Trajan's Column in Rome (Public Domain image from Wikimedia Commons)
I think the best work is made when you are challenged. Maybe you get challenged by something you want to explore, or maybe by limiting yourself.
The latter happens the basis for the movie 'The Five Obstructions', a film where Lars von Trier challenges his creative mentor Jørgen Leth to recreate his most famous movie five times. And for every remake von Trier gives him a very difficult challenge, like limiting him to only 24 frames.
Now I want to challenge myself. But where can I look for challenges? Let's look at art in general for a moment.
With the current method I'm using at my internship, I teach my pupils an artwork consists of three elements they need to know (aside from the artist and the time in which a work has been made).
I will very loosely translate these into english for you.
First there's the contents, or 'what does it depict?'
A portrait depicts a person, an illustration tells a story ( it 'illustrates'). A good example would be Trajan's Coulmn which depicts Trajan's two victories over the Dacians. In an animation, it would be the story.
Next is the visual design, 'how does it look?'
Is it stylized like a comic book or manga, very abstract or very realistic? Which colors are used? There are a lot of questions you can ask here. I like to look at the composition of images and the colors that are being used, so I tend to look at the design of things first.
The last element is the function of the work, 'why is it made?'
Trajan's Column is made to commemorate Trajan's victories. Superhero movies are usually made to entertain. Art can also be made to say something about societies, sometimes because the artist agrees with the society, sometimes to show that something is horribly wrong with it.
Function is also where I want to challenge myself. Because I love hand drawn animation, but I think it's not getting all the love it could get.
You see, I keep up with a lot of the technical developments that happen within animation both hand drawn and computer animated.
And I read about Motion Capture, and HFR, and hair and cloth and water simulations. About sub-surface scattering, self-shadowing, real-time editing in games and the latest shader techniques.
But I rarely read about new techniques in animation, and that saddens me.
So there's my challenge. Why can't some of the breakthroughs in other animation forms be used for hand drawn animation? And I will not accept 'because it's too much work'. Lazy bums ;)
I will make this animation to show to push hand drawn animation a little bit further than it is now.
Which breakthroughs will I try to use and how? I'll tell you in the next part...
