Animation History, 500 words – project 14, Frances Humphries

After researching a lot of different animators and their work, I think my favourite animator from the list was Adam Elliot. He is an Australian animator who is mostly based in Melbourne. As well as animating he also directs and writes his own short and feature length films, a lot of his films are based on true stories and family events. He has films named ‘Uncle’, ‘Brother’ and ‘Cousin’, all of them based on his family experiences. However, they are slightly exaggerated but not so the stories are unrealistic. Adam Elliot has a very dark specific style, his films are for adults and touch upon extremely strong depressing subjects while keeping a slight funny ‘tongue and cheek’ edge to the films.
Most animation is used for children or humorous films but Elliot uses dark colours, tones and slow movements to give a muted sad feel. He does this so the animation can be taken seriously and the strong points can be put across.

In his animations he touches upon, mental illness, death, suicide and other bad things. I think the slow style in which he animates works really well with the themes and characters of the films, and even though some people might find them disturbing and miserable to watch. I enjoy the dark humour and powerful realism behind his films.  

A lot of people also like his work for the same reasons and I think this is why Adam Elliot has become famous and will go down in animation history, his work will always be remembered because of the strong views and thought provoking meanings behind his films, and I believe that it’s extremely relevant to today’s society as well as animation community because it’s important for these views to be shared.

The animator I didn’t really like was Joanna Quinn. She was an animator and director during the feminist movements. She based a lot of her work on this and wanted her animations to be a voice for women. I think that this is the reason her animations are important in the history of animation, because they were important and stood up for a good cause. I liked this about her films and think that it was good how she showed her views though her work. However, I didn’t like the style in which she animated. She uses very rough drawn sketches and not much detail in her animating.

 Joanna Quinn based her animations on the average women’s life and made the characters very common, which I think made her short films quite boring. However, in a way it’s good because it’s an opinion and view not often seen.

I think that both Adam Elliot and Joanna Quinn use animations to show very strong views and points. However, I think that Joanna Quinn’s views were more important during the feminist movements and can be quite boring now. However, Adam Elliot’s animations focus on life problems that occur all the time and will always be very important in society.