Research book #1 - Understanding Animation - Paul Wells

Understanding Animation - Paul Wells

Short summary; Paul Wells is Subject Leader in Media Studies at De Montfort University in Leicester.

This book is a very comprehensive introduction to the popular medium called animation. It discusses its history and explains the defining characteristics of animation as a cinematic form. 

Most important chapter 3: Narrative strategies

Definition and devices

#1 Metamorphosis

One particular device unique to animation. Some argue the core of animation itself. The ability for an image to literally change into another completely different image. For example, through the evolution of the line, the shift in formations of clay or the manipulation of objects or environment.

#2 Condensation 

Animation predominantly occurs in short form, and manages to compress a high degree of narrational information into a limited period of time through processes of condensation. These include the elliptical cut and the comic elision. 

Elliptical cut

Works in the same way as live-action film-making in the sense that cuts are made between the depiction of events that signify the passage of lengths of time (for example the fade in, fade out, dissolve and wipe can point to a new event or chapter in the story of the film).

Comic Elision

Essentially the construction of a sequence of comic events of which operate as a self-determining process informed by the particular timing and relationship of the visual and verbal jokes.  

#3 Synecdoche

 Another of the chief devices instrumental in the condensation process is the use of synecdoche, literally a device by which the depiction of part of a figure or object represents the whole of the figure or object. (In some respects this is also similar to the use of metonymy, which is the substitution of an image for its action, e.g. a symbol of a bottle instead of the act of drinking.)

#4 Fabrication 

Three-dimensional animation is directly concerned with the expression of materiality, and, as such, the creation of a certain meta-reality which has the same physical property as the real world. This fabrication essentially plays out an alternative version of material existence, recalling narrative out of constructed objects and environments, natural forms and substances, and the taken-for-granted constituent elements of the everyday world. In a certain sense, this is the re-animation of materiality for narrative purposes. 

#5 Acting and Performance

'Acting' in the animated film is an intriguing concept in the sense that it properly represents the relationship between the animator and the figure, object or environment he/she is animating. The animator must essentially use the techniques employed by the actor to project the specificities of character through the mechanistic process of the animation itself. In fact, the animator must consider all the possibilities available to the actor in order to create and develop 'character' long before the actual process of animation begins.

Like actors in the theatre or live-action film, the animator develops the character from a script, considering the narrative implications of the role in the determination of character design, the range of movement available to the character, and the character's predominant motivation, which inevitably informs modes of expression and behavior. The animator, like the actor, though, is seeking to extend the possibilities of the character beyond the information given or suggested in the initial text. Though animated characters ultimately seem fairly limited in their motives, their range of physical expression is extraordinary.

It seems, then, that 'character' is defined first by the conditions and possibilities of the medium and its capacity to express and extend the formal capabilities of external, readily perceived existence. The character may be understood through its costume or construction, its ability to gesture and move, and the associative aspects of its design. The 'internal' aspects of character often seem one--dimensional or subject to the excessive overstatement of particular attitudes or moods, and these singular imperatives become the simple devices that drive the narrative, for example, Donald Duck's frustration or Goofy's ineptitude. Character, in this sense, is merely a cipher for a particular quality, often expressed in exaggerated gestures which echo some of the overt posturing and explicit signification of acting in the era of the silent live-action cinema. 

#6 Choreography (extension of theatrical staging)

The dynamics of movement as a narrative principle (dancing for example). 

#7 Penetration 

The ability to evoke the internal space and portray the invisible (for example the internal workings of an organism. The depths of a man's soul is more than a phrase to the animator: it can also be a picture - Halas and Batchelor, 1949: 10)

#8 Symbolism & Metaphor

Symbolism, in any aesthetic system, complicates narrative structure because a symbol may be consciously used as part of the image vocabulary to suggest specific meanings, but equally, a symbol may be unconsciously deployed, and, therefore, may be recognized as a bearer of meaning over and beyond the artist's overt intention. The metaphor essentially grows out of symbolism and serves to embody a system of ideas in a more appealing or conducive image system. The use of metaphor simultaneously invites interpretation but insists upon openness.