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Category: Design For Animation

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Design For Animation

Week 10: Video Presentation

In this last lesson of term 1, we were introduced to the video presentation task required to present our critical report.

This video presentation must detail the key aspects of our critical report in a 3 to 5 minutes video. This video can be made recording ourselves, or with a Power Point presentation, or even with a brief animation. In order to add a voice over or records ourselves explaining our topic, we should first structure and rehearse our speech. The contents of this video should be as outlined in the following:

  • Intentions of research presentation
  • Outlining and referencing of sources accessed
  • Selection of key areas of investigation that informed findings
  • Conclusion
  • Potential applications of this learning and further knowledge that can be achieved in practice or theory.

After this class I continued to finish and polish my critical report and to plan my video presentation. My final critical report looks like this:

Nira-Gonzalez-Critical-Report-1Download

Form my video presentation, I tried to mix footage from the YouTube videos I used for my critical report and I also included my first attempt at claymation sequences. I edited the video in After Effects and also added some CGI.

The video presentation took me over 3 days between planning, storyboarding, modelling, shooting, editing, and visual effects. However, I really enjoyed the making of this video and, despite my stop motion animation skills need a lot of improvement, I am quite happy with the result.

Categories
Design For Animation

Week 9: Harvard Referencing

In this session, we covered the Harvard referencing system and their methods to cite and reference in an academic text.

The sources that we are going to use in our citations and references need to come from peer-reviewed texts or from online recognised academic material. It needs to be avoided citations found on personal blogs, film reviews or YouTube (except if this material is not available anywhere else), as these materials are not peer-reviewed texts.

According to the Harvard referencing rules, a list of citations would need to be included at the end of the critical report (all quotations and paraphrases must be referenced). If a long quotation is added (more than 40 words), this should be added separated from the main body of the text, and with around 1cm of spacing on each side (no need to use quotation marks in this case).

The text will have a 12 point size, in Times New Roman or Arial font, and with 1.5 or 2.0 line spacing. When including the title of an animation, film, or book, this will need to be in italics, and when adding the title of a journal article, book chapter, or song, we will use quotation marks. We will need to avoid contractions and we will use formal language using the full form (avoid colloquial language). Phrasal verbs will also be avoided and a one word synonym will be used instead. The writing will be divided in paragraphs and these will be linked using connecting words and phrases. The use of personal language needs to be avoided (I, my, we, etc.), as well as sweeping generalisations.

Every argument or statement will need to be backed by evidence from the source of reading used as reference. We will use impersonal subjects (it is believed that…), and with this, also impersonal verbs (tests have been conducted…).

The reference list, bibliography, and list of figures/images will be written following the Harvard style too, and we can use helpful tools like https://www.citethemrightonline.com as reference.

After this class, I decided to work on my critical report referencing and to keep developing the main body, and literature review. I struggle a bit to make the literature review, as I did not fully understand initially the content that this section should show, but after double checking it with the professor, I understood that this section should describe the reason why I chose it for my critical report and not the full description of the book thematic. So far, my critical report looks like this:

How CGI has enhanced or affected the stop motion production and result, taking as reference The Nightmare before Christmas and The Boxtrolls stop motion animations.

  • Abstract
  • Key words

Stop motion, CGI, stop motion evolution, Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton, Henry Selick, Boxtrolls, Laika Studios, Phil Tippett

  • Contents page
  • Introduction

This critical report is going to be an analysis of how stop motion is still being used to create great animation movies such as The nightmare before Christmas by Henry Selick and Tim Burton, which has a unique and more refined aesthetic, but it could also be a more expensive process. It will also evaluate how CGI has taken more presence in the animation and VFX industry because of its lower cost of production and its faster creative process. Lastly, it will be also studied how stop motion and CGI are being mixed to achieve even greater and more effective results shown in movies like The Boxtrolls by LAIKA Films.

  • Literature review

Barry Purves explained in his Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion book (2010) the origins of stop motion animation and its development until today’s techniques. I chose this book for this critical report because it also analyzed stop motion elements such as the lack of motion blur in this discipline and how it was solved, the texture, lighting, realism, and detail that can be achieved with the addition of CGI, and as counter argument to this last statement, the unique personality that traditional stop motion offers. 

This book was the base reference of this research supported by two documentaries found in YouTube: Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios (LAIKA Studios, 2018) and The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas BbaGumpSkrimp (2012). These documentaries showed the making of these two movies explained by the directors, producers, animators, and other professionals involved in the making of these animations. These two movies The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Boxtrolls are the chosen references to compare the traditional stop motion techniques and the stop motion with CGI techniques.

For additional information, Lord and Sibley’s book Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation (2015), enunciates the unique and original style of Burton’s stop motion film and how it was distributed and successful worldwide.

On the other hand, an online video made by VFX Geek (2019), Stop motion animation in VFX, shows a documentary that explains how stop motion can be time consuming, costly, and describes its weaknesses like the lack of motion blur in its movements.

  • A brief history of stop motion and CGI

Georges Méliès was an illusionist in the nineteenth century that when filming the street of Paris, for a few seconds his camera jammed, resulting into a cut between frames. This cut resulted into what we know today as stop motion. Mixing animation and puppetry, stop motion was originally used for the creation of illusions or special effects to trick the audience’s eye. The stop-motion animator is not seen as each frame is shot independently, and the illusion of independent and continuous movement is created. This continuous movement credibility depends on how each frame is shot and connected with the others in terms of composition, colour, and movement. Comparing a stop motion scene with a live action scene (both normally shot at 24 or 25 fps or frames per second), the main difference lies in the blur trail that indicates the direction of the movement, called motion blur. In traditional stop motion there was no motion blur, so the movement needed to be emphasised on each frame (for example, using techniques like stretching or squashing the puppet to define the weight and inertia of the movement) and the environment reaction to the character’s movement needed to be precise (Purves, 2010, pp. 14-20).

Phil Tippett, a stop motion animator that worked in famous movies like Jurassic Park and Star Wars, developed a technique to add motion blur to stop motion called ‘go-motion’. This technique uses a computer that is programmed to move some parts of the puppet during each exposure of a frame, resulting in a more realistic effect of motion blur (VFX Geek, 2019).

Stop motion used as special effect itself stopped being used in the 90s with the raise of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). This CGI evolution was shown in the first Jurassic Park movie in 1993 where the physical puppet armature motion was transferred to the 3D model. Stop motion nowadays is easier because of the introduction of digital cameras that allows the animator to preview the shots taken and correct errors in the moment, whereas with analogue cameras, the animator needed to be deeply focused on the shot and puppet movements, with no distractions or breaks in between, as they could not preview how the movement of the animation until the whole sequence was made.

  • Traditional stop motion: The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (BbaGumpSkrimp, 2012) shows how Tim Burton and Henry Selick spent three years and recruited a team of over a hundred artists and technicians to finish this film, only using traditional handmade stop motion animation frame by frame. They needed to hire animators, artists, puppet makers, set builders, prop makers, and specially trained camera operators. All of them had to create and build hundreds of sets and individual puppet characters, since shooting at 24 fps meant that the character needed to be posed 24 times in one second. All this work and attention to detail involves that one minute of finished film, would take an entire week of shooting. Moreover, every facial expression of each puppet meant that a different head needed to be sculpted and, in this case, they used over 400 different heads. In this film, they also had to take in consideration ambience effects such as fire, smoke, snow, lighting bolts, shadows, and flying objects. These effects were added in post-production with rotoscoping techniques or hand-drawing directly on the physical film a frame at the time. Burton and Selick’s animation had also the inconvenience of being shot with analogue cameras, which put a lot of pressure in the animators: if a single frame had a mistake that could not be corrected in post-production, they had to retake the whole sequence from the beginning. As Tim Burton said in the previously mentioned documentary, “stop motion is like making a live action movie in slow motion really”.

According to Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation by Peter Lord & Brian Sibley (2015, p. 43), “The nightmare Before Christmas was the first stop-motion feature film to receive worldwide distribution”. The unique, grotesque, and imperfect style of Tim Burton’s characters was created by some of the best stop motion animators in the world. They needed the best professionals they could find to elaborate that detailed world with imperfect angles, shapes, and textured materials to recreate the cross-hatched style drawings that Burton designed in his original drawings. An example of a masterpiece model design is Jack Skellington, the main character of the film, with a skeleton-like look, a black suit, and long and skinny legs and arms. Despite the creepy look of this character, the stop motion animation of it was elegant and neat. 

  • Stop motion and CGI: The Boxtrolls

Nowadays, with digital cameras and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), animators have less pressure when shooting a stop motion sequence since they can preview it in real time and replace specific frames that have any errors by new corrected frames. Taking The Boxtrolls as reference by LAIKA Studios, there are certain elements of a scene like floating hair or cloth, that are achieved with the help of CGI. To make a dance scene with both cloth and hair moving, first they had to take a real dance scene as reference to see how they moved. They also asked the dancers to create a choreography and movements so they also could include them in the scene with the puppets. Since the puppet’s cloth is not rigid, they had to attach the dress fabric to a joined mesh which was articulated and let the animators to move and fix the desired position to take the shots of the sequence. However, since the scene consisted in a room full of dancing characters, and to create an articulated puppet for each one would be costly and time consuming, they decided to only use traditional stop motion with the main characters and add the rest with CGI (taking as reference the hand-made puppets). This scene has four hand-made puppets and around 50 to 60 CGI characters to fill gaps. The aesthetic of the hand-made puppet was reproduced digitally, and its mistakes and imperfections were transferred to the CGI puppet, making it look more realistic than it would have been by simple designing the characters in digital 3D without a reference. This is a clear example of how CGI and stop motion can be beneficial to each other and better results can be achieved.

  • Conclusion
  • References

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [online video]. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis [Accessed: 12 November 2022].

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios [online video]. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 [Accessed: 12 November 2022].

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015, p.43) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4th edn. London: Thames & Hudson. 

Purves, B. (2010, pp. 14-20) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

VFX Geek (2019) Stop motion animation in VFX [online video]. 13 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfJx5D-8×8 [Accessed: 14 November 2022]

  • Bibliography

Anderson, W., Specter, M. and Lewis, R. (2009) The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Gasek, T. (2017) Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Puppet Photographic Animation Techniques. 2ndedn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4th edn. London: Thames & Hudson. 

Purves, B. (2010) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Shaw, S. (2017) Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation. 3rd edn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

  • Filmography

AT&T Developer Program (2018) The Art and Science of Laika [online video]. 5 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NGeGcV9dXw [Accessed: 23 November 2022].

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [online video]. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis [Accessed: 16 November 2022].

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios [online video]. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 [Accessed: 16 November 2022].

VICE (2015) My Life In Monsters: Meet the Animator Behind Star Wars and Jurassic Park [online video]. 22 December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTGQ_K0DBPo [Accessed: 14 November 2022].

VFX Geek (2019) Stop motion animation in VFX [online video]. 13 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfJx5D-8×8 [Accessed: 14 November 2022].

  • List of figures
Categories
Design For Animation

Week 8: Developing a Research Topic

In this lecture, we reviewed the process of researching a topic and how to structured it for our critical report.

Before start our research of our topic, it is important to consider why this research is relevant to the field of study and how it informs the audience. We also could consider what do we want to focus on when graduating, why skills we want to develop, and how are we going to show case our final major project (FMP).

The aspects that we could explore are if our topic is:

  • Experimental or commercial
  • Emergent
  • Screen based
  • Expanded cinema
  • Installation
  • Interactive
  • Studio/cinema/games

Also, our research should show enquiry (engagement, analysis, evaluation), knowledge (analysis, synthesis), process (methods, practical work, experimentation), communication (arguments), and realisation (improvement). There are several resources to do our research like Google Scholar, JSTOR, EBSCO, Animation studies 2.0, UAL Library, etc.

Once we have done our research, it is time to start thinking in the structure of our critical report. The standard structure that a critical report should have is the following:

  1. Title: subtitle
  2. Acknowledgements (optional)
  3. Abstract (short summary of dissertation: question, methods, results)
  4. Key words
  5. Contents page
  6. Introduction (to orientate, inform, and attract the reader’s attention to the topic, along along with stating focused topic and context)
  7. Literature review (synthesis of books’ topics and why they have been used in the critical report – presentation of sources)
  8. Main body of text (can split contents in chapters, and the arguments and statements should be supported with proof or references)
  9. Conclusion (add findings and position – summarise points made in main body)
  10. Appendix (optional)
  11. Bibliography/Reference list/Filmography
  12. Image list (optional)

It is also important to establish the audience and the purpose of the critical report along with the topic and structure.

After this class, I decided to restructure my critical report, adding the sections that we have reviewed today and separating the main body into chapters. Currently my critical report structure looks like this (the coloured text are personal annotations of possible arguments to add):

How CGI has enhanced or affected the stop motion production and result, taking as reference The Nightmare before Christmas and The Boxtrolls stop motion animations.

  • Abstract
  • Key words
  • Contents page
  • Introduction

The world evolves with the pass of time and the technology with it. Some original practices get perfectioned and others are replaced by more suitable ones. This critical report is going to be an analysis of how stop motion is still being used to create great animation movies such as The nightmare before Christmas by Henry Selick and Tim Burton, which has a unique and more refined aesthetic, but it could also be a more expensive process. It will also evaluate how CGI has taken more presence in the animation and VFX industry because of its lower cost of production and its faster creative process. Lastly, it will be also studied how stop motion and CGI are being mixed to achieve even greater and more effective results shown in movies like The Boxtrolls by LAIKA Films.

  • Literature review

Explain what each source says or explains (TNBC documentary, The Boxtrolls documentary, stop motion books).

  • A brief story of stop motion and CGI

Where did stop motion come from and when and why CGI made its appearance in this discipline?

Stop motion was discovered due to an accident that turned out into a discovery. 

Pros and cons from both techniques separately.

  1. Stop motion pros: aesthetic, refined result, high quality, unique, adds more value to the final product.
  2. Stop motion cons: costly, time consuming as made frame by frame, no motion blur (Phil Tippett).
  3. CGI pros: cost effective, less time consuming, can correct errors without having to reshoot a whole scene, can be more precise.
  4. CGI cons: digital aesthetic (errors or mistakes done are what makes our work ‘ours’ and unique, and sometimes we can create something different or never done before – with CGI this can hard to achieve as we can correct errors easily)
  • Traditional stop motion: The Nightmare Before Christmas (395)

The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (BbaGumpSkrimp, 2012) shows how Tim Burton and Henry Selick spent three years and recruited a team of over a hundred artists and technicians to finish this film, only using traditional handmade stop motion animation frame by frame. They needed to hire animators, artists, puppet makers, set builders, prop makers, and specially trained camera operators. All of them had to create and build hundreds of sets and individual puppet characters, since shooting at 24 fps (frames per second) meant that the character needed to be posed 24 times in one second. All this work and attention to detail involves that one minute of finished film, would take an entire week of shooting. Moreover, every facial expression of each puppet meant that a different head needed to be sculpted and, in this case, they used over 400 different heads. In this film, they also had to take in consideration ambience effects such as fire, smoke, snow, lighting bolts, shadows, and flying objects. These effects were added in post-production with rotoscoping techniques or hand-drawing directly on the physical film a frame at the time. Burton and Selick’s animation had also the inconvenience of being shot with analogue cameras, which put a lot of pressure in the animators: if a single frame had a mistake that could not be corrected in post-production, they had to retake the whole sequence from the beginning. As Tim Burton said in the previously mentioned documentary, “stop motion is like making a live action movie in slow motion really”.

According to Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation by Peter Lord & Brian Sibley (2015, p. 43), “The nightmare Before Christmas was the first stop-motion feature film to receive worldwide distribution”. The unique, grotesque, and imperfect style of Tim Burton’s characters was created by some of the best stop motion animators in the world. They needed the best professionals they could find to elaborate that detailed world with imperfect angles, shapes, and textured materials to recreate the cross-hatched style drawings that Burton designed in his original drawings. An example of a masterpiece model design is Jack Skellington, the main character of the film, with a skeleton-like look, a black suit, and long and skinny legs and arms. Despite the creepy look of this character, the stop motion animation of it was elegant and neat. 

  • Stop motion and CGI: The Boxtrolls (400)

Nowadays, with digital cameras and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), animators have less pressure when shooting a stop motion sequence since they can preview it in real time and replace specific frames that have any errors by new corrected frames. Taking The Boxtrolls as reference by LAIKA Studios, there are certain elements of a scene like floating hair or cloth, that are achieved with the help of CGI. To make a dance scene with both cloth and hair moving, first they had to take a real dance scene as reference to see how they moved. They also asked the dancers to create a choreography and movements so they also could include them in the scene with the puppets. Since the puppet’s cloth is not rigid, they had to attach the dress fabric to a joined mesh which was articulated and let the animators to move and fix the desired position to take the shots of the sequence. However, since the scene consisted in a room full of dancing characters, and to create an articulated puppet for each one would be costly and time consuming, they decided to only use traditional stop motion with the main characters and add the rest with CGI (taking as reference the hand-made puppets). This scene has four hand-made puppets and around 50 to 60 CGI characters to fill gaps. The aesthetic of the hand-made puppet was reproduced digitally, and its mistakes and imperfections were transferred to the CGI puppet, making it look more realistic than it would have been by simple designing the characters in digital 3D without a reference. This is a clear example of how CGI and stop motion can be beneficial to each other and better results can be achieved.

How can CGI help stop motion to be more cost and time effective?

How are stop motion and CGI techniques put together to achieve a better result?

How is the mix of these two techniques affecting the quality and aesthetic of the animation, and how nostalgia can influence when taking the decision of using traditional stop motion? (The Nightmare Before Christmas)

Is traditional stop motion becoming obsolete as CGI is developing into more refined techniques to reach and match the quality and aesthetic from traditional stop motion?

How are animation studios approaching stop motion animation like LAIKA Studios in The Boxtrolls?

  • Conclusion
  • References

Name of person or organisation posting video (Year video posted) Title of film or programme. Date uploaded. Available at: DOI or name of streaming service/app or URL (Accessed: date).

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. 30 January.  Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis (Accessed: 16 November 2022)

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 (Accessed: 16 November 2022).

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015, p.43) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4th edn. London: Thames & Hudson. 

  • Bibliography

Anderson, W., Specter, M. and Lewis, R. (2009) The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Purves, B. (2010) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4th edn. London: Thames & Hudson. 

Shaw, S. (2017) Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation. 3rd edn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

  • Filmography

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. 30 January.  Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis (Accessed: 16 November 2022).

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 (Accessed: 16 November 2022).


AT&T Developer Program (2018) The Art and Science of Laika. 5 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NGeGcV9dXw (Accessed: 23 November 2022).

  • List of figures
Categories
Design For Animation

Week 7: Individual Tutorials

This week, we had individual tutorials with the professor to double check and ask question about our critical report ongoing work process.

After passing last week researching sources for my critical report, I found two documentaries in YouTube about the making of The Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton and Henry Selick (BbaGumpSkrimp, 2012), and the making of The Boxtrolls’ dance scene by LAIKA Studios (LAIKA Studios, 2018), where it was really well explained the techniques and the process followed to make these two stop motion animations: one with traditional stop motion and the second mixing stop motion and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery).

Then I decided to go to the UAL Library and check some books related to stop motion animation and CGI. Digging into the animation section, I found two books: Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion (Purves, 2010), and Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation (Lord and Sibley, 2015)

In Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion book (Purves, 2010) it is explained the origins of stop motion animation and its development until today’s techniques. I chose this book for my critical report because it also analysed stop motion elements such as the lack of motion blur in this discipline and how it was solved, the texture, lighting, realism, and detail that can be achieved with the addition of CGI, and as counter argument to this last statement, the unique personality that traditional stop motion offers. 

Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation focuses in the process followed by Aardman to create his iconic clay animation, and also explains various 3D animation techniques, and the history and evolution of stop motion. I focused in the stop motion history and evolution section as it was really well explained and it also offers some insides about The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I also found some books I already own, like Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation (Shaw, 2017), which explains the different techniques that can be used in stop motion animation from modelling to filming tips.

This research plus a brief chat with the professor already gave me a rough idea of how the structure of my critical report is going to be and it also helped me to set the title: How CGI has enhanced or affected the stop motion production and result, taking as reference The Nightmare before Christmas and The Boxtrolls stop motion animations. The possible structure I out together looks like the following:

  1. Abstract
  2. Intro
    • What is the critical report going to explain?
  3. Main Body
    • Where did stop motion come from and when and why CGI made its appearance in this discipline?
    • Pros and cons from both techniques separately.
    • How can CGI help stop motion to be more cost and time effective?
    • How are stop motion and CGI techniques put together to achieve a better result?
    • How is the mix of these two techniques affecting the quality and aesthetic of the animation, and how nostalgia can influence when taking the decision of using traditional stop motion?
    • Is traditional stop motion becoming obsolete as CGI is developing into more refined techniques to reach and match the quality and aesthetic from traditional stop motion?
    • How are animation studios approaching stop motion animation like LAIKA Studios or Aardman Studios?
  4. Conclusion

References

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [online video]. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis [Accessed: 12 November 2022].

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios [online video]. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 [Accessed: 12 November 2022].

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4th edn. London: Thames & Hudson. 

Purves, B. (2010) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Shaw, S. (2017) Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation. 3rd edn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

Categories
Design For Animation

Week 6: Critical Thinking for Research Topics

In this lecture we learnt how to structure a critical report or thesis, what type of language do we use, referencing and citations. We also approached the process to follow when developing the investigation of our topic and we analysed the different methods used in academic writing such as paraphrasing.

When researching information for our critical report, we will need to use trusted sources like peer reviewed texts (books or scholarly articles) or recognised academic material online (like academic journal articles on UAL Library or Google Scholar).

If we need to use any short sentence from these texts, this will need to be referenced. When quoting or paraphrasing we will use the Harvard referencing system to provide a list of citations and references at the end of our critical report or thesis. Citations can be in-text (adding quote marks to the cite) or, if longer than 40 words, separated around 1 cm from text main body and on each side. We will use formal language and we will avoid to use personal language (like ‘I’, ‘my opinion’, ‘I think’, etc).

In order to develop our argument, we can use our own point of view but it needs to have evidence that supports it. This argument will be structure with an introduction, main body, and the conclusion and in longer texts, such as thesis, we could structure the sections adding headings.

The steps to follow to develop an academic argument are:

  1. State the main point and argument to prove (topic) in the introduction.
  2. Analyse important reasons of your argument (evidence that supports the main point or contention).
  3. Identify the possible objections (evidence against main point).
  4. Research and gather evidence that supports main argument.
  5. Structure and connect paragraphs so they follow a logic lead to conclusion.
  6. State clear conclusion putting together statement and supporting points.

When paraphrasing, we need to reword the author’s idea using our own voice. We use paraphrasing to avoid plagiarism, to avoid overuse of quotes, to avoid problematic language, and to shorten long quotes. Summarising is often confused with paraphrasing, however, this is used when we want to state the overall or relevant points of an idea using our own words.

To practise paraphrasing, we were told to paraphrase the following passage in our own words:

The authenticity of a documentary is ‘deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images are linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images bear evidence of events that actually happened, by virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality’ 

Horness Roe. A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

In my own words, this text would sound like this:

According to Honess Roe (2013, Animated Documentary), the authenticity of a documentary is connected to what we understand as ‘reality’ and the fact that the images in a documentary are connected to this ‘reality’ since they show events exactly how they happened.

Categories
Design For Animation

Week 5: Politics and Persuasion in Entertainment, and Animated Documentary

In this week’s lecture, we have discovered how animation can be political and influence or persuade the audience, and we also analysed if animated documentary can be considered and actual documentary or not.

It is possible to persuade or influence the audience through social media, broadcast news and events, film and animation, and television. There are media platforms that can be used for this such as broadcast, print media, mainstream film & animation, independent film & animation, games, podcast, etc. These influential messages in moving image don’t necessarily have to be political, they can also be subliminal or masked content, propaganda, persuasive commercials, documentaries, personal struggle (observation, experience).

The animated documentaries are used to explain, illustrate, or emphasise a story. It can be recorded or created frame by frame and it is presented as a documentary by producers and/or received as a documentary by the audience, festivals, or critics. This type of animation offers new alternative ways to see the world as it shifts and broadens the limits of what and how we can show reality. Its authenticity depends on how specific are the images that compounds it, and it is linked to notions of realism (how story was told and not an imaginary story). There is some controversy regarding these animated documentaries as some people disagrees that these can be classed as ‘documentaries’ as they have a lack of objectivity.

I found an animated documentary as a good example of this, called Nowhere line: voices from Manus Island by Lukas Schrank.

**Award Winning** CGI 2D/3D Documentary: “Nowhere Line: Voices from Manus Island” – by Lukas Schrank (TheCGBros, 2016)

This documentary is based in a phone called made to two asylum-seeking men detained in Manus Island, Australia, at the Offshore Processing Centre.

Since no images has been able to be recorded in this case, an animation can illustrate this story and search for an emotional connection with the audience. It doesn’t need to be considered fake information as the images are an interpretation of the facts narrated by these two men in Australia. However, it can be very informative and helpful to put things together in a story and keep the attention of the audience. I think animated documentaries are a very useful tool to draw the audience’s attention to important matters like this one in Manus Island and make them engage and empathise with the story.

References

TheCGBros (2016). **Award Winning** CGI 2D/3D Documentary: “Nowhere Line: Voices from Manus Island” – by Lukas Schrank (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D8B0o1aRcs [Accessed 8 November 2022]

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Design For Animation

Week 4: Innovative and emergent practice

In this class we analysed the types of abstract or experimental work used in visual effects and animation.

Abstraction is not related to objects but to express something through colour, forms, light, shadows, movement, sounds, etc.

A formative abstraction is focused on the manipulation of basic visual fundamentals: colour, form, light, space, and texture, along with movements, rhythm, and sound; with the target of experimenting new methods or techniques to reach different results. It is important to look at experimental work as it is full of technical advancements discovered through experimentation. Experimental work is a vast variety of concepts, models, and approaches. In this lesson we saw several video examples of this experimental visual effects that was made directly in the 35mm film stock, exposing it several times, or painting directly on it.

The conceptual abstraction is the abstraction or juxtaposition of narrative structures or story telling tools to provide emotional process. This process can be used in independent films or non-dialogue films that do not have a narrative and show a more metaphoric manner.

There are different forms of interpret abstraction:

  • Categorisation – genre and sub-genre, setting, mood, theme.
  • Form and function – meaning, format, presentation.
  • Process – techniques, material, technologies applied, technique-message relation.
  • Formal elements – space, composition, light, colour, movement, rhythm, timing, pacing, transition, audio.

The assignment for this week is to pick a short movie that is considered experimental and to analyse it following the contents outlined in the lecture, so I decided to analyse the short movie ‘Juniper’ directed by Robert Pereña.

This short film is a conceptual abstraction in which the stop motion was made from scrap paper, trash and art supplies mixed with rotoscoping techniques. ‘Juniper’ looks into the effects of the pollution in the environment through several artworks creating with this an expressive and unique style.

This type of stop motion animation is very crowded and, therefore, very expressive as it is a lot happening on each frame (different artwork per frame). The viewer needs to watch the movie several times to fully absorb all the information put into it. The film also evoques the feeling of suffocation that we would feel with the pollution in our environment. The limitation of this animation style would be that it is not suitable for all types of audiences as there was a warning at the beginning of the video that it could trigger seizures to people with epilepsy.

The process followed has a clear relation with the message as they created a stop motion sequence, using scrap paper and all sort of art supplies mixed up to create this ‘polluted’ environment. The use of an unfixed colour palette or shapes transmits the chaos that is happening around and inside the girl’s rotoscoped silhouette. Also, the fact that each frame is a different artwork gives this twitching movement that makes this movie so unique.

At the beginning, the pace is a bit slower as the girls is sat down and starring at the leaf that suddenly becomes a butterfly. The girls face and body features are visible at this stage and the colours are mainly purple and black transmitting a calmer environment. However, when the butterfly enters inside the head of the girl, her features become abstract, and the pace of the film increases as she starts to move along the scenes. The colour palette is indefinite at this point and an explosion of colour and movement is added to the scene. Afterwards, the girl’s silhouette recovers its traits, and the girl raises her feast as a symbol of rebellion against the noisy and polluted city. Lastly, the background clears to white and the girls silhouette starts to stand up and grow like a tree. The music adds tension to the film as it is a dark and low sound playing in the background along with the sounds of the wind and some minimalistic high dissonant sounds. 

References


Robbie Pereña, 2019. Juniper – Experimental Short Film (Stop Motion Animation/Rotoscoping) (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsRkDJYKOwE [Accessed 01 November 2022]

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Design For Animation

Week 3: Narrative Structure

In this lesson we learnt the basics of a good editing, the narrative structure and the key aspects of storytelling.

In the editing of a film, we put together a chain of shots and scenes to complete a film (shot transition). There are three golden rules for a good editing:

  • It should be invisible to the eye.
  • The storyteller should never let the audience to get ahead of them (less is more).
  • The audience needs to be a participant

We also need to take care of continuity to create smooth cuts so the viewer attention goes to the story. Some ways of keeping continuity are:

  • Graphic relations – relating last frames of a shot with the first frames of the next shot
  • Rhythmic relations
  • Spatial relations
  • Temporal relation
  • Duration of story events
  • Continuity editing – orientation and direction of movements and subjects in a scene
  • Temporal continuity

In addition, the strategy for the development of the narrative must be engaging and has a satisfactory conclusion. In a character-based narrative, the actors must perform convincingly in the role while the directors create the appeal and extract the potential performance of them to communicate the story. Some of the literary structures that exist are the novels, poems or plays, drama or plays, short stories, novellas, myths, legends, folktales, fairy tales, and epics. However, most of the narrative structures of these stories follow the same three-part structure: beginning or protasis (exposition, conflict), middle or epitasis (rising action, climax), and end or catastrophe (falling action, resolution). 

However, there are other more complex narrative structures like the five-part structure (story arc):

  • Act 1 – exposition (setting time and place, problems, conflict)
  • Act 2 – rising action (complications arise)
  • Act 3 – climax (highest amount of suspense)
  • Act 4 – falling action (concluding, twist revelation, etc)
  • Act 5 – denouement (outcome, lessons learnt, protagonist overcomes)

Another example of narrative structure is the monomyth or the hero’s journey (concept created by Joseph Campbell). This narrative structure organises the heroic journey in a circular story.

The narrative development must be engaging to make sure the viewer is immersed in the story and is not distracted by elements that are not part of the story. Therefore, we need to take care of elements such as end of scene or transition, shot choice, scene timing, performance timing, audio, change obstacle, change character’s objective/quest, etc. The steps to underpin a narrative development are research, establish a challenge, develop characters, structure of actions (chain of events leading to target), and consider subplots and secondary actions.

Also, in a film there are characters or hero archetypes that need to be followed to keep the story dynamic and interesting:

  • Hero – protagonist
  • Mentor – provide motivation, insights, training
  • Threshold guardian – guardian of world and secrets of protagonist (not villain)
  • Herald – issues challenge, announces change
  • Shapeshifter – alliance is not clear
  • Shadow – opposite of what hero is (not necessarily the villain)
  • Trickster – funny character or one that shows absurdity of situation (to relieve tension)
  • Allies (sidekicks) – filling gaps of hero (virtues) and are their support system

Considering all the information learnt today, this week’s task consist in picking a film of our choice and break it down into the following:

  • Story arc – describe 8 stages
  • Character’s archetypes
  • Describe main character’s timeline (starting before film starts)

The film I chose is actually a trilogy, The Lord of the Rings directed by Peter Jackson, as it is my favourite movie-trilogy since it came out on 2001. The story arc (8 stages) are:

  1. You – Frodo Baggins is living in the Shire with his uncle Bilbo Baggins.
  2. Need – Bilbo leaves the Shire in his birthday and Frodo inherits his uncle’s magical ring. This ring cannot fall back into Sauron’s hands whose searching for it and is ready to go to the Shire (Gollum passed on this information after being tortured). As Gandalf notices that only pure hearts can bear the dark power of the ring, he tells Frodo that he has to take the ring out of the Shire.
  3. Go – Frodo leaves with Samwise Gamgee, Pippin and Merry as companions, and they keep running away from the Black Riders who are looking for the ring to take it to Sauron.
  4. Search – In Rivendell, they form the Fellowship of the ring composed by those guardians of the carrier of the ring (Frodo). Together they start the journey to Mount Doom in Mordor were the ring must be destroyed. In the way they fight many challenges that make a difficult journey. The Fellowship splits and Frodo ends up with Sam until they find Gollum, who wants the ring for him but pretends to be their guide to Mordor and constantly tricks them.
  5. Find – Frodo finally reaches Mount Doom with Sam and Gollum while Sauron’s eye is being distracted with the battle that’s taking place at the doors of Mordor.
  6. Take – Gollum tries to take the ring biting off Frodo’s finger but then Gollum falls into the volcano’s lava and the ring is destroyed along with him.
  7. Return – The Great Eagles arrive and carry them back. Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin made their journey back to the Shire.
  8. Change – Everything was changed back home. Amongst the changes, Sam gets married and stays in the Shire and Frodo sails to Undying Lands with his uncle from where he will never come back.

The main character archetypes are:

  • Hero – Frodo Baggins
  • Mentor – Gandalf
  • Threshold guardian – Samwise Gamgee, Aragorn
  • Herald – Bilbo Baggins
  • Shapeshifter – Gollum
  • Shadow – Sauron
  • Trickster – Merry and Pippin
  • Allies (sidekicks) – Legolas, Gimli

Frodo Baggins’ character timeline starts in the Shire, were he has been raised and lived most of his live with his uncle, Bilbo Baggins, who adopted him after his parents died. After his uncle’s birthday, he inherits his uncles magical ring and Gandalf asked him to take it out of the Shire as Sauron is looking for it. While leaving the Shire with his companions, Frodo is being chased by the Black Riders who are looking for the ring. In the way he meets Aragorn who is going to defend them from the dangers of the way. Frodo ends up in Rivendell after being badly injured by the sword of one of the Black Riders. In Rivendell, Frodo is cured and the Fellowship of the Ring is formed after Frodo volunteers to be the carrier of the ring until Mount Doom in Mordor. Frodo leaves Rivendell with the Fellowship of the Ring and they head to Moria. There, they battle the Balrog who defeats Gandalf and falls into shadow. They leave Moria and Frodo meets Galadriel who gives him the Phial to give him light in darkness. Then Boromir, manipulated by the ring’s power, tries to take the ring, so Frodo decides to travel alone. Sam ends up going with Frodo until they find Gollum who will guide them to Mordor through a secret passage. Gollum ends up tricking Frodo and Sam, and he takes them to Shelob’s Lair (big spider). Frodo is wounded by Shelob and is taken by the orcs. Sam rescues Frodo from the orcs and they continue their way to Mount Doom. When they reach the Crack of Doom, Frodo claims the ring to himself. Gollum steals it biting off Frodo’s finger but falls into the lava and the ring is destroyed. Frodo assist to the coronation of Aragorn and then goes back to the Shire. Later on, he travels with his uncle to the Undying Lands from where he will never come back.

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Design For Animation

Week 2: Film Language and Research Approaches

In this class, we spoke about the elements of the mise-en-scène needed in a scene or frame, we watched a short western movie as an example of this, we analysed the differences between descriptive writing and critical writing, and lastly, we discussed the first topic ideas we have for our critical report.

The mise-en-scène describes the elements that compose a scene or frame. This can be composed by:

  • Settings and props (made or real)
  • Costume, hair, and make-up to show character’s personality
  • Facial expressions and body language to show feelings, mood, and emotions
  • Lighting and colour to show scene’s mood and style
  • Positioning of characters/objects in the frame to give importance or to draw attention.

The lighting of a scene is key to transmit the correct mood or style of the video. We can use low key lighting (use of only key light and back light) to create a high contrast in the scene (dark scenes); or in the contrary, we could use high key lighting (more use of filler lights) to create a more realistic/natural look (bright sets/sunny day). The colours used in the scene are important to depict the importance of the subjects: warm colours push forward, and cold colours push backwards.

The type of lens used is also an important aspect to take in consideration as we will define the depth of field of the scene (distance from the nearest to the farthest point where the subjects are in focus): in a deep focus, both close and distant planes are in sharp focus (longer lenses); in a shallow focus, close objects are on focus and farthest are slightly unfocused (shorter lenses).

The framing of the scene will show the importance or hierarchy of the subjects. We can have a single subject in scene, a two-shots frame, group-shots… depending on the number of subjects and complexity of the scene. To determine the importance of the subject, we can use high angle shots (shows weakness, less importance, tension) or low angle shots (shows dominance, importance, drama). We could even use a POV (Point of View) shot, which shows the view of the scene from the subject’s eyes perspective. There are also moving shots to give more dynamic to the scene: pan shot, tilt shot, traveling shot (dolly shot), and crane shot.

An aspect to take in consideration too is the screen direction, which is the direction that subjects move on screen from the point of view of the camera/audience (continuity). The movement from one shot to the other must be consistent to don’t confuse the audience (for example, the 180 degrees rule, where the axis line drawn by the subjects shouldn’t be crossed by the camera as this would swap the direction and position of the subjects and could confuse audience). In animation, this line can sometime be crossed, for example, when zooming in the face of a subject that is falling down and then zooming out from their back.

And lastly, in the film or animation staging, the character’s placement and composition can be accentuated with the perspective of the camera (angle and position), contrast (light and shadow), performance or pace (character dynamics), entry to the scene, audio (compliment or emphasis). The background and setting also needs to have an aesthetic to project the mood and style of the scene. This aesthetic can clash with the character, can be more complex of simpler, can distract or not from the subject, and need to be in scale with subject.

Western sequence

In order to put all that we just learnt together in an example, the professor played a short scene from the western film ‘High Noon’, and asked us to analyse what elements are in the sequence that leads us to guess the time is passing and the characters are waiting for the noon when the train arrives.

  • The music is following the pace of the clock.
  • Pass from medium shots of the characters and the clock to close ups and even extreme close ups to give more drama to the time passing and to show that the noon is closer from scene to scene.
  • Low angle and pan up shot of the clock to give more importance to this element.
  • Characters waiting in silence with tension in their faces is improving as the train approaches.
  • The long shots of the village shows empty roads to show fear.

Descriptive writing vs critical writing

Descriptive writing is an informative text the uses quotes, summarises a piece of literature, uses listing, facts, tells the history of an event, etc. However, critical writing (or critical thinking) analyses a topic, searching for the pros and cons, avoiding assertions, using paragraphs, giving clear arguments that have evidence to prove them, and giving conclusions (avoiding simplistic conclusions and recognising limitations).

Following on this analysis of descriptive and critical writing, the homework for this week is to research our topic ideas, pick one, and made a brief description of the question to be answered, adding 5 key words and at least 2 resources that relate to my topic (uploaded to padlet.com).

Since I didn’t have any topic in mind yet, I researched on Google Scholars information about VFX, stop motion and animation, since I’m interested in these areas in general. Some of the ideas I came up with are the following:

  • Stop motion vs CGI: is stop motion being replaced by CGI or both disciplines have been mixed to reach better results?
  • Is it stop motion animation a useful tool to explain science in a simplified way for better understanding?
  • How the knowledge of basic physics or the interaction of objects with the environment improves the reproduction of good VFX or animation?
  • How to use stop motion as a way to teach experimental animation?
  • Visual illusions as an important part of VFX

Stop motion vs. CGI: is stop motion being replaced by CGI or both disciplines have been mixed to reach better results?

The world evolves with the pass of time and the technology with it. Some original practices get perfectioned and others are replaced by more suitable ones. My critical report is going to be an analysis of how stop motion is still being used to create great animation movies such as ‘The nightmare before Christmas’ by Henry Selick and Tim Burton, which has a unique and more refined aesthetic, but it could also be a more expensive process. I will also talk about how CGI has taken more presence in the animation and VFX industry because of its lower cost of production and its faster creative process. Lastly, I will also mention how stop motion and CGI are being fused to achieve even greater and more effective results shown in movies like ‘The Boxtrolls’ by LAIKA Films.

Key words:

stop motion, CGI, technology development, aesthetic, cost-effective

Resources: 

Chung, B., 2014. Unpacking the stop-motion magic of ‘The Boxtrolls’. VICE. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/nz4zjd/unpacking-the-stop-motion-magic-of-the-boxtrolls (Accessed: October 17, 2022). 

Franklin-Wallis, O., 2014. How stop-motion and 3D printing brought Boxtrolls to Life. WIRED UK. Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/handmade-movie (Accessed: October 18, 2022). 

YsabelGo, 2015. Understanding the art of stop motion. The Artifice. Available at: https://the-artifice.com/art-of-stop-motion/#return-note-78500-17 (Accessed: October 17, 2022). 

Categories
Design For Animation

Week 1: Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language – Unit Introduction

This first session consisted in an introduction to the main assignment that we will be developing throughout term 1: a 1500-words critical report along with its progress documentation in this blog and a research presentation.

We will need to find a topic that motives and inspires us. It needs to teach something to the reader and to be engaging. In order to find a suitable topic we should research and gather related information in order to study and select the parts that interest us.

Once the topic is established we will decide the targeted audience and start organising the main related questions and subquestions that need to be answered. Following on, we will craft our critical report and will mention our references used (following Harvard referencing system).

After clarifying the main assignment of the term, we were asked to form groups and to discuss possible topics that could interest us and could be useful for our critical report. Some of the topics that came up in my group were the following:

  • How VFX development can affect the beauty standards (unrealistic beauty standards)
  • How technology development can lead to changes in the remake of older films.
  • Stylised vs realistic graphics and its effects in VR player immersion
  • AI development and its threat to creatives and copyright
  • Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness: are the VFX used in this movie a useful tool to transmit the confusing and bended reality or is it an impediment that confuses the audience and takes them out from the full experience?