Second semester of my second year at university and I'd been looking forward to getting into animation again since I did the module in first year.
Except now we'd moved on from that lovely wee flour sack! The brief given for this semester was as follows:
Character
animation can be produced and presented in a number of shapes and forms. Within this module, we will explore the work
of a range of animation directors and will draw inspiration from their practice
to inform our own. You will select a
director from the list below and using their work as a basis, develop a short
character animation of no more than 1 minute in length. You can work collaboratively to produce this
animation, but each individual must present evidence of each project task.
Animation
Directors:
Chuck Jones
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Marc Craste
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Hayao
Miyazaki
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Genndy Tartakovsky
|
Michaël
Dudok de Wit
|
John Hubley
|
Bill Plympton
|
Norman McLaren
|
Joanna Quinn
|
John Lasseter
|
Dan Sumich
|
Don Hertzfeldt
|
Task 1 – Animation Review (20% weighting)
Using your chosen animation director, you will
conduct research into animation production, looking to gather information on
the body of work produced by these animators, their inspiration, their process,
and the meaning of their work. Within
your project sketchbook you will document this research process and will feed
your findings into a review of the animator.
The review will be a
critical essay of the animators work, drawing conclusions on how their practice
can inform your own. The review will be
written in third person passive language and will utilise literature to support
your argument. You will use a minimum of
three references to books, journals or articles to support your discussion and
will document these utilising Harvard referencing techniques. You will use and discuss appropriate images
within your text to support your conclusions with appropriate Harvard
referencing. The essay will be a minimum
of 1,000 words in length.
Task 2 – Concept Development (30% weighting)
Throughout the module, you will research, design
and develop a character for an animation.
This character will have a complex personality and will be capable of
demonstrating a range of emotions. You
will explore this personality through the development of an animation
narrative, where you will introduce the character and show their emotions in reaction
to a simple conflict. The style, design
and tone of the animation will be inspired by your chosen animation
director.
To demonstrate the
development of the character design you will maintain a project
sketchbook. Within this sketchbook you
will collect research material to inspire the visual style of the animation,
produce a mood board, character concept art, colour concepts, and a final
character model sheet. In exploring the
character’s personality, you will also produce a short character profile and
back story. You will demonstrate the
development of the narrative through production of a storyboard and animatic.
Task 3 –Character Animation (40% weighting)
Upon the completion of planning your animation, you will produce a
completed animation which:
- Utilises digital 2D or digital 3D animation techniques
- Tells a story
- Creates an illusion of life in the character
- Conveys emotion within the character performance
- Relates to the chosen animation director in style, tone, theme or
pace
- Has an appropriate sound track which makes use of sound effects
and/or music
The final animation will be no more than 1 minute
in length and should be presented at 720p (a resolution of 1280 pixels by 720
Pixels) at 24 frames per second.
Phew! Well, there you have it!
I decided that my chosen director was to be Hayao Miyazaki, director of the Studio Ghibli films: Spirited Away; Howl's Moving Castle; Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind etc. I have been a fan of Miyazaki's work for a good while now and I felt that his exemplary animations would be a great inspiration to my work and I. Having researched Miyazaki thoroughly, I wrote the following critical essay on his work and how it would inform my own:
Character Animation Essay - Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki, head of Studio Ghibli, is one of the
world’s leading directors and animators, a veritable giant in his field of
Japanese Anime. He has been described by TIME magazine as,
‘A fearsomely hands-on artist who does everything from
scriptwriting to storyboard sketching to correcting many of the final frames of
his movies by hand.’ (Morrisson, 2006)
His titles include: ‘My Neighbour Totoro’; ‘Howl’s Moving
Castle’; and ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’. His films are renowned
world-wide and according to The Japan Times,
‘Domestically, three of his movies are among the top five
money-earners: His “Spirited Away” from 2001 outstrips even “Titanic” and
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”’ (Matsutani, 2008)
With all the credit and fame to his name, it is easy to see
as to why Miyazaki is such an inspirational figure to other animators and
directors. At a press conference in 2009, with Hayao Miyazaki and John
Lasseter, Lasseter was asked what made Miyazaki’s work so inspirational and
influential to him and his work with Disney and Pixar, to which he replied:
‘The first thing I saw of Hayao Miyazaki’s was the first
film he directed, Lupin 3rd, the Castle of Cagliostro and I was so
taken by the humour, the heart of the film and also the way that he staged
action . . . It’s so sophisticated and simple how he created depth – tremendous
depth – using hand drawn animation, where he would have a foreground where
parts were hand animated to get a sense of moving around. And the mid to
background levels were made of many levels and he would slide them sideways.’ (cartoonbrew,
2009)
Clearly, Lasseter was impressed by the high level of
knowledge and skill that Miyazaki utilises in creating his films. It is indeed
true that Miyazaki seems to know where to lead the audience’s eye, allowing for
smooth, well-timed animations. This also informs us that a good place to start
looking for inspiration in Miyazaki’s films is in how he sets up the scene and
plans ‘camera’ shots and pans to further the idea of movement and action. But
of course, it isn’t just the action in Miyazaki’s films that are so inspiring.
As Lasseter points out in the same interview:
‘Miyazaki celebrates the quiet moments in movies: which is
very opposite of Hollywood tendency of louder, faster, more and more. . . What
he does is sets up sequences that come after or right before it.’ (cartoonbrew,
2009)
It can easily be noted that Miyazaki does indeed seem to
revel in tranquil moments and scenes and uses them for a variety of reasons.
These include: bringing a sense of calm to the viewer; gifting them with a
beautiful environment; creating juxtaposition when a scene changes from
peaceful to chaotic. An example of the latter would be in the film ‘Princess
Mononoke’, the main hero, Ashitaka, is riding through green countryside, before
coming across a massacre taking place in a small village in the distance. It is
through moments like these that the viewer has time to come to terms with the
story and setting of the films and brings more impact to the action sequences
that follow, either by continuing the mood or by contrasting it. In these
times, often no music or dialogue is necessary, for the animation makes sense
in its own right, requiring no prompting. Lasseter reinforces this point from
the aforementioned interview with Miyazaki,
‘One of my mentors, Chuck Jones, the great Warner Bros
director, he always said, that great animation you should be able to turn the
sound off and still tell what’s going on.’ (cartoonbrew, 2009)
This is the reason as to why silent films and animations
work so well, is because the animators and directors know what is needed for a
scene or action to make sense without words to explain. In other words, if you
can turn the volume off on an animation and still make sense of it, it works
and is successful.
Another part of Miyazaki’s success is in creating iconic
characters that the viewer can associate with or find appealing in some way.
His characters are often easily recognisable as to the role they play and this,
again, fits in with the ability of having no sound, but still making sense of
what’s going on. The character Totoro, from ‘My Neighbour Totoro’, only ever
says his name in a slow deep voice and makes other noises associated with
happiness, e.g. a soft purring. He is a large, furry creature with big eyes and
a big grin. His rounded form clearly indicates that he is a friendly character
and thus makes him appealing, especially to children. His form does indeed
follow his function. Miyazaki’s
characters vary greatly in personality and depth from film to film. Totoro is a
simple character, being little more than a creature and portrays a good natured,
fun loving character; Howl, from ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’, on the other hand is
far deeper than Totoro: At first he seems vain and mysterious, but as the story
grows, he becomes caring to the other characters and shows a variety of
emotions from joy to sadness. From The Japan Times article,
‘Miyazaki’s characters exhibit a variety of expressions and
gestures, even within a single scene. For example, in “Spirited Away,” several
customers at a public bath, some of the “8 million gods,” walk slowly, while
the employees, who are froglike creatures, hastily run up and down the hallways
and stairs in all different directions.’ (Matsutani, 2008)
This example goes to show the effort and dedication Miyazaki
puts into his films. No character is deemed unnecessary to animate or give life,
even in large crowd scenes.
It’s not just the characters and scenery that make his films
so inspiring, but also the stories he tells. His stories vary greatly from
being more children-orientated to facing adult issues. A number of his films
deal with the issue of the environment and in an interview on the making of
Princess Mononoke, from Nikkei Entertainment magazine, he stated the following:
‘I thought that I must make a deeper, more authentic movie.
I continually thought about this as we entered the 90's. As I plunged in
deeper, I came to look hard at the issue of the true nature of humanity, and to
depict the relationship between man and nature and between man and man. Not
just superficial ideas like "When nature is abundant, humanity will be
happy”.’ (Anon., 2001)
It is made clear then, that Miyazaki thinks a lot of what
his films say and who they are aimed at.
Princess Mononoke is obviously aimed at an older audience, due to the
violence and environmental issues present in the film. In the film ‘Spirited
Away’, the story follows the main character Chihiro, a young girl who is going
through a great deal; travelling, moving school etc. The story tells a lot
about responsibility and growing up, something which Miyazaki must find an
important issue that had to be addressed. It can then be assumed that it should
be common practice to aim your story at the right age level so your point is
put across best.
There is then the continual argument as to what is the best
way to present the animation – traditional or digital. What best suits the
story you are trying to tell and why not the other? In a world where technology
seems to reign supreme and is slowly quashing traditional methods with its ever
expanding functions and availability, surely hand drawn animations have hit the
wall as it were. Miyazaki continues to carry on with the traditional and only
uses digital as an aid or final touch to his films. A number of his films do
not use digital methods at all however, including one of his most recent films,
‘Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea’. His reasoning for this is simple: that’s what
he does; digital is for other people. In the interview with John Lasseter, he
says,
‘Just as John Lasseter and I are different, I think I can
leave the computer animation to him and I can stick to the hand drawn
animation.’ (cartoonbrew, 2009)
So it could be said that traditional animations are still
just as valuable as the uprising digital ones. Whatever the method, it is the
fundamental designs of the animation that determine its success. An animation
needs believable characters, suitable plot and most importantly, life. The same
could be said true for any other medium, but Miyazaki has proven that, through
his work, traditional animation can still be a powerful way of communicating an
idea, a story.
To conclude, Hayao Miyazaki is a sage source of inspiration
for amateur animators and animating masters alike. Any of his films show off
all the key aspects that make them stand above so many other animes: the
smoothly timed animation sequences that lead from scene to scene, be they
tranquil or chaotic; the iconic characters with easily readable personalities,
even without them speaking; engaging stories aimed at a specific audience, but
on the whole, enjoyable for all. It is easily understood then as to why
Miyazaki is acclaimed by so many.
References
[Accessed 12 Feb 2013]
[Accessed 12 Feb
2013]
Cartoonbrew.
2009. Miyazaki – Lasseter Part 3 – 7/28/09. [online]. Youtube. Available from:
[Accessed 12 Feb
2013]
[Accessed 12 Feb 2013]
[Accessed 12 Feb 2013]
With my essay out of the way, I moved on to planning out my own animation. I spider-diagrammed (that's a phrase now) some ideas and my favourite from these was 'The Thieving Magpie'. After a number of reitterations, I came up with the following character profile:
Character Profile:
The Thieving Magpie
Gender:
Female
Age:
Late 20s
Character Synopsis:
A depressed kleptomaniac who goes by the pseudonym of
‘The Magpie’
Physical:
Agile and athletic with a slim but muscular physique
Mentality:
Normally depressed, but becomes almost animalistic when
consumed by the need to steal
Backstory:
Her true name long forgotten, the Magpie’s lithe form
skirted the roof-tops. Her long hair, laced with feathers, rippled with colour
in the moon light as she ran low, remaining unseen. Her destination, the Church
of the Weeping Dove, was in sight. She slinked past a couple of roof-top guards
and leapt onto one of the lower window ledges of the church. The window was
open. This was all too easy. Yet still her heart pounded, blood thundering
through her veins. She was convinced that the guards would hear the deafening
thump – thump – thump that reverberated in her head.
The Magpie looked through the eye-holes in her mask down
the long pillared corridor, right to the end where a guard was standing in
front of the door to the inner sanctum. No way past. Her emotions conflicted,
sorrow fighting animalistic rage. She moved without thinking. The beast had
truly taken over. The guard had barely managed a sharp intake of breath before
the Magpie’s bladed gauntlet was imbedded deep in his neck. He slumped to the
floor, precious life-blood spilling out of his open wound, permeating the
cracks in the stone floor. The Magpie hunched over him, breath ragged and heavy,
her animalistic urge abating to be replaced once more by doubt and sadness. The
object she sought, the Crystal of Peace, was so close now, atop the altar at
the far end of the inner sanctum. This Crystal would save her from her
kleptomania, her depression. This was why she was here. The fear of getting
caught trickled down her spine. Taking a deep breath, she started forwards . .
.
From my character profile I went on to establish a decent amount of researched material so as to gain a better knowledge on how my character would look and act.
From this research, I put together a couple of moodboards as inspiration:
I also used a number of life-model images as reference whilst designing my character's physique. Before going on to the actual character design, I practiced drawing the female figure using the aforementioned images:
From doing these drawings, I felt more comfortable in being able to draw a toned female body and so I went on to starting to design my Magpie character. I began with characeter silhouettes (a popular way amongst concept artists to quickly churn out ideas) and came up with the following:
Out of these 10 silhouettes I chose 4:
And from these 4 concepts, I did another 10 silhouettes:
And just for good measure, I layered the first 10 over the second 10 and achieved this look:
And again, from these 20, I selected my 4 favourites:
And from these 4, I came up with 1 design using my favourite aspects from each:
From this I did a pencil sketch of the character:
However, at this point I realised that this was certainly NOT the look I wanted for my character - they were becoming very 'native-americany', which I wasn't looking for. Fortunately, I somehow took great inspiration from this and came up with another couple of silhouettes based upon further research I did that I knew would be something closer to what I was looking for. I focussed on the characters from the Assassin's Creed game series as well as looking at ball gown dresses:
From this further research, I silhouetted 2 more concepts based on the posing of one of the life drawing studies I did (7th down), as it fitted my character perfectly:
At this point, I had ideas of the camera going into first person and the guards in the story would play more of a part.
Happy with how my story was advancing, I returned to my character design with fresh eyes. Still pleased with the design I had, I did a pencil sketch to add more life to the design:
I decided that I wanted to focus on the mask design of the character, as I hadn't properly nailed it down yet, and so did further research, focussing on venetian masks in particular:
From this research I came up with a number of mask concepts and from these I came up with a final design i was pleased with:
At the same time, I also advanced my character's design to something more final:
With my character more or less finalised, I decided that I should look to designing the guards that I had planned to be in the animation. I looked at miniatures from the companies Games Workshop and Forgeworld to get further inspiration, as I already had a fairly good idea as to how I wanted my guards to look. I also looked at images of doves, seen as the guards are of the Church of the Weeping Dove.
With these images as reference and an idea in my head, I did a quick concept that I then took on to be my final design that I was pleased with.
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| Concepts |
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| Final Design |
Now with the character designs more or less nailed, I decided that it was time to get the storyboards nailed as well.
As an after thought, I decided that it would be good to imply that the guards had been alerted to the presence of a hostile intruder and thus came up with the following key scene that would take place during storyboard 16.
From this, I went on to produce a walk cycle that was unsuccessful. I've found walk cycles to be incredibly difficult. It's not too bad just making a normal walk cycle, but trying to make one that shows how the character is feeling as well as their personality is a real challenge. I think this will be something I'll need to spend extra time on in the future to try to build up my skills in it, due to it being such a core skill of any animation.
I decided that a slight revamp was also needed on the storyboards, so sketched up more thumbnails before coming up with this final scenario:
From these story boards, I then put together a rough animation, drawing out each individual frame, which would then be drawn over and rendered later with the full character.
Talking about my full character, I did a couple more bits of work for her, as requested by the hand-in criteria. A model sheet, showing front, side and 3/4 views and an emotions sheet.
With everything under my belt so as to speak, I went on to plow through the final animation, taking about 4 days to complete it.
I then wrote my project evaluation:
The final animation has not strayed wildly from its
original planned documents, maintaining the key elements that it was set out to
contain. It has experienced changes such as: cutting the opening sequence all
together to minimalize the use of secondary characters and objects; and
altering camera shots so as to further exemplify the movement of the character.
Furthermore, the character herself has under-gone minor changes to simplify the
design and remove any unnecessary complications; such as the bladed gauntlet
originally set upon her wrist. The final outcome has stayed faithful to the graphic
novel style look that was originally planned, along with the mainly grey-scale
scheme and limited use of colour.
Hayao Miyazaki was the chosen director and the focal
point of influence from his work was his use of timing. The final animation is
successful in utilizing this influence, as time is given in order for the
character to show through her emotion and how she is exploring the space that
she is in. This careful use of timing has ensured that the character’s
movements are readable, even though some are swift.
The project is successful as it, on the whole, fulfils
the criteria of giving the illusion of life to a character. This illusion of
life is brought on by the strong conveyance of emotion through the character’s
movement. For example: When the character is nervous in the animation, she
glances around often and stays fairly hunched, providing less of a target and
thus exemplifying her clear need to remain undetected. This movement was aided by the use of a live
model to understand what was possible for the character to achieve with their
build. The project is also successful, due to it telling a brief part of what
would otherwise be an expansive story. Even though it lasts under a minute, it
is still clear to the viewer as to why the character is where she is and why
she goes about in the manner that she does.
In future animation productions, more time and care would
be put into the creation of the character’s walk cycle. This is due to the walk
cycle in the final animation not showing the intended mood for scene that it
takes place in. The character should be transfixed, walking slowly and tensely
towards her destination; instead she simply casually walks from A to B. The
walk cycle breaks the flow of the animation, causing the viewer’s immersion to
falter. The accompanying audio track could also have done with more attention,
as it feels very haphazard and rushed. This leads again to disturbing the
viewer’s immersion and causes the animation to lose some of the emotions it is
attempting to portray. More time could also have been spent on establishing the
opening scene, as it is fairly weak in helping the viewer to understand what is
going on. Though it was indeed intended to throw the viewer ‘into the action’
as it were, there may have been better ways to show the situation through
further experimentation.
So that's it for character animation! It has been an enjoyable semester for this project and I think I shall be trying my hand at more animation over the summer, particularly those dastardly walk cycles!
Till next time!
