Through the Looking Glass: Philosophical Toys and Digital Visual Effects
The essay says Visual Effects are combination of both art and science as to make things look more realistic. Earlier, movies lacked realism in terms of effects. For example, ‘The Abyss (1989)’, the artists were lacking were lacking the ability of water dynamics if they were to show waves, tides, etc, but as the time advanced science and effects artists collaborated to improve these in ‘Poseidon (2006)’. “Perceptual Realism”, the basis of realism in terms of proportions in three dimensional models as it would look more realistic and appealing to audience. Some earlier movies had quite less tools to create perceptual realism as a result the effects looked fake while watching them. One of them was King Kong (1933). One of the better example for this is ‘Jurassic Park’ as while watching we can see the perceptual realism when the characters are seen standing in front of dinosaurs which makes the creatures appear more realistic to audience. Visual Effects helped artists make the movie look more appealing.
What Is Digital Cinema?
Digital Cinema is process of using live footages for the animation. During the earlier years, Artists used to shoot majority of the film physically as the computer effects were not advanced as they are now. The traditional ways of shooting films have not been changed yet now as the wire removal is done manually now also but in majority of areas the computer-generated effects have taken place which are time saving but expensive as high-end software’s are being used. The process of movie making is same as earlier like the traditional as the live action footage is treated as raw material and then taken to computers for changes for compositing and morphing but the traces of computers being used in movies to create effects are hidden from the audience to make the output realistic.
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Computer Games
Computer games itself covers a large range of games which include action games, puzzles, strategy games, etc. computer games are on variety of platforms comprising CD-ROM, Applications, Internet games and many more. Games were introduced in early 1970s. This was the time when only business organizations could afford fully programmable minicomputers. The computers became more graphically sophisticated for the games to run. Macintosh interface released in 1984 was more advanced than many games available at the time of its release. The earlier games were not photorealistic like the Pong. It consisted of circles and lines which was a surprise to people as they saw dots behaving like a ball bouncing. Computer games became popular and as a result some of came under pressure of censorship because of there violent and erotic theme. Compared to games book are less censored because games having live footages and books having written culture.
The Code
At the start, the host refers to bees as how they are using simple geometrical shapes to make their honeycombs for all these years. He is speaking about sea and the waves and says it is difficult to identify their shape and nature is not made up of purely simple geometrical shapes. The giant causeway does not has proper hexagonal shapes in it. There was a painter Jackson Pollock who used to scatter paint all over the floor layer by layer and used this pattern week after week with more colors and as a result the scattered paint looked extra ordinary. His painting became popular and he was declared artist of 20th century. There were questions raised on his works but no-one could understand. It came in notice of artist Richard Taylor, he created a pendulum like mechanism operated with hands to scatter paint like Pollock. Taylor said Pollock was the first person to identify the hidden shapes of nature and that made his works looked more appealing.
Uncanny Valley: why we find human-like robots and dolls so creepy
Stephanie Lay
The writer mentions relationship between human-likeness and emotional response in form of distinctive dip is uncanny valley. A Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori identified that people will accept more robots when they find robots more like them than that of mechanical parts. Maya Mathur and David Reichling did a study
on 80 robots to find out about the valley effects and
their results were similar identifications of Mori.
The uncanny valley will not exist as the science is progressing and creating realistic robots making to harder to compare between human and robots.
One of the theories is as the robots are becoming realistic humans are becoming more sensitive
and will be able to point out differences between
robots and humans.
Film
The writer here mentions about the animations used in films. As the time has the advanced the effects have also improved from the earlier decades. During the past, computer generated effects were difficult to animate with traditional techniques. The film Toy story has perfectly rendered sequences which engages the audience while watching. This film expresses virtual realism. There are also some examples of movies from 20th century- Vertigo (1958) which goes back in time by two decades. Sometimes in the live action films, the artists intensify the use of graphics to be made noticeable by the viewers as in Terminator 2 (1991) and sometimes they make without enhancing them. During 19th century there was movie made in the Grand Café, The Arrival of a Train at Ciotat Station. The effect of the film on the audience was they ran out of the room after seeing the movie image of a train. As a result there were some questions raised on the film and one of the theorist suggested there was a gap in between what people saw.
12 Principles of Animation
Squash and stretch
It can be applied to simple objects, like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions, like the musculature of a human face.
Anticipation
Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic.
Staging
Its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is of greatest importance in a scene.
Straight ahead action and pose to pose
Straight ahead action scenes are animated frame by frame from beginning to end, while "pose to pose" involves starting with drawing a few key frames, and then filling in the intervals later.
Staging
Staging in animation is a lot like composition in artwork. What we mean by that is, you should use motion to guide the viewer's eye and draw attention to what's important within the scene. Keep the focus on what's important within the scene, and keep the motion of everything else of non-importance to a minimum.
Follow through and overlapping action
"Follow through" means that loosely tied parts of a body should continue moving after the character has stopped and the parts should keep moving beyond the point where the character stopped only to be subsequently "pulled back" towards the center of mass or exhibiting various degrees of oscillation damping. "Overlapping action" is the tendency for parts of the body to move at different rates.
Slow in and slow out
The movement of objects in the real world, such as the human body, animals, vehicles, etc. need time to accelerate and slow down. For this reason, more pictures are drawn near the beginning and end of an action, creating a slow in and slow out effect in order to achieve more realistic movements.
Arc
Most natural action tends to follow an arched trajectory, and animation should adhere to this principle by following implied "arcs" for greater realism. This technique can be applied to a moving limb by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory. The exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines.
Secondary action
Adding secondary actions to the main action gives a scene more life, and can help to support the main action.
Timing
Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film.
Exaggeration
Exaggeration is an effect especially useful for animation, as animated motions that strive for a perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull.
Solid drawing
The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, or giving them volume and weight.
Solid drawing
This includes knowing how to draw in three-dimensional space and understanding form and anatomy, weight and volume, and lights and shadows.
Appeal
Appeal in a cartoon character corresponds to what would be called charisma in an actor. A character who is appealing is not necessarily sympathetic, villains or monsters can also be appealing, the important thing is that the viewer feels the character is real and interesting.
VFX BreakDown
John Wick
Techniques
- Supporting Wires/ Wire Removal
- Blue Screen & Green Screen
- 3d Models/ 3d Animation
- Bump Texture Mapping
Key terms
- Ocean Effect
- Blood Effect
- Glass Shatter
- 3d Axe
- Action Artists
Mise-en-scene
- Matte Painting
- Live Footages
- Actual Backgrounds
- Horse
- 3d Vehicles
Narrative
By using Ocean & Blood effect the directors wanted to show the audience to make them feel like its the real action sequence going on.
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Digital Photorealism Essay/ Presentation
Digital Photorealism
Photorealism is a new trend in VFX industry. Photorealism was introduced by artist ‘Louis. K Meisel in 1969’. It is also known as Super-Realism or Hyperrealism. It is a technique that includes painting and all photographic materials available with the artist and then using different ways and softwares.to make the output as realistic as possible. The phrase photorealism can used to show artists production used in any of the media. In the VFX terms, it refers to changes in moving images by digital means to create an illusion which is not present in real world. The early photorealist used urban scenes rather than rural to make portraits and landscapes and they were American realists named ‘Ralph Goings’, Chuck Close’ and ‘John Baeder’. There was only one lady realistic at that time named Audrey Flack. They were trying to celebrate and value their works. Sometimes, they were also referred as cheaters as they used photograph of the other realists.
Photorealism came into light more after painting by Chuck Close in 1940 as he had self-portrait himself and it was caught in one of the photographs at ‘Museum of Modern Art’ in New York. He was also known as pioneer of photorealism. He had a lit-up cigarette in his mouth with smoke all around and messy hair. He used black and white colour to highlight his scruffy appearance as well as uncaring nature of the artist. He has focused more on his head. Close has hand-painted this canvas with many details and light pencil sketch to scale up his photograph. He has maintained sense of resemblance to work on big and conveying scale. Close has used concept of bringing the elements of human in photorealism through many portraits. Ralph Goings was also one of the artists who made an art named McDonalds Pickup in 1970. Here, he has used the American Flag, McDonalds and a Jeep as his subject. He has used a large part of photographs with the details of American highways and has given more attention to the details. The artist has removed public and debris from the painting as he didn’t want to show irrelevant stuff which would draw attention from his artwork’s subject. He chose to do this because he wanted to maintain and follow the traditional genres which were being followed since 17th century. He has painted with great care to show their culture of America. In 1974, Supreme Hardware Store was made by Richard Estes.
He showed the untidy city full of lettering storefronts and bold signs. He painted this art with most care and precision, and it turned out to be unremarkable. The artist stated the sensible reason, he laid foundation of his painting on photographs. “It’s silly to work from drawings when I can do better with Photographs”. His painting showed the New York City was on doorway to bankruptcy which was acclaimed for their urban aesthetic. With his focus on detail and realism, he managed to bring back the theoretical tradition. Estes skill is among the chief contributions of photorealism. Oscar Okonu is one of the artists who creates his work with just ball point pens. He is from Nigeria and the country has become the hotbed of photorealism for last few years. Okonu expresses his ideas and thoughts on the paper, it is estimated that he takes 100 hours to complete one artwork with over ten pieces of pen for each one. Gottfried Helnwien, his works often tackles tough subjects into unsettling works. He was German and most controversial artist of her time because of his works. They were mostly wounded and bandaged with Nazi dresses of the World War 2. He could tackle the controversies and difficult situations. The details he used to put in made the people provoked towards him. David Kassan is a relaxed artist; he takes around two months to two years to complete the art. He takes so long because he tries not to make exact copy of his subject and inspires them to reflect their own voice. Elizabeth Patterson had a severe injury which left her away from art for 15 years in 1984. After returning, she made her own style of defining urban scenes on windscreen of car with rain using coloured pencil and graphite which made impression and realistic in photorealistic way. Ester Curini is an artist from Italy based in New York learned everything by himself, she specialises in more detailed animal portraits set on white backgrounds. She tends to use more of white’s because she thinks it makes easy for her to concentrate on important aspects what she needs in the artwork. Richard Estes is most famous for masterclasses in photorealism and he is also an American. He was more into making convincing urban arts and scenes. He used to assemble his compositions from several source pictures before forming reality in exciting real-life renders. While taking a close look one could see clearly, he used reflected surroundings in his artwork on window glasses to enhance the scene more. On my list, the last artist is Raphaella Spence based in Todi, Italy and London born, is a photorealist painter specialising in cityscapes and landscapes. Her works are showcased in corporate and public places all over Germany, England, Russia, Italy, Austria and Canada.
Nowadays, Photorealism is widely used and more demanded in world of digital cinema to makes scenes look more real as possible. The more realistic the scene is the more time it takes to render the output. Artist combines everything demanded according to the vision and generates or creates magic on-screen through skills and techniques required. Michael Korvac is fictional character from Marvel comics. For the very first time the character appeared in Giant Size Defenders edition 3 (Jan. 1975). He was created by Steve Gerber and Jim Starlin. The very first model of Korvac was lacking basic requirements to be called as realistic in terms of photorealism as it did not had proper details to the model in aspect of everything possible – Lighting, Rendering, Background and Detailing but as the time advanced and newer editions came the character got details which looked more fascinating in comparison with older ones. The Jungle Book movie is a mixture of CG modelled characters and live action scenes and environment. The movie made some of the viewers surprised and some were into uncanny. In terms of photorealism the physics behind the making of film was perfectly fine. If we take an example of movie Maleficent by Disney in terms of VFX and realism the earlier part released in 2014 was some-what missing the taste of realism in some parts of the film when there is castle shown and camera rotates in 360. The backgrounds don’t look real in that but if we see the newer version which is about to release in January 2020, according to me, the trailer justifies that artists behind the movie have worked on all the incomplete aspects from the earlier version and made the newer one more real. On the other hand, we take The Lion King as one more example, the earlier version from 1994 looked more in 2d aspect than in 3d. It was more over on cartoon theme than realism. The newer version looks extremely real until the animals start speaking and singing. The artists have put in everything in terms to make it realistic in form on expressions, emotions, energy and character. Photorealism is not only used in movies but also in games. In terms of gaming, I am fond of gaming and according to me I have been playing games for all these years around and I have found with every game when a newer version is been released of the particular its more advanced than the earlier one in every possible way. If we take GTA into consideration I have played 4-5 versions of this franchise and all of them are different from one other. The most recent one GTA 5 is more realistic than others and that’s natural as that’s with the advancing time. The 3d characters used all these years in these games have advanced by the time. The main character has more detailed model now from the older ones, the only aspect they can improve is go give the characters more natural features of the human body. The character of San andreas looks more cartoony than any other after GTA Vice City. Both characters are designed in similar ways and seems to be 2d. The surroundings and places they also seem to be on the 2d. the most recent GTA 5 has been improved in terms of majority of the aspects of the realism and looks more 3d modelled with proper textures and lights. 3d realism is also an important aspect in photorealism. Rieber (1994), “Realism is somehow measured against the likeness of the object the picture is supposed to present”(p. 148). 3d realism is obtained by transferring color, texture, shape, details and motion regardless of these features relevant for identification of the object. The process of evolving a shape in mathematical manner in a three-dimensional way is known as rendering. The process of creating all these outputs look more realistic is known as rendering. Rendering is gathering and compiling all data in multiple frames and compositing them to generate the final output. More realistic the output is the more time it takes to render. Compositing also plays a major role in digital photorealism. It is a mixture of essential visual elements from distinct sources into one image to create a deceptive appearance or illusion that all the elements are of the same scene. Live action shoot is regarded as “green screen”, “blue screen” and “chroma key”.
In today’s time, compositing is often achieved through manipulation techniques. Photorealism is important feature of media in today’s world as everything is depended upon how real the art/movie is, in terms of CGI characters or the effects used. All the authors have similar views on photorealism and if we look on painting from the past, it isn’t doubtful that the designers drew more finer and usage of lens was frequent for most of their work by the artists consecutively. It was tough for them to make their works close for real life objects, even if an object is still it becomes tough for artists to bring all the details of the subject. The artist named Saravanamudaliar thinks help of computers is always required to bring up the photorealistic feeling as of the actual one. He tried to draw the replica of the original and says he is not sure whether he succeeded or not. He also thinks it was hard to follow the same scale and size of the subject. This states that the artists are more of thinking on the digital aspects of making their works realistic and this is what digital realism is.
References
https://www.creativebloq.com/illustration/examples-photorealism-10135012
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/photorealism/
https://www.toolbox-studio.com/blog/photorealism-an-exciting-new-trend-in-the-vfx-industry/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926580599000187
https://mymodernmet.com/hyperrealism-history/
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/photorealism.htm
https://www.popmatters.com/189333-video-games-and-the-aesthetics-of-the-impossible-2495574410.html
