Fellow Travellers?
by T. Hodler
Thursday, July 10, 2008
This probably doesn’t deserve a post of its own, but since we closed the comments on the post where it would make most sense to put this, I thought I’d just point out an interesting credit that Pixar apparently included at the end of Ratatouille, according to Augie De Blieck at Comic Book Resources. If this is true, Pixar (at least sort of) agrees with Frank:
Our Quality Assurance Guarantee:
100% Genuine Animation!
No motion capture or any other performance shortcuts
were used in the production of this film.
“Realism” and excessive reliance on photographic reference aren’t the same thing, after all, a distinction a lot of people got tripped up by, I think.
Labels: animation, photo-referencing, Pixar
Until reading his posts recently, I’ve always assumed that the “Pixar” that Dan has said he dislikes must be some 70’s penciller I’d never heard of. I’m really surprised! Wall-E was one of the best new movies I’ve seen in a long time! “Dehumanizes” is a word I’d never use for them. I kind of think of their “super-realism” as polish and very much besides what is so great about the movies – however, after reading those comments, I have listened for people whose first description of Wall-E goes, “the CG is awesome!” Blah.
I saw some original character models for Rataouille at a graphic design museum in NY a while back — clay models. Maybe everyone does this, but I thought it was real impressive.
Anyway, go see Wall-E. It’s a beauuuutiful love story (and the CG is awesome!)
As much as I loved Wall-E, (and Ratatouille, and The Incredibles, etc.) I’m kind of bummed out by Pixar’s decision that every movie they release from 2009 on will be in Digital 3-D. (By which I mean, you view it with glasses in the theater, so the images pop off the screen, to create a more immersive experience.) As much as I like the argument that it isn’t Pixar that’s to blame for creating an economy for animation where hand-drawn 2-D stuff is no longer viable, it seems like this new decision will actually push them further into the realm away from the hand-made and probably create an even more exclusive world of what American animation is to be.
But then, I’m still kind of puzzled by what the concept of “pure animation” means in the context of computers and 3-D modelling, since you’re already afield from the direct act of drawing.
Interestingly, the title character in Snow White was essentially rotoscoped (traced from live-action footage). I think they did about as nice a job of it as they could’ve, although it’s still pretty noticeable if you’re tuned into that kind of thing. However, it works — she’s well integrated into her environment, she interacts with the much livelier dwarves convincingly, and so on. You’re not constantly reminded that you’re seeing a real person through a drawn filter. And that’s because the Disney animators were top-notch artists using a tool to help execute a vision — even if it was, to some extent, a crutch.
Richard Linklater’s animations use a similar technique, but I think they suffer quite a bit from the artists being overwhelmed by the process. With the exceptions of a few segments in Waking Life, I don’t find them at all “believable”. As Frank observes about Alex Ross’ work, I see the model behind the image. It’s a wet blanket.
Which is just to say that this kind of thing can be done well, and it can be done badly. As Tim points out, it’s not a matter of detail — it’s whether an artist understands how to interpret the source to her or his own ends.
And on a gut level, I agree with Frank that this kind of thing is best avoided as much as possible, especially among students. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s a crutch, not a tool.
Just to respond quickly to an issue Brian raises:
It’s worth keeping in mind that strictly speaking, “animation” really just means making things move over time. Stop-motion and cut-out animation has been around for as long as the hand-drawn sort, and computer animation is really just another technique. True, 3D computer animation isn’t really drawing-based — but neither is claymation, for example. They’re both more-or-less sculpturally-based.
Now, one could argue that the best hand-drawn stuff from the 20th Century is aesthetically better than what Pixar is doing today… but that’s not a case I’m prepared to make or defend this afternoon!
Oh, I’ve totally done stop-motion stuff. I just get confused by notions of purity when computer programming seems to me such a distancing thing.
To me, animation is primarily about putting one image after another, you know. I think that with computer animation, it’s more about rendering whole sequences at a time. I could be wrong about this, I’ve never done it.
This isn’t to say I think computer animation is bad- I like what Pixar do with 3-D modelling, I like what Paper Rad do with Flash. I just get confused with talk of purity, even though I understand the draw of self-imposed rules, which both Paper Rad and Pixar have.
At the same time: what I like about hand-drawn animation is how it feels limitless and free. Which gets into tangent territory.
(I also don’t know if I should consider it a bummer the way you consign hand-drawn work to the twentieth century, as someone who was really fond of The Triplets Of Belleville.)
Don’t be bummed out, Brian! I just think the nicest looking animated drawings come from mid-last century: Fleischers, early Disney, Tex Avery, and so on. I don’t think anyone alive can top those guys.
I do agree that there’s a certain kind of immediacy in anything hand-drawn that’s hard (maybe impossible) to achieve with a computer. But I think ‘purity’ is a loaded word. The animation in Tron, for example, feels very pure to me, but not at all in the way that you’ve defined it.
Still, I can’t imagine that everyone who works at Pixar doesn’t love the Fleischer Bros. cartoons, most of which are rotoscoped to some degree. It’s all in the execution, which is why Pixar’s computer animated movies look better than everyone else’s even though they use the same techniques.