Re-Imagining Animation the Changing Face of The
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RiA cover UK AW.qxd 6/3/08 10:40 AM Page 1 – – – – – – Chapter 05 Chapter 04 Chapter 03 Chapter 02 Chapter 01 The disciplinary shift Approaches and outlooks The bigger picture Paul Wells / Johnny Hardstaff Paul Wells Re-imagining Animation RE-IMAGINING RE-IMAGINING ANIMATION ANIMATION – The Changing Face of the Moving Image The Changing Face Professor Paul Wells is Director of the Re-imagining Animation is a vivid, insightful Re-imagining Animation Other titles of interest in AVA's Animation Academy at Loughborough and challenging interrogation of the animated addresses animation’s role at the heart THE CHANGING THEAcademia CHANG range include: University, UK, and has published widely film as it becomes central to moving image of moving-image practice through an in the field of animation, including practices in the contemporary era. engagement with a range of moving-image Visible Signs: The Fundamentals of Animation and Animation was once works – looking at the context in which FACE OF THE FACEAn introduction OF to semiotics THE Basics Animation: Scriptwriting. constructed frame-by-frame, one image they were produced; the approach to their following another in the process of preparation and construction; the process of Visual Research: Johnny Hardstaff is an internationally constructing imagined phases of motion, their making; the critical agenda related to MOVING IMAGE MOVINGAn introduction to research IM established, award-winning designer, film- but now the creation and manipulation the research; developmental and applied methodologies in graphic design maker and artist. He is the creator of The of the moving image has changed. aspects of the work; the moving-image History of Gaming and The Future of With the digital revolution outcomes; and the status of the work within Visual Communication: Gaming, and innovative popular music videos, invading every creative enterprise and form contemporary art and design practices. From theory to practice 01 TEACHING MOVING IMAGE CULTURE: 01 TEACHING MOVING IMAGE CULTURE: including Radiohead’s long format ‘Pulk/Pull of expression, pencils have become pixels, PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS Revolving Doors’ and ‘Like Spinning Plates’. He dreams have become data, and animation – 02 THE POLITICS OF PRACTICE 02 THE POLITICS TheOF PRACTICE Illustration Book was also one of the co-initiators of the once merely an adjunct of film – has become 03 ANIMATION RE-IMAGINED 03 ANIMATION RE-IMAGINED 04 ‘OBJECT REACT’ 04 OBJECT REACT ‘Object React’ project with Onedotzero and central to the whole cinematic enterprise. 05 FROM IDEAS TO IDIOMS 05 FROM IDEAS TOLeft IDIOMS to Right: Darryl Clifton. The cultural shift from words to pictures Verbalising the Visual: Translating art and design into words ava publishing sa [email protected] www.avabooks.ch AVA Academia | AVA Context | Theory PAUL WELLS PAUL WELLS JOHNNY HARDSTAFF JOHNNY HARDSTAFF AVA•Re Imagining Animation CD608-15/4234 5th TB UK Re_Imagining Animation AW_pp1-182_ 4/5/08 12:19 PM Page 1 RE-IMAGINING RE-IM ANIMATION ANIM THE CHANGING TH FACE OF THE FA MOVING IMAGE M PAUL WELLS PAU JOHNNY HARDSTAFF JOH AVA•Re Imagining Animation CD308-159/4270 1st TB Re_Imagining Animation AW_pp1-182_ 4/9/08 3:03 PM Page 2 An AVA Book Design Published by Emmi Salonen AVA Publishing SA www.emmi.co.uk Rue des Fontenailles 16 Case Postale Production 1000 Lausanne 6 AVA Book Production Switzerland Pte. Ltd., Singapore Tel: +41 786 005 109 Tel: +65 6334 8173 Email: [email protected] Fax: +65 6259 9830 Email: Distributed by [email protected] Thames & Hudson (ex-North America) All reasonable attempts 181a High Holborn have been made to trace, London WC1V 7QX clear and credit the United Kingdom copyright holders of Tel: +44 20 7845 5000 the images reproduced Fax: +44 20 7845 5055 in this book. However, Email: if any credits have [email protected] been inadvertently www.thamesandhudson.com omitted, the publisher will endeavour to Distributed in the USA incorporate amendments and Canada by: in future editions. Watson-Guptill Publications 770 Broadway New York, New York 10003 USA Fax: +1 646 654 5487 Email: [email protected] www.watsonguptill.com English Language Support Office AVA Publishing (UK) Ltd. Tel: +44 1903 204 455 Email: [email protected] ©AVA Publishing SA 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission of the copyright holder. ISBN 2-940373-69-8 and 978-2-940373-69-7 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 AVA•Re Imagining Animation CD308-159/4270 1st TB Re_Imagining Animation AW_pp1-182_ 4/5/08 12:19 PM Page 3 AVA•Re Imagining Animation CD308-159/4270 1st TB Re_Imagining Animation AW_pp1-182_ 4/5/08 12:19 PM Page 4 CONTENTS 006 INTRODUCTION 010 HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS BOOK 01 012 TEACHING MOVING IMAGE CULTURE: PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 02 014 The disciplinary shift 044 THE POLITICS 022 OF PRACTICE Approaches and outlooks 046 03 Authorship 038 092 The bigger picture ANIMATION 068 Attitudes and ethics RE-IMAGINED 094 084 Artist animation? Re-animating history 102 Re-defining practice 114 Re-thinking artists AVA•Re Imagining Animation CD308-159/4270 1st TB Re_Imagining Animation AW_pp1-182_ 5/6/08 12:39 PM Page 5 – – – Front matter Contents 004/005 Introduction How to get the most out of this book CO 006 182 INTROD APPENDIX 010 184 HOW TO Conclusion OUT OF 185 Bibliography 188 Further resources and webography 189 Index 192 Acknowledgements and picture credits 04 124 ‘OBJECT REACT’ 126 Re-animating pedagogy 05 152 140 Process FROM IDEAS TO IDIOMS 154 148 Practice Objects of desire 164 Impossibly real 170 Themes and dreams AVA•Re Imagining Animation CD508-6/4234 2nd TB Re_Imagining Animation AW_pp1-182_ 4/5/08 12:19 PM Page 6 INTRODUCTION In recent years, the ‘digital revolution’ has as profoundly instrumental to film in general consolidated major changes in moving image because of the digital animation interventions practices, privileging the computer as not (visual effects) that are endemic to even the merely the facilitator of processes involved in most mundane realist narratives and define creating moving image works, but generating the moving image palette. If animation was moving images too. It is possible that we are once understood as an adjunct of film and a closing in on the post-photographic era, backwater in cinema, it now finds itself as where film will be viewed as an arcane the core condition of film-making per se. medium of image generation. For many, this In what is surely to become a seminal is already old news and their work takes for statement in defining this new model of granted the application and assimilation of digital live-action cinema, Lev Manovich computer software and its attendant creative concludes it is ‘live action material + painting tools, which establish new forms of + image-processing + compositing + 2D visualisation and pictorial effect. computer animation + 3D computer One of the chief animation’, adding that: consequences of these developments is – the elevation of animation as a core term ‘The manual construction of description for many aspects of creative of images in digital cinema Taiwanese artist Agi Chen image-making endeavours. This is mainly represents a return to brings together the worlds of the traditional cartoon, through the ways in which the intrinsic nineteenth century pre- new media technology and artifice and illusionism of traditional cinematic practices, when arts culture by taking the animation is seemingly embedded within, images were hand-painted colours used in a cartoon, rendering them in new or directly echoes, the simulation and and hand-animated. At the geometric forms, and then synaesthesia that now characterises turn of the twentieth re-embedding them in a scene contemporary film-making. This in turn has century, cinema was to from the original film. in some senses made ‘animation’ a redundant delegate these manual term – a mere catch-all that speaks to techniques to animation, and all manipulated moving-image practices. define itself as a recording It is the intention of this book to address medium. As cinema enters this issue and to delineate animation the digital age, these further through its specific applications techniques are again and authorial intentions. becoming the commonplace In the contemporary era, in the film-making process. animation has been reabsorbed into debates Consequently, cinema can about film-making in general. It is no longer no longer be clearly considered a ‘second cousin’ to live action, or distinguished from merely understood as ‘the cartoon’ or ‘the animation.’ (1) experimental film’. Rather, it is now viewed – AVA•Re Imagining Animation CD308-159/4270 1st TB Re_Imagining Animation AW_pp1-182_ 4/5/08 12:19 PM Page 7 – – – Front matter Contents 006/007 Introduction How to get the most out of this book INTRODU While this view correctly Animation, under these In recent years, the ‘digi determines the historical status and conditions, has come to adopt its original consolidated major chan technical influence of animation and its place meaning as the essential ‘animus’ at the practices, privileging the within contemporary film-making, it remains heart of cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary merely the facilitator of insufficient on two counts. First, it merely and multidisciplinary approaches to creating creating moving image w defines animation within its parameters as moving images. Film-makers may now be moving images too. It is a form co-opted by the computer and understood as ‘animators’ of their work closing in on the post-ph neglects to acknowledge the myriad forms without any sense that they animate in the where film will be viewe of animation not made in this way.