These pictures are all from the coffee table book called "Chicken Little" by Monique Peterson. I feel sorry for Peterson because she had the thankless job of trying to put a positive spin on what appears to be a story of endless woe in the making of that recent film. I never worked on a 3-D film so I can only guess what it's like. If the book is right it couldn't be much fun. The programs are clunky and unresponsive and seldom do what the animators want them to do.
Maybe the strong suit of the 3-D programs is backgrounds and props but even there the results are mixed. The car (below) looks great but the theater (above) looks somewhat cold like something made out of a Leggo set. I can't imagine the cottage of the Seven Dwarves having any emotional impact in this style.
Everybody knows that computers are the future of animation but that future isn't here yet. Right now 3-D animation programs confine us to a style of literal, unimaginative drawing that dates back to 1910. Even the stories animation tells have to be crippled to fit the limits of the medium. How can that be considered an advance?
BTW, I just got Amid Amidi's book, "Cartoon Modern" and it looks great! I'll do a blog about it when I have a chance to read it!
I haven't watched this film (no desire to), but from what I have seen, the character designs aren't appealing to me. Chicken Little himself looks OK, but the secondary characters are ugly! I think a lot of these 3D animators execute their animations in more of a technical manner, and less of a cartoony one.
ReplyDeleteThere was a story posted on Cartoon Brew the other day (here) about a technique where an animator could use a mesh distortion type program to make characters less 'stiff' and more 'cartoony,' with the distortions specific to the camera angle. I thought it was interesting!
I feel unsettled about computer animation and I struggle trying to figure out what bothers me about it. One realization I had is animating on a computer doesn't improve my drawing skills. I'm never training my hand to do anything new, never drawing new poses or drawing anything for that matter. A lot of people in the computer animation industry usually say "fake it" and "cheat it" to explain how to create something. With drawing you can't fake much and you have to be very skilled. It's spontanieous too. With computers and their magical ability to undo, all spontinaiety just gets crushed. Some people I've met seemed to have faked their way into being credited as an artist in the computer animation industry. On my blog, I wrote a small theory on how to possibly spot them.
ReplyDeleteAbout the dwarf cottage: you're right, not in this style. But this style isn't all 3D can do. I believe I heard somewhere that back when they started to use 3D backgrounds in the 2D films (Tarzan), they created an almost perfect copy of the original cottage painting, only you could move around in it. Some shots in Tarzan (like the one where the camera pans over baby Tarzan's crib) are really impressive in how they look like real paintings.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why 3D films don't look like that is simply because those sets were actually digitally painted in 3D, while on characters, that would create distortions when animated. As a result they have to use shaders, and to create a unified style of the film (regardless of how much you like it), they have to do similar work on sets.
A little off topic here, sorry, but I just wanted to say "HEY, Uncle Eddie!", and that I'm glad you liked my caricature of you, but it's easy enough to do one if you write the words "Haw, Haw, Haw!" next to the drawing.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you Eddie, many thanks for the kind words!
My best to Mike F. if you see him!
Sde
That first picture may be the ugliest thing i've ever seen, and not ugly in a good way either.
ReplyDeletei've worked on a few characters for this that never made it to the film. it's a lot of work, you're right.
ReplyDeletei switched from animating to concept art because i wanted to get back to drawing.
great blog.
So what's with most CGI houses using a garish, full hued palette while Pixar chooses one that's too grayed-down on purpose? Maybe Pixar thinks everyone else's color is too much, which is true, but shooting everything or printing it through a gray fog isn't the answer, either. You're right, Uncle Eddie. The computer age really hasn't fully arrived just yet.
ReplyDeleteChicken Little wasn't a Pixar film, It was done by Disney animation to prove that it didn't need Pixar to make hit animated films. The result was that Disney ended up buying Pixar for $7 billion. They sure showed them, didn't they?
ReplyDeleteThe drawing of the car looks so much better than what came out on screen.
ReplyDeleteWhen the preliminary drawings are better than what ends up onscreen is like Don Juan leaving his best performance in his pants.
ReplyDeleteI have always detested that design for that girl duck, it's just so fucking weird.
ReplyDeleteComputer animation is fairly disgusting to me. Everything ends up looking like souless mannequins attempting to move like real creatures. If only there was a way to take the spontaneity of life that comes out of stop motion animaton and get that into 3D stuff. But then, why the hell would you want to do that when you can just make a stop motion film?
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is that 3D animation is too "perfect". There are no rough edges or jerky movements. Everything is mathematically connected to everything else. Imperfection is what makes things seem more real.
"It's meant to be weird looking.. she's the Ugly Duckling."
ReplyDeleteI think her design comes off as more of badly designed and weird then funny,I thought her ugliness was suppose to project humor. I also hate Chicken Little design's, too realistic and not cartoony enough.This is all just my opinion though.
Correction, having a weird design isn't bad but when it just looks badly constructed or un-inspired it is.
ReplyDeleteI think there’s always a level of faking it in bending something to give you what you want. Assuming you know what you want, getting it from a picture is a matter of pencil on paper. With 3d it is quite often the case that the rig will not be capable of hitting the pose desired, so an animator may not have the option to get what they want. Corrective deforms are good for that, camera, character, or world space, though it’s still another layer and can become like reaching past your elbow to scratch your arse.
ReplyDeleteMore so than 3d, it’s toon shaded 3d that I find jarring. There is not the same sympathy of an artist and craftsperson choosing where to draw a line and the quality of the line, where details fall, what to suggest and what to leave out, what to further distort. As opposed to a computer analyzing some geometry, which is often too rigid in the first place. What is the angle between this and this relative to camera? Is it more that x? Yes. Make black pixel. It’s cold analassit and for the most part produces unappealing resluts.
As long as I’m winding up for a rant I just as well keep going... There is also the barrier of an interface to your work with computers. You’re pressing buttons, pulling sliders, moving a mouse, or drawing on a tablet (not so bad on a cintiq) to see a change on a screen. There is not the physical contact or presence of what you are working on and with, you are a step further away from what you are doing which can be hard to bridge. Looking away to change something in front of you, something displayed, but not tactile.
There are also things you get standard with some mediums. Such as stop mo has a physical presence by default and you do not fight with the notion of it being there or not. You are taking pictures of something that is actually there, and have just beaten one of he biggest hurdles 3d has, looking like it in a real space. If you are drawing your animation, you are not judged on the motion of every strand of hair, let alone the interaction of the light on it. Suggestions of things are accepted.
3d suffers from what has been termed the “Uncanny Valley”, although used with reference to human facsimiles, I think it applies to our relation with anything. -The closer something gets to being real, the more disturbing it becomes until it is indistinguishable from reality, at which point it is accepted. With the car as reference, the drawing is an iconic representation of something solid, and judged as such, no question of being real, conscious or subconscious, if you made a model of it for stop mo, it’s a similar thing, no doubt as to it being an actual object or not.
Er I better shush now before I end up ranting about mo cap..