Research
I’ve been researching the most influential examples of animation and live action that I could find and I came across a video that mentioned the people who animate the music videos for Gorillaz. These animations involve live action backgrounds, 3D animation and 2D animation all in one video sometimes, so they seemed like a perfect company to research into. The production team are called “Passion Pictures”. The director is called Jamie Hewlett and I figured I’d look at things he’s done. Him being a director I wanted to find someone who is more on the practicle side of actually making these things and I found one of the animation directors, “Robert Valley” who has made Oscar award nominated animated short “Pear Cider and Cigarettes”. This was all basically produced by Robert himself and it was a very stylized and showed that he has a lot of experience. I decided to look for an email but could only find a twitter. The reason I want to contact him is because I would like to know how the industry tackles animation in live action, what software, how they deal with lighting, is there a secret to compositing them in believably?
These are all questions I hope to have answers to however he is rather inactive on twitter now.
I’ve decided that my character designing isn’t giving me the 1930s designs that I want to recreate. Its so hard to follow the classic design and not stray too far away by adding too many details.
I’ve emailed an animator on the Cuphead video game. The animator is called Jake Clark and he’s done a panel about the creation of the Cuphead style however he doesn’t really describe his artistic approach to making these characters. Hopefully he might respond and give me some helpful tips I can follow.
I didn't receive a response from either of these creators unfortunately. As I came closer to the deadline I decided that I wanted some kind of idea of how a group of outside sources reacted to what I was doing. The idea here was to see if my original idea for the project is reflected in peoples reactions to it. I did this with a survey that would ask questions based on the most recent export of my project. I have decided to plan for what I can do with the project after the deadline, for my own betterment. I used on each question a 1 - 5 scale of Disagree and Agree. That way I get a wider range of answers. I also added at the end an open question and an optional question that lets you say any comments they would like to add. Since I will be pursuing it as a passion project, it gives me almost unlimited time to improve it and add what I want, such as sound effects which was an abandoned idea because of time.
My first question was based on my own interest of the animation style. If I am to do all this long, hand drawn, frame by frame animation; I'd hope it would be for an audience that appreciate it. As it is one of my favourite art styles (Rubber Hose) I need to know if I am the only one that enjoys it and it is just an oddity.
These results show that there is an exponential difference in interest, more people saying that they really enjoy it than "kind of" enjoy the style. This is good for me as it means if I do spend a lot of time on these animations, more often than not I will gain an audience that enjoy them. However, most of the people that took the survey are my own age, this means it could be a bias result.
With this question, I'm interested to know if what I didn't have time for in the FMP, would be worth perusing in my own time. This is because it almost feels like there is personality missing from the movements without sound. However, these results show a slightly staggered opinion. While some people agree, more people think that either they aren't sure, or that they don't think it would help. This makes me consider that for some people, sound with movement isn't as important, but some think it would really help. My thoughts are that people who have watched original old cartoons know that sound effects were very important because there is no verbal speaking. This could be something I can look into to see how many cartoons rely on sound gags.
One big question I know a lot of animation studios have is, "Is 2D animation still worth it?". Because of its long production time and cost, most studios opt for 3D animation which is much more efficient. You don't even have to consider the space the characters have when they move or turn because the computer already has their model loaded. This is something I didn't even consider because I knew I wanted to do the classical animation style. However, since companies such as Disney are now mass producing 3D movies, I need to consider if 2D still has a demand. As the results here show, there is more desire for classic animation than 3D. I think this can be due to a clear lack of that animation in the theatres and the cheap pumped out 3D movies are becoming overly common.
The last required question that I had on this survey was left open to a small sentence. This is because I wanted a reference from people to see what they are reminded of, and to see if its what I was trying to remind them of. It makes me happy to see that Mickey Mouse is referenced a few times from people. But there is a general idea that the animation is based on more classical era of animation. Mickey Mouse being a very expressive mascot for Disney when the original "Nine Old Men" were pioneering what gives still images life. This means that I have given the impression I was hoping for with my animation. The only problem I think this gives off is that I'm almost copying what these animators created. I want to produce a similar effect with life like animation, but I also don't want my animation to become someone else's. This can be something I endeavour to avoid with my next project.