Drawing Voices

This article presents a series of images, transcriptions, and musings on the making of Stranger Comes To Town (2007): an animated documentary that centres on the stories of six immigrants and visitors to the United States who describe their experiences crossing the border. The author chooses 10 images that are accompanied by transcriptions of each interviewee’s statements. She follows each pairing with a musing on either the process of making the animation – what she gleaned about the interviewee from the process of syncing a fabricated image to a ‘real’ voice, the different ways voice and text can play off each other in animation – or the (still surprisingly) subversive gesture of using subjective hand-drawn animations in documentary form.

Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind when I started reading this article was the slight similarities that it bore to Aardman's Creature Comforts (Seeing that fabricated depictions were used in place of the real interviewees themselves), the only difference however is the fact that the author made sure that it all still remained in context, unlike Creature Comforts where the usage of animals (And aliens) were used more for humour's sake (If not in an almost ironic manner).

Avatars from World of Warcraft are used instead to represent each interviewee, and while it at first came off as entertaining and quite humorous, it is actually quite interesting when you find yourself beginning to associate these variet of voices with these elves and orcs. It is not surprising that some of these voices would use avatars that probably do not at all match the way they sound (Such as Subject 3), but a particularly interesting thing to note was the fact that all interviewees would go for an avatar that was of the same gender as them. While it of course makes matters simpler for the animation process, it is still an interesting factor to take note of, especially when some folks tend to take the opportunity to hide their true identities through their avatars when possible.

It seems to me that animating lip syncing still remains one of the most challenging aspects in animation, especially after reading the author’s musing about the way certain words were articulated and pronounced by the interviewees and the challenges faced when animating it all. Not to say that everyone should speak clearly, as these different voices are what makes each person who they are in the first place.