Michel Gagne Essay

8/2/2019 Michel Gagne Essay

1/14

1

Title: Michel Gagne

Tutor: Phil Gomm

Name: Michael Smallwood

Unit: 5. Animation

Date: 27-4-12

Word Count: 1530

UCA Rochester


2/14

2

Content

Introduction

Body

Conclusion

Bibliography

Illustrations


3/14

3

Michel Gagne

Behind The Scenes.


4/14

4

Introduction

This essay will critically analyse the animator Michel Gagne and his style of

work in Sensology(2010). This investigation will analyse the meanings behind

the form and the context or in other words, the how and why Michel Gagne

made this animation. The essay will consider what the animation represents,

specifically its use of synaesthesia and his interest and fascination in this

phenomenon.

Synaesthesia is a joining together of sensations that are normally

experienced separately. Some synaesthetes experience colors when they

hear or read words, whilst others may experience tastes, smells, shapes or

touches in almost any combination. (University of Sussex, 2010). Many

animators use this to create animations to picture music.

The sources used in this investigation are: Diamond Comic Distributors

(2001), for some views of his work; Gagne International for general

information (2012) of Michel Gagne and his work; Art And The Senses (2011),

is used for a deeper understanding of the use of Synaesthesia in art and

Indias Animation Roporters (2011) for some interviews on Michel Gagne.


5/14

5

Body

The winner of the Annie Award of Best Animated Video Game, Michel Gagne

launches his imagination at warp speed. This exquisitely rendered collection

hovers between the delightful and disturbing, the benign and bizarre.

(Diamond Comic Distributors, 2001). Michel Gagne is not one whom does

things half heartedly; he puts soul and meaning into all of this works no matter

how big or small they might be.

Michel Gagne was born in 1965 in a town called Roberval and to this day, he

has always said, I really believe that I was always meant to be an artist. I

read comics, watched sci-fi shows on TV and lived in this total fantasy world.

(Gagne, 2005). At the age of eighteen, he started to study classical animation

at the Sheridan Collage, and by 1986 he began working at Bluth Studios. He

would go on to make and work on many films and animations such as Prelude

To Eden (1995) and Ratatouille (2006). (Gagne, 2005)

In 2006 Coastal Jazzs manager of artistic programming, Rainbow Robert,

invited Nancy and Michel Gagne to the Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

This was where Michel Gagne first heard the piano improviser, Paul Plimley

and his musical performance.


6/14

6

Paul Plimley, (2006) Vancouver International Jazz Festival

I closed my eyes and had an intense synesthetic experience. When

the show ended, I immediately started feeling a compulsion to express

in animation what I had just experienced. I shared my thoughts with

Rainbow and to my delight, she said to me, "That's why I brought you

here, I was hoping you'd say that!" (Gagne, 2010)

As soon as Michel Gagne heard Plimleys music, his imagination ran wild and

his desires to create an abstract animation to picturing music would soon be

in his grasp. He would later state in an interview with McNeil that, I had

wanted to do an abstract animated film for years and after hearing Paul's


7/14

7

music, I felt that I had finally found the component I'd been missing. (McNeil,

2010). Pauls music would inevitably be that missing peace to the puzzle to

which Michels mind would go wild.

This would be Michel Gagnes chance to do an abstract animation; he had

wanted to do this since he had discovered the works of Norman Mclaren,

Kandinsky, Yves Tanguy and many more. (Gagne, 2012). These artists would

be of great influence to his new ambition, Sensology (2010) as they had all

used Synaesthesia in many forms to create their musical animations or other

types of animations. All used and blended the senses together. Notably,

Norman Mclaren used blurred film and painting onto film to achieve his work

and sense of Synaesthesia to which Michel would come to reference in his

own work.

This use of Synaesthesia to create artworks, which combine the senses

instead of just a visual, came about in the early 20th century by a group of

German artists called Der Blaue Reiter. They executed synaesthetic

experiments involving a composite group of painters, composers, dancers and

theatre producers. The groups aims were focused on three goals: the

unification of the arts by means of total works of art; achieving freedom of

expression through abstraction; and expression of spirituality as the ideal of

an immaterial art.(Bacci & Melcher (ed) 2011, 504)

If music is the rhythm of the soul then animation is the minds eye to a

creative inner space (Lemos, 2011, 16) Accordingly, animation could also be

described as the body to which the music can express itself to the world in a


8/14

8

visual form. This abstraction is what Michel Gagne had wanted to produce in

this work and Paul Plimleys music would become the starting point of his

vision to give the music a body and soul.

After listening to Paul, Michel Gagne would gather several musical pieces by

Paul and start to experiment with animating it in different ways through trial

and error. He would then go on to animate the musical triptych from the

album, Sensology. However, unlike other animators, Michel Gagne would

work in a different and bolder approach. Most animators would make

storyboards and preliminary work to visualise how one would work to make

the music feel alive, thus making sure there are no errors along the way.

Michel Gagne however, would bypass this approach. He would, as he called

it, animate in a stream of consciousness. (Gagne, 2011) He would continue

to say, The shapes revealed themselves as I listened to the music over and

over again. Like Kandinsky taught us, every shape and sound has a equal

vibration in the soul. (Gagne, 2011). This approach gives his animation a

unique feel both visually and mentally.


9/14

9

Still Shot From Sensology (2010)

Every frame of the 30 frames per-second, were all hand drawn by Michel

Gagne, using a Wacon Tablet. He would then go on to use a Cintiq using

Adobe Photoshop to produce this very bazaar and almost alien animation. His

hard-edged, straight-line style of animation is evident, yet he has visibly taken

a lot of influence from other artists such as Norman Mclaren with his own

similar style of drawing straight onto film.


10/14

10

Norman Mclaren, BEGONE DULL CARE (1949)

Although many years apart, there is a certain similarity between the two

pieces of art, though one uses modern technology and the other is simply a

paintbrush. They still both have a very flowing form; this is what Michel Gagne

had been aiming to achieve ever since he discovered Noman McLarens

work. (Gagne, 2011). One also gets the feel that these two images are both

meant for music, both born for it, and thereby both visualising element of a

musical score. A natural body for the music to flow into and perform.

When Paul Plimley saw a portion of the film for the first time, he said to me

with tears in his eyes, "It's like you read my soul." (Gagne, 2011) This

reaction may have made the group the Der Blaue Reiter very proud at this

moment in time, as this is what Synaesthesia, the art of combining the senses


11/14

11

to reveal the soul, is all about. Michel Gagne himself would later state that,

The creation of this film was a true spiritual and artistic journey. (Gagne,

2011) This journey would bring the past and the present ideals on

Synaesthesia together and would allow Michel to fulfil his dream of making an

abstract animation, which is in very much in keeping with his own personal

style of art direction.

He would later state in his interview with McNeil what part of this process he

enjoyed the most. The process was intensely focused and cathartic. I was

becoming part of the music and expressing my creativity at its rawest and

most primal.(McNeil, 2010) It is shown in the animation how closely the

animation goes with the flow of the music. It also makes it feel as if the music

was written for the animation and the music goes with its flow as well.

In 2006 he would put up a 9-second teaser trailer ofSensology (2010). Soon

after this would leadto Pixar contact Michel Gagne, asking him to do the

abstract taste visualisation for the film Ratatouille.

In 2010 Sensology(2010) was finally shown to the world. It premiered in Los

Angeles at the Laemmle's Fallbrook 7 in West Hills, CA on July 30th, 2010,

where it was shown for three consecutive days. It won countless awards and

still is considered a well thought off animation.


12/14

12

Conclusion

The award winning animator, Michel Gagne has worked on many productions,

both small and large and has left his imprint on all of them. His style, though

gradually evolving over time, has very much stayed the same with his flowing,

yet sharp lines. This remains the same in one of his most spiritual and most

heartfelt animations of his career thus far. The award winning Sensology

(2010) has not just been another animation Michel has done; it has been a

journey that has had its reflection cast on some more of his newer works such

as Insanely Twisted Planet (2012)


13/14

13

Bibliography

Bacci, F., & Melcher, D., (ed) (2011) Art And The Senses, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press

Diamond Comic Distributors, (2001) [online] At:http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-jucPAAACAAJ&dq=Michel+Gagne&hl=en&sa=X&ei=K32WT6ivMaKk0QXbv4GlDg&redir_esc=y (accessed 24-4-12)

Gagne, M., (2012) Gagne International [online] At:http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/About%20Michel/bio/longbio.htm(accessed 24-4-12)

McNeil, S., (2010) Sequential tart [online] At:

http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=1830 (accessed 24-4-12)

Lemos, J., (2011), Indias Animation Roporters

University of Sussex (2010) [online] At: http://www.syn.sussex.ac.uk/(accessed 24-4-12)


14/14

14

Illustrations

Michel Gagne [online image] At:http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/About%20Michel/bio/Michel_FFF_201

0.jpg (accessed 9-4-12)

Mclaren, N., (1949) Begone Dull Care [online image] At:http://www.reelcanada.com/short-films/begone-dull-care (accessed 24-4-12)

Paul Plimley, (2006) Vancouver International Jazz Festival [online image] At:http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/Animation/Sensology/Sensology.html(accessed 24-4-12)

Still Shot From Sensology (2010) [online image] At:

http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/Animation/Sensology/Sensology.html(accessed 24-4-12)

Michel Gagne Essay

Documents

Transcript of Michel Gagne Essay