Mad Eyed Misfits

Writings on Indie Animation

Chris Robinson

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032207698
• eBook ISBN: 9781000544237
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Digital Media
• Index: Computer Science

One of the most stylistically original and provocative writers in animation returns with this

informal sequel to his previous books on indie animation, Unsung Heroes of Animation and Animators Unearthed.

In this collection, award-winning writer Chris Robinson looks at a wide range of films and filmmakers, including cult favourites Don Hertzfeldt, Adam Elliot, Masaaki Yuasa, Wong Ping, Bruce Bickford, Jodie Mack, Rosto, Suzan Pitt, Clyde Henry and Cartoon Saloon.

Eclectic, opinionated, passionate and personal, Robinson's writing will amuse, confuse, infuriate and enlighten while introducing readers to some of the most astonishing and important animation artists from around the world.

CHAPTER 1 Masaaki Yuasa Speaks in Many Colours

DOI: 10.1201/9781003265153-1

ANYTIME YOU SEE THAT you’re getting a new festival entry from Masaaki Yuasa, you feel a tinge of excitement, but when you scroll down the list and see two feature films submitted by the very same man, well, that’s just orgasmic.

Already a cult figure in the animation scene, Yuasa added to that reputation in 2017 by releasing two stunning, contrasting and widely acclaimed animated features: Lu Over the Wall—about a displaced young boy who befriends—to the disenchantment of local villagers—a local mermaid; Night is Short, Walk on Girl is set during a seemingly endless evening of insane alcohol consumption in Kyoto. A young university student, Senpai (who some might recognize from the 2010 Yuasa-directed TV series, Tatami Express), decides to confess love for Otome. During the strange evening, littered with eccentric characters, Senpai decides to create some “chance” encounters to win over the woman.

Both films were immediate successes with Lu Over the Wall grabbing the Cristal for Best Feature Film at the 2017 Annecy International Animation Festival. Night is Short, Walk on Girl then took home the Grand Prize for Animated Feature at the 2017 Ottawa International Animation Festival.

—

Like a fusion of Tex Avery, Dali and even—seriously—Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, Yuasa’s work (which includes short films, TV series along with the cult favourite feature, Mindgame) bursts with visual energy, rapid fire colour patterns, sudden shifts in character design, elastic character movements. You’re never sure where you are in this kaleidoscopic dance dreamscapes. Yuasa’s work for film and TV, no matter the genre is consistently imaginative, magical and original. He seems to get animation. There are no rules in animation. You are not bound by laws of physics. Yet, so many animation artists can’t seem to grasp that, perhaps fearful of the freedom. Yuasa shows no such fear as he gives us worlds and people that are stylized, exaggerated, distorted and impossible. Yet his works tell us more truths about individuals, relationships and society than so many of the mainstream animation frauds hell bent on regurgitating the same endless tropes and types no matter how tired, tedious and predictable. These counterfeits think they’re telling us great stories about ourselves when really their breaths are as stale and staid as the corporate spaces that exhaled them.

Yuasa’s work lets the audience breath. There are mysteries unexplained, left for us to ponder, to make sense of, or to walk away from. Every episode, say, of the extraordinary series, Tatami Express, is a standalone work of art that rivals any indie animation short. In it, he takes a fairly common theme of feckless post-secondary youth on campus and turns it into an utterly surreal, time shifting portrait of youth, identity, community and society. In fact, throughout all of Yuasa’s work (whether it’s the bizarre Romeo and Juliet meets flesh eating monsters series, Kemonozume, 2006 or Ping Pong, 2014), we encounter anxious, feckless people sifting through life in search of a worthy purpose or at the very least a meaningful connection. It wouldn’t be stretching it to say that the many characters who populate Yuasa’s universe wouldn’t be out of place in the philosophical books of Kierkegaard, who, in a different medium and manner, wrote in shifting tones, voices, names and styles (much like Yuasa’s work makes frequent shifts in design and style) as he attempted to sort out the question of how does one live.

“I love both Tex Avery and Dali,” admits Yuasa.

I’ve been influenced by a lot of artists I get inspired with a lot of things I see, hear, smell, and touch in everyday life. I believe whole things inspiring me could be tuned into anime. Actually, the structure of tunes can be a model of storyboards when working on them. I often derive inspiration even from really modest visuals; a commercial, a cut from a movie, a movement from an anime as well as nameless flowers and grasses blooming on the road, clouds, stars, and moons in the sky. I’m also inspired with what I’m currently interested in and feeling. My humble wish for creating anime is to have common images, conversations, and scenes sublimed into art works.

In terms of his stylistic choices, mixed-techniques and wide palate of colours, Yuasa had to be careful

not to get inclined to dark colours too much as both the movies are full of shaded and night scenes. I turned to high-contrasted colours while using neutral colours as well so that you sense freshness and vividness on the whole. I believe that things should be pleasant in principle and that is why shots get fresh and vivid in terms of colour design when characters have a sense of pleasure in the story.

Now, getting one animation feature out and about is an accomplishment in itself, but to release two outstanding—and refreshing—features takes some kind of special talent. Of course, Yuasa had no idea he’d be undertaking two features at once. “It was when I was making Lu Over the Wall,” he says,

that I got the green light to start the Night is Short project. I had to hurry and went into the pre-production phase while still making Lu because we hired freelance animators when we began with the production and we had to shift them to Night is Short before they would say goodbye to us.

While I wondered how difficult it must be to shuttle back and forth between two very different projects, Yuasa says that their differences actually made it easier. “They were quite different in visual style,” he adds. “And that saved me from confusing their different movement styles of animation.”

Although widely different in terms of tone, style and intended audience, both films are ultimately about love, kindness and acceptance—themes that we all need to be reminded of in this somewhat erratic time of intolerance. “Lu Over the Wall is a story about a mermaid who just wishes to make good friends with human beings,” adds Yuasa.

It’s about overcoming an irrational sense of discrimination and prejudice, about understanding and accepting alien creatures. Similarly, Night is Short is a fable about how you’ll only be happy when you wish for someone’s happiness and you’ll be unhappy when you just wish for your own happiness. Both movies depict how coming out of your shell could make things better. I love stories about opening up your heart.

Despite having only one moderately successful—Mind Game was a critical success but it was a box office failure. So much so that very few producers would even touch Yuasa after that—feature film experience Yuasa says that he rarely stresses out when he’s creating. In fact, his biggest stress is finding support:

I always enjoy making films but I must confess that I’d like to find more supporters and sympathizers and to make a commercial success. I really want to catch up with what people really want, but it is rather tough for me to try to achieve that.

Lu Over the Wall has all the potential to find a massive audience internationally. It’s a gentle, soulful film that has many hallmarks of a successful family feature, but that is much more inventive in terms of animation, story, character and technique. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the film will make a big dent in the North American market. “Orthodox narratives attract more moviegoers,” says Yuasa. “Innovative ones might not necessarily appeal to them. But I always dream of something that is both innovative and appealing to people.”

Having worked in some many mediums, I wondered if Yuasa has a preference or if each offers different elements to an artist:

I like to make features because you can see vividly how the audience sees your efforts, but I’m also enjoying making TV shows because they allow you to develop stories longer and in more detail. Also it is pretty enjoyable to make a short piece once in a while because you can make elaborately crafted ones.

More recently, Yuasa completed the series Devilman Crybaby (2018). “There’s lots of sex and violence. I believe the story will make audiences cry, and is highly unsuitable for children because it is unexpectedly shocking.”

I’d expect no less from this master of delicious and sorely needed unpredictability.

CHAPTER 2 52 Films, 1 Year Meet John Morena

DOI: 10.1201/9781003265153-2

If you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start.

—Charles Bukowski, “Roll The Dice”

So … early in the OIAF 18 pre-selection process I’m skimming through the submission database and see an endless list of films (26 to be precise) by the same guy. Now, in my … let’s see … it’s 27 years since I started at the OIAF, that’s a sure sign, as harsh as it sounds, of easy rejections. Anytime you get more than maybe 2–3 films from one person, you can often assume they’re probably not so good.

Fortunately, curatorial decisions are not based on assumptions.

It turns out that there wasn’t a dud among this gaggle of submissions that came courtesy of American animator, John Morena (who is self-taught and has worked in New York since 2000 doing an assortment of commissioned work including music videos, network promos, commercials and visual effects). Oh and it turns out that these 26 submissions were a mere pittance, as he actually made 52 films (yes, one for every week) in 2017.

What’s even more impressive about Morena’s parade of films is the diversity of tone, technique and subject matter of the films. Some films (e.g. Untitled, Mini-Jazz, String of Sound and the marvellous Dreams I Don’t Remember) serve up abstract, impressionistic and stream of conscious imagery, while others touch upon prevalent social issues (e.g. Dicks, a hilarious fusion of an old educational film about the function of the penis replaced with images of guns, Slurred, a listing of the—sadly, seemingly endless slur words used against women, and Flea Circus, which attempts to put our oh-so-serious daily problems into a universal context).

The list of techniques is even more impressive as Morena makes use of flashlights, scanner, string, sound collage, cut out, ink, pencil, photocopies, polaroids, pixilation … just to name a few.

Intrigued and mystified, I sought Morena out and asked him what just what motivated this madness. “Fear. Frustration,” replied Morena.

I originally got into animation so I could make my own films. That was back in 2000. By mid-2016, I had a come-to-Jesus moment that I was getting old and had no films of my own under my belt. I had tried several times to make a film the traditional way but nothing ever truly got off the ground. I had a big time itch to make something.

Years earlier, Morena, who was getting fed up with the financially necessary but often mindless work of commercial animation, came up with the idea to do a weekly challenge that he called Area 52. “Originally,” he says, “it was to be 52 experimental tests—one per week for a year—that I could use as a testing ground to discover new techniques that would then inform my regular client work.”

Although Morena had no set rules in place when he began the experiments, because he was releasing them on Instagram he was forced to keep them under one minute. “It’s one of the main reasons why I chose Instagram as the platform,” adds Morena.

It made it so that I could actually get films done. A maximum of 60 seconds a week seemed more than doable if I was willing to sacrifice. Plus, platforms like Vimeo and YouTube are the filmmaking equivalent to the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Everyone is crowded in the same place shouting for attention.

If there is a one commonality, aside from length, it’s the minimal use of dialogue. “One of my self-imposed limitations,” adds Morena, “was to make films that dissolve language boundaries. I used language and words sparingly, if at all.”

Given the renegade spirit of Area 52, it’s no surprise that Morena eschewed any exterior funding and paid for everything out of his own pocket. “I made sure to be really Resourceful,” he says. “The most expensive film I made cost me $110. I don’t see a need to spend thousands of dollars on a film that might just end up on Vimeo, be cool for a week, then fade into oblivion.”

Incredibly, especially given Annecy’s proclivity towards classical narrative films, the festival took 7 of Morena’s submissions. He later learned that Anima Mundi (Brazil) took 10 and that the Hiroshima festival took a few (Ottawa has yet to announced their selection). “I was surprised that any festival wanted t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Masaaki Yuasa Speaks in Many Colours
• Chapter 2 52 Films, 1 Year: Meet John Morena
• Chapter 3 Passing on by Us: Clyde Peterson Talks Torrey Pines
• Chapter 4 Marcel, the King of Tervuren
• Chapter 5 “People Are Finally Listening”: Indigenous Animation Rises Up
• Chapter 6 Fight! Fight! Fight!: Malcolm Sutherland’s Bout
• Chapter 7 Ghosts of a Different Dream: The Films of Mariusz Wilczynski
• Chapter 8 Wondering Boy Poet: Bruce Bickford
• Chapter 9 The Burden of Dreams
• Chapter 10 Unity by Tobias Stretch
• Chapter 11 Don Hertzfelt’s Beautiful Days
• Chapter 12 Don Herzfeldt Talks World of Tomorrow II
• Chapter 13 Joy Street: Remembering Suzan Pitt
• Chapter 14 Nightlights in the Forest: Cartoon Saloon
• Chapter 15 Beautiful Maladies: The Uncanny World of Rosto
• Chapter 16 Špela Čadež’s Nighthawk
• Chapter 17 Kaspar Jancis’ Motel of Fools
• Chapter 18 The Moneygoround: Liu Jian’s Have a Nice Day
• Chapter 19 Clyde Henry Talks Gymnasia
• Chapter 20 The Crushed Dreams of a Magnificent Cake
• Chapter 21 The Frog, The Dog and The Devil: The Ballad of Bad Whiskey
• Chapter 22 Consuming Chris Sullivan
• Chapter 23 It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken: Luc Chamberland and Seth’s Dominion
• Chapter 24 Yield by Caleb Wood
• Chapter 25 Visiting Ville Neuve With Felix Dufour-Laperrière
• Chapter 26 Where Is Here: Felix Dufour-Laperrière’s Archipelago
• Chapter 27 Laughing at Chaos: Alex Boya Talks Turbine
• Chapter 28 Banana Skins and Cigarette Butts: The Films of Adam Elliot
• Chapter 29 Pineapple Calamari
• Chapter 30 The Joys of Jodie Mack
• Chapter 31 Moving on With Ainslie Henderson
• Chapter 32 Peeping Wong Ping
• Chapter 33 On the Weave of Construction: RISD Animation
• Chapter 34 Lesley the Pony Has an A+ Day
• Index