Creating the Illusion of Depth and Volume in Animated Forms without Contour Lines
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Animation Department in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts Savannah College of Art and Design
By
Tyler Johnathan Kupferer
Savannah, Georgia August 2011 Table of Contents Thesis Abstract 1 I. Introduction 2 II. Visual Theory 3 III. Why Contour Lines Are the Prevailing Style 5 IV. Prior Examples of Animation without Contour Lines 11 VI. Creating Appealing Lineless Styles with Digital Animation Tools 17 VII. Conclusion 23 Appendix A: List of Figures 25 Appendix B: Filmography 29 Bibliography 30 Thesis Abstract
This thesis will explore the application and development of animation styles that do not use contour lines to define the edges of overlapping visual forms. Through examination of historical and contemporary animation, the author will demonstrate how to achieve the illusion of depth and volume without contour lines. Although lineless styles have existed since the beginning of animation, this paper will emphasize the use of modern digital illustration tools. It will also consider how digital production pipelines beget new methods of stylizing animation.
1 I. Introduction
Throughout the history of animation, mainstream content has gravitated toward specific styles based on the influence of popular content and emerging technology. The inventions of plasticine, cel animation, rotoscopes and Xerox transfer are all early examples. This evolution of technology has historically benefited traditional 2D cel animation the most, but the introduction of computer graphics has changed that trend. Computers and similar digital tools have brought about a dramatic transformation of the industry, rendering traditional animation methods obsolete. Hardware and software both allow for the creation and manipulation of animated content that was not possible twenty years ago, redefining even the most economic types of animation.
For most filmmakers, a goal of central importance is creating a convincing representation of
a believable world on the screen.1 In order to create believable characters and worlds, an artist must deliver a clear portrayal of visual forms. This portrayal can be achieved in a variety of ways, including new digital methods that have only recently been developed.
Most dominant animation styles of the 20th century used a simple but effective device to define forms: the contour line. Initially a useful tool in a developing industry, the contour line became a beneficiary of its own success. By the mid-20th century, it was almost always present in contemporary animation. However, the development of digital animation hardware and software during the past two decades has made new methods applicable on a larger scale. In the past, contour lines were essential for a division of labor and cost efficiency, but now they are rendered irrelevant by modern digital animation technology. Although this technology can be both two- dimensional and three-dimensional creation tools, the two-dimensional realm has received less consideration until now. Many useful methods exist for creating the illusion of depth and volume
1 With the exception of holography, the physical nature of a screen is always two-dimensional. The challenge of a filmmaker is often to portray a three-dimensional world on the two-dimensional surface of the screen (Block 14). In the medium of animation the need to always portray a three-dimensional world, or even a figurative world for that matter, is less prevalent. For the purposes of this paper, however, a believable three-dimensional illusion is the desired result.
2 in 2D animated art. By better understanding these methods and the older techniques from which they evolved, animated films will have a greater expanse of stylistic options than ever before.
II. Visual Theory
Within the realm of all artistic expression exists the mark, defined most simply as a trace or
blemish left on a surface (Wayne and Peters 22).2 While many types of marks exist, the line serves a valuable purpose as an indicator of forms and boundaries. In relation to drawing, the line is “the essential element in delineation” (Mendelowitz 287).
One of the most common uses for a line is the representation of contours. Contour is the concept of using lines to explain a form (Hayes 38).3 As opposed to an outline, a contour line is not restricted to the outer boundaries of an object.4 While an outline appears as a line surrounding a given shape, a contour line gives the impression of being located just inside this border, so it more appropriately belongs to the form of an object. Additionally, a contour line boasts variation of thickness, tone and speed, giving it the capacity to suggest three-dimensional form (Wayne and Peters 128). For example, in Albrecht Dürer’s pen drawing My Dear Agnes (Fig. 1), lines are used not only to describe the surface as it turns away at the edges of the form, but also inside the form. Parallel lines of varying weight across the arms, neck and chest of the figure seem to suggest the direction of the surface as well as the angle of the light striking the figure. A relatively limited use of lines within the drawing is still effective enough to convey shape, texture and lighting.
Although the contour line is perhaps the most fundamental way of showing three-dimensional form, it is far from the only way. Defining space overall can be done using a multitude of other
2 The mark has in total three major ramifications. It may also serve as an indication of the presence that made the mark and/or an indicator of spatial quantities like distance, area and volume (Wayne and Peters 21). 3 Form refers to the configuration of an object in space, defining spatial limits, structure and organization (Wayne and Peters 120). 4 The outline is a simpler concept than the contour line. Defined solely as the boundary that separates a form from its surroundings, outline is best reserved for depicting literal flat shapes; it draws the viewer’s attention to the two- dimensional spread of the area it surrounds (Wayne and Peters 128).
3 proven methods. Wayne and Peters list relative position, diagonals, overlapping, atmospheric perspective, relative scale, and foreground, midground and background as fundamental ways of creating three-dimensional space (30). They also discuss how value, lighting and color can represent space and form (147, 223-224). Hayes cites light and shade as instruments of form whenever “realism necessitates the use of devices which to some extent reflect visual appearances” (16).
These concepts become essential when considering how to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms without contour lines. A “contourless” piece of work is one that is devoid of any distinct contour lines that differ in color and value from the shapes they touch. In Fig. 2, a digital drawing of an apple conveys the spherical form of the object using a simple contour that wraps the receding edge of the form and shows the overlapping shapes around the stem. In Fig. 3, the same object is rendered without contour lines, and the same forms are now conveyed using shifting values of grey. Both drawings create the same illusion of three-dimensional form, but they do so using different visual devices.
The definition of contourless art is massive in scope. Contour lines are an imaginary invention of artistic stylization, and do not exist in natural human vision. Therefore, any art that attempts to emulate the view of a human eye should not feature contour lines. In The Calling of Saint Matthew by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Fig. 4), contour lines are nonexistent. The forms are defined by a strong light source, shadows and folding textures on the figures’ clothing. The visual devices in the piece, when considered collectively, suggest a style that comes as close to true human eyesight as is possible in this medium.
When comparing Caravaggio’s grand Baroque painting to the pen sketch by Dürer, it is apparent that contour lines are often a tool of efficiency. The imaginary, simplistic nature of the contour is what removes it from visual cues associated with the real world. The advantage of this simplification allows the contour to convey similar ideas with less information. Because of this, contour lines are often a useful tool for simplification of figurative art but should be abandoned when realism is given priority over efficiency (Hayes 38).
4 III. Why Contour Lines Are the Prevailing Style
The mere fact that contour lines are so efficient when rendering three-dimensional forms makes them an appealing candidate for any business-minded artist. It is not surprising, then, that contour lines played a large role in the expansive growth of animation.
In the early 20th century, the pioneers of animation were often singular artists, branching out from a similar creative realm and exploring the medium of animation as more of a curiosity than a fully developed art form. Originally, no single style dominated the public’s perception of animation (Furniss 17). Before too long, though, popular media sources quickly began to affect the look of successful mainstream animation. By the time the craft had matured, the contour line quickly became the dominant tool for defining three-dimensional forms. Three major factors played into the preeminence of the contour: artists adapting their own styles from other mediums, the industrialization of animation production and the powerful influence of popular animation studios on the public.
Early animated cinema, much like its live action cousin, had a need for narrative, visual iconography and storytelling that could be best satisfied by looking toward other established media for inspiration. Comics, which were already a well-established genre by the end of the 19th century, proved to be a large source of influence for live action cinema in its earliest days. Much of this was based on simple gag setups, where the plot of a short comic could be quickly adapted into a film successfully (Crafton 36). Early dabblers in animation, such as James Stewart Blackton and Walter R. Booth, did much of the same thing when creating gag animation and trick photography to accompany their stage shows. Visual gags from comic strips were adapted directly into theatrical performances, and the performer brought the drawings to life as a sort of magic trick (Crafton 25).
Windsor McCay was the first to make a conscious decision to not only adapt the ideas of a comic strip, but the stylization and characters as well. Already a well-established cartoon artist with comic series like Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland, McCay was not bashful
5 when promoting his name and his work. He used his fame as a cartoonist to propel his career in motion pictures and vaudeville. His first film, Little Nemo (1911) (Fig. 5), borrows characters from the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip (Crafton 98). In the film, McCay portrays himself attempting to create 4,000 drawings of the Little Nemo characters to the disbelief of his fellow artists. When he finally does complete the drawings, he holds the stack up to the camera like a large flipbook. The remainder of the film is two minutes of actual animation by McCay.
The painstakingly slow process comically portrayed in Little Nemo was not far off from the truth. McCay went on to make more animated films for his vaudeville act, The Story of a Mosquito (1912) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), but each one involved a laborious process of drawing every frame by hand, background included. Still, the films were a hit. McCay’s unique sense of showmanship, combined with such novel animation, made his vaudeville routines wildly popular with audiences (Canemaker, Winsor McCay 15).
Likely inspired by the success of McCay’s early moving cartoons, the American branch of the Éclair film studio planned a direct adaptation of another comic strip called “The Newlyweds and their Baby” by George McManus. McManus himself played almost no role in the creation of the films. Instead, it was Émile Cohl, considered by many as the true father of the animated cartoon, who single-handedly drew and animated thirteen “Newlyweds” cartoons between March 1913 and January 1914. Whereas McCay spent immense amounts of time and effort drawing every frame of animation individually, Cohl drew the “Newlyweds” characters on paper and then made cutout puppets that sped up the animation process (Crafton 83). Still, the animated versions of the “Newlyweds” characters adhered strictly to McManus’ own work. Success in the animated film was, at this point, still closely tied to recognizable characters from other mediums.
Even with his cutout method, Cohl was like McCay in that he did almost everything himself. The fast pace of the film industry, however, demanded more efficient ways to produce cartoons. The Canadian Raoul Barré is credited with the slash system that Cohl used for “Newlyweds”, but more importantly, Barré introduced the perf and peg system for aligning drawings. The basic concept
6 of this system is still used in traditional 2D production setups today, where punch holes in the top (or bottom) of the animation paper can be held in place using a peg bar (Furniss 18).
What really drove the 2D animation system forward and allowed specialization of labor was the cel (Callahan 225). A catchall term for any clear, flexible drawing material, cels allowed true separation of moving elements of a scene from static ones. As cels became thinner and more transparent, they also allowed for the characters themselves to be further broken down into multiple parts, depending on frequency of movement.
It was cartoonist and animator Earl Hurd who originally patented the cel system in late 1914. A precursor to that system had already been patented by inventor Joseph Randolph Bray, whose original idea kept static images on one piece of celluloid with new drawings cycled underneath. Bray quickly saw the added utility of Hurd’s reversed method and hired him, making him a partner at the Bray-Hurd Patent Company (Furniss 19). The patent at first hampered the use of cel animation by other studios since royalty fees were adding on to what was already an expensive system. By the time the patent ran out in 1932, the system was well accepted. It quickly became the industry norm.
The other long-lasting legacy of Bray was his own studio managerial and organizational practices. The rapid growth of capitalism in the early 20th century left capitalists looking for new ways to streamline output of factories and increase worker output. This led to the popularity of scientific management, a concept developed by Frederick W. Taylor and commonly known as Taylorism. Bray’s managerial techniques at this company were a poster-child for the applications of scientific management. He stressed the unquestioned authority of upper-level management, and the clear distinction between bosses and subordinates (Crafton 164).
Taylorism emphasized the role of management as an analytical tool, whose role was to organize and analyze its workforce to the highest possible efficiency. The effect of Bray’s Taylorized approach was far-reaching in the animation industry. The mass of studios that replicated their
7 systems from the Bray model carried similar setups into the 1910s and 1920s. As Crafton puts it, “This concept, allied with cel technology, provided the praxis of studio animation” (167).
The maturation of the 2D cel animation process created elite workers in all specialized areas of the animation process. The use of contour animation allowed inkers, who drew the final version of the contour lines, to play a massive role in the quality of the finished product. Maureen Furniss describes the weight of the inking department:
At the Disney studio, before the advent of photocopying, studio inkers were strictly trained to hold pens correctly and to trace animators’ images with a high degree of accuracy. Another group of employees, called ‘line checkers’, later measured the thickness of the inkers’ lines to assure uniformity. The individuals in these positions were very skillful. Craig noted that, during the 1950s at Disney, ‘an animator wouldn’t even need to clean up his drawings, because a good inker knew what lines to pick up’; she stressed that ‘inking was a skill and an art, and not just a production-line job’. (75)
This demonstrates the significant role that the contour line played during the “golden age” of animation. Inking was a key separation point between rough animators and the clean-up department. The fact that animators were allowed to forgo any type of clean-up (leaving it instead to the skilled artists in the inking department) demonstrates a deep division between these two disciplines. Animators were strictly trained to focus on staging, motion and acting, while inkers were concerned with details. This separation was essential in the days of cel animation to produce the highest quality product via hand-drawn methods.
The important role of the inking department started to wane when the Xerox process was introduced during the 1950s. The process allowed animators’ drawings to be copied directly onto cels, virtually eliminating the inking department. This affected the actual style of the finished animation. The rigid, clean colored contour lines seen in Lady and the Tramp (1955) gave way to the grey, textured lines of 101 Dalmatians (1961), the first Disney feature to use the process. The
8 introduction of color copiers in the 1980s allowed colored contours to return. This made contour lines less prevalent in newer Disney feature films, though never entirely absent (Furniss 75).
Limited animation was another cost-cutting measure that affected the evolution and influence of cel animation during this time. Since the early days of animation, virtually all studios have used cycles as a means to reduce the number of drawings needed to make a film. Often they would create techniques to supplement the cycling, in order to “hide” it. Most common during that time were varied backgrounds and excessive camera movement (Furniss 136). United Productions of
America5 was the first studio to use limited animation for artistic purposes. The founders saw it as a stylistic complement to their work’s minimalist designs and stylized colors. UPA stood apart from the major studios not only for its modern design sense, but also by its choice of storylines. The studio favored plots based around human characters, as opposed to the anthropomorphized animals of Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM films (Furniss 140).
Unfortunately, UPA’s unique approach to limited animation was short-lived. The changing nature of the Hollywood film industry during the 1950s led to the demise of many short film units at studios, while at the same time the Red Scare was at its peak. Anti-communism sentiment forced Hubley and many other UPA artists out of work, and without its top creative minds, the studio began a downward spiral. UPA attempted to produce new content for television such as “The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show” in 1956. Using normal production techniques, however, the project became too expensive. The show lasted only three months (Beck 208).
Learning from shortcomings of “The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show,” company executives focused on ways of making television animation more practical. Televised series required a greater quantity of shows within tighter schedules. The limited animation techniques originally
5 Originally formed as Industrial Film and Poster Service in 1943 by Steve Bosustow, Henry Schwartz and John Hubley, United Productions of America was a response to the founders’ resentment toward the ultra-realistic style of major studios of the time. Hubley believed that the practice of replicating cinematic realism was restricting the creative possibility of the animated medium, and founded the new studio on the premise of creating animation as a modern art form (Bendazzi 130).
9 designed by the UPA founders as a stylistic choice became a cost-cutting measure, and the quality of work suffered greatly (Rieder 23).
Limited animation practices continued to evolve into the 1960s and 1970s.6 By the 1980s, it reached a level of maturity that allowed for massive amounts of cheap (although not necessarily good) animation to be produced for television. This was the final level of evolution for purely traditional animation, and at no point had it abandoned its two greatest allies: the cel and the contour. The animation empires that reigned by the end of the 1980s were all built upon this aging system.
Beyond these practical reasons, the other major factor that played into the preeminence of contoured 2D animation was a constant push by major animation studios to promote their own aesthetics. Since the industrialization of the animation industry, large studios have often made continuous, conscientious efforts to condition the public toward particular styles. Most responsible for this, especially in the first half of the 20th century, was the Walt Disney Company. Between about 1930 and 1950, in a time when the public image of animation was shifting from that of a curiosity to full-fledged entertainment medium, Walt Disney and his artists were merciless in imposing the idea that their brand and style of animation was superior. Giannalberto Bendazzi writes:
For a long time, Disney was the only standard: not only did he defeat competition, he also erased it, because in the mind of his viewers, his animation was accepted as the only possible one. On the negative side, his work fed the general public’s reluctance to accept alternative proposals for more cultured, stimulating or simply different animated cinema. Disney, himself, contributed in reinforcing his ‘cartoon monopoly’ by publicly describing animation and by theorizing about it as if it had never existed in any other forms but those he himself had created—needless to say, his keen sense of public relations assisted him in his quest for animation superiority. (70)
6 Hanna-Barbera Productions perfected the use of economical limited animation, allowing them to produce the majority of American television animation for nearly three decades. Founders William Hanna and Joseph Barbera used limited animation specifically for cost cutting, compared to the purely stylistic motivations of early UPA. These methods significantly reduced the number of drawings needed. Only certain parts of characters were animated at a time, and then photocopied onto cels to simulate talking or acting (Sennett 49).
10 More than any other single cartooning entity, the Walt Disney studio intentionally shaped the public’s perception of what animation should be. For them it was good business. Keeping audiences expecting a certain result and then delivering it in every permutation meant more revenue. However, this was at the cost of other animation styles and strategies. Artists looking beyond conventional means of animation found less support from audiences once Disney had established his brand of animation as the only acceptable option.
A perfect example of this trend is Oskar Fischinger’s experience while working on Fantasia (1940). As an independent artist by nature, Fischinger quickly became frustrated with the large scale, mass production nature of the Disney process and quit after only nine months. Later he expressed his disgust that the project did not represent his own work, dismissing it as “the most inartistic product of a factory” (Canemaker, “The Original Laureate of an Abstract Poetry”).
IV. Prior Examples of Animation without Contour Lines
The many factors that thrust contoured styles into the mainstream were not total in their domination. Many independent artists and animators developed styles that defied commonality. Today they are well-recognized for their individuality. Historically, much of this came from two groups: the European abstractionists of the 1920s and 1930s and the National Film Board of Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. These artists demonstrated the many styles that contourless animation can take, although it was often the work of a single person pursuing a unique style.
The earliest significant example of non-figurative animated form is German film director Walther Ruttmann. Trained in architecture, fine arts and music, Ruttman worked in painting and engraving before dedicating himself to developing a theory of abstract cinema. This pursuit led him to Lichtspiel Opus I (1921) (Fig. 6) and three continuations on the series, all abstract painted animation synchronized to orchestral arrangements (Bendazzi 28). The shapes featured in these films are devoid of outline and solid color, utilizing instead gradient and shading to create some degree of form. However, the films operate on what appears to be a flat plane, with
11 the moving shapes strongly acknowledging the picture plane by restricting their movements to entering and exiting the visual space.7
Like Ruttman, Oskar Fischinger began in painting and pursued cinema as a means of communicating ideas that static art could not. His early attempts to illustrate written word fell short when his audience had difficulty understanding his work. What Fischinger realized, however, was that the motion of those forms would allow him to better communicate his ideas. His works such as Komposition in Blau (1935) and the studio-backed An Optical Poem (1938) demonstrate how Fischinger primarily used movement to convey the shape and form of the objects featured in his films (Bendazzi 122).
The abstract animations of Ruttman and Fischinger are fundamental examples of moving forms that do not use contour lines. Later artists demonstrated that contourless animation did not have to be restricted to abstraction. Several artists supported by the National Film Board of Canada produced work in the 1960s and 1970s that demonstrated figurative visual elements using a variety of methods. Ryan Larkin created Cityscape (1964) and Syrinx (1965) using oil paint (Bendazzi 262). Even his Academy Award-nominated Walking (1968) used some degree of lineless painted forms. During his time working at the NFB, Jacques Drouin employed a pin screen method (Bendazzi 263). His film Mindscape (1976) (Fig. 7) portrays emotive characters and detailed environments all without the use of contour lines. Lastly, Caroline Leaf is well known for her animation using sand on glass, in which sand is manipulated on a plane of flat glass, under-lit by a light source. Her classic film The Owl Who Married A Goose (1974) displays the characters as moving silhouetted forms against a white negative space. The characters remain mostly flat, but move throughout the empty white space as if it was three-dimensional (Bendazzi 269).
Contourless animation is not limited to 2D, of course. Any style of animation based on photography or realistic visual rendering lacks contour lines, and technically qualifies as a
7 Other European individualist artists such as Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling did similar work exploring the transformation and metamorphosis of shapes within an ambiguous black space, although their films lacked the color and tonal gradation of Ruttman’s work (Bendazzi 30).
12 contourless aesthetic. In that sense, stop motion represents another type of contourless animation. Although stop motion and clay animation were developed alongside the earliest of drawn
animation,8 stop motion failed to pick up the momentum of cel animation. The cel system allowed for a division of labor in the production stage that stop motion could not match, yielding most of the limelight to the cel process (Frierson 64).
This selection of historical contourless examples is not complete in its scope by any means, but it provides a framework for what has been explored in this style, and what sort of potential lies in its expansion. Most significant is that all of these contourless styles, produced without any digital systems, were limited in their size and scope, since the specialized processes needed for producing contourless animation did not lend themselves to elaborate division of labor.
V. Modern Application of Contourless Style
While there are many strong examples of contourless design in 2D animation throughout the 20th century, it took the success of the 3D animated film to make the idea of contourless animation acceptable to the modern mainstream audience. The earliest of computer graphics technology started out as visualization tools for scientists and engineers in the 1950s. During the 1960s, the technology advanced, allowing for primitive 2D and 3D geometry to be created with pen input devices and displayed on monitors. By the late 1970s, computer graphics began to achieve a level of practicality for film and television production (Masson 388-427).
The early 1990s saw the widespread integration of computer graphics into filmmaking with the release of blockbusters such as James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1990) and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). Disney, in collaboration with Pixar, developed the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), which allowed drawings to be scanned and colored
8 Stop motion animation emerged from the same kind of lightning sketching and trick photography that led to drawn animation in the 1900s decade. Early films like Billy Bitzer’s The Sculptor’s Nightmare (1908) and James Stuwart Blackton’s Chew Chew Land (1910) used clay animation in its most limited capacity, to show objects of that very material coming to life. This is quite similar to the earliest of drawn animation, such as Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906), where the physical state of the materials being animated is always revealed to the audience in advance (Frierson, 57).
13 digitally. The Little Mermaid (1989) was the first Disney feature to try the CAPS technology, and The Rescuers Down Under (1990) was the first 100% digitally painted feature film (Masson 144). Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992) featured further implementation of 3D rendered imagery with the 2D traditional animation. While these films were beginning to utilize contourless animation, it was still reserved to environmental shots and background plates.
The release of Pixar’s Toy Story (1995) marked the beginning of the 3D animated feature film. Its success prompted Pixar to continue making features, while other CGI studios like PDI/ DreamWorks and Blue Sky took to a similar cause. So great was the effect of CG films, most animation studios converted entirely to CG productions or were dissolved by the early 2000s (Masson 434-435).
Although the success of CG animation caused a sharp decline in 2D traditional work in the early 2000s, some notable success has come out of Disney’s short film efforts. A good example of modern contourless animation in a studio environment is Destino (2003) (Fig. 8). A project originally planned by Salvador Dali in 1946, Destino was produced with a specific effort to merge the Surrealist movement with modern animation methods. This resulted in director Dominique Monfery choosing to leave contour lines off the character animation so that it would integrate more pleasingly with the painted aesthetic of the film.
Destino was produced primarily at Walt Disney Animation France, in collaboration with the Burbank animation studio. Monfrey began production by reviewing the already-completed work from 1946 and deciding to make the film true to the original vision. This required finding a non- typical way to render the characters, one that would match the painting style of Dali. Monfrey states, “One important fact is that we have 2D character animation but we don’t have lines on the character. Also, the volume of the character is revealed more by light and shadow than by color. In order to better match Dali, we decided to remove that dark line that usually outlines the character sheet” (Desowitz, “Channeling Dali to Make Destino”).
14 Monfrey’s decision to remove the contour lines from character animation directly reflects the styles more commonly associated with painting. While the animation was completed by the French studio on paper, it was scanned and colored using CAPS. The Disney studio had used this system for over a decade to paint within contour lines, but in this unique instance, the tool was eliminating contour lines during the painting process. Once digitized and painted, the 2D animation was combined with the 3D elements of the film, which were modeled and textured in Autodesk Maya (Desowitz, “Disney/Dali’s Completed Destino Kicks Off Annecy Fest”).
This collection of modern digital tools is what made Destino a viable project in 2003, compared to the abandoned project of 1946, which would have required replicating the hand-painted aesthetic of Dali on thousands of individual cels and combining it with animated painted backgrounds. A process so strongly rooted in one artist’s style would be contrary to the system of divided labor associated with the Disney studio at that time.
The animated short Lorenzo (2004) (Fig. 9) followed on the success of Destino by demonstrating another experimental approach to 2D stylization, this time capturing the expressiveness and spontaneity of tempera paintings using interpretive software. The film was conceptualized in 1943 and uncovered alongside Destino. Director Mike Gabriel wrote and designed the film entirely himself, creating fast, expressive paintings to convey the visual aesthetic he wanted to achieve in the film. From these paintings, the team’s software expert, Dan Teece, created an entire CG application called Sable that would apply textured brush stroke to vector lines. In an online interview with art historian Ron Barbagallo, digital effect supervisor John Murrah noted the utility of the software by saying “The only other alternative would have been to paint every frame individually, which would have given the film a very distracting and chattery look. This is a great example of adapting technology for a particular artistic purpose” (Barbagallo, “Lorenzo”).
Achieving the frame-by-frame painted look that Gabriel wanted would have been an expensive and laborious undertaking if actually done by hand. Using a digital process allowed the
15 filmmakers to apply Gabriel’s own brush strokes to the entirety of the animation, as if a singular artist had painted every frame. Computer graphics technology allowed the production designers to distribute labor across many artists while still maintained a singular look and feel.
Baidir (2009) (Fig. 10), which is currently only viewable as a teaser, displays a terrific example of modern contourless 2D style. The teaser, which is meant to advertise a proposed 26 episode television series, demonstrates another unique advantage of contourless 2D style. It allows for much more seamless integration of 2D characters with 3D environments. The rendered 3D backgrounds of Baidir are styled to reflect the solid fills of the character animation. What makes the union successful is the flexibility of both styles to work toward each other. The 2D animation abandons contour lines to look more like 3D rendering, and the 3D environments strip down shading and textures to look more like the 2D. The result is a digital hybrid style that retains the visual appeal of the conceptual source material.
The short film Duck Heart Telsacoil (2009) (Fig. 11) also displays a willingness to adapt a style to the strengths of a particular technology. It was conceptualized to be an idealized application of
motion tween animation.9 Characters and environments in the film were designed to alleviate the problems commonly associated with limited Flash tween animation. The most notable of these is joint gaps. The way that 2D character “rigs” are often structured causes an issue at the points of overlapping geometry. Shapes with complex lines or textures do not transform and distort naturally around points of articulation, causing gaps between the artwork (Georgenes 128). Character designs in Duck Heart Teslacoil avoided this problem by eliminating all contour lines and textures from the characters themselves. Without complex details to reveal overlap, the contourless body parts merged seamlessly. Flat shapes appeared to rotate three-dimensionally because no texture existed to reveal that the surface was actually static.
9 Character animation achieved with motion tweens relies on a collection of graphical sprites, or symbols. Each shape usually represents a body part or prop related to the character, such as eyes, legs, hands, clothes, etc. These overlapping shapes are manipulated individually to create different poses and expressions for the character, and the poses are then tweened to create fluid motion between posed extremes (Georgenes 108).
16 The challenge that remained was how to give the characters a strong presence in the visual scene and how to create a continued illusion of three-dimensionality. To create the effect of a traditional rostrum camera setup, cel flares were simulated by adding drop shadow effects to all character animation throughout the film.10 The size and weight of the drop shadow varied depending on if the shot was a close-up or wide shot. This suggested the proximity of the camera to the photographed surface. A vignette was applied to the composited shot to enhance the rostrum aesthetic and eliminate any remaining fields of solid, flat colors.
Overall, the treatment of the character art and its compositing with the environment created a very flat visual aesthetic for the film, but this was intentional. Embracing the 2D cutout look provided an appropriate application for contourless character design that was acceptable to modern audiences. The disadvantage, however, was that while this style was economical, it lacked the engaging nature of films with high visual depth. In order to make a film that creates convincing three-dimensional imagery in 2D contourless animation, and artist must employ a number of specialized production techniques.
VI. Creating Appealing Lineless Styles with Digital Animation Tools
Modern films that feature contourless styles demonstrate the variety of different ways that three- dimensional form can be represented. The Girl and the Fox (2011) (Fig. 12), the accompanying visual component to this thesis paper, served as an ideal testing ground for a variety of contemporary methods for stylizing contourless forms in 2D animation. The goal of The Girl and the Fox was to adapt the idea of contourless 2D characters into a style that reversed the approach of Duck Heart Teslacoil. Instead of building a visual style around the concept of flat space, The Girl and the Fox overwhelmingly features deep space in character movement, shot design and visual cues. Throughout the development process, techniques were designed and implemented to test
10 A rostrum camera setup is the traditional way of capturing 2D animation on to film, consisting of a camera mounted vertically above a flat image plane where the art is mounted and lit (“rostrum camera”). Cel flares are the diffused shadows that surround the edges of a figure on a cel, cast by the downward lights used in a rostrum setup.
17 which methods would best generate the illusion of deep space. The results suggest three major types of methods for creating this illusion for 2D animation: movement, texture and lighting.
Movement and transformation over time, an attribute that is unique to motion pictures, can have a huge impact on how shapes and forms are perceived by an audience. In Oskar Fischinger’s piece An Optical Poem (1937), solid colored geometric shapes create a sense of deep, three- dimensional space by skewing, shrinking and growing as they move past the viewing plane. These shapes, while devoid of any contours or shading, still create the illusion that they exist in a three- dimensional world. Fischinger’s work is a classic example of how movement alone can create a sense of three-dimensionality. Movement includes translation, rotation, scaling and morphing of figures. All of these methods can demonstrate the three-dimensionality of a form by transforming it in a way that corresponds to silhouettes in the natural world.
The character animation in The Girl and the Fox was created using hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation, as opposed to the 2D symbol rigs of Duck Heart Teslacoil. Drawn forms have far more potential to be posed and moved in a way that conveys three-dimensionality compared to combinations of flat shapes. This also allowed for an essential mode of creating deep space within a film: moving objects in z-space. Often cited as one of the most effective ways to create a strong visual effect in cinema, movement along the z-axis also helps bring shape to a world and characters pictured in a film (Block 172). Hand-drawn characters can change their orientation toward the camera as they move, so not only will they scale and transform as a whole, but their individual parts will shift in size and angle.
The second category used to portray three-dimensional form is texture. In its general form, texture is the perceived surface quality of an object, used to enhance and reinforce a mood or idea (Mayer 418). In this specific context, texture refers to a distortion of objects in a 2D composition that helps to distinguish figure-ground relationships. In a traditional animation setup, some degree of texture is unavoidable. The choice of drawing medium affects how backgrounds, cels, and effects look when captured on camera. Multiple layers of stacked cels in a scene often produce
18 cel flares that call attention to the edges of figures.11 The quality of the film or video itself can create scratches, lines or noise across the image. Comparatively, no texture exists by default in a digital image; it must be applied via bitmaps or procedural functions. Because the creation of textures is an additive process in digital graphics, artists have the ability to select the ideal surface quality regardless of creation method.
In The Girl and the Fox, backgrounds were the most prominent feature to use textures for figure- ground distinction. Pencil sketches made for each layout were scanned and painted over with Photoshop brushes in a way that allowed the texture of the graphite to remain visible. This added a coarse line quality throughout the images, giving the final color pass a more convincing faux- paint look. This gave the backgrounds a clear visual distinction from the smooth, solid nature of the character animation.
The background art in The Girl and the Fox also made heavy use of the illusion of atmospheric perspective. A fundamental method for creating three-dimensional space, atmospheric perspective is the visual effect that the atmosphere has on distant objects. Exaggerating this effect in art strengthens the illusion that the rendered objects are a considerable distance from the viewer, and gives additional cues to how far apart objects are in space (Wayne and Peters 30). All background paintings in The Girl and the Fox contained some degree of atmospheric perspective to add depth and tone to the film’s compositions. Shots designed for multiplaning featured distant layers painted with dull, flat tones while layers meant to appear closer were higher in saturation and deeper in tonal value.
A final way to emphasize figure-ground relationships in 2D compositions is to lower depth of field. In live action cinematography, depth of field is the acceptable range of objects in focus
11 While historically the bane of traditional animation camera operators, cel flares can actually be an effective method of exaggerating figure-ground differences. They were used in Duck Heart Teslacoil to further the paper cutout aesthetic and display characters more prominently. Like strong outlines, however, cel flares have a tendency to flatten a composition. The flat shadows make characters appear to be sitting on top of a background instead of existing inside an environment, and were not utilized in The Girl and the Fox.
19 through a camera lens (Block 51). In animation, this acceptable range can be simulated with a 3D camera or replicated in 2D by applying blurs to background and foreground elements.
Both methods were used in The Girl and the Fox; close-ups of characters placed heavy focus blur effects on background images, while shots with effects simulation or complex 3D compositing actually set a focus range for the 3D camera used.12 The resulting effect displayed separation of objects in a more realistic sense, anchoring the visual style in a world that more closely echoed how humans view reality.
The third category of methods, lighting, plays perhaps the biggest role in how three-dimensional forms are perceived. Hayes states on the subject of drawing, “If realism necessitates the use of devices which to some extent reflect visual appearances, there will come a stage at which some suggestion of light and shade come into play, for it is an axiom of natural vision that without light we should see nothing” (16).
When it comes to animation, lighting is broken down into three components: highlights, tones and shadows (O’Hailey 160). Any illustrated form, if contourless, must have a color that makes up the mass of the shape. In its most simple form, this fill is a solid, flat color. Adding the effect of lighting to the shape gives it three-dimensional form (Hayes 30). Highlights and tones are indicators of where the geometry of the object starts to turn away from the viewing plane. Highlights represent the edge of a form that is exposed to a light source, while tone is the opposite. It shows the part of a form that is facing away from a lighting source, casting any shadows that will appear on other parts of the scene. Both highlights and tones are effects overlays, and traditionally were rendered by effects animators, separate from character animation (O’Hailey 206). In digital production systems, however, it is possible to move parts of this process to the compositing stage and eliminate repetitive animation work.
12 Although objects that are pulled out of focus become visually flat, the overall effect creates a limited spatial composition because of the overlapping forms (Block 51).
20 While designing the contourless style for The Girl and the Fox, it became apparent that simply removing the contour lines from the characters’ designs caused a serious problem. Devoid of any other three-dimensionality cues, characters were left looking flat and awkwardly offset from their environments. Because of the strong lighting of the production design, it became necessary to add tone to all animation throughout the film. Tones were rendered by clean-up and painting artists based on key drawings from the director. This often required a process of trial and error, trying to find how to best shape the edges of the tones to display the most important part of the character forms.13
The cast shadow does more to place an object in a three-dimensional space than define the dimensions of the object itself. A cast shadow is the silhouette of one form projected onto another form (Hayes 27). In the case of character animation, it becomes the silhouettes of characters and props cast upon other characters and their surroundings. Cast shadows have a special role that also allows an artist to convey the spatial relationship between two objects in an environment. They can be drawn by hand or simulated in digital 2D to various degrees of success.
In rare instances, character shadows in The Girl and the Fox were drawn by hand to match the movement of the character along the ground place. More often, the characters’ shadows were simulated using 3D lighting in After Effects. Character animation was embedded with alpha
channel information to allow simulated light to pass through translucent parts of the video.14 The resulting silhouette of the animation was projected onto a hidden ground plane, where only the resulting shadow was visible. This could be precisely composited with the 2D backgrounds
13 Tones, along with shadows, are often not exact representations of how they would look if realistically rendered. Because of the countless subtle variations in the surfaces casting and receiving the shadows, realistic tones and shadows would be too complex and distracting when rendered with a 2D style. This is why the use of “toon shaders” in 3D production is rarely successful. The well-trained mind of a human artist is still required to simplify the shadowed areas to mesh with stylized 2D character art (O’Hailey 206). 14 This requires the use of alpha channels around the animated character so that the simulator knows the solid boundaries of the form being lit. The method works best when the direction of the perceived light is perpendicular to the surface of the digital animation cel. The more the perceived light source was parallel to the surface of the cel, the less effective this strategy is. In these cases, a second, invisible cel of animation was set perpendicular to the light, casting a shadow that appeared to come from the visible layer.
21 created by layout artists, leaving an accurate shadow that did not reveal the nature of its 3D origins. The useful consequence was that the method was considerably faster than rendering shadows by hand, while at the same time somewhat more accurate. All the while, the final image served the 2D look and feel of the film’s style.
The technique that links these three levels of lighting together is the gradient. Any naturally lit object has some degree of falloff along its surface. This causes the surface to always be somewhat unevenly lit (Wayne and Peters 156). To replicate this, solid fills in 2D animated forms can be given subtle gradients that follow the lighting sources that are suggested by the highlights, tones and shadows. In another sense, gradients can be thought of as transitions between highlights, fills and tones. In fact, 3D rendered objects usually feature a gradient that is automatically created where highlights and tones transition through light diffusion.
Gradients in The Girl and the Fox were of two distinct types: either linear or radial. Linear gradients were achieved with direct ramp effects, applied to animation in After Effects where a light source was predominantly overhead. Most gradients were radial, achieved using point lights cast onto 3D layers in After Effects. Point lights could be quickly pushed closer or pulled farther away from a digital cel to adjust the intensity and radius of the light’s effect, so that more immediate falloff could be created for unevenly lit scenes and subtle gradients could be saved for shots with greater ambient lighting. The center point of the gradient could also be quickly customized just by moving around the point light in X and Y dimensions.
The combination of visual strategies used in The Girl and the Fox is only one possible configuration. Any of these methods, combined with other ideas, can serve to create the convincing illusion of three-dimensional forms in an animated film.15 What is most important is that all of these methods are digitally designed and implemented. While similar effects can be accomplished in the physical realm, digital tools make the process faster, cheaper and more customizable.
15 Viewers of The Girl and the Fox have often remarked that they felt like they were watching a 3D CG film rather than a hand-drawn 2D film. One conjecture for this effect is that the variety of digital simulation methods used in the film, combined with the lack of familiar outlines, reminds the viewer subconsciously of a 3D CG film.
22 VII. Conclusion
The notion of the paperless animation studio is not a new one. It has been talked of for some time now, probably since the first computer arrived on the animation scene. However, until now, the necessary software and hardware have not really been available to make it a plausible reality. Die-hard traditionalists have maintained that paper-based drawing is required to achieve the highest quality of drawing and subtlety of line. (White 412)
The vision that Tony White puts forth in his book Animation from Pencils to Pixels: Classical Techniques for the Digital Animator is, in retrospect, still a bit conservative. Hardware and software have not only caught up with all the functionally of a traditional animation process, they have surpassed it in almost every way.
Like live-action film and television, animation has always been tied to commerce. In the world of independent artists, animation is an open and viable medium suited well for complex and elaborate artistic expression. In the world of business, however, budgets and deadlines always put restrictions on what is feasible when creating animated films. During much of the 20th century, these restrictions led to the large-scale adoption of the most economically feasible tools of the time. Hand-drawn, cel animation proved to be the best option when it used contours to carry art from rough stages into clean-up and paint.
Today, however, computer graphics software on desktop systems allows for extreme low-cost alternatives to traditional systems. Not only do they sidestep the requirement of a line transfer to cels, removing the practical need for contour lines, digital systems also make the alternative techniques to contours much more economically feasible. Shading, shadows, textures and camera effects are all available in a digital compositing environment as an easy means of creating deep, sophisticated animated styles without the use of contour lines.
23 The contoured aesthetic is still a perfectly viable and effective means of stylizing animated characters and environments, but its dominance of mainstream animation is finally beginning to wane. In feature films, contourless aesthetics have already replaced the 2D contour within the last ten years. Perhaps in the coming decade, the progress made by the 3D contourless formula will continue to propagate an interest in contourless 2D animation styles. Ultimately, the versatility and efficiency of digital tools will allow a greater application and acceptance for a diverse landscape of all visual animation styles.
24 Appendix A: List of Figures
Figure 1. My Dear Agnes. (1495). Albrecht Dürer. Pen drawing in bistre on white paper
Figure 2. A digital drawing of an apple using contour lines
Figure 3. The apple of Figure 2 without contour lines
25 Figure 4. The Calling of Saint Matthew. (1599-1602). Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Oil on canvas.
Figure 5. Little Nemo. (1911). Windsor McCay.
Figure 6. Lichtspiel Opus I. (1921). Walther Ruttmann.
26 Figure 7. Mindscape. (1976). Jacques Drouin.
Figure 8. Destino. (2003). Salvador Dalí, John Hench, Donald W. Ernst. Dir. Dominique Monféry.
Figure 9. Lorenzo. (2004). Dir. Mike Gabriel.
27 Figure 10. Baidir. (2009) Charles Lefebvre, Slimane Aniss, Thierry Rivière.
Figure 11. Duck Heart Teslacoil. (2009). Tyler J. Kupferer.
Figure 12. The Girl and the Fox. (2011). Tyler J. Kupferer.
28 Appendix B: Filmography 101 Dalmatians. Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Wolfgang Reitherman. 1961. Walt Disney Pictures. MP4 file. An Optical Poem. Oskar Fischinger. 1937. AVI file. Baidir (Teaser). Charles Lefebvre, Slimane Aniss, Thierry Rivière. 2009. Web. 2 May 2011. Destino. Salvador Dalí, John Hench, Donald W. Ernst. Dir. Dominique Monféry. Prod. Baker Bloodworth, Roy E. Disney. 2003. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010. DVD. Duck Heart Teslacoil. Tyler J. Kupferer. 2009. Base14. DVD. Lady and the Tramp. Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske. 1955. Walt Disney Pictures. MP4 file. Lichtspiel Opus I. Walter Ruttmann. 1921. AVI file. Little Nemo. Windsor McCay. 1911. MP4 file. Lorenzo. Dir. Mike Gabriel. 2004. Video Recording. Mindscape. Jacques Drouin. National Film Board of Canada, 1976. Web. 3 May 2011. Syrinx. Ryan Larkin. National Film Board of Canada, 1965. MP4 file. The Girl and the Fox. Tyler J. Kupferer. Prod. Nicholas W. Allred. 2011. Base14. DVD. The Owl Who Married A Goose. Caroline Leaf. National Film Board of Canada, 1974. MP4 file.
29 Bibliography “About tweened animation.” Adobe Flash Professional CS5 & CS5.5 Support. Adobe Systems, n.d. Web. 29 June 2011.
30 Frierson, Michael. Clay Animation. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994. Print. Furniss, Maureen. Art In Motion: Animation Aesthetics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Print. Georgenes, Chris. How To Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4: The Art of Design and Animation. Amsterdam: Focal Press, 2009. Print. Gerantabee, Fred. Adobe Flash CS4 Professional: Digital Classroom. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, 2009. Print. Hayes, Collin. Grammar of Drawing. London: Studio Vista Limited, 1969. Print. Laybourne, Kit. The Animation Book : A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1979. Print. Laybourne, Kit. The Animation Book : A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking. New Digital ed. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998. Print. Masson, Terrence. CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference. Indianapolis: New Riders, 1999. Print. Mayer, Ralph. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques. 2nd ed. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991. Print. Mendelowitz, Daniel M. Drawing. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1967. Print. O’Hailey, Tina. Hybrid Animation: Integrating 2D and 3D Assets. Amsterdam: Focal Press, 2010. Print. Rieder, Howard. “Memories of Mr. Magoo.” Cinema Journal 8.2 (1969): 17-24. JSTOR. Web. 12 Aug. 2011. “rostrum camera.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 01 Jul. 2011.
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