Today, I am going to write about my favourite animation of all time, Paprika (2006) by Satoshi Kon. Its target audience is young adults. It is a complex story with many layers like Inception (2010). The plot in paprika is very complex like Inception because it is like a dream in a dream so the characters cannot tell which is the real world and which is not. Both also have another similarity which is that the dream world and the real world inter-connect and the directors make us think about what reality really is and if the lines between real life and dream life can be blurred. In my opinion,  animation is the best medium to explore the layers of reality because through art work and special effects,  the director can portray rapid changes in scenes and really bring up the element of fantasy. Watching Paprika is like being in somebody elses very own unique/nightmare.

In terms of style, Kon uses hand drawing for the animation characters. The characters are  flattened, and angular. This gives a traditional comic book effect and it is very different from fully CGI dependent animation such as Kungfu Panda.  However, Kon also uses CG effects mainly for the background. It is not always clear which parts are hand drawn and which parts are computer generated. In the Paprika Parade Video below it is clear that the confetti is computer animated while the lead characters such as Paprika and Detective Kogawa Toshimi. The effect of mixing CGI and Hand drawn characters make the film more sophisticated. 

From the "Special Features" of the DVD, "The Art of Fantasy", I learnt that the backgrounds were meticulously done by modeling programs such as Maya.  To distinguish between the dream world and the real world,  the artist used muted and more dull colours for the real world and vibrant and bright colours  for the dreamworld. 

Real World

Dream World: 

In "The Dream CG World" Special Feature, the Director of photography spoke about using CG to enhance the scenes. For example, for the dream parade, they used 650 000 pieces of confetti which were positioned to give the scene a sense of depth and separation between the background and foreground. Even for a scene where a car drives through a tunnel in the rain,  they added a brief reflection of the car so that it will be more realistic. In another scene, the patterns that form on a car window were also carefully studied and recreated.

 In the picture above, Detective Konokawa is running through a warped hall way in his dream. This

scene repeats a few times in the film. In order to create it, the CG team had to think about what it would feel like to walk on something very soft like candyfloss. They took 3 months to perfect this scene alone because they wanted to mimic the feeling of being in a nightmare. 

Satoshi Kon died on Augest 24, 2010 and he could not finish his last film called, "The Dream Machine". When i read his last words I was very moved because  though he was dieing he was still thinking about animation. His biggest regret was not being able to finish his final film since they have already created the storyboards. He said, " I haven't been idly waiting for death, even now I', thiking with my weak brain of ways to let the work  live even after i am gone. But they are all shallow ideas.". This touches me because it shows how much passion he has for animation. Here is a link to the rest of his translated letter: http://makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words