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The sword and the sailor
Aug. 6th, 2007 04:19 pmI watched a lot of Popeye this weekend. I can truly say I honestly loved just about every second of it. Popeye is fantastic. The way he moves and sways gives him a life and realism that I honestly just don't see in pretty-much any cartoon ever made.
Of course, not everyone agrees. I ran into some guy on an animation group that was going on about how he wished some anime series would get a clean-up and release like Popeye. (I forget which one but it was a giant-robot one) There are also people in that group who think Mocap is great and said something silly about how as mocap libraries go, 'animators' will be able to mix and match walks of different people and use them to make a character. This spurred me to say:
"A thousand hairless monkeys and a thousand pairs of shoes for a thousand years will never produce Popeye."
(I thought it was cute but really, quoting myself is abominable) It's true though. No human walks like Popeye without dislocating something. To me, the whole interest of animation is that it can be surreal and weird in ways that live action cannot.
Then again, it also got me thinking about the nature of the characters. Most anime/motion capture I've seen is stiff and lifeless but in a way that makes sense. The major plots tend to be about sword or gun or robot. Really, they are the central character of many many stories and the human characters are secondary. From that point of view, the stiffness sorta makes sense. You can't ham up your sword's action too much or people won't read it as your dark angsty teen-boy masterpiece of "I'm so brilliant and misunderstood"ness. So the other option is to knock the other characters down and make them as lifeless as your main character. Quite an appealing option too as it means less work for you.
By the same token, I think Popeye could only be done with full animation. Every story revolves around his fists. His living weapons. They are alive and expressive. As a reflection of this, he too must be alive and expressive.
Of course, not everyone agrees. I ran into some guy on an animation group that was going on about how he wished some anime series would get a clean-up and release like Popeye. (I forget which one but it was a giant-robot one) There are also people in that group who think Mocap is great and said something silly about how as mocap libraries go, 'animators' will be able to mix and match walks of different people and use them to make a character. This spurred me to say:
"A thousand hairless monkeys and a thousand pairs of shoes for a thousand years will never produce Popeye."
(I thought it was cute but really, quoting myself is abominable) It's true though. No human walks like Popeye without dislocating something. To me, the whole interest of animation is that it can be surreal and weird in ways that live action cannot.
Then again, it also got me thinking about the nature of the characters. Most anime/motion capture I've seen is stiff and lifeless but in a way that makes sense. The major plots tend to be about sword or gun or robot. Really, they are the central character of many many stories and the human characters are secondary. From that point of view, the stiffness sorta makes sense. You can't ham up your sword's action too much or people won't read it as your dark angsty teen-boy masterpiece of "I'm so brilliant and misunderstood"ness. So the other option is to knock the other characters down and make them as lifeless as your main character. Quite an appealing option too as it means less work for you.
By the same token, I think Popeye could only be done with full animation. Every story revolves around his fists. His living weapons. They are alive and expressive. As a reflection of this, he too must be alive and expressive.
