Week two: Researching timing of animation

We’re looking at timing, slowing down animations to look at frames in detail, and comparing different styles.

I chose three animations that have inspired me, all very different:

1) This is an animated poem: The Dead (poem by Billy Collins)
Animated by Juan Delcan.

2) Long time favourite of mine: Pink Floyd: Goodbye Blue Sky

3) The piano duet from Tim Burton’s fabulous Corpse Bride

I realised after I had selected all these animations that there is a definite common theme going on – Death! not sure what that says about me at the moment! So, on initial analysis, these three animations are very different not just in the construction and creation of them but in the timing of images:

The Dead, simple line drawings with jerky movements, fast transitions and lots of metamorphoses. If you slow down the animation and watch it frame by frame the moves are made across fewer frames, for example the arm moves with the cigarette over 24 frames (12 different images). The poem itself is dealing with abstract ideas; it is concept driven as opposed to being a narrative.

Goodbye Blue Sky, beautiful Gerald Scarfe drawings with much smoother transitions. Still a lot of metamorphoses, but these tend to be at a slower pace generally, and there is a flow of ideas which feel as though they follow more of a narrative than ‘The Dead’. It’s still quite abstract but grounded in a reality that we can all appreciate. The arm movement of that big creature takes 70 frames (each a different image).

The Piano Duet from Corpse Bride is even smoother. 3D animation with no metamorphosis. This is a narrative, relationship based, much more like live action. The camera moves in the way live action camera moves. The movement of his arm takes 90 frames just for a slight gesture.

It feels as though the ideas behind the animations help to dictate the nature of the animation. The dead is intellectual, abstract and concept driven, and lends itself to an animation with lots of transitions, metamorphoses and changing images. Goodbye Blue Sky is more shocking and laden with messages about war and death; the beauty of the images and smooth transitions works on our emotions. The Piano Duet is a narrative, part of a larger story, exploring the relationship between two characters, and the live action feel works to make the characters real for us, and enables us to identify with them.