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Ed's Newsletter - May 2002
ED HEADING
FOR GERMANY MAY 20TH
I'm looking forward to teaching at Filmakademie Baden-Wortemborg
in Ludwigsburg May 21-23 and also to speaking at FMX '02 on
May 24th. My topic will be "The Thinking Character".
If you're in the vicinity, say hello or let's grab a beer
or something!
WIRED MAGAZINE ARTICLE
ON PHOTO-REAL ANIMATION
Lawrence Weschler wrote a remarkable article for the June
issue of Wired Magazine. "Coming Face to Face with the
Uncanny Valley" is a terrific overview of the state of
art of photo-real animation in general and facial photo-real
in specific. Very excellent stuff, surprisingly philosophical.
You'll dig it. I was interviewed for the piece and am quoted
briefly. The June issue hits the stands mid-May.
VANCOUVER ACTING FOR
ANIMATORS CLASS MOVED
TO JUNE 22
The Acting for Animators workshop that was scheduled for the
end of April has been moved to June 22nd. This is under the
sponsorship of the Emily Carr Institute. For more information
and to register, contact 604 844 3852 or email vcraig@eciad.bc.ca.
ANIMATED THANKS TO
BIG IDEA!
We laughed and we cried, we kicked acting all around the room
and a good time was had by all. Thanks to the talented animators
at Big Idea Productions! I has a terrific and enriching time
with you guys (...and Amber the girl, of course :)...). Special
thanks to Marc Vulcano and Tim Meidl for connecting the dots
at Big Idea and for making it all happen.
CRAFT NOTES
"Further Consideration of Force vs. Form"
Recently, I was re-reading
a transcript of a Don Graham class at the old Disney Studio.
His subject was the importance of animating force rather than
animating mere forms. He rightly pointed out that if you draw
the form of a leg and then another bunch of forms of legs,
it might all flow together as a moving image, but it will
not stimulate the audience emotionally. To have that effect
on an audience, you must animate force. And force is most
often something that originates in the character's thinking
and emotion.
Don Graham was a brilliant
man, an ace in Walt's deck. I wish I had known him, and I
wish Disney Studios would publish all of his class notes.
I am told they are all residing in the Disney library in the
Burbank studios. If you know somebody that knows somebody
with pull at Disney, you might pass this particular newsletter
along to him...PUL-EEEZE PUBLISH THE LECTURES!
Anyway, regarding force
versus form, Graham said the correct thing about its origin
being in thinking, but he stopped too soon. And thinking in
and of itself is not enough for successful storytelling. You
must also have scene construction that includes obstacles,
actions, objectives and negotiations.
As I mentioned in a previous
newsletter, the bookends of human life are brain waves --
i.e. thinking. Medical science can keep hearts and bodies
alive mechanically now, but when the brain stops, that's the
end of the party. This is more than a simple observation.
It is a profound connection between all humans, something
that we all have in common. It doesn't matter if we are talking
about Mother Teresa, Osama Ben Laden or Tom Cruise, we all
come into the world the same way, and we exit the same way.
We are all part of the same family. Though we may disagree
with one another about the best ways to spend our time between
entrances and exits, we are hard wired by nature to recognize
in one another the very attempt to spend the time. And that
attempt manifests itself as the force that Graham was talking
about. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a body is just a body
is just a body, even if it is an inert one. The thing that
causes us to pay attention to one another as humans is force
-- the way we go about living and spending the time. Acting
is doing!
Though all of us humans
have thinking brains -- making us all part of the same family
-- the kind of thinking we do varies from person to person.
Because each of us is an individual product of our genes and
environment ("nature vs. nurture") therefore, the
key to successful character animation is in understanding
the character's particular sense of life and personal style.
Pluto and Mickey Mouse were both humanized animals, with human-type
brains. But Pluto's brain and style were more dog-like than
human. Mickey was a normal human boy in every way except his
mouse ears and disappearing tail. Pluto was always a dog.
Once the animators understood this, they were good to go.
If Mickey Mouse had gotten himself stuck on the flypaper the
way that Pluto did in the famous sequence, he would have handled
the predicament altogether differently.
(Reminder to myself:
One of these days, I must write about how and why we humanize
animals in animation. A dog in our U.S. culture is a pet and
a friend. But I visited Western Samoa some years ago, and
in that culture the dogs were viewed as oversized rats. The
locals threw rocks at them and were horrified when I wanted
to feed the half-starved strays.)
THE THINKING CHARACTER
IS NOT ENOUGH
It is not, however, enough
to simply make a character think. Thinking qua thinking is
not inherently theatrical. Because Disney's contribution to
animation was the thinking character, some animators figure
if they can just make their character's appear to think, they
are home free. Not so. You can see people thinking all day
long over at the 7-11, and that doesn't make a good story,
nor will people pay to watch it. What you need for successful
animation -- particularly feature animation -- are thinking
characters that express emotionally for a theatrical purpose!
Walt Disney based his
early features largely on fairy tales like "Snow White",
and those stories had obstacles built in, sort of like a blueprint.
He had only to apply thinking characters to the already- conflict-charged
story lines, and voila! Today's animators frequently must
invent scenes from whole cloth rather than mythic tales, so
it is necessary for them to understand classic Aristotelean
scene construction -- actions, obstacles/conflict, objectives,
empathy.
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