Kangaeru Renshuu
English title: Imagination Practice
Japanese title: 考える練習
Alternative titles: Thinking and Drawing: Nihon no Shinseiki Art Animation, Thinking and Drawing: Japanese Art Animation of the New Millennium
Type: Movie
Source: Original
Episodes: 1
Status: Finished Airing
Aired: 2003
Duration: 4 min
Rating: G - All Ages
Genres: Avant Garde
Themes: Visual Arts

The description of Suwami Nogami's minimalistic line drawing piece, Imagination Practice, calls it an unending "thought loop". It depicts an artist sitting in front of a window with a self-portrait, like a miniature mirror image, on the desk in front of him. The window frame and the blue sky filled with moving clouds are in colour, but the figure of the artist is not coloured in. The soundtrack sounds like a skipping record that is punctuated by humourous springing noises (a la Bugs Bunny) as the image 'bounces' in an unending loop from the establishing shot into the "drawing." A philosophical piece, Imagination Practice considers the circular dialogue between an artist and his work.

(Source: Midnight Eye)

Released in 2005 on DVD, Thinking and Drawing features a wide selection of animation styles from line drawing to CGI manipulated photographs. The subject matter ranges from feminist allegory to ghostly tales. Although each film has a short running time of between 5 and 17 minutes, the depth of meaning in each is truly astonishing. The films have shown together and separately at festivals in Europe, North America, and Australia. (Source: AniDB)