Nira's VFX Blog
A journey through my master

Tag: Research

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FMP Thesis

Week 6 & 7: Further Research, & 1-to-1 Session

In these two weeks I have focused on structuring my thesis points and doing further research to find the answer to the questions and sub-questions about my topic. I also had my 1-to-1 tutorial with Nigel.

1-to-1 session

Before this session, I prepared the below form with some questions about my thesis proposal to discuss it with the professor.

Framework-to-consider-in-developing-proposalDownload

The feedback I received from Nigel was that I had to extend my bibliography and to find more contemporary sources. Also, he said that I should focus more in the peer reviewed papers or case studies already made by other authors, and do not make a survey myself (considering that it would be time consuming, and its would be hard to acquire opinions from professionals of the industry). He also said that I could focus on the ‘uncanny valley’ that exist around photorealism instead of trying to cover every aspect of this topic. I could also take some movies as references and depart from that.

Further research and thesis proposal structure

Doing some further research to expand my sources, I found a book called The Complete Guide to Photorealism for Visual Effects, Visualization and Games: For Visual Effects, Visualization and Games by Eran Dinur. This book provides detailed explanations of the differences between the view through our eyes and the view through a camera lens, the uncanny valley, and the imperfections of reality. It also talks about the challenges that visual effects have faced with photorealism in filmmaking as well as some more technical aspects of how to achieve a photorealistic look. Lastly, it also mentions briefly how photorealism is likely going to evolute with the emerging of new technologies and new techniques. This book is going to help me understand the technicalities of photorealism and why is so easy to get stuck in the uncanny valley with this style.

I also made a new structure of my thesis taking in consideration the new approach I want to focus on which is the photorealism struggles regarding the uncanny valley and the solutions that the industry has come up to deal with it. I also started to link my sources that could answer those questions and to start with the literature review next week.

Main question – Will photorealism continue to be the leader in the film industry in the future against traditional visual effects and 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?
  1. How is photorealism used in filmmaking nowadays and important is it?
    • Importance of photorealistic VFX to replace dangerous live action scenes. (Maio, 2021; 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)
    • Has the audience become more used to photorealism, therefore, more exigent about it? (Failes, 2021)
    • Is photorealism considered emotionless?
    • At what point photorealism starts to become surrealism?
    • Non-photorealism in filmmaking to foreground the work of digital effects artists. (Jeng, 2023)
    • 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)

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 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 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?