Experimental Animation

 Experimental animation? Who are these experimental animators? Is a particular type of person drawn to experimental animation? How might they work their experimental projects and how might they present their projects as real work?

My Head of Faculty asks me last week, in perfect honesty ‘is a certain type of student drawn to the more experimental forms of animation?’ He actually used the term ‘stopmotion’, but I will forgive him for that. In using the term ‘a certain type of student’, I’m hearing vague undertones of such experimental students possibly being slightly prickly and problematic, but let’s ignore that for now too.

For the purposes of this discussion and guidance, let’s place stopmotion, claymation, cutout, object animation, pixilation, mixed media, soft media, sand animation and all other such animation forms under the term ‘experimental animation’. In doing this, we’re creating a simplistic demarcation between such nominally ‘experimental’ forms and the more ‘mainstream’ animation forms, notably 2D (so-called ‘drawn’ animation) and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery).

Let me just say that I firmly believe such simplistic demarcations in animation are desperately dangerous, because they lead to all sorts of facile judgements, decisions to educate based solely on technique, decisions to force everyone into early and blinkered specialisation and ways of doing etc.. Animation should not always lend itself to simple decision making, because animation is frequently not simple. Rather animation is a complex multidiscipline. I believe in the diffusion of demarcations, the crossing over of technique, method and intent is where the future creative and imaginative power of animation will lie.

Once again, for the purpose of this discussion only, let us persist with our demarcation between experimental animation and mainstream animation forms.

In an effort to answer my HOF’s question, I felt compelled to ask myself ‘is there a ‘type’ of student who is drawn to experimental animation?’ Indeed, is there a type of person who is drawn to experimental projects? I admit some conflict of interest here, because my primary animation form is stopmotion. Though I worked to high levels in CGI and would consider myself a pretty accomplished film and digital animator, I also practice in experimental animation and in what is commonly referred to as ‘film art’. So, in attempting to describe some possible demographic which might be drawn to experimental animation, I would be including myself in such a group.

What ‘type’ of person is drawn to experimental?

Let’s lay some cards directly on the table here. Many 2D animators will already be shrugging their shoulders at this question, believing that the answer is blindingly obvious. Many 2D animators will answer ‘people who do experimental are people who can’t draw’. The 2D animators may even be more specific ‘people who do experimental are people who can’t animate’. When 2D animators speak about animation, they’re invariably speaking about (in their minds) the ‘highest’ form of animation, the top of the animation food chain, that is 2D drawn animation. So, in the minds of 2D animators, ‘people who can’t animate’ means ‘people who can’t do 2D drawn animation’. People who work in CGI animation are usually a little more circumspect. They understand that not everyone will have an aptitude for the cognitive virtual space techno-gymnastics required to work well in CGI. Unlike 2D drawn animation, CGI has never developed the belief that CGI is the ‘highest’ or purest form of animation.

Let’s imagine that the 2D animators are indeed correct. Let’s imagine that they’ve struck upon the simplest answer to our question. Perhaps indeed, people are drawn to experimental forms because they simply can’t draw, can’t animate, or can’t draw and animate well enough, or quick enough to survive in the aggressive macho dominated animation production culture of 2D animation? People who are drawn to experimental simply don’t have the skills and abilities to survive? Might there be some truth in this?

We might even stretch this assertion out a little further to cover ‘film art’ and ‘artists who animate’. In the eyes of 2D animators, professional animators and live-action filmmakers, much of film art is exemplified by amateurist technique and approach. Artists who make film and artists who claim to ‘animate’ usually don’t have the time, the aptitude, the skills or the ability to learn how to create film and animation to anything beyond a most amateur level. Once again, in the eyes of 2D animators and film professionals, artists who make films and artists who animate are a similar (or possibly identical) demographic to the people who are drawn to experimental animation. They’re people who can’t draw, can’t animate, haven’t learned to be ‘real’ filmmakers, can’t really use computers or cameras, at best playful and happy amateurs.

I know that many accomplished film artists are exploding as they read this, but I’m not interested here in your arguments against any such assertion. Film art shares with 21^st century art in general a broad perception of casual and arrogant pointlessness, pompousness and slippery cleverness amongst most of the human population. A great deal of work needs to be done if such malign perceptions are to be improved or changed.

Let us persist. Let us imagine that experimental animators are indeed people who can’t draw, can’t animate and haven’t learned to be ‘real’ filmmakers, playful and happy amateurs. In animation terms, some new questions strike me here. Why or how have these people become so dislocated from the needs and requirements of mainstream animation? The second question is how might these people do animation work? For some of my students another question is ‘how might we present our experimental animation work as work, especially to our lecturers? How might we convince our lecturers of the value of our experimental efforts?’

I will speak from my own experience here, though I will, before completing this essay, include contributions from some of my experimental animation colleagues. Let’s attempt to answer the question ‘why and how would people become so dislocated from the needs and requirements of mainstream animation, that they’d be drawn to the supposedly vague and uncertain wastelands of experimental?’

can’t draw, can’t animate

There may well be something in the 2D animators’ simplistic ‘can’t draw, can’t animate’ assertion? Thelma Chambers used to marvel at 2D animators’ almost universal inability to understand modern art, anything vaguely approaching modern art, never mind anything postmodern or metamodern. Thelma describes Bob Godfrey once misreading one of her own flower paintings with a slightly contemptuous nod ‘oh… Modern art?’ Thelma would say ‘even highly accomplished animators are only starting as artists, on the bottom rung of the artistic ladder’. Thelma saw animators’ inability as something of a restrictive and crippling affliction ‘the arrogance of the draughtsman’ (and yes, top 2D animators are almost universally guys). In Thelma’s eyes, the (2D) animators were those who’d learned to draw (and animate) in very specific, highly homogenised, conformist, conventional ways, ways which left them no cognitive room, space, energy or ability to comprehend ‘other’ ways of seeing, ways of working. We see this all the time in what animators cringingly call ‘the art of animation’. Animation art seems to predominantly defer to (and seems to perpetually emerge from) late 19^th century figurative art, art before impressionism went crazy, art before Dadaism and cubism started to mess everything up for everyone in the world. In this, 2D animation has many unexplored parallels with socialist realist art, an attempt to pushback against the complex unintelligibilities of modernism, an attempt to reassert the simple, rules-based drawing and art conventions of Academic art and academic art education, where models were female and nude, long poses were king and where learned and accomplished professors patiently taught measuring, drawing from classical plaster casts and techniques for the correct shading of drapery.

Might it be that ‘people who are drawn to experimental’ somehow do not fit comfortably into such simplistic, rules-based, 19^th century figurative working and creative practices?

Let’s look at another aspect of mainstream animation today. Since the early 1990s at least, animation has experienced an inexorable shift from film to digital, a Digital Turn in fact. There are many interesting and important historical aspects to the Digital Turn and many existential questions remain for animators as digital mutates inexorably into our future. But here, let’s deal with something of the now. What if we were to assert that ‘people who are drawn to experimental animation simply don’t have the skills or abilities to survive at dizzy digital and technical heights? Technology, both hardware and software is increasingly dominating the animation creation space and very few animators (or artists working in animation) can today be ‘insulated’ from the swirling, stormy, uncertain, mutating oceans of digital technology.

But let’s assume that all of our experimental animators are technically savvy, digitally adept and agile practitioners. What if the source of their digital discomfort lies instead in frustration with tramlined hardware and software ‘straitjackets’? What if the more experimental amongst us are frustrated with digital’s simplistic, rules-based, mechanistic working environments, methods, procedures and approaches? What if experimental animators are frustrated with having to constantly work in an intangible, virtual space, creating digital ephemera, using digital tools which frequently demand that the animator bends to the tool or bends to the software?

Having persisted with our argument, we’re perhaps beginning to develop an idea of who these experimental animators might be? Perhaps experimental animators are people who reject the straight line conventions and restrictions of mainstream animation? Perhaps experimental animators are people who reject the retro artistic simplicities of mainstream animation? Perhaps experimental animators are people who reject the mechanistic digital orthodoxies of mainstream animation? Perhaps experimental animators are people who reject naïve and simplistic demarcations in animation, demarcations between CGI, 2D and experimental forms? Instead, experimental animators want to range wide over the multidiscipline of animation, using diverse methods, techniques, tools and approaches. Experimental animators don’t want to stick with nor defer to tried and trusted conventional ways of doing. Rather, experimental animators are wholly dissatisfied and unfed by the garish conventions of existing animation. Experimental animators want to evolve new ways of creating and imagining animation for the 21^st century and beyond, new results onscreen, new industries for the future.

experimental animation and students

This brings us back to my students’ questions. ‘How might we present our experimental animation work as work, especially to our lecturers? How might we convince our lecturers of the value of our experimental work?’

In presenting project work for assessment, students will usually be asked to submit to more or less strict (and readily accepted) conventions. In animation, students will usually be asked to evolve a concept or idea for the project, frequently a narrative concept or idea. Once evolved, students will frequently be asked to ‘plot point’ their narrative, before writing out a conventional film script. Students will then be expected to visualise this concept, idea and script through a process of visual design, visual language and film language. Rough designs are developed into ‘locked down’ designs. Thumbnails are developed into storyboard panels. Storyboard panels are strung together to create storyboards. Time and audio (especially scratch voice recorded from the written script) are added to the storyboards in order to create animatics. Animatics are timed out, edited, changed and finally ‘locked down’. Then animation takes place, no matter what the technique, CGI, 2D, stopmotion or experimental. Once animation is finished, post production takes place. Scenes are comped and visual effects are added. Once final picture is locked, the final audio can be developed and final mixing takes place.

let’s take a deep breath here

I must admit that my animation practice deviates greatly from these accepted conventions. In this way, I suppose I am indeed a classically ‘problematic’ experimental animator and filmmaker.  I will often start my projects with the roughest idea or concept. I often work without any narrative or story. I don’t write full scripts for most of my projects. I often do not design my visuals beforehand, rather I want to explore, evolve and discover my animation visuals under the camera, through actual animation. I do not often storyboard my projects, nor do I always prepare animatics. Rather, I lay down and edit audio as my timebase line. I animate in and around, sometimes in response to and sometimes contrary to or despite the laid audio. I comp scenes as I go, each day, adding visual effects each day I work (if I add visual effects at all). I layer and edit my sound as I work, sometimes in response to and sometimes despite the laid visuals.

Let me throw out a few words to describe my working process. I throw these words out without prejudice and you may add your own terms if you wish (in fact I’d welcome other characterisations and descriptions). My working practice could be described as free, open, exploratory, discovering, imaginative, confused, confusing, chaotic, disorganised, evolutionary, unintelligible, irrational, illogical, wasteful. Many animation lecturers will see huge potential dangers for students in such a working process. Working in this way, students will become easily lost, confused, demotivated, obsessive and demoralised. Failure will loom over any project with such a disorganised and unintelligible working practice.

Let me say that, as a lecturer, I am no advocate of ‘glorious failure’ or ‘learning through failure’. I believe that all students should be given every opportunity to succeed in their projects and in their studies. I do think students should be hugely encouraged to risk-take and mistake-make as part of their learning. Similarly, students should be in every way discouraged from emulation, copying and sameiness. Failure may well be part of any student’s pedagogical journey, but the key thing must be that students learn from risks, from errors, cul de sacs, tangents and mistakes.

So how might students do everything possible to work through, rather than to fail in their experimental animation projects? Let me just take a moment to challenge an unspoken assumption here. That assumption is that conventional, so-called ‘well-organised’ narrative and mainstream animation projects are guaranteed success because they are scripted, storyboarded, animaticed, and production scheduled in advance. This is untrue. In fact, I’d argue that so-called conventional animation projects often suffer from the conventions of pre-production and pre-preparation. When problems arise, ‘conventional’ projects often don’t have any creative or imaginative elbow-room, space or time in which to evolve agile and effective solutions. Even potentially excellent and ambitious (often fully funded) animation projects frequently succumb to the inertia of this grinding, inexorable, self-defeating momentum.

However, to simplify things and to ‘assist’ students in working towards success in their experimental projects, many lecturers will make rather simplistic and pointless suggestions. Often such suggestions centre around imposing narratives, or developing the project through a safe and conventional script. In order to comply with such suggestions, students sometimes feel compelled to ‘invent’ narratives or to write ‘script’ descriptions based on the visuals in their current experimental timeline. These are pathetic wastes of time and effort. Another lecturer misread centres around experimental animation tests. It’s easy for lecturers to look through a folder containing a succession of experimental tests and then to casually declare ‘well that looks like an hour’s work?’ In reality, exploratory, risk-taking and mistake-making experimental testing takes a lot of time and effort. Many lecturers do not understand the precarious uncertainty and nervousness involved, the struggle to make something work, where all conventions are telling you that what you’re attempting could never succeed.

So how can our students do their experimental work? How can they present such experimental work as genuine and valuable animation and film work to their assessors, the lecturers? In presenting experimental work for assessment, let’s make some suggestions.

The first challenge is to present the artistic intent of your project. This is very easy to say and hard to do. Let’s use artistic intent here to replace any notions of narrative. Eamonn O Neill suggested ‘Make rules, set boundaries and start thinking about your work... Rules shouldn't be arbitrary, they should be based on the emotional intent of your film...’

What I’d often suggest is that you think of the END of your project, not any narrative end, rather a final persistent feeling, thought or emotion. When the screen goes black in the cinema or the gallery after the screening of your experimental  piece, what do you want you and your audience to feel, to think? Do you want them to be moved, sad, angry, happy, wowed? Do you want them to be laughing or shaking their heads in disbelief? Do you want your audience to be nourished or fed, to feel that you have given them something immensely deep and rich and valuable? Do you want your audience to think you’re cool, or very clever? Do you want your audience to think ‘I need to see that again, IMMEDIATELY!’ It’s completely up to you, but it’s important that YOU develop this final emotional or rational audience objective as an experimental Director and as an Artist!

In project development terms, and in order to present your work to lecturers for assessment, once you’ve established an END to your project, you can jump back to the START of your project. When the screen in the gallery or the cinema suddenly illuminates with your experimental project, what do you want the audience to hear and to see? HOW are you going to entice, lead, shove, chase, hunt, lure your audience into the world of your piece and WHY are your bringing  your audience into that world? YOU are in complete control of your audience. You are the Captain of your Film’s ship! Will your audience see and hear things they’ve never seen and heard before?

Once you’ve conducted your audience safely into the world of your piece, WHY are they there? What’s in it for your audience? What will you give them, or take away from them? How and why will you feed them, nourish them, fill them with wonder, strip them bare or terrify them? Why are your audience in your world? As ever, it is completely up to you to decide, but I believe you must have some definite ideas. When you’ve played with your audience for long enough, you must conduct them towards the exit, towards the end you’ve already developed. A caution here! Try to make sure that you don’t keep your audience in your world a moment longer than your world can sustain! Conversely, don’t kick your audience out of your world too early! If things are interesting, your audience will want to spend time in your world. If things are really interesting and rewarding, your audience will not want to leave at all! You can always promise to bring your audience back again!

Once your artistic intent is determined, you have something of a map forward. You can always change or modify or enhance or simplify your artistic intent as your project develops. The map can change as you work. Sometimes it’s better not to admit this to the more conventional lecturers, because any prospect of change unsettles them and starts them obsessing about student failure again. Map in hand, your journey (your experimental work) should begin. Though you need to stay open, agile and imaginative in your process, I believe it will help you realty if your work is scrupulously organised and scheduled.

Alan O’ Cuilean (Alan Holly) spoke about experimentation on his CODA film. ‘The Many Things section at the end (of CODA) was to be very experimental – not tied down ‘we’ll figure it out when we get to it’ and was never properly scheduled.  Don’t ever do that! TRY to plan the work out properly.’

First, I completely agree with Alan that all work should be planned out and scheduled properly. This is probably more important in experimental animation forms because experimental working practices frequently form part of our experimentation. Sometimes in true experimentation, we simply don’t know how we’ll accomplish something, how it will be done or how it will look or work when it’s finished. As Eamonn O Neill once said ‘it’s okay NOT to know!’ Such experimental effort TAKES REAL TIME! Generously allocate adequate testing and experimentation time in your production schedule. Remember you’re conducting perfectly valid research, but you must explain it to ‘cold viewers’ (including many of your lecturers) as perfectly valid and legitimate research. You’ll need to explain your research process and methodology. You’ll also need to explain how your research is proceeding, shot by shot, what you’re discovering, what’s working and what’s working, why such things are working or not working in your terms and how you plan to move forward in your research journey.

Explain the artistic challenges you’re encountering and surmounting. Present your progress when you feel you’re making progress. In order to accomplish this for assessment purposes, I believe the best way is to assemble your research tests in a timeline and to voice over, explaining what you’re doing, explaining your process. Plan and script the points you want to make. Rehearse what you want to say. Edit your voiceover to sharpen things up.

A final thing! Don’t shy away from new technology! Just because you’re doing experimental animation doesn’t mean that you have to do everything in some old-fashioned or retro way. Many students are thinking this at the moment and it can be unhelpful!  Old and manual ways of making and doing can be very satisfying and rewarding, but if you find they’re no longer creatively and imaginatively satisfying or rewarding (of if you find you’ve invented or discovered some old-fashioned onerous, time-consuming manual chore) then grab a modern technological solution if one is available. We need to use all the tools available to us if we’re to succeed in our experimental endeavours. Remember that experimentation in and using modern technology is hugely valuable experimentation too! I do believe there’s a lot to be gained in digital pushback and through dedigitisation but I’m not advocating any luddite approaches just to satisfy some mindless old-fashioned and retro fashions. Use every tool available to you. As Eamonn O Neill said ‘learn always, because skills are brillz…’

once again, bulletpointed advice for students...

ONE: Explain your artistic intent. Start with the END of your project – what do you want your audience to think and feel when your screening is finished? Work back to the START of your project – how are you going to entice your audience into the world of your piece? Finally WHY have you brought your audience into the world of your piece? What do you want them to do, or what do you want to do to your audience, whilst they’re inside the world you’ve created for them? Such a START, WORLD and END approach should comfortably replace any ‘narrative’ or story impositions from outside experts, guides and lecturers.

TWO: Plan and generously schedule your experimental research work into your Production Schedule. Tests, visual research and experimentation should take just as long as the drawing and development of any ‘conventional’ storyboard, just as long as the writing of any script.

THREE: Explain your experimental and research methods, processes and discoveries. I’d suggest that the best way to do this is to voiceover your experimental animation tests every few days, every week at least. Tell your assessors what’s working, what’s not working, how and why things are working or not working for you and what you’ll be doing next or how you’ll move forward.

FOUR: Don’t shy away from technology. Just because you’re doing experimental animation doesn’t mean that you have to do everything in some old-fashioned or retro way. Old and manual ways of making and doing can be very satisfying and rewarding, but if you find they’re no longer creatively and imaginatively satisfying and rewarding (of if you find you’ve invented or discovered some old-fashioned onerous manual chore) then grab a modern technological solution if one is available. We need to use all the tools available to us if we’re to succeed in our experimental endeavours.

Experimental animation is a most challenging, risky, fun and rewarding form. I truly believe that the greatest animation discoveries lie ahead of us through more experimental forms, not through the tired and restrictive conventions of ‘mainstream’ animation. Humankind desperately needs new and better artistic solutions for the 21^st century. Experimental animation forms will allow you to truly show humans things they’ve never experienced before, to feed them, to enrich them and to make our world a better place! This is a great opportunity! Don’t screw it up!