As many of you may know, I also write for Tiki Geeks. As a student and admirer of animation, this is something very dear to me. Please read, I hope you enjoy it as well.
The argument of animation versus motion capture, a Tiki Geek's perspective.
There is an argument brooding over what animation is in Hollywood. Be it controlled by a single person, or more, who all have control over how a character is brought to life. There is no argument that the likes of Toy Story or The Princess and the Frog are animation, be they 3D or 2D. The conundrum arises in performance capture, motion capture, or MoCap. Such as Avatar or the soon to be released Tin Tin, where an actor or actress's performance is captured digitally for use in the film or short. Steven Spielberg (sp) has persuaded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to get Tin Tin entered in the best Animated Film category. There are those who see this as a digression, or poor use of the term "animation", crowding a field of already numerous contenders.
Let me explain some things very quickly here, to get you up to speed a bit on the technology behind this technical problem. Forgive me if you detect a side upon which I sit.
Animation in its most simple term, is the illusion of life. Be it a mouse or lamp, the belief that it is living an anthropomorphic life of its own, is done using animation. The history of animation goes back more than 150 years, to the Zoetrope, device that allowed the viewer to see a sequence of photos or drawn images, in a loop, through small slits in the side of a spinning cylinder. Animation technology progressed faster once film came along, adding sound, improved the of the quality story telling, and the rest is as they say, history.
There have been technological improvements to be sure. The Walt Disney studios with their multi-plane camera, which improved the depth of 2D images. The precision of the drawings improved among the various studios producing animation as they tried to outdo one another. With a big leap taking place in the photocopying or Xerox process that allowed final animation sheets to be copied by a machine on to cellulose sheets, a laborious process that had been done by hand. The painting of those cells continued to be done by had at the large studios until the advent of CAPS (Computer Aided Production System) designed by Pixar in conjunction with the Walt Disney Studios. The new technique was used to enhance the color palate available to the film's designers on the film Rescuers Down Under. The next big leap being in Tarzan with the Deep Canvas tool which allowed the animators to take their 2D images into a 3D environment. Their characters were still being animated by hand, frame by frame, in order to tell the story. Sometimes even multiple people brought the same character to life throughout a single animated feature. Backgrounds became environments, and the integration of 2D animation with a computer for production reached a bit of a plateau.
Time for a step back again to, George Méliès's A Trip To The Moon from 1902. A foray into film making that helped defined special effects for generations to follow. But one bit of this film is of note, the Moon, as characterized near the beginning of this film, is essentially a head, with a great deal of prothstetics to enhance the look of being the Moon.
Let me just repeat that again. To enhance the look, of being something else. The actor is still there, right behind or under the prothstetics.
Prothstetics have been used to various degrees, good or atrocious, to help an actor or actress appear to be someone, or something else. Take for example, Warwick Davis, who in the final two part installment of Harry Potter, was two characters. Those two characters exist under the prothstetics, with Warwick bringing them to life through his ability to move and manipulate the prothstetics, that he now has many years of working with.
Keeping this in mind, a film such as Jim Cameron's Avatar takes this in a different direction with technology. The world of Pandora exists in a 3D digital simulation, created by a crew of skilled individuals who understand the technology. The actors and actresses performed their characters on a stage, for many cameras. This is motion capture. Though we do not see those performances on the screen, rather, a digital prothstetic is placed over them, at which time they are inserted into the 3D digital world. Their performance is still there, no one else is bringing that character to life, it is the actor or actress's performance.
This is the detail for me that leads me to believe that motion capture should be treated differently from animation. Prothstetic makeup is an effect, part of the technical side of film making. Animation is a technical thing to be sure, though a different style than live action. Motion capture brings live action into a 3D simulation, a complete world that is essentially a prothstetic.
So an actor or actress providing their skills to bring a digital character to life, is for me, not quite the same as an animator using their hands and the tools available to them to bring a character to life. If an actor or actress is going to be in a movie that will be up for an Animation Oscar, and their performance will not be recognized in an acting category, they are being denied an opportunity that an actor or actress has if they are wearing traditional prothstetics. Likewise, an animator driving a character for an animated film is not up for a leading or supporting role for their portrayal of a character in the film.
These distinctions get blurred when a movie such as Tin Tin is up for an Animation Oscar. It does not quite fit into the frame of what most audiences expect it to be. Yes, most audiences will seen a computer graphic film, easily confused for an animated computer graphic film, but is actually better defined as a live action computer graphic film.
So yes, I think a movie like Tin Tin should be treated not as an animated feature, but rather something else. For those who might argue about Tin Tin's dog Snowy, which IS animated, hold on a second. Okay, so one of the major characters is animated, that does not mean that the whole film should be in that category. If that were so, 1998's Lost In Space would see the character of Blarp being used as an excuse to get the whole live action film moved to a different category. The effects in Lost In Space were great, detailed and helped the story, but they were still effects driving a live action film. For me, this is also true of Tin Tin.
I will get out and see Tin Tin, have no doubt. I grew up reading the stories alongside Asterix the Gaul, even as to took French as a second language, I would then read them in another language too.
Thanks for reading,
Buckaroo
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