Investigation and Practice on the Form and Content of Irony Animation
Research
Outline
- What is irony animation
- The characteristics of irony
- The forms of irony
- What does irony animation emphasize
- Irony Examples in Disney and Pixar Animaions
- Specific analysis of several irony animations I like
- Inspired satire illustration
Part1 What is irony animation
Irony means the opposite meaning of what you intend, it is something that is different or opposite from what is expected. Using an animation to show a social phenomenon. The art of irony is widely used in literary works, but in film and television animation. The art of irony brings a lot of dramatic plots to animated films, and uses the way of mutual contrast to deepen the touch of the audience’s heart.
Irony is the difference between the ways things are and the way things should be, or the way things are expected to be. Animators often use irony to express their opinion on an issue. When you look at an animation, see if you can find any irony in the situation the animation depicts.
Part2 The forms of irony animation
https://filmdaft.com/types-of-irony-in-film/
When writing a screenplay, we can use irony as a tool, as well as a rhetorical device, to describe what happens when someone says something or does something that is actually the opposite of what is expected.
In order to do so, we need first to understand the meaning of irony in relation to storytelling and screenplay writing. Here’s the short definition:
Irony is the existence of two ideas that are opposite to one another. In storytelling, there are three main types of irony that can be used to improve your writing and add new layers of depth, suspense, or humor to your work. They are dramatic irony, situational irony, and verbal irony.
Part3 The characteristics of irony
Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is the existence of information presented to the audience that we learn before the characters in a story do. When the audience knows something the characters don’t, dramatic irony becomes present, as the characters will act in opposite ways than they should.
Dramatic irony is actually the strongest tool out of the three that you can use to layer your plotlines and deepen your storytelling ability on screen.
Situational Irony
Situational irony is when someone does something opposite of what we expected them to do in a specific situation. Many people tend to use the word “ironic” incorrectly to describe situations that are unusual, or even coincidental.
However, a situation playing out differently than expected doesn’t make it ironic – it has to be the opposite of what is expected.
Common Examples of Situational Irony
- A fire station burns down. …
- A marriage counselor files for divorce. …
- The police station gets robbed. …
- A post on Facebook complains about how useless Facebook is. …
- A traffic cop gets his license suspended because of unpaid parking tickets. …
- A pilot has a fear of heights.
Part4 What does irony animation emphasize
Artistic treatment, most of them have no lines, which makes the characters more appropriate.
In technique, exaggeration and impact.
The use of colour gives people a kind of conciseness, a description of things for the purpose, rather than performance.
It is a work of art with connotation and depth to show their respective effects in art and reality. The exaggeration and irony of many plots make the viewers reflect and examine themselves.
Part5 Irony Examples in Disney and Pixar Animations
resource: https://www.hypable.com/irony-the-secret-to-pixar-plotting/
• Ratatouille
The very idea of having a Rat in a kitchen is gross to some people, so Disney making an ironic movie about a rat that just happens to be a master chef makes it one of the most ironic movies of all.
The irony in the Brad Bird directed Ratatouille is evident. Rats, considered the vilest and most disgusting of all animals, in a kitchen, where they are the most despised and unwelcome. Make that restaurant one in Paris, the food capital of the world, and well…that’s a bit self-explanatory. The message of this film is, “Anyone can cook,” which, underlying, is: “Anyone can be a great artist.” That artist is found in the rat, the thing you’d least expect to become a chef. Therein, Pixar executes its message through irony, combining story tact and profundity all at once.
• Monster’s Inc.
The entire plot of the movie is very ironic. Monster’s Inc. is a corporation run by monsters, their job being to scare children, when in reality they are the ones that are constantly afraid of the children.
Irony is most prominent in Pixar’s fourth feature film, Monster’s Inc., as most of the jokes deviate from direct reference to the premise. Monster’s Inc. is a corporation run by monsters, the local trade being the scaring of children (“We scare because we care!”), their emotions a source of fuel. Of course, there’s obvious irony in the fact that monsters are scared of children in the story (used heavily throughout). Also, the fact that the business is run by monsters, considered reckless, violent creatures of the imagination, and actually being organized enough to have created a civilized system and government is irony in its own right.
Part6 Specific analysis of several irony animations I like
Dinner for few
This is my favourite irony animation, and it gives me a lot of inspiration and ideas.
The film tells a black fable. Every dinner time, the “system” starts to work like an oiled machine. This machine is only responsible for a small group of people. These people divide up all the resources, and most of the rest are starving. In the end, resources will be exhausted, the eyes of hungry people will turn green, and a storm is inevitable. Unfortunately, the change does not bring hope, but eternal reincarnation.
The concrete contents of irony are as follows:
- The furnishings in the room and the shaking of fat people are equal to resources and technology, which are created to support the capitalists and the bottom.
- What fat people represent is the capitalist distribution mode. The capitalists at the top always have a big head, while the bottom is only enough. In fact, this state is extremely fragile.
- Technology is stagnant, while limited resources are steadily consumed. As a result, over time, there is not enough for everyone.
- A swallowed cat is a metaphor for discovering this unfair distribution and its vulnerability, which shows up in the end.
- In fact, the evil of capitalists is logically negative, because their existence is legitimate, so in the end, a new wave of people appeared and started again.
- When there is less food, every pig is hostile to each other, which shows that the high level of the capital society is fighting openly and secretly for the benefit of the present.
The reason for this is as follows:
- The fixed allocation of limited resources is bound to complete the crisis, if not handled correctly, it will lead to the collapse of the existing system.
- It’s a topic that perplexes human beings. Human beings rely on desire to go to the present, how to have a more civilized life, and no longer use war to solve problems.
The film is a satirical animation, although only 10 minutes, but the film is short, strong irony. The pig’s head and the cat at his feet in the film represent the division of interests. Judges, capitalists and politicians are the objects of irony. The goods are replaced with food to protect the stomach. The chain under the dining table represents the chain of interests that can’t get away from. The cat who discovers the secret is used by the ruthless magic brake to cover up the dirty interests. When the interests are enough, it will fight each other to win, and the winner will go to a new field to continue the cycle.
Life Smartphone
The director presents it in the form of writing to let the audience recognize that it is a story. Then a white-collar worker with a bag, playing with a mobile phone, accidentally pulls a woman’s skirt, and then the woman becomes the main character of the story. The same way is used in the later character transformation, so that a variety of characters appear in the short film, even firefighters, Scientists, doctors, etc. These noble workers in the society have also become murderers because they bow their heads. Here, the director uses some exaggeration and satire, not to over criticize these workers, but to criticize them. Admonish these people not to live a so-called low life, so that we can really feel the urgency of the creator for this kind of social problem. He tries to use this work to appeal to people from all walks of life, which is the deep meaning of the creator and the real value of this short film.
This film takes the white brown as the background, and also slightly brings in the feeling of being worn out, such as the paper-based character narrative. The character design takes the strange appearance of big eyes and single one. This case is different from the spirit of each character. The color matching of the character’s clothing is mainly light color, which is to highlight the main body, accurately explain the development trend of things, and use the line color or black line to depict the food such as tables and chairs, which is a 2d picture to narrate The trend of the plot makes the viewers enjoy a kind of dynamic scene film with simple strokes, which is very interesting and fresh. The artistic expression of the film has a close fit. The correct use of color makes the keynote of the film humorous and relaxed, which will really make the audience like the short film more.
The employment
This short film shows the employment relationship in the society. In the film, all the characters are doing their jobs without facial expressions. Low saturation color is adopted to render a depressing atmosphere. The whole short film has no dialogue and music, only environmental sound and sound effect, which is also consistent with the unemotional employment relationship expressed by the short film.
In this magical world, all the tools are replaced by people. In the film, the protagonist, as an employer, enjoying all kinds of services provided by employee, such as clothes hanger, stool, car, traffic light, gate, elevator, etc. In the end, the protagonist also becomes a prop to serve others, revealing everyone is a small part of society, including the man who stepped on the protagonist’s body and pushed people away. To some extent, he must be an employee in different level. No one is the so-called privileged, everyone in this society only two has status, employer and employee.
The village
Every plot in the film is like the epitome of today’s society. The seemingly peaceful and harmonious village is actually a bright tide.
- Seemingly hardworking women always secretly pick the fruit from the tree when sweeping the floor;
- It should have represented that the holy priest was addicted to alcohol and always abused his power to do things against the holy way;
- The prisoners in the dungeon pretend to be obedient, but actually plan to escape;
- There was a big box of gold under the bed of the poor old man;
- The fierce mob coveted the old man’s property;
- The mob’s wife and the tree grower are always secretly lingering;
- The boring old lady enjoys peeping into other people’s secrets every day.
People in the village are closed, selfish, greedy, idle and numb. They are hypocritical and greedy. They are aunts who steal apples, ferocious and greedy men, false and indulgent priests, and old ladies who like to spy on other people’s lives. They hide all these dark things hypocritically in their daily life. Only when they think that the glasses man is dead and people can’t participate in the execution, they show their disappointment and hypocrisy. Human society, often only choose not to spend time to think, hear what is what, lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong, and the pursuit of real good things.
Room Reference
Presentation
Transcript of the Presentation
Hello and I am going to do the presentation about my FMP and thesis which is related to the Investigation and Practice on the Form and Content of Irony Animation. I will divide my presentation into seven parts，including General Description, aim and Intention, Initial Research, Inspiration and Content, Methodology, Expectations and Goals, Resources and Reference.
With regard to my FMP, I will make an independent short animation for about 60 to 90 seconds. I will create a narrative irony animation by combining the first semester’s practical practice of animation principles with the study of narrative structure and film language. As for my thesis, it will be closely related to FMP, just like the theoretical basis, the main content is to investigate irony animation, understand its style, characteristics, form , film language, color, sound and other aspects. At the same time, the process of creating 3D animation based on the theory will also be recorded in the thesis paper. it is more like the feedback of my FMP, a reflection of learning and practicing. In general, the thesis paper is the process of investigating, while FMP is the process of applying theory to practice and achieving goals.
When talking about my purpose and intention of doing this project, part of the reason is that I reviewed many previous exercises. In fact, the aim of each animation clip is to train an animation principle, but there is no strong logic and coherence. In other words, I hope that this work will have a breakthrough in creativity and connotation so that I can exercise my ability to tell stories. At the same time, I want to reflect certain situation which I have seen or experienced and arouse the audience’s resonance by using animation to express my views and thoughts. At least in my opinion, there must be creative reasons for the production of an animation. In most cases, the original intention of many animators to make animation is that they want to express an emotion or tell a truth. Just like many hot political satirical illustration, I also hope my animation has its meanings. The reason that I choose to do an independent 3d animation is to show my modeling, rigging and other 3d basic skills in animation industry.
Considering that my FMP is the summary of my personal learning and the embodiment of my professional ability, when thinking about what type of project to do, my approach is to first consider what I am good at and what I want to show. I know that the fields I like and am good at are modeling and animating, that is to say, I hope to be engaged in animation industry in the future, so I choose to do an irony narrative animation. Then I found that the problem is that I didn’t know anything about irony animation. Then I did some research, which is divided into six parts. I first looked for the definition of irony, including the interpretation of some movies. Then I watched a video called “why cartoons make great Satire” on YouTube. It read the Simpsons’ and BoJack Horseman animation works, which include some exaggerated animation performance and humorous lines. Then I found the formal classification of irony, including situational irony and dramatic irony. Then I read several articles about irony in Disney and Pixar Animation. Additionally, I found four of my favorite irony animations and did some detailed research, including the village, The employment, Life Smartphone and Dinner for few. Then I summed up some rules from the color, lens language, visual style, sound, role characteristics of these works, and I think these are very helpful for the presentation of my animation works.
After all this research, I just lack the specific content. I have a general understanding of the form of irony. When I asked myself what I wanted to convey, I thought for a long time and didn’t decide what to do. Then I stayed in front of the computer every day to play games. In fact, this state lasted for a long time. This is actually a very terrible phenomenon, that is, I was avoiding what I had to face, and then paralyzed myself by eating and playing games. Then I suddenly felt that I can express my own state in my animation. Then I began to look for some irony illustrations, similar to being addicted to the Internet and escapism. There’s no doubt that our society is plagued with problems like dependence on technology, taxes, obesity, devaluation of workers etc. But that is not the real threat. The real threat is the fact that we refuse to acknowledge these problems to justify our addiction to them. Therefore I decided that the plot of my animation is that the person who addicted to computer games finally becomes the raw material of the food he eats by constantly eating. The man’s room is full of all kinds of take away boxes. Every day, the takeaway will send him pizzas, meat and other food. He keeps eating until cannot distinguish whether he is a human or a pig. Until one day, someone came to take him away and sent him to the food processing factory, and the baked food was sent to the next customer. It’s a simple story that takes place in a room, the process of which is very similar to a cycle. I call it a new way of feeding, that is, “we become what we eat.”
In my practical planning, I will first find a lot of room reference to set the atmosphere of this animation and then draw the 2d character and scene design. Then I will draw a 2d storyboard according to the learning of film language. Then I will model a character and a scene independently, including mapping and rigging, and finally lighting and rendering. I will focus on strengthening my ability in character creation and rigging, combined with my internship learning and some tutorials. What I want to show is exaggeration and atmosphere brought by the picture, and the character’s animation will not be much and complex. I will do more preparation work in the shape of the character, including the details of the scene, because compared with some fighting animation, irony animation needs a lot of obscure but reasonable elements. The reason why I insist on this animation for my own original rather than looking for some online materials is that I hope that every setting of my animation has been specially designed and is a meaningful arrangement.
My project will be carried out at the same time with my internship in China, because the content of the internship is the in-depth study of creating character model and rigging. For fmp, I hope that through this training, the skill of modeling in my personal project can reach a higher level, so as to better show my good field in the animation industry. I want to clip this animation in my profile to show that I am involved in the whole process of animation. For the thesis, I hope to improve the ability to tell stories, and understand how to express emotions and ideas with animation. My challenge is how to use the film language and narrative structure to present the phenomenon I want to expose in an exaggerated way of 3d animation and I believe that through this animation, I will strive to achieve this.
As for references and resources, I’ll look for resources from books, papers, online articles, YouTube videos, etc . Besides, I will find some kinds of image and video websites like Pinterest and Behance for FMP reference. I will generally use Maya software, and may use some basic actions of Mocap to reduce the workload of animation. I will use PS to draw the two-dimensional part, and use PR and AE to edit and colour matching.
This is all my content. The blog link with research so far and Presentation Transcript are listed below. And I look forward to your feedback and suggestions. Thank you.
PPT