Thought

You know what I love about animation perhaps even more than any of the art involved ?........

Its a place where the passionate prevail.

Leave a comment and tell me why you love animation
.

14 comments:

Lisa said...

deep Ian.

Terry said...

Yes they do.... often.

frank said...

It still seems a lot like magic to me. That's beguiling for a sceptic and a scientific mind.

I'm sure all that traditional inbetweening and straight ahead organic animation can be broken down into mathematics.

But it's so much more complex.

It requires a person pursuing the craft to not only look or observe but to see. But not only to see but to feel and act and push that pencil into a page making a big messy scribble because words can't describe what is trying to be conveyed.

The robot inbetweeners can't cope. The animation programming geeks can't put meaning and appeal into numbers.

It comes down to an animator with a squishy brain slushing around in a thin, salty watery soup making some bold (yet appealing) marks on paper to bring to life creatures and beings that would otherwise sit around in the dark corners and recesses of underexercised imaginations.

I love it because it defeats mathematicians and bean counters. It's as beguiling as biology. It's hard to understand, so doesn't become boring. To learn it best, an animator has to animate.

That's magic.

Ian said...

nice!

Az said...

Why? Because all of that wonderful mathematics that requires thought and calculations put into animation and timing! I mean my god those graphs just have my cup runeth over with joy and passion. May I just say 'ALGEBRAIC!
Boy I can't wait till we get into the whole 3D stuff that involves axis' that I can't even remember what they're called :D!!!

... I do hope you could tell I was bullshitting a little there D:

Though seriously, I'm not sure if I can pick a main reason why I love animation. Guess I could say one of the big reasons though is that with animation we can imitate what the human body is able to do in real life- but also break that sense of reality, logic and physics.

We can blow characters to smithereens, murder them and not be charged with assault! :D It keeps us blood-thirsty people sane! ...

yeah I got a little carried away there and more BS was contained in that last paragraph. Point I'm trying to make is that we can push the boundaries of reality through animation.

We can even manipulate peoples emotions if we're just that great at it. Nothing like doing an animation that could bring a huge smile on their face or breaking out into tears :D

Oh lawds. I'm rambling so I'm gonna stop now before I make an idiot of myself 8D! -flees-

Anonymous said...

i like things that move
RHOMBUS!



:B

Mr. Saeton said...

This is quite funny because only today I posted a huge rant on why I love animating.

The short version, for those who don't like long winded and most likely convoluted rants about seemingly everything, is the challenge.

I love the sense of purpose I get from rising to the challenge and giving it my all. It's not the style of animation or whats being animated, it's the animating itself.

This is one of the trickiest things I've ever tried to do and I LOVE it. Animating is better than trying to out do someone in a contest of strength, wit or intellect because with these things you will invariably reach a peak, a pinnacle from which you just cannot move, but the harder you try the further you fall. and for most of these people, it's usaually around the middle of their life when they realise they can do no more (not so much for the scientist but for athletes and such, it's true). This gets compounded when someone younger and better than they takes the feild and smashes whatever record was set.

This isn't true with animating, you can just keep going! Screw retiring at 50 or 60 and being bored the rest of your life, ANIMATE! It's freakin awesome!

Mr. Saeton said...

BAH! short version, man i am such a liar-face...

Dan said...

i animate therefore i am

Unknown said...

Along the lines of what's been said before, I love animation because its SO LARGE. It encompasses so many skills (design, observation, directing, acting, bean-counting, color, comedic timing, problem solving, and on and on) and at any time you can choose to specialize in one or do them all at once.
For me, it's like the ultimate art form because it incorporates so many (lesser :) forms within it.
I will never become bored with animation.

Anonymous said...

When i first watched Beauty and the Beast i was about six years old and i remember watching the beast for the first time. To me i thought that the beast was real, that the beast was an actual living thing that existed.

Once i found out that he was only a cartoon it didnt bother me so much but it always remained in the back of my head how they made such a beautyful character. The beast took my breath away and i was inspired and so into creating something myself that was better.

I started drawing anything and everything that i saw in the park or in my head, i used to get into trouble at school for constant day dreaming about how to make a desk eat my teacher.

As much as i drew there was nothing in the end result because the drawing did nothing for me. I have watched so many animated films and it still gets me how they can make such a ridiculous person do ridiculous things and make it so wounderful and true.

My passion lies with the creativity and imagination and process of bringing still drawings to have mass personality and believeability so i can make other think that my animations are real too.

Dana said...

I want to bring my characters to life. I've always had this need to show people who my characters are, what their personality is like and just have people fall in love with them.
Animation to me is like looking into someone's imagination and seeing the beautiful, creative, yet sometimes very screwed up way that they see the world. That and i like making people smile and this is the only way i know how to -3-

So don't be surprised to see a red headed, very happy character in one of my animations during this course Ian.

Ian said...

I might expand a little on my initial observation.

Etched into my brain from my childhood are TV shows and films where the underdog prevails. Tales of adventure like, The original Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal, Astro Boy, Super Man etc. The ones that got to me were those coming of age stories where the hero was set a task way beyond what they thought they could achieve. Where the odds where overwhelmingly beyond them but they prevailed through guts and determination.

Perhaps I was a particularly naive child, but I grew up expecting life to be like this. Obviously as I entered adulthood I learned that live isn't quite that predictable, sometimes bad stuff just happens or good stuff happens to seemingly bad people (what up with that!?!?).

But I have found an aspect of life where the rules of my childhood do tend to apply, in Animation. I've said in class that from a purely economic point of view animation is a ridiculous proposition. Making a whole movie one frame at a time is just silly if you look at it objectively. Animation only exists because of the passion of those willing to make it.

I've never met a successful animator who didn't work far above and beyond what they were paid for, who hadn't at times had to take on ridiculous challenges and somehow find a way to slug it out. When you meet another established animator its like an unspoken bond, you both know what its like to put in the big hours, to push yourself to the very limits of you mental and physical ability, to meet that impossible deadline, to have taken the standard of work to that higher level when your job and maybe even those of your co works are depending on it. Read between the lines of any interview with or blog written by a successful animator and you can see it there, that it takes more than liking animation, or being a good artist. It takes a desire that runs down to that individuals very core, if they didn't have it they wouldn't be a successful animator, the system is self regulating.

In there own way, anyone who makes it in this trade is an Indiana Jones or Astro Boy. We take on the challenge because its the right thing to do, whether or not we we will make it to the end in one piece hardly enters into the equation. If you find yourself weighing up if its worth it then you have lost already.

Roll the Indiana Jones music..... Da da da Daaaaaaa da da Daaaaaa da da da Daaaaaaaaaa! Da da da da Daaaaaaaaa!

Cassie said...

That beautiful feeling of satisfaction at finishing such a challanging task as making animation that breathes life every time moves.:P