动画设计外文文献翻译.docx

1、动画设计外文文献翻译文献出处：Amidi, Amid. Cartoon modern: style and design in fifties animation. Chronicle Books, (2006):292-296.原文Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties AnimationAmidi, AmidDuring the 1970s,when I was a graduate student in film studies, UPA had a presence in the academy and among cinephiles

2、that it has since lost. With 16mmdistribution thriving and the films only around twenty years old, one could still see Rooty Toot Toot or The Unicorn in the Garden occasionally. In the decades since, UPA and the modern style it was so central in fostering during the 1950s have receded from sight. Of

3、 the studios own films, only Gerald McBoing Boing and its three sequels have a DVD to themselves, and fans must search out sources for old VHScopies of others. Most modernist-influenced films made by the less prominent studios of the era are completely unavailable. UPA remains, however, part of the

4、standard story of film history. Following two decades of rule by the realist-oriented Walt Disney product, the small studio boldly introduced a more abstract, stylized look borrowed from modernism in the fine arts. Other smaller studios followed its lead. John Hubley, sometimes in partnership with h

5、is wife Faith, became a canonical name in animation studies. But the trend largely ended after the 1950s. Now its importance is taken for granted. David Bordwell and I followed the pattern by mentioning UPA briefly in our Film History: An Introduction, where we reproduce a black-and-white frame from

6、 the Hubleys Moonbird, taken from a worn 16 mm print. By now, UPA receives a sort of vague respect, while few actually see anything beyond the three or four most famous titles. All this makes Amid Amidis Cartoon Modern an important book. Published in an attractive horizontal format well suited to di

7、splaying film images, it provides hundreds of color drawings, paintings, cels, storyboards, and other design images from 1950s cartoons that display the influence of modern art. Amidi sticks to the U.S. animation industry and does not cover experimental work or formats other than cel animation. The

8、book brings the innovative style of the 1950s back to our attention and provides a veritable archive of rare, mostly unpublished images for teachers, scholars, and enthusiasts. Seeking these out and making sure that they reproduced well, with a good layout and faithful color, was a major accomplishm

9、ent, and the result is a great service to the field. The collection of images is so attractive, interesting, and informative, that it deserved an equally useful accompanying text. Unfortunately, both in terms of organization and amount of information provided, the book has major textual problems. Am

10、idi states his purpose in the introduction: to establish the place of 1950s animation design in the great Modernist tradition of the arts. In fact, he barely discusses modernism across the arts. He is far more concerned with identifying the individual filmmakers, mainly designers, layout artists, an

11、d directors, and with describing how the more pioneering ones among them managed to insert modernist style into the products of what he sees as the old-fashioned, conservative animation industry of the late 1940s. When those filmmakers loved jazz or studied at an art school or expressed an admiratio

12、n for, say, Fernand Lger, Amidimentions it. He may occasionally refer to Abstract Expressionism or Pop Art, but he relies upon the reader to come to the book already knowing the artistic trends of the twentieth century in both America and Europe. At least twice he mentions that Gyorgy Kepess importa

13、nt 1944 book The Language of Vision was a key influence on some of the animators inclined toward modernism, but he never explains what they might have derived from it. There is no attempt to suggest how modernist films (e.g. Ballet mcanique, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari) might have influenced those

14、of Hollywood. On the whole, the other arts and modernism are just assumed, without explanation or specification, to be the context for these filmmakers and films.There seem to me three distinct problems with Amidis approach: his broad, all-encompassing definition of modernism; his disdain for more t

15、raditional animation, especially that of Disney; and his layout of the chapters. For Amidi, modern seems to mean everything from Abstract Expressionism to stylized greeting cards. He does not distinguish Cubism from Surrealism or explain what strain of modernism he has in mind. He does not explicitl

16、y lay out a difference between modernist-influenced animation and animation that is genuinely a part of modern/modernist art. Thus there is no mention of figures like Oskar Fischinger and Mary Ellen Bute, though there seems a possibility that their work influenced the mainstream filmmakers dealt with in the book. This may be because Amidi sees modernisms entry into American animation only secondarily as a matter of direct influences from the other arts. Instea