Theory: CGI Animators Should THINK Like Artists

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.


You probably have never heard of William Lee Hankey, but he was a pioneer in the field of illustrated books at the turn of the century. Perhaps I'll tell you more about him in a follow up post. But as I was scanning this book, something came up that I need to address. I hope you'll bear with me as I take a little time out to do some sorely needed ass-kicking.

LISTEN UP!

This is NOT a site strictly for 2D animators. CGI animators can learn as much from this stuff as the guys with the pencils.

I happened across a thread in an internet forum on the subject of CGI animation. The thread was titled, "Why aren't animators artists?" I was surprised to find people debating a question that to me is self-evident. I take it for granted that people realize that animation is an artform with close ties to the traditional arts of drawing, painting and sculpture. It's always a shock to find that there are people working in the field who don't see the link.

I started to wonder whether the readers of this blog understand the intent behind the material that we post here. We're not just presenting "pretty pictures" to inspire in some sort of vague manner. We intend for this material to be used and applied to everyday work. We don't get a lot of feedback from this website. Other animation blogs get hundreds of comments on each post, but we rarely get any comments at all. I don't know why that is. I suspect it's because people are taking a passive attitude to the resources all of us at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive are working so hard to provide to them. Normally, I let the artwork create its own context, but today, I specifically want to address CGI animators to show them how art like this can inform and improve their own work.

WHAT CAN AN ILLUSTRATED BOOK THAT IS NEARLY A CENTURY OLD TEACH SOMEONE WORKING IN COMPUTER ANIMATION?


I'm going to break down illustrations from W. Lee Hankey's 1909 edition of The Deserted Village and show you how you should be thinking about and analyzing the information we provide here on this site. It's time to THINK like an artist!

AVOID EXCESSIVE DETAIL

Too often, artists and animators mistake detail for quality. Rendering out every leaf on every tree, every pore on every inch of skin, every single blade of grass or shock of fur may be an entertaining exercise for retentive types, but all that detail is nothing more than gilding the lilly- distracting from the main point of the design. Notice how Hankey focuses your attention on the important parts of the composition by rendering those out, while leaving unimportant background information very loose. The choice of colors clearly defines light and shadow, and the carefully balanced values hold the background together as a frame for the subject of the image. Click on these to see them larger and you'll be surprised to see just how loose the rendering is on the girl's dress and the background foliage.





COMPOSE SHOTS ON A HUMAN SCALE

Too many CGI features are set in environments that are completely out of scale to the characters. Rooms are the size of convention halls and gardens are as big as football fields. Everything is wide open, with very little variety to the depth or contrasting perspectives of the structures. Camera angles on wide shots are staged from 20 feet in the air, much higher than a real human perspective. This makes everything look like model railroad sets instead of like real environments. The way to lay out a background is through skillful composition and a range of different sizes of forms. Look at how Hankey creates a zig-zag perspective on the first image, layers of contrasting shapes and textures on the second, and divides the last example to frame three separate simultaneous actions beautifully.





LEARN TO COMPOSE GROUPS OF PEOPLE

Check out these amazingly expressive tableaux by Hankey. Each one defines the personality and situation of each individual character in relation to all the other characters, while directing the eye cleverly through the image from one main focal point to the next. Just try to find a grouping like this in current animation! Characters are almost always staged obliquely, lined up like a chorus line or in perfect half circles in front of the camera- sitcom style. If you search through the films of great directors like Chaplin, Hitchcock or Welles, you'll never find these sorts of flat setups. The dynamics of group relationships are never revealed in what the characters say- it's always in how they are arranged visually.





CREATE MOOD THROUGH UNIQUE COMBINATIONS OF COLORS

John Kricfalusi recently discussed how important unique color harmonies are to animation in his blog, All Kinds Of Stuff. He makes the point that colors "straight out of the tube"- lime green, purple, orange, etc.- are not nearly effective as hues with non-mathematical mixes of colors... colors that don't have names. For instance, what color would you call the street in this first example? Pure colors are best used in small areas to create interest, like with the sea green door on the house in the second one. Sometimes the best color harmonies involve muted colors to create a mood, as in the third example here. The colors tell you exactly what is going on in the scene. In fact, each of the three characters is surrounded by an unique set of colors that reflects his or her attitude.





CREATE CHARACTERS BY OBSERVING LIFE

The most obvious power of animation to entertain is its ability to caricature life, yet amazingly, observation is exactly what is lacking in character design in current CGI movies. Every day, a million great personalities are all around you who have never been seen in animation- just go to your local coffee shop or shopping mall with your sketchbook. You won't be able to get all the great characters down on paper fast enough. So why do we get the same old stereotypical cool dude, smartass sidekick, goofy fat kid, and "independent minded pretty girl who doesn't know how pretty she really is" in every doggone movie? I keep hearing people say that story is the most important thing in animation. Well, that's a lie. Personality is at the core of all great animation. OPEN YOUR EYES AND OBSERVE! SHOW THE AUDIENCE SOMETHING REAL!





POSE CHARACTERS EXPRESSIVELY

This is CGI animation's cardinal sin. Gestures and body positions NEVER reflect a character's unique personality. Every character scrunches their mouth to one side and looks upwards when they think- they all lower their eyebrows and narrow their eyes the exact same way when they're angry- they all throw their hip to one side and lean their head when they're petulant... This is "formula acting". If we were talking about the performance of a human actor instead of a grizzly bear or raccoon, it would be called "BAD acting". Formulas don't tell you anything about the character, yet entire movies are performed by rote. Don't believe me? Take any of the recent CGI movies, whether they involve animals invading backyards or escaping zoos, rodents in European restaurants, superhero terrapins or prehistoric sloths- and count the number of times the characters deliver dialogue with that meaningless, stock- hands out to the side, palms up, up and down movement on every accent- sort of gesture. What the heck does that gesture mean? It's just water treading because the animator is too lazy to think of a gesture that actually expresses something. Now look at the last image in this post- the one with the fella sitting next to the girl. Even his feet tell you what he's thinking! Every pose in an animated film should be that expressive. There's no excuse for stock poses or actions.




An animator isn't just moving a complex polygon through space- an animator creates a performance from a succession of still poses. That's the job of an artist and anyone doing that sort of work needs to THINK like an artist. As you browse through this site, if you just "look at the pretty pictures" without thinking about what makes them work, you might as well be off shopping or playing video games. This website is a tremendous resource, but it won't help you if you expect it to work passively by osmosis.

Print this stuff out. Put it in binders. Make notes. Talk about your ideas with your fellow artists. Apply these concepts to your work.

If this post didn't make you angry, you'll probably also want to see... Live The Fabulous Lifestyle of a Hollywood Cartoonist, The Application Of Inspiration, How To Properly Use Reference, Incorporating Natural Forms, (Visual) Literacy, Why Do We Need An Animation Archive?, Parody: Whack Comics Part One and Ripoff vs Inspiration: Chaplin's Shadow

Also see... Monks By Eduard von Grutzner, N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne, Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll, Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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