Artistic or Technology

[wizaerd]

What is it that draws you to animation? Is it the technical aspect, or the artistic? Do you enjoy drawing characters, rigging their skeletons, setting different buttons and checkboxes to get the movement just right or the lighting perfect, or , or gettin that bit of dialog correct, the plot moving along, telling the story?

For myself, I like the propect of telling a story, moreso than getting bogged down in button pushing. Let’s see if I can explain it without sounding too much like a tool… 

There are lots of “stories” out there, just be waiting to be told. My particular fondness is for jokes. A great many of them are perfect for skits. My options for doing so are video taping live actors, and acting out the joke, or animating it. For videoing, the group of people I know in my life wouldn’t be so cooperative in helping me out, and it’s not something I want to spend money on (such cameras, lights, props, costumes). I know I don’t necessarily need all those things, but you know you’d want them. Try telling a pirate story without them dressed as pirates and standing in your bedroom…

But animating it is fairly inexpensive, and technology has come a long way. So I find myself attempting to animate. The real challenge of animation, specifically on the computer, is creating everything. Everything.
In live acting, assuming my friends were a wee bit more cooperative, I’d pick someone to play a part. While there are certain traits that make that role more believable, anyone could play it. I just pick someone, and boom the role is filled. In animation, I must create my character. From scratch usually. I have to desgin and draw or model the character. And if you can’t draw or model (I’m totally inept at both), it’s not fun, at least to me it’s not. I’ve tried for a number of years, in different applications and I’ve not improved much.

In live acting, I could tell someone to walk across the room, pick out a book, flip through its pages, and take it back to the couch to read it. In animation, using check boxes, menus, and sliders I must do every bit of that manually. Build a walk cycle (that looks good), get different sprites for controlling the mouth, then actually having to change those mouths, different sprites for hands, lifting the arm, twisting the wrist, grab something, etc…

I try all sorts of software applications but they all require one thing. A heavy time commitment in just learning the software before you get to telling the story. And after fighting with the software, there are other applications you have to learn too. Drawing programs, and hope you can draw. And then also fight with file types, video codecs, export options, import options, etc…

So I’m curious, how many are in it for the nitty gritty creation and software, and how many are in it for the more artistic side of it? Or is it a possible combination of the two? Just an idle question I had..

[jahnocli]

It's seeing something LIVE. When you can believe in a character, can empathise with it and appreciate the forces acting on it. I can draw (he said immodestly), but I don't think I have ever achieved this myself in animation -- although you can appreciate it when you see it on the screen. That's my motivation. Oh, and yes -- a story. However slight...