"The Millionaire"'s Awesome Minimalist Art Style (OUAN401)

My love for this cartoon is well documented in the animation analysis essay, but I want to take the opportunity to talk about it in a non-formal setting because I bloody love this cartoon! It's a Russian Film from 1963 created to discredit capitalism. I love it as a propaganda piece because it was very convincing with its message and by the end of it I was growing to resent our nepotistic capitalist system. It was also brilliantly animated and I can apply a lot of its principles to my own work.

The art style is really awesome and has started me thinking about how I can play with a minimalist and abstract art style, which I had never considered before.

What I used to worry was that more minimalist or abstract animation couldn't be relatable because it lacked structure and stuff. BUT I WAS WRONG. The emotion came through with the larger than life movements and bold use of colour that engrossed me, as well as a kickass thumping jazz band soundtrack that has stuck in my head for ages. It felt wild and unhinged and like it would be very freeing to animate.

The Millionaire has a wonderful colour scheme! It feels like its been shot very playfully, with energy and joy crammed into every design choice. I would love to experiment with this kind of zestful style.

It made me wonder how else an animator could convey a mood or theme using minimalist shapes, so I looked at Len Lye's work.

Rainbow Dance (1936)

Tusalava (1929)

What "The Millionaire" and Len Lye's work have in common, regardless of whatever message they are trying to convey, is that the line work is extremely expressive and full of energy, where some animations are very calculated in where everything is placed which can make it seem rather staged, the pieces I've referenced above have the illusion of being untamed, which is cool!