“Dots, Lines, Washes: Animating Ink”
“>“>Dots, Lines, Washes: Animating Ink, underlines the impact of ink on the history of animation and the creative possibilities of this medium for contemporary artists. Whereas early cartoonists like Winsor McCay animated their characters with fountain pens on towering stacks of paper, subsequent artists expanded the range of tools – embracing everything from the calligraphic brush to the commonplace marker and the industrial printer. The diversity of their techniques and approaches reveals how the process of animation can amplify and transform the material qualities of ink, activating both the medium’s fluid openness and its binding permanence. The 59-minute programme lineup included:–>
- Walking, Ryan Larkin, 1968, Canada, 5 min.
- A Fly in the Restaurant, Xi Chen, 2018, China, 6 min.
- Shadow of the Butterflies, Sofiya El Khiyari, 2022, France, 9 min.
- Accordion, Michèle Cournoyer, 2004, Canada, 6 min.
- Polar Bear Bears Boredom, Koji Yamamura, 2021, Japan/France, 7 min.
- Sea Song, Richard Reeves, 1999, Canada, 4 min 30s.
- Honekami/A Bite of Bone, Honami Yano, 2021, Japan, 10min.
- Solar Storm, Masha Vlasova, 2022, USA/Finland, 3 min.
- Night Vision, Jake Fried, 2015, USA, 1 min.
- Evolution of the Red Star, Adam Beckett, 1973, USA, 7 min.
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still frames from films Accordion (Michèle Cournoyer), Solar Storm (Masha Vlasova), Walking (Ryan Larkin), and A Fly in the Restaurant (Xi Chen).
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still frames from films Accordion (Michèle Cournoyer), Solar Storm (Masha Vlasova), Walking (Ryan Larkin), and A Fly in the Restaurant (Xi Chen).
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still frames from films Accordion (Michèle Cournoyer), Solar Storm (Masha Vlasova), Walking (Ryan Larkin), and A Fly in the Restaurant (Xi Chen).
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still frames from films Accordion (Michèle Cournoyer), Solar Storm (Masha Vlasova), Walking (Ryan Larkin), and A Fly in the Restaurant (Xi Chen).
This programme was curated by Alla Gadassik for the 2023 edition of the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), where she also served on the Shorts competition jury. The screening was introduced with a public talk that paid special attention to the cultural and artistic history of ink in animation. See additional resources below for a short curatorial essay that was included in the festival book.
public talk introducing “Dots, Lines, Washes” to OIAF audience
Gadassik was joined at the festival by fellow AMW members screening their own works in the student shorts competition. Mia Milardo’s Fruiting Bodies (2023), Weiwei Wu’s 聽ㄊ丨ㄥ嘸ㄇˊㄡ Tia-Buo ( Don’t Understand) (2023), and Cameron Kletke’s between you and me (2023) were graduating thesis films partly informed by their workshop experiments with gouache, glass, and drawing pigments. Cameron Kletke’s film received the festival’s top student award, selected by the festival committee.
from left: AMW members Weiwei Wu, Alla Gadassik, Cameron Kletke, Mia Milardo, and Celi Doubleday at the 2023 OIAF festival
“Dots, Lines, Washes: Animating Ink”
The above ink-based films are discussed in Alla Gadassik’s curatorial essay, Dots, Lines, Washes: Animating Ink, written for the 2023 Ottawa International Animation Festival.
read essay
