What does a comparison of different styles of concept art reveal about the creative representations of the different character themes? (e.g. the hero, the anthropomorphic etc.)
INTRODUCTION
“We must determine what would be an appropriate style for a character. It must fit into a story or general projects overall design sense, enhance its story or surroundings and often carry the plot forward by weight of its appeal”. (Hedgpeth/Missal 2006, p.xviii)
This statement creates an idea of how important character concept art is in the industry today. However, in general it has only recently been recognized for its important role in the production of video games, movies and animation. Concept art is hard to define - many people are confused about what it actually entails and the area/s it covers. A brief description is, it's a form of illustration where the primary goal is to from an idea, create a visual representation. Concept art is all the creative work which underlies any animated illustration: sketching, brain storming, research and refinement to produce a character. Characters are the most important part of any world and it is said that our body communication is much greater than our verbal. According to Albert Mehrabian, (Mehrabian, 2007) a professor in psychology, our body communication comprises 55% while our spoken word is 7% (the other 38% is voice tone). It's safe to say that building a character design is considered more than the character's dialogue in a script. Even before a character speaks we have connotations about its personality from the way it's physically built to its presentation. Today the concept art industry covers thousands of appealing styles worldwide, so how is a character created for a specific genre, age group or industry? In this essay, the question “What does a comparison of different styles of concept art reveal about the creative representations of the different character themes?” will be answered through historic, economic and comparative examples of concept art considering various aesthetics. The analysis will explore the concept of 'the hero', the most celebrated stereotype in history.
HISTORY
To better understand how concept art and character design came to be, we need to take a distant look back through history, past any modern development, to the era of cave paintings. Little is known of cave paintings but it's obvious that characterization was first explored through prehistoric cave art such as in the famous caves of Lascaux. The commonly accepted belief, what's known as the utilitarian theory (Johnson, 2003), is that these basic symbolic images of humans and animals was to visually show how to hunt for future generations. Further on through history at the time of Renaissance we come across one of the first two founders of conceptual work, Leonardo Da Vinci. He is famously known for the Aerial Screw flying machine [Fig. 15], the Paddle and Boat Scythed Chariot drawings: all of which were conceptual designs. The second key founder in this overview of concept art, was Athanasius Kircher who was born roughly 100 years after Leonardo Da Vinci's death. This famous alchemist/inventor designed a magnetic encryption machine and a cat piano [Fig. 16]. This device involved pins being driven into the tail of a cat to create a high pitch on scream. In a demonstration of how new animation returns to certain recurring themes, Australian animators PRA (Peoples Republic of Animation) recently revised this concept in their work Cat Piano (2009). Masks and puppets were the next development in creating characters. In Turkey, from at least the fourteenth century, shadow puppets with distinct characters were used in Karagoz theatre. From the mid eighteenth century France and England had a famous puppet called “Mr Punch”. He was conceptually a large nosed degenerate and ladies man who frequently hit things with his large plank of wood.
However, it was not until the discovery of animation as an industry in the early 20th century that conceptually, distinct characters fully emerged. In 1914, Winsor McCay was the first to use character concept art for animation. He created a distinctive personality and stylized world for his animation Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). Seventeen years later Disney appoints a name to it, calling it “inspirational sketch art” (Canemaker, 1996, p 10). The job was to, from each new project, draw whatever came from the artist's imagination. This was then used as creative fuel for the writers, animators and other artists throughout the studio. The first of this group, who originally gave Walt Disney the idea, was Albert Hurter. He first arrived three years after Steamboat Willie (1928) and was the oldest in the studio including Walt Disney himself (Canemaker, 1996). He worked as a visual effects animator but abruptly left the studio for personal reasons. Eventually the studio was able to bring him back, and Hurter through his development of the inspired sketch, unknowingly became the first official concept artist in history.
THE COMPANIES
The main analysis of this essay will be of two similar hero characters: Disney's Aladdin (1992) and Ubisoft's Prince of Persia 4 (2008). Both characters come from a Middle Eastern background and are acrobatically talented. However, each are completely different in terms of the method, concept and corporate structure that underpins them. Starting with Prince of Persia, Ubisoft is a French company that was founded in 1986. Their 2008-2009 revenue was $US1, 409, 636 which is up by 14 percent from the previous year (Nunneley, 2009). Ubisoft directed the Prince of Persia franchise, initially, towards children. The colour palette was bright with the style of the prince [Fig 1] being cuter: not extremely realistic, soft character silhouette and shading was kept to a minimum. However the next two games, Warrior Within(2004) [Fig 2] and The Two Thrones(2005) [Fig 3] saw the art direction turn to more mature themes. The mood was based on being dark and gory, more horrific scenes and sexual elements of female characters started to be enhanced by skimpy costumes [Fig 4]. Prince of Persia 4 (2008) took another turn and has combined the two styles. [Fig 5]
The second example for the analysis, Aladdin, was produced by Disney in the early 1990's. Disney was founded in 1923. The American company's revenue in 2008 was $US 37.8 billion dollars, an all time high and 7 percent increase compared to 2007. (Walt Disney Company, 2008) Disney's style existed between simple and realism. However, for economic reasons, Disney have slowly started to head towards simplistic styles since the 2D animation industry is now dominated by limited animation.
Aladdin ‘s story was derived from One thousand and One nights (9th Century), a Persian fairytale that incorporates Egyptian, Arabic and Indian influences. As you can see in [Fig. 6] (which isn't from the fairytale), the design in this era was very simplified. This caused the artists that worked on Aladdin to be heavily influenced these Persian miniatures and Arabic calligraphy. (Aladdin, 1992) The directors, John Musker and Ron Clements had recently finished The Little Mermaid (1989) when they were asked to direct Aladdin (1992), Clements has said, “(Aladdin) is one of the cartoonier movies that Disney’s made in terms of features, and it was designed to be cartoony because it seemed to fit that (story)” (Clements, 1992). During the process of the film the character design was heavily influenced by the art of Al Hirschfeld, a caricaturist, and was also physically referenced from popular actor Tom Cruise. Although the end design depicted Aladdin as a young adult, it was originally intended for him to act and look alot younger as seen in the concept stages of [Fig. 8], [Fig.9] and [Fig. 10].
COMPARISONS
METHOD
Prince of Persia and Aladdin represent different styles, techniques and eras of animation, meaning there are some obvious differences between them. The Aladdin (1992) concepts are rendered in watercolour and pencil, fairly standard tools for Disney animation at that time. In contrast the more recent artwork for Prince of Persia (2008) is done digitally. Today the animation industry is dominated by digital tools, computers and digital tablets are the most efficient and effective method for artwork at this present time. Technology has significantly increased allowing artists to create heavily detailed images in a short amount of time (First Look – Speed Art Trailer, 2008). The Disney Animation studio is famously known for approaching the work of animation through a taylerist approach. Disney pioneered after Henery Ford, an ‘assembly line’ approach to cel animation. Nonetheless, the pre digital era involved massive amounts of human labour to achieve Disney’s characteristic style. This has resulted in a system which in return would produce incredibly detailed work which has captured the imagination and provided inspiration for artists all over the world, even to this day. In fact many artists worry about the ‘old’ techniques and styles of Disney being disregarded, and express concern at the loss of the basic fundamentals needed to create great characters. As Hedgpeth and Missal argue, “It will take strong will and steadfastness in the face of change to produce the great character art of the future”. (Hedgpeth/Missal 2006, p.xviii)
TEXTURE
Aladdin's texture is basically flat, in comparison, [Fig. 5] has each brush stroke with an added texture built in, also note the crocodile skin like texture on the character's coat. A quick easy way of detailing a part of the character like this, is to use photos of anything (stone, bark, fur etc.) and overlay it to cause a change of hue and saturation on the base colour. This particular character was intended to be used for a high quality 3D game. The game engine is built to deal with incredible detailed characters when they are modelled, unlike a 2D animated movie such as Aladdin (1992).
LINE
Aladdin's design is heavily reliant on line [Fig. 11]. The line has a caricature type quality to it, obviously inspired by Al Hirschfeld. See [Fig. 12] and [Fig. 13] using simplistic sufficiency to give it depth. The simple design works with Aladdin's animation flow and holds more appeal to its intended audience, children. The line is thick and thin, like a calligraphic ink line which can obviously be seen from the research into Islamic art I mentioned earlier. A comparison of [Fig. 6] however, reveals lines at various locations of the body to tie in to the games rendering technique which is cell shaded. This could have also been caused by the quickness of the piece causing the artist not to have time to refine.
COLOUR
Unlike [Fig. 14], [Fig. 5] leans towards realism. Take note of the rendering of the cloth and body. It has a fine artistic approach, defining each section with intended strokes and use of colour, which are de-saturated to suit the intended market. It also serves the purpose of not being too bright because of the two main colours used, orange and blue. The two are opposites of each other, using one sparingly will complement the other and create a more intense result which brings together the illustration. The image [Fig. 10] uses red as his hat, a strong central focus which clearly stands out from the rest of the palette which would be of benefit but not in this particular case. As you can see in the final version [Fig. 14] they toned down the saturation of the colour to a darker red. For the final colour scheme of Aladdin they used purple for his vest [Fig. 14]. Why? Because the artists have to pay close attention to everything, including the terrain Aladdin will wander into. The story is set in the desert, which could have caused distinguishing problems later down the animation pipeline especially his hat. The art direction chose purple because it contrasts against yellow/orange dominated desert and buildings causing Aladdin to stand out from his surroundings. The cool use of colour also intertwined the symbolization of the movie, characters such as Jafar and Iago have colour schemes based on warm colours which in the movie resembled heat and flame, while cooler colours represented water, and life.
LIGHTING
In Aladdin (1992) there was no shading of the characters because there is no need for detail, it would have only created more work for the studio thus slowing down the pipeline. The used lighting at various stages in the film to convey a particular mood but they stayed as far as possible from it to keep in the cartoon theme. It may have also been inspired by the early Persian art. [Fig. 6] The lighting in the concept for Prince of Persia (2008) comes from one direction helping the idea of it being mysterious. The lighting isn’t as harsh as the previous titles but is still used to bring this piece together.
CONCLUSION
As we have seen from these two examples Aladdin (1992) and Prince of Persia (2008), each style is intended to suggest a certain animation industry, theme and audience demographic. Even though they are very similar in culture, talents and stereotype they could not be any more different. There is no such thing as an overall ‘correct’ style, it all depends on the story.
The concept art industry is ever changing and soon will change like never before. Various sites have been created such as Conceptart.org, a community which have been specifically designed to share and invite artists all over the world, to information and resources from professional concept artists. Software itself is changing and being developed for the specific purpose of concept art. A good example is Alchemy, software that “explores and experiments with alternative ways of drawing”. It’s in a very raw release stage which allows it to be distributed and downloaded free for anyone. This software can be a very important stage for a concept artist, “the main thing to remember is that the job is principally about design”(Tsai, 2007).
The recognition of such an important role in the industry comes with a catch. Popularity. Society and other artists from different fields have taken interest at creating illustrations and seeing them come to life. This has caused the industry to be incredibly cluttered and hard to gain entry into. Nonetheless, with such a high standard of art, new styles and methods emerging, there is no sign of concept art ever slowing down, especially in animation. Canemaker summarises the relevance of concept art to animation: “(l)ike Yin and Yang, or dynamic parents who share and combine different functions, conceptualizes and animators are both creators who need each other – one to conceive ideas that the other brings to life.” (Canemaker 1996, p.xiii)
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References
http://www.vg247.com/2009/04/29/ubisoft-sales-for-q4-show-increase-of-14-14-million/ date accessed - 8/6/2009
Australian Centre for the Moving Image 2006, PIXAR: 20 Years of Animation, Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco.
