"Studie Nr.7" (1930) Oskar Fischinger

Oskar Fischinger's life and work are illustrative of the complex relationship between art and commerce. Born in Germany in 1900, Fischinger studied many crafts and arts, from organ-building to engineering and oil-painting. He is credited with many moving-image innovations, including a technique for wax-slice stop-frame photography and a coloured-image producing organ called the Lumigraph. As an animator, he is best known for his visual music films, of which Studie Nr.7 is an early example.

Throughout his life, Fischinger strived to work as an independent. He believed:

"The creative artist of the highest level always works at his best alone, moving far ahead of his time. And this shall be our basis: that the Creative Spirit shall be unobstructed through realities or anything that spoils his absolute pure creation."
(Fischinger, 1947).

Whilst this was the ideal towards he strived, Fischinger was not above taking commissions and commercial work. In 1940 he contributed to the visual development of the Toccata and Fugue sequence for Walt Disney's Fantasia. Although he left the project disenchanted with the industrial nature of production at Disney, his influence can be recognised in the finished film:

Bibliography
http://www.oskarfischinger.org/MyStatements.htm
retrieved 22.04.2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Fischinger
retrieved 22.04.2011

"Muto", Blu, 2008

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This piece received a wide web airing when it debuted on Vimeo in 2008. I've included it as a sample of the kind of animation that can be made without expensive overheads (studio, lights, distribution deals, etc.)

The artist Blu comes from Bologna, Italy, has been making wall art publicly since 2001, has made wall art in many countries, and works with house paint and roller brushes.

In other pieces on his site, the artist incorporates industrial objects, sand, and clay into the animated narrative.

References

Artist's website, retrieved (16/08/10)

Wikipedia - Blu (artist), retrieved (16/08/10)

"Dots", Norman McLaren (1940)

"Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn".

McLaren's aphorism is neatly illustrated by his short film "Dots". The individual frames of the work communicate very little, but seen in quick succession they form a series of lively, playful movements set to music. By releasing himself from the need to draw a character or object, he was able to create a charicature of motion itself.

Mc
laren was an experimental film-maker at his most prolific in the 30's, 40's and 50's. His work for the GPO Film Unit (UK), National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and UNESCO, has earned him the reputation as one of the most influential animators of the last century. He worked with a wide variety of techniques including painting, drawing, pixellation, stop-motion, optical printing, and multiple exposures. His pixellated anti-war parable Neighbours (1952) won him the Best Documentary, Short Subjects at the 1953 Academy Awards.

"Dots" was made by painting directly onto clear frames of film. Interestingly, the music was created in the same way, painting directly into the area on the film strip usually reserved for the soundtrack. The film was created at the request of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, later the Guggenheim, in New York.


(Frame enlargements from "Dots")

References

Paul Wells -
Animation: Alternative Methods (retrieved 25.09.09)

Bill Schaffer - The Riddle of the Chicken: The Work of Norman McLaren (retrieved 25.09.09)


Robert Koehler - Some Aspects of Norman McLaren (retrieved 25.09.09)

BBC Radio - Dots and Loops (retrieved 03.10.09)