Wasn’t this meant to be a Blender blog? For sure it is, and i’ll get back to Blender when i’m ready. Here’s some long-form thinking about where i’m at.
My current objective is to strengthen my general art skills, then sally forth into animation again when my visual art foundations are stronger. I don’t know when that will be. Eventually.
Animation’s also only one part of the puzzle – i’ve still got everything else in the production and post-production pipeline to learn about. That’s a heap of stuff.
Frankly, this is no time for impatience, because even just the Blender stuff represents a ton of material to learn, but it’s good to have the eventual goal at the back of my head, steering my decisions. The goal is to make my own animated short films. Going back and doing these art fundamentals means there’s an overall picture being detailed with this upskilling – and that upskilling has included researching storyboarding, visual storytelling, cinematography, film grammar, semiotics and a mass of other things.
And all the while, i’m thinking about what kinds of stories i want to tell with all this new knowledge. What should i do with all this new-found knowledge?
It occurred to me today – sorry for being obvious – that Blender is just a means to an end, a conduit for the art. If it’s all technique and no art, it’s just endless technical demos. Yeah it’s cool being able to set polygonal monkey heads on fire. Yeah it’s great to be able to do a funny double-take. Yeah it’s awesome how i can tell Blender how light and surfaces work using complex mathematical algorithms if i want to. It’s important to know how to do all of that if i’m going to make movies with it. (Maybe not setting monkey heads on fire.) It’s important to know how to do all of that well, even.
But i’m getting more and more why Pixar says that “story is king” (even if the story for Brave makes me think they took that king out the back, beat him around the head and buried him under a carpark in Leicester).
If i’ve got them right, it’s actually because of the computers.
Computer graphics technology is seductive and shiny and pretty and awesome – and frankly enormous and labyrinthine and demanding. It is a maze and a forest and a puzzle and a hall of mirrors. Lesser people go into that realm and become completely lost. Or the technology can replace that beacon of an idea being aimed for. Humanity allows a possible path through all the technology – the humanity of the story, the humanity of the audience – in the form of good old human purpose.
Technical art like computer animation requires a counter-intuitive mix of momentary emotional impulse and protracted exacting precision. It’s tricky to work like that, a real art in itself. If all of that technology isn’t put towards connecting with the audience, through its ideas and-or its story and-or its aesthetic form, the result is less than it would be otherwise.
Anyway, all of this off-Blender time in a way more general artistic space is working out beautifully. Blender is a tool, a means to an end, and that’s the kind of experiential perspective i really needed. To make that tool work with me, even with comprehensive technical knowledge, i have to have a good idea about what i’m aiming to actually create – and why i’m aiming for it doesn’t hurt either. Sitting down at a computer and trying to squeeze art out of it without thinking it over beforehand.. well.. being able to plan and explore ideas using pen and paper seems better to me. And that requires more skill with drawing than i have. Hence, upskill.
Learning all these fundamentals after being a hack cartoonist for years and years is kind of liberating, even if i’m at that stage where i know just enough to completely hobble myself while i test and assimilate all this new knowledge. I tried drawing a figure today without reference and it sucked. And right now it’s fine for me to suck. Learning all this stuff well enough to be able to forget it takes a lot of time and practice. If i’m not practising and trying to improve, only then do i get to nag myself.
It’s all early learning, which is why this blog has become all text and no images lately. Nothing to show. Yet.
With respect to all that stuff about learning, here’s a quick plug: there’s this art training site called the Gnomon Workshop. They have courses in art fundamentals about anatomy, figure drawing, colour theory and perspective amongst other things, as well as much more advanced VFX stuff. So far i’ve gone through the figure drawing series and the animal anatomy series and i can recommend them highly. Any site that does non-DRMed digital downloads is awesome by me, especially because posting discs takes ages and especially especially if i have to muck around with the files when the audio doesn’t work in VLC player. So if you can’t physically get out to a class and you’ve got the cash, definitely check them out.
Also worth mentioning: Blender 2.66 will probably be out some time in the next couple of weeks. It will be shiny.
