Poetry in Animation

As a student of animation and a huge fan of poetry as narrative, i chose to look into this subject in order to gain further knowledge on how to approach designing an animation concept using poetry as the narrative. i have written my own poems, and I am hoping to create an animation to visually express the emotions of the text.


Animated poetry is most simply described as an art form in which the artist renders a text poem using moving or animated words. Abstract, descriptive or allegorical animated images may also be used instead of, or with, the moving text.

Animated poetry need not consist of only moving or animated text, it is often composed of several media types, including sound/music, animation, photography/videography, written text and spoken words. The images, sounds, motion and the viewer's visual perception of the poem are an integral part of animated poetry, as important as the text itself. The elements of animated poetry combine to form a unified artistic expression, expressing a concept, idea, event or emotion much like traditional poetry.Music Videos, such as those seen on MTV can be considered a form of animated poetry, that uses audio and video elements to express the song's lyrics.

'The whole idea of Animated Poetry is not to illustrate poems, but to interpret them in a visual way" - 'Geert Van Goethem'

As explained above the idea of animating a poem is to capture the message behind the text. the sub-text can be shown through visuals which by themselves may not make sense, but together with the poem narrated over the soundtrack it adds a sense of reassurance to the plot.

Lotte Reiniger

The extract i have chosen is from the book 'Animation Art', written by Jerry Beck. I was particulary captivated by this segment because i have never experienced a lot of shadow puppet animation, therefore i wanted to learn about the advantages of working with this medium.

German animator Lotte Reiniger began as a theatre student at max Reinhardt's school in Berlin. whilst there she created a title sequence for expressionist director Paul Wegener's Die Raffarger van Hamelin, 1917 (a German adaptation of the pied piper of hamlin), made for the Berlin Institut fur Kulturforschung.

Her first love was for Chinese theatre and first used the technique in Das Ornament des Veliebten Herzens 1922. In 1932, with her film director husband, Karl Koch, she started work on a feature-length silhouette film, adding depth to the end product by filming figures through shelves of glass.
around the same time Nosferatu was released, which contained a sequence involving shadows as the focal point, in order to create mystery and conjour a sense of fear.
in many ways Reiniger used the shadow puppets to portray a scary character, thwarting monsters and devils en route.

Lotte Reiniger's creativity and imagination found expression through the exacting details of finely cut paper, and moved frame by frame. This is the same technique used by puppet animators, for example, Nick Park and Jan Svankmajer.

In conclusion Lotte Reiniger incorporated shadow puppetry in animation, marking a turning point for the route of animation. the really effective approach of using puppets to cast shadows, immediately relates to chinese theatre and captures a historic technique on film.

Jan Svankmajer

'Homunculus figure in Jan Svankmajer's treatment of Faust (1994). Svankmajer achieves haunting effects in his films with his mixtures of live action and animation.'

The passage i'm analysing is extracted from 'Cracking Animation, the Aardman Book of Animation'. The focal point of the article is the works of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, who is renowned for his bizarre and corrupt animations. Also the article looks into Jan Svankmajer's unique approach to animation through the mutipul techniques he adopted . By reviewing this piece i will gain further knowledge concerning independent animators and their use of different art forms. Svankmajer was considered ahead of his time, in his film Alice (1987), he experiements with animal skulls and doll's eyes.

From his first film, The Last Trick (1964), Svankmajer brought to the cinema the theatrical skills of masks and puppets, combining them with film animation techniques using clay, models, cut-outs and inanimate objects conjured into life with a sharply focused surreal imagination that is endlessly startling.

Svankmajer's films play on universal phobias and the subject matter flies in the face of social taboos, linking food, death, sex pain and pleasure in shocking, unforgettable imagery.

Svankmajer's broad use of mediums and techniques is facinating, I will now consider a wider range of materials and techniques when storyboarding animations in the future. Although Svankmajer uses multipul amounts of mediums, his work relays the right message when completed, which also means that when choosing a technique or material I must make sure it is relevant to the narraive and the sub-text.

The passage then proceeds to comment on Jan Svankmajer's apparent inspirations. Svankmajer's The Pit and the Pendulum (1983) reveals two major influences-Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe-and reflect his fascination with dream states: those uncertain regions where reality and unreality are excitingly, and ofter frighteningly, blurred.

After reading this article I'm not suprised that animators such as Brothers Quay and Tim Burton, find Svankmajer's work to be inspirational. Jan Svankmajer's use of multiple mediums is present in The Brothers Quay's Street of Crocodiles (1986).

Art in Motion

Published in 'Cinema' by Montejorge on May 23rd 2008, 'Art in Motion' briefly follows the time consuming technique of stop-motion animation adopted by Blu.
Montejorge claims that Blu's technique is an extremely laborious type of animation, i found this interesting as most animation techniques tend to be painstakingly tedious, although the way in which Blu demands the process to be carried out is highly precise. Stop motion is where objects are photographed frame by frame. Between each frame, the object's position is moved slightly, so when the film is shot there is an illusion of motion. This technique has been used by many animators in the past, for example, Nick Park-'Wallace and Gromit' and Tim Burton-'The Nightmare Before Christmas', 'Vincent' and 'Corpse Bride'.

Whilst reading the article i wondered why Blu's technique differed from the conventional use of stop motion. My question was shortly answered, as Montejorge asks the reader to imagine this technique using graphite, paint and city walls. Apart from being an insane amount of work, the results are simply ingenious and inspired. This is exactly what Blu did in the movie 'Muto'. in order to create a free flowing animation, Blu would draw an image, take a photograph, paint over the image with a thin layer of white paint, then draw the image again in the next position. Obviously Blu repeats this technique until the animation is finished, resulting in a free flowing motion blur animation, filmed in the streets, walls of Buenos Aires and its outskirts, the artist had a monstrous amount of work, although had some assistance.

I found this article useful because Montejorge has investigated how a simple technique such as stop motion has been transformed into a process, which takes considerably more time to master. I have also learnt that Blu uses his work to express the urban culture and busy city life. Blu communicates to his audience by focusing on something we see everyday, 'graffiti', and brings it to life. The majority of viewers will be pleasantly surprised, graffiti, which is usually an example of defacing property, has been transformed into a medium of art through Blu's animations and art pieces.