During one of my first jobs in stop-motion animation, a more experienced animator approached me, pinched my arm without warning, and mysteriously uttered, "Ass meat." "Excuse me?" I asked, unsure about if I was being harassed or if I was being solicited to try the Atkins diet. "Ass meat," she repeated, and proceeded to explain that over time, animators’ muscles invariably atrophy and convert to "ass meat." Those involved in CGI were especially at risk, she claimed confidently, as if her medical credentials were beyond reproach.
Having pondered her ominous words for some time now, and having done a little CGI as well, I cannot entirely dismiss the evidence. Perhaps this does not bode well for the practitioners of an industry where the overwhelming majority of animation, modeling and set construction are now created digitally. Du-bious medical claims aside, industry trends do seem intimidating to those trained in the ancient arts of hand-crafted model building, stop-motion animation or puppeteering, and not without good reason. Despite the loss of market share, however, traditionalists have plenty to be enthused about, and digital technology has actually conjured numerous opportunities for the synthesis of media, resulting in greater creative freedom for everyone.
Consider compo-siting and the ease with which animation models and live action can now be combined via a simple chroma key. Already taken for granted, the liberation of the animated character from its native medium has revolutionized the way artists conceive animation, in that each matter of practicality resolved un-tethers the imagination a little bit more.
Animation historians may opine that Mieles, Fliescher and Harryhausen (just to name a few) paved the way for this now standard amenity decades ago, and for their respective times they certainly produced miracles. By any standards, Ray Harryhau-sen’s rear-projection masterpiece from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, pitting the hero and crew against dueling stop-motion skeletons, withstands scrutiny and inspires new generations of bony assassins (Pirates of the Caribbean), whose multitudes, although indebted to the past, could only be achieved through digital animation and modern compositing techniques.
Even today, however, mixing live action with animation is sometimes most expediently achieved through stop motion, at least when combined with digital compositing. When MTV Films needed an animated cupcake to converse with a human actor in a promotion for their new release, The Perfect Score, director Mike Bellino asked our studio to replicate and animate a perfectly real looking, albeit goofy, cupcake. We fabricated the model by making a silicone mold of a real cupcake and casting it with an armature inside a flexible foam body coated in a urethane rubber frosting, resulting in a seemingly edible simulacrum that circumvented the rendering issues inherent in computer generated animation. Properly lit and composited into the actor’s hand, the cupcake doppelganger’s toxicity is be-trayed only by its large googly eyes and ample vocal range—confectionery red flags to be sure.
Even productions as generously financed as The Matrix still rely on the visions created by traditional model builders. While unable to produce the illusion of acting by a certain protago-nist, fabricators were instrumental in realizing the Wachowski Brothers’ concept of the corroded, industrial, grimy Zion docks environment.
I recently corresponded with Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions compositing lead John Stillman, who lauds the model makers for bringing nuances to the dock set that would have been very difficult to achieve with CG. He also cites the benefits of using real photographic plates as the foundation of a shot so that the subtle artifacts intrinsic to film—such as chromatic aberration, grain, lens flares, light blooming and depth of field—do not have to be manufactured on a computer. In addition to the critical role of miniature sets (utilized extensively in The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars trilogies), sculpted models continue to prove their indispensable value, not only as pre-visualization tools for CG modelers, but as hero props in stunning effects sequences.
For proof, consider the scene from Matrix Revolutions where the Mjolnir cruiser explodes through the Zion dock gate. Na-turally, the shot has digital components, but only to enhance the already spectacular beauty of a real model ship—rigged with pyrotechnics triggered to blow on impact—ramming into a one tenth scale set. Witnessing the production of such a spectacle is just so much cooler than sitting in front of a computer. Visceral reactions such as this give me faith in the staying power and relevance of traditional model building.
Also on the horizon, fans of Spider-Man should be on the lookout for extensive puppeteering employed in bringing Spi-dey’s nemesis, Doc Ock, to life in Spider-Man 2. Slated for release this summer, the Sony Pictures production, while CG intensive, still employed a team of 16 puppeteers for eight months of shooting, not counting pre-production testing and fabrication. According to one of the crewmembers, director Sam Raimi thought it was important to integrate puppets to ensure spontaneous reactions from the actors during close-up fight sequences. At times, it required the entire cadre of puppeteers to convincingly manipulate Doc’s four menacing tentacles.
Aspiring to achieve maximum versatility, the puppeteers utilized rods, marionette rigs and cable controls in order to animate the villain’s appendages, initially shooting each boarded shot on video.
Upon review, the director, effects supervisor and producers would ascertain the pros and cons of the scene and decide whether or not they should proceed to film, reproduce the action digitally, or resort to an amalgamation of techniques. By all accounts, the relationship be-tween the puppeteers and CG animators proved symbiotic, giving us all something to look forward to in July.
Evidence suggests that the charm and inimitable qualities of handcrafted special effects will persevere in collaboration with computer-generated effects in the digital age. Furthermore, stop-motion fans should find comfort in the fact that after 40 years, the Rankin/Bass classic, Rudolph the Red Nosed Rein-deer, still tops all holiday specials by at least 30 percent in the Nielsen ratings.
Peter Jackson take note: It’s dangerous to mess with a be-loved, animated classic (Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings does not in-spire the same cultic devotion as O’Brien’s King Kong). Even as computers dominate the special effects industry, rest assured that the virtues of silicone will re-main prominent in Hollywood—if not with the studios, then at least with the plastic surgeons, Tinseltown’s other great illusionists.
