Terry Gilliam

        Terry Gilliam, aside from being a film maker, is the creator of distinctive and quirky animations which stand out thanks to his use of cut out engravings, photographs and his own drawings. These images are then melded together in surreal scenarios, which are all the more unusual considering the juxtaposition between the stern, Victorian photos and the silliness of the comedy.

        Initially, Gilliam's animations were used as a link between the sketches of Monty Python's Flying Circus, but soon became an integral part of the show and have come to define the visual language of the group through use for their other media including book and LP covers. It is in Monty Python's films that Gilliam was allowed to stretch his animating legs, not only through the title sequences, but with action sequences involving fantastical monsters (The Holy Grail). The choice to use Gilliam's signature animated style to create the 'Legendary Black Beast of Aarrrggghh' over any other technique not only heightens the comedy, but further enhances the inseparability of Terry Gilliam's animation and Monty Python.   

 

        "The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use."- A quote from Gilliam when he appeared on the Do-it-yourself Animation Show in the early 1970s. It is a terrible shame that there aren't programmes like this any more, where people can watch and learn from their animating icons.

PES

        There are a couple of films by PES (Adam Pesapane) that have really appealed to me, both using everyday objects to create something quirky and inspiring.
 

         The first is The Deep. An ersatz nature film, the use of metal objects including tools, chains and ammunition to create underwater creatures transforms the mundane into the sublime. The sequence where two differently shaped types of callipers are transformed into an ethereally beautiful jellyfish-like creature was particularly outstanding to me.

        Western Spaghetti is similar in that it is not an animation that tells a story, but looks at something familiar from a different perspective, in this case the everyday task of cooking. Using regular household items like dice, pin cushions and rubber bands is a perfect demonstration of how an excellent animation can be made without reams of complex props and equipment. The creativity of the artist's ideas, the simplicity and the smooth execution combine to make attention grabbing films, full of quietly stunning moments (see the post-it note butter melt seamlessly). The culinary follow up Fresh Guacamole was Oscar nominated.  

Storyboard Research

        Looking at a selection of storyboards for well known films, I was surprised to discover that the majority are not finely finished, exquisitely painted works of art. Instead, although well drawn, there is a sense  of speed and energy behind them, as though the artist has ideas tumbling out of their minds. Most importantly, these drawings don't seem laboured over; what is important is conveying a the essence of what is happening on screen.

David Lowery for Jurassic Park.

Sylvain Despretz for Gladiator.

         What the above two segments of storyboard share is a sense of dynamism. By not sticking to the confines of the box/frame, the movement within is so much stronger and somehow more exciting. It also provides a clearer sense of where a character is going to or coming from as the frame provides a definite start/end point. The simple black and white lines manage to paint the scene without distracting from the content of the scene; important given the point of a storyboard in the first place (to clearly map out a scene for everyone involved in the film).   

Zack Snyder for Watchmen.

        This storyboard for Watchmen, I feel, is a little underdeveloped. Certainly, the drawing doesn't detract from the action, but the lines are so simple and the character so vaguely draw that I find it harder than with the others to follow what is happening. It just isn't that exciting...but it appears that frames from the original graphic novel have been used as a reference, so perhaps the purpose of the storyboard in this case is to fill in the blanks, as the graphic novel has already depicted the characters, settings and main action.

The Grand Old Duke Of York

The Grand Old Duke of York,

He had 10,000 men.

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

And he marched them down again.

And when they were up they were up,

And when they were down they were down,

And when they were only half way up,

They were neither up nor down.

 

 

 

        This is the nursery rhyme that I chose as a subject for a storyboarding task. To create a 12 frame sequence out of most nursery rhymes is not as straightforward as it seems, as most of the stories are simply not that long, and require some imagination and embellishment. An added challenge that I found with The Grand Old Duke of York is that it is quite repetitive, with much of the story concerned with going up and down hills, and my job was to explore the different shot types and camera angles which would depict this.

        The first task was to break down the rhyme into its key elements, before drafting frames on to post-it notes so that they could be interchanged, shuffled around and adjusted before I settled on a definite sequence.

 

        In order to elongate the eight lines into twelve frames, I needed to figure out a back story and motivation for the repetitive actions, and I settled on the idea of the Duke being lost but 'nobly' leading his men on regardless. Once I was satisfied with the order and layout of my post-it note draft, I could flesh out the characters a little and work on a colour scheme in the second draft before doing a final version.

        I settled on watercolours and a simplified style for the characters, due to the fact that as a nursery rhyme  (and one without sinister hidden meaning) this would be aimed predominantly at children, so I wanted a soft colour scheme and friendly looking characters to match accordingly. Also, as the story is historical, I felt that hand drawing the frames would be more sympathetic, as opposed to the clean lines and bright colours of digital drawings. Unfortunately, this did mean that once scanned into the computer, some of the softer, more subtle paint colours didn't show up very clearly. However, I don't think that this small problem has overly affected the final result.       

Brambly Hedge

        One of my childhood favourites, Brambly Hedge manages to ingratiate author Jill Barklem's original illustrations into stop motion films that retain a style that is remarkably sympathetic to the original vision. As the illustrations are used to show cross sections of the trees that the mice inhabit, it could be said that their inclusion is a strategic way of avoiding the need to construct complex and expensive sets. However, building the many trees as they are in the books, filled with mazes of chambers and corridors, would not be an efficient use of time considering the amount of time such shots are on screen, and the illustrations are an effective substitute as it adds to the traditional feel.

 

 

        Often when working with animals, animators choose between keeping the animal on all fours and emphasising the gestures of tails and ears for communication (see Bambi and The Fox and the Hound) or giving them more human qualities and movements (see Bugs Bunny and Wile E Coyote). With Brambly Hedge makes use of the mice's tails while also using anthropomorphism, thereby optimising the expressive abilities of puppets which have limited facial manoeuvrability- they don't even blink.  

 

 

       

Love- Further Development

        Once I had made the decision to go with my idea for 'love' using just hands, I began to storyboard my grand vision. Although this storyboard shows the frames in a square format, they will actually be closer to 16:9 ratio, so I will have to consider what else will be in shot. The nature of my idea means that most shots will be relatively close up.

 



     

        Other areas of consideration are the type of hands that I will use. This will have a major impact on the story, as the appearance of the hands will influence how the audience sees them as characters, and may also alter the message of the sequence. For example, using both male/female hands might give the film a more political undercurrent than using one of each gender. Similarly, age, skin colour, tattoos and jewellery could drastically adjust the meaning.

 

        I have settled on the use of one real hand (female) and an artist's mannequin hand (male). The story that I hope this will depict is the desire of the wooden hand to be real and find a loving relationship, sort of like a romantic Pinocchio. As such, there is a dream like, fantastical slant to my idea, and all the scenarios should be accordingly 'perfect'. To further emphasise this idea the lighting should be soft and warm where possible and the locations should be cosy and homely. 

 

        Now that all the decisions have been made, all that remains is to shoot it! 

        Oh, and one final note. To avoid the problems timing and spacing issues I had with my first attempt at pixilation I will be using this guide as a reference throughout the photography stage:

 

Pose to Pose Animation

        Pose to pose is a method of animation where key frames are drawn first, and the in between frames filled in later. The task of drawing out the inbetweens can be left to an animator's assistant once the key frames have been drawn strongly. This method allows careful control over timing, as the movement to be animated can effectively be broken down and the frames mapped out in a diagram such as this: 
       

        As an introduction to pose to pose animation, as well as to have a go at the traditional animation technique of using Acme punched paper and a light table, I used a simple pendulum swing as the subject. At least, it sounds simple.

         Although a pendulum is not really affected by squash and stretch, others of Disney's 12 principles of animation do apply, particularly timing and spacing, while the most important is the slow in and out as the pendulum reaches the peaks of it's swing. To achieve the appropriate sense of weight and gravity it is essential that the pendulum slows as it rises and speeds as it descends, rather than moving in an arc at a constant speed. This is where spacing comes in.

         To make the 25 frame, two second animation a pose to pose rather than straight ahead exercise, I firstly plotted the key points i.e. the highest and lowest points of the pendulum's arc. The it was time to fill in the in between frames. To do this, I found it helpful to draw a diagram that would approximately show the spacing between each frame before starting on the punched paper.

Love

        For the final task in the Animation skills module, we have been given free rein to use any of the skills learnt in the other tasks to create a short animation. The only guidance given is that it should concern one of the following words: longing, hate, love, lateness, surprise, happiness or fear. Initially, no particular word stood out to me so I began by sketching ideas for all of them.

 

        Having only a couple of weeks for this project from start to finish, I realised that I would be pushed to draw the required 60-120 frames required for a 5-10 second animation, on op of all the planning and preparation. Instead I have opted to do the pixilation option, which should be between 20-30 seconds and would give me a chance to improve upon my earlier pixilation attempt. This then narrowed down the number of my ideas which would be practical to work with (i.e. eliminating any which involved animals). I finally made the choice to go with my idea for 'love'.

        This idea involves depicting a romantic, perhaps idealised version of love, but using just hands and allowing their movements to communicate the story. As reference, I looked at the movements of the omnipotent hand of the state in Jiri Trnka's The Hand (which wheedles, flirts and intimidates equally well), and the more eccentric 'Thing' in The Addams Family. Both characters manage to embody strong characteristics without uttering a word. This is what I wanted from the hands in my pixilation, and so it is essential that I take great care with the animation and make each movement clear and relevant.

 

Quantic Dream

        Every time I go to the cinema it is almost a given that one of the trailers will be for a new game and these trailers are often bigger, louder and more action packed than those for the actual films. As game technology advances at an astonishing rate, the advertising, let alone the gameplay, becomes ever more cinematic and engaging.

 

        Quantic Dream is one company that seems to be at the forefront of closing the gap between game and film. Their use of motion capture technology has increased the range and depth of emotion that can be achieved in games characters (see Kara), allowing for more complex and involving narratives. As this technology has been making deeper inroads into cinema as well (Avatar, Lord of the Rings and the less photorealistic Beowulf) there is now less of a visual discrepancy between the two mediums.

 

        The next step after sharing techniques seems to be sharing talent. While it is not new for actors to reprise their roles by voicing characters in video game imaginings of their films, Beyond: Two Souls allows gamers to interact with characters brought to life, both vocally and physically, by Hollywood actors Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. The process of acting for a game does not seem so very far removed from film production, aside from the increased quantity of story which is needed to accommodate multiple scenarios rather than one linear narrative. Perhaps it will not be long before cinema becomes interactive.   

 

       

Cats Like Felix...

        In 1989, Felix Cat Food had just a 6% share of the cat food market. Ten years later, the company was Britain's biggest selling competitor on the market. What could have accounted for this phenomenal change in fortunes? To avoid being delisted by supermarkets, the owners of the brand were pushed into advertising to create awareness. The result was an animated black and white cat, created by Boase Massimi Pollitt.

 

 

        Keeping the beleaguered owner's faces out of frame placed Felix the cat at the centre of the campaign, while the mischievous, recognisable scenarios appeal to viewers as they may bring to mind pleasing associations with viewers' own pets. Making the character's movements as close to those of his real life counterparts as possible,  rather than making him cartoonish or anthropomorphic, also helps strengthen the appeal to cat lovers.

 

 

 

        More than 20 years later, Felix still uses the same character, same style and same simple, effective  and time tested formula of a cheeky cat's unstoppable attempts to get his food. This clearly demonstrates that some things are best not tampered with.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Title Sequence

        Often one of the prime uses of animation, particularly in film, is to show things which it may not always be possible to capture in live action. The title sequence for David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, created by Blur Studios, comprises of a sequence of such vignettes which are intended to provide a peek into Lisbet Salander's troubled psyche.

 

        From the eponymous tattoo bursting to life to a brain made of wires and cables, all consumed by a layer of cloying black fluid, the sequence is full of images which would have been impossible to create without the use of animation but maintain a photorealistic look thanks to the use of digital scanning. Director David Fincher recognized the difficulties posed by his vision, and that CG would give ultimate control. Luckily, this approach is the studio's strength.

        An animation, visual effects and design company, Blur Studios specialise in highly realistic effects shots for films such as Avatar as well as stunning animation for games such as Batman: Arkham Origins/City/Asylum.

 

        As a piece intended to mentally prepare the audience for the feature film, as well as incorporate key elements from all three of Stieg Larsson's source novels, the sequence races through a variety of shots which build from the smoothly hypnotic into a frenzied crescendo which mirrors the instability and trauma hidden beneath Lisbeth's impersonal exterior.  

Joanna Quinn Charmin Adverts

       Joanna Quinn's series of adverts for Charmin, featuring a variety of animals from bears to sloths to flamingos, are a seemingly perfect choice to demonstrate the gentle softness the company no doubt wished to depict.

 

 

       With only a limited amount of time (approximately 30 seconds) to communicate an idea, there is a lot of pressure within commercial animation to make every second count. Every aspect of Quinn's animation from the pencil lines, the muted, almost pastel colour palette and rounded character design suggests cushiony softness.

 

 

        Using hand drawn animation (Quinn's signature design) creates a mellow effect that would have been difficult to replicate with the cleaner, crisper lines of 2D computer animation. The lines and colours change subtly from frame to frame which makes the animation flicker slightly; not enough to disrupt viewing, but to give the adverts a comforting, cosy quality. As Quinn's animations were also used for a not dissimilar campaign for Whiskas cat food, it must have been a style that appealed to audiences.

 

        Yet while these adverts are recognizably Quinn's, her animations are not always quite so gentle. The fluid lines are used in Britannia, Body Beautiful and The Wife of Bath for a quite different effect. The movement between frames works extremely well as the characters transform and shape shift between dog and Queen Victoria, and as a middle aged woman's body morphs into that of a body builder. The animation style manages to make such dramatic changes seem easy and naturalistic as one image simply flows into another.

A still from The Wife of Bath, but it works on its own.

        As she works using animation paper, drawing each frame one after another, Quinn's work lends itself to the flip book format, as not only can you watch the animation sequence as a whole, it is easy to stop, look and admire individual frames as beautiful drawings in their own right.   

 

Carn

        While browsing through Short of the Week, I came across Carn by Jeff Le Bars. Initially, I wasn't sure that I'd like it, as the 2D animation seemed a little flat and without much detail. This was not the case.

 

 

        The dramatic silhouettes are enhanced by subtle colour variations which give the illusion of texture. Particularly with the wolf, the outline is not silhouette sharp when she is in close up; instead there is delicate feathering between the body and background, making her fur look thick and plush. The pattern of the speckled snow on the boy's hat also conveys it's furry texture well.

 

        The strong yet sparse style allows Le Bars' animation to be the main focus, as the delicate movements are not overshadowed. The way in which simple shapes and block colours are combined to create an image with greater depth mirrors the unembellished yet affecting story of trust and betrayal.

 

Jurassic Park

        Although heralded as a milestone in digital animation (and rightly so) what appeals to me about Jurassic Park is the way that computer effects are combined so seamlessly with more traditional animation techniques. Steven Spielberg assembled a team including Stan Winston (animatronics), Phil Tippett (go motion), Michael Lantieri (on set effects) and Dennis Muren (Industrial Light and Magic, Digital compositing) to ensure that the dinosaurs the audience would see on screen were not monsters but believable living and breathing animals.

 

       The ambition to use full size mechanical dinosaurs was quickly replaced with Phil Tippett's go motion technique, which would incorporate animated model dinosaurs into live action sequences with the actors, with motion blur for added realism, but although Tippett's tests produced some incredibly smooth and realistic results, Spielberg was not satisfied and Muren posed the idea that ILM could advance their work from The Abyss and Terminator 2 and create the dinosaurs digitally. The rest is history.

 

A stop motion animatic created by Phil Tippett. It is remarkably close to the finished sequence.

 

        Yet the transition to digital didn't mean that the traditional animators were out of a job. The go motion animators' knowledge of the dinosaurs movements informed the digital creations, while Tippet's early model animatics were used as a reference. A device dubbed the 'Dinosaur Input Device' even allowed a mechanical dinosaur skeleton to be animated by hand and the information transferred to a digital model; a sort of early motion capture. As much of the technology was in its infancy during the film's production new obstacles were overcome and new techniques were being developed constantly.

 

 

 

        Yet the excitement of new technology was not allowed to interfere with the vision of creating 'real' dinosaurs. Animators mimed, acted out sequences and referred to footage of animals to improve their understanding and immerse themselves in their work as well as consulting palaeontologists.

 

        Whereas many films now seem to revolve around their special effects, in Jurassic park they enhance the story and are used in a considered fashion, with the most appropriate method being selected for each moment. The triceratops animatronic allows the actors to actually touch and interact with a dinosaur, which helps the audience invest in the digital animals. It is in this fusion of art and technology that Jurassic Park succeeds, while the attention to detail means that the effects, both practical and digital, still hold up 20 years later.