ECopeland MA 3D Computer Animation

As it stands, I’ve got a shot from a cowboy-style Western ghost town beautifully tracked down to a 0.07 and ready to go. My plan for this first scene is to have two shots, one of a cartoonish cowboy with a stylized walk, and one of a hyper-realistic cowboy rig, and contrast the perception of the audience as to how serious/professional each animation is and the demographic they think it’s targeted towards.

My original FMP plan was to have 4-6 tracked shots. I’m debating whether that’s realistic now, as the shot I’m currently working on is a full 635 frames, which is gonna require a 30-second animation for both shots, stylized and realistic, and in both of these I’m planning to have both a character AND a creature animation. So it will take me literally weeks upon weeks just to get the cowboy shot done.

Not to mention how hard it’s been to do my internship full-time, where I am the manager of an animation team and expected to both come in early and stay late every day, as well as make significant progress on my FMP and thesis. As such I haven’t been able to make much progress over the last 2 weeks because I’ve been settling into this role. Nevertheless, I am absolutely determined to do both and know that I can combine the necessity of getting work experience before I finish my degree.

As I’ve said, I tracked the shot very well. I’ve since been spending my nights after work trying to make progress on my first animation. Unfortunately, I’ve run into some troubles.

Parent Constraint Situation

When I worked on my matchimation from last term, I found a godsend in parenting the hand to the subway poles.

I’d been struggling to keep the arm movement from looking robotic and jerky as the character (Santa) tries to keep holding on while the arms, of course, move with the rest of the body’s movement. Parenting solved days worth of frustration.

So I’d assumed that parenting was the solution here, too. Unfortunately, I did not consider that parenting two moving objects is quite different from parenting a moving object to an unmoving one.

The arms have spaghettified.

After trying to break connections as well as trying multiple different kinds of constraints, I’m officially clueless. I had expected that, rather than deforming, the rig would simply aim at the object it’s intended to reach if I try to stretch it too far, like lifting a rig’s feet from the ground. As you can see, stretchiness is applied to the legs, but the arms give me no option to control stretch, so I’m not sure why this is happening.

After asking some of my most Maya-proficient teammates at work, I’ve decided to reach out to Luke for help and hopefully can figure out some way to get this working without having to awkwardly animate the arms to keep them fixed on the saddle and belt at all times.

Edit: changing the “chef shot” to one of cowboys with horses due to assets I already have available vs ones I’d have to purchase.

My original FMP concept was as follows:

4-6 tracked shots with incorporated CGI Elements that range from hyper-realistic, theoretically blending with the film so as not to be noticed, to hyper-cartoonish, intending a surreal product. Then I will question animators as well as viewers completely outside any artistic field on their takeaway as far as which is more serious / “professional” work, which is more adult-oriented etc

I’ve somewhat narrowed this down into a more concrete idea, at least for half of it. I call this plan “the chef shot”. In the chef shot, I’ll animate a hyper-realistic chef preparing food behind tracked kitchen footage, as realistically possible, and then animate a cartoon chef preparing food in a silly, entertaining way. The questions associated with these will be as follows:

What do you think is the audience demographic (age range) for each?

Which one do you think is more professional?

Which one is more entertaining?

Which is serious work?

Which could you see in a film?

etc etc etc

The chef shot will be its own project constituting either 1/2 or 1/3 of the total. There will be another tracked shot, which I’m tentatively calling the helicopter/horse shot, involving a horse or vehicle, hyper-realistic only, one in a normal setting, intended to blend in as much as possible, and one in a strange or entertaining setting. The questions involved with this project will aim to determine whether the perception of a hyper-realistic shot varies at all based on the silliness of the actual animation. Is it the art style or is it the animation itself, basically.

And then going off of this I should do a shot with a cartoon element that seeks to identify whether the artstyle vs animation changes for that too. Possibly. I’m most sold on the chef shot so far.

Marketing to Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z with Animation

Baby Boomers

“Since baby boomers are naturally more inclined to think of animation as children’s entertainment, the way you represent things visually can play a significant role in how they relate to your content. Overall, they prefer things that look simpler and natural. They aren’t so inclined to represent human characters with unusual colors or limb proportions, like longer legs or tiny heads. And if your story has a character that isn’t human, be aware that adding life to an object can look childish for them, depending on how it looks, acts, and moves.”

Gen X

“Visually, Gen X is way more open to different and unique representations than the previous generation. Less literal narratives also work better with them than with Baby Boomers, but depending on your animation’s length, abstraction might reduce their interest in the video. There’s room for experimentation regarding visual complexity, but just make sure your animation doesn’t rely heavily on complex camera movements and transitions. Gen Xers can follow visual transitions better than Baby Boomers as long as they are simple and help build or tell the story.”

Gen Y and Gen Z

“As you might have noticed, I’m mixing both generations in a single analysis. Why? Millennials and many Gen Z grew up in a period during the 80s and 90s in which cartoons took on a whole new level of depth. Networks such as Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network revolutionized the way animation was perceived. Both generations experienced the advent of 24-hour animation stations, and the animation matured with them. Today, there are thousands of animated shows and movies for adults with unique narratives for different audiences. For example, “BoJack Horseman,” one of Netflix’s most famous cartoons, blends existential crises and extremely poor adult decision-making with the childishness of a typical cartoon, all through the unique view of the main character, a washed-up star of a 1990s sitcom. A lot of this also has to do with the popularization of anime in the western world during the 1990s – with Akira, a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk masterpiece, being largely credited for that achievement. On Rotten Tomatoes, for example, the critical consensus reads, ‘Akira is strikingly bloody and violent, but its phenomenal animation and sheer kinetic energy helped set the standard for modern anime.’ Strikingly bloody and violent is not something you would expect in the review of a children’s show, so you can see how animation evolved toward different audiences. For these generations, animation is not a “children’s thing” anymore; it gained a whole new meaning. Today, you can still find a lot of old and new content on TV channels like Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Cartoon Network, but animation has also spread across different sections of the entertainment field.“

“Even though animation is mostly seen as a visual storytelling medium focused on video, video games have influenced newer generations’ relationship with animation. Previous generations were used to playing classic arcade machines or early personal video games – like Odyssey and Atari, or even 8-bit consoles. While fun entertainment for its time, their immersiveness was limited by the visual and sound technology available at the time. Newer generations, like Y and Z, experienced all sorts of visuals and narratives through animated interactive worlds and characters, which makes animation even more common for them.”

This article’s thought-provoking. It makes me consider that perhaps I shouldn’t be generalizing broad statements such as “Western adults see animation as a children’s medium”, but rather considering the way each generation consumes animation. After all, it’s the baby boomers who dealt with the transition of animation into a children’s programming block, and it’s younger generations who more frequently encounter animation in their day-to-day lives. My grandfather (age 91) refuses to watch anything animated because he believes it’s for children, whereas my father plays the Assassin’s Creed franchise religiously and enjoys watching anime with my siblings (24 and 20).

Although numbers decline with age, this chart indicates that adults do generally enjoy animation until a cutoff of 40-50 years old. This timespan is so far into adulthood that I would argue it is related to the perception of animation of the age group rather than simply being a vestige of immaturity.

“Animation videos have captured the attention of 19% of the online population of adults. Three percent of internet users report watching or downloading animated video on a typical day. Not surprisingly, younger users account for much of the animation audience online, as 32% of internet users ages 18-29 say they watch or download animation or cartoons online, while 19% of users age 30-49 report this. Just 9% of users age 50 and older say they have watched animated videos online. Male users are somewhat more likely to say they watch animation online (23% vs. 16%), but much of this difference stems from young males, nearly 40% of whom watch or download animated videos.”

Outside of the gender trend, which would be a separate topic to research, I want to point out that although the article lists “younger” users as being more likely to look at animated content, these users are still 18-29 years old, nowhere near the traditional market for children’s animation. 1/3 adults is quite a lot. And the drop down to 19% for people under 50 years old still makes 1/5 of the adults surveyed.

The positive side of this study is that because its definition of animated content downloaded and streamed is broad, we can get a better sense of the groups that enjoy it, as animated content online is more likely to include subjects appealing to many age groups rather than just being children’s/family movies and TV. The downside of this is that the subjects are self-reporting, which isn’t necessarily the most reliable way to gather information. I can flip this around- getting more reliable figures while losing that niche of a broad range of animated content consumed- by researching box office ticket sales.

What this chart doesn’t show is the amount of people in age category that would be likely to attend a cinema anyway, not to mention the fact that this may be disproportionately skewed by the 2020 COVID crisis: would audiences over the age of 50 be going to the movie theater anyway?

Luckily, I found a study that’s a bit more comprehensive in the fact that it takes into account the age distribution of admissions, however, there’s a couple issues with it that are not entirely relevant to my research, which I’ll discuss below.

The main thing I’d point out as skewing the potential takeaway of older audiences simply not enjoying animation (Paddington is an outlier because it’s combination live action + VFX and also even with my limited UK knowledge I know its a well-loved classic among all age groups). is the fact that every single one of those animated movies are made for a child or family-friendly audience. On the surface it may seem that the cutoff for enjoying animated movies is 35, but I’d actually posit that those 35-year-olds paying to see How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The LEGO Movie are actually exhibiting a willingness to consume children’s content because they love the use of animation as a visual narrative as it contributes to the story.

It may also be said that this age group is disproportionately represented because they may be accompanying their children to the theater, but the first chart does not necessarily seem to show the two trends of ticket sales to the groups corresponding in a way that’s conclusive.

As I’ll continuously repeat myself, it would be easier to tell how willing people under the age of 40 are to watch animated movies if there were more marketed towards an adult audience (and of those, more with a diverse range of content rather than the action movie or sex comedy dichotomy.)

Live action vs Animation: A Comparison

Stormy Studio Ltd, an animation studio in Plymouth (UK)

to note: Stormy Studio clearly gains from advertising its practices.

“Whilst all emotions can be delivered via animation or film. Some are often better suited i.e. live action footage can make it easier to deliver a message that is relatable or create empathy and compassion. Whilst animation can explain complex ideas, build excitement and wow an audience. There are of course many pros and cons when looking at live action vs animation and we’ll explore these in more depth below.”

from Stormy Studios’ insights page:

Budgeting for Animation vs Live Action Video

Budgeting for Animation vs Live Action, Mowe Studio, an animation studio of Hallendale Beach, FL

(another one to note as seeking to gain from advertising itself)

What makes production more or less expensive?

“An important aspect to take into consideration when budgeting for a project is understanding the details that make it more expensive. This will help you to adapt your production to make it fit the budget available. As a rule of thumb, the more people and time you need, the more expensive it will be.”

Live Action

“During live-action productions, more people also means more money spent on supporting this team, which translates into more food expenses and travel costs — an exponential increase.

Besides that, location is a significant factor. It needs to be available and accessible. And you may need to pay for transportation for everyone to that location. As for talent, hiring a celebrity will quickly increase your expenses, and never forget to account for union talents as they also tend to be more expensive than non-union talents.”

Animation

“In the animation world, the type of animation or the techniques involved may require specialized (and more expensive) professionals, or increase production time, which directly impacts costs. For example, an animation based in Motion Graphics (with graphic elements, typography, and shapes) usually requires less time and people than an animation involving characters. 

Characters in animation are very complex and require a very talented and specific professional (a character animator). Since characters tend to be the focal point in a client’s review, it’s crucial to account for extra revisions every time characters are involved.

When it comes to cel animation, the professionals and time required to develop this type of animation can increase drastically. Like in live-action, all those specialists have a huge impact on the final piece. Depending on the client’s goals (and of course, budget), adding them can be the best way to deliver something extraordinary.

A final thing to note: if time is of the essence and you need to speed up production, an animation team can always bring in more people to get the job done faster, but of course this increases the investment required.”

In the end, what’s the difference between live action vs animation?

“Live action budgets range widely and can increase quickly. A big part of its costs are related to administrative tasks such as logistics, transport, location rent, food crew, COVID crew, etc. Animation is more time-consuming, while live-action productions can be shot in one day and be ready for post-production. Animation can be a cost-effective solution when budgets are not high, but it doesn’t mean you’ll get the best animation with that. Animation is more malleable in terms of how you can simplify its costs, but a good animation will involve many specialized talents and require as much budget as live-action.”

These posts may read like a diary and/or sometimes incoherent train of thought due to my myriad of ideas and the daunting prospect of narrowing down my topic to a strong, presentable, clear thesis. It’s also extremely likely that these posts will be rather long-winded as I pull my buzzing swarm ideas from the area and type them out to pin them down for documentation.

I am not entirely sure the hard and fast specifics of what I want to research, although I do have a good general idea of a subject that both fascinates me and provides ample opportunity for investigation. That being said, I will allow myself to bounce between niche subsets of the theme and play with different areas that I may explore in greater depth.

Below is my original proposal for my thesis, submitted at the end of term 3.

In December of 2020, the worsening COVID-19 variant outbreak meant that my partner and I could not travel home for Christmas to visit our families in Connecticut. If I had, I would’ve been required to quarantine there for two weeks and then quarantine again upon re-entry to the UK, thus complicating and dampening the festivities as well as being somewhat of a waste of money on air travel. After much discussion, me and my partner decided that to instead travel to Plymouth for a Christmas by the frigid black ocean and gorgeous hills of Cornwall.

Our AirBnB was cheap, likely due to its basement position, with only the glimmer of sunlight and shuffling feet on the sidewalk visible through the living room window, but it did have a magnificently large television, an amenity neither of us had in our student accommodation, and we always sat down to watch Netflix on the cold and rainy nights. It was during this time that I started watching Love, Death + Robots.

It’s funny how something as simple as a trendy Netflix program influenced my interests in the field so much. Gripping storylines and Twilight Zone-esque plot twists aside, I was thrilled by the use of artistically experimental animation throughout, variating widely in style in connection with the context of the episode. What caught my eye the most, though, was its use of hyper-realistic 3D animation in certain episodes. This was more than the 3D assets used in live-action movies like Marvel, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc: this was a fully animated piece of media using 3D models for characters and bringing us into an entirely imagined space that was still so very touchably real. I had never seen any piece of media do this, aside from video games.

There are fully 3D-animated children’s shows and movies, and some of those can be described as”for all ages”, but for the most part it feels that 3D animation in film has been reserved for children (Disclaimer: specifically in Western media). I’ve never seen any mention of a fully 3D-animated adult-oriented movie, despite the wealth of incredible artwork and storytelling that could be explored. My question is, why?

I found an old forum post discussing this same topic here, so at least I’m not the only one who’s noticed this.

I did a presentation on animation still being seen as a children’s medium, but I want to focus specifically on 3D animation and its place as a tool in the future for adult viewers. Here’s the feedback that Luke gave me.

He’s right, the topic is broad, and that would make it much harder to start, let alone research. He’s also right that it’s impossible to measure audience perception, as much as a desperately want to understand whether non-artists view animation as being childish and whether it must be hyper-realistic or contain gritty themes to be taken seriously. It would be much easier to study box office success.

The techniques and technology suggestion is daunting to me. I suppose a good jumping off point is to study animation styles and their success among adult viewers, although part of the problem is that the few animated adult movies very often rely on gritty themes or stupid humor to assert their position in the viewerbase. I don’t think that Persepolis and Sausage Party have much in common just because they’re both animated films for adults and I especially don’t think comparing the two box office figures has much to say about the enjoyment of the specific animation style.

That being said, perhaps that directly reflects what Luke was talking about as far as widely disliked media sometimes being the most financially successful.

Well, turns out I was wrong! There are some 3D-animated adult movies out there. This one’s from 2007. It’s based on Beowulf. Guess I’ll be watching that and analyzing opinions on the animation style.

I’ve already gotten a sneak peek of some reactions:

Which should be interesting to dissect.

Also Ronal the Barbarian, which looks bad, but hey, I’ll watch it for the sake of my project. I guess it is interesting to note that they’ve used a style typically associated with children’s animation for what’s clearly an adult-oriented film, even just from this poster.

I also found a handful of 3D animated adult movies based on video games. Which I guess says something about how we perceive the use of 3D animation as a whole. I think watching just one of these will give me an idea of what’s going on with that.

Just based on these, I’d conclude that 3D adult animation is still generally struggling to prove itself as an adult medium by overcompensating with lowbrow humor or extreme blood and gore. And as with Love, Death + Robots, the comedy films always lean towards a more stylistic choice. Most of the films I saw that appeared to be making more of an attempt to tell a story were stop-motion or traditionally animated, but even still, there’s not much for adults there.

I guess what I’ll do for the next couple days is watch some of these movies and read about their financial outcome as well as general reception, and try to draw a comparison between the success of hyper-realistic violent movies vs cartoonish sex comedies. It would be easier to tell whether the earnings are due to the animation style if the styles weren’t so tied to the content of the movie.