PPP- Visting Professional: Fraser Maclean on Layout

'Cinema is too powerful a form of storytelling to be left exclusively to the Storytellers.'
                                                                                                                                      -Fraser Maclean

Fraser Maclean has been lecturing colleges since 2000 and has worked on some Major Hollywood pictures, such as Space Jam, Tarzan and Who Framed Roger Rabbit and recently came out with a book on animation layout called 'Setting the Scene'.

During his talk to our course, Maclean dismissed contemporary fine arts as self-obsessed and slammed people like Tracy Emin, Charles Saatchi and Damien Hurst. Maclean asserts that Graphic Design disciplines, such as Animation and Illustration, were the only disciplines at universities which seemed to be aware of the developments of the 20th Century outside the gallery system. He argues, if you're working in any form of visual communication, you're working within three endeavours; creativity, technology and cash. Maclean's creative philosophy rides on the simple fact that technology will change over time, and as practitioners we can either ride that wave of innovation, or get swept under by it.

Maclean studied Graphic Design at Glasgow College of Art in the 1980s and got one of his first jobs out of university working on 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' as an SFX supervisor for the shadows in the scene with the cow with the lipstick, before moving on to work on projects such as Space Jam and Tarzan in a more directorial role. Maclean's speciality lies in layout, an art-form he likens to classical painting; creating not only the scenic aesthetic but also the framing, positioning and movement of characters and props within a given scene.

Maclean asserts that no other animation company was in competition with Disney until the advent of digital production pipelines and digital painting in the mid 90s. He attributes the increase in quality/competition with other animation studios in the late 90s to programmes such as the Deep Canvas system, which allowed animators to paint directly onto 3D models, blurring somewhat the barrier between the artistic and technological sides of the animation pipeline.

Layout is important. Animation is more than just the characters, it is the lighting, the framing, the general balance of the scene Maclean stresses. Cinematography is an important area to study for Layout Artists; Maclean singles out cinematographers such as Jack Cardiff and Stanley Kubrick as examples of artists with an innate understanding of their craft and as such proven masters of their respective fields. Learn the optical properties of cameras and photography (particularly Multi-plane camera setups). in animation design is everything, every aesthetic decision should be conscious, nothing happens by accident so if a design decision is not there for a reason, get it off.

Maclean's philosophy on layout and art direction echoes a lot of how I feel towards the form and how I wish to approach my practice for CoP3, with a focus on distinctively visual storytelling, using layout as a narrative tool. When considering research material for CoP3 I will definitely be giving his book a read as well as Tod Polson's 'The Noble Approach' which he also recommended. We had a brief chat after the talk where I asked for feedback on some of my background designs; to which he told me to study landscape painting and photography, pointing to filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick. As for general advice, he stressed to me the importance of understanding the industry you're wanting to go into and trying as much as you can to own your own intellectual property. Overall I found the talk extremely helpful, providing me with some helpful pointers on art direction and layout, areas which I see myself pursuing in my practice going into Level 6.