Make it strange: no other medium presents such endless opportunities for manipulating space and time - Post Positions

Post, March, 2004 by David Lobser, Peter Sluszka

T.S. Elliot believed the role of the artist was "to take what is familiar and make it strange, and to take what is strange and make it familiar." What would Elliot have said about the very strange world of animation? No other medium presents such unlimited possibility for the manipulation of space and time. Every period in art history has found an analogy in animation, from the abstract expressionism in motion of Stan Brakhage and the geometric abstractions of Paul Glabicki, to the caricatures of Chuck Jones and the Cornell-like interiors of the Brother's Quay. Each of these animators has found a way to work with the inherent limitations of the medium to find a new way of seeing--a way of making the world of sensation strange and wonderful.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Where does style come from? Ideally it is the result of experimentation and personal vision. In the real world, however, demanding clients, tight budgets and masochistic deadlines can make one feel as if the vibrant, artistic-self has been bullied and left hanging by a wedgie in the dark. Fortunately, the creative drive is irrepressible and the many logistical challenges encountered in producing animation can be used positively.

In other words, budget and time limitations can actually be good for art, inspiring creative solutions out of necessity. Conversely, having too few limitations tends to detract from the creative process by making absolutely everything possible. As an example, current Hollywood effects films are sometimes hampered by their ability to show everything rather than use the basic elements of film language to create tension. The Alien in Aliens is so much scarier because you can't see it and the viewer has to fill in many details with the imagination. For those of us without bottomless pockets, limitations inspire creative solutions and new ideas. Rendering techniques in computer animation have made great strides in the past few years. The advent of techniques to accurately replicate the effects of bouncing, diffusing and absorbing light has made photorealism a thing of the present. Unfortunately, it's not easy and requires a good deal of time on the part of the artist and the renderer.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

PHOTOREALISM

Photorealism is the buzzword for most computer generated rendering but many studios have made strides in developing toon rendering into a style of its own. Toon rendering is a catch-all phrase for every kind of non-photorealistic CG rendering, but its use doesn't need to be limited to re-creating a cell painted look.

The recent Nickelodeon CG pilot, The Alan Brady Show, which we worked on, was an attempt to find a middle ground between smooth, 3D shading and flattened out illustrative rendering. The show didn't use cell-style outlines, but relied on subtle, translucent shading and color to define the forms. In another attempt to push the stylistic boundaries of CG, NYC's Psyop has developed a fleshed-out toon style that combines toon rendered 3D forms and semi-translucent 3D layers mixed with scanned, painted washes to create a unique illustration style. In these examples, illustrative is perhaps a better term than toon for the style of rendering. [Editor's note: David Lobser was the art director and designed the look of the CG images for Viacom's The Alan Brady Show, through Nick Digital.]

Although we all strive to be objective critics, it is common and maybe unavoidable that our expectations influence our judgment. Computer generated animation is a relatively new and evolving medium, but despite its limitless creative potential and recent developments in toon rendering, many still judge its artistic merit based on how "real" it looks. There is an interesting parallel mirrored in the history of Western art, where achieving the illusion of realism was once the ultimate goal. It's easy to forget that even the understanding of perspective in drawing was as much a technological breakthrough as an artistic one. While no one can deny that some of the world's great art was produced in pursuit of technical achievement, we are also culturally enriched by the advent of modernism and the myriad styles and "isms" that followed. It is probable that CG artistry is just on the cusp of being appreciated for it's artistic potential and will not be seen primarily as a means of creating photorealistic effects to be composited into action and science-fiction flicks.

Perhaps more traditional forms of animation such as cel and stop motion have never shouldered the same burdens as CG, accepted from their inceptions as mediums owing nothing to the real world, other than an occasional cameo. The very notion of photorealism is moot when applied to animation that is already photographic, as in the case of stop motion, or stylistically too removed from reality as in the case of cel. Furthermore while stop-motion models and puppets can be fabricated to blend smoothly with live action, stylistically it is not a necessity since audiences seem to accept and enjoy the intentional strangeness of seeing human actors interact with stylized, animated characters.