6 x 1: Theory of Animation Reading

It was cool to read something specifically about animation for a change. In all my years in film study, I have spent the majority of my time focusing on film, or video, but not animation. I never really 'tried' to have any sort of inner dialogue regarding my opinion about the various modes of animation. It was interesting to me to read the first quote by Moritz:

"Non-objective animation is without doubt the purest and most difficult form of animation. Anyone can learn to 'muybridge' the illusion of representational life, but inventing interesting forms, shapes and colours, creating new, imaginative and expressive motions - 'the absolute creation: the true creation' as Fischinger termed it - requires the highest mental and spiritual faculties, as well as the most sensitive talents of hand."

It dawned on me after reading it how incredibly, unimaginatively creative abstract animators are. While I concede that creating associations through juxtaposition of live-action images is difficult, I couldn't imagine forming an aesthetically-pleasing or meaningful work completely by hand, from scratch. And this quote made me think back to when we first got to paint on film in class. It was something I had looked forward to for quite some time. I thought, "finally, I get to channel my inner Brakhage, my inner Belson!" And then there I was with a paint brush, ink and about 10 feet of empty frames. And the thought immediately changed to, "shit...I better start channeling my inner Brakhage and Belson." There is something so scary about staring at a plethora of empty frames, knowing that you're completely and 100 percent responsible for what ends up on them - that YOUR talent is the only limit, and the only parameter is that there aren't really any. It was like when I got to my first college composition class and was told (for the first time) that I could write a paper about ANYTHING I want. I fancied myself a good writer, but when given the task of choosing anything I want and coming up with 1,500 words that made a shit about it, I was immediately paralyzed. And that is what it felt like four years later with that brush in my hand. I finally had what I wanted, but had NO clue how to handle it. And I ended up going crazy - slinging paint like a mad man. It looked cool, but I had not channeled anything close to Brakhage or Belson. I had not truly understood until then what it means to master the craft of abstract, hand-drawn filmmaking (animation). As Moritz said, "Non-objective animation is without doubt the purest and most difficult form of animation."