Different Animal Representation: America and Europe

This is an interesting animation by Pablo Vazquez from Netherlands and it is in the list of 'Disney Favorite'. Of course it is fabulous that an animation less than two minutes can represent such an adorable story. But now I would like to concentrate on the way of making the movements of this llama. Begin with this I will compare the similarities and differences between American and European animations in shaping animal movements in a certain extent.

This unlucky character is walking like a llama but shows some personification in expressions. Its clumsy movements provide most hilarious sections. Even made by an European artist, it still shows obvious Disney style.

Playing a leading role of American animation, Disney's creating methods influences tremendous animators in this country profoundly. Hence it could be fruitful to look into their ideas making animal actions.

Instead of the guard captain riding on, Maximus is a starring role.

The white horse Maximus is a key character in the animation Tangled. He is completely showing various of emotions, interests, and interactions with other characters, just without dialogues and walking with four legs. 'In general, Maximus has very human facial features: especially the eyes and eyebrows. When he snorts and fumes straight toward the camera, he looks just like a big, furry guy.' (Abdi, 2012) In my opinion, this feature mixing human and animal actions and keeping the original animal appearance exists in most American animations with animals contains.

In these works, the characters can support the drama not merely with the same ways to humans, but also performing some characteristics only existing in their species. For incidence, Bugs Bunny can wear any costumes and still be hunted by Elmer Fudd, running with funny dialogues.

American animators successfully made this mixing way to show some drastic imaginative scenes. The animal stars is seldom playing the original life given by nature. On the contrary, they can represent their instincts with some specific segments. Generally speaking, they are acting normal American characters just through animal bodies and representing features watched in other categories of American dramas, either in films and cartoons. Majority of them are commercial, containing funny plots, happy or scary emotion rending, and even some violence and cynical sarcasms. This situation donated the animation industry a number of masterpieces.

Despite nominated to the Animated Feature Film, everyone could figure out this film is from Europe in the first glimpse.

There are quite a lot similarities, I insist, between European and American animations when creating animal characters. At least, one significant quest for animators is creating something difficult to be seen in real-shot films. Consequently, admixing some human characteristics to animals is a comparably common method in animation making.

On the other hand, there is some obvious difference from American to European animation animals. From those pieces of work I have watched, what can be observed was the animal characters in European animation films akin to humans are more living in human ways. They often have similar desires and plights, running mortal lives and concerning about families just like human. Whilst American animation give animals human movements and thoughts usually to make them more funny, European animators always reflect some real-life phenomenons and issues in human society with some animals dressing and arranging livelihood like us. In the action representation field, the difference can be described as two kinds of 'bodies'.
      In American animation, an animal body is often 'fragmentary - it can be broken into parts, reassembled and conjoined with other objects and materials.' (Wells, 1998)
      Contrarily, in European animation, their bodies are usually 'apparently incompatible are rendered equable in size, strength, ability etc.' (ibid)

Another feature of European cartoon is it often perform less commercial elements than those of American. They often are effected less by specific story modes. There are not always a hero struggling, growing and acting as a salvation role. The animation Animal Farm (1954) displayed a dark tale in a specific social environment filled with different animals and farmers. Many problems in human life can be observed during this film. Even the animals are merely playing there own roles, they did not look comparably funny. 'Although the main characters are farm animals, the subject matter is anything but typical Disney family fare.'(Barry, 2012) Obviously, this animation, considered as a masterpiece, would not be considerablly welcomed by the market.

In this article I compared some main performing methods between American and European animation in animal characters. Next time I would discuss some Asian cartoons in this domain.

Reference

Abdi (2012), Adorable Animated (Movie) Animals. Retrieved from http://www.abdi.ro/adorable-animated-movies-animals

Barry P. (2012), Animal Farm. Retrieved from http://cinematiccatharsis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/animal-farm.html

Wells P. (1998), Understanding Animation. London: Routledge.