At the beginning of the year we were given a reading list of books which would help us in our understanding of the fundamental principles of animation, one of these being 'The Fundamentals of Animation' by Paul Wells which unfortunately was sold out. So, I decided to pick up his other book 'Scriptwriting' in which Wells explains some of the essential rules of pre-production.
The book outlines some of the specific vocabulary of animation as a practice, such as...
- Metamorphosis: The ability to facilitate change from one form into another without edit.
- Condensation: The maximum degree of suggestion in the minimum of imagery.
- Anthropomorphism: The imposition of human traits on animals, objects and environments.
- Fabrication: The physical and material creation of imaginary figures and spaces.
- Penetration: The visualisation of unimaginable psychological/physical/technical 'interiors'.
- Symbolic Association: The use of abstract visual signs and their related meanings.
- Sound Illusion: The completely artificial construction of a soundtrack to support the intrinsic silence of animated forms.
Probably the passage which has stuck with me the most since reading the book was when Wells states that...
'It is useful to remember that animated films are normally essentially made in their pre-production phase, while live action films are made in post-production.'
This is certainly true. As stated in the book, 'advanced preparation of material is crucial in executing the particular intentions of the piece' due to the time consuming nature of the technical processes of animation. This is honestly something I had never thought of in the past, but it's true that animation is a lot more pre-planned than live action film, rarely is the director making it up as they go along, as this would be wasting everybody working on the project's time.
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