Though the Bottle and The Dog Who Was a Cat may seem very different they both have much more subtle messages in them about identity, and the idea of what a person is.
Bottle shows a person changing over time, their identity becoming something else when they meet someone new. As they share things with each other, they begin to change and they are no longer the person they started out as, but rather an amalgamation of their own identity and this new person that they have met. If they had not have met, then each person may have stayed the same, or been influenced by something else. It shows how the people around us help to make up our identities, rather than us just being one fixed, never changing person. They give and take different parts of who they are until they are a very different person than they started as, and as they slowly come together they begin to break apart. this could be a metaphor for all kinds of things, not least marriage and becoming a single unit, or trying to become or be a part of someone else so much that your own identity is lost. Another interpretation is that, in a way, they could even be telling each other how they should be, with the things they are saying - it may not be just sending a gift/sending a part of themselves. In real life, it could be subtle or not, but they way people act, what they do and even gifts they give to each other could all be a way of showing how they want a person to be, especially when family or partners are involved.
I think that using stop motion was a very effective technique for this because things are changed in a much more organic way, using actual parts of the world to make up these characters, which is in effect what happens in reality and stops them from becoming perfect solid shapes which doesn't really show them as natural living beings as well. Stop motion also shows the passing of time much more effectively than other types of animation and the fact that stop motion is done with photography works as a kind of documentation of their life, as that is what people do with photographs now.
The Dog Who Was a Cat Inside shows a different story of someone struggling with their identity as opposed to finding/creating it with someone else. The dog character is shown to have a cat on the inside, which can be seen as a metaphor for not feeling the same inside a you act/look, which could also be showing gender dysphoria/sexuality. The dog chases away another cat/kindred spirit after a second, as it acts as a dog is supposed to, and not necessarily how it wants to act. Other dogs act more hostile towards the cat inside the dog, symbolising the way that many people often treat people differently depending on their true self and what they do - for example, if we look at this as a dog being male and a cat as female, this shows another male attacking the dog for being female on the inside/not acting as a typical male, which is a big problem in our society today. The dog then gets into a fight with their cat, showing the inner turmoil or someone who's identity does not match up to other peoples' ideas of how they should be, and how they themselves feel they should or should not be.
After getting into trouble, and being in a different environment than usual with no expectations, the cat and dog are able to work together and make themselves much better off for it. They are happier, and as they emerge, they find someone who is the opposite of them - a dog in a cat's body. This perhaps shows then that letting go of your surroundings and everything that dictates how you should be allows you to see other people and other people to see you how you truly are, and that people would be happier outside of the rules of society and how they expect you to be. Gender is not the only possible meaning of this animation, however; mental illness is another thing that works really well with this animation, especially with the treatment people affected with Autism get, or when people don't ct as other want them to when they have depression or even psychosis. On a less drastic level it can show the difference between when is acceptable/normal to like and what isn't, like the differences between subcultures and how they may act towards different activities and the like. I feel like this animation is left open enough that the viewer can interpret it the way that they want to, and whichever way it means more to them which I things is a great idea and works very well.
The animation itself is done in a way that has particular shapes for everything which could show a mentality of 'this is how certain things should be/act/look' within the setting that the dog/cat is in. For the most part, other than the actual cat/dog, the animation is not actually that bright, giving it a glum, miserable feeling which does well to reflect the sort of mood and mentality that the sort of people with dysphoria or any of the above illnesses may have.
Both animations show their ideas about identity very well, even if the message when it comes down to it could be considered as quite different; while Bottle shows how you may change and be changed by the people around you, TDWWAC shows how you might be a certain way and other people want to change that, but that there are other people with similar identity issues and that you are not along in that. The former could be more of a warning of what happens when you let go of your individuality, and how it is not always a fixed thing, whereas the former could be seen as more of a reassuring message that you are not alone, and it is fine if your identity does not conform to what is expected of you. I feel that this lighter message makes TDWWAC a lot easier and inspiring to watch, even if the message in Bottle can be just as important, but I think that they were made with this in mind, as the message of both can be conveyed better with their differing moods and atmospheres.
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