Saturday, April 12, 2008

Creativity in Animation

Animation is an art form that i was always wanted to learn and make it a part of my life.
My inspirations came from the disney cartoons I used to watch in black and white television at home on sundays when i was a kid. This dream of mine, i had put it off in a corner of my mind untill now because of lack of opportunity to learn and practice.
Now since i have started learning the art form, it has intrigued me to find out what creativity is like in animation.
Now, this is an attempt to understand creativity in animation. Hope to arrive at 'understanding' soon..

References:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Robin King said during a speech on animation art at the International Animation Design Masters Forum on Friday afternoon, November 9th, 2007
"Don't try to copy Japanese or U.S. styles of animation. Find a way to bring a unique Chinese voice for Chinese stories and for Chinese content rather than replicate or duplicate what other people do. Use the tools and techniques to support your own culture and to find your own voice. And I truly believe in China that when you find that voice, it will be a big voice, a powerful voice and a wise voice. And that is a task, not to mimic the Japanese, not to mimic Hollywood, but to learn from the experts how to use the tools to create stories your need to create."

Chris Webster, Head of Animation Provision at the University of the West of England, Bristol, who spoke on ‘Movement without Meaning is Pointless.‘
In this talk and screening, he aimed to explore how the underpinning nature of individual creativity is central to animation as a medium. Animation is a unique visual art form that entertains, informs and educates, though without meaning - it is reduced to a form of dynamic wallpaper. Using examples of work drawn from students studying on the program at the University of the West of England, he aimed to explore the creative nature of animation and look at creativity as a transferable skill that we can all learn and develop.

More to come.. :)

2 comments:

Juilie(zui-lee) said...

brilliant!
waiting for more from you!
so Mr. Animator, you do have a way with words!

I wanted to second- 'Imagination is more important than knowledge' , but then again don't you think the two are inter-linked? Imagination without knowledge is impossible. Gaining knowledge without imaginative ways too is in a way impossible.
For example, in the absence of imagination, there wouldn't have been a pictograph but without the knowledge of the use of nature's resources, the imprint of images in our minds and the awareness of our ability to draw, pictography was as bad as impossible.

Nary said...

apologies for the late reply..yes you are absolutely right about the roles that imagination and knowledge play individually and for each other.. i think they have their own roles to play.. but when it comes to the matter of "what's more important", i think it only depends on the situational application.. but looking at the whole thing in a broader sense, i can relate imagination-knowledge to space-time relationship.. imagination is in a way one level up in the intellectual heirarchy.. looking at it in one way, knowledge can be called 'data'.. its limited just by itself as it inherently lacks potential for self driven meaningful application.. unlike imagination..
apparently, imagination is what differentiates humans from AI.. :)
Humans have imagination. AI depends on knowledge/data and i hope/wish they NEVER get imagination.