I’m usually never aware that my monitor is actually flickering 60 times a second, but I just discovered a little perceptual giveaway. If you see an isolated shape in space and shift your eyes away from it, instead of smooth motion blur you momentarily see multiple instances of the shape.
My friend Nobuaki translated my Basic Animation Aesthetics essay into Japanese. See it here:
Nobu has also recently translated PSS into Japanese for submission to Hiroshima, which I heard is an amazing festival.
Some months ago I disappointed some jury members because I wasn’t a Japanese schoolgirl. They kind of expected after seeing the film for some reason. I found the comparison very weird. Or maybe they were fetishists for that kind of thing…
*This essay was published recently in Objects Magazine (translated to German). Here is the original English version*
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essay by David OReilly
For the purposes of talking about animation, aesthetics are simply any of the elements that make up the world of a film, the building blocks of images and sounds.
The importance of animation aesthetics is such a subtle yet vitally important one. It might seem superficial to discuss these things, especially because cinema is so much more to do with content and story than a pure aesthetic experience, but nonetheless the visual nature of animation calls for debate on the subject. There is a continuous raft of animation, both commercial and independent, which looks the same, and I don’t believe it has to be so. The more we think about the subject the more playful and interesting computer animation becomes, the medium feels to me like a recently opened Pandora’s box which is still being examined, understood and tamed. (Read more…)
I’m obligated to write a post about all this nonsense relating to using compression in video work, I’ve received many messages claiming I’ve been ripped off and asking how to get the effect.
First of all, datamoshing is an extremely lame title for the effect, it’s another attempt at branding a basic technique as something new and edgy, there really is nothing hardcore about removing keyframes from a video file. The title is and always has been using compression artefacts.
While I did what was probably the first intentional transition using compression back in early 2005, I never structured my identity around it or overused it. It was obvious it would eventually hit mainstream and join the ranks of interesting effects which become embarrassing after they’re easy to do (posterize, glow, van-gogh, mosaic etc). My goal aesthetically has always been the more broader aim of simply not hiding the artefacts of software, the same way Bacon didn’t hide paint strokes, that includes compression but about 1000 other things. It’s not a big deal that it’s now mainstream.
The only criticism for some of the recent, popularized versions of the effect is that it’s being stuck on to a normal performance, when the music or content doesn’t remotely call for it. I don’t believe any form of cinema should be about cherry picking new effects, aesthetics should always serve the content.
“When exaggeration is not inherent in the imagery, but is merely an exaggerated attempt to desire and please, it’s a sign of provincialism, of the wish to be noticed as an artist”
- Tarkovsky
but you can finally get the latest Psst! Pass It On project on a special edition DVD, order it now!
As most people in the bidness know, Psst! is a rare project, literally all of the short films are entirely independent and essentially works of love. There simply is no better platform for seeing the state of modern computer animation, it’s very important this kind of thing exists.
This year was bar far the largest one yet, there were over 150 people involved. My team alone included the talented Chris Harding of Shynola and the often-imitated king of the absurd David Shrigley. Order this artifact of history now, there are only 500 copies being made.
One of the hardest questions for a lot of people in the animation world is the simplest: what do you do?
The endless skill-set involved in animation means you can apply yourself to almost any job. I’ve at various times been a Designer, Concept Artist, Animator, Director, Writer, Sound Designer and Editor. I’ve always been happy in every role, the only reason I spend so much time film-making is that there isn’t another Director who would do the same ideas. Nonetheless, I meet a lot of other Directors who have a different interpretation of the role, and it seems to have lost much of it’s original meaning as Film Maker.
It used to be perfectly acceptable to call oneself an Animator if you made films, but then these individuals started using Director to distinguish themselves from the production line Animator. It seems the problem now is that certain Directors need to distinguish themselves from the production line Director, and there simply is no definition available.
Today, Director is such an umbrella term it ceases to describe anything meaningful. Many Animators, Illustrators and Designers try on the Director gloves, this can sometimes be a great thing, but it nevertheless changes the definition slightly, terms like ‘animator/director’ or ‘director/designer’ have become quite common in the last 5 years. There is also a greater number of production companies than ever before, with rosters changing like the weather. Whatever status and cachet the term used to carry is undoubtedly fading. In London the presumption of a Director is that he or she pitches their heart out and barely gets by, in Berlin it’s that they work in a cafe. (Read more…)
