exploring is fun!

The films we watched today in class were some of my favorites that we have watched this year. As an animation major I am just lovingggg the 'master of animation' track we have been on. It's so eye opening to see the way that animation has been done in the past, and how differently it can be done. Not just style wise, but also just how different countries interpret the art form, too. Animation is relatively new, if you consider all the other kinds of art out there like painting and sculpture, which I find to be pretty interesting. It's also not all computers, either. Watching the clips we have been watching makes me really think about how much of this medium I don't really know about. I grew up with Disney movies and the cartoons off television. All I've ever known, and really most of what our generation really knows, is computer-generated animation, and some claymation. I didn't even know about paper-cutouts until just recently, and I love it. Watching Yori's work with cut outs has been astonishing to me. My personal favorite piece of his we watched had to have been The Fox and the Hare. Seriously stunning. I loved the idea of it being in the format of a children's storybook, and the dialogue was so adorable. To watch the richness of something like that really makes me want to keep exploring the medium of animation and to see what else is out there that I haven't experienced, especially foreign films. The most I've gotten is really between different American companies, and some Hayao Miyazaki, of course. Which makes me feel really uncultured and just like oblivious to all the amazing little wonders other people have created. It's really important to me to get a taste of all different kinds of things so I can draw my inspiration from them and learn from the true masters of the art that I want to pursue. I don't know about the rest of you,  I'm really excited to keep watching films in this class! Even if sometimes I don't get what's going on, the fact that I'm being exposed to all of this amazing work is really inspiring as artists. :) I feel like an animation explorer.