I have set the title of my thesis as’Investigation and Practice on the Form and Content of Irony Animation’. Because I wanted to research about ironic animation in relation to the definition of ironic animation and how to do ironic animation. This is also relevant to my FMP, as my FMP is also a satirical animation that satirises the current social situation of teenagers being addicted to games and food.
The research and investigation part is where I parse and analyse the ironic animations by finding information, and the practice is to show how I refer to this theoretical knowledge into my FMP by analysing my own ironic animations.
Irony is a literary device in which contradictory statements or situations reveal a reality that is different from what appears to be true. There are many forms of irony featured in literature. The effectiveness of irony as a literary device depends on the reader’s expectations and understanding of the disparity between what “should” happen and what “actually” happens in a literary work. This can be in the form of an unforeseen outcome of an event, a character’s unanticipated behavior, or something incongruous that is said.
One of the most famous examples of irony in literature comes from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. In this story, a newly married couple decides independently to sacrifice and sell what means most to themselves in order to purchase a Christmas gift for the other. Unfortunately, the gifts they receive from each other are intended for the very prized possessions they both sold. As a result, though their sacrifices symbolize the love they have for each other, the actual gifts they receive are all but useless.
Irony is one of the most common rhetorical techniques in narrative art, where the actual meaning of the words is often strongly impugned to the surface meaning. Most animation, like novels, draw on characters, language and plot to develop their narrative and express meaning. The use of irony in animations creates a tangled emotional tension and an intriguing aesthetic meaning in the text, which is why studying the rhetoric of irony is particularly important for a thorough reading of the animation.
Films from 2002 often relied on characters made up of cubes, spheres and other simple shapes. Later, characters became more detailed, backgrounds and surface textures improved, and motion became smoother. A lot of that, Greenberg said, reflects increased computer power and improved software, as well as students who arrive at Cornell with more experience.
But as any fan of “South Park” will tell you, it’s the story that counts, and most of the films offered quirky, often hilarious vignettes with ironic twist endings worthy of “Twilight Zone” episodes: People at a bus stop never found out why their cell phones kept ringing, but the audience did; a chameleon’s efforts to find friends paralleled the tale of the ugly duckling; an elephant struggled to lose weight with no help from his trainer; and a medieval warrior thought he had gotten the best of a dragon but learned the meaning of “do unto others.”
The first animations were all written with a lot more visual storytelling. This is the same with kids animation. You can tell a lot cleaner jokes that are much easier to understand. With adult animation, you get a lot more storytelling that’s based off jokes and dialogue. The simpsons, for example, openly consider themselves an animated sitcom rather than a cartoon.