Trial and Error

Absolut Panushka, Jan-Apr 1997.

Trial and Error

Students at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles are encouraged to try every kind of technique and technology so that they can express any given idea in the correct way. The result has been a wide variety of fine films from alumni.

Computers provided the right tools for abstract animation by Larry Cuba (First Fig), John Adamczyk (Recurrents), David Brody (Beethoven Machinery) and Amy Alexander (Unbroken Pieces) -- and for representational animation by Lea Zagury (Karaiba).

Ruth Hayes shot her delightful 1990 film Wanda on video to incorporate live-action images with drawn materials. Hayes also makes "book animation" (or flip-books), an enthusiasm she shares with Gary Schwartz, whose film Animus contains animated flip-book pages in live-action settings.

Paul DeMeyer made one of the most complex reflexive works in his Papiers Animes. The film shows the live-action animator's hands manipulating drawings that have a life of their own, and is accompanied by a multi-layered philosophical narration.

Henry Selick proved not only that he was an excellent draftsman, but that he could also employ life-sized cut-out puppets in his Seepage. And David Daniels made a virtual epic Buzz Box, which satirizes a week of television programs through images modeled in wax and clay and then sliced away (in the manner of Oskar Fischinger's Wax Experiments).

Eric Darnell created an extraordinary student film, Grasslands, which involved cutting out pieces of film and pasting them onto other filmstrips, then painting and scratching on the film to evoke the vanishing wild animals and their natural habitat. But he later shifted gears and made the comic Gas Planet, a sophisticated computer animation that simulates the hatching of hand-drawn imagery.

Like Darnell, Joanna Priestley employs a variety of techniques in her films. She has produced films with sand animation (Dancing Bulrushes, a Chippewa legend, co-directed with Steven Subotnick), line drawing and rotoscope (Voices), computer (Jade Leaf), puppets (She-Bop) and candy for the Candy-Jam film which she co-produced with Joan Gratz.

Moritz, William. "History of Experimental Animation." Website. Absolut Panushka, curated by Christine Panushka. (Jan-Apr 1997).