Simba's Fear

For this blog, I'll be discussing this scene from The Lion King.

The scene fades from Mufasa's death to Simba roaming through a cloud of dust, looking for his father. His every expression indicates fear. When he hears the lone wildebeast, he is suddenly hopeful for just a moment, then he sees his father's body and is sunk back into fear and sadness. He tries to wake his dead father, then cries out for help with tears in his eyes.

The magical thing about this scene is the degree to which it follows the old filmmaking adage of "show, don't tell". Simba says nothing to indicate that his father is dead, or that he's sad, or afraid. Instead, those emotions are animated into him. The work on Simba's eyes in this sequence is actually quite fascinating. He says an extrordinary amount with the way he moves his eyes and eyelids.

Simba is a scared little kid, and we can instantly relate to this without any statement from him on the matter. He shows his emotions, he doesn't have to tell anyone he's sad, anyone can see it. In fact, he doesn't tell anyone his feelings, besides Scar, and this ends up setting up the film's second act of repressed emotion.

Realistic Unicorns

What is a realistic unicorn? On the surface, it seems like a contradiction, after all, unicorns are not real, and can therefore never be realistic, but in the world of animation unicorns can still be depicted in a realistic way. How?

Well, let's go back a little and look at how animation allows things to NOT be realistic. The most obvious way is through anthropomorphic depictions of animals. Take, for example, Netflix's Bojack Horseman.

Bojack is a horse, except, he's not a horse. In-universe, he behaves as a human does, though with some minor horse-like actions. In the Bojack universe, as well as in Mickey Mouse or Winnie The Pooh, animalhood is more of a ethnic identification than one of species. Mickey Mouse speaks in a high-pitched voice, Pooh Bear loves honey, Bojack's rival, a dog named Mr. Peanutbutter, hoards tennis balls and chases the mailman, but otherwise lives the life of any Hollywood has-been.

These characters, despite being animals, are realistic as humans. Perhaps, Disney's notion of the fantastic applies here, and the characters are made as fantastic humans with animal heads. Mr. Peanutbutter is certainly a caricature of a golden retriever, but his human-like tendencies are clearly based in the reality of a human.

So what if we want to animate a unicorn? We can't rotoscope a real unicorn, because there are no real unicorns. So what do we do? We rotoscope horses.  Suddenly, we have a creature that runs the way our mind wants unicorns to run. Then the audience gets to praise our film for it's realistic unicorns.

Principles Of Animation

This material is a bit dry, but ultimately useful. For my example, I will be using "It's A Wonderful Day For Pie", A Family Guy song animated in the style of Disney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlk36vgygh4 

12 Principles Of Animation

1. Squash and Stretch – animated objects should change shape as they move, but retain volume, in order to look interesting to the viewer.

In the Family Guy clip, the way Peter's body stretches as he floats down from his flight to the pie as the song begins.

2. Anticipation – The pull back before motion in a living character.

Before the song begins, Lois's arms move toward her chest with the pie before they move toward the camera.

3. Staging – Where things go in a shot for best effect.

The way, throughout the song, that nothing enters the frame until it's ready to be the active element.

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose To Pose – animating from start to finish vs. animating with key frames. 

This was clearly done with Pose to Pose, as certain shots are clearly composed as stills, then animated, as well as the fact that Family Guy is always animated Pose to Pose, as they draw the keyframes, then send those to South Korea for inbetweens.

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action – the whole body doesn’t stop or start at once.

The way the Bird/Quagmire moves his head before the rest of his body when beginning to fly is an example of this.

6. Slow In and Slow Out – the timing of in-betweens for satisfactory motion.

Motion in this whole sequence has slower in-betweens than most Family Guy episodes.

7. Arcs – living things move fluidly, not like the robot dance.

In the whole sequence, everyone is constantly moving in wide circles.

8. Secondary Action – Minor business of a character, not to upstage primary action.

The way characters move their hands while speaking in this video.

9. Timing – the number of drawings taken to show an action.

When Lois spins over to Teakettle/Joe, her spin is only really animated for 4 or so frames, as it happens very fast.

10. Exaggeration – Show the most emotionally effective version of an emotion or action.

The way they use facial expressions on all the characters to show contempt when Mort the Jew comes to the door is very exaggerated in a very Disney way.

11. Solid Drawing – One must be able to make good drawings to begin with in order to animate.

The whole of the scene is essentially a sequence of moving paintings of very high quality. Very solid.

12. Appeal – Creating images which a viewer wants to see, that stimulate the viewer’s imagination.

The image never stays the same for more than a few seconds, keeping the audience interested.

Fred’s 14 Points Of Animation

1. Appeal in Drawing – Essentially the same as Principle 12.

2. Staging – Essentially the same as Principle 3.

3. Most interesting way? - Essentially the same as Principle 12.

4. Most entertaining way? - Essentially the same as Principle 12.

5. Are you in character? - Does this character seem like he would do what you are making him do?

6. Are you advancing the character? – Does this contribute to the characterization?

7. Is this the simplest statement of the main idea of the scene? – Could this be done in a more efficient way for the audience to understand?

8. Is the story point clear? – Does this tell the story effectively?

9. Are the secondary actions working with the main action? - Essentially the same as Principle 8.

10. Is the presentation best for the medium? – Does this serve animation well?

11. Does it have 2 dimensional clarity? – Can the subject of the shot be understood alone?

12. Does it have 3 dimensional solidity? – Does the subject fit with the backdrop?

13. Does it have 4 dimensional drawing? – Does the subject move properly in time?

14. Are you trying to do something that shouldn’t be attempted? – Does the shot make sense?

Must Animation Represent?

In my previous post, I discussed the idea of animation as being the medium freest from obligation to representation. The question this raises, of course, is if this is a good trait for animators to take full advantage of when creating their films. Does a realistic depiction of realistic events have a value over the caricature, or does exaggeration and simplification lend the work a greater deal of relatability and unique charm?

The answer is up to the audience, and to a lesser extent, the animator. Making realistic animation can be good in certain audience targets. If you’re animating something like Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars, realism would be preferred, so long as the animation does not fall into the uncanny valley (Lucas opted to go the opposite way on both of these, creating a caricature that still manages to hit the uncanny valley). If you’re animating something a little more abstract, or perhaps a character you want the audience to relate to easily, a blank slate caricature, like the simplicity of Andy in Toy Story, who looks like every ten year old boy ever, is a good fit.



If we seek to examine how animation relates to reality on the spectrum of realism vs caricature, perhaps it’s a good idea to begin with animation that’s been inserted into largely live-action films. Here’s the judge from The Wall’s trial sequence:


This is an extraordinary amount of caricature in a single image. The judge is so much in caricature that his personality as an “asshole” takes over the entire body of his character. This is extremely refreshing in a film that mostly consists of images of Bob Geldof crying, and ultimately, the animation in the trial sequence is what makes the movie watchable a second time. A realistic depiction of the characters at the trial would have been perhaps the single worst decision to make on this film, as the sequence stands above all others in the film for its brilliant use of caricature as a method of attention-getting.



Here’s the classic puppet vs animation comparison shot of Yoda from Star Wars Episode I. 

On the left is the classic Frank Oz puppet from The Empire Strikes Back, as he appeared in the theatrical cut of The Phantom Menace. On the right is the 3d animated Yoda used in the DVD release. In this particular situation, we notice immediately that the puppet looks like a puppet, while the animated Yoda looks a bit more alive, particularly in motion. In this situation, realism was looked for in animation, because the puppet version looked laughably dead in the well-lit shots of The Phantom Menace, which was not a problem in the dark swamps of “Empire”. By animating to realism, they were able to make Yoda’s motions during his surprisingly coherent speeches look more real than they ever did through puppetry. In this film, suspension of disbelief was a rare resource, and every animated Yoda they could use would improve the film’s charm.

Animation as a Communicative Tool

The word “creativity” seems to imply total creation of all elements of the product. Is this truly the case? Musicians seldom invent new notes. Authors seldom create new languages. Photographers are seldom able to completely shape the world that they wish to capture. They must all go through a communicative middle man to be able to effect the audience. If a musician did create a new note, perhaps by finding an out of tune frequency and playing it as if it were correct, it would have to be amongst known notes and rhythms to be effective as music. If an author creates a new language, such as Klingon or Tolkien’s Elvish, they must include translations in order to effectively communicate. A photographer would have a hard time creating a landscape that was fully created and not merely representational, unless they began to make scale models, unfortunately camera focus and water flow do not scale well, so this could cause problems with communication of the mind’s ideal landscape.

Drawing (which I will use to include any method of laborious fabrication of a single image, including painting, photo manipulation, and sculpture), though it uses tools, is essentially raw visual data that can create things that are completely non-representational. This, of course, has its downsides, as drawing creates a single moment without dimension or sound, it represents only that single moment of pure creation, satisfying our sense of sight. Animation allows for drawings to also tap into our sense of time in a nonrepresentational sense, and our sense of hearing in a pseudo-representational sense (that is to say, the sounds are made from existing sounds, but the signifier does not always match the signified, such as a human voice sound representing a cat’s meow). It’s fair to say that animation is the only medium that allows for this incredible range of nonrepresentational development. Film, without animation’s assistance, could not, for example, create any large, non-real monster, without either animation or puppetry, and unfortunately, Dragon-sized puppets come at a hefty cost.

Wrapping up 4 Inches + Concerns on Distribution

As of the time that I write this post, production has finished on 4 Inches of Danny Jefferson. The first film shoot took place on February 7th, 2015, and the final shots were taken on March 7th, 2015. In the span of the month, there were four shooting days, February 7, 24, 25, and March 7. Over 30 gigabytes of h.264 footage was shot with a Canon t3i camera on it's stock lens with custom Magic Lantern firmware to allow for live audio monitoring, paired with a shotgun mic on it's own tripod. Most of the footage has been processed and color corrected in Premiere Pro CS6, with only scene 8 remaining for editing before the film gets a final audio cleanup and is ready for a final render.

Remaining in the main part of the project is the production of a press-kit, as well as the creation of a deliverable film file and DVD. I am currently considering a few options for distribution. The three contenders are:

Free Streaming - The obvious options here are YouTube and Vimeo. While this has it's perks, there is so much content of quality on these sites that it's very easy for things to get lost in the shuffle if they aren't aggressively promoted. This is good for the audience, but not great for the creator.

Free/Premium Download - I'm very curious as to the specifics of a program like BitTorrent Bundle - where audiences can get into a project with a certain amount of material for free, then pay a small fee for a larger amount of material + extras. This is both audience and creator friendly, and the competition is sparse. Premium download for indies is also available from GOG.com, though it seems they may be more selective than BitTorrent Bundle.

VOD/DVD - Thanks to CreateSpace's Amazon ownership, getting put on DVD or Amazon Instant Video is so incredibly simple that it might as well be the same as YouTube. This comes with the added bonus of IMDB crediting, but ultimately that is little more than a piece of resume flair that doesn't impress many people in the film industry. This isn't good for the creator of the media because it's just as hard to find your media as YouTube, and the audience isn't going to be willing to pay for unproven film.

Ultimately, I'm concerned about self-promotion, and I feel that a unique method of distribution, such as BitTorrent, is more likely to draw attention than yet another indie short on YouTube.