The Most Important Aspect Of Animation Is...

Motion!

Okay, that's a cop out. Saying the most important part of animation is motion is like saying that the most important part of a TV is the screen. Animation IS motion, so motion is the most important part for a good reason - once motion ceases, it is no longer animation. Motion could also be thought of as the activation of time in a visual medium.

But motion comes in 4 flavors.

1. Actor/Object - Balls bouncing, Mickey running, Gumby doing a big stretch, things that activate time in the 3rd person (effecting the characters) visual sense.

2. Camera - Sweeps and pans, things that activate time in a first person (affecting the viewer) visual sense.

3. Sound - BANG!, "Hello, I'm Artemis!", or even CRASH!, things that activate time in a third person aural sense.

4. Incidental Music - Probably the William Tell Overture, things that activate time in a first person aural sense.

I would argue that, unless at least two of these types of motion is happening, you do not have an interesting animation, while unless at least one is happening, you cease to have animation at all, and revert to still visual art, as in photography or painting.

So, being that motion is the essence of animation, and the only thing that, when removed, also removes the notion of animation, it's pretty hard to argue against it's importance.

How Pixar proved Detheux wrong in five minutes of Up.

Detheux accused Disney of being bland, predictable, and tasteless. Detheux views films like The Lion King as what Kurt Cobain might call "Radio Friendly Unit Shifters". When the essay was written, of course, it was absolutely correct.

But then something incredible happened. Pixar made a five minute short film without a single line of dialogue or sound effect, and it told an incredible story with nothing but moving images and a little music. Then they delivered it to the world wrapped in a 2 hour adventure film about a rare bird. I'm talking, of course, about the "Married Life" sequence of Up.

Subtlety? This piece is  loaded with subtlety. Detheux accused Disney of "whispering the plot into our ears", and at no point does this do that. Of course, this is actually following a set of rules in itself, established by Pixar when they first started out:

No songs
No “I want” moments
No happy village
No love story
No villain

Up breaks two of those rules in the course of it's run, as it does tell a love story in those 5 minutes, and it does have a villain in it's final scenes, but the essential idea behind Pixar's rules is to stop telling fairy tales, folklore, and fables. Usually where Pixar falter's is the "no villains" rule, though most of the villains act only in ways that are justified by the story. Randall in Monster's Inc is more concerned with the energy crisis than with humans, Sid in Toy Story is more concerned with how cool explosions look (very) than with the possibility that toys are sentient. All Pixar villains act in ways that are justifiable. They are not pure evil. This gives their stories complexity and depth, which is, I think, something that Detheux is accusing Disney of lacking.

Incidentally, Brave is based on folklore, but still manages to follow all the rules, perhaps in this case it was a matter of choosing a more diverse source material.

The Plato's Cave of Animation

I think, when we look at what Detheux is saying in "Prozac or Kyosaku", that is, that we should question the established modes of aesthetics, we must consider the question first outside of animation, as it applies to the general ideas of the human mind. If we are to question the authority of aesthetic, we must understand that aesthetic is here to serve our minds.

All western, and most modern eastern music, serves the same aesthetic rule, Pythagorean tuning. I'm not an expert in music theory, but the basic idea is that before Pythagoras, it was hard to write down music. This isn't because notation didn't exist, it is because the idea of a set pitch representing a note was completely unheard of. Things were just done to what sounded good. Pythagoras came up with the idea that notes should be evenly spaced frequencies of sound waves. The problem was that this wasn't the way it always had been, so music was slightly off from the natural place of the notes, as our ears hear them, but over time, our ears got used to Pythagorean tuning, and now all music rests on this principle.

In Plato's Cave, we get a pretty good idea of why new ways of seeing are so hard to give onto others. If you're not familiar with Plato's Cave, here's a pretty good animated version:

So, to relate that to animation as a mode of communication, let's consider the elements of Plato's Cave as they relate to our perception of Disney. We are all blindingly used to two forms of animation, Disney and Warner Brothers's exaggeration, and the broader field of representation, which includes Claymation,Special Effects CGI, and, to an extent, animatronics. Representation works because it's real to us. Gumby lacks most of the big principles of animation that mandate movement, but we still believe Gumby because it is representative of something. Disney exaggerates because it's two dimensionality is not real to us, and it gains credibility through exaggeration. These styles are all we ever know in animation, and the idea of anything else is impossible in our brains. But if we did find something different, it would be impossible to describe it to others. To completely divorce ourselves from Mickey and Gumby, we would have to first throw out all the rules. Then we could try to find new ways of perceiving movement.  Perhaps we could play upon our persistence of vision? What would happen if some happy modernist made an animated film at 5 frames per second? Wouldn't the strobe-like animation be enough to be different? Except that won't work, because there isn't an audience for strobe lights with pictures. In order to play on our perception of motion, perhaps we should look at making animation at 60 frames per second?  Here is an example of the effect of frame rate on animation, and even from a simple animation, we see a major difference, what if subversion is as easy as making our animations more fluid?

This isn't quite what Detheux was going for though. Simple changes like this are post-modern, and I think what is desired is a more modernist rejection of all things Disney. As with the modernist art movement, rejecting one thing (western art, Disney) just gives us more of something else that already exists (African art, Gumby).

Bad Cartoons

In chapter 14 of Illusion Of Life, it is said that "A good story cannot be ruined by poor animation, but neither can a poor story be saved by the very best animation". I wanted to find examples of each and see how much this statement holds up.

For a good story with poor animation, let us consider the Soviet version of Winnie the Pooh.

I must be clear, I am not saying that "Winnie Pooh" is an outright bad animation. The way the characters move is delightful, the issue of the animation is that, rather than going for the look of an airbrushed story book, like Disney's version, they went with the look of a child's drawings. Because of this, the camera movements seem like a cheap way to fill space, rather than an interesting shift in image. By not trying to emulate the multi-plane camera, they sold their abilities short, but did not harm the story. The story is still just as interesting as Disney's Pooh, so long as we hold our attention during some of the less interesting animation spots.

For a poor story with good animation, let us consider... It actually pains me to do this, because it's still one of my favorite films, but Disney's Dinosaur.

So, the story of Disney's Dinosaur is that they took the same basic dinosaur migration story of the smash hit Land Before Time, and ruined it. In Land Before Time, we want the dinosaurs to survive so that they can see their families again. In Dinosaur, we want them to survive... so they can die later? These are dinosaurs. We know they all die, and if the meteors have started coming and extinction is already started, then watching them struggle for 2 hours to live another month is less a plot of a family movie and more of a Dinosaur hospice. There's no winners in this movie, even if the dinosaurs survive, except maybe the monkeys, who get to evolve into humans and warn their descendants that even though it's one of the most visually stunning films ever, it's really not worth watching more than once for the plot.

The Cutest Common Denominator

Big Hero 6 was, in the 90s, a comic book about some former X-Men members teaming with some new heroes to fight crime in Japan. The plots were as complicated as anything else that came out of that era of comic books, and the bigger tie-ins to the Marvel universe are not exactly super family friendly. Silver Samurai, one of the original team members from the comic, was, at one point, a Daredevil villain. Daredevil being one of Marvel's most violent comics, this would not be a good association for a children's movie.

So, when the time came for Disney and Marvel to make the film version of Big Hero 6, what did they do? They cut all reference to the X-Men, partially for legal reasons with Fox's X-Men series, but still to the benefit of the lowest common denominator. Then they changed the characters of Hiro and Baymax.

In the comic, Hiro built Baymax himself, then, somehow, Baymax's internal memory absorbed the brain of Hiro's dead father. Baymax was built to be a shapeshifter, allowing him to transform, Gundam style, into a few forms, from humanoid male to dragon monster.

In the film? Well, the comic was a little thick for most people, so they made it simpler. Baymax was the invention of Hiro's genius brother, and didn't have any hard-to-understand shapeshifting abilities, but rather had a suit of armor.

But the connection to Hiro's brother gives the film a lot more heart than the comic. Hiro has to deal with his brother's death, and deal with Baymax as an extension of his brother. Having Baymax absorb his father's brain allows Hiro to see death undone. Growing to deal with his brother's memory is a much more heart-warming experience for the audience, to the point where the dumbed down mass appeal film is unarguably a better story than the comic.

Cultural Events: becoming: Hillary Erin Russell at Gallery 924.

On April 3rd, in Indianapolis, Indiana, I attended the opening of the very first solo art show of Hillary Erin Russell, "becoming". I've been following Hillary's art for about eight years, since she was first starting out as a Photography major at Shepherd. Her art (or HER's art, if you like funny acronyms) covers many of the walls of my house. Hillary, incidentally, is my sister.

Her art deals with pornography, and how it's images can relate to her own feelings, as well as her own personal stories. One of the most striking pieces is a folding table we had bought for her on clearance at Target. In it, she has carved the names of every girl she had a crush on, growing up in the closet in West Virginia. Her art touches a lot on her experience as a lesbian, and it happened that her show was scheduled for the weekend after that law was passed in Indiana allowing for discrimination against gay people by local businesses.

I think that her art was the perfect amount of provocative at the perfect time to really  effect culture. She was featured in several local publications, including Indianapolis's biggest gay newsletter. Her opening was packed, and it seemed to garner a really positive response. I think that going out and exhibiting art that deals with lesbian issues, in one piece she used photos from OKCupid and gold-star stickers to obscure faces of the women she met, is very important to create understanding of the struggle of lesbians.

Cultural Events - Natural History Museum

On March 14th, I also visited the Natural History Museum on the DC mall. The main reason for attending this museum was the current exhibit on Indian-American culture, showcasing the struggle of Indian immigrants to be successful in America. Featured was a large wall of famous Indian Americans, including M Night Shyamalan, and Mindy Kaling. At the end of the wall was a sign that said "email us if we missed any Indian American trailblazers". I noted to my girlfriend that Aziz Ansari was conspicuously absent from the wall. She pointed out that it was a wall of Indian American firsts, and we couldn't think of anything he was the first to do.

The exhibit also showed many cultural artifacts and religious symbols, as well as contemporary Indian American art. I thought it was very important to see art so closely linked to another culture, but still coming out of an American locale. The culture of Bollywood and of Indian Americans was on show, and as weird as it is that they placed it in the Natural History Museum, particularly with the American History Museum half empty, it was a great show of culture.

Cultural Events: American History Museum

On March 14th, I was in Washington, DC on the mall. I went, with high hopes and childhood memories, to the American History Museum. My hopes were satisfied, my memories were less so. Many of the long-standing exhibits, including the ones that covered the history of television and film, from Seinfeld's puffy shirt and Dorothy's red slippers to Oscar the Grouch's trash can, were under construction, and in their stead was a much smaller version of the same exhibit, lumping cultural artifacts from the colonial era just 20 feet away from Tony Hawk's skateboard and an old Apple II.

Regardless, the cultural importance of the items on display was great. There was a large exhibit about wartime America, which helped to connect me to the time of my grandmother's youth, as well as an exhibit on food culture in america, covering everything from the first drive-thrus to Julia Child's kitchen, remade in the museum's space. There was a large exhiibit on Edison's light bulbs, and on the invention of the Internal Combustion Engine, prompting me to give my girlfriend a long-winded explanation of why we need internal combustion engines powered by hydrogen, and how global  warming wouldn't have happened if the Hindenburg never crashed...

Being in this muesum made me feel like the "American" identifier meant a little more than I'd previously felt. It was also pretty funny to see the exhibit on First Ladies, clearly written before the 2008 election, juxtapose the question "Who will be the First Lady to the first female president?" next to a photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Cultural Events - Quilt Exhibit at Scarborough Library

On March 11th, I went into the Scarborough Library to see what the "Quilt Exhibit" that had been run on our calendars all semester was. I was surprised to find, after looking at all the quilts, that they were all made by the same woman, Phyllis Nichols Rowe, when I picked up the program. I was also confused by the date listed on the program indicating that the event should have ended months ago, but that's alright.

I never understood quilts. I've been perpetually confused by what the meeting point between art and blanket is, and why anyone ever thought to make such a thing anyway, but then I remembered that I own 4 different zebra-print blankets, and figured that's probably weird to someone who likes their blankets in basic beige. Quilts, I suppose, must be a fashion, but one that comes from a cultural background that I don't really understand. I respect, however, the artistry and effort that goes into a quilt. I don't think I would be able to machine-sew a quilt, much less hand-sew and embroider a story into each panel.

So I suppose the great value in this exhibit is helping to explain the artistry and  culture behind quilting to people like me who are completely ignorant of the form.

Cultural Events - March 7th - Laurel Art Guild 46th Annual Juried Open Exhibition

On March 7th, I attended the opening of the Laurel Art Guild 46th Annual Juried Open Exhibition at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, Maryland. The program celebrated local artists in the Prince George’s County and Montgomery County area. Many great works of art were on display, primarily photographs, paintings, and drawings, alongside a small handful of digital art and mixed media. The event was attended by most of the artists featured. It was interesting to see so many people able to walk up to the artists and ask questions.

I felt this event was culturally important because local art events show the world that the gallery is not a place of elitism. Anyone can be a great artist and have a chance, and open events such as this one show that off in a beautiful way. There was no notion of superiority at this event. The curator walked the room the same way that the attending audience did, the same way that the artists did. A small handful of children were playing in the hall, and rather than scream or get upset, as one might expect from an art gallery curator, he was entirely gracious and forgiving, understanding that contemporary art is not always a child’s greatest interest.

I think that the world of art as a place of acceptance, rather than elitism, is what makes an event like this truly special and important. I hope that future art events I visit have a similar attitude.