Computers
and Animation
Sat.
March 30, 2002
7:00 p.m. pst
Finally, I will talk
about the future of the filmed medium, where animation, as practiced
in the computer, will morph with conventional photography, so
that anything in the imagination will be able to be experienced.
Couple the advances in CGI (computer generated imagery) with
an immersive experience, and you have "virtual reality."
The future of the medium is very exciting.
Computers and Animation
As the last of the great "animators" pass out of this
existence, the skill that it once took to create conventional,
hand drawn "cartoons" will pass away as well, because
as computer graphics advance to the state where they can precisely
replicate life and the world around us, they will be able to
replicate anything we can dream up as well. The range of the
computer graphics palette will start at photorealistic and change
from there to any type of graphic ability imaginable. Computer
animation will at some point in the recent future morph (and
that's as fine a word as any) into a new kind of artform. Instead
of "computer animation" (i.e. "Toy Story",
or "Monsters Inc." and "CGI" (computer generated
imaging, like T-2 in "Terminator 2" or the flyover
shot of "Titanic") occupying two separate realms,
there will be a "cultural blending" together, where
audiences will not know or care where one stops and the other
begins. This new artform will render the ideas of filmed reality
and cartoons moot.
The early stirrings of this new artform which could eventually
take the place of both animated and conventionally "lensed"
motion pictures can be seen in the recent "live=action/computer
animated" "cartoon character" movies. Films like
"Rocky and Bullwinkle" and "Scooby Doo"
incorporate "realistic" looking cartoon characters
along with live action actors.
This was started back in the early nineties with the release
of Disney's "Roger Rabbit". Already, though it failed
miserably because of lack of plot, "Final Fantasy"
imagined a world with CGI "humans" who looked almost
like real people. The range of computer graphics in this type
of endeavor is already impressive, and the strides to yet be
taken are wonderful to imagine.
I predict that computer
imagery,and it's near perfect "cloning" capabilities,
will change animation in look and form, but not in substance
and theme. For as long as man has been able to project images
which move, he has been "drawing" on animation to
supply the images which are only in his imagination.
When I "create"
my little composites for these websites, I see images in a different
light. I see an infinite capablity, utilizing the various tools
available, and others which haven't yet been dreamed up, to
render anything imaginable, in whatever way in which we imagine
it. I see dreams and nightmares, ecstasy and pain, knowledge
and epiphany. All because of the computer graphics program's
abilities to take copy/paste to the next level.
Perhaps within five
to ten years, before I turn 60, the forever shrinking memory
chip will allow complex animation paths and behaviors to become
available to the novice, and complex animated features will
show up on the websites of 12 year olds. The elements, which
have been in place for at least two decades, will perhaps not
"create" artists. but artistic types who haven't been
able to give illustration to their ideas will now have that
power.
In the early days
of computing (circa 1985-88) although programming looked difficult,
and results seemed ultimately anticlimactic rather than mystifying
and awe inspiring, I searced the local audio superstores for
a Commodore Amiga because I had read in Video Review Magazine
that you could digitally edit videotape, and add special effects,
titles and transitions very easily within the computer. As I
write this, albeit on my (now rapidly aging) Compaq 7940 from
1999, there is the possibility that I can not only edit video
and add special effects, but create animation and put my creations
on DVD's which I could conceiveably sell on my website.
The possibilities
exist for a mass globalization of a digital imaging art form.
Already, by scouring
photo databases like Webshots and Exite or Google, I can find
illuminating and artistic examples of composites and animations
which will, with time, get easier for thier creators to conjure
up.
As the tools become
easier to use, the amount and variation of artists creating
in the medium will multiply, then rise exponentially. Perhaps
because of digital imaging programs, mental health shall become
a stable factor in society, as imagination becomes "virtual
reality".
The term "virtual
reality", which seems to have been with us for a couple
of decades now, used to allude to a world, as portrayed in movies
like "The Lawnmower Man", where the user would strap
on his virtual reality helmet, mount a gurney or gyroscope,
and take a trip inside the computer. The early CGI movie "Tron"
released by Disney in 1982, and the first to use exclusive use
of computer graphics, imagines a physical world inside the computer.
William Gibson, writing in 1984, coined the term "cyberspace"
to imagine a digital realm inhabitable by humans with electrodes
and computers inserted inside them.
The heretofore only
imagined world of "virtual reality" and the already
existing techology which is responsible for photorealistic computer
generated images of places and worlds only residing currently
within the realm of human imagination will very soon merge together,
and we will view, and in fact "experience" these worlds
in ways that "virtual reality" never even imagined.
Already, through the
programs already available, some very interesting effects can
be achieved. In my feeble way, I'm attempting to get a handle
on this wonderful technology by designing the composites on
websites such as the Cultural Blender. The idea of copy/paste,
when taken into the infinite realms the mind inhabits, allows
me to begin to realize that anything I can imagine, I can therefore
find, cut, paste, and affix to my own vision.
With time, these visions
will move, not only in space, but in with time and emotion in
check. Art exists when mankind uses the elements around him
to comment on and enhance his life experience.
Soon the websites
of the departed shall become their legacies, inhabited with
the creatures of their dreams come visually out of their imagination
and into cyberrealistic sense and nonsense.
We can be entertained,
nee, enlightended by the possibilities soon to be bestowed upon
us.
With Disney, it started with a mouse. With Max and Dave Fleischer,
it was a clown. In 1968, I drew my first "Arnold"
cartoon. I haven't flowered along with conventional animation,
but I feel a flowering of the digital type to spring forth very
soon.
I see a wonderful
new world on the horizon, where film, animation, imagination,
and art mix and blend together in a copy/paste hurricane of
cultural and social implications.
Everyone is equal
in cyberspace. I've mentioned this before. The ways in which
our images inform and excite us in new and exciting ways, now
and a few digital moments from now, will announce a new world
of tolerance and understanding.
A picture is worth
a thousand words. With access to the right pictures, and the
ability to speak volumes with the images selected, we are about
to experience an avalanche of communication at exactly the moment
in history in which this communication needs to happen.
And we can look back at, and thank the cartoon film for starting
this revolution.
Michael F. Nyiri
© are copyright 1999-2001 MikeVideo Enterprises and Michael F. Nyiri.
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