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.”