Blog 5: Animation and Mood

            "In most instances, the driving force behind the action is the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character--or else all three.  Therefore the mind is the pilot.  We think of things before the body does them."  This quote by Disney is a summation of how the mind and its many chemical and neurological processes work in conjunction with the body - in essence, these 'signals' that convey messages between the brain and the body.

            In order to understand this and apply this to animation, it's important to remember that the key to conveying a realistic (even if exaggerated) animation is to understand the way in which the body moves and the processes behind that movement.  Take, for example, moving your arm.  Just the simple action of moving it - again, this is a basic and general description - is generating a neurological signal from your brain to the nerves in your arm, which then causes you to move your arm.  While very simple, the process behind this also carries over into animation.

            Whether it be moving a limb or using the mouth to speak, the idea is that behind each physical movement is a neurological 'pilot' to guide the correct and appropriate action to the correct appendage or area of the body.  When speaking, your mind is forming the words used to communicate orally using sound and motion of the mouth.  The same process carries over into animation. 

Blog 4: The Real and Realism of Animations

             When taking in Walt Disney's quote, there is a fundamental understanding behind his words.  "I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real, unless we first know the real" is a quote that still holds true to this day.  To interpret his quote, Disney is stating that unless we know how real objects move, feel, weigh, and interact with other objects, our animation will not have the same quality of 'life' than if you knew the real, physical properties of the way objects exist in our world.

            When comparing Disney's quote to Chapter 2 of 'Illusion of Life', the two seem to go hand-in-hand, as Disney himself prided and focused on bringing life to his works.  The amount of time that it takes to create a semblance of life in each frame of animation requires an understanding of the properties of different materials, movements, forces, and mechanics.  This leads into the idea that without proper understanding of real-world physics and motions, the animations we can create will not have the same vibrant 'life', on screen, that exists in our world.

Blog 3: The Twelve Animation Principles According to Disney

            In animation, there are twelve different principles of animation.  The first (and most important), Squash and Stretch, is a simple term detailing the stretching or squashing of a fixed shape.  Think of a ball bouncing up and down on the floor.  When animated, the ball will squish when it makes contact with the 'floor', followed by stretching when it lifts from the ground and back into the air.

            The second principle is Anticipation, which is a planned sequence of events. For the most part, many animations are a sequence of planned events with which the audience may expect to occur between each key frame of animation.  Going back to the ball, we know that objects have a certain weight to them.  With a ball, we expect it to drop from its starting point (either from a hand or a table) and hit the ground, followed by the resulting motion of it bouncing back into the air.

            Staging is the third principle of animation that focuses on the presentation of any idea that it is both unmistakable and completely clear.  A good example of this would be any Tom and Jerry cartoon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVW_rTqo4bs).

            Straight Ahead Action / Pose to Pose is the fourth of the twelve principles.  While 'Straight Ahead Action' focuses on working straight from the first drawing in the scene (think of a batter in Baseball and how he will swing the bat when the baseball comes by the home base).  Pose-to-pose, however, relies on the animator planning the action out, figuring which drawings will be needed to animate the action, drawing the key frames, relating them to each other in both size and action, then giving the scene to his or her assistant to draw the in-between frames.

            Follow Through / Overlapping Action, the fifth principle, is a rather interesting one due to it being broken into five main categories.  In base terms, however, the concept is that a figure and all of its appendages (whether it be a feather or a coat or what-have-you) must carry some weight and therefore must be animated along with the object or figure to give a sense of the believability, regardless on if the action is broadly cartooned or not.

            Slow In / Slow Out is a principle in which in-between frames of an animation are so close together (almost extremely close to each pose frame) that they make a smooth transition from one frame to the next without  the animation having to suffer from pauses when transitioning from frame to frame.

           Arcs are the seventh principle in which most living creatures will follow a circular motion (albeit slight).  A good example of this is watching a walking animation and taking note of the almost circular motion that the object makes after taking each step.                                                          

            Secondary Action, the eighth principle in the set of twelve, is one that gives a scene its characteristic 'life'.  Not only that, but the main focus is that they emphasize the main action (instead of taking attention away from it).  An example of this would be a woman walking whilst rummaging through her handbag.

            Timing, the ninth principle, refers to the number of frames for a specific, given action, which then translates to the actions speed when processed into a film.  This is one of the most important principles of the twelve, as it heavily influences not just the object's perceived weight, but also how it mirrors the laws of physics by giving the figure or object a perceived motion and weight.

            Exaggeration, the tenth, is the style of giving a realistic item or object an exaggerated look to give said object or item a sense of 'life'.  To note, the level of exaggeration is varied by the artist's style and whether one seeks to create something using realism or a caricature.

            Solid Drawing is to give the object or item a sense of being three dimensional in the sense of both space and weight.  In animation, this applies to the artist/animator knowing and understanding the fundamentals of three-dimensional shapes, the shape's anatomy, its weight, and its effect of light and its resulting shadow, among others.

            Appeal, the final principle of the twelve, is the act of making the character a sense of realness - that is, making it so that the viewer or audience is attracted to the character(s) due to the character's behavior, likability, and is interesting to the viewer.

Blog 2: Caricaturing Reality...or Realistic Exaggeration

            A caricature is, by definition, "a picture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.”  In animation, this applies to a character, background, or object that takes its real-world properties and effectively stretching them to make them unreal or largely out-of-proportion to its real-world counterpart (for example, a standard butter knife in reality could be stretched to be an unwieldy sword).  This, in turn, gives the work a more interesting and original feel to it that otherwise would go unnoticed by the audience or by the creator himself.

            What is interesting to note, however, is that caricature and realism are both opposites of the same coin in a sense.  On one hand, caricatures focus on the absurdity and out-of-proportion features that differ them from realistic properties and equivalencies.  Realism, though, differs in that it takes what we perceive to be real and keeping those proportions within the same boundaries.

            To compare, think of a sword from an animated short or film and then think about a sword that you would see in a museum.  While we perceive them to both be swords, the animation version will differ greatly from the real-life counterpart.  For instance, the caricature version of the sword might focus on a larger hilt or the blade will be comically longer or heavier looking.  In that sense, caricatures are - depending on your view - truer than realism in that the creator has more freedom with how to carve these objects out than he would if he based them exactly like their realistic versions down to the most minute detail.

Blog 1: Communications - The Basics of Conveying Ideas

            One of the basic fundamentals of communication stems from the idea of two or more beings interacting with each other.  With this in mind, the same basic principle applies to mass communication, albeit on a larger scale.  Whether it be through speech, text, or motion, communication is the prime outlet with which we, as humans, convey a wide range of ideas and emotions between one another.

            This also applies to animation, as communication between the creator and the audience is a bond that relies solely on being able to convey any idea, thought, or emotion.  Just as the creator brings these things to life, so too must the audience be able to understand the creator's manifestation of his or her ideas.  This back and forth "conversation" between audience and medium heavily relies on the creator's ability to convey such communication in an easily understood way, otherwise the message being conveyed will be lost.

Maus and the Comic Triangle Concept

Throughout the first chapters of the book Understanding Comics, many concepts are brought up regarding comics and how they can convey not just ideas and concepts, but also convey messages of differing meanings.  One such concept, a chart that appears on page 51 of the book (also on pages 52 and 53 for a better understanding of the chart), connects pictures, realism, and language into a triangle that represents the "pictorial vocabulary of comics or of any of the visual arts" (51).

To give a brief summary, the triangle works like this:

- The closer to language, the simpler the art becomes
- The closer to realism, the more realistic the art becomes
- The closer to the picture plane, the more that each individual line, shape, and color can be themselves and not pretending to be something else.

For the purposes of this reflection, we'll be ignoring the the picture plane part, as that mostly deals with art being art and not to convey a narrative or idea.

This concept lends itself very nicely towards Maus.  One of the most noticeable things is that, art-wise, the comic centers around generally stylized (but still simplistic-looking) anthropomorphic animals, each one symbolizing a different nationality/race/religion - the most notable being that the Jewish people are represented as mice while the Nazis are represented by cats.  While still having mostly detailed backgrounds (with the occasional panel dark and detail-less background), the characters themselves lend their simplicity to give the illusion of realism while not being real.

Language-wise, the story is told through the eyes of a Jewish survivor from World War II.  Going back to what I said earlier, the fact that the art of the story is told using anthropomorphic animals lends itself to the dire and bleak times facing the Jews during the war.  Not only does the cat-and-mouse visual idea lend itself well to the story, but it also gives the reader a sense of the visually horrifying nature that Jews faced during WWII.

Maus' WWII narrative roots and the artistic anthropomorphic style of cat-and-mouse gives the reader a more visual idea of the horrors of WWII that befell the Jews.  Using this chart's concept helps give the reader a better understanding of Maus' mature theme.  When used correctly, as in the case of Maus, the chart can be the best weapon a person can have in creating a comic that best suits its focus - both in visual and narrative sense.

In-Class Assignment - Frames

During class today, we discussed how frames work in comics/graphic novels and how their layout can subtlety convey messages that our subconscious recognizes.  

The image above, found in issue 46 of the comic 'Transmetropolitan', demonstrates this concept precisely and cleanly. In it, the main character (named Spider Jerusalem), reflects on his current predicament after the events that occurred in the issue preceded this one.  He eventually concludes that he is in a coma after realizing that he is still alive (which he references when he alludes to God "giving up his throne to" Spider).

The layout of the two panels brings this image together of Spider's comatose isolation. The thin, white line between the two panels subconsciously brings up the feeling that the balance between Spider's life and a vegetative state is fragile, almost as if ready to crumble at a moment's notice.  The excessive use of black ink surrounding Spider also helps convey his imaginative self suspended in a mental space devoid of everything but his own mental likeness.  It projects to the reader that in this state, Spider is surrounded by a darkness that has resulted from his coma.  This darkness, along with the shading of Spider's face accenting his grim but self-philosophical reflection, adds itself to this image of being trapped within one's own mind.