The Narrative Arc

 This is perhaps a topic that most animators myself included do not want to involve ourselves in. Most of the time we consider our work to be technical and want to leave issues about the story in itself to others. But in the recent weeks and especially on some of the work I've been required to do, thinking about the narrative has become more important. Even in very short stories such as the ones I have been involved in, thinking about how stories start and how they end and how these two parts links have become critical.

The basic narrative arc can be depicted with a pyramid shaped linear path drawn on a graph. The bottom line represents the chronological progression of a story while the vertical plane represent the rising height of complexity in a story. The rising part of the pyramid describes the initial crisis that characters are introduced to in establishing the story. This represents the Exposition stage. The complexity in the story must then rise until an apex is reached. In terms of complexity, early literature involved Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, and Man vs. Self . In more recent times however, the kinds of complexity and conflicts possible have increased to include Man vs. Society, Man vs. Technology,and Man vs. Alter Ego, Man vs. Alien Society, Man vs. Biotechnology, and Man vs. Cloned Self.

The final descending slope on the pyramid describes the stage of resolution, as the answers that have been asked are answered. A few types have been culled from a fairly descriptive article at the Sandhill.edu website here linked. They are:

1. Comic resolution: The conflict is resolved favorably for the protagonist; he or she is better off than when the tale began.  
2. Tragic resolution: The conflict is one in which the protagonist loses ground. He or she is worse off than when the tale began. 
3. Linear resolution: Despite the ensuing complications and conflicts, the protagonist is largely unchanged by the events of the story. 
4. Dénouement: In some tales, a portion of the story at the end is devoted to tying up the loose ends. Think of Murder, She Wrote, in which each episode includes a segment at the end during which Jessica Fletcher fills in her audience on how she figured out the identity of the real killer.[1]

For me, paying a bit more attention to these details have become essential especially as I realize that there is a more aware audience who will judge the quality of a film however short, based among other things, on the plot and cohesive links in a story.


References

Sandhills.edu, 2009. Plot, Theme, the Narrative Arc, and Narrative Patterns. [online] Available at: <http://www.sandhills.edu/academic-departments/english/film/narrativearc.html> [Accessed 28 December 2011 ].

Animated Shorts Inspiration

Of late, I've been posting a lot on this blog about inspiration. where and how I get them. I decided to post some of my most favorite short animated feature. The choices however cannot be exhaustive because new things come out almost everyday and to cover all the possible pieces that might have made it onto this list would take forever. My selections however, are governed by those same aesthetic principles of good animation namely use of great narrative arcs, stylistic lighting or color grading techniques like cell shading and creative animation techniques be it in stop-motion or full CG animation.

Big Bucks Bunny by The Blender Foundation
A funny story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself and how the crafty tricks of three rodents make something snaps inside him and the rabbit isn't a bunny anymore! I really liked the way the story unfolds and the general animation of the environment.



Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

Mac 'N' Cheese by Colorbleed
A crazy and energetic chase by two guys that spills into desert territory leaving a huge trail of destruction in its wake until they are out of places to run all over a game of tag. There use of cell shading has inspired me to want to use this technique in my work as it gives that stylistic feel to it that makes colors richer and more vibrant.



Mac 'n' Cheese from Mac 'N' Cheese on Vimeo.


The Tale of Three brothers by Stateless Films
First seen in the Harry Porter Movie, the tale of the three brothers highlights the story of three brothers and the decisions they made to acquire and use power and the repercussions of their actions.
The overall contrasted color style really worked and helped serve the mood and animatics of the story.



Harry Potter - The Deathly Hallows from Michael Blackshore on Vimeo.

Bridge by Ting Chian Tey
The story of four animal characters trying to cross a bridge, but ending up as obstacles to one another and the decisions they make. For me the most interesting thing was the way the animator uses a cartoon-like animation to communicate some life lessons about the many disagreements or competing paths in life people face, and the possible results of pride, obstination, and compromise.



Bridge from Ting on Vimeo.

Swing of Change by Harmony Bouchard, Andy Le Cocq, Joakim Riedinger, Raphael Cenzi for ESMA (Ecole Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques) in France
The story about how Harry, a racist barber changes his mind at the arrival of a magical trumpet in his barber shop! I loved the animation in itself and the brilliant balance of weight and detail. Finally, the ability to use animation to challenge a moral issue is also well displayed again in this piece.


Swing of Change from Swing of Change on Vimeo

Oktapodi by Gobelin

The struggle of two octopus to free themselves from their persistent owner. The detail in the animation is astounding and the overall humor in the piece was balanced by the narrative path it employed. Very good work.

Oktapodi from Mauro Flamig on Vimeo.

The Edges OF Reality

(Hyper-Realistic Characters From The Movie Tekken: Blood Vengeance)

Seeing the new Namco Bandai's Tekken: Blood Vengeance (Yoichi Mori, 2011) movie and the high level of realism employed in the character's looks and performance, it brought home again the sheer amount of work that must go into creating that quality of work. And perhaps by extension the debate between hyper-realistic animated characters of Japanese animations and the more cartoon-like characters of  Pixar and DreamWorks Studios. However, it is not my aim to make this a comparison between Japanese and American animation, but instead to reflect on the unexplored notions of the uncanny valley that almost always arises in academic circles when the topic of hyper-realism in animation is visited.

It is no longer news that high levels of realism can be achieved in animation. With the use of motion capture data technology becoming main stay in most of the major studios, almost life-like performances can be captured from live actors and retargeted to CG characters. The higher processing power and memory available in computers mean that high level facial and muscle detail can be scultped and rendered quickly. The first attempts at realism are found in the Disney animated features, one notable one being Bambi (James Algar and Samuel Armstrong, 1942). In Jurassic park (Steven Spielberg, 1993), the first use of photo-realistic characters for CG were seen. Motion capture data was first used on the Gollum character for the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002) movie while The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004) took the technology one step further by using motion capture for all the character performances in the movie.

Most of the debate over realism have always concluded that realism was against the very purpose of animation which was to not be 'real'. In Siegfried Kracauer’s Theory of Film  he posited that “achievements within a particular medium are all the more satisfying aesthetically if they build from the specific properties of that medium.” and in this quote:

What holds true of the photographic film does of course not apply to animated cartoons. Unlike the former, they are called upon to picture the unreal – that which never happens. In the light of this assumption, Walt Disney’s increasing attempts to express fantasy in realistic terms are aesthetically questionable precisely because they comply with the cinematic approach… There is a growing tendency toward camera-reality in his later full length films. Peopled with the counterparts of real landscapes and real human beings, they are not so much “drawings brought to life” as life reproduced in drawings… In these cartoons false devotion to the cinematic approach inexorably stifles the draftsman’s imagination.[1]

However, in the paper titled Life Reproduced in Drawings: Realism in Animation (Steve Rowley, 2005) claims this analysis avoids the complicated relationships underpinning audience's notions of realism or the ways in which one form of reality might be prioritised over another, or one type of realism might serve to reinforce another. An attempt to breakup the levels of animation possible is made and it is divided into 5 kinds of realism. They are:

• Visual Realism: The extent to which the animated environment and characters are understood by the audience as looking like environments and characters from the actual physical world.

• Aural Realism: The extent to which the sounds of animated environment and characters are understood by the audience as resembling the sounds of environments and characters from the actual physical world.

• Realism of Motion: The extent to which characters move in a fashion that is understood by the audience as resembling the way characters move in the actual physical world.

• Narrative and Character Realism: The extent to which the fictitious events and characters of the animated film are constructed to make the audience believe they are viewing events and characters that actually exist.

• Social Realism: The extent to which the animated film is constructed to make the audience believe that the fictitious world in which the events take place is as complex and varied as the real world.

Pixar's animation  which makes use of cartoon-like characters has always been made to appear better than the hyper-realistic look and feel of Japanese animated features like Final Fantasy and Tekken. This is mainly because they don't have the clearly formed narrative arc of more American animated features. But with this deconstruction of realism, it is easier to see why if the intent is to achieve audience interest and identification in the character’s personality and situation (narrative and character realism), having the character move and behave realistically (realism of motion) is more important than having the character look real (visual realism) which is what one might associate with Pixar's animated feature. While if the intent is to accentuate technological brilliance in a production, Visual realism becomes more important than Narrative and Character Realism or Social Realism which would be the case in a movie like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Realism in one of its forms will always be the point to attain because it is such a difficult feat to achieve.

In conclusion, it is not the form of realism that creates the uncanny valley effect but the fact that the 'realistic' aim of the animated feature is not communicated through out the piece so that audiences can follow. This is a topic that requires much more in-dept research and I hope to delve deeper into how the notions of reality affect our perceptions of animation and how audiences might receive work that I do.

References

Tekken: Blood Vengeance, 2011. [Animated Film]. Directed by Yoichi Mori. USA: Digital Frontier

Bambi ,1942. [Animted Film]. Directed by James Algar and Samuel Armstrong. USA: Walt Disney Productions 

Jurassic park, 1993. [Film]. Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal Pictures

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2001. [Film]. Directed by Peter Jackson. USA: New Line Cinema

The Polar Express, 2004. [Animated Film]. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. USA: Castle Rock Entertainment

[1] Kracauer, 89-90. A similar discussion of animation in the realist context can be found in Armes R. 1974, Film and Reality, Harmondsworth: Penguin, chapters 16 and 25.

Steve Rowley, 2005. Life Reproduced in Drawings: Realism in Animation. Animation Journal, Volume 13, Available at:< http://www.sterow.com/?p=797 > [Accessed 24 December 2011].

 

The One Man Animation Pipeline

In the first few weeks of the semester, I have been pushed to submit assignments that have required a somewhat tricky workflow capable of producing and delivering work within a one-week timeline. I in this article I reflect and share some of the compromises and creative streamlining techniques that it has taken to produce these projects on time and how my workflow would compare against that of a proper studio pipeline or environment.

Concept development\Previsualization.
One phrase which I have heard my instructor use a lot in the past few weeks is "If you had more time". Time is the first and perhaps greatest difference between the process that I have used to deliver most of my assignments in the last few weeks and perhaps what would apply in a studio environment. Since the whole project has to be completed in one week, most of the previsualization and concept development is mostly an internal mental process rather than a one requiring a lot of drawings and sketches. Most of my story boards have had to be mental storyboards. This would not be the case in a studio environment. I tend to create a rough sketch of the animatics more as a written script rather than a drwan storyboard. Within a proper production studio and timeframe, adequate sketches of the main scenes and shots would be drawn by a dedicated art department that would layout possible angles and cloth and material textures for the set and its props. Rough or more polished previsualization shots would be done to see and narrow down what works.

Modelling
Apart from my first assignment project, most of the others were done with free pre-rigged characters downloaded from the web. This was also another attempt to speed up the time it would take modelling characters, rigging and skinning them. In a proper studio house, 3d artists will be tasked with this process, for highly detailed characters, powerful 3rd-party software such as Zbrush would have to be added to the pipeline. Rigging in itself is a whole different process that could take from a whole day to possibly weeks, depending on the scale of character flexibility needed by the animators.

Animation, Framing, Texturing and Lighting
The process of animation for me takes the greatest time within that one week spell. Typically around 3 to 5 days could be spent fiddling with controls and key frames. Like in most genres of design, a sequence of animation can always look better so there exists that temptation to continuously refine. In my case as is the case in most projects, the schedule intrinsicly limits how far fine tuning can go since the scenes need to be ready for lighting and texturing. I have labelled this stage as Animation, Framing, Texturing and Lighting because most of these processes take place at the same time interchangeably. As soon as I map in textures, I immediately check to see the ligting and ensure that it works while still continuing with animation. Once I get proper motion and timing, I set up the framing of the shot and get it ready for render. Ofcourse in a production environment, this would not be the case. Animation, texturing and lighting are all seperate processes handled by different departments and one process has to end before another can begins. Animation first and then interchangeably texturing before lighting. In even more advanced pipelines, a special effects stage is needed before texturing and lighting.

Rendering
Both the 2GB file storage limit available in school and the large file sizes of EXR files have continuously conspired to make rendering a challenging stage of the one week projects. I have at times had to resort to jpeg, png, targa renders just to save on file space and rendering time. Technically, rendering times should not be different when comparing EXR to other file types but with the added processing of Ambient Occlusion passes, raytracing, 4 x 32bit channels, rendering times can go way out the window. A work around that I recently began to use required rendering the normal beauty, diffuse, shadow, reflection and specularity passes at once and then redoing the AO pass as a seperate render layer. This way the AO pass took less time and reduced rendering times by at least 2 times. This process takes about 1 to 3 days. One option I may look at for later renders will be to bake the ambient occlusion into the textures before mapping textures back in maya so that there is no need for another AO pass during rendering. In a studio environment, since there is ample time, there is no need to compromise on quality hence render farms with thousands of nodes are used with as many passes as needed being rendered as EXR files since adequate storage is available in the form of multiple terrabites of external hard drives.

Compositing
Although Nuke can be used for linear editing, the node based workflow works best when there are effect heavy shots or where CG is being comped with live action footage. I didn't find Nuke to be applicable for my one week projects because it still required another pass of rendering before I brought the shots into After-effect for final editing and rendering. In a big studio scenario, with multiple passes, the Nuke process is integral to producing quality output with its superior tracking, grading and 3d world space. Final editing would be completed in packages such as Avid or Premiere. My workflow utilized mostly After-Effects, since I didn't usually have many shots per sequence or that many passes to work with per shot and the shots were never effects heavy. For me, this effectively saved on time and I was able to add and edit all the shots, colour correct and add sound fx and soundtracks in a quick and intuituve way in layers which are the things incidentally that After-Effects excels at. This final process usually took a day at most to complete.

In summary, my workflow made use of quick compromises and shortcuts which though would seem to have worked for a one week assignment, but would be unacceptable or grossly inadequate in a Big studio pipeline. I will continue to strive to improve the process to meet up with frontline industry standards as more time is made available.

ILM: Creating the Impossible [Video Review]

 Recently, I finally saw the Encore Special which featured how Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), an Academy Award-winning motion picture visual effects company that has set the standard for visual effects. In the process they have created some of the most stunning images in the history of film and changed cinema forever as they continue to break new ground in visual effects.
According to the press release for the feature,

"Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible" is directed by Academy Award® and Emmy® nominated director Leslie Iwerks and is narrated by Tom Cruise. Encore will also present five ILM-effects films starting at 2:00 p.m. with Jumanji, followed by Hook, Jurassic Park III, Twister and Starship Troopers.
The hour-long special has interviews with filmmakers George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, J.J. Abrams and Jon Favreau, actors Samuel L. Jackson and Robin Williams, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and John Lasseter, the chief creative officer at Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. Film and television shows featured in the special include The Abyss, Avatar, Forrest Gump, Jumanji, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Robot Chicken, Star Trek (2009), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Transformers, Twister, Young Sherlock Holmes and The War of the Worlds (2005), which starred narrator Cruise.
Leslie Iwerks' documentary takes audiences behind the scenes at ILM with in depth interviews with some of the company's top talent and showcases never before seen footage highlighting many of their pioneering milestone.[1]

For me it was a huge eye opener to the inner workings of a company and group of people who have changed the whole landscape of movie production. The feature revealed in great detail how the company started and how it was influenced by George Lucas and his desire to create never before seen effects for his Star Trek films. It spoke of how the likes of John Dykstra, the assistant of Douglas Trumbull , famous for 2001: A Space Odyssey, put together the team of college students, artists and engineers that became the first VFX department for the star trek movies. It describes the challenges they have faced as they sought to find innovative solutions to creating believable illusions in Hollywood's biggest block-busters including the entire Star Wars saga, The Abyss, the Indiana Jones series, the Harry Potter franchise, the Jurassic Park franchise, the Back to the Future trilogy, many of the Star Trek films, Ghostbusters II, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the entire Terminator sequels, the Transformers films, the Men in Black series, most of the Mission: Impossible films, and also provided work for Avatar, alongside Weta Digital.

Notable names in Animation such as Pixar's John Lasseter also worked for ILM in the early 1980s as a computer animator. It was invariably the computer graphics division of ILM which was eventually sold to Steve Jobs that became Pixar, and went on to create the first CG animated feature with Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995).

I found great inspiration watching the ways in which these men, much in the same way Walt Disney revolutionized animation, revolutionized CG and VFX for cinema and how they have continued to successfully tackle the challenges of creating the realistic illusions that have become a  great influence for my own work. Below i've attached a video of the feature and it can be found on YouTube.



References

[1] io9.com, 2010. The inside story of how ILM changed movies. [online] Available at: <http://io9.com/industrial-light-and-magic/> [Accessed 19 December 2011 ]. 

Toy Story, 1995. [Film]. Directed by John Lasseter. USA: Pixar Animation Studios

Finding Ideas: Animation Inspiration

The concept of finding and using inspiration is one that is common to every facet of creative practice. From fashion to interior design, architecture to web design; the ability to look around at the world around us or the work of others who we admire and receive impetus for our own work is critical. But i have been pondering about what it means to find inspiration as an animator. One might watch an animated feature or a short but how does that translate to inspiration for me on my next piece. I'm going to try and share some of the things I have learned over the past few weeks.

Always Start Here 
If ever I need to look for a place to start looking for what would be called acceptable 3d animation here is where I start.

PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIO . Their blockbuster movies are the Incredibles, WALL-E,Ratatouille,Toy Story 1 & 2,Cars,Finding Nemo,Monsters Inc.,The Incredibles,A Bug's Life etc.

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION owned by Steven Spielberg and his other two partners
Their blockbuster movies are Shrek 1,2&3, Kung fu Panda, Over the hedge, Bee Movie


Ask Why Not How!
Because the field of animation is mostly technical and requires a skilled use of techniques, the error is usually to look at someone else's work and wonder "how did they do that?". I have learned to not just ask how they did something but also why they did it. In understanding why they have used a particular lightening scheme, i have found out about how lighting can affect the mood of a scene and how audiences respond to the characters or the narrative presented. A bluish scheme suggests a horror or sci-fi theme to the scene and bright yellow or orange scheme suggests a happy and fun theme to the scene. Asking why can also give more insight to how and when I should use certain elements in  my animation. From adding more anticipation, to exaggerating weight etc. finding out why, can go a long way to answering how this actions help communicate greater believability in a character and the overall animation.


Observe The Details
I also have learned to look at what additional actions, movements in the shorts or animated features I see help to make the characters more believable. I look at the timing of eye winks, the follow through on limbs and cloth, facial expressions, amount of depth of field in a scene. Applying all these things in my own animation help to improve it. I simply look at something I've seen and liked, comparing whether it would make my own animation look even better and then add it.

This is just a few of the many things that I watch for as i look at other people's work. The aim isn't to copy them or use the same narrative or style they used in hope of achieving the same level of success on a piece. In the end, originality of content while keeping those elements of animation that communicate believability will always produce the best results. In my current piece, I have found inspiration for the character I am working with, in the "Scrat" character from the Ice-Age animated feature movies (Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha, 2002). 

References

Ice Age, 2002. [Film]. Directed by Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha. USA: Blue Sky Studios