DOMAINS BRIEF
The dictionary has defined the word animation as simulation of movements created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames. Essentially what animation is at its core is an optical illusion created by the persistence of vision. Animation is usually presented through either a video program or as a motion picture. At the earlier stages of mankind, depictions of animals were drawn onto Paleolithic caves with multiple legs to simulate the action of motion. Nearly two millennia ago, in China, a zoetrope type device was invented to imitate animated movement. Also noted that during the 19th century, the Praxinoscope, an animation device was created in France by Charles-Emile Reynuad as the successor to the zoetrope in 1877. The Praxinoscope was used in early image projection on to a screen. The Phenakistoscope on the other hand, is a precursor of the zoetrope. It is a device that creates an illusion of motion on a revolving disk invented by Joseph Plateau in 1832.
This revolving disc has a series of pictures around the center. The user would look through the moving slits reflection in a mirror. The slit was used so to keep the images from blurring together. Phenakistoscope comes from the Greek word “phenakizein” which means to deceive, much like how the device deceives the eye.
A man known as George Melies was considered to be the creator of special effects in films. It is noted that he stumbled upon his idea one day when he decided to stop the rolling camera to change something in a scene that he was working on & then after continued to roll the film. His technique was later given the name stop motion film.
One of the pioneers of hand drawn animation was a French artist named Emile Cohl. Cohl created a film named Fantasmagorie in 1908. Fantasmagorie was comprised of a stick figure moving around and interacting with a series of shifting items. It was made by drawing each frame onto paper & then afterward shooting each frame on a camera. This is what is known as today as tradition hand drawn animation.
Today this type of animation is almost completely obsolete today due to the wide scale use of computers & digital software tools available today to modern artists.
My second domain is about the Yakuza who are the crime mafia of Japan. They usually have rigid rules of they follow & a very well planned internal structure. The Yakuza are an international organized crime syndicate with tens of thousands of members to help run their operation.
Despite uncertainty about the single origin of yakuza organizations, most modern yakuza derive from two classifications which emerged in the mid-Edo era from about early sixteen hundred to about mid 1800. One of their first areas of focus were mainly on gambling operations and selling stolen merchandise.
During that early time period, the stolen goods merchants in the beginning started self organizing & operated mostly during large Japanese festivals. Some of the street peddlers took on the role of defense protection for the other merchants during these festivals. Others took on the clerical roles for the new group. At some point the mainstream Japanese regime, started to officially recognizing this group of merchants and decided that heads of this new organization should have the privilege of carrying short swords for protection much like how the samurai were allowed to samurai swords during that time period. This was a great accomplishment for this new group called the Tekiyia. Also happening during this time period was another group; this one participated in & ran illegal gambling operations in the old capital of Japan, Edo. They were the low class gang of thugs that ran gambling rings, loan shark companies for their customers & much like the Tekiyia, they also had their own people working as protection agents.
This groups original name was the Bakuto or gamblers in English translation. They later became know as the “Yakuza”, a name which was originally from a Japanese form of poker meaning a losing hand. The stereotypes that people have of the Yakuza came from this group of gamblers which were not in high regard with the citizens of Japan.
The Yakuza of modern day still use elements of the tekiya & bakuto origins for group initiation ceremonies.
When the Yakuza was created, the pecking order was similar to that of an adopted parent & child in terms of allegiance & reverence. In the official initiation ceremonies, similar to that of traditional weddings, alcohol is drunk from a single cup & passed to the new & existing members of their organization, solidifying this newly bonded relationship. They often accept those who feel that they’ve been abandoned by their parents & start out on the low rung of the organization as thugs. Much like a family, the orders usually flow from the head of the household down to the children. The Yakuza relinquish their pre-existing relationships with their family to solidify their allegiance to the Yakuza’s head of operations.
They have a very intricate internal makeup for their group. There is one boss who presides over all operations, & working directly underneath him are his advisors Senior chief of operations. Below this level there is the regional manager that coordinates the local gangs in his vicinity. Underneath the regional manager are the local gang heads & then the clerical workers & thugs. The Yakuza are stereotypically pictured with full upper body yakuza tattoos also called Irezumi in Japanese terms. The process is costly and excruciating and may take many years to accomplish. Often when they are gambling in card games they take off their shirts & wrap them around heir waist to reveal their tattoos to one another.
Today there are about a hundred thousand members of the Yakuza in Japan. Even though there are different Yakuza groups, the Yamaguchi-gumi with about fifty to sixty thousand members, the Sumiyoshi-kai with about twenty thousand members and the Inagawa-kaï, with about fifteen thousand participating members.
