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History of Animation - 4: In the Shadow of Disney

      While Disney was trying to assert itself as the major player in the animation world, there were many other studios who were advancing the field in their own ways. Across the sea in Europe, many different techniques were developed to make animations more photo realistic and easy to produce. Wladyslaw Starewicz created stop motion films using bugs and dolls. He was the film maker to make stop motion into something. Most of the other animators of the time were creating hand drawn and painted works. Starewicz's film The Mascot created in 1934 was a prime example of this.
      There were other small innovations, that seem almost silly on paper, but really helped to bring animations to life. Alexandre Alexeieff used a pinscreen in some of his works. This was a screen with hundreds of thousands of pins stuck into it. This would allow for shadows and rays of light to be cast around the audience that would give the illusion of animated steel engraving. Alexeieff would go on to create A Night on Bald Mountain in 1933 which would be the first animated film to use his pinscreen.
      Another German film maker would decide to try and take the world of animation in a completely different direction. While most animatiors of the time were producing works similar to comic strips, Oskar Fischinger decided to work in the abstract. He began working in stopmotion, by capturing images of clay figures that he created, clay animation is still used today. But his radically successful films were those of sounds and shapes that he dubbed "color rhythms." These were created by shifting color fields and patterns that moved in time with classical music. His film Composition in Blue won a prize at that year's Venice Film Festival.
      Even in the shadow of the magical Disney, many wonderful films were created by other artists around the world. There were studios and artists developing techniques that would challenge Disney's "magical" touch to their films. This would only continue until WWII stuck the world and forced some artists to take a different approach to animation and storytelling.


Sources:
http://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/2012/11/29/starewicz/
http://www.openculture.com/the_mascot_1934_by_wladyslaw_starewicz
http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/sammondn/clips/night-on-bald-mountain-1933/view
http://www.totalshortfilms.com/ver/pelicula/199
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