Visual analysis

In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting two short animations. These are "Bottle" by Kirsten Lepore and "The dog who was a cat inside" by Siri Melchior.

"Bottle" is a Pixillation animation so it's made by putting a series of photographs together in a timeline. In this animation there are two characters, one is made of sand and the other from snow as they live in different parts of the world. They Send bottles across the ocean with different objects in them and they stick them on themselves like pen pals and friendship bracelets. One day, the guy made out of sand sends a drawing of himself and the snow girl meeting under the ocean. So that is what they do. Unfortunately when they go underwater they both disintegrate because what they’re made of cannot survive underwater.

This could have been about long distance relationships and saying they don't work as they are in contact for a long time before they actually try to meet. It also could be about social media and trying to portray yourself as something your not on your profile like they are sending each other items and they become different people but when they go to meet each other all the fake stuff comes off and they look like themselves again and that’s why it doesn't work because they fell in love with the fakery. This is the same in real life when if you start talking to someone online and pretend to be someone else then you go meet up with them and they see who you actually are and don't like it.

"the dog who was a cat inside" is a 2D hand drawn animation that looks really simple. In the story, there is a dog and inside there is a cat. The two appear not to get along at all. The cat would try and stop the dog from doing what he wants and visa versa. They are both very unhappy to the point they have a big fight and fall in the river. Where somehow they learn to get along a little better and work together. When they get out they find a cat with a dog inside!

This animation can be taken in a number of ways. One thing could be transgender. Like humans sometimes feel that they should have been born a girl and there actually a boy, the dog feels he should have been born a cat and he constantly fights himself saying no that’s silly.

Another issue this could be facing is homosexuality- The dog is a dog so he should like other dogs but inside he actually really likes cats. He feels people will think he is weird so he suppresses the cat inside him. When he finds a cat that is a dog inside he realizes he is not so weird.

It could also be tackling the issue of split personality disorder. Where you have another voice inside your head and sometimes it tells you to do things that perhaps you don't want to do. Like when the cat is interacting with another cat.

I think its nice that it doesn't clarify what issue it is trying to portray as it gives us opportunity to figure this out for ourselves and put our own take on it.

I think both of these stories work well through animation as it makes you think more about the issue but it's not right in your face so you actually feel more comfortable watching it. Also a child could watch this and just think it's a sweet animation but when they’re older that might be still in their heads and help them to understand things. I think if this was done in a film/ documentary kind of way it would have been a lot less engaging and you would probably turn it off.


These animations are executed in quite different ways. One is photographs and one is hand drawn. The sound track is also quite different. In "Bottle" there is just sound effects like the ocean and the sound of sand moving, but in "the dog who had a cat inside him" it is a sound track playing over the top and the sound effects are secondary. They both work though. The soundtrack shows us that time is passing by staying constant while the images change. It also tries to make it more emotional.

I like how ‘the dog who was a cat inside’ used simple 2D animation because it makes such a complex issue seem rather simple and your just concentrating on that rather than the beauty of the animation. However, perhaps people that actually have one of these issues might feel a bit offended by the fact that it has been simplified.

I think both stories work well just as stories and can be enjoyed whether you are reading into them or not.

In conclusion I think these are two very good animations that both portray a human issue using animation which gets the message across in a less in your face way which is easier to take. I think ‘the dog who was a cat inside’ did this more and also had multiple things you can read into it.