Media Cultures 1‘Real Worlds of

Animation’

Week 8

Tracey Meziane Benson

To explore animation in the context of 3 issues

1. Realism effects in animation

2. The distinctions that we make between fiction and non-fiction in screen media

3. How we can tell stories through animation

eg. Waltz With Bashir (2008)

Some animations to consider

Other examples:

The Nightmare Before Christmas (Tim Burton,1993)

Big Buck Bunny (Blender 2007)

Howl’s Moving Castle (Miyazaki Hayao, 2004)

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Hironobu Sakaguchi, 2001)

Cinematic Animation

DRAWING & PAINTING IN 2 DIMENSIONS traditional cel animation – frame by frame Drawing into the computer and animating via

software programs Compositing RotoscopingSCULPTING IN 3 DIMENSIONS Stop-action: claymation, puppets, frame by frame Computer generated (CG) animation CG Figural Morphing

Digital Compositing

Operates new process of ‘super-imposition’ in editing film. This process is a layering of many digitalised images in the creation of a ‘shot’ – a sequence of images created through a single camera ‘set-up’. It involves matching a real camera’s position with a ‘virtual camera’s’ viewing position to create a high level of realism. The aim is usually to create effects which cannot be noticed.

‘Bullet Time’ – ‘timeslice technique’

A combination of new and old media techniques: green screens, wireframe computer simulations, an arc of still cameras, motion cameras, compositing …

Questions

1. How do we understand animation as representation?

2. What is the relationship between animation and the real world.

3. Has this relationship changed with animations created via computer technologies?

4. What happens to the story when animation and human acted cinema combine?

Can we understand animation as Puppetry?

A definition of puppetry in the context of computers?

‘if the signification of life can be created by people, then the site of that signification is to be considered a puppet.’

Tillis, Steve (1999). ‘The Art of Puppetry in the Age of Media Production’, The Drama Review, 43.3, 185. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_drama_review/v043/43.3tillis.html

Realism: what does it mean in the context of animation?

We can define here ‘realism’ to mean the relationship between a representation of an object (through sound, image, movement) and how closely we think this representation evokes in us how the object exists for us in real life.

Are line drawings, stop action any less realistic then for us than CGI animation such as Final Fantasy, The Spirit Within?

Have our ideas of realism changed with computer technologies?

This is an open question still Perceptual Realism: where we pretend for a while

that the filmmakers really know what dinosaurs look like because they are contextualised in what looks like a representation of real space:

A ‘perceptually realistic image is one which structurally corresponds to the viewer’s audiovisual experience of three-dimensional space’

Prince, Stephen (1996). ‘True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images and Film Theory’, Film Quarterly, 49:3, 32.

DV Realism - Manovich

‘I do believe that new media re-configures a moving image in a number of very important ways … the shift from montage to compositing; the slow historical transition from lens-based recording to 3-D image synthesis; the new identity of cinema as a hybrid of cinematography and animation.’

Lev Manovich, ‘Reality Media’, 2001http://www.manovich.net/TEXT/cinema-cultural.html

Virtual Puppets

Animatronics Stop Action Scanning from models in real life to produce

moving CGIs – Computer Generated Images:

- ‘the strings’ – articulation variables

- Kinematics – creating and saving gestures

- Motion capture

Vactors

CG virtual actors meant to do the same theatrical, storytelling work as a human actor – often used in crowd scenes and in special effects via compositing

‘In the coming era of digitized representation the crucial questions have less to do with reality than with communication’.

Creed, Barbara (2000). ‘The cyberstar: digital pleasures and the end of the

Unconscious’, Screen, 41, Spring 2000, 83.

BUT can animation also be REAL?

The boundaries between fiction and

non-fiction: Can we record real life via animation? Eg.

William Kentridge, Ari Folman, Richard Linklater What will come (Kentridge) Waltz With Bashir (Folman) Waking Life (Linklater)

And William Kentridge

‘stone age animation’