#computer animation

[humanoidhistory]

Charting the path of the Voyager probes in Understanding Space and Time, 1980.

[inapat18]

Pushing the limits of computer animation – The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn

             Our previous articles discussed the trend of realism in computer animation, and how some computer-animated movies, namely Toy Story and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, chose to radically distinguish themselves from it and revolutionized computer animation twenty years apart. There was still however a certain type of aesthetic to be found in realistic 2010s computer-animated movies. Thus, while major animation studios were perfecting their techniques, directors of live-action movies took hold of these tools to try to translate their vision.     

             The 2011 animated movie The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is a very interesting case to study in this respect. It is indeed one of the best examples of trying to close the gap between live-action and animation.

             Adapting Tintin’s adventures on the big screen has always proved tricky, because Hergé’s style – called in French la ligne claire, which translates to "clear line" – is difficult to translate to cinema and especially in live-action. Finding actors to play those emblematic characters or transliterating visual gags is a perilous operation. Nevertheless, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson decided in the 2000s to rise up to the challenge. Both directors are VFX enthusiasts and they decided to use a hybrid technique: performance capture.

             This 1990s technique came from the video game first. It involves picking up actors’ expressions and movements thanks to suits and sensors to translate it best to 3D animation. Video games such as Prince of Persia or The Last of Us use it to make their characters look the most realistic way possible. Peter Jackson knows performance capture very well, since he used it himself to create Gollum in Lord of the Rings. With this technique, directors reasoned they did not have to find actors whose primary appeal was their resemblance to the original comics’ characters anymore.

             Other criteria were prioritized: the way they move or emote, or their voices. Directors could hire anyone they wanted and then make the magic happen through VFX. Hence why, for Secret of the Unicorn, performance capture imposed itself as the perfect compromise between pure computer animation and a live-action movie. It gives the movie a peculiar look: it is easy to recognize that it is not only computer animation, but it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what is different from the usual movies.

             This might be why the experience was not very successful: Hergé’s aficionados did not get their bearings and the general public sometimes found the movie visually weird – flirting with the uncanny valley. Performance capture pushes the limits of what we consider realistic and it can make the viewers uncomfortable. But it also created a debate in the industry: can performance capture be considered as animation? The movie’s animators explained that performance capture was just a tool they used to keep the actors’ facial expressions but looking at it, it is hard to decipher what is animation and what is performance capture. As a result, if performance capture seemed to be the best choice on paper, the results were flawed. The movie did not bring forth a new animation era, and performance capture is still used parsimoniously in VFX techniques. But who knows? In the future, it may very well be a tool to innovate computer animation.

EL

[agreatartist1]

armurred heerohs

In little medieval times

[destroyer-of-monsters]

G VS G

Godzilla vs Gigan [Gemstone] 2019

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Bolt (2008, Chris Williams and Byron Howard)

28/05/2024

[th3-0bjectivist]

“Victim's Respite” - Animated painting

[omorisunny21]

A little animation test i done on mine aimator few days ago to test out, I do know how to change background & more but my pc cant handle it & have to wait till next year to get a new one when startong College.

[alexisr294]

In spite of the announcement of another utterly and pointless Ice Age film in the works, let's be glad there will be better animated films coming next year.

[juhnkit]

[alpaca-clouds]

Old Computer Animation

As I am planning the Digimon Rewatch, I found myself confronted with a problem: I have the BlueRays for the first four seasons of Digimon, however, nothing that right now can play them given they are Japanese BlueRays. One of my old laptops had a BR player and a laptop can easily read any code, obviously. But my PS4 is broken, and my BlueRay player is not cooperative when it comes to playing Japanese BlueRay. And my current laptop does not have any drive for CD, DVD or BlueRay. So, I did the thing, that I will not namely mention, but you know what I did. And when I did it, I looked at some of the movies, now in the quality of BR-Rips.

What noticed: Oh boy, it is quite a lot more noticable in HQ that this is really early computer animation. However, given how fucking old this is (the screenshots above are from 2000 and 2001) it actually looks fairly decent.

I am honestly not quite sure with Digimon season 1 and 2 for the TV show. I know they used some computer elements, but I am almost certain that at least the main animation was still done on cells, though I know Tamers was fully animated in computer with the drawings no longer being cells that were scanned in, but having been completely created in a computer. In Tamers it is actually quite noticable because the show uses a lot more complex layering with the backgrounds and such.

But the movies... Honestly, I do not think I realized how much of the background stuff was completely 3D but rendered flatly. Like some stuff as the backgrounds for the Hosoda movies for the Internet stuff was obvious, duh. But I do not think until yesterday I ever realized the Kuramon in movei 4 are completely 3D but rendered flat. And in thw HQ version it is also very noticable how many background in the third movie are fully 3D but created in a way that appears fairly flat. I know I noticed the flower field as being 3D before, but it is constant in that movie.

I mean, thinking about some of the stuff it makes so much sense. Like the Kuramon. At times there are like tens if not hundreds of those things on screen. Having someone animate them fully by hand, rather than animating a couple of patterns and then copy pasting the 3D Kuramon all over the screen, rotating them a bit, definitely was less of a nightmare. Imagining some poor soul animating those frame by frame makes me anxious xD

But it is kinda interesting to look at this and compare it to modern animation, that pretty much always is done in computer fully, allowing for a lot more complex layering to happen.

I am kinda looking forward to the rewatch in this regard. To see how far animation has come in the last 25 years. Especially given that Digimon is still an "advertisement TV show" that always had to cut a lot of corners and never had a lot of budget. I do remember that especially 02, with all the crunch going on behind the scenes, was at times very poorly animated, watching more like an animatic in some episodes, than actual animation. (I do remember the Christmas episode especially. So many frames that did not move and were just camera pans over a still image... I know the kind of crunch that happened with that show, but wow.)

But, well... As someone who loves animation, this is actually kinda interesting to see.

(Yadda-yadda-yadda. If you wanna join the rewatch. Bla-blubb-tumblr community. I am gonna annoy y'all with this for the next two weeks, sorry.)

[animatejournal]

Hunger (La faim) | Director: Peter Foldes Studio: National Film Board of Canada | CA, 1974

[phoenix-arts7]

Might be outing my age a bit, but indulging in some childhood nostalgia.

If you know what this is from childhood, we're already friends.

[kply-industries]

CRAYON ATTACK

[comet-cola]

The only animated movie remakes I ever want to see are remakes of classic old CG movies, that keep them CG and just implement newer technologies/techniques to make them look more alive & visually stunning, without any major art direction or plot changes

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Bolt (2008, Chris Williams and Byron Howard)

27/10/2024

[th3-0bjectivist]

“Oblivion Haze” - Acrylic paint on canvas