Editorial: My Personal Art College Experience

 

As of writing this blog, the day is Thursday, April 28th, 2022. Today I have received my Diploma from my Art College, I have completed the course and now have a piece of paper that says I am done. Some people would be ecstatic about that, they are done with school and ready to go out into the world. I however am relieved. I am finished with school, and more specifically, the awful school I went to.

This is just gonna be a short little blog detailing some of my experiences and strong memories of going to the Victoria College of Art, and hopefully tell you why you shouldn't attend if you're a Capitol City Resident, because let me tell you, I am not happy with the school.

Honestly, the course started out fine, I show up at the building do the work and the day was done. Standard things and whatnot. I had a few problems during this part of my time at the college, but nothing major. Some problems with some teachers, but nothing too bad, then we hit 2020. I remember the day well, I was in my animation class and we got the news that because of the pandemic, school was no longer going to be in person, future classes were postponed, and the planned art show was canceled. One of my friends, whom I met at the college, was looking forward to the art show, and was practically devastated that it was canceled. This is where the problems began for me at the college.

The first big problem was, that for most of us, they were terrible at communication. The one major thing that any school, business or even person in a group needs to do when communicating online is to be responsive. They did tell us when classes were beginning, and the teachers were responsible for sending out links and notifying us when they couldn't attend a class session. However, I've had classmates struggle with getting some clear and precise answers from the staff, such as if they were allowed extra time on an exam, and I had some issues getting some things in a timely manner, like receipts.

My classes were also strange. I signed up for the animation course, so you'd expect me to be given a lot of animation related classes? And I did get a good amount of them, I also got two sculpture classes, "Art Theory", a painting class, and a bunch of Art History classes that had nothing to do with animation. The funny thing is that there was a class for History of Animation, but I didn't get it, and I don't think any of my classmates did. For some reason, it was assumed that the history of architecture and fashion were more important than the history of the thing we were learning to do.

The teachers were mixed, some of them were fine. I had a good relationship with a couple teachers. There was one teacher whom I would be highly complimentary of on a good day, and on a bad day I would be less enthusiastic about, but I think I had more good days with them than not. One teacher gave us a lot of work to do, but they were a decent teacher beyond that. The not so good teachers were another story. One teacher had problems properly communicating what they wanted us to do, most likely because they were old, but it was tough to get a clear answer from him if you were even the slightest bit confused. One teacher, whom I did like, ended up missing a lot of classes, and another teacher was very unconcerned about potentially sensitive topics, like sexuality, torture and child abuse, as in they gave no warnings about these kind of subjects, and didn't even attempt to breeze through them. The worst teacher I had was actually fired by the college, so good on them, but their classes were so dull and slow, and it did not help that during those classes we were in the middle of a terrible heat wave. The worst part about them though was that their use of a certain word, now I don't use bad words on this blog because I want to keep these accessible to most people, so I can not write what word this teacher said on this blog, but it is a word that myself and a friend of mine, both of us being on the autistic spectrum, took umbrage with them using.

I don't want to make it sound like I learned nothing or got no positive experiences from going here, I had some. I did learn some important things, I found a drawing style I was more comfortable with, I learned that I probably did not want to be an animator in the future, and I made some of the best friends I ever had. That being said, college was also a big reason I had to put this blog on the back-burner for 2020 and 2021, as I had to devote time to that rather than watching movies.

There were two major problems I had though, the first being the cost. It was probably cheaper than going to other colleges, but it was still expensive, and quite frankly the quality of the education was not worth the tuition. The big reason for that is that we did not get any group projects. Animation is not a one-man show, it takes multiple people to make an animation. Some animations can be done by one person teams, but those are not as common. Most TV Shows, Movies and short films or music videos are done by teams, and we never learned how to work as a team. We were never given a group project, outside of an Acting class (Which I thoroughly enjoyed actually, probably my favourite class of the bunch), and it was tough because we were expected to complete animations by ourselves. You know how many drawings goes into a minute of animation? Math was never my strongest attribute, so I'll leave the numbers up to you, but I believe our animations were twenty-five frames per second, and there are sixty seconds in a minute. twenty-five frames per second, sixty seconds per minute.

I'm not going to go into my classmates because any issues I had with them were not the college's fault, though I did butt heads with one a bit. Hard to say I'm blameless there really.

Overall, my Art College experience was a disaster, by the end of it, I just wanted it to be over. I'm kinda glad there was no grad ceremony really, I didn't even really like my high school grad ceremony. Sitting in that cramped amphitheatre, sweating bullets just waiting for name to be called, and then waiting for everyone else's name to be called. grad ceremonies are dumb. Otherwise, a fair amount of the teachers weren't great, some of my classes were irrelevant, it was expensive, with poor communication and overall I just don't think it was worth it. All I want to do is just kind of forget about it now, put my diploma in a frame and shove it in my closet. Still, I am thankful for the friends I made while I was there, and here's to hoping for many more years together. Either way, it's finished, over and done with, and I can devote more time to this blog now.

You may have noticed I actually put out two reviews in April, well, expect that to be the norm now, two reviews each month. One on the first, and one on the fifteenth. I'm happy to be back to this really.

First Impressions: The Bad Guys (2022)

 

2022 Has so far been an... interesting year for animated movies. The first notable release was The House, which was an anthology film, then there was that new Ice Age atrocity, then there was all the bad takes on Turning Red (including one which I think has quite frankly gotten enough attention) and then two movies from the last year made more notable this year, and that only truly applies to one of the two. I don't think this has been a bad year so far, there are two movies this month I still have yet to see, but so far not many movies have really been amazing, and the ones that could have been are being released next year. So, with the opportunity to see the latest theatrical animated movie, one that actually was meant to come out this year, of course I'd have to do a First Impressions on this one.

Going into this film, I did not have a lot of expectations, I expected a cute and entertaining family film and I got a cute and entertaining family film. It is not a bad movie, I'd say it's pretty good, but I would not say it was great.

So, what did I like about this movie? Well, for starters the animation and art-style was excellent. DreamWorks does not usually attempt different art styles in their movies, so this was an interesting looking film in their catalogue. The cel shaded feel gives this movie a unique look as most movies don't typically opt for this style of CG. The cel shaded look is typically reserved for video games more often than not. Sure we did see something like it in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, but that was stylized to look like a comic book. I am interested in seeing what the influence of both of these movies will be, whether or not we'll be seeing more movies with a similar look or not.

The acting is fine too, there aren't a whole lot of ultra-recognizable names in this movie, there's Sam Rockwell and Awkwafina, I also recognized the voice of Richard Ayoade of The IT Crowd and there was also Alex Borstein, most notable for voicing Lois Griffin on Family Guy. That being said, everyone did a good job with their roles and there weren't any bad line reads, so all-in-all the acting gets a pass from me.

Where the movie doesn't win me over is the plot. It is not a bad plot, but a rather predictable one. I saw this movie with some friends and after a while me and one of my friends just kind of figured who the true villain was gonna be, and then the characters are in prison and there is this ultra awesome black masked warrior that shows up and kicks all of the police officer's butts. I kind of figured which character was behind the mask immediately after they showed up. Ultimately, there is not going to be a whole lot about this movie's plot that will wholly surprise you, but that doesn't really take away from the rest of the movie's strengths.

As a whole, the movie was an entertaining time. I'd put it with the Sonic the Hedgehog movies or Angry Birds 2. I don't think it will be regarded as one of the best movies of the time, animated or otherwise, but it is still an entertaining enough watch. I've watched a fair number of movies this year, and a lot of them were dark, The House, The Batman, Studio 666, Everything Everywhere All at Once, okay that one wasn't dark, but it was weird and a bit obtuse, either way there is nothing wrong with watching a more basic, but entertaining movie every now and again. If there happens to be a sequel to this movie, I wouldn't mind checking it out. I can't say this is a very high recommendation, but I definitely do recommend it. No real surprises for avid movie-goers, but it's fun and entertaining, not bad at all.

First Impressions: Pinocchio: A True Story (2022)

It is not very often that a direct to video movie gets any kind of attention from critics or movie-goers, it really has to be something special to warrant the attention of movie fans. Maybe it's a cross-over between two iconic franchises that also just so happens to be the final role for on of the actors involved, maybe it's the movie based on a popular video game franchise that we've been waiting for since the original movies, or maybe it has some hilariously bad voice acting displayed front and center in the trailer. Pinocchio: A True Story is the third one, the trailer that everyone got to see thanks to AniMat (If I'm not mistaken the Tweet was a while ago) showcased some of the worst voice acting in an animated feature since Jeff Bridges in The Last Unicorn. The kicker of course is that, as other Twitter users have pointed out, Pauly Shore has done voice acting before, so... what exactly is going on here?

Sad to say but everything that people were making fun of about the movie prior to release, the infamous reading by Pauly Shore and the scene where Pinocchio gets shot happen within the first twenty minutes of the film, but it is still a treasure trove of absolute awfulness, completely unwatchable.

The voice acting is just all around terrible, not a single take sounds convincing or natural, with the exception of Tom Kenny, who of course is a seasoned professional, so while he puts on a typical Tom Kenny voice, his acting is still the best in this movie. What makes it even worse is that this is a dub-job, so while you're hearing bad voice actors read these lines, you're watching lips that never sync to the dialogue. You never tend to notice this stuff with dubbed anime because the mouth movements are fairly consistent, partially because of the Japanese language, and also because that's just how lip syncing works in animation now, there are a set number of mouth shapes that are used when needed, you can probably get away with using five or six different mouth shapes on a character and make a convincing enough dialogue scene. CG animation doesn't exactly work that way. On top of that, the DVD I purchased did not give me the option to watch this in the original Russian, which would have made the lip-sync less of a problem.

The lip-syncing reminds me of one of those GoodTimes Entertainment/Golden Films Disney knock-offs, specifically a version of Aladdin that I watched a while ago. There are moments where the dialogue comes out of mouths that are closed. The rest of the animation is... odd. Not in that Richard Williams or Tool music video kind of way, it's odd because it's obviously direct to video quality, but there are moments that don't look all that bad, like fix the lip-syncing and you could probably get away with putting some of these scenes in a theatrical production.

Honestly, that's the most interesting talking point. Not a whole lot else about this movie is interesting. The plot is not very interesting, I mean it's solid enough, but that's about it. You want to know something that is more interesting? Nimona has been revived!

Nimona is coming to Netflix in 2023 after being pulled from Disney's line-up. This means that plenty of dead projects can be revived by other studios, and also means that my favourite graphic novel of all time is getting it's movie adaptation finally! Seriously I'm very excited, and I'm not the only one. Plus, we have another Pinocchio movie coming soon, helmed by Guillermo del Toro. We're also getting that Blazing Samurai move finally... I mean I didn't say the interesting stuff was gonna be ALL good.

On some level, I can see why this got some attention, unlike a movie like Ella and the Little Sorceress, but if you want all the enjoyment you can get out of it, just watch the trailer. Really the movie's biggest crime is that it's boring, the voice acting is literally the most interesting thing about it. I can't even recommend this as a "So Bad It's Good" movie, but at the same time, I can't recommend people not watch it either. It's boring, but ultimately harmless, I don't think your perception of animation, nor direct-to-video cinema will be hurt by watching this. Granted the standards for Direct-to-Video cinema is low to begin with, but that's beside the point. If you see this for like, two dollars in a discount bin and want something just absolutely dumb to kill some time, there are worse things to spend your money on. Can't recommend it, but it does not irritate me by existing.

The Three Caballeros (1944) - A wild, but not wholly engaging collection

 

The 1940s were an odd time period for the Walt Disney company, Bambi did not do financially well upon its initial release and World War II in full swing. The company did not have the material nor funds to really do much outside of a collection of package films, shorter segments sewn together to make a feature length production. However, at the start of the "Package Film Era" of the Animated Canon, or "The Wartime Era" (Which actually extends beyond 1945 but... whatever, I guess), the American government wanted to combat the ties Latin America had with Nazi Germany, something called the "Good Neighbor Policy". The end result of that was Saludos Amigos in 1942. It was apparently popular enough to warrant a sequel, yes a sequel. The Three Caballeros is one of the rare sequels in the Animated Canon, and is the first of all of them. That all being considered, the one question that needs to be asked remains; Is this film any good?

The Three Caballeros stands out from the rest of the package film era because it actually does have a central plot, although it does end up being like the "Central Plot" of Fun and Fancy Free, where it just serves as a vehicle to bring us to all the different segments of the movie. It's Donald Duck's birthday, and he gets a bunch of gifts from his friends in Latin America, and that's pretty much it. I think rather than go through each segment individually, I'll talk about them in chunks because there aren't any really major jumps or dips in quality.

We start with a film projector with two shorts, "The Cold-Blooded Penguin" and "The Flying Gauchito", over all these shorts are cute, not really hilarious, but cute none the less. I remember really liking the Cold-Blooded Penguin segment a lot as a kid, although if I do have one criticism it's that, as much as I love Sterling Holloway (Come on, he was the voice of Winnie the Pooh), he really didn't seem like a good fit for this short. I could imagine someone with a punchier voice doing it and making the deliveries funnier, but for what we got, Sterling did a good job as the narrator of this segment. Afterwards, we meet José Carioca, and we get a segment about Bahia, which leads to some songs, some live action mixing and some really wacky animation. Honestly the same can be said about the segments with Panchito Pistoles, it's a collection of songs, the characters interacting with live action footage, and wacky animation.

I guess that kind of is the biggest problem with the movie, that's just kind of all it is, outside of the two shorts at the start, we get a bunch of songs, a lot of live-action mixing and a lot of wacky animation, and it's just not really engaging. Even as a kid I remember fast forwarding through a lot of the movie to get to the parts I liked. I think the best example of this is during one of the moments of live-action footage. We see a bunch of people dancing, and that's it. We don't get anything about how the dance is performed, we don't get the history or cultural significance of the dance, all we're told is that it's "Panchito's favourite dance" and we just watch it. Believe it or not, learning about other cultures is very fascinating, and I would have been way more interested in talking about this dance than watching it, especially because... well I'm not taking part in the dance, I'm sitting down watching a movie on my couch, so I can't really get into the excitement of the moment.

Really, after a while I just found myself getting bored of some scenes. I'm sure to some they'd be impressive examples of film and animation, but it's like going to a party. It's fun at first, and kind of neat, but after a while you're just drained and you want to go, but your ride wants to stay and hang out, so you just sit in the bathroom and try to rejuvenate but then you go back out and you just drain even faster. At that point, I don't really care how pretty the décor is, or how nice the music selection is, I'm bored and I'd rather be doing something else.

Speaking of Décor and Music, I must say this film is... okay. Animation wise I do think it's on par with the rest of Disney's output at the time. They do have a lot of wackier and more cartoony bits, and they're fine. I'd say music is pretty fair, they use a lot of more traditional songs rather than writing their own songs, and they're fine songs. With the exception of maybe two songs, one of them being the memorable "The Three Caballeros" which is genuinely one of my favourite Disney songs. I think this scene is a perfect summary of what the film was intended to be like, it has the more energized animation and the fun song, but I guess it was never going to be easy to make an entire movie like this one segment.

Honestly, as much as this movie failed to engage me, I am kind of glad it became kind of a popular franchise. The Three Caballeros have made their way to multiple comics, with two being written by Don Rosa himself. José cameos in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there was the mini-series Legend of the Three Caballeros, and they even appeared in DuckTales 2017. I'm gad they're popular within the Disney world, I do like these characters. Still, the movie is not very interesting. I feel like if they took these characters and had them explore different aspects of their cultures, or meeting other characters and exploring their cultures, that it would be more interesting than this movie. On some level, I can kind of recommend it, it is an odd curiosity in the Animated Canon. But unlike something like Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, I don't think this is a movie that is a must watch. I don't think you really need to watch this movie unless you're a huge Disney fan. It is on Disney+, and you can probably find individual segments here and there so, I can't stop you if you want, but I can't really recommend this one.

The Last Unicorn (1982) - A charming and somewhat dark, but flawed fantasy film

There was a strange trend in kids movies of the 1980s, a trend that many of us look back on in either joy or confusion. A trend that may have had a hand in shaping the modern animation landscape. Kids movies in the 1980s got darker and more intense. Why this happened I am unsure, but if I could guess, I'd say it was a response to something, to what I would not know. This trend seemed to really begin in 1982, when movies like The Secret of NIMH and The Dark Crystal were released, movies with G and PG ratings with more of an edge to them. The Secret of NIMH is one of the earliest of these movies, but I think The Last Unicorn was also an influence in this trend as well.

The movie is based on the book of the same name by Peter S. Beagle, who also did the screenplay for this movie. It is nice when an author gets some creative control of their property when it gets adapted. I've been meaning to get a copy of the book but I've never gotten around to it, next time I'm at the bookstore I'll pick up a copy. Anyway, the movie follows the titular "Last Unicorn", as she leaves her forest to find others, after she is told of a Red Bull that chased them away. In her travels, she comes across a struggling magician named Schmendrick and a ragged maiden by name of Molly Grue. That covers about the first two-thirds of the movie, the last third has the Unicorn turned into a human, and while at the castle of King Haggard, she begins to become more human than Unicorn. It works, nothing about the plot is wholly special, but it works. Granted I could be missing a lot of subtext, there is a lot that could be said in regards to the book and film being allegory, satire or commentary, but I am not well versed to understand any of it. The other thing of note is that this movie does have a few musical montage transitions in there. I think these mostly serve a nice, pleasant and more calming moments as a breather between darker scenes like the Midnight Carnival or more intense scenes like General Scully.

The music is rather nice I'll say. The music was composed by Jimmy Webb who is most famous for songs like "By The Time I Get to Phoenix" and "MacArthur Park". The music was performed by the band America, most known for the god-awful song "A Horse With No Name", with orchestral work done by the London Symphony Orchestra. Oddly enough, the combination of America and the London Symphony Orchestra lead to some honestly really beautiful tracks. I can see why the title track was covered by Kenny Loggins, Loreena McKennitt, even Ninja Sex Party did a cover of it, and yeah, it's a really beautiful track. I also really like "Man's Road" I think that song is just as good. Unfortunately, we get some singing from the cast, specifically from Mia Farrow and Jeff Bridges. I can at least see someone really liking Mia Farrow as a singer, but to pair her up with Jeff Bridges. I love Jeff Bridges, but he is not a good singer, like, give me Christopher Lee's power metal album instead.

Speaking of the voice talents, this movie has some solid talent behind it, Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Tammy Grimes, Jeff Bridges, Angela Lansbury, Christopher Lee, and as a casual Deep Space 9 fan, a cameo by René Auberjonois is gonna make me happy, and being a Disney Duck nerd, a Paul Frees cameo also makes me happy. Most of the cast do good jobs in their roles, Mia Farrow, Tammy Grimes and the cameos do good jobs, Christopher Lee kind of suffers from the same problem as Orson Wells in the Transformers movie, where I'm not exactly sure if his performance is good or if it's just the voice. Alan Arkin is mixed in this movie, on the one hand he does give a much more flat read than some of the others, but on the other hand, it kinda works, and he does put some flare and actual acting into his reads. Either way, he does a better job than Jeff Bridges. Again, I love Jeff Bridges, but this is probably his weakest performance, it's flat and unconvincing. Some actors just don't translate into the booth very well, which is why a lot of animation fans ask for studios and the big heads to be more respectful to voice actors. Sometimes we get a Hank Azaria or a Patrick Warburton who can do both, but other times, we get performances like this.

I can't say that the animation is bad, it looks nice and has a really nice palette to it. The Red Bull just pops against the darker blues, and the forests look so lush and pretty. Some of the backgrounds look like really nice paintings, and the character design is very interesting. I do think that you could identify these characters if they were in silhouette. However, the character animation is... a bit limited. This was a Rankin/Bass production, and yes, that is the same Rankin/Bass behind those stop motion holiday specials. It looks like the budget for this film was 3.5 Million, which is actually very little in the scope of animated movie budgets, like Disney spent 140 million on Treasure Planet, The Nightmare Before Christmas was made on a 24 million dollar budget, and even Kiki's Delivery Service is estimated to have cost 800 Million Yen, which is over six million USD. So yeah, character animation and lip synch aren't the best, 3.5 Million dollars is less than what Peter Pan was given. That being said, there are way worse animated films out there, and it's really only noticeable if you're actually studying animation, because when I watched this film before taking my animation courses, I had no issues with it at all. Also, how does a skeleton blush when it has no blood to rush to its face? That was a weird animation choice.

Taking a critical look at things can be tough, especially when you're looking at something like The Last Unicorn. It's a good movie, I'd even say a really good movie, but it does have some flaws. However, a solid B average is still a good mark, I don't expect straight A's from every movie I watch, so while I do have issues with the animation and voice acting, on the whole they weren't awful. There are movies where the animation was just horrid, and where the actors were miscast and gave dreadful performances, on its own, this movie does not stick out as anything too bad. It's a charming movie that I think would be a good watch for a slightly older demographic, but maybe you can get away with showing this to younger kids too. Just keep in mind, there are somethings that aren't suitable for children in this movie. I think despite the issues I have with it, I can still give this a recommendation, this is one of those movies I do believe is worth watching, and for what it's worth, I am glad I watched it. Now to read the book.