This week I focused on re-organising my notes gathered from different readings I have done and paraphrasing the important text, which I think is a key for me to write the draft literature review.
Topic 1:
<How anthropomorphism is changing the social context of modern wildlife conservation>
Anthropomorphism is a concept of humans start adding their own characteristics into non-human entities, such as animals. As people’s social value and style of their personal life had been entirely changed by the modernisation after the Second World War, the need of their seek of belongingness as human beings were getting stronger due to the growth of urbanisation, the loneliness and the lower life happiness. Thus, by putting emotions into non-human things and building up relationships with them, such as pet-keeping, it fulfils the connections while also bringing up a few issues.
<animation and America>
In the same period, the text also points out the influence of how people view their physical and material world differently had encouraged the art practice to challenge traditional orthodoxies. With constant change, they had achieved the revolution and the renovation of modernism. It is a culture to critique the contrast between the modernisation of technology and dehumanisation as a representation of ambivalence.
<Towards a Definition of American Modernism>
The text has pointed out that Modernism arised early from symbolism and impressionism, which were built up through different art forms such as symbolist and paintings they emphasise on what they have been effected emotionally through the object instead focusing on the real thing. They explore beyond world structure under the positivism while sharing more unpredictable experience from human perception.
<animation and America>
Correspondingly, the pervasive anthropomorphic characters in variety of media support audiences to explore different scenarios through changing identities, metamorphosis, dehumanising and restructuring themselves in the story; without bounding into any industrial orthodoxies, they are living in an uncertain reality and working for the need of gags to structure more possibilities and values.
Talk about how the abstractions inspire the appearance of anthropomorphic characters. Animation and American, p20, the animator pioneers under the time experiment the limits of graphic space, ‘playing out narration of perception and memory in rapid metamorphosis.’ They play ‘lines, shapes, forms in the enunciation of time, space, weight and flow.’
Topic 2:
Anthropomorphic characters which created to expose the political issues are as an important example to show the sprit of modernism in different work.
<Animation and American: p22, >the abstraction of anthropomorphism in early American animation achieved through developing technologies in the industry, which explores the relationship between humanity and animality and the expression of humans after being challenged. It reflect the possible lack of humanity in society, philosophy and mechanisation.
<Symbols, metaphors and similes in literature: A case study of “Animal Farm”: p23>
The characters in Animal Farm were created by the author as metaphors for the Soviet Union leaders, of the Russian revolution in beginning of the 20 century. Based on the analysis of characters in the story, the text found the resemblances of characters of the government’s leaders at the time to the animals found in the story. Such as the boar napoleon represents ruthless and authoritarian Joseph Stalin between 1920s to 1950s, the old Major from the first chapter represents the revolutionary and idealistic Vladimir Lenin between late 1910s and early 1920s.
<Character Metaphors in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, p84-86>:
Similarly, the text here also points out the metaphors of the anthropomorphic animals in the original novel. Such as the most prestigious boars in the farm, Snowball and Napoleon, which are always arguing on their ideas are representing the confrontation between Stalin and Trotsky within the soviet power to fight for the president position. Though, napoleon was more successful by expelling Snowball in the story with the help of nine enormous dog and crafty squealer, in response to the committee for State Security and the Soviet official party paper.
<Revolution on Animal Farm: Orwell’s Neglected Commentary>:
Overall the story emphasis on the difficulties and dangers of the socialist revolution. In the story when pigs brought the apples into their harness room by assuming themselves are the most important brainworker in the farm while slowly formed up their own dictatorship in chapter 3 (p38-39), the failure of any other animal’s protest with their pessimistic attitude became an abandon to the spirit of their animalism in the book. Quoting the text ‘if people outside still thought that that particular form of revolution could succeed without betraying its goals, nothing new could be accomplished (p137)’, the idealisation originally structured by the old Major had completely be destroyed by pigs and their Stalinism from the seven commandments had eventually turned into one to permit the hierarchy of animals in their farm. The text also summarises the author’s idea that in the face revolutionary change toward socialism, true success can only be achieved only when everyone contributes their effort for themselves and protect their initial resolutions. Otherwise the power-hunger group could easily disrupt the equilibrium, like how the apples had been unfairly taken away by pigs in the story.
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As Orwell mentioned, he was keen to write a story which could be easily translated into other languages and being understood by a wide range of readers (p131). In its animated form, the animals build up connections with audiences through their performances, and with no explicit political references under the sensitive topics, their behaviour becomes a core internal sources to be focused and reviewed. The film highlights their foibles and flaws, allowing viewers to interpret deeper meanings through the lens of animal characteristics.
Topic 3:
Towards the end of the last century, animation companies started embedding the concept of anthropomorphism into the creation of their hyper-realistic and cartoon characters, influenced by the background of modernism. A few well known examples include the beast from the beauty and the beast, samba from the lion king and the Micky Mouse from its series.
<Animation and American: p23, >Scholars Patrick D. Murphy and Richard Schickel argued these characters hide their natural terrors or wildness through cuteness, joke and musical cues in the performance, which can be way more ideal for the story-telling.
Whereas, their figures blended with ‘sentimental modernism’, a term pointed out by Steven Watt <p24.>, a way where characters mix their complex emotions and human-like trait together work well for gags in films.
<Understanding Animation: p129,> In the early ‘trick’ films, audiences were mostly unallied with characters which create random humours as gags in a story with a lack of continuity and empathy. However, the added human personalities and emotional depth of anthropomorphic characters allow audiences to be emotionally attached by the way how stories are being told sentimentally and how their characteristics are being expressed freely.
A few examples can be found in the early short films created by Windsor McCay,by combining with key elements of building up personalised characters in films mentioning in <Understanding Animation: p129-130,>:
Eye contact between characters and audiences to break up the 4th wall.
Facial expressions to deliver emotions and expressions.
Recognised physical poses in the set.
Clear motivation set and acted by the anthropomorphic character itself within narrations.
Physical rhythms indicate the attitude of the character.
The character is taking responsibility of the film as an actor.
Here are my studies:
1: Mosquito in ‘How a mosquito operates (1912)’
This surreal short animation features an anthropomorphic mosquito dressed in a business suit, sneaking into a chubby man’s room, obsessively sucking his blood in an addictive way while he is in a deep sleep, and eventually bursting himself due to its overindulgence.
Through the whole story, we can easily identify the mosquito’s body language such as observing the lock with his eyes carefully, and rubbing his hands in a manner of diligence. When he is lightly patting his hat, he also turns its face into the audiences and then showing his playful excitement and pride of catching such a human prey.
His physical rhythm can be easily followed up by seeing the beat of his needle-like proboscis. His determination has been emphasised through multiple attempts of piercing its needle into the man’s skin in a persistent way.
When he is full with an exaggerated grotesque tummy, audiences could easily sympathise his physical discomfort, leading to a feeling of both amusement and unease at his tragicomic ending due to all the similar human traits.
2: Dinosaur in’ Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)’
This influential short animation displays the interaction between the creator Winsor McCay, and his animated dinosaur, Gertie, set in a dinner time, surrounding by the other gentlemen to watch their performance.
Gertie, an anthropomorphic figure which is highly reflective in human’s emotion through its physical responses to McCay’s commands. She easily breaks the fourth wall by performing bow to the audiences and is being playful itself to follow the instructions in a charm manner.
Gertie can do different physical poses such as raising feet, shaking its bodies and moving around with surprising expressiveness to show its characterisation.
Also, she cries when McCay blames on her of being distracted by the sea serpent appearing in the scene, and bearing grudges with the jumbo by attacking the latter back to show the emotional depth.
Overall, her spirit of sentimental modernism is displayed through emotionally engaging with the creator McCay and showing her human traits of being childish, naughty and innocent in the scene. She brought humour to the narrative and gaining affection from audiences to the story, and eventually making people to remember her in the animation history.
To conclude, Winsor McCay’s successful use of ‘caricature’ and ‘exaggeration’ in anthropomorphic characters deliver a strong sense of natural shortcomings from their internal sources, this anti-stereotype of traditional gags had been studied by Disney films at the same time (understanding animation, P130). Which helps audiences to identify the weaknesses and strengths of human traits and hence being impressed by the creation of figures. Also, Disney tried to adopt the working process which used by Windsor McCay into Ub Iwerks creation, instead of drawing from one image to the next one, he tended to add ‘in-between’ in the middle of two ‘extreme’ poses. (Animation and American, P21).
Topic 4:
Though the concept of anthropomorphism brought a lot of benefits to the creation of art, it is undeniable there are potential risk, destabilisation, and immorality of applying it to our media in the real life.
<Popular Media and Animals> first chapter:
The text indicates anthropomorphic narratives of animals are in an important position for popular media industries and define most animal issues in publicity.
However, the strongly use of anthropomorphism from the human perspective to describe the plight of them in either soft news or hard news is structured to gain emotional reaction from audiences in popular media, and boost the sale.
Hence, Steve baker argues those animals within popular culture themselves, are not being treated respectfully, instead they symbolise the dismissive treatment of the farm in a trivialising and amusing way for the publications.
And, their reality received by audiences are being addressed mainly through representations to control the influence of the business.
In the film industries, real animals have always been strongly exploited, specially through merchandising the product and entertaining the audiences.
<Popular Media and Animals> third chapter:
Animal stars were especially crucial in the mid-twentieth American film industry, they embedded human traits for the marketable functions and represented cultural stereotypes for audiences to consume(p55-56).
In studio under Hollywood such as MGM, it had a specific system for training and producing animal related films and products (p51-52), animals were correspondingly becoming part of their physical capitals.
Jackie the Hollywood MGM lion, one of the animal stars was absolute a moneymaking of the business, has been strongly pressured by Hollywood films for his entire life.
After the inspiration and success of ‘gimmick pictures’, centring animals and chap production produced by universal-international studio, Jackie had been used to compete it in ‘Fearless Fagan, the wandering lion’.
Poor Jackie had to passively work in a toxic environment, they structured him as a figure or orphan initially to attract the support of the community, after he had been rescued from the Mills Bros. Circus; they focused on ways to generate the revenue such as releasing peanuts merchandise and pictured him with other famous stars; his natural animality of lion had been replaced by gentleness and sensitivity in his characters while he was over 400 pounds, and his film critics will be only relied on his performances instead of his animal natures.
<Popular Media and Animals> second chapter:
Also, animal testing was becoming more popular after the second war due to the development of science and medicine, therefore the post-war west are more reliant on the constant exploitation of animals.
Readers of the newspaper based on the cases formed national pets club in 1957, they set strong influence on the vivisection around the world.
However, proponents of animal rights movement tried to split them from the identity of ‘animal lovers’ by the end of 20th century due to their excessive emotional sympathy towards animal potentially led to the acts of terrorism.
As mentioned by Peter Singer in his text, the protest raised up by emotional ‘animal-lovers’ has excluded the true issue being discussed in serious political and moral debates, as their extreme actions only lead to negative stereotypes and the marginalisation to the society.
Here are my notes from re-reading chapters 6 to 10 of the anthropomorphic novel Animal Farm, by following my last week’s blog:
Chapter 6:
(P60) Although animals started building the windmill with even hard working labors, they still enjoyed it most of the time as they trusted they were working only for themselves and the result would not be stolen by any human beings.
(P62) Boxer had been worked hard to make sure everything could be achieved through the building of the windmill.
(P63) Napoleon started breaking earliest resolutions by allowing the engagement in trade with the neighboring farms.
(P64) Mr Whymper, the solicitor from willingdon behaved as intermediary between animal farm and the outside world.
(P65) humans’ hatred and anger are raised to the animal farm due to its prospering growth, they thought the windmill would be a failure, but they also appreciated the efficiency of how the animals were well managing their own affairs.
(P66) when pigs started business with human beings, they moved into the farmhouse for their residence, on the excuse of working as the brain of the farm. They ate their meal in the kitchen, used the drawing room as a recreation room and slept in the bed, which broke the initial 4th of the seven commandments of the animal farm (P67).
(P68) Only Benjamin had no interests with the build of the windmill.
(P69) The windmill was in ruins due to the gale in a night with its thin layers, but Napoleon assumed it was snowball came in the night and destroyed their work of nearly a year. And animals still needed to carry on their work on the windmill.
Chapter 7:
(P74) animals are in struggles with the need of grain since spring, a context of 400 eggs a week had been signed by Napoleon in the deal with Whymper.
(P75) To punish the disagreement of hens, Napoleon ordered the hen’s rations to be stopped, and so none hens died at the same time in a day.
(P77) Squealer pointed out that Snowball had sold himself to Frederick of Pinchfield, which the farm decided to attack the animal farm again. And Napoleon thought Snowball was Jones’ agent (P80) from the very beginning by ignoring other animals’ confusion.
(P82) four pigs confessed they had been secretly get in touch with Snowball had been slaughtered by Napoleon’s dogs.
(P85) Squealer announced the abolishment of the song of ‘Beats of England’ after pigs thought the rebellion had completed through making all the execution of ‘traitors’ to the animal farms.
Chapter 8:
(P87) Animal realized pigs broke the 6th of the initial commandment through killings to achieve the exemption. Clover noticed the 6th commandment had been changed to ‘no animal shall kill any other animal without cause.’
(P88) through the rebuild of the windmill project, animals somehow noticed they were been feed less than old Jones’ day:
(P91) Napoleon kept good friendship with Mr Pilkington who owns the farm Foxwoods which caused more jealousy of Mr Frederick, who is the owner of Pilkington. It brings back Frederick to against them with guns and his men, to knock the windmill down which animals worked on it for 2 years long (p100).
(P101) chapter 8 is talking about the battle of the windmill happened in the animal farm.
(P102) The boar Napoleon starts wearing Mr Jones clothes after the windmill battle. (P103) At the same time squealer announced animals with alcohol drinking should be punished to death, whereas Napoleon asked Whymper to purchase some booklets on brewing and distilling for himself. And over night, Squealer’s act of changing the fifth commandment had been caught by the other animal.
Chapter 9:
(P106) Even there are always adjustment of rations, animals believe the important is still bigger than the days controlled by Jones.
(P107) Privilege and good education had only been assigned to new born pigs instead of any other animals.
(P109-110) Sheep’s represent devotee and the rabble to the society led by Napoleon, therefore they always stoped the protest by the others in the story.
(P112) Boxer eventually went fallen after overworked himself for over years.
(P113-115) Napoleon and Squealer said Boxer would be sent to the hospital at Willington, instead, it had been noticed that he would be sent to the horse slaughterer.
(P116) A scene shows animals from the farm try to beg for horses in charge of the cart not sending boxer to slaughterer in an emotional way, but the pleading had been brutally ignored.
Chapter 10:
(P125) squealer was being seen eventually that he walked in a human being way, following up with a file of pigs walking with their hind legs.
(P126) The scene shows a moment where animals finally start protesting against the hierarchy and horror by the pigs in the animal farm.
(P127) The constantly change of commandment set by pigs reasoned everything they wanted to take advantages of from since the beginning of the story, and eventually they behaved more like humans to be in charge of the whole farm.
In the coming two weeks, I will re-read The Animal Farm and do some notes to assist me use them as a reference in my thesis in the future–
Here are my notes between the first and the fifth chapter:
Chapter 1:
By reading Animal Farm, the first chapter depicts the rebellion was led by the ‘old major’ in Mr Jones’ farm with other animals, which they agreed beings with two legs like their lord Jones are bad, who is doing no labors but only set them to work. The old major led the farm animals to sing the song ‘beasts of england’ in this topic, which represented their determination of seeking of freedom in their life.
Chapter 2:
The second chapter talks about two young boars, snowball and napoleon took most duty left by the old Major after his death. They structured a system called ‘animalism’, and letting the other animals trust it is a must to expel Mr Jones and his men in the farm through the successful action of fight. Without being physically controlled anymore, they listed main principles of animalism to seven commandments through the three months studies of read and write.
Chapter 3:
The third chapter points out pigs took the leadership in the farm with their superior knowledges, while they were not doing any practical work.
For the other animals, they overcame difficulties of using human being’s tools and received a lot of pleasures by getting more food to eat, working with a more balanced task allocation.
Pigs painted their flag on an old green table cloth to represent their future republic of the animals with the weekly meeting started running.
Main boars in this novel, Snowball and Napoleon always have opposite arguments in their plans and decisions of the farm.
Harness room became a headquarters for pigs to learn and study, pig Snowball formed most committees for the farm such as the egg production committee for the hens. However, due to the gap of intelligence quotient between different animals in the farm, not every one of them knew the whole alphabet.
(P38-39) Apples were being commented to bring to the harness room for pigs, due to they assumed themselves as the most important brain workers in the farm. Also, the milk was mixed into pig’s mash in everyday.
(P39) On the sake of gaining more food, pigs threatened the other animals that Mr Jones would be back with their failures in arranging the farm.
Chapter 4:
This chapter shows about how did Mr Jones moan of the animal farm and his experience in the red look at willing-don (P40). And how the owners Mr Pilkington and Mr Frederick respectively from the adjoined farms Foxwood and Pinchfield (P41) were terrified by the animal farm, or Manor Farm, from what they called it.
Meanwhile, human beings raised up their hatred to the song of ‘Beast of England’ (P42).
Another war carried by Mr Jones and his men were happening in early October, which was been expected and well prepared to defense by the animal farm, it ended up with retreating human beings, the death of the sheep; and the wound of Snowball.
Chapter 5:
This chapter starts with Mollie, the foolish and pretty mane, had been seen with a Mr Pilkington’s man in a morning (P47). With her drastically disagreements in responding to the truth, she reappeared on the other side of Willing-ton to work for a smart dog cart ran by a fat red faced man who feed her with sugars (P48).
(P49) The ongoing argument between Snowball and Napoleon: Napoleon was better at canvassing support from the sheep, Snowball was more successful with his brilliant speeches and ideas learnt from ‘Farm and Stockbreeder’.
(P51) Napoleon held aloof with Snowball’s plan of building up a dynamo in the farm, and he was strongly against the windmill publicly from the start.
(P52) Benjamin the donkey, was the one not voting for either side of plans of two boars.
(P53-55) Snowball had been attacked and expelled by nine enormous dogs reared privately by Napoleon through the meeting, after he let most animals believe on his plan of building up a windmill.
(P55) After snowball had been expelled, weekly meeting in Sunday morning had been replaced by special committee of pigs.
(P56) The control taken by mainly pigs had raised up protests by the other animals, however, all arguments were terminating with sheep’s tremendous bleating of ‘four legs good, two legs bad!’
(P57) The porker pig Squealer, his trick of turn black into white had been constantly used to persuade the other animals with Napoleon’s plans.
(P58) Napoleon copied the windmill plan and creation organized by Snowball after expelled the latter.
Here is the final outcome of my 3D previs after 10 weeks development, through creating gags in this animation to explore the meanings behind our daily item ‘underwear’— it has hopefully created a romantic story between a male and a female character.
In this week I have focused on a few little details of my 3D previs left to be adjusted. Here are what I have changed by following the feedback:
I exaggerated the movement of my male character when he lied on the ground and wanting his underwear back from the female character under a high angle shot.
I adjusted the time of the cut in the mind world, to ensure they are not looking so interruptive.
I make sure the male character turns onto its left during the moment he feels embarrassed, and so his face could easily face the camera. And linking to his shit in the next shot.
in this week I have kept developing my 3D previs by following my lecturer’s feedback, and here are what I have improved:
When the underwear is landing on the male character’s face, there would be a few seconds in still before the female character leans forward and pick it up.
I changed the camera position of shooting the moment when the female character picks the underwear up.
I get rid of the medium long shot in the mind world of the female character, as there are too many cuts, which messes up the scene a little bit.
I adjusted the movement flow of how does the underwear fly through the moment approaching to the female character.
I extend the time of the shot where my female character shows her prop from her pocket.
I adjusted her movement through the time she lifts up her arm.
I extend the time of the shot where both of my characters show their underwear.
I extend the time of the moment where my two characters look at each other, before they kill in the last shot of the animation.
In this week I carry on in adjusting the camera composition and angles with characters poses in my 3D Previs, here are some of my progression:
The beginning medium long shot starts quicker where two characters meet which audiences could see them more clearly:
I slightly moved camera in this two shot to avoid the overlap in two characters:
When the female character is observing the flying down underwear landing on the male character’s face, I changed to use the medium shot instead of the close-up:
I adjust the pose which needs more space:
Changed a few poses:
Adjusting the ending camera, and also adjusting the ending pose into a much intimate one:
In next week I will be focusing on the timing of shots and see if any of them need to be checked again.
In this week, I have kept looking at my chosen topic ‘Anthropomorphism’ and focusing on the discourses of design of anthropomorphic characters in animations by reading Paul Well’s Understanding Animation:
In chapter 5, page 203- 204, it mentions about the tendency of creating anthropomorphic characters in opposite genders: the male tends to be defined as how they perform, and the female tends to be defined as how they looked like in a stereotypical way. Most of the time, male characters are more masculine, cunning and aggressive while in opposite binary, female characters are passive and sentimental.
The example of it is shown through the famous characters Micky and Minnie created by the well known Disney animator, that he described Minnie is drawn in the same structure as Minnie only she has been added more make-up on her face, and with a more female poses and costume to show her mannerisms to please audiences.
However it’s also been pointed out that anthropomorphic characters are over juvenilised through their signifiers to please the adult audiences.
Beside, there are also anthropomorphic characters interfere with the concept of ‘gender-bleeding’ shown in the animation such as Tom and Jerry, which ends up a complicating structure of relationship between characters in their story, and their sexuality becomes unstable to define the representation of genders of themselves.
in page 23 of Understanding Animation, it points out early animation uses Anthropomorphic characters include:
Gertie the Dinosaur
Felix the Cat
Mickey Mouse
Disney company has developed the concept into achieving the hyper-realism in their future work. However, scholars Patrick D. Murphy and Richard Schickel argues these characters hide their natural terrors or wildness through cuteness, joke and musical cues in the performance.
By looking at the proposal questions, I have started my response as shown below:
The essence of including anthropomorphism in animation
How anthropomorphism was structured under the cultural background
How do the anthropomorphic characters signify the meaning behind the political issue?
How anthropomorphic characters help to create gags in the film
The destabilisation of anthropomorphic characters in media studies
Brief Outline:
The use of anthropomorphic characters is commonly seen in old and contemporary media, including animation and films. This thesis will discuss the source of anthropomorphism in art history, the benefit of bringing it to the animation industry, the political meanings relating to a few anthropomorphic animated films, and the destabilisation of ethical issues potentially included in different media forms.
My methodologies include researching related articles, reading well-known novels, and watching animated films, surrounding my chosen concept ‘anthropomorphism’. Eventually I will be gathering clues and comparing each element I have used in different topics to structure a result.
Hopefully, the reader can form a good structural understanding of anthropomorphism and add it to their creation of art.
Brief Literature:
Starting from the modernism period, where more revolutions happen in people’s lives due to the second world war, more hyperrealist characters show the feature of anthropomorphism appearing in the animation industry. By reading Paul Well’s Understanding Animation and Animation and America, which provides me a concept of how these anthropomorphic characters bring new meanings and gags to the stories and audiences. Through reading George Orwell’s book Animal Farm, it displays anthropomorphic characters designed to reveal political issues of socialist revolution sarcastically. By reading the articles produced by Claire Molloy, they allow me to view potential risks hidden in the use of anthropomorphic characters in media studies.
Bibliography
Topic 1:
Wells, P., 2002. Animation and America. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
Singal, D.J., 1987. Towards a definition of American modernism. American Quarterly, 39(1), pp.7-26.
The M3 Media Collection (2021) The Tale of the Fox (1937) English Subtitles Best Quality. 25 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dCvmEY_9fo (Accessed: 5 March 2025).
In this week I have concentrated on adjusting the composition of a few shots, and leaving more space for characters, in my 3D previs after receiving feedback:
I have also changed some poses to focus more on the character movement:
When the male character falls down on the floor I have tried to add a camera shake through changing the attributes and following the online tutorial below:
Plus I have also relocated the camera to face the front view of the male:
Beside, through the feedback session I have been told to be careful with the over-lapping areas and try to avoid them through moving the camera or posing the character again in the set:
