Animators complain that 2 Oscar nominees
(Happy Feet and Monster House) use motion capture technology. Is Mocap
is killing animation, or is it the logical heir to rotosco
As
you all know by now, there are only 3 nominees for Best Animated
Feature Film at this year's Oscars, despite a crowded field in 2006.
That's because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
decided that Luc Besson's Arthur and the Minimoys (Arthur and the
Invisibles in the U.S.) didn't contain enough animation to qualify for
the category.
(Quick note: according to AMPAS rules, a
movie must have a minimum of 75% animated sequences in order to qualify
as an animated film. Some wags wonder why 2003's Lord of the Rings:
Return of the King wasn't considered an animated flick, since it had so
many CGI sequences and characters.)
There is another issue
at stake. Several animators claim that, of the three movies that
received a coveted Oscar nomination this year (Cars, Happy Feet, and
Monster House), only Cars is an actual "animated" flick.
Both
Happy Feet and Monster House were filmed using a technique called
motion capture technology (Mocap). In case you're wondering, that's the
same method Peter Jackson used on actor Andy Serkis when Serkis played
Gollum in Lord of the Rings and the giant ape in King Kong.
Here's
how Mocap works: an actor wears a special suit with reflective markers
on strategic locations all over his or her body. A strobe-equipped
camera (which illuminates the markers) records the actor moving in a
defined space. A computer then records the resulting silhouette image,
showing angles, velocities and spatial relationships with each marker.
Finally, someone uses computer imagery to superimpose another character
over the MoCap actor.
The major advantage of Mocap is that
it's a quick way for someone to create "realistic" animated characters.
The major disadvantage is that motion capture is limited by the
real-life physics of the actor in question. Many of the techniques of
traditional animation (such as stretching, squishing, etc.) is simply
not possible with Mocap, not without killing the actor in question.
Luc
Besson used Mocap in Arthur and the Minimoys to create his animation
sequences. However, AMPAS decided there wasn't enough animation for that
movie to qualify. But Happy Feet and Monster House used Mocap
exclusively. Enter the controversy.
"From my perspective,"
Sheridan College School of Animation professor Mark Mayerson writes in
his blog, "motion capture is not animation, merely a technique whose
look imitates animation. The Academy has decided how much animation is
necessary for a film that's mixed with live action, but somehow, motion
capture is not held to the same standard."
Mayerson (who
also created the cartoon series Monster by Mistake) also calls out
AMPAS' category of animated films, saying, "We have to be clear that the
animated feature category exists for a technique and not a genre . . .
The technique of animation is what stops these films from competing
against live action films, for better or worse. Having created the
category, the Academy should be vigilant about what it accepts. I would
make the analogy that motion capture is like steriod use in professional
sports, except that I don't think that motion capture is performance
enhancing."
He concludes with, ". . . it's so important
that the Best Animated Feature award actually go to an animated film . .
. if motion capture is perceived to be better than keyframed animation,
motion capture becomes the style and keyframing's opportunities (and
the opportunities of its practitioners) are diminished."
Animator
Keith Lango (The Ant Bully) concurs: "As usual Mark Mayerson speaks
softly and carries a whippin’ big stick of common sense. When you’re not
animating things anymore (as animation has been defined for 80+ years),
what’s the point of calling it an animated film? Increasingly the
delineation is based on the technique of visual rendering and little
else. A Scanner Darkly was more about graphic rendering than animation
since it was pretty much a paint over rotoscope project, yet it still
qualified as an 'animated' film."
Lango also calls out
Happy Feet and Monster House, saying, "When it comes to performance they
have more in common with The Muppets Take Manhattan than they do with
The Lion King. But it’s too much bother to worry about that. Nobody’s
keeping score anyhow, so let’s just call it all 'animation' and be done
with it. And so we are witnessing the end game of the slow redefinition
of terms."
A lot of this argument reminds me of those who
dismissed CGI as "illegitimate" animation (eg: not hand-drawn cel
animation) nearly 20 years ago. When there's a faster, more efficient
way of performing a technique, many old practitioners get left by the
wayside. Certainly when CGI first showed up in the 1980's, a whole
generation of animators had to drop their inks and get comfortable with
the Apple Macintosh. Has CGI killed animation? Certainly, the success of
Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky/Fox in recent years has encouraged more
studios to put out more animated flicks, creating what some have called a
glut on the market.
As for Mocap not being legitimate
animation, I challenge anyone to look at what WETA did with Gollum in
Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and tell me that's not brilliant
animation. WETA's artists created a computer-generated character that
was as real and compelling as the human actors working alongside it.
Much of the credit for that must go to those anonymous computer
animators, as well as Andy Serkis' excellent performance.
And
while we're at it, Lango's dismissal of A Scanner Darkly as mere
"graphic rendering than animation" ignores a few important facts. When
making A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater (who also directed the
brilliant Waking Life) used a computer-era version of rotoscoping, an
old technique of painting over filmed scenes to give them a more
painterly or cartoonish quality.
Rotoscoping has been used
in animation ever since 1914, when Max Fleisher invented the technique.
Nearly every classic Disney movie has used rotoscoping, from 1937's
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (yep, all those human figures were
rotoscoped) right up until 1961's 101 Dalmations.
Rotoscoping
has also been a central element in many other productions, including
Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings (1978), 1981's Heavy Metal, and even
A-ha's celebrated music video for "Take on Me."
Filmmaker
Martin Scorcese even used rotoscoping when editing Neil Young's segment
in his 1978 concert movie The Last Waltz. Scorcese needed to disguise a
blob of illicit pharmaceutical that was hanging from the
singer/songwriter's nose during his live performance.
One
could argue that Mocap is a more modern version of this classic
technique, much like CGI is with cel animation. Certainly Disney's use
of rotoscoping didn't put many animators out of work. It was merely
another technique that helped bring many classic movies to life. I would
consider Mocap to be the next logical step in the evolution of
rotoscoping, doing
Will motion capture overtake cel or CGI
animation? Certainly Disney/Pixar (the biggest player in the North
American animation industry) is sticking by CGI. In fact, Disney/Pixar
creative chief John Lasseter is looking to revive traditional cel
animation with its upcoming The Frog Princess. Disney is also happily
distributing Studio Ghibli's anime, which is mostly hand-drawn animation
with the occasional CGI background. Hayao Miyazaki has done pretty well
for himself by sticking with cel animation, methinks.
Motion
capture is definitely here to stay in the movie industry, whether it's
creating fantastical creatures (LotR's Gollum) or making actors look
younger (a la X-Men: The Last Stand). Silly digression: I wonder how
many aging leading actors or actresses will turn to Mocap rather than
Botox to remove those career-killing onscreen wrinkles? As such, it
should be considered another part of the animator's palette, just like
cel animation or CGI.
The jury is still out on whether CGI
has killed cel animation; Disney's The Frog Princess may herald a "cel
animation renaissance" or it may be the final nail in the coffin. It's
the same with motion capture. I predict there will be a glut of movies
using Mocap in the next several years until audiences are bored with the
technique. Then it will become just another tool for filmmakers until
the next gee-whizz technology comes along. Here endeth the rant.
