Category Archives: Skills and Industry
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Case Study 2
The Jetsons was first produced in the 1960’s by Hanna-Barbera Productions and had two additional seasons in the 1980’s, although it is set in the future it still used the cultural and social attitudes/stereotypes from around that era, and viewed some of the attitudes/stereotypes from another perspective, for example in the future using a outside treadmill to walk their dog. One of the stereotypes used in The Jetsons can be with Judy Jetson who is described and portrayed as a “typical teen girl whose interests include clothes, boys and revealing secrets to her digital dairy”. One of the cultural influences in the Jetsons is the era its based on depicted in a futuristic setting that used a lot of Googie style, an iconic American architecture from around the 40’s to 60’s that used a lot of geometry, glass, neon, space, motion etc, themes for example buildings suspended on adjustable poles and pneumatic tubes for people to use as transportation.
However a good comparison to The Jetsons is American Dad. Fox Television, Fuzzy Door Productions and Underdog Productions first produced American Dan in 2005 and continues today with a total of 12 seasons. Compared to The Jetsons American Dad is set in a modern-day setting, but it uses and challenges some stereotypes, for example one stereotype they use is that for example Jeff a hippie does drugs and is a high school dropout, however one stereotype that they challenge can be that American-Asian’s are inoffensive, one of the characters called Toshi only speaks Japanese and his friends believes that he is agreeing with them or talking about similar things, however he could be rude, offensive or talking about how he want to kill another character. One of the cultural and social attitudes used in American Dad is that some of the adults and older generation don’t know how to fully use or dislike technology, for example Stan the farther of the family at first does not agree with texting because it inhibits ‘real’ conversation. A majority of The Jetsons humour was sitcom style although American Dad is also a sitcom its jokes can be crude, for example a character called Klaus, a German Olympian stuck in a goldfish’s body, claims his “grandfather was a conductor at Auschwitz” but on a “kiddy train at the zoo. You know, it’s a big town, there’s other stuff there”.
Both of American Dad and The Jetsons have commercial value in home release, crossovers and rumoured movies, however only The Jetsons currently have commercial value in other products, for example several video games on a range of consoles that include NES, Game Boy and Intellivision, and many comic books published by several companies that include Marvel and DC. Furthermore the Jetsons had a crossover with Family Guy, another animated series produced by Fox, additionally Fox also produces a show called The Cleveland Show and all three series have crossovers with each other and all have similar themes and stereotypes.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055683/?ref_=nv_sr_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jetsons
Case Study: Alex Mann
Alex Mann studied at California institute of fine arts, with Jack Hannah, an animator notable for many Disney films and shorts featuring Donald Duck, and graduated with a Bachelor of fine arts (BFA), Alex first worked for Robert Joseph on “Rage of Angles” although not as an animator but as a writer, however he first started working as an animator as an inbetweener at 16.
After working on “Rage of Angles” at Universal Studios He was hired by Hyperion Pictures in the story department, he worked on a film called “The Brave Little Toaster” which won awards, at the same time He worked with Willard Carroll on “The Backyard Gang”.
After Alex worked at Walt Disney Studios first co-writing and co-directing “Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas”, after He worked on several projects while working for Disney that include “Treasure Planet”, “A Goofy Movie”, and “Lilo and Stitch 2”, overall He worked over 10 years at Disney in story development.
Over the years He has worked with many companies and help produced many popular movies and shows such as; Nickelodeon “Tak and the Power of Juju”, Sunbow “G.I. Joe”, Filmation Associates “He-Man”, Ruby-Spears productions “Mister T”, Warner Bros “Space Jam” and most recently with Columbia Pictures “Planes”.
Furthermore in 2002 Alex, as a writer and story artist, worked on a 4D movie for Disneyland theme parks, “Mickeys Philharmagic” included new updated CGI graphics of many of Disney’s most popular films like “Aladdin”, “The Lion King” and “Peter Pan”, “Mickeys Philharmagic” is now one of Disney’s most popular and profitable attractions around the world for Disney.
He was also hired to help make storyboards for Jack Smith’s “On The Waterfront” because the moving set pieces needed pre-visualization, Additionally He is a member of the Animation Guild and The Writers Guild of America.
To date Alex has earned two awards, the first is the ProMax awards in 1992 and the second is an Annie award in 2000 for “Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas.
Overall Alex Mann has worked as; Story artist, character designer, character stylist, layout artist, background designer, background layout artist, inbetween artist, assistant animator, co-writer, co-director, storyboard artist, production artist, storyboard revisionist, story director, stage manager, blue sketch artist and a creative consultant. Although for some of these He was uncredited.
When he was working on “A Goofy Movie” his job roll was character designer that meant that he elaborated on the designs of the characters, the movie is set several years later than the animated series, so He had to take the design of middle school characters for example and design what they could look like in high school, he also had to design various facial expressions and body positions to go with the designs.
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Animations and Research 