Digital Images can fall into two categories, bitmap or vector, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. For this animation I chose to go with Bitmap assets, as I was inexperienced with using Vectors in the context of animation. However, Vector art does have it's advantages, specifically in regards to motion graphics and rigged animation.
One of the main advantages of using Vector assets in Animation is that Vector files are mathematical definitions, made up of set points with lines and bounds interconnecting them, defined in terms of width, height, ratio and proportion and not dependent on the resolution space assigned to them like Bitmaps are. This means that they can be scaled without effecting the quality and edited with ease, as components can be individually manipulated without effecting the rest of the image. File sizes are also generally smaller as the size is dictated by the intricacy and detail of the points on the graphic.
Vector based art lends itself to certain styles more than others, and this is no different in animation. Vectors are most prominent in motion graphic animations and more commercially oriented work where efficiency of workflow and market viability is prioritised over artistic merit and expression. Often you will find assets created to be vectors are designed around the tools in Illustrator. Illustrator's toolset prioritises simple shapes, curves and lines, and is less suited to more complex drawing.
'I will never let something go into production unless it is working fantastic in that version with the still drawings . Because no matter all the great animation you can do will never save a bad story. We will work and rework and rework and rework these reels-sometimes thirty times before we let it go into production. We're really adamant. We'll even slow the production down or stop production to get the story right because we believe its the story that entertains audiences. It's not the technology. It's not the way something looks. It's the story.' -John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer
Pixar is an animation studio renowned for it's characters as well as telling emotionally resonant stories with well-written narratives. Their approach in regards to the pre-production is unique in that they approach narrative from the emotional perspective of their characters. The storyboard artists at Pixar receive a 'beat outline' which provides the basic guidelines for the character's emotional journey through a scene. Artists then pitch their ideas going by these basic outlines to the director who will then finalise and approve them.
According to John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer at Pixar, the reason the storyboard process is so important to them is because unlike in live action, the animators cannot have coverage, every asset has to be constructed from scratch , so what they do is edit the movie before they start production, for which they use storyboard drawings. Essentially the animators create their own rough cut of the film from the still drawings, complete with their own scratch track, voices and temp music. It is only after that, when everything has been approved and finalised that full production can begin.
CG is the most prominent commercial form of mainstream animation. A quick look at the highest grossing animated films of any given year after 1995 and you'll more than likely see that they are primarily CG animated, family friendly affairs produced by large studios such as Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks.
The demand for family friendly never slowed down, evidenced by the popularity of late 2D animated features such as The Lion King, but with advent of CG in the mid 90s, animators were granted a new set of tools to better express their ideas. While CG is considered a large financial and technological investment, on large scale productions it's workflow generally allows for projects to be churned out faster than their traditional 2D contemporaries and is thus the less risky option. In much the same way tools such as DUIK save time on 2D animated projects by allowing animators to animate pre-existing assets, CG cuts down on asset creation and grants the animator more flexible control of elements such as lighting and camera in a scene. 2D animation, while still popular in parts of Europe and Japan, seems unviable in the current Hollywood, profit-oriented landscape.
CG's proven formula generates profit precisely because it is so deeply entrenched in the hollywood system of profit-oriented, family-friendly feature films. Smaller scale CG productions are a lot less common because audiences expect a certain level of technicality, and due to the monopolisation of the medium by Disney and Dreamworks, a particular, family-friendly style.
3D Animation is something that has interested me for a while, but it was not until I first starting using Maya at the end of last semester, and observed some of the work other people in my class were doing, that I fully appreciated the artistic potential of the medium. So, for this project I wanted to push for using as many 3D tools as possible, though this proved difficult due to my partner's reluctance to engage with the Maya tools. So to compromise, I opted to create 3D assets for our animation in Maya and then export them as 2D Renders, to later be composited in After Effects, something more along the lines of a 2.5D Animation. I didn't want to skimp on the 3D aspect of my animation, as Maya is something I hope to use for future animations.
One of the key examples of 2.5D animation I hoped to emulate at the beginning of this project was the Gorillaz Music Videos designed by Jamie Hewlett. Videos such as 'Clint Eastwood', and 'Feel Good Inc' incorporate fully 3D backgrounds and assets in their animation, alongside live action footage. This creates a sort of montage aesthetic, reminiscent of the zine culture from which Hewlett's early work on Tank Girl emerged. This style, while proving that 2.5D animation can be visually appealing and work across a variety of different art styles, is a little ambitious for the limitations that have been placed upon me. Environments in many Gorillaz videos are fully rendered in 3D with camera movement and lighting that is just not possible to replicate with 2D Assets, or at least not possible to replicate to the standard required for a well produced animation. In the 'Feel Good Inc' music video, grass flutters in the wind as the camera orbits the character Noodle playing a CG rendered acoustic guitar as light bounces off the windmill in the background. This shot represents a perfect fusion of the two mediums of 2D and 3D, light on the character is moves with the light of the environment. It's a beautifully conceived shot made possible only by the animators fully embracing the tools at their disposal.
This style of animation, while appealing, is incredibly expensive and time consuming however, and not necessarily a feasible undertaking for every project. For music videos as well as other more artistically oriented endeavours where strict deadlines and marketability are less important, this approach works, but it is not a style or technique you see often in more commercial work. Feel Good Inc's music video is clearly a labour of love from the animators involved in the project and it shows in the densely detailed animation. It is also clear that a relatively large team of animators worked on this video, which is another limitation of 2.5D animation. This level of detail, both in the 2D and CG animation is something that could only be achieved by a sizeable studio, due to the artstyle and sheer number of individual unique assets. It is probable that a smaller team looking to apply this technique would have to drastically alter the artstyle and possibly tone down the detail of the animation if they were tasked with this project or else risk missing the deadline, no matter how lenient.
Test Render I did early on in production of what the animation might have looked like using the Ocean Shader.
With this project I can't help but feel a little restricted by my collaborator (as well as my lack of knowledge of the tools), however, since the beginning of the module I have been determined to make the most of it. Originally for the water, which plays a huge role in our animation, I wanted to create it in Maya, generating an oceanscape using the ocean shader tool. The plan was to use a script which my tutors has shown me in Maya which allows for objects to interact with the movement of the waves, to animate the bed/boat floating across the ocean while making the most of Mayas tools. Then we would produce a skybox dome for the more abstract environmental details of the dreamscape. There is even a plugin for creating skyboxes in Maya, so a lot of this wouldn't have been too much hassle. Ultimately, none of these ideas came to fruition, and I can't help but feel a little disappointed. Using Maya as the primary workspace would have allowed for realtime lighting, realistic wave physics and generally would have pushed me as a practitioner more than the process I ended up settling on with my partner.
I knew from the beginning of this module that I wanted to experiment with rigging a 2D character. Over the summer while I was on work placement at Paper Owl Films, I was introduced to DUIK, an After Effects Plugin which aids in the creation of character rigs in 2D animation. Rigging is a fairly versatile method of animation which is used in everything from children's television animation, including many CBeebies shows such as Sarah and Duck and Hey Duggee, to Academy Award Nominated Independent Israeli Animated War Documentaries such as Waltz with Bashir, and DUIK aids this process by providing the animator a set of tools to construct a sort of easily manipulatable and posable wireframe.
It is important when using DUIK to design your characters around the tools you are given. Most characters animated in DUIK are simple in their design, often with long, pipe-like arms and legs to allow for straightforward manipulation without deforming the mesh. The tools in DUIK are also better served, at least in my opinion, by a vector based art-style, such as the one seen in Studio AKA's Hey Duggee. By using a vector-based aesthetic, deformations in the mesh are less noticeable than with an art-style emphasising line-work, and as a result the final product is a lot cleaner, with the tools used being less apparent to the audience. There are exceptions (see Sarah and Duck) but for the most part, rigged animation generally looks better when it applies a vector based aesthetic. This is why DUIK is primarily viewed in the creative industries as a motion graphics tool, as it is best suited to a specific style of Graphic Design.
With my animation I was hoping to apply DUIK to a more complex rig and character design, which admittedly wielded mixed results. My main influence when creating the rig for my character for this animation was Waltz with Bashir. The characters in the film are made up of an incredibly large amount of moving assets, particularly around the face area, lending an aura of the uncanny to the animation. My whole approach with my rig has been to create as many variations of facial assets such as eyes and mouths, in order to replicate some of this aura but in a more stylised manner. Looking at the character models and overall design of Waltz with Bashir, the characters seem designed to be visually appealing in stills and screenshots, but in the final film, for all the animators' merit, there is something bordering on the uncanny and I think this has to do with the tools the filmmakers use.
In a behind the scenes documentary, it is apparent that the filmmakers are using Flash to animate their characters, and not the DUIK rigging tool as I had originally suspected. While I would still classify the animation in the film as 'rigged animation' the animator's approach has more in line with limited and more traditional forms of 2D animation. While characters are constructed into sort of rigs, there are an extraordinary number of individual and unique assets, vastly more so than is usually the case with rigged animation. One of the reasons for using DUIK and rigging tools in the first place is to cut down on the amount of assets the animator needs to create in order to streamline the animation process, it's an economic decision used to cut costs and produce work quickly and efficiently. This design philosophy stands in stark contrast to the philosophy of the filmmakers of Waltz with Bashir, who you have to keep in mind are producing a very personal, war documentary, purely on artistic merit over a period of years.
This was the first time I used DUIK for an animation, and in hindsight I do feel I should have simplified my design somewhat to better accommodate the tools I would be using to animate, however I also feel that there are elements of my rig that do work and are enhanced by being animated in DUIK, such as the hair and arms. In the future however, I will probably think about what tools I use for my animation a bit differently and design accordingly. I look forward to using DUIK in the future, in particular in relation to Motion Graphics.
