Animation research and practice Extended Essay

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1 Animation research and practice Extended Essay 4000 Words What are the differences in the production in the games industry compared to the animation industry? Introduction This essay is to look at the production pipelines within the animation industry, it discusses what the pipelines are and how they are used within the game and film industries. I will be talking about the comparison between the industries, the reasons why they have to be different and how I will include them in my practical work. The pipeline production is the process of creating a project, for example if you were creating a film or a game the project would have small segments on where different teams of people would be specialising in different parts of the work: for the production there will be a team who create the story of the sequence- they will be looking on how to script the work and bringing the story to life, then there would be a character design team who look at developing the character for screen and what personality traits it would have. The character design part is what I will be focussing on so that I can extract the design methods in film and games to see how I can use it for ideas to help create my project. I will be looking through the differences that game and animation production have which goes into the depth with the production pipelines, this will give me a further understanding how both forms are produced and help me understand how they use similar tools and methods but in a different way from each other. A lot of people believe that after playing a game or watching a film the production of them are the same because of the tools they use and that they use the 12 principles of animation. (i Animate (2016). However, the animations used to create a game are completely different to how they are used in film animation, this is because in a film the animation needs to be fluid, it needs to tell a story whereas game animation has a sequence of animations fitted together in different orders. This is because the player is telling the story for himself. Would it be a game if you could not control the animations or if you could not control the story? As mentioned by Ric Arroyo, an animator (i Animate (2016), you get to live and Play the main character This is one of the major differences between film animation and games, how the story is told and how the audience interacts with it. I will also be talking about the character design process that is used within the game industry (gears of war) and the character design in the film production of monster s university, this will help me gain a better understanding of the production work so that I can use it in my practical work process. Animation production Animation productions pipeline starts off with pre-production work which consists of story, editorial, casting and art, it is where the idea generation is created. Also it s where the concepts for the story are created and who s going to be in it or how it would look using different styles for the work. The story normally turns into a storyboard which will then breakdown into the scripting side of the work once everyone knows how the story will look visually. Characters and sets which consists of modelling, shading painting, rigging and set dressing stage 2 is normally where the visuals come into play, creating the main part of the production such as how the character will look and creating the animatic using the storyboards from the pre-production. Which then leads onto creating concept art

2 for both the characters and the background (where it will all take place) and movement which looks at layout, animation, simulation and effects. This step is another big stage where we see the animation being created, once the characters have been finalised they move to creating them in 3d. If it was for a 3d film animation this would be done by using the drawings and sculpture models as reference to create 3d replicated models on a computer which would be then be able to be used in the film. Post production involves lighting and rendering (Sharma, J. (2014). The production is not always the same with all films, it varies depending on the budget and the team behind it but it is often created in a similar way. The rendering in the animation part can take such a long time for a production which often means that the studio would have to use a lot of computers to render in all the frames otherwise it would take a longer time to do so. Then finally the sound, music and character voices are created for the animation. This process is carefully done because they would have to try and match the characters with the voices and the sounds/music with the theme otherwise it might ruin the atmosphere of the film and it will not have such a strong quality. The sound is very important in the production process because it is one of the first things people hear when listening or watching an animated film. Contact (2014b) 3D production pipeline

3 Movement is a strong element used in animated films, Norman McLaren believed the most important thing in film is motion, movement he was an animator, producer and director. (Bendazzi, G. (1994) Movement offers the most importance rather than lighting, composition and colour, due to how realistic it needs to be, if a character does not move correctly people would pick up it. It is an illusion which people follow which Wells quotes the artificial creation of the illusion of movement in inanimate lines and forms (1998:10) The realism in animated film characters can distract people from the illusion resulting in the film animation not being as successful. As we learn from Peter Plantec s article crossing the great uncanny valley explains to us how we can have a psychological reaction to with realistic looking CGI modelled characters. Plantec mentions how we pick up on noticing incorrectness within movement because it is not a real thing. as she moves, our minds pick up on the incorrectness. And as we focus on her eyes, mouth, skin and hair, they destroy the illusion of reality (Plantec, 2008:1). Animated Film Character design The production of the character design for the film Monster s University was a tough process for the design team (Pixar) because they had to try and recreate the main characters but younger as Jason Deamer, who was a character designer for this film mentions, How do you make an eyeball look 18 years old? shows me the thought process that they had to go into when creating the characters. (Takahashi, D. (2013). The design team also did further research into the development on the characters so that the characters had a story before they ended up going to Monster Inc. Rae the producer of monsters university tells us that they wanted to figure out who these characters really are. Who they are before they get to Monsters Inc. Who is Sullivan? Who is Mike? We wanted to dig in and find out more about them and go back to a time in life that everyone can relate to. This shows tells me that there was a lot of development in the character s personality and who they are as a person, this will then help develop the story of the film. Posted (2013) Monsters university concept artwork.

4 Game production Gaming experience is completely different to a film animation because of the fact that you are in complete control of the character and the camera that moves the screen. (Marco (2016) Often the camera only follows just one character, which is who you are in control of. If you were a game animator, your animation skills will be set on creating cycles of different types of animation and movement for a variety of characters. For example, if you were creating a character which could fly you will have to create the animation cycle of it launching off the ground to fly into the air. The reason that games need animation cycles is because it s up to the gamer what that character will do, a certain animation at a given time meaning that they could just repeat the same animation one after the other such as jumping. Also being a game the character design process could often mean a range of different types of species of creatures which would all have different or similar animation cycles which are used for them. Often game companies prefer animators who can create new creature s designs because it shows creativity meaning they have flexibility other than just making a generic human character for a game. As we learn from Marco s article the production pipeline is often broken down to the concept which is how the game ideas are created, what is in the game, how it will look and what it will be about, this then moves on to the pre-production of the game, which is where the story is developed and the theme and character designed. This then moves over to the production of the game creating the models for the character and props. Making the coding for the game which will allow the game to be able to be played. Moving onto launch which is where the game is released for people to play. Post launch allows the game studio to be able to edit the game and fix any issues gamers have with the game such as gameplay glitches or animations not rendering in properly. Also it allows them to add any more future content for the game. (Marco (2016) Game character design I found that the process is similar to working on the production for the character design work. (Hellard, P. (2002) As written in Hellard article Jay Hawkins, a character concept artist, says concept I only want to draw it once. I am not a big fan of redrawing something over for the modeller s and the designers separately. I basically try to make everyone happy with one single concept, providing as much detail as possible and being as exact as I can be. I ve also learnt that game studios do create personalities of the characters but the character s back story is brief in a game compared to a character from an animated film. As mentioned in the book Game design theory and practice (Rouse, R. (2010) characters in a film need to show a lot more facial expressions this is because the audience is following the character and trying to gather feelings and thought where as in a game the character is much more active which means the story in games need to centre around actions. This is one of the reasons why writing the story for a game is different to writing a story for a film.

5 Hellard, P. (2002) Art created by Jay Hawkins Comparing differences between the game and animation industry Game animation has a range of differences to how it s used and what it looks like to film animation. One of the main differences that I have found is that game animation consists of a variety of loop animations which are on repeat. This is because when an action is performed within a game as the player presses a button the animation is used and we see the action take place. (Masters, M.) The reason why they have separate animations in games rather than one big sequence is because the player is in control of how the story is created, how everything will happen and when it will happen. In games we can see cinematic animation which is then very similar to animation used in film because it is telling a story directly to the person. The character design process is very similar in both film and game production because of how the character is created, it has to go through the same stages from ideas to drawings which then goes to model making to get a 3 dimensional look. The artists will normally read how the character is meant to look and the character traits it needs and then they will start creating rough sketches of lots of different character ideas which leads to the best one being picked and further developed. This process mainly consists of drawings, sculptures, body poses, facial expressions and key features of the character. The camera is another difference between both the game and animation production. For film animation the camera is constantly set on a certain camera movement meaning that the animator only has to worry about one camera angle at a time (Masters, M. (2014), which allows the animator to be able to speed up the process compared to a game because the game animators have to make all the animations in different directions considering that the player can choose where to go and where to look, there are no camera restrictions. Whereas for games, the camera is moved in a different way, the camera is often rotated or moved around how the player wants. allowing them to have more control with how the character moves. This means that more angles are used for games allowing more of a 3d view of the animations. The

6 camera angle also depends on the type of game, for instance if it was a 2d platformer that has only one set angle, it would be much more relatable to a film animation but if it was a third person game you ll be seeing more around you meaning that the animators need to fill in the space around the character as well because in a film they can just create the areas which are needed for the set however with a game they do not know where the character will go because it is being controlled by somebody. Below are two examples of how the camera angles are used in a game and animated film. (Downey, T. (2016) (Anderton, E. (2015) The launch for film and games can be arguably different to each other, although they both have set dates to release the product, a game could add further content or fixes to the production, this means that they can alter the game after it is released, this is because the gaming world is often

7 connected to the internet giving the game makers the option to be able to edit/update the game even after it has been released. Films do not have this option because once released everyone will see the same animated story sequence, and the only way they could further extend or alter the story would be to create a sequel to the film. The film production would have a set deadline and budget, limiting the production speed, meaning that they have to work at a quicker pace so they try to focus on the story and the visuals as best as they can. After comparing my case studies and looking at other films and games, I ve found that there are a lot of games that try to look a lot more realistic than films do. The character designs for the gaming industry seem to be very heavy on how realistic the character looks whereas in animated films we see the character designs being curvier and less detailed. I think this is because of how well films can tell a story with the character designs being able to connect to the characters easier however games need the extra realism to make it feel like you are there, in the game, by making you the character. Lionel Gallat who has worked on films such as Shark tale and Flushed away is now wanting to move to the game industries, he said that he found that he wanted to create something more personal which, when he was creating films he found it to be a much more collaborative process. (Rose, M. (2017) Gallet has inside experience in both industries, where he talks about one of the differences he s noticed is that between movies and games is that on a movie we tend to nitpick about many things. The attention to detail is pushed to excruciating lengths. It's mostly due to the screen size movies are projected on, and the complex simulation calculations going on at render time. With games you can be a lot more loose in your approach. It's much more forgiving and I really like that." Looking at further research I found that the speed for the production of games is quicker than the production of film animation. Lional Gallet explains "I really love the flexibility of the process. Movie development moves at a much slower pace. Iterations can take hours, sometimes days. So in my experience this change of pipeline translates into more freedom in the workflow." (Rose, M. (2017) How this relates to my practical work This relates to my practical work because I will be focusing of the production on taking a pre-existing character from a film and then altering it and changing it visually to suit a realistic looking game. The research for my essay has given me a better understanding on how a character is created within both game and film production and will make it easier for me to understand how I would create my character for a game company. By looking through the reasons why there are differences used for the pipelines, I can understand how I could alter my character to fit the needs for a game. Also I have learnt, that characters used in game animations have a range of animations cycles which show certain movements, whereas in a film the movement goes from one to another. I ve learnt that comparing both the film and game production character design development, that the styles of the characters often varies. I believe that there are more games with more realistic looking character than film characters, so I d like to incorporate this idea into the making of my characters and how I can take one character from an existing animated film and develop it for a realistic styled game. Linking this to how the 3D modelling works, this might be the reason why this trend is taking place due to how the characters being created using polygons. In a movie production they are often racing against time to make the piece look good, which could answer why the 3D models do not contain as many polygons as game characters do, but they do still make the characters look right for the film, mentioned in Sanders article (Sanders, A.-L. (2015) This suggests that game production companies have more time to create their characters because the movie industries have a stronger deadline

8 which they need to focus on the story and to create the characters with enough polygons to look good for the production. This is also mentioned in the book Production Pipeline Fundamentals for Film and Games (Dunlop, R. (2014) which explains the models in film animation and games have strict polygon and texture budgets. We also find that established artists looking to transfer from film animation to game animation need to understand how the production pipeline is different between the two industries. For games, the only restraints with the character the studios have, is the power of the engine which the game is running on, the more power it has the easier it is for it to render graphics such as the polygons for objects or the characters. Over time technology has increased which has allowed there to be more powerful consoles where we see the characters having more polygons. In a game the graphics are constantly being rendered, whereas a film has been pre rendered, which also tells that the less polygons used for film 3d models it is quicker to render for deadlines. The amount of polygons used in models in a PlayStation 1 was around 1,200 where as in a more recent powerful system the PlayStation 3 can render 11,600 polygons. (Sanders, A.-L. (2015) With this information it has helped me understand why we often see there being more polygons being used in games compared to a fully animated feature film. I ve also found that the animation I d be needing to create for my character for post-production will consist of short animations which need to function together, I will need to create simple reusable animation sequences which show my characters performing different movements such as jumping, running or walking. Conclusion I think that both game and film production do have some things in common within the production pipeline for both but I also think that the main differences are how they are used and how people interact with them. For example, in the game production pipeline we found that the gamers are in control with how the story and character is used whereas in a film we see the film being set in story sequence that cannot be altered or changed. I personally prefer games over films because of the freedom of choice it has to offer which a film does not but a films story is often portrayed stronger because of the consistency it has that a game does not. Games are based on being able to interact with the story but for a film the main purpose is that it is meant to be watched, (Sanders, A.-L. (2015). The 3D environment need to be completed around for the characters setting in a game which means the production for the environment would be different for a film because on a film it is set in one angle which allows the animator to have a bit more freedom with animating the shot. From looking at the differences between the case studies I have found that monster university s production is more heavily based on creating the story for the film and how the characters will impact the story. With game production I ve found that the production relies on how the game plays and what you have to do for the story that you are controlling. I ve also learnt that the styles tend to be trending differently between the gaming world to the film world. In games people like to control the game and get some reward from the experience, with a good constructive narrative it will keep the audience engaged. (Denning, R. (2016) Finally, I ve found that that people prefer the film animation quality being stronger than being in a game. I think this is because when someone watches a film animation and the animation movement is not very realistic or the textures are not very good people notice and the illusion for the film is broken whereas in a game people prefer the game mechanics more than how it looks visually. I feel

9 this is because in games people look for more enjoyment than how it looks, but if someone created a really nice looking game where the game mechanics was not very good, people would not play it whereas if it was really fun and it was not up to par with visuals it has potential. People prefer the visuals to be stronger within the film production because it keeps the story alive whereas in a game you are controlling the story.

10 Bibliography Anderton, E. (2015) The Martian WALL-E trailer mash-up is adorable and intense. Available at: (Accessed: 4 January 2017). Bendazzi, G. (1994) Cartoons: 100 Years of Cartoon Animation. John Libbey Publishing: London (Accessed: 17 December 2016) Contact (2014b) 3D production pipeline (Pixar vs Dreamworks). Available at: (Accessed: 4 January 2017). Denning, R. (2016) The fundamental difference between movies and games: Storytelling. Available at: immersion-and-stories (Accessed: 4 December 2016). Downey, T. (2016) Rushing uncharted part 2: Who s this woman and where s Elena? Available at: RAhXE1RoKHe9QBt8QjxwIAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamehaps.com%2Fnews%2Frushinguncharted-part-2-whos-woman-whereselena%2F&bvm=bv ,d.d2s&psig=AFQjCNE2rgDlSxahfAa9dJnz- OvbPET8xQ&ust= (Accessed: 2 January 2017). Dunlop, R. (2014) Production pipeline fundamentals for film and games. (Accessed: 4 December 2016). i Animate, R.A. (2016) Overview between game and feature animation. Available at: (Accessed: 4 December 2016). Instructor and Williams, D. (no date) Character design for film and games. Available at: (Accessed: 2 January 2017). Mailing list (no date) Available at: (Accessed: 2 January 2017). Marco (2016) Game development pipeline: From concept to store - GameDev. Available at: (Accessed: 2 January 2017). Masters, M. (2014) What s the difference? A comparison of modeling for games and modeling for movies. Available at: (Accessed: 22 December 2016). Plantec, P. (2008) Crossing the great uncanny valley retrieved from < Accessed (Accessed: 17 December 2016) Posted (2010) Adam de beer Kinesic constructions: An aesthetic analysis of movement and performance in 3D animation. Available at: (Accessed: 22 December 2016). Rose, M. (2017) Exploring video game animation with a film industry veteran. Available at: dustry_veteran.php (Accessed: 22 December 2016).

11 Rouse, R. (2010) Game design: Theory and practice, Second edition. (Accessed: 2 January 2017). Sanders, A.-L. (2015) Animating for video games vs. Animating for movies. Available at: (Accessed: 2 January 2017). Sharma, J. (2014) Animation film production pipeline by: Animationgossips.Com (Jayant. Available at: (Accessed: 2 January 2017). Wells, P. (1998) Understanding Animation. Routledge: London) (17 December 2016). Case Studies Hellard, P. (2002) Gears of war 3: Concepts. Available at: (Accessed: 17 December 2016). Posted (2013) Monsters university concept artwork. Available at: (Accessed: 17 December 2016). Takahashi, D. (2013) How Pixar made monsters university, its latest technological marvel. Available at: (Accessed: 17 December 2016).