New media

What is new media these days? its always changing, the front of what is new is differnt one year then it is anouther. Animation is now one of the fastest moving medias around in the speed it has developed, and is still developing, we are constantly making games better, graphics better, vfx better. Pushing the artist more with technology, and pushing technology more from the artist. Graphics is one way to show how much the industry is progressing but there is also anouther way. Over the past year there has been a large leap that has lead to well used job role. "sterographer" this person takes care of all that new 3D that u see in every single animated film at the cinema these days. Its become a real hit and has baught 3d back to the cinema in a real big way. James camerons avatar was the first to me to use 3d in such a compelling way with the vfx just jumping out at u but not in a unnessisary or gimmik kind of way. 3D should only be used when it is able to given the audeince somthing more then just 2 hours of looking like a geek and a couple of cheap thrills as somthing pops out towards you. It should be used for when the created world is so rich and well populated adding this new dimension only helps to show that and immerses you within the film.

Anouther recent development is motion capture, although it has really been a while for a long time (in animation standards is about 10 years) it has only just become useable in films. Motion capture can come in many differnt shapes and sizes, from mechincal suits, too rooms with funny looking lights and a guy standing in the middle with green dots on his face, too no green dots at all, just a man talking into a camera. Motion capture replicates the animtion of a person trying to get it as real as possible, so trying to capture every tiny little movement then if given to an animator would take weeks and weeks of work. This how ever is certainly not the be all and end all for animators, they will not start loosing there job because of this. Motion capture is still not acurate enough to get to the other side of uncanny valley, although close and a great tool for speeding production up, character animators everywhere do not have to worry about loosing their jobs to a computer.

But hasnt that feeling of animators loosing there jobs to a computer been felt before anyway? after all 2d animation had a boom and then disapeared after computer animation took hold. Animators everywhere feared they would loose there job but it was infact their skills that were needed to produce a nice looking beivable and appealing animation. Because of there artistic skill and well grounding in the rules of animation they were increadbily vauble to the progress of the computer animated industry. After all a computer can never replace a human being. so yes looking at the past we can see that eventually there will be a large change in which jobs may look as if they are at threat. But until the computer can calculate creativity it can never replace the human artistic hand.

Structuralism

Structuralism and binary oposits are defintaly rules that should be understood when trying to develop any story. These are some of the basics of story telling that can lay the foundation to a good directors style and film. Binteray oposits are easy to stop, characters that are completely on a good side and the evil bad guy whos on the dark side. But nothing is quite as simple as it seems, there is always a bit inbtween, no matter how much of easy way it is to catagorise one character on one side and the other on the oposite side. The rule of complete opostits is meant to be broken, a character who is good, but has a short temper or has had a bad background or up bringing is much more apealing to an auidence then a goody two shoes with who does nothing but right all the time. Batman for example is a great anti hero, a hero that does not always do things by the book and has more human (bit in the middle) characteristics. This makes characters much more interesting and the story line can then deepen into the characters differnt attributes and merits. As for a villian with heroic and good characteristics think of "Darth Vader" a baddy that lasted so long being only known as a villian when all of a sudden a secret past is revield and the character starts to show some caring and heroic quilities. These can make for amazing plot twists and really add to the story of an animation.

Intertextuality

Soooo, long word, again frightened me at first but this will actually be what my essay is about by the looks of things. Its actually quite simple, intertextuallity is basically one piece of media referencing another, or even an unconscious and un intended reference in the audeinces' mind. These reffernces happen all the time and before know i never had a second thought about them, just that sometimes they could be a cool little quirk in films, but never that this form of thinking often happens on a day to day basis. In fact you could say its how the mind works.

But anyway, back to pixar :) now they DO use this methord of adding a little bit of spice into there films. Just for the fans like me to pick up on and look out for. These are often refferd to as easter eggs, but this term is actually just a name for a well used method by directors in there films to put little secrets that most of the audeince will not pick up on but those keen eyed or those in the know may see it and get a smug feeling (which is basicaly its main purpose, to feel smug) as its a good feeling and any good feeling from a movie helps that movie to apeall to you. So how do pixar use intertexual reffernces to their films? well by puting nearly every character in every other film (ok bit of an exaduration, but they do, do it ALOT!). Mostly from previus films so those fans who have watched the prevois film may see the old piza delivery truck drive by the streets of paris (toystory - rattotuil) or a little girl play with lots of toys in her room including a famous orange fish (monsters inc - finding nemo). Infact they use this so much that i believe they have found a way of using intertexualty as a commercail purpose not just to enhance the apeal of a film, but to advertise more of their own features.

Semiotics

So today's lecture was on Semiotics. At first the subject sounded very complicated, but it is in fact the study of how we see things and recognise things. Graphic design would study this quite a bit, as they need to produce symbols that's are simplistic as possible but portray a meaning as quick as possible to the viewer. Semiotics is really used in everything we see, the director is constantly trying to give the audience a message. But this does not mean that the audience will always receive or perceive that specific message. That is the interesting thing with semiotics it is never a certainty to how people will see something pick up on that, the director can never control what a person feels in a film, only what they see in front of them, how this effects them is entirely dependent on the individual.

Semiotics can also be split into two groups of images. Iconic and arbitrary, iconic is more realistic, it is like a photo of what it is trying to symbolise and makes it less likely to be mistaken as something else, or does it? Arbitrary is something of much less detail but focuses on the main characteristics we might associate with that symbolic meaning, so perhaps we would recognise this quicker.

This to me also feels like it relates to the realism lecture i had last week. Showing how we do not need to have a high detailed, high poly, mega graphics accelerated character to see exactly what that character is about, after all back in the old school Disney animations characters where much more simplistic then as they are now and we still watch them today. It makes me wonder if we will still be watching final fantasy, beo-wolf, or any other graphics selling feature film in 20 years time, i doubt it.

Realism, are we obsessed?

first off i would probably have to say yes straight away, especially in the way of animation and games. Games technology is in a constant race for "better graphics" this usually means the closest it get possibly get to realism. To me it has shortened the amount of original and individual games that are out there, it is the games that really take there artistic direction that appeal to me. Games like COD and battlefield and medal of honor are all first person shooters that hugely realise on using the latest engine to make it as realistic as possible, as well as other types of genres like racing games such as Grand tourismo, this game does not appeal to me at all, it is a true example of being obsessed with realism there is not an inch of this game where developers haven't tweaked to make it more realistic, it goes beyond graphics (although they are constantly being up dated) the cars are all real cars that have been modeled from the blue prints and the driving of each car is different depending on the real internal parts. It is games that come out to strike a different look that really impress me, and i think they can become a massive hit as well, it has been proven, but yet still all these games are from much smaller company's with much smaller budgets and usually end up being eaten up after they have produced this game that steps away from the realism race.

Games like little big planet, mirrors edge, and shadow of the colossus. These games have truly create art direction and to me, feel much more creative.



Rough magic

So i realised i should be talking more about what i thought about the lectures. Well that first lecture was actually quite inspiring, it was eye opening to see that art and technology both came from the same word, skill. The fact that both of these things are just skills that can be enhanced and learnt. I person can learn to draw just as they can learn to fix a computer, sure one may take longer then the other but it is still a skill that requires dedication and patience, this is very good for me as at the moment i feel that i am more technically proficient but my basic art skills are lacking.

It struck me that yes we are all magicians in a way or illusionists, my job as a character animator is to make the audience feel like a bunch of pixels is alive, or maybe some sheets of paper are alive, either way, i have to fool the audience into believing in this character (they don't have to think its real or that it exists) but to WANT to follow that character and learn about its characteristics and personality, and learn about the story this bunch of pixels is going to imitate. Looking at it that way its kind of crazy, i mean we all pay £6 (dam odeon) to go watch lots of tiny lights, and wen u put them together we think they have emotion and feeling, heck sometimes we get scared by these lights, or feel so sorry for them we cry (never watch Bambi in front of your girlfriend, unless your going for the caring sorta guy of course). So it must truly take a heavy amount of skill from both the technical and artistic sides to create this effect and power.

But of course its the merge of these two skills that has set new boundaries for what has been created in the world of media, and more specifically animation. It wasn't that long ago that to create a 3d animated movie you had to stare at a bunch of coding and nothing more, typing numbers and random letters that apparently made sense, and in the end make something looks pretty, this was the case for tron the first feature film to have 3d computer animation, it came out in 1982 and the first time the developers got to look at it was after it was all rendered, as before then, it was all just messy code. This film however at the time did not receive too well by the general public and did not make the large bang it had hoped for.

But soon after came technological advancements to the world of 3d animation. Lucas film (the production how soon to be behind star wars) was very keen to push it further and further, eventually they were able to see what they were doing there a viewport, now by this point this technology was just crying out for an artists guidance. This is where John Lasseter stepped in (yeah i love Pixar) he joined the developers and created his first 3d animated short. When the short was shown a Siggraph (the largest computer imaging and graphics festival in the world) it shocked the audience and caused a huge amount of hype, before this all that had been shown was very basic tech shots and tests, no one had put a narrative behind it like he did. John Lassater was previously a 2d animator trained by the experience of Disney, so when lots of people came up to him asking him what program he had used they were asking the wrong question. It was not the program it was his artistic ability and the ability to work with those with technological skills in harmony. The addition of artistic animation and good story telling made a huge difference and is still obvious today if you see the animations done by pixar.

I watched the Pixar story that tells you all about how they became to be, and the gathering of artists to the new medium and John Lasseter says in this "From the beginning, I kept saying it's not the technology that's going to entertain audiences, it's the story. When you go and see a really great live-action film, you don't walk out and say 'that new Panavision camera was staggering, it made the film so good'. The computer is a tool, and it's in the service of the story"

First thoughts on MHC

Finaly started my first blog :D hello internet!

So at the moment im still stugling to figure out what question i want to answer for the MHC breif, i have narrowed it down to 3 questions out of the six which isnt to bad but they all seem pretty interesting and dont want to miss out on a favourite.

so my 3 questions are:

Does an obsession with the attainment of ‘realism’ limit our sense of what contemporary digital animation might do? (this was an early favourite)

What is intertextuality and can it help us to understand the constant appeal and popularity of animation? (I'm not going to lie, I dont entirly understand the meaning of intertextuality, but im very keen on finding out any more factors that enhance appeal and populatity of animation)

What is the relationship between 'originality' and 'repetition' in the context of genre production? (Shreck and the rest of Dreamworks instantly springs to mind when i read this, although this is only properly coverd in the very last lecture and although they say they will put things on studynet to help research i still feel it could set me at a little dis advantage)


Actually just looking back at what i said, it looks like i might be leaning slightly towards the first one, but i want to wait and see some of the questions in the coming lectures to see what exactly they are looking for. For now i think general research and a look at my new dvd of pixar shorts specifically john lasseter's early work would be a great start and an awsome way to spend this quiter weekend.