, with perhaps one exception...

Never subordinate your personal creativity to anything but freedom.

https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-3-issue-1-spring-2006/decalogue/​ 

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I could also quote our friends and IADT graduate Eamonn O' Neill from his April 2014 IADT AnimSoc talk... Perhaps not quite a manifesto, but still some key human and animation learnings for us all!

99.9% of engineers do NOT make guitar pedals...

Be transparent (be open and honest with people)... (this actually comes from Eimhin)

It HAS to be human!

Make rules, set boundaries and start thinking about your work... Rules shouldn't be arbitrary, they should be based on the emotional intent of your film...

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should... Be economic.

Have BALLS - be scared - safe is boring.

Personal is universal! The more personal it is, the more universal it is.

Make work and show people. (get it out there, you don't know who's watching)

from eamonnoneill.ie

You get the work that you DO!

BAD experiences are STILL experiences.

There's politics and bullshit EVERYWHERE!

The grass is not always greener.

Reach out, ask questions, be a sponge.

You make your own luck (good luck follows hard work, work hard and get lucky)...

Learn always, because skills are brillz...

GO for stuff, you have nothing to lose!

It's okay NOT to know!

Don't plateau (just keep moving forward, keep trying to progress)

Say thanks - don't be a dick to people, there's enough dickheads EVERYWHERE!

http://quindpdp.blogspot.ie/2014/04/eamonn-o-neill-iadt-animsoc.html

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My Research MA Symposium! Success!

Thanks to ALL the participants in yesterday's morning symposium for my research MA! Special thanks to John Parry MA RCA for delivering a probing and provocative keynote speech - your hard work was really appreciated John! 'animism' and 'confidence' were two central themes for me!

The discussion afterwards (on 'A Manifesto for Animated Filmmakers in the 21st Century') was extremely valuable and lucrative, clarifying and 'framing' many of my research findings and discoveries and posing questions and threads for future exploration. Some really considered, heart-felt contributions to the debate! We started the manifesto ideas with Laura's proposal of 'failure' and ended with Michael Algar's telling and decisive 'so what?' observation about 'disruptive change'.

DQ, Donald, John Parry and Elaine

Thanks again to Elaine Sisson, Donald Taylor Black, John Parry, Andrew Power, Marion Palmer, Mark Riordan, Brendan Rooney, Derek Laffan, Katy Goodhue, Michael Algar, Steve Woods, Laura Venables. Also DL832 Animation 3rd years Fiona, Eleanor, Ruth, Caoimhe, Fionn, Laura, Laura Jask, Morwenna, Kayleigh, Komila, Glen, Sean and Sophie. If I've forgotten anyone (or if I don't know your name) apologies and thanks!

Also thanks to Aidan Hickey, Edith Pieperhoff, Eimhin Macnamara, Michael Connerty, and Tara Ryan who couldn't make it on the day. And remembering the late Jimmy Murakami who did the first interview for my research - we miss him!

Next, finishing the dissertation and delivering the 30 minute rough-cut of the reflective documentary before the summer - thanks for all the kind comments and suggestions about the documentary slugs I screened yesterday.

I can see light at the end of the tunnel! Thanks to my learning network!

http://www.incite-online.net/jonasmekas.html

UWE Bristol - Animation

Thanks to John G. Parry for his invite to and guided tour around Bristol's University of The West of England Bower Ashton campus. John also did a very valuable video interview for my Research masters. In return, I did a one-hour presentation for his students about animation in Ireland - hope it was of some assistance to them!

John Parry

Some real potential for future student and Institute hookups...

http://courses.uwe.ac.uk/W615/2014

Internet Research Methods - Submission 2 - blogpost

‘Has digital production and digital distribution (through Youtube etc) fundamentally altered animation?’

The world wide web is 25 years old today. Huge internet platforms – Facebook, Youtube and Google are now dominating the lives of millions. This presents enormous challenges for creatives, especially for media creatives like animators. Since the earliest days over 100 years ago, ours has been a broadcast model – we make animations in order to screen them (in cinemas or through tv) to broader audiences. As broadcasters, we spoke (through our films) and the audiences passively viewed. We rarely met or interacted with our audiences. The mechanism of commissioning and funding of our productions was usually professionally based, highly selective – even elitist.

Now, with digital production, we can make animations using cheap laptops, shareware software. Through the internet, we can distribute our videos instantaneously across the globe, reaching millions of viewers – if the videos prove popular (that popularity being determined by their success in (apparently) impartial search engines) … And our audience can respond immediately, messaging us directly with comments (good, bad and ugly). Even when our audience doesn’t contact us, their digital trails are gathered and fed back to us through Youtube Analytics, telling us who they are, where they were from, how long they watched, what device they were watching from – the data generated is endless.

But wait! 6 years old children can create videos (even animations) for the internet. Crazy Jihadists on a mountain in Yemen can create video for the internet (and can gain millions of followers too).

But has all of this digital and internet opportunity fundamentally changed animation? In conducting my first interviews with animation professionals, the consensus seems to be ‘no’. Animator Steve Woods is adamant that the practice of animation remains unaltered…

My stock answer is, the practice hasn’t changed at all. What I’m saying is that ehm, when a piece of technology is invented, or a new format is preferred, it tends to make other formats and technologies redundant, but that wouldn’t be the case in animation.

Steve’s argument, is that the craft of animation – even with the pervasion and cultural dominance of digital media and the internet – maintains a continuity. New technology and new digital or internet opportunities or challenges merely add to what Steve terms ‘the animation storehouse’…

And all the other technologies which were invented, like cutout animation, which is a very primitive form of puppet animation, and sand animation, or any other technologies which have come along, all add to the treasure house. You know, they don’t make the currency redundant, the previous currency redundant, it’s just more eh, treasure being added to the treasure chest that is animation.

There’s another danger too… As professional creatives, we imagine that it’s important that we bring our vision, often our very personal vision of the world to audiences and that we do this (if possible) over a sustained life-long career. Too much internet video is one-off, amateur, chancy, almost random. Internet creatives who pride themselves on search engine manipulation and the generation of multiple viral videos tend to manipulatively and slavishly play to established audiences. As creatives, we still cling to creative freedom, to the right to make statements which we want to make and which will find, surprise, entertain or move new audiences. There’s still a lot of work to be done, even if it’s merely adding to Steve Wood’s ‘treasure chest that is animation’.

BBC article on Tim Berners Lee and the 25^th anniversary of the world wide web…

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26540635

Maynooth, Cintiqs and Art of/and Psychology Seminar

Busy day yesterday! First, I presented the latest version of 'anatomy of an internet series' to Barry McCabe's final year Digital Media students in Kairos in Maynooth. Thanks to Barry for the invite again!

Returned to IADT around lunchtime to discover that Dee Mc was the first of our 4th year students to get a Cintiq working! Later in the day, Anita emails me to say...

'I've been using it for an hour or so and I've done more than I'd have done in a day on a tablet (And it looks infinitely better too!)'

Woohoo! Success!

In the afternoon, in the Drawing Project in Dun Laoghaire, Brendan Rooney and Nicola Fox Hamilton present 'Art of/and Psychology' seminar.

Psychology of engaging with Film, Art and other visuals.

Dr. Brendan Rooney and Nicola Fox Hamilton (IADT Lecturers), introduce and explore some ways in which psychologists can explore human engagement with film, art, graphic or other emotional information. What do we know about the way humans engage with this art and entertainment and how can we apply this knowledge?

The session discusses the aims of psychology of art, film and design. Explore areas such as persuasive, emotional or universal design. Using research on film, the session will explore the interaction between our automatic emotional responses towards film (or art) and our thinking about the film (or art). Followed by some collaborative discussion and Q&A.

Excellent presentations and a pointer to future interdisciplinary potentials for our institute.

Tara Ryan's ALIGN thought for the week...

Your Align Learning Outcomes Thought for the Week – Happy New Week, January 27th, 2014.

cartoon
From:  http://www.assuringlearning.com/

  
And for those of you who like words – here are some other thoughts: 

Learning Outcomes, Qualifications Frameworks and Quality Assurance
“It is almost a truism to say that the absorption and application of the concept of learning outcomes is the most recognisable feature of the recent Europe-wide growth in qualifications frameworks. The notion of what a qualification now represents has been fundamentally reoriented in this process – the EQF Recommendation, for example, defines a qualification as the ‘formal outcome of an assessment and validation process which is obtained when a competent body determines that an individual has achieved learning outcomes to given standards’. The architecture of qualification frameworks (level descriptors, individual qualifications descriptors etc.), at the national and European levels, are also invariably constructed as generic or specific statements of learning outcomes (knowledge, skill and competence).

And yet learning outcomes are not the preserve of qualifications frameworks alone.  The use of learning outcomes to define the expectations of learners and workers predates the recent growth in European NQFs by many years; In the context of the development of the Bologna Process, it is noteworthy that it was a group of quality assurance agencies, known collectively as the Joint Quality Initiative, who undertook much of the groundwork in specifying learning outcomes for higher education qualifications. The group’s key output, the so-called ‘Dublin Descriptors’ – generic learning outcomes descriptors for Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral Qualifications – would eventually become the centrepiece of the QF-EHEA.

In tandem with this work, quality assurance agencies also played a key role, through the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education’s (ENQA) development of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG), which provided for the development, publication and assessment of explicit intended learning outcomes, as a key element of the internal quality assurance of higher education institutions.

Since the adoption of the ESG and QF-EHEA some countries, including for example, Denmark  and Sweden, have introduced formal implementation systems for their higher education qualification frameworks, in which national quality assurance agencies play a central role in evaluating and assessing the outcomes of study programmes. Reflecting a growing awareness of the increasing role of quality agencies as key contributors to NQF implementation, ENQA has also taken the step of organising a number of seminars on the theme of qualifications frameworks and their relationship to quality assurance.  These points are well made in Referencing National Qualifications Levels to the EQF - European Qualifications Framework Series Note 3 (2nd edn., forthcoming 2013).” (Murray, J. 2013)

http://www.eu2013.ie/media/eupresidency/content/documents/QQI-Presidency-Paper-Publication-(12-March).pdf

Quality Assurance in Qualifications Frameworks An issues paper to support the Dublin Conference, organised by Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), on behalf of the Irish Presidency of the European Council, with the support of the European Commission Authored by Dr Jim Murray (Ireland) March 2013

AIT Capstone - 19th June 2013 - and a revelation!

July - just catching up on blogposts. Back on the 19th of June, we returned to AIT for the 2nd session of the T+L Capstone module. Great session! I feel this module will allow me finally to PLAN my professional development over the next few years.

Whilst doing the Learning Outcome Mapping Exercise for the module, I had something of a revelation, realising that the LIN T+L modules have been a most unusual postgraduate experience, because the learning from the modules has from the outset, plugged straight back into our professional practice to the benefit of our students. Quite unlike most 'normal' postgraduate activity.

My Animation MOOC Proposal

For my sins, I decided to put together an IADT application to run an animation MOOC - a Massive Open Online Course - with Iversity in Autumn 2013. We're in the public voting phase, up against hundreds of courses from (mainly German) institutes and universities - subjects ranging from international politics to remote sensing for earth observation. A very interesting process whether we succeed or not. Please log on and VOTE for the MOOC to get it through this phase!

https://moocfellowship.org/submissions/animation-beyond-the-bouncing-ball

2013 Corona Fastnet Film Festival (Schull County Cork) from 22nd to 26th May

The 2013 Corona Fastnet Film Festival (in Schull County Cork from 22^nd to 26^th May) has invited me to look at ‘aspects of Irish Animation’. I will be chairing a round-table discussion of Irish Animation studio heads and practitioners. We’re hoping to get Boulder Media’s Rob Cullen, Brown Bag Film’s Darragh O’ Connell and possibly Paul Young from Cartoon Saloon. The discussion will be entitled ‘Irish Animation – Boom or Bubble?’
I’ll also be doing my presentation ‘The Anatomy of an Internet Series’ and one of my stopmotion short films will be featured in the Festival’s prestigious ‘Horsebox’ screening booth, the film interpreted by local artist Deirdre Cairns. Finally, models, props and characters from my stopmotion short films, TV series and other projects will be displayed in themed shop windows around the village of Schull. I’m exhausted already!

Masters by Research Approved!

Friday 19th April! Approval letter arrives from IADT Registrar Marian O' Sullivan - My Research Masters (with practice component) is approved. Starts immediately (before the summer anyhow...)

Flu and Moocs

I had such great intentions for the Easter break and then I was floored by some flu bug, completely flattened, felled to a persistently geriatric state. Two weeks on, and I'm realising that I'm still not recovered from the bout.

In the meantime, some excellent guidance on how best to exploit the wonders and potentials of moocs...

http://ryan2point0.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/10-hot-tips-for-moocers/

Revisiting Practice Research

Revisiting Practice Research Gradcam

21st March, 10.30-4.00pm

What has come to be termed Practice Based Research has been in a feature of third level and research cultures of the last 15 years. Yet it’s emergence has not been a greeted with consensus nor has it been without challenges in both its traction or implementation. Each institutional setting has performed PBR in different ways.  Across many of the institutions involved in Art and Design on the island of Ireland, PBR has been adopted at the PhD level though Level 9 is now a prospect.

In this context, GradCAM with the Learning and Education in Art and Design (LEAD) network are hosting a platform that takes stock of where we are and where we have been with regards to this emergence and its surrounding debate. It will allow for a focused discussion on the nature and problems of conducting PBR in the Creative Arts, Art and Design and Media at this current moment. We are inviting a number of partners and contributors across the network to present position papers on what they understand by PBR or Practice Led Research and all of the permutations in between. However, rather than only leave it at this top level discussion for senior staff and supervisors, we also seek presentations from researchers recently graduated that ground and anchor the actualities of PBR in these institutions.

I like the way the descriptor has refused to describe such research as 'practice based' or 'practice led'. An incredibly interesting discussion and an obvious sense that IADT is trailing far behind in this postgraduate area.