Think

From an interview with Sylvain Chomet (Belleville Rendez-vous, 2003, The Illusionist, 2010).

And what are your thoughts on the decline of 2D and stop-motion animation in favour of 3D?

The thing that’s actually in decline is not 2D/Stop Motion but 3D Animation. It’s become too expensive to make a CGI movie and the technique has now got to a point that most [3D Animation] films have the same characters – they all look the same!

It started with Toy Story; it was declared that 2D Animation was dead because we were going to move into CGI. CGI was supposedly going to be a lot cheaper. However, today it’s actually more expensive as you need to render some really heavy pictures, and sometimes rendering takes more time than actually drawing it.

Also, I don’t think anything is original coming from CGI Animation, and it should be. 2D Animation still has a lot of variety. I got a lot of happy faces when I said to the students ‘you made the right choice’ [choosing 2D Animation], because there’s more and more films being done and it’s getting cheaper. I feel that the 3D technique has got to a point that if you make it realistic it’s going to just look like real life. It might look fantastic but it’s not Animation. For me, it’s reached a dead end, and people are getting fed-up with always seeing the same style of film.

Finally, what is your main message for aspiring Animators everywhere?

The main thing – as I was saying to the students – is to enjoy and have fun [with animation]. And be politically incorrect, that’s what Animation is great for. Animation is for ‘bad boys’ and ‘bad girls’.

Keep an eye out for Chomet’s upcoming film, The Thousand Miles (2019)

I haven’t yet read the book, but I found this write-up about the recently published Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice by design historian D.B. Dowd very interesting. He encourages drawing as a practice rather than an aesthetic art form.

Our anxiety around drawing starts around puberty, when we begin self-critiquing our abilities to render a perfect likeness, Dowd says.

I have definitely noticed a marked difference in their own expectations  between the 2nd and 5th grade students, and it serves only as a handicap to their ability to express themselves. I’m all for making beautiful marks, but sometimes just getting the narrative down (or starting the exploration) is what’s most important. I encourage them to not view their drawings with such a critical eye, and some of Dowd’s words will be my new backup. “At its core, drawing is a problem-solving tool.”
I also love this:
“If practiced in the service of inquiry and understanding, drawing does enforce modesty,” says Dowd. “You quickly discover how little you know.”
“Drawing makes us slow down, be patient, pay attention,” he says. “Observation itself is respectful, above all else.”
Excuse me while I grab my pen and paper.

“BBC and Netflix’s new series Black Earth Rising follows the story of Kate Ashby – a young woman who was rescued as a child during the Rwandan genocide and raised in London by a criminal prosecution lawyer.” – Creative Review.
Writer/director/producer Hugo Blick tasked the amazing Studio AKA with creating hand-drawn animations to recount Kate’s memories of the genocide.

 

Studio AKA director Steve Small wanted a black-and-white painterly feel, inspired by the content and emotive nature of memories. The animations were created using a mix of CGI, rotoscoping and line drawings.

He explains, “A lot of these stories illustrate that events that are almost retold or recalled in shock and in that sense, I felt that colour might either over-dramatise the sequence or it might distract. We took away details if we didn’t need them.”
Also, this (also from CR):
“It’s rare to see animation play a key role in primetime drama…Yet in some ways, it’s surprising animation hasn’t been used more in drama – particularly in series that deal with dark and difficult subject matter. As the sequences in Black Earth Rising show, animation can do something live action can’t. It can offer up a glimpse of an event – encouraging viewers to use their imagination to complete the picture – and that can be a powerful thing.”
I’ve seen many great examples of independent animations used in exactly this way, but it’s true they are not presented as/to mainstream.
I look forward to watching on Netflix once it’s released.

Sasha Svirsky’s 2016 animation, “9 Ways to Draw a Person“.
(English version here). The style moves from abstract collages to line drawings – ever-changing and rarely still. I didn’t always follow, but I’m sure that’s the point – imaginative and compelling and a little bizarre, just like the best people.

 

There’s a lot of potential in this idea (Andreas Bjoern Hansen / BUCK) of setting up the animation across the screens/phones; I wonder if this could be utilized as visitors enter the gallery, prompting engagement with their own phones. Even possibilities for interactive storytelling between a central screen and handheld ones?

I always try to keep up with the new stuff, but I’m also going back through archives. I’ve come across many great animations for BBC Knowledge…animated idents, intros. This one from 2010 – by Sean Pecknold.

All of the spot is in-camera on a multi-plane table in sequence.

 

Also posting to show students: this shot is perfect!

“Pigeon Pilfer is Michael Stevenson’s 2008 senior film from San Francisco State University. It was completed in four months with sixty pounds of clay, a digital SLR camera, and one tiny room.” And Dragonframe.

I remember this from years ago, but lost track of it…so posting this here to show students later.

Brent Barson + BYU students created this animation for the 5th annual Typophile Film Festival, using raw materials and Dragonframe.
Additional writeup on Motionographer (from years! ago).

Loving these fresh colors and transitions from Illo, an Italian company.
Watch the Airbnb cycling video featured on Motionographer,

and make the time to visit their site too:

I’m loving these animations by Virgilio Villoresi, beautiful stories in themselves – an elegant combination of techniques.

Ombro-Cinéma (like the later Scanimation books) is an animation effect created by moving a striped transparent overlay across an interlaced image, used beautifully here by Villoresi.