The next animation I chose to critically analyse was 'Mona The Vampire' which I have not seen in years but has a very unique genre for animation and I wanted to go back to it and see how it's environment emphasised or did not emphasise it's story. I used to watch all the time when I was in primary school, so it was extremely nostalgic looking back on it. The show is about Mona who is a vampire and they imagine what it would be like to defeat different enemies in the different episodes.
First off, I was EXTREMELY surprised by this animation. Unlike 'Tinkerbell', the environment was not something I remembered greatly, but when I watched it again, I was quite pleased. The colours used have a touch of neon to them almost, which I love! Mona the vampire obviously connoted halloween and spooky adventures, so I think that these vivid colours in combination with the dark tones of the rest of the image, portray this brilliantly. Also during the show, scenes like this with these colour palettes are only evident when Mona is amongst the enemy or when the enemy is around, so when a sequence switches to something like this, then you know something bad is going to happen.
Here is another scene which is also shown in the opening credits where Mona is in her bedroom plotting what to do. Because Mona is a vampire yet is still young, she goes to high school, then you could possibly wonder how she lives/what her room is like. Here we see that it has an essence of being a little sinister with the spiders and cobwebs, but it isn't too frightening as the soft glow on her walls make it a little more comforting. I really love the use of gradients on her walls because without it, if they were plain/blank, then I think then the room would look more dark. Whilst she also has cobwebs, etc... you can also see she as a desk and a play box therefore is like a normal child and does normal child-like things such as playing with toys and probably studying.
I have also noticed that the environments in this animation are always changing composition and perspectives:
The are a lot of tilted frames/different angle shots which make use of the space in the compositions. I think this a very smart aspect to add to the exaggeration of the animation. There is only so many setting a child's TV show can have for a child to understand where they are/what is happening in each one, so by keeping setting the same, for example Mona's home/room and her school but then using different frames, and compositions add more depth the scenes whilst also keeping them interesting and worth watching.
Though this show is years old, I still think is demonstrates telling a story through it's background rather well. There is obvious attention to colour and perspective which is what I really like and pay attention too, and just in general it makes the animation more exciting. It may not be as intricate as a stop motion animation of as vibrant as a CGI animation but it's principles work just as well and I am reminded of why I loved it so much, once I watched a few more episodes!
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