This week's Animation Skills class focused on Pixilation, and yes friends, I beg your forgiveness for at first thinking that it was the technique on how to animate pixel sprites (Don't hit me!)... with a rather huge variety of examples shown to us, honestly it was quite a lot to take in but nonetheless enjoyable all the same.
Pixilation is a stop motion technique where live actors are used instead as a form of animation, normally all that is needed is simply a digital camera (Though if you have an SLR, that will make things even easier), a few people, and a prop or two (Which can be an everyday object), special equipment is normally never ever needed for this technique, and so it is considerably popular with those new to the animation area.
Though considered a live-action, the Principles of Animation still applies to this technique (Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Slow-Out and Slow In, etc.). Something to note is that 2 frames are normally taken for each movement made by the subjects when using this technique, it only makes sense that 1 frame can be taken instead of make the subjects go faster, or many frames to make them slower (And maybe more fluid).
While it has been said that only three things are really needed when filming a Pixilation (Camera, people, props), a tripod of some sort should at least be used to keep the camera steady, otherwise it will surely be unpleasant watching an animation with noticeably shaky camera work, making the purposely stiff stop-motion movements of the subjects seem... less jerky in comparison.
Frames are of course later on joined together in a software of one's choice, most probably Photoshop (Though you will have to bring down the resolution of the photos especially as there will be so many frames to put together), or Quicktime if you have that.
As mentioned earlier, there were quite a lot of examples shown during class, so I will just pick the ones I had watched before in the past to show you folks. It really was a pleasant surprise seeing some of these animations again (Having first watched them about 3 years back in my previous school for an "Introduction to Animation" class):
Norman McLaren's "Neighbours" (1952)
Beginning with a cute setting, slapstick humor and hilarious music and sound effects, you probably would not have expected that things would have taken such a dark turn nearly halfway through this short.
An anti-war film, the story begins with two neighbors living peacefully and happily with one another, until a single flower grows between their two homes, causing the both of them to fight over it, with many increasingly aggressive attempts to gain ownership of it leading them (And their families) to their early graves.
This short definitely got it's message across about the huge losses that are always made when starting a war over something that is insignificant to begin with.
Another interesting fact is how the music was created, McLaren had created the soundtrack for this film by scratching the edge of the film, creating various blobs, lines, triangles which the projector read as sound. It is perhaps one of the earliest examples of graphic sound usage (Way before Pong or Pac Man).
Another interesting fact is how the music was created, McLaren had created the soundtrack for this film by scratching the edge of the film, creating various blobs, lines, triangles which the projector read as sound. It is perhaps one of the earliest examples of graphic sound usage (Way before Pong or Pac Man).
Norman McLaren has influenced a number of other Pixelation works, notably "Gisele Kerosen" by Dutch born French Film director, Jan Kounen, in 1989. Something outstanding about this animation is their technique in creating the flying effect for the witches simply by using the same jumping pose for each frame (It's impressive really since they were jumping for the majority of the production).
I will just let you all watch it and let you guys think about whether you like it or not,:
I will just let you all watch it and let you guys think about whether you like it or not,:
Oren Lavie's "Her Morning Elegance" (2009)
I am sure most animation enthusiasts have seen this at least once in their life, perhaps one of the most gorgeous Pixilation music videos, while it is shot the same way throughout, I really did not see that as a bad thing, the storytelling had a very fairy-tale style to it, and by simply filming it from above, the scenes played came off like a 2D-ish picture book, and so fancy angles or camera panning would ruin it to me.
This is also a great example of using only everyday items such as pillows and socks as props for the subject's dream world.
Blu's "Muto" (2008)
While the video does consist mainly of graffiti art, this still counts as a Pixelation animation as it takes place in a real time setting where people could pass by at anytime and surrounding objects could suddenly appear, move or disappear, causing them to appear randomly in certain frames throughout the animation.
Blu is an Italian artist, his real name unknown, though it is known that he lives in Bologna and has been a street artist since 1999. Blu has travelled throughout the world (Which still managing to limit his presence), collaborating with many other artists and creating numerous large-scale projects such as "Muto".
If you are interested, you can check out these other Pixelation works:
"The Wizard of Speed and Time" by Mike Jittlov (1979)
"Food by Jan Swankmajer (1992) (Warning though, his works tend to be really surreal and creepy) (But if you do enjoy his work, do check out "Dimensions of Dialogue" too)
"Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel (1986)
Enjoy.
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