Time for another post.
For those you are not in the know... check out the other blogs attached to my right column here... specifically Yet Another Writer's Blog, which is made by my brother. I point this one out for 2 reasons. First, he is my brother.. and he just had a baby!! YAY, I'm an uncle, he's a dad, and the pressure is off me to have a kid :P. Second, and more related to the topic of this blog, he has recently been writing about.. well.. writing. Specifically, writing in comics. He has talked about DC and the DC universe, about Comics in general, and has some good books listed on his site. Check them out. If you are interested in learning to draw your own comics, use both his and my blogs to get both aspects of comics, the writing and the drawing.
Now... to talk about this last week. I made the "mistake" to be social last weekend with some new friends. I met with a fellow cast member (by that, I mean employee of Disney, the Disney Store in our cases), and we went to the GA Renn Faire. I posted some pictures I took on their facebook page, so take a look! I planned to get a lot of homework done before, and spend one night working on homework after. Well... that plan didn't exactly work as planned. I got tons done before, but I didn't get as far as I wanted to. Then, another project I thought would take maybe 2 or 3 hours took about 8 to finish. SO in the end, I went 2 nights in a row with no sleep, and one of my projects suffered from it. My bad.
However, do not fret. I have been getting Bs and As in all my classes so far. The project that suffered from my lack of time and sleep was my drawing of perceptive. We were to draw a 2 point perceptive of a hallway on the floor of our classroom, and insert 3D words in the space that described us. I chose the word "TALL" and drew my perspective close to the ground looking up, in an attempt to make the letter look like they came straight out of the 2001 movie. I think I did very well on this. I spent a long long time working on the letters, the perceptive, the distances and sizes and relationships. It looks awesome. Except for one thing. I spent so long working on these complex elements, I forgot to do the ceiling until the last hour. I rushed to add some sort of ceiling there, but in the end result is flat, lacks any shading, and is in the wrong perspective. It isn't too bad, and can be fixed (I plan to fix it cause it is too cool a drawing not to make look complete), however, I will not be graded on any fixes I make to it now. I have to live with what he gives me. I hope it is a B, since I spent SO long working on it and showed of some very powerful perspective skills in the most complex areas of the image. While most people were busy eye-balling distances to make it look good and then started shading, I was literally measuring the sizes of objects in relation to each other and calculating ratios and such. I mathematically improved the accuracy of my image, and it really worked well in it. I just didn't have enough time. Another hour or two would have completely saved me.
That was the bad news... the good news is that the project I was working on the first night, which I didn't expect would take nearly as long as it did, got turned in on time and completed. I decided to write a speech about Disney, specifically, the Disney Company, specially the Innovations of Disney, in an attempt to limit my topic and talk about the highlights of the company. I could not find all the information I wanted. I was ready to delve into more research papers about the parks and the films, showcasing the imagineering and even the artistic techniques used in the various films to really drive home the innovation aspect. However, thinking back on it, I am a total Disney and animation nerd, and all that would have been too much shop talk for most of my classmates. It was good I couldn't find the really geeky stuff, it would have been too much for this speech. I was still convinced I did an awful job writing this thing out though. I thought my transitions needed more work, and my points were not defined clearly enough, etc. But going a full night without sleep messes with your head... sometimes for the better I guess. Today I got my paper back, and I got 100%! He LOVED it. Now the pressure is really on to make the speech kick-ass too! I am preparing visual aids and I need to practice practice practice! Maybe when I'm done, i can post a video of it on here (if I do well), since they will all be recorded.
I also finished the painting, and everyone loved it too. I think that for the time I had, I did the best I could, and 2 out of 3 ain't bad. I am convinced I did the right thing by hanging out with my friend at the Faire, since it not only helps build friendship, but it also helps me meet more people. I met more SCAD alumni, and tons of people at the Faire, and I'm glad I went. I wish I spent more time on my drawing, and maybe an hour less resting between classes... but I did damn good. Granted, I will not be going to the faire again until this is all finished.
Now I am working on some drawings, and preparing the speech and visual aids. But enough about SCAD et al, on to the topic at hand.
I said I would do a review of Tangled this week, and I am going to! But not at this post, I will post that tomorrow or Saturday. I'd also like to mention I finally saw Rio, and I liked it! It wasn't perfect, and it needed some reworking of some of the characters, but I'll go into that more later in another post. First I will sleep on it and think about the film some more. Before I get to my Tangled review later this week/weekend, I am going to go over something I have talked about a few times now with family and friends about a specific phenomenon in animated movies... the uncanny valley.
For the most part, animation directors want their characters to stay just to the left of the valley, at the peak where they can stylize the character, and get the emotional and acting performance from the character that they need. A good case in point here is The Incredibles (recently re-released to Blu-ray). These characters are easily recognized as human, and yet are not lifelike at all, and have a very specific style to them. This is the safest place to be, since it is easy to stylize the characters and over-exaggerate movements, while keeping the character likable. Some directors want to reach the other side of the valley. Sad to say there is no bridge over this valley, you have to fall down and climb your way back out the other side. The only film I can think of that starts to do this (and I think is an awesome film too and will probably review at some point also) is Beowulf. This film has managed to make the characters as lifelike as possible, dropping down the uncanny valley, and back out the other side, through not only awesome special effects that do a wonderful job of mimicking the look and motion of a human, but also through the acting. By hiring mainly theatrical actors for motion capture, they could achieve the right level of over-the-topness that they needed for such a theatrical production. For these reasons, and many more, I believe that this is one of the only movies ever to come back out of the uncanny valley triumphantly. That isn't to say there aren't characters specifically in other films that do the same thing. Dr Manhattan and Gollum are perfect examples of this as well. In fact, Dr Manhattan goes all the way over the peak to the OTHER SIDE of the chart (not shown on this page). He is not human enough to be human, he is more like a post human, being too perfect, almost god-like. Is has gone past human and starts to drop down a similar peak on the other side, but luckily he does not do this, and he is still a familiar and likable character (if you get over the nudity already geez people!).
So why do I bring up the uncanny valley? Simple! There are several movies that have been released that have suffered from this. Often the characters are described as being like "zombies" or "just-off". 2 cases in point would be the Polar Express (which only went down the valley a little in my opinion), and the much more recent Mars Needs Moms. Mars Needs Moms seems to have fallen right down to the bottom of this valley. The human characters are human enough to look human in single frames, but just off enough to look creepy and disturbing. I have heard many people complain about these characters, and on top of a weak story, it suffered at the box office for it. Despite the failures in these movies, i have to applaud them for one thing, being brave. They know about the uncanny valley (or at least they should know), and they chose to dive in head first, hoping to rise up out of the other side again. They were not really able to get out of it, but they are taking those first steps in, in an attempt to make ultra-realistic human animations. I look forward to the day directors have the choice of making entire animated films that look either like The Incredibles in stylization, or to look absolutely human. To have the freedom is exactly what the industry needs in a post-Avatar special effects world. With such advanced graphics from Avatar, everyone is going to expect other movies to meet, or even raise that bar. Well that is a high bar to reach, and there are many reasons why Avatar didn't suffer from the uncanny valley. Most of the humans were humans, actual actors on sound stages. The CG characters were not human, and were just not human enough to look good if they were slightly off. Despite that, audiences are expecting miracles now in all animations, and some directors are pushing that envelope to meet those demands.
Now the studio behind Mars Needs Moms may be closing down, ImageMovers. Sadly, they are the same studio that made Beowulf AND Polar Express. They had big successes, and big controversy, and I was looking forward to seeing more on their remake of The Yellow Submarine. As it stands now, Disney is no longer producing these, as ImageMovers is (or was) a Disney studio. Whether or not ImageMovers is going to be picked up by a different producer remains to be seen, but I have my hopes that they continue to make these movies, despite the failures, in hopes of pushing the envelope further and making more great hits like Beowulf.
There is another side of this entire Uncanny Valley thing, and it involves character relationships. I don't mean emotional relationships, I am talking about character design relationships. Usually in a movie, specifically animated movies, you do not want some of your characters to be stylized, and others to be ultra-realistic. Usually they don't mesh well. Films like Roger Rabbit and Cool World do not fit into this category, because these humans are interacting with very non-human things, and the differences between the cartoons and the humans is part of the stories of each. However, you usually want to stay away from mixing realistically drawn/rendered characters with stylized ones. There are 2 interested exceptions in my opinion, and for opposite reasons.
First is Shrek. In Shrek, there are characters that are both ultra-realistic, such as Fiona (who does NOT enter the uncanny valley herself since she is stylized enough, especially through her movements), and then there are the very stylized and non-human characters, such as Gingy, Pinocchio, the blind mice, and all the fairy-tale creatures. Usually this would be weird, having these stylized character clashing with such human ones, but I feel we have a savior in our midsts. Shrek himself is a bridge between the two worlds, not only in the story, not also in the character designs. While he himself is not a human, he is very close to being a human (far more so than Donkey :P), while still being a fairy-tale creature. The way I see it, Shrek has enough human qualities and realism to him, and yet enough stylization to be considered in both camps. It is his presence, as the main character, that really brings together these 2 worlds in such a wonderful way that you hardly notice the odd miss-matched nature of the designs. In the latest film, the witches also manage to fit into the same category. They are very human, but just stylized enough to make them not human.
The second film is a classic, Snow White. Here, the characters of Snow White, the Prince, and the Evil Queen are all very human and realistic. In fact, Disney used a form of rotoscope that they developed themselves to use live action footage as reference materials for the artists. They would use these live performances to make the animated ones all the more realistic. To contrast this, we have the 7 dwarfs. These little guys are so stylized, they really clash with the realistic look of the other characters. Some people have said that this is a place where it does not work, but I disagree. As I understand it, Walt knew that he needed the dwarfs, not for the story, but for the human element. He realized early on that the acting of the human characters would be very limited, and it would be difficult for people to really engage with them. If the entire movie had been made with only these human characters, it would not have been nearly as impressive as it was. However, the stylized dwarfs were capable of far more expression, with exaggerated movements and acting. Because of this, Walk knew people would be able to engage with these characters the most. By using these contrasting characters, there were several different subtle effects presented. First, you are more able to get sucked into the story of these realistic human characters on an intellectual and emotional level. Second, you see the entire chain of events more from the dwarfs point of view, giving you a stronger emotional attachment to them, so when they get sad at their loss, you do too. Third, the queen, prince, and princess traditionally are characters in stories and real life seen from a distance, through a looking glass. They are idolized, iconic, and glorified. By allowing the audience to see the story as it happens, but to feel it emotionally through the dwarfs, you get the same sense of how ideal Snow White and the others are. You feel that they are above you, they are the iconified vision of how you think a princess and a prince and a queen should be. As soon as the evil queen sheds her beautiful and vain body, she replaces it with one that better fits with the dwarfs, stylized and less human. This makes her unique in that you see her as the trickster, hiding her true nature to try to appeal to your emotions, or at least Snow White's emotions. You have now related the stylized dwarfs with the emotional aspect of the film, and seeing the witch in this form has made her all the more despicable to you. Because of these drastic differences, and the distance between the designs of the characters, Snow White is a huge success in balancing contrasting character designs.
Now I'm sure I bored you with my geeky analysis of Snow White, Shrek, the Uncanny Valley, etc. However, that is what I do... bore you. No! I mean.. geek out about animations and such. I love to analyze and re-analyze these films, seeing them for not only their face value and their artistic worth, but also for their subtleties and complexities that are easily overlooked by your average movie goer. The next time you hear someone talking ill about animated films as though they are "kids" movies... remember how complex these films can actually be, and how much work goes into not only the art work, but every single step of the way.
That being said, I am off to bed! :p
I will be going to some drawing sessions later this week and next week, and I plan to have more posted soon. Look forward to it!
Ta Ta!
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