RSA – Steven Subotnik

In my tutorial it was mentioned that people were really interested in the textures I was creating with the printing ink, I liked the close up’s too but I found that had little  and I was happy with the general aesthetic. I mentioned to Anna however that I was interested in the markmaking, so I’m starting to conisder more ways of creating a texture focused animation with a focus on typography. She suggested ‘Hairyman’ by Steven Subotnik, it looks l like this film is made with a mixture of drypoint printing and charcoal drawings. It seems like a very time consuming and difficult animating process but I think that the markmaking makes for a really beautiful, interesting aesthetic. The roughness of the animation also looks really interesting. The rough textures of the printing reflect the character of the short film really well, it’s very rough ominous and unsteady. It also has a ‘dirty’ unclean look which seems how the animator is trying to represent the character. This method of printing and animating I feel as though it has given the animator a really individual voice and way of markmaking, which is something I can only strive to achieve. If I were to compare this animation to one I looked at previously like ‘The old man at sea’, that animator layered the paint to keep a really fluid, soft visual style which contrast so strongly to this animation. This aesthetic is far stronger and fits with the narrative so well, as did the smooth paint done by Petrov. He also uses charcoal to create some frame by frame animation, which again creates some really interesting textures.

What I think I have taken most from this animation is not only a love for this way of visual style, but started to make reference between the purpose of each visual style, so for example this suits the story line and character so well with the roughness of the edges, and with the surroundings.  what’s more difficult for my own animation is the fact that I don’t have a character or place to base my visual style on, but I still need to find a method of image making that is appropriate to what I want my animation to say.