Contemporary Sources of Animation

Monty Python

   Monty Python was a British surreal comedy show produced in the late 60's by the Python troupe aired on the BBC. Their influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles influence on music. The show was very popular during the era (and even now) due to the whole psychedelic theme of the program. As most people know the 60's was a very drug influenced era and most people were taking them; obviously this encouraged people's enthusiasm of strange things that seemed 'trippy'. 
   Monty Python was a show based on its comedy sketches; a lot of them were with real actors but other sketches were animated. The reason why they used animated scenes is because the animation could depict what people cannot; obviously with animation your imagination can go wild creating. This is exactly what Monty Python did by creating bizarre sketches with animation techniques. For example they have a sketch called Conrad Pooh's Dancing Teeth; the title pretty much explains it all, it is an animation of a mans teeth dancing. 

   Monty Python, like many others used animation to make their show a little more interesting. Anyone that uses animation can create anything they like, there's no limits. During the era everyone liked psychedelia which is why bright colours, weird drawings and weird animations were put into the show, so it would appeal to the audience. 

Yellow Submarine

   Like Monty Python the Yellow Submarine film was produced during the late 60's and followed a psychedelic theme. The movie was written by The Beatles themselves and stared animated characters depicting the band. As we know The Beatles were a psychedelic rock band that enjoyed singing about unusual things. The band was obviously very drug influenced like everyone else at the time and went with the weird themes. 
   The film is an animated fantasy musical; the story is based on how The Beatles travel from an underwater paradise to an Aztec island in their yellow submarine. Later in the story the island is attacked by the 'Blue Meanies' and the band eventually beats them with the power of song. 
   The animation style of the movie is compared to some of the work by the famous psychedelic pop art artist, Peter Max. This means that the art is very colourful and bold; the animated scenes are very weird and have sequences that don't even make sense but that is the whole point. 
   Even the way the narrator speaks is strange; he has a very mellow tone and speaks as if he is confused. The animation however is very bright and bold, the images depict fantasy things to make it look unusual. 

A Scanner Darkly

   A Scanner Darkly is a science fiction thriller that tells the story of identity and deception in a dystopia under heavy police surveillance in a drug addiction epidemic. Obviously the plot is rather unusual so the creators decided it would be a good idea to style it a bit strange as well to go with the theme. The movie was first digitally filmed and then animated using the interpolated rotoscope technique. Rotoscoping is where animators trace over footage frame by frame; this means they draw over the images already there to make them look like a cartoon. This is a great technique to use if they want an animated movie with realistic and stylised imagery. 
   Again, like the other movies, they used this technique to give it an unusual feel to it; the film has a weird plot so it fits that the style is strange too. The animation makes the movie more interesting as it can depict strange things while still having live actors in it. 

Persepolis

Persepolis is a French animated film in which the story follows a young girl coming of age during the Iranian Revolution. In the movie the girl starts to rebel against typical Iranian morals (e.g. women covering up). I think there are numerous reasons why the film is animated; one of the main reasons is because nobody would actually be able to film during a revolution and especially since the film is so controversial the country would not approve.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award due to it's gripping story; the animation itself is pretty simple. I think they chose to play down the style because a fancy style would distract from the story and the points it's trying to make. However the theme is very stylish and does represent the French style because it is sleek and simple.