Ecomation

Abstract

Ecomation Thomas Lamarre (bio) Definitions of animation tend to oscillate between making something move and bringing something to life.1 Yet what could be more different than striking a billiard ball on a table and bringing that same ball to life? Are these two propositions not worlds apart? Animation brings them into relation, however. The relation between making something move and bringing something to life is thus an ongoing source of perplexity both for producers and critics of animation. Two distinctive ways of dealing with this relation have emerged, implying profoundly different images of thought. According to one line of thinking, movement is always movement of something. Another line of thinking submits that movement is something.2 The first line of thinking takes its cue for making something move from classical mechanics: an action on a body produces a reaction; something or someone imparts movement to a body, usually a figure or character. A figure made of clay or plasticine is pushed into motion. A hand-drawn figure is sketched into motion, position by position. In keeping with Newton's laws, the initial frame of reference for this line of thinking is inertial: an object remains at rest unless some force acts upon it. The first line of thinking has its drama of creation. When movement is considered as force imparting movement to the inert object, a creator inevitably makes an appearance as the animator responsible for imparting the force. The creativity of the animator is thought to lie above all in the act of producing an illusion of life.3 Animation is a matter of imparting a [End Page 179] force to an object, thus bringing it to life. The animator is a demiurge who brings to life. When the goal is bringing something to life, the illusion of life depends on resemblance. A computer brought to life still looks like a computer, but it must also bear some resemblance to life. Resemblance to life usually means resemblance to an animal, almost always the human animal but sometimes non-human animals who differ from human animals in degree, such as mammals. Indeed, resemblance in animation often evokes anthropomorphism. WALL-E (WALL-E, Andrew Stanton, 2008, Played by Ben Buertt), for instance, resembles both a robot or computer and a human animal. Such resemblance is not entirely stable, however. Neither is anthropomorphism. WALL-E might readily morph into some other kind of animal. It is narrative, or more precisely, a set of consistent behaviors organized in relation to a goal, that intervenes to sustain WALL-E's resemblance to both computer and human. For human audiences, sustaining anthropomorphism is arguably what most effectively shores up the illusion of life. The illusion of life demands a certain kind of invisibility on the part of the animator or animators. Animators must not appear in the animation, at least not directly. Like absent causes or invisible forces, they are perceptible only through their effects. They appear partially. Early animation was fond of showing the hand, a part of the creator, which sets the tone for a kind of partial perception of the work of animators.4 Their creative force is perceptible in the figural traces of their performative gestures in the process of applying force to figures, drawing, shaping, bending, turning, angling them, or imparting their facial expressions to characters, or even rotoscoping their own bodies. Creative force is at once perceptible and imperceptible.5 It is in-perceptible. This first way of thinking about movement, precisely because it implies an inertial frame of reference, always entails an initial separation between force and figure.6 Force is applied to the body to make it move; creative force is dexterously applied to inert materials to bring them to life. The animator stands outside their creation, separate from it, even as they dwell in it, inperceptibly. The problematic of this line of thinking is, How does one inhabit separation creatively? Two orientations emerge for the illusion of life. On the one hand, signature styles develop, attesting to the in-perceptibility of the animator or animators. Character animators, for instance, introduce a distinctive style into their rendering of characters. Between action and reaction arises an interval...