Analog to DigitalHow Technology Changed the World of AnimationA Recap of Alice Crawford’s Animation in the age of information technologiesBy : Sean Douglas

The Transition

• Digital animation was more widely received than its analogous counterpart. Amid the boom of cartoons in the 80’s, television became the primary means of distribution for animation.

• In the later 80’s computer animation was becoming more widely accessible. Prior to this time the giants like Disney and such were the only ones with the finances available to use these technologies.

“Harry” “Ultimatte” “Paintbox”

• These technologies were originally used for commercials.

• “With these technologies, for the first time, animators were able to mix a variety of forms of animation into a single frame, layering, or “compositing” images from video, two-dimensional animation, and film them together, combining them all into a single image.”

Blendo

• This was the subgenre title given to television productions that blended these forms of animation into experimental pieces. Liquid TV was the MTV production that served as the testing grounds. The segments of the show used all forms of animation as well as live action segments.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXhe4jFzEwU

Defining the Differences

• Digital animation incorporates a third dimension, or plane of action, z. Analog animation works within the boundaries of a two dimensional world, x and y.

• Digital animation also renders the world within a digital plane, making the drawing of multiple frames obsolete. The camera is free to move around the rendered world, which also allows animation to work in more conventional cinematic methods.

• Digital animation is not drawn or colored, but rendered, and then fitted with a texture which is also rendered onto the rendering of objects. However, the ability to do this well is restrained by processing power not by the ability of the artist. In the early CGI era the rendering of one frame could take days.

Benchmarking: Reality vs. Rendered• The benchmark for realism in animation is 80 million polygons

per second being rendered. A polygon is what rendered objects are comprised of, and each one refracts light differently in order to achieve a more realistic rendering.

• “We can no longer go to a film and be sure what we are seeing ever existed in physical space.”

• When we see CGI now, it has to pass a sort or Turing Test. In the Computer Science world, the Turing Test is when you place a computer beside a child to see if a judge is able to tell the difference between the answer or a human and a computer. This is in order to test the Artificial Intelligence capabilities of a computer. We test the rendering of an object against our perception of reality.

Processing Power and New Technology• As the processing and computing power increases, the more

realistic of an object we are able to render.

• In more recent years CGI artists have been relying more on ‘inverse kinesthetics’ of sorts. By this I mean the artists outfit an object (usually a person) with a suit covered in motion markers. The artists then have the person perform functions wearing the suit against a green screen. From this point a more realistic representation of movement can be achieved through the mapping of these movements and using each marker as a placeholder to be rendered around.

• The conjoining of animation and technology is even furthered by video games.

New Wave Animation?

• Since the early 90’s computer games have been topping the gross sales of film.

• Video games are rendered using what is called an engine. The engine allows developers to take premade effects and objects and render them with different textures, if they so choose. These engines are sort of like a signature style, but they also lead to a sort of redundancy.

• Although it is far more immersive, video games are just another form of digital animation. The characters are the star much in the way Woody and Buzz are the stars of Toy Story even though their voices are those of actual stars.

Animation is More Pervasive Than Ever• With the advent of CGI, animation is more pervasive than

ever. It’s just far more subtle about being animation. From cell phones, to radios, to television, animation is everywhere around us; just not in the conventional forms that we are used to.

• With that in mind it is easy to see why more immersive technologies are being developed.

Virtual Reality

• Haptic suits and virtual reality headsets are currently being developed if they aren’t already released; the Oculus Rift is the most widely known VR headset currently available to buy.

• These technologies are about more fully interacting with the rendered world. Once again, with these technologies the distinction between the real and the rendered will become increasingly blurred if not indistinguishable.

Quick and Easy

• Access to animation technologies like Flash and DHTML allowed for easier independent production for the new and the experienced animators. However, as mentioned before, things like rendering engines used in computer games also makes this far easier.

Machinima

• Machinima is the result of using an original gaming software or rendering engine in order to record video, which is then edited, and then repurposed into the final product.

• “The greatest thing about Machinima is its democratization of the medium of animation and film—not democratization of access, so much, but democratization of content. The new medium, for the first time, allows hobbyist film-makers to make not only their own wedding video, but their own ‘Star Wars’. All for the price of a copy of a computer game.”

• However, Machinima itself provides a link back to analog animation. Machinima is the transformation of a three dimensional space into a two dimensional image. The camera cannot move around the third axis anymore, it is confined to the vertical and horizontal.

Conclusion

• Digital animation provides tools unimaginable to analog animators. Digital animation has arguably taken over television screens (cartoons, commercials, video games) and most screens alike. However, the question is can the progression keep up with the demand, and at which point is it demanding too much from a simulation.