The Fundamentals of Animation

360 Pages·2016·37.79 MB·English

by  Paul Wells

Contents
Introduction
01
Principles and Processes
1. Ideas Generation
2. Research and the Pre-production Process
3. Technique
4. The Animator as Interpreter
5. The Animator as Performer
6. The Animator as Editor
7. The Animator as Director
02
Applications and Outcomes
8. Drawn and Cel Animation
9. 3D Stop-motion Animation
10. Animation for Children
11. Clay Animation
12. Digital Animation
13. Alternative Methods
14. Animated Documentary
03
Contexts
15. Post-production
16. Critical Evaluation
17. Portfolio
18. Collaboration
19. Working as an Independent
20. Postgraduate Opportunities
21. Making an Independent Film
22. Screening Opportunities
Bibliography and Webography
Acknowledgements and Credits
Introduction
‘The art challenges the technology and the technology
inspires the art. Technical artists are coming from
computer graphic schools, and learning sculpture,
drawing and painting, and traditional artists are learning
more about technology. The more we get their cross-
pollination the more we will stretch the boundaries of this
medium.’
John Lasseter1
Animation and Popular culture
Animation is one of the most prominent aspects of popular culture
worldwide. It informs every aspect of the visual terrain that surrounds
us every day. It is present in its traditional form in the films produced
by Disney, PIXAR, Dreamworks and Ghibli, and in television sit-coms
like The Simpsons and South Park. Equally, it exhibits its versatility in
every ad break, as anything from washing machines to cereal packets
take on the characteristics of human beings and persuade us to buy
them. Computer-generated (CG) animation finds close affiliation with
the computer games industry. Most websites have some form of
animated figure or banner, as well as housing new forms of cartoon;
and on mobile devices, too, animated characters and games
proliferate. As well as all this, independent animated film survives in
the face of economic adversity, providing festivals with inventive and
affecting shorts, while the ‘invisible art’ of animation within the special
effects tradition carries on transforming, and in some aspects
eradicating, ‘live action’ in blockbuster features. Animation also
continues to embrace new applications in science, architecture,
healthcare and broadcast journalism, to name but a few. Animation is
simply everywhere.
This is no surprise. Animation is the most dynamic form of expression
available to creative people. Animation is a cross-disciplinary and
interdisciplinary art and craft, embracing drawing, sculpture, model-
making, performance, dance, computer science, social science and
much more. It has a distinctive language that enables it to create the
art of the impossible. Whatever can be imagined can be achieved.
This unique vocabulary can be used in a variety of different ways – for
example, traditional drawn or cel, CG, or stop-motion animation – but
crucially, whatever technique is used (and there are many more) it can
service works from the most outlandish of cartoons to the most
abstract of avant-garde films, and all else in between. This is why
animation has remained the most consistently experimental art form
even as it has entered the mass popularity of mainstream visual
culture.
Animation continually offers new possibilities narratively, aesthetically
and technically, encouraging new animators, artists and practitioners
to explore new kinds of storytelling, to create new graphic and
illustrative styles, and to use both traditional and new tools in the
execution of their work. This book will address all of these aspects,
seeking to be a useful primer in the ‘how to’ of animation across a
number of disciplines, but also considering a range of critical ideas
and historical perspectives that are pertinent to creative work of this
kind.
Liz Faber and Helen Walters suggest that animation may be found
‘occupying a space between film-making, art and graphic design’,2
while veteran animator Gene Dietch offers a more technically
determined view, suggesting that frame-by-frame cinematic
animation is ‘the recording of individually created phases of imagined
action in such a way as to achieve the illusion of motion when shown
at a constant, predetermined rate, exceeding that of human
persistence of vision’.3 Much of the ‘particularity’ of animation, though,
is in all the work that must be done before it becomes a film or digital
presentation. Animated ‘movement’ is artificially created and not
recorded from the real world. Consequently, animation almost
intrinsically hides its process, and the ‘art’ that characterises that
process. Only the outcome is important in the public imagination;
however, for the prospective animator the core work is in the process,
and it is that which is reflected throughout the rest of this book.
In many ways, when animation is made in the traditional frame-by-
frame form it is comparatively easy to define, but this is significantly
problematised in the digital era. Comics artist and theorist Scott
McCloud has suggested that ‘as the technological distinctions
between media fall away, their conceptual distinctions will become
more important than ever’.4 This book, then, seeks to combine the
traditional and orthodox ideas at the heart of animation with the ‘bright
new dawn’ of the impact of the digital era, offering case studies and
advice from artists, scholars and practitioners. In this book there is no
difference between theory and practice – they are one and the same,
as actually, they always have been. You cannot be a good animator, or
indeed, an artist of any sort, without embracing historical perspectives
and critical insight, all of which are embedded in any forward-thinking
and original practical work.
It is likely that the 21st-century animation practitioner – you – is
interested in and engaged with the visual dynamics of popular culture:
comics; graphic novels; animé; pop promos; advertising; websites
dedicated to left-field interests; cult TV and movies; fan cultures;
contemporary modern art; and any aspect of visual culture that has
entered into the mainstream of the popular imagination by the time
this book has been published. For the most part, all creative people
start off as ‘fans’ of something and want to make something like the
art they admire. These are the catalysts for animators wanting to
emulate a particular style or approach, while at the same time trying
to find an individual ‘voice’.
It is likely, too, that many contemporary animators have found access
to the medium through increasingly affordable software packages,
and the trial and error of making animation in back-bedroom ‘studios’.
Animators with no formal training have been able to use inexpensive
computer programs to create quality work without a colossal budget
or using the extensive film crews present in the credits of major
movies. Further, college and university courses have proliferated to
accommodate the increasing interest in animation, and there is
training available in traditional and CG animation.
Inevitably, in a global culture so aware of the works of the PIXAR and
Dreamworks studios, and so invested in computer games, there is
high creative aspiration among fledgling practitioners, but a note of
caution also needs to be added. As Bill Fleming has noted, ‘The
problem with technology is it can greatly simplify some tasks while
greatly complicating others … In 2D, the animator simply draws the
body perfectly and doesn’t have to worry about the technology
getting in the way or falling short. Being a digital animator means also
being a technical engineer and in many cases a programmer.’5 So,
making choices is crucial – what is the best approach for you, your
ideas, your abilities and your ambitions? This book will try and help
you make those choices.
Animation offers extraordinary versatility and range in its style and
techniques, but there are some fundamental principles at its heart that
distinguish it as an art form, a practical craft, and a distinctive means
of expression. It is hoped that the following discussion will highlight
those principles by engaging with the process in developing an
animated film; defining the multiple roles and perspectives in thinking
about the use and execution of animation; and through the advice and
support offered by a range of case studies in which students and
professionals making animated films in a variety of contexts speak
critically about their projects, and share ‘best practice’. At a time when
there is an increasing number of books about animation – and any
number of ‘making of’ documentaries available, concerned with
technical considerations, historical perspective, creative outcomes
and critical analysis – it is crucial that these aspects are not seen as
separate, but part of the same approach. The whole point of this
discussion, therefore, is to keep these perspectives working together
in a book that we hope will be thought provoking and practical, and,
ultimately, fundamentally useful to the critically engaged, creative
practitioner.
Why Animation?
Why choose animation instead of live action? There are many
possible answers to this question, but the following points may serve
to summarise some of the key perspectives:
Animation offers a different vocabulary of expression to live action
and enables greater creative freedoms.
Animation gives a greater degree of control over the construction
and outcome of the work.
Animation may be usefully related to and operate within the
physical and material world of live action.
Animation can offer a different representation of ‘reality’ or create
worlds governed by their own codes and conventions that radically
differ from the ‘real world’.
Animation can achieve anything that can be imagined and create an
‘art of the impossible’.
All these perspectives acknowledge distinctiveness in the form, which
may be recognised in all its approaches and disciplines. The process
by which an animated film might be made, though, is variable. It has
some generic consistencies, but often varies with the technique
employed, the purpose of the project and its outcome and, crucially,
as a result of the working methods employed by an individual or a
collaborative team. The ‘process’ guide shown here, therefore, is only
one model of an approach to practice, but it encompasses many of
the core aspects required.
It’s important to recognise that this is not a strict linear process. Many
aspects of the production process overlap and become subject to the
ups and downs of creative practice. Things do go wrong and need to
be recovered; aspects of any production are constantly reviewed and
revised as they go along; and things that seem hard and fast can
quickly be jettisoned in preference to another idea or in response to a
pragmatic concern. One key point remains though, and that is the
importance of pre-production, as we’ll see in Chapter 1.
The Animation Process
Concept: the inciting idea
Independent project/Studio project/Commercial commission
Creating schedule of work
Budget/Planning/Timeframe