Animation

Sony are adapting a graphic novel. Putting aside all the Dark Knight stuff (for a moment) and the Marvel and DC Adaptations, this feels more like an independent affair. A smaller more localised story.


http://www.cartoonbrew.com/biz/graphic-novel-chickenhare-set-for-feature-at-sony-pictures-animation.html


And, a dodgy link to some 'animation styles', i.e. cliched tropes. But...




ANIMATION STYLE


I know we are set on doing 2-D, but what are the limits of that actual technique. How far can we go? How can we do something that hasn't been done before in 2-D?


How to develop a style that maximises 2-D?


Okay, so, brilliant 2-D then.


Really good use of backgrounds in this. Ramps up the 2-D into something more. Simple use of character movement - very economical but thoughtful.





Sorry, once again, side tracked. Check out this one. It's 3-D, but its, well...





Interesting Sound Design, but that's a whole other blog.


Hmm. Note to self - come and look at this CG website: http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-798571.html




SIMON'S CAT


Lovely stuff. How was it done? What was it done on? Is it cell?


Love the static backgrounds, with loads of action in the foreground. And the thought that's gone into every scene. It's also huge, so people are prepared to watch this type of stuff.














MORE EXCELLENT 2-D

Just using a white space on a black background. On vice versa. Even using stick figures, or manipulations of that.






SILHOUETTING

This type of silhouetting - with the cinematic shading, lighting, simple backdrops (just moving shapes and nothing else) is surely something we could bring to our scenes. Especially to set up action, like for example the sex scene that's happening between Horatio and Mandelay. Have the action for these sihoutted scenes side-on - so that there is no need to draw '3-D'. In fact you could really play on it as well.

Just a thin wall between Horatio/Mandely, and the arrival of Evie, on the other side of the frame.

Instead of using PANS, resize the frame as much as possible, to play with perception and suggest a bigger reality to the audience's mind. Also, it looks realitively easy, and focusses on simple gesture and movement. We could make it funny too, if he's being raped by Mandelay.




Again, the animation in this is not very strong by any means - but there is much heart in the effect rendered by her silhouetting.




I just love the incredible image this hand pupeteer is able to get at 3.44. The movement is superb too, sort of ricketing, but constantly moving, constantly interesting for the eye. We should aim for CONSTANT MOVEMENT, suggesting more about the interior world of the characters.


BACK LIGHTING - THEATRE

Again, this is still in the realm of theatre/human performance, but what is achieved by the movement of these actors/performers is incredible and very 'animated' looking. I guess what is interesting about them for me is that they are human and yet we think they are not.

We are going for the opposite effect. We know they aren't human but we think that they are. Which means we need a THEORY of MOVEMENT which suggests humanity.

This, is NOT the stupid 'realistic' movement of the big budget 3-D movements with their smooth arcs and rotoscoping or motion capture technology. That's boring. It's something else. It's the INTERIOR of what it feels like to be human, represented in ANIMATED FORM.

What does that look like. Well, I guess that is our CHALLENGE.






RUBARB AND CUSTARD

The squiggly movement of RUBARB and CUSTARD always felt, and still feels intensely REAL to me. And I don't know why. I guess its the way excitment feels. Evie is constantly moving, she is a neurotic, so all her animation should reflect this and be DIFFERENT from all the other characters. In fact, each character MUST be different from the other characters.

ANOTHER RULE.

RULE NO. 2 - Each character must embody their personality in their animation. And therefore, since each is unique, must be different from each other.

Rules, who am I kidding...but I like the notion of setting them.

So, Rubard and Custard.

But, before them, look at the way these two guys move. Beautiful.




Could only find the intro. Even then, three simple cycles and its enough to get a real flavour of the character. Simple cycles of movement. Constant movement.




AND I KNOW THIS IS MEANT TO BE GOOD AND PEOPLE LIKE IT, BUT

I think its shit. It goes against everything the nine old men where getting at.





WHEN ORANGES RULED THE WORLD

The image in the frame is constantly interesting in this one - partly because of the speed of the image and the speed of the movement in the design of how the frame moves (reminds me of Irish animator John McCloskey's short film) but also because of the OVERLAYING of images ontop of one another. And those other images aren't always drawn. The orange overlaying everything looks like a photograph that's been slightly animated.

Just thought - in silhouette - we have to show the COCK.

RULE THREE - Be Brave.

Show the cock. Have Mandelay nearly destroy him.




I KNOW WE'VE BEEN TALKING ALWAYS ABOUT AFTER EFFECTS, BUT

Does it have to be?

Are there other avenues for us?

Maybe we need to re-look at what kind of animation techniques we are actually using to create our animation and in doing so re-invent totally our animation (and ourselves of course, nice by product, become new artists, surely getting a series like this demands we shed our old skins and become the thing we are meant to be, etc, etc, if you get my new age bullshitorama. But this is the hero's journey, and we are, at the moment, defeated, so must shed something - and attack.)

This is cookie. Too cookie, but its simple and effective. Too childish sure, and people might not watch a 'moving' unrepresentative image for so long - but its worth taking it as inspiration.





AGAIN, nice simplicity. Done by the same guy who did the Orange film. Very Lotte Reineger. But the seamless movement is gorgeous and something I'd really like to work at.









SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE

We need to be able to move the camera around - a lot. And shift perspective. What we lack in animation we should try and make up for in PERSPECTIVE.

Check out the wonderful David O'Reilly. As always, a master of simple movement and character with always one eye on the emotion. The shot is at 1.46. It's a simply designed shot, with great perspective, brilliant design (beauty as truth) and a JOKE in it too. Great. Can't we do something like this when Evie is coming to the apartment where Horatio lives?




OKAY, SO THIS IS A BIT MENTAL, BUT

Could we also look at putting in some simple stop motion too? Say for things like HANDS KNOCKING DOORS or GOING INSIDE PEOPLE'S HEADS. (like for example whenever Evie knocks at the end of Sc 02 - maybe we could go inside Horatio's head - and what we see is a his brain (which is a stop motion brain - maybe plastercine, or whatever, and its melting)

In other words, stop thinking just in after effects and begin to mix media a little. Just a little. Some simple stuff. To keep the whole thing INTERESTING.





NOIR AND LIGHTING

Limbo set the bar. We should be using parallax, but most of all, its in the lighting of the scene. We have to really think and experiment with LIGHTING.




DEPTH OF FIELD

One of our major problems is our work is flat. It has no perspective. Something which the guys who did Waltz with Bashir got round with backgrounds. But surely we could also use Depth of Field.

Animation: Isometric

So, what style? Worth looking around. Something generous in its design, value for money to produce and both original, stunning but inspired by the whole overall feel of the series.

Easy peasey. Where the frig to begin.

Isometric. Often used in graphic novels. First stop Rokysopp Video. Damn, can't embed. Fair enough. Some beautiful visuals in this. The isometric design creates a distance and space from the characters that gives the viewer a God like vantage point.


All the smallness makes you feel you're looking down from a height. For sequences requiring that more far away look, this style is, for my money, is interesting territory. It's also sharp, neat and suggests a controlling force somewhere at play.


http://youtu.be/lBvaHZIrt0o


The French company that produced it, H5, are here.


http://www.h5.fr/




A MILLION MILES AWAY


We have to think of  budget. No getting away from it. However, it is also nice to look at stuff that is mega gorgeous, lovely, provocative or new. 

This video by Edouard Salier has some of those. No story, well, a bit of a thing to knock about, but mostly just the gorgeous, nightmarish image. Lots of shatter, shatter. Like.


http://www.rsafilms.com/company/rsa-uk/rsa-animation/director/edouard-salier/massive-attack-atlas-air-2163 

And then, he went and did this.









ANYHOW, GETTING BACK TO IT


Big touchstone has to be the animated version of the gorgeous graphic novel, Persepolis. Perceptive, tragic, never sentimental (which it could've been in lesser hands) beautifully designed and drawn and in the end, funny and well animated too in the end. Although the translation lacked something, can't put my finger on it, maybe too winding a story that needed simplifying for the big slow moving image.

Uses a fair bit of isometric and lots of what feel like clever tricks to create the sense of 3-D space without ever engulfing the viewer in spectacle. Character comes first.

That should be a rule. Character first.





Here she is talking French on a French TV Channel. Gotta ask, how many TV Channels was a graphic novelist turned film maker on. Probably loads, but hey cynicism is a better mask.







MORE ISOMETRICS


I suppose the reason I'm starting here is because moving isometric graphics, via video games, blew into my child hood world via computer games for the C64 and Spectrum. They used Isometric parallel grids because it was a cheap, effective and stylistic way to render 2D space as 3D.


This guy wrote some interesting stuff.

For the uninitiated, drawing objects in perspective means using a system to mimic the way things appear to diminish in size as they get farther away. One, two, and three point perspectives use different numbers of vanishing points to help determine an object’s relative size based on perceived distance from the viewer. All this is a visual trick to represent three dimensions on a two dimensional sheet of paper or computer screen. Piccaso is quoted saying, “Art is lies that tell the truth.” Perspective is one of those lies.

Isometric perspective is different only in that it trades one lie for another. There are no vanishing points. Objects don’t diminish in size as they get further away in the scene, instead everything is locked on a parallel grid. This doesn’t match reality as we experience it, but it can prove useful in architectural renderings, or other applications where dimensions are critical. It turns out this false perspective is also useful in video games, and turns up everywhere on the web. Everything from casual games like Farmville, to the soon-to-be-released Starcraft II are built on these rules of projection.

It is easy to see the underlying grid in these screen caps:

Ref: http://www.otis-graphics.com/blog/archives/318


So, what about those games?





Vendetta:

Anyways, I get the point. But so what? What's in it for us? Is it cheaper to do? 

It'll definitely help to have action scenes done at this level and then when characters move and talk we go in for a more comic book feel.

GRAPHIC NOVEL TO MOVIE

Apart from Persepolis, what else has been rendered in animation well.

So, Marjane Satrapi comes to aid again. Nice interview in the Guardian, makes a couple of interesting points. Nothing to push us any further towards animation, but useful when thinking about adapting our little four panellers into something animated, to keep certain things in mind. Like rewriting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/16/how-to-film-a-graphic-novel

Alright, I'm bored. I'll start again soon.