WEEK 6: TASK 7 – AESTHETICS
Aesthetics in the animation discipline crosses into many different areas all combined to convey key communicative points in art and storytelling. Aesthetics builds shape and form into the storytelling and visual side of animation, fabricating the visual artistic expression giving the audience an experience, meaningful growth, and attachment towards the animated world. As explored by Herhuth (2016) aesthetics in animation creates theoretical feelings and visual metaphors guiding the audience in understanding through contemplation and sensorial based experience. Aesthetics creates connections between the audience and the story which promotes an effect and reaction in benefit of entertaining the audience and attracting consumers. For the audience this is establishing an original enjoyment from creativity and art.
In the anime Puella magi, Madoka Magica the animators creatively constructed the illusion of the characters entering a different abstract world or the witches labyrinth. They do this by using the visual aesthetics of design by combining art forms like Diadist collage into the animation to communicate to the audience the characters are taken away from their reality. In doing so it creates a feeling of fear and the unknown, taking the audience alongside the characters’ experience into surrealism and danger. From this the anime has implemented what Heruth elaborated on (Herhuth-Pixar and the Aesthetic Imagination.indd. 16/09/16, C.1, P.1) “They are able to address aesthetic experience through characterization and worldbuilding…”
(screenshot taken from original clip 13th April 2021) [1]
Bibliography
Herhuth-Pixar and the Aesthetic Imagination.indd. (16, 09 16). Aesthetic Storytelling. A Tradition and Theory of Animated Film. In Pixar and the Aesthetic Imagination (PDF ed., Vol. chapter one, pp. 1-37). Herhuth. Retrieved 04 19, 2021, from https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/13289.ch01.pdf
youtube (Director). (14 Aug 2013). Puella Magi Madoka Magica Movie – Witch Gertrud (Part 0.5) (scene clip ed.) [Film; youtube MP4 video]. Aniplex. Retrieved 04 19, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGW2Cy2zxfE&ab_channel=PuellaMagiMadokaMagica%28Unofficial%29Channel
Ehay, R. (2018, 03 8). Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Russian and Czech Influence In Japanese Animation. ANIMATION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES. Retrieved 04 19, 2021, from https://animationcriticalperspectives.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/puella-magi-madoka-magica-russian-and-czech-influence-in-japanese-animation/#:~:text=Surrealism%20is%20an%20art%20movement,their%20lives%20before%20becoming%20witches