The master of the masters - Ladislas Starevich

  Last week, it was given to my class a project in which we had to create a fully animated video using the stop motion technique. I decided to do a self portrait and use cut-outs along with pixilation.

Since it had to be stop motion, I decided to start by looking for the "creator" of this technique, and so it led me to Ladislas Starevich, a Russian and French stop motion animator pioneer, who used insects or other animals as his protagonists.

             

Scene from "Cameraman's Revenge" from 1911

In my opinion, his masterpiece came later with is first fully animated feature film, "The Tale of the Fox". It is based on the tales of Renard the Fox. Released eight months before Disney's Snow White, it is the world's sixth-ever animated feature film (and the second to use puppet animation). (As you can see from the picture below, his puppets and sets could achieve massive dimensions).

Plot

In the kingdom of animals, the fox Renard is used to tricking and fooling everyone. Consequently, the King (a lion), receives more and more complaints. Finally, he orders Renard to be arrested and brought before the throne.

It's a must!! Everyone in the animation industry should watch this film or his work. It has inspired some of the greatest names in animation and it still keeps on inspiring little students like me.

One of the great names that appeared next to Starevich was Jiri Trnka. He was a Czech puppet maker, illustrator, motion-picture animator and film director.In addition to his extensive career as an illustrator, especially of children's books, he is best known for his work in animation with puppets, which began in 1946.

Throughout his career he experimented with different animation techniques, from traditional cartoons in his first shorts to animation with shadow puppets. However, his preferred method, and that which gave him worldwide fame, was stop-motion puppet work. His carved puppet characters were animated in complex sets with an expressive use of lighting. In this manner he was able to realize the dream of Czech baroque sculptors to set their sculptures in motion. Of puppet films Trnka said:

Puppet films are truly unlimited in their possibilities: they can express themselves with the greatest force precisely when the realistic expression of the cinematographic image often faces insurmountable obstacles.

Really Trnka was not involved so much with the animation itself, but primarily on the development of scripts and puppet making. His studio had a trained team of animators, among which especially Bretislav Pojar was credited as responsible for the animation of many of Trnka's films. Other prominent animators from Trnka's studios were Stanislav Latal Trnka, Jan Karpas, Sramek Bohuslav, Frantisek Zdenek Hrabar and Braun.

Although animated films with puppets had already been made before Trnka, he corresponds to the main thrust of this technique, later used in many parts of the world. Unlike what had been done before, Trnka chose not to alter the appearance of the dolls with artificial elements to denote their emotions but to keep it unchanged, getting his expression through changes in framing and lighting. According Pojar:

He always gave his eyes a look indefinable. With the simple turn of their heads, or with a change of lighting, rose smiling expressions, or unhappy, or dreamers. This gave one the impression that the puppet hid more than it showed, and it's heart of wood stored even more.

                     

  








Scene from "The Hand"

One of his greatest films was "The Hand"( 1965),

his last film. In the words of Bendazzi, "the Hand" is "a kind of hymn to the creative freedom raging." 

Plot

It is about a sculptor visited by a huge hand, which seeks the completion of a sculpture of itself. By rejecting the imposition, the artist is constantly pursued by the hand, ending with induced suicide and the hand officiating at his funeral.