500word compare task.

For this taks we were asked to watch two pieces of animations, and compare them, .first one being “The Hand (Ruka) by Jiri Trnka (1965)  and  the second is Ersatz (Surogat) from Zagreb Film (1961) by Dusan Vukotic.


The hand is made as a stop motion animation, and protease the struggle between freedom of “Will” and suppression. “the hand” tells a story of a man? (the puppet) and his battle with suppression. All this little puppet wants to do is make plant ports, and at the start if the animation, it seems to be rather cheerful and child friendly, bright colours, birds singing, and a very happy and cheerful “puppet” working on a new plant pot. Until a knock on the door, The hand. The hand is persistent on telling the puppet what to do, and that he should be making clay hands, and not clay pots..


5 minutes in the reserves a package, inside is a phone, with someone telling him what she should make hands, not plant pots. The ignores this and throws the phone out of his window.


10 minutes he has his free will taken away from him, and is tired up and control like a spring puppet, as a “your will, my hands” meaning, whenever his told what to do, being tired up like a puppet and being placed inside a birds cage he complies it the “hands” wishes, this earns him meddles for not breaking the rules, but at what cost?..




After breaking free for his chains, he returns to a rundown home, with fear from being controlled again, the “man”  bored up his widows and words, but sadly ends up dying from the thing he loved the most… in the end the “hand” finds the puppet void of life, and morns him, placing the puppet in a box and sends him off in a funeral like manner.

Although the story started off almost child friendly, it slowly descended into a nightmare-esk situation, the colour pallets used were cold grim,  I personally enjoyed its visaral styal over ErsatZ (Surogat) and like Eratz, they were no dialog, or faces. So the way emotion was protruded in “the hand” was through lighting, and the music. In the end it demonstrates a darker and foreword representation of communism 
‪Ersatz (Surogat) - Zagreb Film (1961)
Ersatz (Surogat) by Dusan Vukotic. Is a 1961 Yugoslavian short animated film by Zagreb Films,  is a hand drawn 2d animation and it  uses a colourful but almost bland colour pallet. In the entire animation there is no dialog meaning the expressions and movements of the characters exaggerated   to almost stupid levels, only his constant “humming” and grunting, that and music fitting of the time.


The animation shows a “man” arriving at the beach and every object he brings with him, no matter how unlikely, is inflatable from a car to a ball. Or woman to a boat.… part way into the film the man decides to inflate another object, this one being a women, but he’s not pleased with his 1^st choice so he deflates her and discards like an object and tries again. This time a more sharply women is inflated, from here most of the animation consists of him trying to get her affection, and she wants nothing of it. Until he sets up an even where he saves her.


The life of this character is protrude as care free and lively, but his word is almost empty, this is seen at the end, when he’s packing away this things, he deflates the beach and inflates a road, sadly this “mans” would come to a erupted end when he’s car reserves a puncher, and thus defatting, he too also is deflated in this act.


As said, the animation uses an almost colourful by bland pallet; by this I mean most of the colours are shades of yellows and blues, with the exception of a bold purple- red colour however the art style is somewhat appealing and fits the tempo of the story. Ersatz also won an Academy Award in 1962 which meant its author became the first non-American winner.