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FMP Thesis

Weeks 8 & 9: Final Thesis Chapters Structure & Draft Literature Review

In these two weeks I finished the final thesis structure so I could focus on researching further sources that were more specific to answer the questions and sub-questions of my topic. I also started writing and structuring my draft literature review with the sources I currently have.

Final thesis chapters structure with sources to be used to answer questions/sub-questions

I did some digging through my sources to take the parts that I could potentially use to answer my topic’s questions. Then, I also created an Excel spreadsheet to make notes of the most important points of my sources and to start structuring my literature review too.

Critical notes

Main question – Will photorealism continue to be the leader in the film industry in the future despite its controversy around the uncanny valley?

  1. What is photorealism? Photorealism is an art movement that started on 1960s in America, that shows artworks that look photographic. This form of art is defined by being complex, extremely clear, and emotionally neutral. Since this type of art was considered unoriginal and boring, this led to the pop art movement. However, in the beginnings of 1990s, the interest in photorealism resurged again as effect of the development of digital cameras which could offer a more precise image. (Kench, 2022; Tate, 2023; Wainwright, 2019)
  1. What are the origins of photorealism in filmmaking and what were its initial uses? (Manovich, 2002, pg. 198)
  1. How is photorealism used in filmmaking nowadays and how important is it?
    • Importance of photorealistic VFX to replace dangerous live action scenes. (Maio, 2021 – Matrix scene Neo dodging bullets; Wadmare, 2021) 
    • Importance of VFX to replace impossible to shot environments such as outer space scenes or fictional environments. – (Dinur, 2022 – The Reality of the Unreal, pg. 18)
    • Importance of VFX for health and safety issues like the use of virtual production when the global pandemic hit and travel to different locations was not a possibility.
    • Does photorealism quality depend purely on the new digital technologies’ high definition? (Dinur, 2022 – Image Quality and Photorealism, pg. 19)
  1. Why is photorealism not accepted by all audiences?
    • Uncanny valley. (Dinur, 2022; Manovich, 2002, pg. 199)
    • Has the audience become more used to photorealism, therefore, more exigent about it? (Failes, 2021 – interview to Eran Dinur)
    • Is photorealism considered emotionless?
    • At what point photorealism starts to become excessive? (Dinur, 2017, pg. 14)
    • Non-photorealism in filmmaking to foreground the work of digital effects artists. (Jeng, 2023; Agrawal and Auryn, 2009; and Cooper, 1999)
    • Photorealism costs and workload. (Agrawal and Auryn 2009; Cooper 1999)
    • Photorealism used for malicious intentions, issues caused, and solutions in place to help avoid this. (Meena and Tyagi, 2019)
  1. Industry professionals case studies. (Melki, 2019)
  1. What could be the future of photorealism in filmmaking? (Dinur, 2022)
    • AI as a tool to help with photorealism demands in film industry. Would AI replace human labour as digital VFX has shadowed handmade VFX artists and animators’ jobs?
    • Virtual production – high resolution screens installed in life action shooting. Helping with green screen spill issues? Problems when shooting outdoors or moiré issues? Once shot, can background not be replaced?
    • Is Unreal Engine helping filmmaking industry to speed up their work process and to reach a more photorealistic look? (Failes, 2020)

Draft Literature Review

According to Studio Binder (Kench, 2022), Britannica (Wainwright, 2019), and Tate (2023) official websites, Photorealism is an art movement that started on 1960s in America, that shows artworks that look photographic. This form of art is defined by being complex, extremely clear, and emotionally neutral. Since this type of art was considered unoriginal and boring, this led to the pop art movement. However, in the beginnings of 1990s, the interest in photorealism resurged again as effect of the development of digital cameras which could offer a more precise image. These sources will contribute to explain the concept of Photorealism before diving into a more specific analysis of this movement into film making.

Photorealism can be used in filmmaking in many scenarios. For example, to add CG elements (characters, objects, environments) or visual effects that would be impossible or dangerous to shot during live action. Wadmare examines in his essay the importance of photorealistic VFX in filmmaking industry as a tool to avoid shooting dangerous or impossible live action scenes, which techniques are being currently followed to achieve this, and which new trends are arising to make the process easier. In addition to this, Maio (2021), also reflects in her article What is VFX? Defining the Term and Creating Impossible Worlds about how VFX industries use photorealistic digital assets to create impossible and dangerous scenes such as the scene in The Matrix when the main character dodges bullets shot against him.

Eran Dinur, visual effects supervisor, believes that Photorealism is an aspect that is important across all disciplines as it helps simulating a real character, object, environment, or phenomenon that would have been impossible, dangerous, or highly costly to be filmed or photographed in live action. Delving into Eran Dinur’s bibliography, and more specifically in his book The Complete guide to Photorealism for Visual Effects, Visualization and Games, he analyses how to implement the physics that apply to the world around us to the visual effects in filmmaking and make them look as photorealistic as possible. Since most of the scenery in filmmaking are not even real like alien planets, fantastic creatures, or impossible environments for our understanding of physics, visual effects artists important job is to observe and study the world around us and try to implement it to these fictional shots. These imaginary worlds have also some Earth like aspects that are kept so the audience can empathise with them. Sometimes these familiar aspects can help make the shots more ‘believable’ and, therefore, more photorealistic for the viewer. It is important to keep a balance between what is real and unreal, otherwise, the shot could end being an overly fantastic scene that could throw the audience out of the story. 

Dinur also mentions that the quality of photorealism does not depend entirely on the quality digital capturer and display. While high dynamic range and bit depth are important for a successful photorealistic recreation, there are independent aspects such as light and surface, the sense of depth, richness of textures, characteristics of optical lenses, and many other characteristics that make a shot look as photorealistic in high definition as well as in low definition. These characteristics are more linked to the physics of the world around us and the interaction of surfaces, materials, lights, and other aspects with it.

In the beginning of the 21st century, Manovich (2002) explains in his book The Language of New Media, the origins of photorealism and how it has been developing throughout the years. He also analyses how it is a common opinion that CGI will never be as realistic as images gathered by camera lenses. However, he also counter argues that these opinions are mistaken, explaining why he thinks this and how these CGI is in fact becoming more realistic than traditional photographs (hyperrealism). He also mentions that photorealism is often mistaken with realism, as people has the tendency that this movement depicts the reality as we see it through our eyes, when what photorealism has always tried to achieve is the look of the reality seen through a camera lens.

Going back to Erin Dinur, in an interview he had with the journalist Ian Failes (2021), he defends that if a digital asset does not look like it was shot live in front of a camera and like it is part of the rest of the composition, it will look fake and will not work. This is why, in his opinion, photorealism is so important for visual effects artists and why there is also a lot of pressure on the visual effects artists’ shoulders regarding the so called ‘uncanny valley’ where the audience’s opinion will be stuck in feedbacks such as ‘this looks fake’ or ‘it looks too CG’. Also, he affirms that it is difficult to point out which part of the CG shot needs to be improved to make it look more photoreal, since the work pipeline when creating a CG shot is made by a chain of people, in most of the cases, like a modeler, a texture artist, a shading/lighting artist, a compositor, and a matte painter. Moreover, when we are talking about photoreal, we do not say ‘real’, as we are referring to the way we see through the lens of a camera not through our eyes. Therefore, so many things such as defocus, dynamic range, or exposure are processed differently through our eyes and brain than through a lens and a camera sensor. If we show CG shots as we would see it through our eyes, we will find it strange.

Dinur also has a previous book, The Filmmaker’s Guide to Visual Effects: The Arts and Techniques of VFX for Directors, Producers, Editors, and Cinematographers, where he speaks about the fact that a convincing photorealistic work is possible as soon as there is a ‘respect for the real-world physics and optics’. However, it is also very easy for VFX artists to fall for the desire to use every single VFX available and overload the film with an excess of digital effects that takes off the audience from the story.

Taking in consideration the amount of work, focus, and knowledge a good photorealistic shot requires, Jeng (2023) explain in their research paper, Sidelining Photorealism: ‘Speed Racer’ and Articulation of Digital Effects Labour, how photorealism has always been the leader in the film industry and how some movies like ‘Speed Racer’ have opted to sideline this style to help foreground the work of digital visual effects artists.

Furthermore, Agrawal and Auryn (2009), and Cooper (1999) also explain the challenges and techniques that artists have faced with photorealism (and its issues with the so called ‘uncanny valley’). They also explain how some artists have opted for NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) instead, to create a simpler and cartoony style (animation) that gives more creative freedom and more room to use the artist’s imagination.

Nowadays, photorealism’s quality has become so high and polished that it is difficult to differentiate it from real photographs or live action scenes. This could be beneficial and useful when used with good intentions, but it could also be used with malicious intentions. Meena and Tyagi (2019) argue in their paper, A Novel Method to Distinguish Photorealistic Computer Generated Images from Photographic Images, how photorealism, despite revolutionising the filmmake and game industry, how it has also been used with malicious intentions and how important it is to learn how to distinguish real assets from computer generated ones.

To understand photorealism practices amongst practitioners in the industry, Melki (2019), in his dissertation called An Investigation Into The Creative Processes In Generating Believable Photorealistic Film Characters, focuses on the process to create photorealistic film characters that are credible, as well as its benefits and challenges. The research also extends to interviews made with several industry expert practitioners with the purpose of comparing of all the statements acquired from the participants.

Indicative bibliography

Agrawal, A., and Auryn (2009).Non-photorealistic Rendering: Unleashing the Artist’s Imagination(online). Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5167490 [Accessed 25 April 2023]

Cooper, D. (1999). Personal Thoughts on Non-Photorealistic Rendering (online). Available at:  https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/563666.563690 [Accessed 25 April 2023]

Dinur, E (2017). The Filmmaker’s Guide to Visual Effects: The Arts and Techniques of VFX for Directors, Producers, Editors, and Cinematograrphers. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Dinur, E. (2022). The Complete Guide to Photorealism for Visual Effects, Visualization and Games. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Failes, I. (2020). EPIC’S GOAL WITH NEXT-GEN UNREAL ENGINE IS PHOTOREALISM (online). Available at: https://beforesandafters.com/2020/05/14/epics-goal-with-next-gen-unreal-engine-is-photorealism/ [Accessed 4 June 2023]

Failes, I. (2021). WHAT IS PHOTOREALISM? WELL, SOMEONE LITERALLY JUST WROTE THE BOOK ON IT (online). Available at: https://beforesandafters.com/2021/11/30/what-is-photorealism-well-someone-literally-just-wrote-the-book-on-it/ [Accessed 4 June 2023]

Jeng, J. (2023). Sidelining Photorealism: ‘Speed Racer’ and Articulation of Digital Effects Labour (online). Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KLOqEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA153&dq=photorealism+in+film&ots=r8349MlY8s&sig=aEhMvSbwORZ1C0leMCKO8dpnEns&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=photorealism%20in%20film&f=false[Accessed 25 April 2023]

Kench, S. (2022). What is Photorealism – The Art of the Real Explained (online). Available at: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-photorealism-definition/ [Accessed 23 April 2023]

Maio, A. (2021). What is VFX? Defining the Term and Creating Impossible Worlds (online). Available at: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-vfx/ [Accessed 30 May 2023]

Manovich, Lev (2002). The Language of New Media. First paperback edn. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Meena, K. B., and Tyagi, V. (2019).  A Novel Method to Distinguish Photorealistic Computer Generatd Images from Photographic Images (online). Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8985711 [Accessed 25 April 2023]

Melki, H. (2019). An Investigation Into The Creative Processes In Generating Believable Photorealistic Film Characters (online). Available at: https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/78290411/Henry_Melki_Thesis.pdf [Accessed 25 April 2023]

Tate (2023). Photorealism (online). Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photorealism [Accessed 30 May 2023]

Wadmare, S. (2021). Recent Trends Visitation in VFX and SFX in the Animation World (online). Available at: http://ilkogretim-online.org/fulltext/218-1617213160.pdf?1682423818 [Accessed 25 April 2023]

Wainwright, L. S. (2019). Photo-realism. Encyclopedia Britannica (online). Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/Photo-realism[Accessed 30 May 2023]

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