Month: October 2025

There ‘s two kinds of abstraction in experimental animation: formative abstraction and conceptual abstraction.

Formative abstraction focuses upon the manipulation of the visual fundamentals; color, form, space, light and texture, alongside the dynamics of movement, time, rhythm and sound as a central theme of the work.

Conceptual abstraction is the abstraction in narrative structure and storytelling, using semiotics metaphor and symbolism.

A Légy (The Fly) (Ferenc Rófusz, 1980)

Categorization: It is a 2D animation. This animated short film is presented from the subjective point of view of a fly. The topic is probably about the inescapable misfortune; make you feel trapped and vulnerable.

Form and Function: The artist’s objective is to explore the limits of animation in creating a purely subjective visual experience. He attempts to make the audience “become” a fly, seeing through its eyes, moving in its way, and feeling its fate. The function lies in creating an unprecedented immersive perceptual experiment rather than telling a story.

Process: It is a 2D hand-drawn animation, with a black-and-white sketch style. It adopts a continuous, unedited first-person perspective long take, give the audience a immerse experience as a fly.

Formal Elements: there’s no background music, only the noise made by the fly, feels very realistic.

It is not merely a story about a fly; rather, it is an immersive installation art piece centered on perception itself. Through meticulously calculated, subjectively animated movements constructed frame by frame in hand-drawn animation, the technical process itself becomes the film’s theme and philosophy: How do we experience and define existence through motion and vision? Stripped of all narrative superfluities, it goes straight to the core of animation art—the creation of movement and transformation. Its profound experimental nature lies in proving that animation can serve as a pure tool of visual psychology. By manipulating space, perspective, and rhythm, it evokes intense, wordless empathy and fear within the audience, achieving an absolute cinematic experience of “what is seen is what is.”

Narrative structure is the key aspect of storytelling. While telling a story, there should be beginning, middle and end. One of the structures is the Three-Act Structure, it has three parts, act 1 is the setup, act 2 is the confrontation, act 3 is the resolution.

The reason of Editing is to create narrative progression and maintain coherence, and to convey character emotions and actions visually.

Characters are a major part of storytelling. In films there are different character archetypes, including villain and hero, also characters play different roles in storytelling, like protagonist, antagonist, sidekick, mentor, and love interest. Those character roles drive the narrative.

The Film I pick is Fight Club (1999). The main character isThe Narrator also can be called Jack.

1. Story Arc

You — The narrator lives a numb, consumer-driven life: with a corporate job, an apartment filled with Ikea furniture, suffering from insomnia, feeling empty and meaningless.

Need — He needs to feel something real. He wants freedom from consumer culture, also wants relief from emotional numbness.

Go — The explosion in his apartment leads to him going to Tyler Durden, who represents rebellion, masculinity and freedom. He moves into the dilapidated house, and step into chaos and rejection of society’s rules.

Search — They start up the Fight Club, and the narrator feels alive again. Physical pain replaces emotional emptiness, the masculinity and violence become more intense. This phase feels empowering but unstable.

Find — Project Mayhem begins. The narrator believes he has found purpose. He thinks Tyler has created something meaningful. He gains status and respect.

Take — The narrator pays the price. People are injured and killed. The major revelation occurs: Tyler Durden is not real.

Return — The Narrator tries to undo Project Mayhem, and stops Tyler. He realizes he must destroy the illusion, not run from it, so he shoots himself to eliminate Tyler. This is symbolic self-sacrifice.

Change — Tyler is gone. The Narrator reconnects with Marla, and watch the world collapse.

2. Character Archetypes

The Narrator is the fragmented hero, Tyler Durden is a trickster, Marla Singer is s catalyst

3. Timeline of the Main Character

The narrator grows up conforming to societal expectations, suppresses anger and dissatisfaction and finally develops insomnia due to emotional repression.

He attends support groups to let out emotion, faked his own misery. He meets Marla, who disrupts his coping mechanism. Then Tyler appears.

The Fight Club forms, they use fighting to let out emotions. Project Mayhem starts to form and escalates beyond control.

At the end of the film, the narrator learns Tyler is a projection, he tries to stop the destruction by committed suicide to eliminate Tyler. At the end of the film he holds Marla’s hand as the old-world collapses.