Art 103: Knowledge COMM 345 Blog #3

"I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real, unless we first know the real." - Walt Disney.

I feel this quote is actually a fairly simplistic observation. It's kind of like saying "We can't make an ocean of pudding until we find out how pudding moves." There is a more philosophical point of view you can take. You could question what he means by real. Is he speaking of reality as we comprehend it visually, or "real" as the incomprehensible force behind Lacanian perception? Well, Walt Disney wasn't really that kind of man. His characters expressed forcibly through motion and expression rather than subtlety with open interpretations. Walt was that kind of man as well.

It should be said that every artist does hit a limit of what they can do with their skills. I believe this is what Walt Disney was trying to emphasize. As an artist myself I find myself that I cannot draw what I don't know how to. Or rather, it is hard to draw a realistic hole in the wall, unless someone has seen how the hole looks. Then you have to imagine what the exposed brick looks like or whether or not there should be plumbing or insulation or whatever. Without a firm understanding of these textures, shapes and construction, you couldn't tell what you drew from a hole in the wall.

Making the object fantastic is the next step after "knowing the real". If you can draw a door (I just wanted to get the hole in the wall joke out of the way) inside and out, then you should have problem animating a door that twists about and moves. There are times when I think you know something only to find that problems arise when you need to get it to do something unusual. For example, most people can draw a closed door, but they may have trouble drawing one that is half-way open. Unless there is a firm understanding of how a thing operates in space, errors of reality may occur. Someone may draw an ornate door that leads to a church, but forgets a door handle, or they may not overextend the edges when they draw in perspective and make the door hard to open (this is all assuming that the door is pulled opened).

During the time of the quote animation was still in it's discovery phases, "fantastic" could mean making things look like they come from a fantasy world, but more likely Walt just meant the technique. To an audience still new to the medium, a realistic flying bird would be just a "fantastic" to see on the screen as, say, a dancing door. Thus the knowledge of how objects behaved and moved in the world must first be mastered before it can be brought to life in animated form.

For Reals. COMM 345 Blog #2

I believe caricatures are important for understanding people in cartoons. The human mind can only handle so much information, so rather than store every single detail of the human face we subconsciously select outstanding features for recognition. Jay Leno, with his large chin and black hair stripe, is a famous example. If you were to hold up a photo realistic drawing of Jay Leno, it would take people a second to identify him as they scanned for features. Now if you were to hold up a caricature of him with squinty eyes, thin smile, large chin, and outrageous hair you would get a quicker response, maybe even from people who aren't fans.

Animation relies on caricature, even if not mocking celebrities. For example, if you wanted to animate a fireman, you would probably start with generalizations of what a fireman would look like rather than a realistic representation. You'd give him the large hat, the traditional red fireman's outfit, exposed face or guard, an ax for chopping down doors, maybe even some generic imaginary insignia. You wouldn't want to draw an modern bulky yellow suit, cover his face with a scary gas mask, draw in numerous detailed insignia, make him short and fat or (heaven forbid) a woman under all that. All of that stuff would take away from the visual recognition, someone might mistake him as some Hazmat dude from the future before they think of them as a fireman. You also want to make consider the poor animators as well. If you can communicate an image in fewer symbols then that is the best option. Overly detailed designs will are too much effort to follow through with and will cause animators to hunt you down and burn you and your descendants to the ground. Ironically, a fireperson could help with that.

Inhumanly Human COMM 345 BLOG #1

Reality in movement is something the audiences take for granted in animation, but it is really hard to produce in animation. The focus for modern film animation is how realistic the face appears on the character, not how well the character moves or positions themselves. Though we are experiencing something of a paradigm shift as new technology and techniques allows animators to play with the look and feel of animation.

A hyper-real environment, such as the one in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, can become dull and uninteresting once the initial novelty of marveling at the scenery wears off. At the time the movie was released critics were blown away at the way the main character Aiki's hair moved, though at the same time the other characters had hair that was shaved, tied back or anything else that kept their hair from moving. Add to that the barely existent plot, stiff body movement and sparse action and you have a box office bomb that demolished any real hope of anime movies making it in American theaters.

So now that we have established that I do not like animation that is overly realistic let's discuss my choice that represents good character animation. Crash Test by Gobelins is a tale of a crash test dummy that resents his job and dreams of bigger things. The main protagonist, Johnny Crash, is instantly distinguishable from his other crash dummy counterparts, who headbutt each other and cheer on crashes. They're huge masculine body shape and unified mind set communicate their simplified personalities while Johnny is a harder read with a slim body and large eyes.

Johnny's expressions and movements are familiar, like he reminds me of an actor or person I know but can't quite put my finger on. Maybe Johnny Depp, maybe a bit of Woody Allen, or perhaps that one character from the manga "Blazing Barrels". Either way it makes him accessible as a character that is not only real, but human. I realized this during Johnny's audition when he blows smoke out of his ears that I kept thinking of him as a person in a suit rather than a crash test robot.

Johnny Crash gets nervous, frustrated, and even fed up with his job, all without saying a word. Johnny expresses more with only a mouth and bug eyes than any one character from Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within. He is awkward and out of place as a crash test dummy but moves with style and awe while performing. Not to mention the look on his face while the crowd is cheering him is pure joy. And he expresses all these emotions without saying a word.

Gobelins. "Crash Test." YouTube. Talantis, 18 Apr. 2008. Web. 14 Sept. 2010. .

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Dir. Hironobu Sakaguchi. Perf. Ming-Na, Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland. 2001. DVD.