Paul's film "Slocum"

[Paul Fierlinger]

EDIT: I have asked the webmaster to take these posts that are hogging Asaf's thread and create a new thread with them

Thanks, Klaus; the pictures are very helpful to understand your points. It's interesting how taking the time to experiment with such problems has helped me in sorting out my story's red thread which has been missing all along, and that is to contemplate on the question of When does truth cross the line into fiction?

Slocum, in his original journal/book went through some obvious pains to underline the point that he is telling the truth by naming real names of ships he passes and recording little conversations he carried on with their captains -- all an elaborate effort to convince his readers that he is not making anything up. Yet some of these ship to ship conversations are quite witty so as not to bore the reader and they make me think that he made those up just to make the book more entertaining -- so where does truth cross into fiction?

I decided to make this question the central theme of my movie exactly because I experienced the difficulty we had with making the water match the motion of the objects on and around the water. So I decided to turn our dysfunctionality into a means to support the sum of the story's red thread and now intend to carry the idea to absurd lengths by sometimes drawing scenes in more or less realistic lines, and on other occasions obviously resorting to a more classical cartoon style.

And we will not stop there, but also carry the dialogs in the same spirit; when are we telling the story the way it (supposedly) happened and when are we making things up? Obviously the answer should be that it doesn't really matter as much as some people insist upon the truth and nothing but the truth.

[Sierra Rose]

Who was it who said, "I don't mind lying but I can't abide inaccuracy"?

[Paul Fierlinger]

Or:
Memory is a strange bell
__ Jubilee and Knell

[Sierra Rose]

I take your meaning.

Emily Dickinson and Samuel Butler, together at last.

[Paul Fierlinger]

You are good! Have you read A Summer of Hummingbirds, by Christopher Benfey?

[Sierra Rose]

No I haven't...I gather you recommend?

[Paul Fierlinger]

If you like Fin de Siecle Americana. The subtitle of the book says Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Hariet Beecher Stowe, & Martin Johnson Heade. I am reading books like this one now because it is the period of Joshua Slocum, who actually became a close acquaintance of Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt because both these men themselves had a strong affection for explorers. Life in America was very, very different back then but at the same time it was at its threshold of marketing economy and Barnum & Bailey bombast so it isn't a completely foreign period to us.

[Fabrice]

EDIT: I have asked the webmaster to take these posts that are hogging Asaf's thread and create a new thread with them

ok, Paul we will try to split the topic if possible tomorrow

nb: that's fun because I told last week to Norman to take a look at the Might River from F.Back.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Thanks, Fabrice. The Mighty River is a completely different type of film and animation of course, but it's interesting to see what a mighty element water can be in animation; it becomes an actor with completely different roles from one film to the next.

[slowtiger]

There are as many ways to depict water in animation as there are drops in the sea ... but my favourites are always the simple ones, not the realistic special effects.

Paul: I think I'd like it to have the brush strokes follow the wave outlines, but definitely not very exact, or with the use of masking. I've noticed that you still use a quite small brush. I wonder if a brush of about 1/8 the project height would work. (Note to self: construct a brush for that purpose yourself.)

[Paul Fierlinger]

I am searching for a style that blends in with the roughness of the actors and backgrounds in general. Sandra and I don't want to discover the closest way TVP can get to emulating the flow of water but the best way to keep the drawings of water interesting while not allowing the colored areas to take over the screen (as in the Triplets of Belleville).

I have to keep thinking that the average viewer doesn't enter the theater, or turn on the DVD player to catch us at not discovering a better way to paint water. Right now we are treating water in the ocean as a changing landscape. Waves are moving hills and valleys. Sandra uses the same brushes to paint water that she uses to paint hills and the people who walk over them. We'll see how far we can get with that before we decide that ocean spaces indeed need something more inventive to carry the story.

As you said:

There are as many ways to depict water in animation as there are drops in the sea ... but my favorites are always the simple ones, not the realistic special effects.

I wholeheartedly agree because I apply this philosophy to the way everything is drawn in our world. But I also plan on switching styles of everything throughout the story. In times of loneliness, Slocum will recreate conversations with people and sea voyages from his past and in those scenes I will use different art schemes for portraying water and people and their boats.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Animating water without painting it:
http://www.video.paulfierlinger.com/2lip/Slocum-51.mov
This depicts Slocum's arrival at Samoa, South Pacific. There is no sound track.

[ZigOtto]

what a cheeky attempt, interesting how laziness could be a real weapon in the animator's arsenal.

that bothers me the more is the straight line for the water level on the rocks,
a little more "shaped" to espouse the rocks volume and perspective would be better to my eyes,
also about the animation, it shouldn't stop (ever a short time), sea's water never stops abruptly
in its moving like here in your clip (at 4", 11" and 14"),
if the bark have her shadow, why the fishes haven't one ...?
a last thing, a little value (vertical) variation in the flat blue BG could help to bring a depth notion to the scene.
of course I presume everything is intentional (rectilinear water surface, holds in animation, flat blue),
so I'm waiting now for your argued explanations.

[Paul Fierlinger]

It's an experiment -- the straight waterline was indeed my laziness since I didn't know if the effect will work at all; the same for the fish shadows.

Water never stops, even in this scene -- it's the surf rolling in and out, but you can't know that yet (so you are forgiven). In the next scene we will cut to land and see Slocum jump out of the dinghy and we will also see all the water come crashing in with the sounds of the thundering surf .

This is exactly the way you feel in those clear waters when coming in on a small boat and when you can see the bottom. You feel the up and down gentle motion but you don't feel the tremendous force of water, because it can be truly mesmerizing. It feels both like floating and gently flying at the same time -- until you touch the beach and everything turns into havoc and white water comes crashing all around you, pushing the dinghy sideways and then ripping it back towards the open water, but not too far (just a few meters) before the dinghy meets the next incoming wave that pushes it on the beach etc.

The whole scene is meant to be a graphics gag; an illustration of false illusions and somewhat of a parody of a person caught off guard. It's an animated impressionistic gag, not a dumb Pixar pseudo realistic "oh-my-god-they didn't-leave-out-anything" kind of shock and awe show off scene.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I think this visual gag might work better if I leave out the rising waterline and add more colorful fish to the water; more than I show here, and they would be gently pushed around in unison to the forces of the rolling surf. Music will have to play a big role of course; dreamy, serene... followed by the thunder of surf.
http://www.video.paulfierlinger.com/2li ... m-51-2.mov