Assignment 1- Contemporary

Contemporary

Tim Burton

Tim Burton is an American film director who utilised modern day animation to create cult classics like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. He started his career by attending California Institute of the Arts where after he graduated began working for Disney as an animator. He worked on the film The Fox and the Hound to start off his career but it was 1982s’ Vincent which put Burton into the spotlight as the film received several awards. His first full-length film that he animated was Frankenweenie in 1984 but it wasn’t released as it was deemed too inappropriate for children. He directed his first film in 1985 after Paul Reubens sought Burton out to direct Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and ended up being a huge success. He then took a 3 year break from film making as he wasn’t interested by any of the scripts presented to him. That was until he was presented with the script for Beetlejuice in 1988. Other film successes include Batman in 1989 and TheNightmare Before Christmas. The list of successful Tim Burton films is so big that he will surely leave a legacy as one of the most influential film makers of all time.

Tim Burton’s audience is typically 15-30-year-old males as he often portrays a dark tone in his films with the colours and styles which allow a gritty atmosphere into his films. Most of his films carry a dark nature with them. However, this is only an assumption since Burton makes his films available to anyone but typically aged 12 and above. Tim Burtons Models often share the same design as most of them have a slender character with large eyes, pale faces and a long neck which gives his films a trademark when it comes to his stop motion animations. When it comes to the Box Office Tim Burton is one of many Animators/Directors to regularly make millions of dollars in his films with films like Frankenweenie which has overall made $35,000,000 since its release.
Tim Burtons characters have a dark design for the most part as a variety of his characters are undead in his films. It is common for these characters to have pale white faces with a mainly black costumes. For example Jack Skellington is a skeleton who lives in Halloween town. His character design reflects the atmosphere and narrative of the setting of the film. Another famous example is Frankenweenie which is a dog brought back to life as the movie is a parody based around Frankenstein. The movie is entirely black and white so the character has a design to fit the coloring of the film. They are made primarily with armatures.

Nick Park

Nick Park is an English animator, writer and director best known for creating Shaun the Sheep and Wallace and Gromit. He joined AardmanAnimations in 1986 who at the time was striving to reinvent the art of claymation and later worked on Peter Gabriel’s music video titledSledgehammer which is widely considered to be one of the best music videos of all time. His films such as A grand day out and his multiple Wallace and Gromit films were nominated for awards. Due to this he was able to Co-direct his first film in 2001 known as Chicken Run and was distributed by Dreamworks studios, a partnership which was soon to end in 2005 due to creative differences.
However Nick Parks characters are friendly with traditionally bright colors in their design. This reflects their friendly nature and makes it more visually appealing for children who are Aardmans primary target audience. Aswell as this, most of his characters are animals to engage the audience more. Talking and sentient animals are a common trope among children films to help engage a child audience. Unlike Tim Burton, his models are made with claymation.