VIRTUAL PUPPETRY
A Thesis
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Master of Fine Arts in the
Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Matthew Lee Derksen, B .A.
*****
The Ohio State University
2004
Master's Examination Committee: Approved By Dr. Midori Kitagawa, Advisor
Dr. Terry Barrett
Amy Youngs / Advisor Department of Art
ABSTRACT
Obsessive-compulsive disorders plague many of us in our every day lives. The purpose of this study is to successfully display the emotional and physical attachment to these behaviors through the use of three-dimensional character setups and straight ahead, non-linear and looped animation. The technique deals with the interactivity of a three dimensional character after it has been setup for animation and is related to the idea of puppetry. The goal of this project is to create a better understanding of obsessive compulsiveness for myself and to give the viewer an idea of the process, my struggle with various behaviors, and a new way of seeing animation.
ii rI i' I
I dedicate this to my family and friends.
lll ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to my parents, Larry and JoAnn Derksen, for having and supporting me
through thick and thin. I also owe them for passing on their creative talents and minds
which has allowed me to keep my head in the clouds but also my feet on the ground.
I would like to thank Todd for showing and giving me the chance to do what I
love to do.
I thank Julie for being the strongest women that I know and for constantly being
supportive in all of my efforts.
I would also like to thank my advisor Midori Kitagawa, Maria Palazzi, Terry
Barrett, and Amy Youngs for allowing me to roam free and supporting me in my creative and educational efforts.
Thanks to Matt Lewis and Peter Gerstmann for teaching me what it truly means to optimize.
Thanks to my friends Mandy Bauerle, Dan Elsen, Scott Swearingen, Kyoung Lee,
Vita Berezina-Blackbum, Todd Delman, and Ryan English.
iv VITA
August 19, 1979 ...... Born - Celina, Ohio
2001 ...... B.F.A. The Ohio State University
2001-2004 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate The Ohio State University
Field of Study: Art Major Field: Art and Technology
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Abstract...... ii
Dedication ...... iii
Acknowledgements ...... iv
Vita ...... v
List of Figures ...... vii
Chapters:
1. Introduction ...... 1
1.1 Artist's Background ...... 1
1.2 Inspiration ...... 4
1.3 Past to Present ...... 5
2. Character Setup and Rigging for Three Dimensional Computer Animation ...... 7
2.1 Description of Process ...... 7
2.2 A Brief History ...... 10
3. Past Works ...... 14
3.1 Addiction (computer generated, still image, 2001) ...... 14
3.2 Reach (computer generated, still image, 2001) ...... 15
3.3 Childhood (computer generated, still image, 2002) ...... 16
4. Interpretation of 330 (a series of computer animated loops, 2003) ...... 18
Vl 4.1 The Medium ...... 18
4.2 330 (computer generated animations, looped, 2003) ...... 19
5. Artist's Voice ...... 22
5.1 Importance of Process ...... 22
5.2 Conception ...... 23
6. Conclusion ...... 24
Bibliography ...... 25 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1. Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Burning Cigarette 1895; Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 85.5 cm; National Gallery, Oslo------28
2. Edvard Munch, The Scream (or The Cry) 1893; 150 Kb; Casein/waxed crayon and tempera on paper (cardboard), 91 x 73.5 cm (35 7/8 x 29"); Nasjonalgalleriet (National Gallery), Oslo------28
3. Addiction, digital print, 4ftx3 ft, 2001------29
4. Reach, digital print, 4ftx3ft, 2001------30
5. Childhood, digital print, 3ftx3ft, 2002 ------31
6. Nails, 3D looping animation, 2003------32
7. Alarm, 3D looping animation, 2003------33
8. Sway, 3D looping animation, 2003------~------34
9. Push, 3D looping animation, 2003------35
10. Stain, 3D looping animation, 2003------36
11. Wash, 3D looping animation, 2003------37
12. Popcorn, 3D looping animation, 2003------3 8
13. Matt Derksen, Shower 1, digital rendering, 2002------39
14. Matt Derksen, Shower2, digital rendering, 2002------40
15. Matt Derksen, Shower3, digital rendering, 2002------41
16. Edvard Munch, Madonna 1894-95; Oil on canvas, 91 x 70.5 cm; National Gallery, Oslo------42 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Artist's Background
I was born August 19, 1979. It was the only day that my father had missed a day of work up to that point. At least that is what I have been told all of my life. I think that this is one of the reasons that I hate being late. I grew up in a very small town in the state of
Ohio. I lived in the same house along with my mother and father, two older sisters, and a brother who loved to pick on me as much as he could. As I look back on it, I don't mind.
The town I lived in had nothing for me to do for the most part. I mostly goofed off with my friends, doing the usual childish things, trying to stay out of trouble. I was pretty much a "moma's boy." I found out early that if I told my mother what I was doing and did not lie, I usually could stay out longer than the rest of my friends.
I started to draw at an early age. In elementary school, which was K through six in my town, I often found myself loosing interest in what the teacher was talking about, so I would bury my head in my notebook and doodle. My doodles soon turned into full page compositions. My drawings would always become a human-like character that was more detailed in the face than anywhere else. I remember that I could take a bundle of scratch marks on the edge of my page and create a bulbous character out of them. For the most part, I didn't think about what I was drawing, I would just create. Most of my classmates
1 caught on to my secret distraction from class and soon after I started to receive requests for drawings. This was the first time that my artwork had a purpose.
I became obsessed with my style, or trying to achieve one. I never wanted my images to look like the cartoons that I watched every Saturday, but those wonderful, half hour comedy bonanzas influenced my early works heavily. I take parts and pieces of what those artists where doing in their drawings and cannibalize them. My main motivation for creating some of my early works was to make other people laugh. I loved to provoke raw emotion. I remember a specific incident in elementary school. One day a young girl who we used to hang out with was being quite short with us. So I was commissioned to draw an image on notebook paper that displayed a caricature of evil with a caption that was not very respectful. Then I was asked to deliver our idiocy to her.
I have never been slapped so hard. I have not had such a reaction from my work since; I was quite successful for an elementary artist.
As I moved on to high school, I got my first job creating advertisement art for a local grocery store. It involved creating small cartoons on chalk boards every week, showcasing the fruit of the week or maybe the vegetable of the day. I worked at this store for the better part of my high school career. At the same time, I began to create caricatures of my high school teachers and students. They got so popular that other students would request an image of their teacher or a student and I was happy to supply them. At the time, I began to start using white paper, no longer note book scraps, and a black marker. The marker forced me to become quick and more expressive with my line quality. I could not make mistakes. I had the opportunity to take an art class geared towards two- dimensional works during high school but I chose to head towards three
2 dimensions. I worked with ceramics, sculpting characters out of clay for hours on end, trying to achieve the aesthetic feeling and expression that my paper work once had.
I soon left high school in 1997 for college and entered the fine arts program at
The Ohio State University. This was a big decision for me. I was tom between biology and art for what I planned to do for the rest of my life. The deciding factor for me was when my older brother introduced me to three dimensional computer animation and sculpture. I jumped at this medium, head first, and have never looked back. I struggled with a giant learning curve. It was a brand new medium for me. I had not used computers before, especially since my mother and father did not own one. With the help of my brother, and constant, late hours at the university computer lab, I started to gain some control of this new artistic medium. Three years later I started to produce work that
I enjoyed again.
During this time, I practiced oil painting, sculpture, holography, some photography, digital image manipulation, web and interactive works, and continued to draw for myself and others. The community of those making three- dimensional animations was small in comparison to the other mediums I had practiced. I realized that a much larger community existed on the Internet. Much of my work has been inspired by this community. Also in my search to find a place where I could fit in, I found the
Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). I decided that this place is where I needed to be. So after attaining my bachelor of fine arts degree after four years of school, I decided to go into graduate school at OSU and continue making art at
ACCAD.
3 1.2 Inspiration
One of the most important decisions of my life was to go into 3-D computer animation. The movie that influenced this decision the most was Jurassic Park, directed by Stephen Spielberg. Spielberg introduced to me an ancient world that no longer exists by the use of computer graphics. This was the first time that I had seen computer graphics so fully integrated into a movie that I no longer thought about them as special effects, but as characters that conveyed emotion to the audience. It opened up a new medium to me. Although I had seen computer graphics in movies before, such as the
TlOOO in Terminator 2 directed by James Cameron, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were more believable, inspiring me to work in that medium.
Few artists have inspired me as much as cinematographers; but Edvard Munch is one of them. Edvard Munch (figure 1) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker, one of many
1 artists who developed German Expressionism in the early 20 h century. His work depicts emotion in its most raw state, grasping the heart of the human psyche. He used grey colors and body language to thrust the viewer into the emotional state the character on the canvas depicts. I first saw his work in a reproduction of The Scream (or The Cry) (figure
2), like many people have. Munch's work became a window to world of pure and thick emotional expressionism that I was looking for and struggling to express in my art.
Although Munch was successful in creating implied dynamic movement in his imagery, it is not enough for me so I turned to animation. The Lion King came out in
1994, an animated feature directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. I related to the idea of childish rebellion and the constant want to become a man, but this is not why this movie stands out to me. I was most impressed by the natural movement that the artists of
4 the movie were able to achieve with so very few drawings or frames. I read many books on the subject of classical animation. I learned techniques of exaggeration, secondary motion, silhouetting, anticipation, squash and stretch and many others. I still use these techniques today.
1.3 Past to Present
In the past, many of my works dealt with the role of technology and how it affects our everyday lives and experiences. I displayed technology as an over powering beast that can over take us quickly. In many of my works, I portray the wrath of technology as broken monitors and rusted hooks. The hooks appear to be alive, pulling and creating tension as well as stability. At first glance, it may seem that I am judging technology, specifically computer technology, as bad and with evil purpose. How can I do that when my artistic medium relies on this box sitting under my desk, working nonstop? Many of my works deal with the struggle with technology and for the most part do not comment on whether technology should be seen as good or bad, only a part of our daily lives.
I have also worked with the struggle between nature and technology and how the human being is tom between the two. The human body became an important symbol for me. I use it to reflect my inner struggle with my medium and others around me. I also use the body to engage the viewer. It is a stepping stone into my work. I use it to give the viewer some point of reference in which they can freely explore the image and feel what the body in the image is feeling. The body becomes the viewer's avatar. It allows them to project themselves onto the work and create meaning for themselves. The body is usually interacting with the environment. It acts somewhat as a lifeless corpse or
5 costume. The body is usually deformed, somewhat male in appearance, although gender is never clearly stated, hence the absence of genitalia, allowing the viewer to project their inner selves onto the body.
Presently, the body or figure continues to be important in my work. I have become engulfed in my medium and focused on a small area of 3D animation, character setup or the creation of what is known as a "rig". Rigging deals with the body and how its flesh moves across the underlying skeletal structure. Rigging is also important in moving a figure across the screen and having it react to its environment. Aesthetically, it is very similar to old style armatures that drive stop motion animation in such films as
King Kong. Rigging becomes a system of bones, muscles and lattices (three-dimensional grids used to deform polygonal meshes). These rigs can then be moved interactively in
3D space to create a performance. I have recently become interested in the interactive part of this process and have abandoned ideas of producing traditional narrative animation.
In the following chapters I will be discussing the process and a brief history of computer animation, specifically focusing on the technical side of character setup as well as the description of past works and their relation to my present and future work. This paper will also go into detail about my most current piece 330 (a series of computer animated loops).
6 CHAPTER2
Character Setup and Rigging for Three Dimensional Computer Animation
2.1 Description of Process
The creation of realistic computer animated human figures continues as one of the most sought after goals in computer graphics. Character setup, or rigging, remains one of the largest obstacles in the way to achieving realism in a character's movement. Helping to overcome this obstacle is the job of a Character Technical Director; utilizing programming skills, digital skeletal systems and deformers, free form deformers (FFDs ),
Inverse kinematics and dynamics. This chapter discusses these tools as well as the evolution of three- dimensional character setup and animation throughout the history of computer graphics.
The job of a Character Technical Director, as of 2003, is to setup a character and have it ready to be animated by a Lead Animator. The process of setting up a character model (sometimes called rigging) can be tedious. The goal is to take an existing 3D model and attach it to an advanced skeletal system and to set up handles on that skeleton that an animator can recognize and use to control the model through key frame animation. One of the first decisions to be made is type of skeletal structure. There are two possible techniques at this point and it is usually. decided by the construction of the character and how the character needs to be animated. If the character is jointed, a simple
7 forward kinematics skeletal system may be used. Forward kinematics rotates and poses individual joints in a hierarchal arrangement, or a parent and child relationship. Within this setup, if a parent is moved or rotated then its children are moved or rotated a-; well.
This allows an animator to move a character's arm and the hand will go along with it.
However, the hand itself can still be moved and rotated in its own direction. The geometry is parented to its correlating joint on the skeleton. The downfall of this method is that the child object will never be able to stay in one position if its parent object is being moved or rotated. For example, it would take intensive key framing to keep a character's foot planted on the ground as its hips move up and down. If this becomes important, which is quite often, an Inverse Kinematics solution can be used. Inverse
Kinematics allows the animator to position a joint chain according to end effecter. The end effecter is a position or goal in space that a joint in a hierarchy is trying to reach.
This setup allows the animator to concentrate on the goal and not worry about repositioning each joint to reach the goal. In the case of Inverse Kinematics, the animator gives to the computer control of how the joints are rotated using a system of handles and solvers. Within an advanced skeletal system, both Forward and Inverse Kinematics are widely used. Once the skeletal system is setup for a model consisting of multiple geometries and the geometry is parented to its corresponding bone in the skeletal system, the character is ready to be animated. This is not the case if the model is made up of a single piece of geometry that must move in a highly organic way.
In this situation, the geometry must be deformed by the skeletal system. A complex rig uses a system of joint deformers, free form deformers (FFDs), and dynamics to create believable bends and displacements of geometry. In case of joint deformers,
8 sets of vertices in geometry are assigned to specific joints of the skeletal system. Each joint then affects the position of the vertices assigned to it. The amount the joint affects
each vertex can then be controlled to allow for smooth transitions from joint to joint.
Two methods of binding can be used for joint deformers. The first is known as a smooth
bind. A smooth bind attaches the geometry to every joint in the skeleton and allows
multiple joints to affect a vertex, making it possible to achieve smooth transitions from joint to joint. The second is known as a rigid bind. This method binds the geometry to
each joint but does not allow multiple ownership of a single vertex in a single geometry,
but does allow for a higher level of control by numerically weighting each vertex. Both
of these methods can become too specific and time consuming for higher resolution
models. To control the deformation of large areas within a higher resolution model,
FFDs are used.
FFDs (sometimes known as a lattice deformation) are used throughout the
computer animation production process. Their main function is to simplify a higher
resolution model by embedding it within a simple 3D grid or lattice. This simple grid is
then manipulated, causing the target object to deform. FFDs consist of two identical 3D
lattices, a base lattice and a deformation lattice, that surround a set of vertices in the target object. The user can then specify the number of control vertices within each
lattice; however, the idea behind this method is to end up with fewer control vertices in the lattice than the target object. Once the base lattice is set up, the user manipulates the deformation lattice. After that is done, the points of the target object are remapped to fit the deformed lattice, using linear or cubic interpolation, causing a smooth deformation over time. Multiple FFDs can be created on a single geometry, but they can not share
9 vertices. Once the FFD objects are in place, they can be bound to the skeleton using
either a smooth or rigid bind. Once bound, the deformation lattice points can be
weighted. The FFDs can be deformed depending on the rotation of joints to simulate
muscles and fat beneath the skin, and many other subtleties.
Making small movements throughout the body can become tedious and time
consuming, so sometimes the computer is given control over the small actions and
secondary movements through the use of physically based dynamic simulations. The
simulations take into account forces within the world, such as gravity, air, turbulence, as
well as forces that are created by the collision of multiple objects such as friction and
resilience. In many cases, Flexible Dynamics are used to determine the animation of part
of a model or whole. In a Flexible Dynamic simulation, each vertex is treated as a point
mass and is connected to all of its neighboring vertices through a series of springs. That
mass can then be affected by forces within the world. As the vertex is affected by the environment, it pulls on the springs connected to its neighbors. If one vertex is affected, the entire geometry is affected. Once the forces are lost, the vertices return to a position of rest. Flexible Dynamics can be used to replicate the motion of hair or fat jiggle.
Dynamics, coupled with FFDs, joint deformers and underlying skeletal animation systems can be combined to produce a complex rig that can be simply animated.
2.2 A Brief History
One of the earliest creations of a three-dimensional character is "First Man" created by William A. Fetter in 1963 for the Boeing Company. "First Man" was a seven segment articulated human-like character created for Boeing demonstrations. "First
10 Man" was first used to add scale to a CV A-19 in a cockpit visibility film. The "Fist
Man" went through many stages, becoming more and more complex until "Fourth Man and Woman" included color, shading and highlights. In 1972, at the University of Utah, hand and face animations were being created using an animation system created by
Edwin Catmull for the purpose of making computer animated movies. It produced raster graphic images of three-dimensional models implementing hidden line removal developed by Gary Watkins, and smooth shading developed by Henri Gouraud. Around the same time, another animation system was being developed at The Ohio State
University by Tom Defanti. This system became known as GRASS, or the Graphics
Symbiosis System, a programming language used for the animation of two-dimensional imagery. It consisted of a number of vector drawing commands and utilized a hierarchal system in which the user could animate the entire image or break it into sections, or
"trees," and animate them separately. In 1981, Looker was produced, showcasing the first fully shaded virtual human character in a motion picture. The minds behind Looker were known as III. III was founded by John Whitney Jr. and Gary Demos, as a motion picture production company in 1974. Some of the powerful minds at III included Jim
Blinn, Frank Crow, Craig Reynolds, and Larry Malone. They produced Adam Powers, the Juggler to showcase their talent and abilities to produce realistic human motion and a believable character. In 1984, a beautiful metallic woman known as Brilliance came into our lives. This was the first fully computer animated commercial, and show-cased complex human animation. Brilliance was produced by Robert Able and Associates.
They were able to achieve emotion and a sense of character within the piece, and impressed millions of viewers during the 1984 Super Bowl.
11 However, some of the largest contributors of the rigging process were doing research at universities and other research based organizations. In 1976, N. Burtnyk and
M. Wein were two of the first people to develop an interactive skeleton used in key frame animation. Their animation technique allowed the animator to freely key frame a stick figure that would allow a higher level of real- time interaction. The skeleton can then be used to drive a more complex part of the image, introducing a new interface allowing for easier control, letting the artist set key frames and interpolate between them. It also introduced the idea of "bone" deformation. Later, around 1982, David Zeltzer, working on his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science at The Ohio State University as an assistant for the Computer Graphics Research Group, focused on an animation system that centered on the modeling of human kinematics and goal directed animation involving human like characters. He produced animations of a skeletal human walking over even and uneven terrain. Soon after another animation system was developed, also at The
Ohio State University, named PODA. Michael Girard ,Susan Amkraut and A. A.
Maciejewski created PODA as an animation system of a legged figure. It focused on the key framed animation of a figure's legs in relationship to its body movement. It also incorporated locomotion dynamics, taking into consideration the force being applied by the legs when animating the rest of the body.
Today programmers and artists together are solving the problem of body mechanics for realistic human figure animation. So far everything that has been mentioned requires a geometric method of binding a "skin" to a skeleton. This can be thought of as moving and deforming the "skin" from the outside in. This is an unnatural way of deforming a fleshy object when compared to the human body, but it is still widely
12 1+
accepted due to its ability to simplify highly detailed characters. As hardware and
software catch up, this method may be left behind for a more realistic and physically
based binding method. A physically based system would use a system of bones to move
muscles that would then deform a "skin" (polygon mesh). More realistic deformations
and subtle movements are only some of the advantages of such a system.
In 1997, Ferdie Scheepers began to research the construction of muscle models to
help from and deform figures within a 3D space. A figure's underlying structure is the
key factor in Scheepers' identifying how its outer structure looks like. It was also an
attempt to create detailed muscle deformation away from the joints, where a geometric
method of binding sometimes fails. Although physically based skeletal systems are not
widely used, it is being put into use by large companies such as Pacific Data Images
(Shrek) as well as in the movie Dinosaur produced by Disney.
Today it is hard to find research being produced in character rigging because
much of the research is being done by competitive companies protecting their findings.
Eventually papers will surface and information will flow through the computer graphic
community. A perfect rig will not be made up of one method, but a mix of geometric and
physically based bindings that will be driven by skeletons with forward kinematics,
inverse kinematics, and dynamic forces in the world.
13 CHAPTER3
Past Works
3 .1 Addiction (computer generated, still image, 2001)
Addiction (figure 3) is a three-dimensional digital print. The image is 4ft by 3ft and is diced into 12 inch by 12 inch squares mounted onto foam core. Each square is then mounted 2 inches away from the wall and approximately 1A of an inch away from one another. This setup displays the image as if it were a puzzle. A grid pattern is formed on the wall behind the image by lights shinning down from the ceiling, displaying an image of a grossly deformed figure relaxed and lifeless, sitting upon a dining room chair. The chair is made of lathed wood. The figure sits upon a padded cushion of the chair that is sliding off, hanging upon the chair like an old coat with one arm draped over the back of the chair swinging lifeless through the air. A computer monitor sits on the character in place of its head. The monitor has fallen onto the character, catching it by surprise. A brilliant blue shines from the screen and is the only life within this image. A cord falls from the monitor, only to be caught by a bowl shaped hand of the figure, wrapping around it a few times. The figure's left foot shoots out towards the image plane and sits upon a wood floor. This area is completely lit and is the brightest quadrant in the image. The lighting makes the foot stand on its own, signifying importance. There are syringes between the toes of the characters right and left foot; a symbol for an
14 unspecified addiction. Heroin addicts in the military have been known to shoot up between their toes to hide the track marks of the needle. The body seems to have been sitting here sometime without attention and is surrounded by dim colors that were at one time brilliant images of nature. Reflective areas of the back wall stare at the figure. The figure has lost its struggle for life. It sits, lying on the chair, ignoring the world, waiting for someone to find it and give it purpose.
3.2 Reach (computer generated, still image, 2001)
Reach (figure 4) was displayed as a digital print in the same format of Addiction in the same exhibit in 2001 at the Silver Image Gallery located on The Ohio State
University campus. Reach describes a darkened cellar space full of dust as the morning light shines down the stairs from the entrance, cutting through the particles among the grey, mildew air. The walls are made of brick, moistened from the damp air. There are black pipes that follow the ceiling. In the center of the room, to the left of the image, sits the upper part of a torso only the right arm extruding off to the right of the image. The arm is suspended from the ceiling with old, rusted hooks that hold the flesh of the arm and keep the torso balanced on a stool or manikin stand. The arm reaches out to a plant like structure that has burst through the wood planks of the floor. The plant is a brilliant green; it becomes alive as it starts to flower where it meets the hand of the torso. Where the meeting of man and nature come into play, there is an orgasm of light and color. The light has volume and surrounds and engulfs the hand with hot, glowing blues and violets.
Above all, there is a warm, yellow, white light that is suspended from the ceiling in the
15 upper right quadrant. This light suggests an intelligent mind. The arm is suspended to the ceiling pipes.
The pipes seem to feed the arm, giving it strength that it can no longer achieve on its own. The plant form seems to entice the arm, giving it comfort and serenity.
3.3 Childhood (computer generated, still image, 2002)
Childhood (figure 5) was presented in the same format, however, it measures to 3 ft by 3 ft. and is a digital print on glossy paper which caused it to glisten in the light of the gallery space. The image is of a deformed, androgynous, human-like character sitting in the comer of what seems to be white walls on a wood floor with wood trim. The character has odd proportions and an oversized head and is displayed in an unrealistic size. The body does not seem to be well taken care of. The finger and toe nails are long and appear black. The figure has large feet, a pot belly and breasts. The head has an extremely large mouth with no throat and large, imperfect teeth. The figure is screaming.
Its right arm reaches out, trying to pull its body through the space towards an old rag doll.
The doll is tom and tattered. It lies lifeless in the bottom right quadrant of the image. A slight reflection comes off the floor, reflecting what might have been the past. The figure seems to have lost the toy, and with its outstretched arm, it struggles to get it back. The figure is almost asking the viewer to slide the toy closer. The head and face are adorned with make up, red lipstick around the mouth and a white base across the face. The make up is smudged as if the figure was crying and attempted to wipe its face.
I find myself projecting ideas of a male childhood onto the figure. The doll seems to pull me into a time that once was. The white walls and reflective floor remind me of
16 the gallery that this image was exhibited in. The image becomes a display of frustration to be gawked at by others.
17 CHAPTER4
Interpretation of 330 (a series of computer animated loops, 2003)
4.1 The Medium
330 is represented by a series of three-dimensional computer generated short animated films. In the past, I have created classic narrative animations, an animation that displays an idea with a beginning, middle and end. I lost interest in creating such pieces.
In the past year and a half, I have become interested in the process of rigging. My attraction for this medium is its interactivity. Once I create the rig, I can push and pull the character in real time. I can open and close its fist, twist its back, or have it recite
Shakespeare, if I am so inclined. It becomes more like acting. Although many artists choose to take a rig into a final animation and have it becomes something by telling it where to be and when, following cues and communicating to the audience through a script, I choose to keep them pure. My animations require no script. I take a hold of a character and start to move it, recording every move that I make. This is known in classical animation as "straight ahead style." It allows for fluid motion and lets the character move across the screen, in and out of the space on a more unconscious and improvisational level. This can be seen in the pink elephant scene in Disney's 1941 hit,
Dumbo. Elephants run rampant around the screen creating a fluid, yet controlled swill of motion. The Disney artists used pencil and paper. I have spent the last two years
18 developing a technique of creation that allows me to quickly create a character and animate it in a similar way.
4.2 330 (computer generated animations, looped, 2003)
In 330, the main figure is a frog. It took two hours to construct the model of the frog and another two hours to construct its rig. This speed is very important because it allows me to simply use the tool and to concentrate solely on the movement of the character. 330 is a work that is still in progress. It currently consists of seven animations and each animation stands alone. In this paper I will only be discussing the three most successful. The animations will be presented on televisions that surround the viewer.
Each animation is 11 seconds long and loops multiple times, thus requiring the viewer to see the animation as a painting, with no beginning, middle or end. The viewer is simply thrust into a moment in time and forced to relive that moment over and over until he or she chooses to look away. The loops are concealed so that the viewer does not realize how much time has gone by and how often the loops have been repeated.
Within each animation there is a frog that stays in the shot at all times. The frog is a pale greenish grey color. Its skin appears to be wet or slimy. It is sick and sweating, as if it's trying to shake an addiction in some stale hospital. Its actions, or movements, do not appear to be uncomfortable. It shakes involuntarily on occasion, but does not hesitate to keep on doing what it has been doing. In the first animation, Nails (figure 6), its movement is fluid but repetitive. It has no focus at first but then becomes curious about its own hands. The hands become the main focus for the viewer. Tubes attach to the frogs head, back, forearms and legs. Sometimes they control the frog's movements and
19 sometimes the frog is in control. The tubes along with the frog's movement bring to mind puppetry and the idea of some unseen force believing to be in control. It also adds
a feeling of restriction. The tubes keep the frog from becoming too out of control and let
it believe that it can do what it likes. The viewer becomes comfortable while in the same
space suggesting some outside force. Syringes pump into the frog without rest. The
syringes also help to give the piece rhythm and distract the viewer from the actions of the
frog. The frog becomes an abstraction of addiction and repetitive behavior.
In the second of the series (figure 7), the same frog hangs from the top of the
screen, further away from the image plane. To the right of the edge of the screen there is
a switch with a light above it. The light is red in color and seems to be on. The red color
is very similar to the liquid that exists in the syringes in Nails. This piece is titled Alarm.
The frog is in a state of relaxation at one point but quickly becomes excited. It seems
awake, notices the light, and starts to swing over towards it and hits the switch in one
giant swoop, turning the light off and then on again and then returning back to a relaxed
state. Once again its skin is wet and clammy, although this time the color appears to be
bluish white. Cords support the frog from the ceiling of the image plane. They appear to
be tough and strong. They limit the frog from ever leaving the screen, but still allow it to reach the switch, which acts like a protagonist, unlike the syringes. Syringes are used
again, only this time they are under the right foot, pumping away. The frog seems unbothered by them as it did in the first animation.
The third of the series, Sway (figure 8), has the same moist frog appearing much greener and sick as it moves without care from front left to back right of the space. On either side of the frog there are two needles with the needle ends pointing to the head of
20 the frog in a triangular composition. The triangular composition is strengthened by the
cords attached to the characters legs, hips and lower back. The cords stretch off screen to
the right, left, and upper left quadrants, suggesting a cycle reminiscent of the recycling
symbol of three arrows pointing at each other in a triangular pattern.
I think of the monotony of everyday life and the repetitive actions that I find
myself doing but can not stop. The movement of the frog reverberates from needle to
needle and as its eyes move closer to the needle points, the needles start to pump. As the
needles pump the figure moves in the opposite direction. The frog is still being
controlled but is allowed to move away from discomfort. The frog seems unaware of its
surroundings and is more intent on what is in front of it--the viewer. The needles are
floating in the air to suggest an intrusion into the environment, and taking on the same role as the viewer, staring at the frog and keeping it from relaxing. The needle acts as a
symbol for unwanted sickness or addiction and the frog reacts in a manner that a small child may act towards the trip to the doctor or a spoon fool of medicine.
21 CHAPTERS
Artist's Voice
5 .1 Importance of Process
In the preceding series, I set limits for myself. I only allowed myself to use 330 frames or approximately eleven seconds of animation. This also kept my mind and actions controlled and limited very much like my physical actions in my daily life as well as the frog's in his virtual world. I also forced myself not to pre-plan, which was something new for me. I had used the straight ahead style of animation in the past. Now it became important that I completed every animation as quickly as possible, therefore I only thought about an emotion and the movement involved in expressing that emotion.
This technique relies on the rig. I had to first develop a character that could easily and inexpensively be animated. Everything within the scene had to be setup so that it would automatically react to the motion I was creating through the rig. For example, in Sway, there are two needles that appear on either side of the frog. These needles were setup so that if I moved the frog's eyes within .2 units of the needle point, they would start to pump violently until I moved the frog away. This freed me, as the only animator, from having to worry about animating the environment. It gave me an acting partner that would react to me.
22 5.2 Conception
I have always been interested in the little obsessive-compulsive behaviors that
plague many of us. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (obsessive-compulsive neurosis) is
the term used for an individual who experiences obsessive thought or compulsive acts,
either of which can be performed singly. Obsession is described as unwanted and
disturbing thoughts that a person can not suppress, that interfere with everyday life
experiences. Compulsive behaviors are repetitive actions and ritualized behaviors that a
person feels driven to do and cannot repress.
In much of my work I attach the idea of such a disorder to much smaller and less
significant rituals within my life. I investigate such things as nail biting. I bite my own
nails for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, multiple hours of the day. I know I am biting my
nails and I feel compelled to keep doing it even though I know I am mutilating my body.
When my nails start to bleed, I find myself still biting them and become very
uncomfortable if I consciously stop. I have also dealt with issues of hand washing, making sure clocks are right, and swaying.
I incorporated these ideas into my work as addictions to specific behaviors that cause
repetitive actions. The syringes in my work suggest the power of addiction and the lack
of control that the addict has. They pump on their own once they are started without any
input from the animator other than how fast they will operate. I believe that we do have
control over what we chose to be addicted to. That is what the cords represent in the 330
animations. They represent our conscious control and our lack of conscious thought.
23 CHAPTER6
Conclusion
In conclusion, I find that my work through the years has followed a particular direction and flow. It deals with my personal view of myself and how I appear to others as well as my struggle with my everyday obsessive and compulsive behavior. I express these thoughts through the interactive media of computer animation focusing on the character setup. This work will continue on into the future, as a keep picking apart my body and mind.
24 Bibliography
1. Adamson, Andrew and Jenson, Victoria. Shrek. Dreamworks SKG. 2001
2. Allers, Roger and Minkoff, Rob. The Lion King. Walt Disney Pictures. 1994.
3. Battcock, Gregory. The New American Cinema. E.P.Dutton & Co. NY 1967.
4. Burtnyk, N. Wein, M. Interactive Skeleton Techniques for Enhancing Motion Dynamics in Key Frame Animation. CACM, V19, #10, Oct 1976, 564-569.
5. Catmull, Edwin. A System for Computer Generated Movies. Proceedings of the ACM National Conference August 1972, p. 422-431.
6. Camero, James. Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Caroloco Pictures, Lightstorm Entertainment, Pacific W estem. 1991
7. Chung, Shih-Kai. Interactively Responsive Animation of Human Walking in Virtual Environments. May 21, 2000. pp. 1-97
8. Cooper, Merian C. and Schoedsack, B. Ernest. King Kong. 1933.
9. Crichton, Micheal. Looker. Warner Home Video, Ltd. 1981.
10. Frame, Michael and Peak, David. Chaos Under Control. W.H.Freeman and Company, NY. 1994.
11. Fetter, William A. A Progression of Human Figures Simulated by Computer Graphics
12. Fraunhofer CRCG. David Zeltzer, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer.
13. GRASS programming language. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
25 14. Hofstadter, Douglas R. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, NY. 1979.
15. Kaminsky, Stuart M. American Film Genres: Approaches to a Critical Theory of Popular Film. Dell Publishing Co., Inc. NY 1974.
16. Leighton, Eric and Zondag, Ralph. Dinosaur. Walt Disney Pictures. 2000.
17. Scott, Ridley. Blade Runner. Columbie Tri Star Pictures.1982
18. Sharpsteen, Ben. Dumbo. Walt Disney Pictures. 1941.
19. Sheepers, Ferdi. Parent, Richard E. Carlson, Wayne E. May, Stephen F. Anatomy Based Modeling of the Human Musculature. Siggraph 97. 1997 pp. 1-10.
20. Singh, Karan. Kokkevis, Evangelos. Skinning Characters using Surface-Oriented Free- Form Deformations
21. Spielberg, Stephen. Jurassic Park. Universal Studios. 1993.
26 Appendix Figures
27 Figure 1: Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Burning Cigarette 1895; Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 85.5 cm; National Gallery, Oslo
Figure 2: Edvard Munch, The Scream (or The Cry) 1893; 150 Kb; Casein/waxed crayon and tempera on paper (cardboard), 91 x 73.5 cm (35 7/8 x 29"); Nasjonalgalleriet (National Gallery), Oslo 28 Figure 3: Addiction, digital print, 4ftx3ft, 2001
29 Figure 4: Reach, digital print, 4ftx3ft, 2001
30 Figure 5: Childhood, digital print, 3ftx3ft, 2002
31 JA)
Figure 6: Nails, 3D looping animation, 2003
32 Figure 7: Alarm, 3D looping animation, 2003
33 Figure 8: Sway, 3D looping animation, 2003
34 I
,/ /
Figure 9: Push, 3D looping animation, 2003
35 Figure 10: Stain, 3D looping animation, 2003
36
Figure 12: Popcorn, 3D looping animation, 2003 Figure 13: Matt Derksen, Shower], digital rendering, 2002 Figure 14: Matt Derksen, Shower2, digital rendering, 2002
40 Figure 15: Matt Derksen, Shower3, digital rendering, 2002
41 Figure 16: Edvard Munch, Madonna 1894-95; Oil on canvas, 91 x 70.5 cm; National Gallery, Oslo
42