Saturday morning cartoons: “Herzog and the Monsters” and “How Wings are Attached to the Backs of Angels”

OOOKKKAAAYY

You are right about weird. Most fun though.

A book monster and something the NFBofC funded.

these are really cool, irene. well worth clicking through for the high resolution versions.

Thanks, Saemus. That's a good reminder:

*Everyone*
If you find yourself enjoying these, even a little, you really should go look at the high res versions. It's a much better expierience. Unfortunately, only the low res versions are embedable.

Chricton: I don't know why but Canada does seem to be a hotbed of great animation. A lot of what I found was from NFBof C...Or least they aired the version that made it to Youtube. For what it's worth, a quick skimming of a Wikipedia article says that Canada branched out from standard cell animation in the 1940s a realization that they could not compete with Disney.

These are pretty cool. The second one is kinda weird though...

Can anyone explain its purpose/meaning? The only thing I got from it is that he was meddling with things he shouldn't be, or trying to explain things that can't be explained. Or maybe I'm completely off.

Either way, neat stuff.

Irene,
Yes. The Canadian Film Board seems to be more experimental than other places. Although I have to admit that Rotoscoping, to me, is hard to call animation. I guess I'm just a "cell head" at heart. :)

Chricton: Hum, almost none of the NFB's films are rotoscoped.

And rotoscope was first used in cel animation, in fact was specifically invented with the intent to lower the cost of making cel animated films while improving the animation. A good animator will use a rotoscope modify what he sees and make awesome animation, a bad one will simply trace what he sees.

In any case, if you like cel animation you'd probably enjoy The Cat Came Back and The Big Snit
Irene: When Grierson was brought to Canada to be the first director of the NFB, he hired a young animator named Norman McLaren who spent three decades or so there making awesome films, training countless others and fostering experimentation (partly because of low budgets, admitedly)

Thanks for the tip! I just picked Neighbors out of the McLaren entries on Youtube and realized I had seen it as a teenager. I'm enjoying the abstract shape films now....

If you don't enjoy The Cat Came Back, well, just, I dunno. But you will, so that's ok.