Researching: The Presentation and Transcript
[1] Hi everyone, so I’m going to try and do this with auto-generated subtitles. It’s going to pick up the names wrong, because they’re Polish, but oh well.
So I’d like to introduce you to Witold Giersz, a Polish animator, whose material of choice is usually paint.
[2] He was born in 1927, so before the Second World War. He wanted to be an artist, but his parents persuaded him not to, for the fear of him not making any money. So he studied economy at university.
But in 1950 he saw a job offer for animators at a new studio in Bielsko-Biała, and took the risk. He quit his studies and the job at a time.
When he went to interview for the position he had prepared a portfolio with drawings in the style of Disney but was told the studio were trying to update the film style, and have it influenced by Polish artists. He still got the job, though, and his dream was coming true.
He learnt under Lechosław Marszałek, a very respected animator at the time.
In 1956 he started the branch of the studio in Warsaw and directed his first film, which he was very dissatisfied with.
Due to communism in the country at the time, the animators couldn’t release political films and a lot of work was comical, or made for children.
Now, I’d like to show you a little showreel of just few of his auteur films.
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[4] Giersz wasn’t satisfied with drawn animation, so he started experimenting with paint. He was fascinated with auteur films, because the artist was responsible for everything and it opened a world of experimentation for him. When he was making the Little Western, Norman McLaren visited the studio and liked his work very much, which encouraged Giersz. He wasn’t afraid to experiment with the medium and took full advantage of it, making the characters aware of it as well. They lift up water, paint the environment, and the blue and yellow cowboys combine to create a green one. His lines are simple and graphic, and he relies on the body movement and sound to convey the emotions rather than character’s face. He also wasn’t afraid to include real objects in his films – you can see a tube of paint, and in Red and Black a mirror. Little Western was screened at the Annecy Festival.
[5] Giersz was inspired by French impressionist painters and the depth they achieved by using knives for their paintings. He was worried that rubbing the character out of the background, to paint the next frame would look like a technical error, but instead he decided to use it to his advantage as a background effect to add more interest to it.
He then used the same effect in his later work, The Fire, as the pulsating effect made the fire more effective.
According to Parks, The Horse was likely the first paint-on-glass film in the world to be widely shown in festivals.
[6] In 2017, the artist gave a live presentation. He used a painting knife and paint straight from the tube, applying the paint directly on glass, using sketches underneath as a guide. The sketch was then removed and a photo taken, before forming an animation.
[7] The Star is probably his most controversial work and one that got him in trouble. tells a story of heavily controlled city, where a star appears in the sky, giving people hope. It draws from themes of Big Brother, as well as Christian religion. The script was originally approved by the authorities, but Giersz ran into problems when they saw the finished animation. The film was heavily censored internally already. Instead of showing queues of people waiting to the shops, the artists only painted the shoes. During those times, people had allowances, or vouchers, with what they were allowed to buy. My mother would actually tell me stories about how she tore her tights and my grandma didn’t have anymore vouchers to buy her new ones.
On top of the censorship, it turned out the Finnish production partner didn’t have enough funds to cover their part of the contract, and announced they could not give funding to anti-soviet story.
When the animation was finished, the commission did not like the theme of an all-seeing-eye and wanted Giersz to remove it, which he refused to do. Due to this the film was banned from being distributed or entered into any festivals, and Witold never got to make the three remaining parts. After threats from of holding back money and not paying the artists, as well as lack of support from his colleagues, Witold quite his job in the studio in 1985.
[8] Giersz’s most recent work is inspired by cave drawings from Lascaux, Altamira, Teruel, and others. I actually had to email him to ask for a copy, as it’s not available anywhere that I could find. His intention was to bring the expressive drawings to life, to perhaps make them what the original artists intended them to be, now that technology allows it. But he still chose to use the medium people back then would – charcoal and clay. He drew each new frame on the stone, then removed the previous frame’s lines before photographing the image. He also used the stone’s texture in interesting way, forcing the perspective as the horse runs away.
Of course, Witold Giersz inspired many artists and productions with his work, despite the technique being so time consuming. One of those artists is Joanna Jasińska-Koronkiewicz. I’ll play you a short clip of her work, so you can see the clear influence.
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As you can see, she also paints frames of her animations, although she uses oil on canvas rather than glass or celluloid. Witold Giersz actually saw her work and was very happy that someone is taking painted animation seriously. Perhaps there’s one painted animation you guys are more familiar with…
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[11] The film Loving Vincent was the first feature length film created in painted animation and was produced by BreaThru Films. The scenes were filmed, then projected onto the sheet and painted. It was basically rotoscoping but with paint. Witold Giersz mentioned had rotoscoping equipment in the Warsaw studio in 1956, but the technique never took off in Poland at the time. Although rotoscoping is often frowned upon in the industry, Giersz says the audience doesn’t care about the technique as long as it’s effective and they like it. Although he doesn’t deny it simplifies the process greatly. Despite this, the film was a great success and the studio is now working on another painted feature ‚The Peasants’.
It’s one thing if rotoscoping is used… But what if AI could paint the film for you?
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EbSynth is a program which let’s you paint over the key frames and fills in the gaps. It’s undeniable that it’s amazing, but still. It seems to lack that… Personal artistic touch to me. It lacks the aesthetic. Is painting a waste of time? Is a realistic painting useless, because you can take a photo, or is it even more incredible? Still, perhaps if the artist has to spend less time on tedious tasks, it allows them to be more creative. And it coul be very useful in 2D animation to colour in and add shadows… I’ll leave you with that as something to think about.
I’ve also asked Witold Giersz if he had any advice to current animation students….
[13] „Dear Weronika,
for every creator – painter, graphic artist or even a sculptor – enriching his work with the element of movement, creates a completely new field of artistic activity. Dear young artists, try to transfer your own, individual style into the world of animation. In films which you’ll be making, you can – depending on your own preferences – convey your own thoughts on any topic, or bring to life abstract forms which, changing their compositional or colour arrangement, will react differently to each other with the passage of film time. Both paths can bring huge satisfaction. I wish you all success.”
