Chapter 9 in Furniss’s book, Art in Motion, discusses digital animation and how developement and advances have been made throughout the years. One aspect of the digital animation industry that is a downfall is the rapidity of change paired with the duration of time it takes to create such a film. Cel animation compared to digital animation is quite a big difference with the point of a pencil being the smallest image you could see on a drawn animation, but with digital animation a pixel , being much much smaller, is the smallest image one could see. The book even commented on the term filmmaker, and how a lot of the time in the digital field it’s not a relevant term because there is no need for the filmmaker to touch or even handle film stock. Some studios integrate the new and old technologies, using handmade puppets, as well as enhancing the image with digital animation. One film that I know that has done this is Coraline, which was a fantastic film.
Many other films with live action also use digital animation to create special effects or settings that could not be achieved otherwise. Movies like the Harry Potter series use a slew of grandiose props along with the use of blue and green screens to achieve the ambience of Hogwartz. Also, in the third film I’ve heard that the superimposition and animation of the hipogryff ‘Buckbeak’ significantly slowed the production of the film down because the animators were so meticulous about animating each feather. Another big name film that used an infusion of difital animation and live action was Avatar, DUH! James Cameron has taken action tracking to a new level, putting cameras on the actors faces. I’m not exactly sure about all of the little intricacies of the technology, but Cameron has for sure made history with his film, giving birth to more life-like characters than ever before.
The chapter also talks about programs that can be used for digital animation and I am slightly familiar with some of them, such as Maya, After effects, and well, photoshop, of coarse. One interesting tidbit that I didn’t know was that most advancements in digital animation is in the making of commercials because they take so little time to complete and most all commercials are very different. Another reason they can be very developmental is because advertisers have the money to spend, and they are willing to go the extra mile, in their wallets. Another fact that I wasn’t aware of was the cost of digital animation. I knew it was expensive, but the book say that it can actually save money. although the wire framing, texturizing and preproduction on the animation can be very tedious and expensive, once the character is created and ready to be manipulated, animating them can be very easy and cheap because you’re just reusing the same digital figure.
You can really see computer generated animation everywhere. I thinks it’s really amazing how they can combine it with movies where you wouldn’t see so much of this about 20 years ago. I can see where programs like Maya would be easier to animate since the computer mostly does all the work for you when compared to cel animation. I didn’t know about the commercials but I’ll keep my eye out.
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