William Kentridge

I found the charcoal animation by William Kentridge very interesting. When I first saw it, I didn’t even realize it was charcoal. I just thought it was normal pencil or marker drawing. But then on a closer look, I could see the characteristics of the charcoal in the animation. It gives his animation a unique look that I haven’t seen in anything else, especially when combined with the erasing and redrawing for each frame.

At first, I thought that it was really strange that Kentridge would choose to erase and redraw every frame in a scene instead of using a new drawing for each frame. But once again, at a closer look, the fact that you can see smudges from the drawings of previous frames is what gives the animation style its own stylistic flare. Being able to see bits of previous movement adds a real beauty to each shot in his films.

I also found the stuff he did with puppetry and theater very interesting. I enjoyed seeing the use of puppets being clearly handled people on a stage with animated video appearing on a screen in the background at some points. This combination of puppetry, animation, film, and theater was something unique and cool that I’ve never seen before. I liked how they made it obvious that there were people handling the puppet, as if having fun with the fact the people were needed to make the puppets move.