Non-linear history and Nature in Animation

Bill outlined  some history of animation and how the process of modern animation came to be, such as the start of Pixar marked the invention of motion-blur, bending characters/forms and particle systems for animation led by John Lasseter. Further on from this was realism coming into play as they were able to create characters with personalities and the pixar lamp marked a huge step forward in realism that can be achieved in animation.

I was reminded of Finding Nemo which John Lasseter also worked on at Pixar and remembered when I watched the making of Finding Nemo which had an interview with him and other animators. During part of this behind the scene footage John Lasseter discussed the issue they had in creating water for the movie. How they were going to make it look in and above the water. He said that they looked at a clip of a whale surfacing and they attempted to recreate it, which they did. However they looked at it and they had made it too real and too exact to this real clip so they had to find the balance of how to make the water look to make it believable but not too realistic that it doesn't fit with the movie.

He moved on to talk about how nature is represented in 2D animation and showed us clips from Bambi, one of many Disney classics. He said that we grow up with an idea of synthetic nature from movies.

Bambi had a very unique style for the natural environment and was a step forward in animation with multi planing camera which gave a sense of depth to the animation.

One of the most interesting parts of the lecture was when he spoke about ideology being transferred in movies and that it has led to ideological paranoia. Some people even debate and believe that disney purposely put in parts of movies to influence the children watching them. Some even go as far as to say there are sexual subliminal messages in disney and seek out frame by frame where it might be spelt in the trees etc.

As someone who has grown up with disney movies I highly doubt that there are purposeful subliminal messages in disney. I think it is purely because these movies are aimed for children that people become so paranoid and obsessive over keeping the movies 'pure'.

However I will agree that disney can sometimes be daring in what they produce especially many years ago when there wasn't such obsession over content. The most daring movie Disney has probably ever produced was the hunchback of notre dame, as his mother was killed, he was outcast for his looks, the mans lust for esmerelda etc. However this is a movie I watched as a child and a lot of these things I didnt particularly pick up on too much, I was only bothered about the story of the main characters. Quasimodo wanting to venture out and be accepted, befriending Esmerelda and saving her etc. The negative and dark aspects of the movie did not stick in my mind, only when I was older looking back did I realize quite how grim the story is.

Animation

Unfortunately again not exactly sure what was the main point of the lecture :)

But a good point I really liked was about 2D animation frame by frame, that each frame is an artistic choice and each a unique opportunity to do something with the character. The animator can extend/exaggerate the movements or expressions. This gives a great sense of life to the character and the animation and particular character and personality. Also another interesting point was about hand-drawn animation that the expressions and movements of hand-drawn characters are never the same! Which is very true thinking about it unlike with software we are able to just copy and repeat movements where necessary to make the process easier/quicker and as a result losing the expression of hand-drawn animation.

This in particular made me think of Disney animation and the 12 principles of animation that they created such as the squash and stretch etc which gave the original life to animation. The core principles that are now always used even in contemporary animation.

Disney continues to be my favourite animation that I grew up with, however only the classic Disney which I believe was up to around 1998 or 1999 when Tarzan was released was the last classic. Further animations released onwards have lost the "spirit" of Disney movies in my opinion. Although a recent release of the 'princess and the frog' in my opinion mostly succeeded to bring back that disney spirit. Not perfectly but almost! :) Parts of the movie felt rushed but they managed to create loveable and memorable characters in my opinion. For this movie they went back to hand-drawn basics which can show the difference between software and hand drawn.

I also liked the quote from Chuck Jomes Bill told us which was a really nice way to look at animation :) that his two characters bugs bunny and daffy duck are two projections of himself. Daffy is how he is and bugs bunny is how he would like to be.

Although I love disney animation and think hand drawn animation gives more life to animation I do also love 3D and dont disagree with the use of software. In particular I think pixar are incredibly successful with movies, especially when teamed up with disney. The biggest example of this would be the popular trilogy toy story. Another movie I grew up with and a third wasnt made for 10 years after the second! But worth the wait :D I dont know anyone that didnt cry at the end of the third one :p


I love animation and movies in the sense that they take you to another world. The Lion King takes you to a world where lions talk! Toy Story takes people to a world where toys come to life. It appeals to the sense of imagination and allows us to do literally anything with it! See stories and characters come to life on screen that we can't experience in the real world.

Bill talked in particular about Warner Bros who have also produced many great animations aswell such as looney toons but I have not so much watched them and so this part of the lecture did not appeal to me quite so much unfortunately.

On-screen violence

Ugh another lecture on something I'm not a fan of in movies particularly......well when it's graphic anyway :) and no I didnt complain :)

The first point was the audience reaction to the violent clip Bill showed to us and during parts people laughed and Bill responded to this the debate that people can become de-sensitized. In other words by seeing violence or being exposed to it a lot people may no longer feel any shock or reaction to what they are viewing and even maybe enjoy it. This could be he result of movies or games etc.

In the game industry first person shooter games are becoming increasingly popular and in these games headshots are even encouraged as they are the quickest and 'best' way to kill. This industry has not only expanded worldwide but also is now playable online with players worldwide. These games are highly criticised and many demand for restrictions to be placed on these games.

It is very much a double edged sword debate as on the one hand people get enjoyment from these games and playing with their friends, can be used as a stress relief, a safe way to take out anger or just as general gameplay enjoyment. However it can also become a dangerous obsession to some. An example of this that Bill told to us was the Columbine shooting, an incident I have studied during school. A horrific random shooting act influenced by the game doom and the movie natural born killers. The shooter's diaries were found and displayed his obsession with doom and killing and his anger against the world. Out of curiosity I read some of the diaries and was shocked at his pure anger and pure want to kill. Even more interesting was that he kept insisting that it wasnt media, games, his family or anything else that influenced him just himself. He asked that no charges are placed or laws changed as a result of what he does that it wont ever happen again after him....Furthermore he always referred to himself and 'V', a character of some sort he made his plans with. A very disturbing but fascincating read into the mind of the killer.


Oddly despite the criticisms the games have still managed to develop overtime and games that used to be seen as really violent and scary are now laughable in contemporary times! Odd! As someone who has grown up with this graphic level quality in games I can't understand how the games Bill showed us were considered as violent back then, kinda funny really :) I guess they'd really get damn petrified if the people back then saw the games and movies we have now!

An argument against media violence is used in an analogy of cigarette smoking, that the affects are not apparent until later, however this analogy does not take interpretation into consideration. I studied these type of theories also during sociology at college about the effect of the media on society such as the hyperdermic syringe theory(that information is injected into society).

It is also argued that people interpret the media in there own way and react according to that interpretation.

I personally feel that it is a bit of both.....the media is everywhere and always thrown at us and overtime I think we all begin to think in the way that the media imposes on us. Such as fashion trends, popular music etc. However also people are capable of interpreting media messages on there own, people are not mindless (mostly...=P)

Violence is now even parodied such as in cartoons e.g itchy and scratchy of the simpsons aswell as roadrunner which began as a parody but became popular.

Liutenant Grossman(sp?) is a big speaker against video game violence, he argues that techniques used by the American Army to train armies to kill are used in games and the typical hero is diminishing. A hero that dives infront of others to protect them from danger. Which thinking about it is kind of true, the main character are more getting back stories or are rebels etc.

In movies we passively receive information which was seen as really dangerous until games came along which has overtaken this as you are now interact and are doing the violence in the games. The game industry has overtaken the movie industry.

Science Fiction and a bit of extra semiotics

Bill began talking about semiotics and photography which he hadn't managed to finish from last week....

Basically he told us Ivan lied to us....or didnt tell us everything :) that infact there aren't two types but THREE!

1. Symbol - arbitary - linguistic
2. Icon - a likeness or resemblance
3. Index - existentially linked e.g where there is smoke there is fire

He informed us of the 'father figure' of cinema Andre Bazan (sp?) and that the first full length feature film was made in America and was about Ned Kelly. Learn something new everyday :)

Theeen a bit on photography that analogue has been replaced by digital, is this a good or a bad thing? Kind of interesting to think about.

I see the point that because of digital and that we can take as many photos as we want and manipulate any that go wrong there can be as a result not much heart and thought put into taking photographs anymore and has resulted in some of the silly photographic images of today. (but some of these can be funny I'm not complaining =D)

On the other hand digital manipulation has also allowed some gorgeous images aswell with the manipulation further enhancing the photo and photographers that still take into consideration composition, lighting etc.

My favourite photographer at the moment would have to be Elena Kalis
http://www.elenakalisphoto.com/

Although she largely does water images they are all beautiful and display soft movements of water.

After these statements were made he moved onto 'Science fiction'....kind of. He seemed to more talk about genre in general than science fiction.

A good point he made was that movies are never one specific genre anymore, they have multiple genres. The example of men in black was used that it is not only science fiction but also comedy.

Stephen Neale - difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre.

He spoke about how it is not really possible to trace a definate path of a history of a particular genre you can only follow one route and discover patterns. A fair statement as there are millions of movies created now it is impossible all with different inspirations and creators that have worked on them.

The last fact I got from the lecture was about the popular theme of sci-fi. The idea of humans serving computers aswell as special effects, futuristic environments and controlled worlds. This seems to be true however I am not a science fiction movie fan myself(I often get told off for having not seen Star Trek or Star Wars :) ) so I wouldnt really know and probably didnt connect with the ideas of this lecture as much as a result.

Medium.....Specificity? Specicity?

Another lecture and another lecture..rer, Bill! An Australian, awesome! :)

Unfortunately he went off on too many tangents for me to keep up with and I'm not sure specifically what the lecture was about or the main point of it? He got into a flow at the end talking about games and film but the beginning I was a bit confused.

I was surprised at his opinion on the Truman show as I studied this show as part of GCSE and liked the movie :) although fair enough it has a kind of grim back story to it that this person's life is completely being controlled around them and using fear to not let him escape etc.

Picked up on other things he explained such as tromploy(sp?) which is a trick of the eye such as special effects or illusions and that modern superheroes no longer just have their power they have to upgrade themselves such as ironman.

I think one of the main points of the lecture was the revolution of movie making over time from perspective being discovered(during renaissance which was interesting to discover aswell as that it started the drive towards realism in painting which was then liberated my photography) to mastering the technique of editing as it didn't use to exist! Same scenes were repeated twice to show from different angles! Shocking to me! :) I'm used to modern big movies of course.

Directing action at camera led to interactivity, cross-cutting introduced, closeups introduced, two lines of action introduced which eventually converges(still used in big movies such as Inception).

An interesting ending debate he presented was about games, if they can master the narrative and gameplay. Something I've never considered particularly, well, yes I have noticed if a game lacks story or the gameplay is crap but never considered them as conflicting things. He gave the examples of space invaders as a strictly gameplay game and dragon's lair as narrative.

As he spoke of these I thought to my favourite series of Final Fantasy games, such as Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VII both with big stories and popular games, however he also began to tell that cutscenes were introduced and act as a separate thing. The gameplay now gets in the way which thinking about it is true as I played through these games to complete the story mainly. But that is what I play an RPG for :) a good story and a good game.

Optional actions was then introduced so people could optionally choose and be more interactive about the story to improve the gameplay and interactivity. He used the example of heavy rain which allows u to enter commands during cutscenes. I'm surprised he didn't mention Fable as a side part of this as how u play influences ur character and the story which is interlinking gameplay and the story.

Even more so when he spoke of cutscenes I thought of half-life and how they merge gameplay and story really well. Although.....I can't say that from much experience as the game creeped me out and never played it! :D Played counter strike instead :D But! in half-life there are no cutscenes, instead the characters start talking to you and the story progresses around you. Such as I remember a scene in a room the character asks you to go into the teleporter and carries on chatting to you as you go in and they start to fire up the machine, then things start going wrong around you. It's all happening like a cutscene but you stay in the first person mode and then continue on with the gameplay.

A very interesting conflict to consider when playing games :)

Game makers main goal recently seems to be interactivity with games such as singstar, guitar hero, nintendo wii, all requiring movement to influence the game.

Bill finished (prematurely as he had gone overtime! :P) with statements on the power of film and the power of games.

Power of film - There is nothing we can do about it, what happens, happens!
Power of game - Interactivity, busy and your influence.

Mathieu Gérard: Steel Life

An amazing video to just watch and not think about, with stunning visual and beautiful music to back it up by Mathieu Gerard :) Enjoy!

Essay Research

I've decided to answer the question on realism as it has been the main lecture of them all to really get me thinking and interested.

So currently looking around at any interesting articles or opinions of people on the realism in animation, these are what I have discovered so far :)

http://www.cinephobia.com/realism1.htm - Introduction
http://www.cinephobia.com/realism2.htm - Visual realism
http://www.cinephobia.com/realism3.html - Realism in animation
http://www.cinephobia.com/realism4.html - Realism of Motion
There are more parts to this book however I dont feel the rest is necessary to my essay. These were written by Stephen Rowley who goes very in depth about realism in animation and refers many times to Paul Wells.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=G6IUoo_haJEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=paul+wells+understanding+animation&ots=DWnMbVRHYi&sig=dKBlHWtuzly14oGUVQpr2jgxjAY#v=onepage&q&f=false
Of course cant do this essay without reading from Paul Wells book :).....damn its a long book to read though O.o

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2x0RAQAAMAAJ&dq=illusion+of+life&hl=en&ei=Z8_VTM-eF8y4hAfoltSdBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA
I will also look through this book which I own myself which goes through the history of disney animation :)


I will use these links to get started on research, however these are all disney related and so i should look next more into the 3D side of animation and hyperreal stuff

Structuralism and binary opposition

All I can say to this lecture is.....what? :)

I thought I would be okay understanding Structuralism somewhat as I studied structuralists as a part of sociology during college.....but this was completely different!! Although I think I just managed to grasp the idea by the end of the lecture I very much had question marks surrounding my head during the lecture... I noted what I could.

Structuralism is distantly related to semiotics in the sense that it is about signs and how we make meaning of things in the world. It is a deep structure of understanding.

Apparently as humans we think in halves, that we relate one thing to another which was quite fascinating to learn about myself! That we learn what one thing is by knowing what it is not.........think about it it will be clear :) Took me a few seconds to get my head around that one! For example we know what good is by knowing what evil is, they are opposites.

In a way it relates to the symmetry fact we were told during semiotics, that if a face is symmetrical we consider it to be 'beautiful'. So humans kind of obsess over symmetry? Also by the fact that we think in halves, furthermore we have two of a lot of things! Two legs, two arms, two eyes, two ears etc The entire human body down the middle is a (generally) symmetrical thing.

              

But that's not really the point :) even though there are these opposites such as light and dark, these are not absolute things they are a constant cycle. It is not possible to have absolute dark, similarly for absolute light. Really I'm not sure why we were told some of these things about symmetry......and not possible to have extreme opposites. I also never saw the distinct line in the lecture of where he stopped talking about structuralism and started talking about binary opposites or if these are the same things? I assume when he started talking about opposite things was when binary opposites started...

Anyways the main point to me was about a middle ground between two extreme opposites known as, by structuralists, the zone of anomally. An example of a pier was used to describe the effect of this zone.

A man named James Joyce said a pier is a disappointed bridge.....aww a bridge that goes no where. It will take you away from land without getting your feet wet and so as a result normal rules of behaviour are suspended because you are off land..... In honesty when he first said this I kind of ignored this as a weird silly statement in my head but as examples were used and I thought about it it's actually true. Another example used was darkness, such as candlelight, nightclub or cinemas etc are all places that we enjoy because they are darker. A nightclub that was lit up would not have the same effect? Very true.

More interesting was how we find this middle ground more interesting. Such as between human and non human, werewolves, mermaids etc more interesting than a person? True. An anti- hero, hero with a troubled past more interesting than just a hero? True! The highly explored concept of this is Frankenstein that has been remade many times.

Furthermore what is more interesting is each generations different take on this middle ground as Frankenstein was remade he was changed overtime as have been cyborgs etc.

We aren't frightened of robots but we are frightened of cyborgs? True.

Then what about 3D animation? 3D characters? Are they cyborgs? Perfected people? This was an interesting question for me to consider. And in a sense....I agree and disagree. I agree in the sense that when characters are created in animation, in particular good characters, they tend to be made with perfection (perfect skin etc). However on the other side can argue that this is because when creating a main character for a film this would be appealing to an audience. That it is possible to create an imperfect character but animators choose not to. But of course they are also not real at the end of the day so they could still be classed as cyborgs.....

:)

Found an interesting link which relates to semiotic signs and quite interesting info

http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.com/2009/11/face-shows-character-of-men.html

whilst researching some head references for my character creation part of the course I came across this article which I found to be very interesting. It describes a scientific experiment, they found that certain face shapes of men depicts a certain character of them, aswell as Hindu beliefs to what a certain face shape depicts.
Although this is already general knowledge this article goes more specific in detail to describe relating faces to animals as well as general face shapes and how these influences our assumptions of character

Intertextuality

As an animator, intertextuality, did not appeal to me at all! Not only did it tell us that we can never create something original (even though I was already quite aware of that) but also the "death of the author", that we can't control how viewers receive things. This to me kind of conflicted with semiotics as that in a sense said that if you create the sign correctly you can influence how an individual will receive something. Such as a dark menacing looking character will generally be assumed to be an evil character by those viewing.

However at the same time I see why you can't control it as every person will interpret something differently from another person.

Overall intertextuality is not so much how viewers receive things but how things relate to one another and link together in people's minds. Using my previous example of red, some will link red to love, others to danger, maybe some even to blood. Intertextuality is how someone can take one thing and change it to make it into something else so as an animator I am constantly using intertextuality in my work as I research and find inspiration from other artists. However links are not always conscious or purposeful but sometimes can be unconscious links.

Intertextuality can also move which I found interesting such as jeans were designed and made for cowboys to use as they are tough material, however how people everywhere wear jeans. Intertextuality moved and no longer are jeans just for cowboys.

Although intertextuality is something I use during my course it did not particularly appeal to me very much even though I agree with it. :)

Semiotics, read the signs!

Two more lectures, two more topics, however these are kind of intertwined topics as intertextuality is a branch of semiotics.

In basic these lectures were about how signs such as language or pictures relate to different people, in my case this would be how I as an animator communicate to an audience through my animation. How the characters are designed, the colours, the environment, these all give a particular signal to an audience. If a character looks dark and sinister this will give an impression to the audience that this character is evil, or if I decorated an environment with warm bright colours would reflect a feeling of warmth and friendly atmosphere in this environment. So every part of the design as an animator must be carefully done and thought through.

There are many examples of highly talented concept artists that purposely design something for a particular meaning and purpose within a movie/game etc.

My two favourite concept artists that I have seen so far would have to be Feng Zhu and Zhu Li. Helps that they have same names to remember them :)

Feng Zhu
http://www.fengzhudesign.com/

Zhu Li
http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/talented-game-concept-artist-zhu-li/

Both are stunning artists that create amazing works.

Although I was aware that it is important to consider every part of a design as I have been told during University it was good to have it displayed in a more theoretical way of how people will interpret different signs on an image. Such as important information for me and character design that we were told was that scientists have discovered that we find beauty in symmetry, so if a face is symmetrical we consider it to be more 'beautiful'. I will definately take this into account during character creation processes and can manipulate how the character will look to others.

I also thought the fact that people are naturally semiotic was interesting, that we always try to make sense of the shapes and signs we see infront of us. This relates to one lecture this week with Martin as we did an exercise for creating composition. We did a rapid fire series of compositions with 30 seconds each just drawing lines randomly then at the end our minds would naturally try to make sense of these lines and possibly create a composition. He told us that are minds try to "find the recognisable shapes in chaos" which I found very interesting and true.

Every individual will interpret a sign automatically in a different way such as some will interpret the colour of red for love whereas others will interpret red as danger! It was useful to learn the two types of signs to apply to animation.

Signifier: The physical indication or presence of a sign

Signified: The mental concept of a sign.

Iconic: Most representative representation of sign e.g picture of a cat

Arbitary: Symbolic representation

Overall I picked out some bits of information of semiotics to be useful however it is not something I would research and look into myself again as it does not grasp my interest too much. I will however keep the concept of semiotics in mind as I create and design animation as it is important to know how to appeal to and manipulate a viewers mind....... scary :)

Too real or not too real? :) That is the question!

The first lecture of the semester was based on realism. What is it to make something realistic? Reproducing reality? Using colour/correct proportions/depth to convince viewers of realism? Photo realism?

A good phrase was used that although images can be made to look realistic it's not real. An example of this is photo-manipulation in Photoshop, where the image will look very realistic and can even convince viewers that what they are seeing is real, however it is not.

These were some interesting points raised aswell as how different animators approach realism, both 2D and 3D in the seminar later.

The entire lecture reminded me of a documentary I had seen a couple of years ago called My Fake Baby.http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational/watch/v15565477Tt8Gmz96
A fascinating documentary but also quite sad as these women use these realistic babies to replace what they don't have or have lost. Also interesting how some find the babies appealing and cute and others are disturbed that they are TOO real. Personally I think it would creep me out if I saw a baby thinking it was real only to discover that it isn't. A topic that was also brought up later in the seminar during animation discussions. Would it be amazing or creepy to completely master the human form in animation? This is referred to as the uncanny valley. Where things are so real it can become destabilizing, a point I had never really thought of before and so caught my interest especially in relation to the documentary.

Personally I think it would be unnecessary to master the human form in animation as I believe the beauty of animation is that you can create something that is pure fantasy and imagination. We can make them look to be real but know it is not, a pure fantasy brought to life.

Realism is an interpretation or transformation of what we see, an attempt to reproduce reality. However I found interesting the views of those that oppose recreation of reality completely! Even paintings were considered by this man to be a "corruption of reality" which I found to be quite a sad quote really as being an artist I like to not only create it myself but enjoy viewing other artworks. I also believe that beautiful worlds and images from the imagination can be only created through art, a big example of this is the movie Avatar where they created an entire world. Although fantasy, it was based using concepts from reality, which were discussed later as part of the seminars.

However it was soon discovered that some people found the world to be too real and became depressed and suicidal that they could never go to this world of Pandora. Which raises the point told by Plato as a part of his theory of forms, that creating representations of the world is illusory and can be dangerous. An extreme example of a movie capable of hypermediating.

In the modern world however the entire media is based on making things look better than they actually are! Which creates a lot of pressure on people such as in advertising and as a result has created the existence of things such as plastic surgery, photoshopping, models, extreme games such as Second life etc.

Are people creating there own fake reality?
As an animator personally these lectures and seminars raised very interesting questions and thoughts for me to discuss and think about.