Animation defined? Addressing topics of Medium Specificity

Hey Gang! Here is an interesting topic that seems to bring up differences in opinions and artistic practices to what defines the art form of animation and what medium can animation be associated within terms of art making. This article is writen by a pretty awesome animator, Tim Garbutt! <----he's awesome!

To describe a definition for the medium specificity of animation is quite a difficult task for someone, like myself, who doesn’t believe animation has a medium specificity. Of all the art forms that have ever been created, animation has proven that it can be done with any kind of medium. The only element that is universal in all the mediums used to create animation is the use of time and motion. Animated films have been created in computer, created by pencil on paper, made in sand, painted on glass, pixilated people and environments, or scratched on film. Animation is only restricted to the capacity of the artist’s mind who is creating it.

No medium can clearly be defined as an animation medium unless you only include popular culture’s representation of animation through Hollywood films. A popular majority I’m sure would agree that the computer is the medium of animation nowadays. All animated features are created using the computer in recent years and it is perhaps the only art form that is utilizing the computer to create art on a commercial level of success that the common members of society can relate to. It used to be that animated films were confined to the medium of film, but with the replacement of film with digital projectors, even that cannot be completely defined as an animation specific medium.

Animation medium specificity is indefinable. Animation can be created on film, in computers, with a string and a round disc with an image on each side, or in the corner pages of your 8^th grade math book. If the persistence of vision can be achieved, animation can be realized into a physical moving piece of artwork. I think that there are artists over time that have put themselves into a genre of animated filmmaking that allows their particular body of work to lend itself to specifying a medium in their work, such as Len Lye and direct film manipulation animations. Artists in the field of animation choose to focus on one or a few different mediums of representation in animation that they enjoy most, and therefore specify their medium to define who they are in the field of animation and what their specialty is in animated filmmaking. But, animation as a general art form encompassing all types, mediums, and presentations does not bare a sense of medium specificity (in my opinion ).

Physiology of visual perception

In this post, I want to show more of the science behind how we interpret the light and color that we see. When it comes to visual perception, the rods and cones, which are the photoreceptors in the retina, are responsible for detecting light. This is done through the use of light sensitive pigments. Each pigment is made up of a protein called opsin, which can be either a rod opsin or a cone opsin.

The rods are mainly used for dim light while the cones are for bright light vision. The cones are further divided into three groups depending on the wavelength that they absorb: short wavelength cones are for blue, middle wavelength cones are for green, and long wavelength cones are for red. Cones play a large role when it comes to light and dark adaptation. A very dark room will not stimulate the cones in your retina, causing a long period of time for your eyes to adjust to the light and eventually being able to make out details. When the eye is exposed to a brightly lit area, the cones' visual threshold increases relative to the light source. As this happens, the cones are less stimulated and the eyes are able to make out details.

All of this information from the retina is sent through the optic nerve to the brain, almost acting like the film in a camera.

Definition of Animation Part II

Going off Malak's post about defining animation...

Does animation really need to be defined? Why is it that people constantly feel this need to put limits on things, so that they can categorize and understand them? Last year we had a whole symposium here at USC, centered around the task of redefining animation.

I can understand the need for a definition as far as artists are concerned. It has been a long struggle to get animation taken seriously as an art form, and this effect things like funding for programs and for artists. But sometimes I think people get to caught up in specifics of what justifies a certain form or not.

One example included a debate in class centered around the difference between something being called a photo, or a film. The questioned posed was that if you film a stagnant room, and you present that beside a photo of the same scene, does it make it a film just because it was shot on film? Many went back and forth, with some saying some sort of movement needs to happen for it to be a film, etc.




A similar debate was also posed for animation. One person felt that a still could be animation in that the action is happening inside their mind when you look at the still- in a sense it has an animate quality. Others argued that one needed to produce movement between frames, and therefore a single picture could not be animation. The way I feel is somewhere in-between and is from an approach of time and intent.





I do believe there to be a difference between the still in counterpoint to film/animation that its deliberately lending time and/or movement to an object. For instance, a painting inherits is dynamism in that it is still. A choice has been made for the object to be still, and a viewer can analyze this still and look at all its aspects and create a multitude of ways to view it or themes to derive from it. It is animate in this sense, but this aesthetic is different from something that is deliberately given time or movement. The experience of viewing this is different because what you see will change- it will change in that it now has the aspect of time added to it. I do think movement is a very important quality in animation, but I think it is time that separates it from still art. Not to say that time cannot be found in other things, such as film, but again, animation is a hybrid of many mediums.

To address the difference between live action and animation in a sense requires a different set of attributes. I will start this argument by posting a rough and partial definition of animation that I came up with for this class discussion:

Animation uses the audio/visual language of cinema in way similar to how a poem uses words. It condenses meaning and communicates abstract ideas, such as emotion and experience. It uses line, shape, color and symbols in motion, in combination with sound or lack of sound, to represent ideas that stimulate an emotional response, packaged in such a way that others can experience them. It is personal and collective, based upon ideas we experience in the world and in our minds.

Although this covers more aspects of areas in animation than I want to discuss at this moment, I will address the part about animation being similar to a poem. In live action, we are able to capture an image of reality that closely relates to what we see in our everyday lives. In animation, we are able to abstract these items and concepts into a form that could not happen in the waking world. Through aesthetic choices, we are able to condense meaning and enhance it. For example, through using certain color schemes and rendering more iconic characters, one can break through the barriers of what we perceive reality to be and in a sense open our minds to digest ideas in a different way. By allowing us to delve into a more abstracted subconscious world, I believe we are able to be more open to process concepts and emotions without the stigma attached to them in a world of reality. In a sense, the fact that film is framed and presented in a manner not integrated in the real world, it does this already. I think animation can take it a step further, by its ability to eliminate some prejudices people ingrain in reality and present an different perspective.

Also, you can argue that many mediums accomplish this task, certainly painting and music do.

So, I guess I can conclude back with the beginning point. Yes, I did just go through this whole spiel to define what animation is, but I do not agreed with the fact that it has to be so specifically defined. Since it shares so many qualities with different fields, I can only see it being compared with the other mediums to be described. Ultimately, it does not exist in a vacuum, and contains a huge power to portray experience and ideas to others.

Definition of Animation

So a very heated debate went on this week when a bunch of animators where asked to define animation!





What is animation?


I feel if this question was asked to the general public their first answer would be to refer to television cartoons and especially Disney features.


But when asked to those that create and inform the genre itself the notions and perceptions of what animation is differs a great deal.





Wikipedia defines is as: Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although several other forms of presenting animation also exist.





Norman McLaren defines it as : Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are darwn. What happens between each frame is much more important than what exists on each frame. Animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between the frames."

In both these definition it seems that motion, rather the illusion of motion is important. So then would a mere image of an optical illusion be constitued as animation or not?

What about a sculpture that defines motion but is not confined within a frame?

There also seems to be the argument that any appearance of live action or it manipulation is not animation. That special effects aren't animation either. I dont think I agree with any of that.

My definition of animation is that it is the illusion and manipulation of time, space and motion and that can be achieved through several mediums.
To me the beauty of animation is that is almost undefineable, and with the advant of new technology it continues to be reinvented and redefined. It merges onto so many different medium and is becoming more and more infultrated into all kinds of mediums and technologies an example cell phone.
I think for animation to have a multitude of definition and perceptions really makes it powerful and hopefully the general public will one day be more aware of that.

Metaphors for Human Existence

One element which I think is a great asset to animation is it's ability to describe and portray a message of human experience. Concerning our feelings and emotions, they are an abstract concept which is not tangible and cannot be done justice by words alone. I believe we can also get these kinds of messages across through other mediums, such as painting. However, where painting is concerned, the experience is in the exploration of the still, where it's life is created by the viewer, whom renders it dynamic in interpretation.





In animation, it is the combination of stills, with audio many times, which delivers a completely different kind of message and sensation. I think through this combination we can share these experiences with others, as long as they are willing to experience.







"(My) films are not meant to be explained, analyzed, or understood. They are more experiential, like listening to music." (Jordan Belson)

Visual Music

So I know the rest of the blogs have focused on Light lately, but I wanted to bring up the issue of sound also, especially after last seminar's screening of visual music, and the very term its self is intresting.

Visual music is also refered to as color music, but mainly it is defined as a system which translates music or sound into a visual representation using many mediums like CG, Video and animation and so on.

Color music is an old tradition of creating devices such as lumas that display colors and lights similar to the structure of how music is constructed in a way.

This is real interesting becuase I've studied music long before I ever studied animatin and in a sense I have to say it was hard for me to see the association between how light/color functioned in these films we saw and its relation to music.

The first instinct is to want to see the visuals directly describe the music heard and in almost all the films we saw I would say that was not the case, especially in the more fluid and abstract animations such as Richard Bailey's work. I found that either the visuals were so over powering and almost hard to discribe using the music that they chose,it almost seemed like a seperate accompaniment, or the other case of were the music was great and sadly the visuals did not hold up to it.

The way in which i see those pieces described in similar ways to music is their structure. They remind me of sonatas, which are large scale musical pieces that have typically three to four movements. The different movements describe the same theme differently and it seems to be this way in the visual music. The light is the occuring motif and it goes through several transformations, it crescendoes where we see the visuals becomes more intricate and climax in a similar way. It goes through different paces much like the different movements in sonatas, where every piece has its pace.

Some of the pieces remind me of more modern and contemporary music were syncopation became more popular and we see that in the juxtapositions of visuals and even its contrast against the music alot of time.

I can definitly see how these pieces relate a bit more to the structure of music than say the rigid and more formuliac structure of script and story writing. I still think that to some degree they are not as effective as I would like them to be. I think the disjunction between the visuals and the music that goes with it takes alot away.

I think the work of Oskar Fischinger and Norman Mclaren are much more succesful at infusing both mediums together. One of the beautifies of animation is its ability to manipulate time and control every aspect of it and they use that so beautiful and insync with the beats of the music that they choose. Even the simple shapes and elements they use visually portray the notes that are heard.

High and Low

An image perceived as being normal will generally have balance in the light and shade of the image. The representation of a certain scene can be manipulated by choosing to emphasize on one extreme, whether that be light or dark through the use of High Key and Low Key lighting.

High key images are predominantly white and use light tones. In the image above, it helps give it a sense of simplicity by limiting the amount of detail and the color palette, ultimately creating a softer image.

The next image is a good example of Low Key lighting. They are effective by limiting the amount of light in the image, resulting in high contrast and hard lighting. In this case, it is used effectively to give the image a moody atmosphere.