ILLUSTRATION & VISUAL NARRATIVE - LECTURE REPORT 2

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INSTRUCTIONS

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Lecture Report 2 : Visual Study 

Figure 1.0 Fantasia

Fantasia is one of the earliest Disney films, and it contains a number of notable examples of the use of illustrated images to simulate light and shadow, even more so than more recent Disney films. The viewer is treated to a fantastical view of Mickey Mouse's interaction with magical broomsticks that come to life in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a story that would have been difficult to sell in film at the time. 

Animation allows us to explore areas of the imagination that would be impossible to depict in other forms of media. The lighting in this section of the film is initially used to set the mood of the scene, but it eventually expands to include more applications, such as the scene in which Mickey violently destroys his broomstick-man creation, which is represented by red lighting and a shadow cast on a wall outside of the room. Furthermore, as the broomstick-characters multiply and become uncontrollable, their overwhelming presence is represented on the wall by long, coloured shadows. The coloured shadows maintain a similar colour theme, but they cool down some of the warmer tones from earlier in the piece.

Figure 1.2 Frames from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Another work within Fantasia is Night on Bald Mountain (Fig 3.7.1) which is an fanciful story concerning a demon-like entity that takes over a tiny community. In comparison to films like Snow White, Fantasia shines out as a highly innovative composition when considering how the shorts could be depicted in film at the time. 

As Bald Mountain opens, the audience is presented to the outline of the enormous monster character that is definitely not of this world. As the short goes on, the audience discovers that the character is shadow, as his methods of locomotion and interaction are identical to a shadow travelling and distorting across surfaces. Here, animation not only allows shadow to become the topic of the story, but really inserts it as a key character, functioning as a dominating force within a defenseless community

           Figure 1.3 Night on Bald Mountain showing some fantastical creatures through silhouetting and shadow-play