Alberto Mielgo is perhaps one of the most celebrated artists today in the animation industry. He entered into the animation industry at the ripe age of 18 and eventually build his way up to the style that revolutionised the animation industry. It’s no secret that he worked as the Production designer/art director for Sony’s Spider Man: Into the Spider Verse (released 2018) where he worked on animation tests and a defining look for the film, infusing his signature graphic look on the clips available online. Though not making the final cut plus changes in style for the final product and him having to leave the project, it was his contribution that helped immensely to really make the film stand out in terms of a novel visual look and narrative which ultimately became one of the recognizable ways animation can redefine and switch its look owing to artists’ personal styles. His breakthrough recognition came in 2019, after years of working in various teams and projects, when he directed and designed the short ‘The Witness’ in the anthology series ‘Love, Death and Robots’ (LDR). He received his acclaimed Emmy winning status alongside the acclaimed series in 2019.
Out of his collection of short films, his 2022 Academy Winner ‘The Windshield Wiper’ is more of a subdued, ‘mundane’ subject not disguised in mythological lore or sci-fi dystopian movement. Mielgo, at his core is a painter. His graphic style already shines as a staple- marker scribbles as
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facial features on painterly textures over 3d models. We do see his innovative use of textures and multimedia in Spider verse- comic book panels and texts of onomatopoeia flashing during impact frames, or a few seconds of hold on a fun pose with the frame switching to a comic panel with screen tones. But his other projects, essentially made on topics of his personal storytelling have an individualized, different approach. Mielgo’s workflow is personal, often self-funded with a team of artists who can work in his personal style. ‘Jibaro’, that he directed once again for the third volume of LDR, is vengeful, violent and gory with his quarter impressionistic style heightened and portraying the notion of toxic relationships. His academy win however, is a collage portrayal of the mundane. The Windshield Wiper tells little snippets of stories that can happen in any city around the world.
Mielgo is known to come back to the topic of love, and he does it tastefully well. The short starts with a man walking in a diner and immediately off the bat the audio design kicks off; muffled voices encapsulating him and the viewers. We get asked the question-‘what is
love?’ by our mysterious man. What proceeds is a bombardment of collages, maintaining a loose sequential narrative. Cuts to pillars getting knocked off in war. Satellites float as text bubbles reveal the one sided ness as romantics interact with non-romantics that ‘ghost’ you in this digital age- the weight that nonliving objects hold in art. Is love therefore just an occurrence that kick starts conflict? Perhaps like it does in the frustrated ramblings in the background of the diner, or the homeless man that shouts at a mannequin through a glass display, his howls hinting at a hallucination of a loss of someone. Is it the lack of it that makes the school
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girl in Japan take her own life? Will the glance between strangers in a new apartment or the park start something that ends up being frustrated ramblings as background of a diner one day?
Lots of commentaries can be drawn out from each of the scenes, however I feel Mielgo gives us the breathing space to witness the event as is- the intertwined bustle of everyday life. Happening all around in a superficial background, with deep roots only the strangers we witness are entangled in; a standby for millions of bubbles of stories. He brings out the forever happening ‘superficial’, static noise filled background with his semi impressionistic painterly style rendered over 3d models.
Zygmunt Bauman’s indication of ‘liquid love’ and the superficiality of modern dating networks wherein individuals are commodified agents is not lost in translation while witnessing Mielgo’s impressionistic dissection of individuals in his creations. In fact, the scene where the man and woman in the grocery store are submerged in the swipe-fest of dating apps and match with each other whilst physically being next to each other without looking up once is comically crafted with a frustrating undertone. The opportunities are there, yet we fail to recognize them for the pursuit of better. A little comically exaggerated in presentation however there is the very real underlying angst that shouts please look up!
Coming back to visuals, of course Mielgo’s style unlike popular animation like Disney’s, does not rely on cartoonish exaggeration of its characters but drenches in the frantic agitated movement of limbs that are lived in with hype, stress and excitement or the lack thereof. But it is also his use of environment that he lays a great emphasis on and is evident from his practice of fine arts. For ‘Jibaro’ and another of his project based in London, in artist’s tactfulness he effectively gets the live footage of the environment required so it sparks a feeling of being lived in and breathing while modelling it to life. For The Windshield Wiper too, that takes place in multiple cities across the world, I suppose the process followed a similar suit. Mielgo brews his work like well-seasoned artists and crafts it with time. In animation, environments are a very important determinant to hold the gravitas of the chronicle. To emphasize this I draw attention to a personal favourite scene which would be the wonderful amalgamation where all the curated elements of this type of film making pays off. It’s the focus again on nonliving objects, just the scenery of perhaps a Hong Kong esque city with the neon lights, as the parallaxing shot is accompanied by soft breaths and whispers of a lover asking the other about their favourite colour ‘off screen’. A stark visual combined with effective audio design to create another visual narrative picture in your head, a couple dozing off limbs tangled in sheets perhaps. The viewer can feel the notion of individuals crawling as ants through a giant puzzle tapestry of fate and of the burdens one gets when they are to live. It is perhaps, in instances such as this that the purpose of Impressionism coincides/ reinforces its existence of expression. Impressionism, as a movement and then a defined style of painting post its establishment after greats like Monet and Van Gogh, symbolised what the eye captures in totality; zoomed in pixelation of painted blobs come together to form realistic coherent forms that the mind maps out to complete the frame. The Windshield Wiper, in its semi impressionistic texture and saturated world comes together in painted over sound, environment and semi graphic characters that forge a narrative drapery at a glance. You can pick apart in a fit of analysis how some things painted over gives perhaps an illusion of shape in the far background, but the tapestry can only be conceived as a whole, adjacent to the medley of stories. Love exists in all its broken forms.
‘Love is a secret society’ – I think, bias included, is a spectacular summarization in the end of the mundane spectacle. Love exists in the woven fabrics of everyday as we theorize its socio-biological origins but the body and mind perpetuate psychological imprints regardless. A happening institutionalised phenomenon tied to personal motivations. Whether Shakespearean declarations in robes and letters of the olden days, or giggles from two individuals from forbidden clans upon a glimpse of each other to a fast forward to a stifled laugh when the phone hums with the notification one looks most forward to. It undeniably exists in multifarious forms, with varying degrees of questions about the existence of its form. These questions are posed in the depictions of the short inevitably as well. To indulge in that notion- Bauman writes that in liquid modernity, we ‘love in order to stop being lonely, not to stop being alone.’ Mielgo’s characters drift through cities, digital realms, and each other, driven by that very paradox.
Now, depictions are also a forever debate. Too Naturalistic? Mimicking reality by perpetuating stereotypes rather harder? (For eg.-villagers in a forever dusty appearance and squatting). An exaggeration lost in translation? Visuals for metaphors too on the nose?
The debate in focus here would be in relation to the Adorno’s or Benjamin’s lens for the take of cinema; the moving picture formulating your thoughts for you will always pose the argument of the dangers of kinetic aesthetics. But such theoretical accusations can be made for any medium and are perhaps true for a large number of cases in this now commodified market. But, as per my belief, perhaps stemming from a bias towards the cultural reproduction tendency of humankind’s need for creative expression, Mielgo has done what he does with his medium best depict the scenes that have now come to define modernity with the room for you to interpret as you will. Evocative in idea yes, but what are we if not living in a bit of grandeur?
Ultimately, it is no doubt that Alberto Mielgo is one to have a look out for to pay homage to this wonderful medium of film making and the intense technical experimentations of expressionism animation has to offer.
References,Citations
Hobbs, M., Owen, S., & Gerber, L. (2017). Liquid love? Dating apps, sex, relationships and the digital transformation of intimacy. Journal of Sociology, 53(2), 271–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783316662718
Information about Mielgo’s work flow and life-Youtube-“Fired from The Spider-Verse to Oscar Winning Director | The Story of Alberto Mielgo” by class creatives.