Digital Puppeteering Vs. Animation: Where Do You Draw the Line?

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derrical18

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Simple question that seems to be getting more and more relevant as technology advances. When does computer animation stop being animation and start being digital puppeteering?

The answer seems obvious to me. If the computer generated character's positions are still moved about frame by frame or close to it, like in Toy Story, then it's animation. But if the character's movements are based on a real-time recorded motion capture session, then it's just a digital puppet.

But other people don't seem to see it so clear cut, I guess. I've seen Avatar called an animated film, for example.
 
Avatar and most motion-capture (most quality motion capture, anyway) would be somewhere in between. I mean, they do have to do frame-by-frame animation work to synch up the models with the movements as well as animating the features that obviously weren't real (does Zoe Saldana have a tail?).
 
In the case of Avatar, though, they've described that as simply enhancing aspects of the actor's performance. Like if they were mad you'd make their big ears or tail twitch to transfer it to the digital character. It's not actually creating a performance, just complementing one.
 
If you take the animation out of Avatar, you have a live action movie that lacks special effects. If you take the animation out of Toy Story, you have nothing (except the soundtrack.) I think that should be the dividing line.
 
Just to keep this from getting confused and off on a tangent because I brought up Avatar, this is not about things that mix live action and animation. It's just about the method of moving the characters.

In my opinion, in animation an animator creates a performance. Either by creating drawings or manipulating clay, wood, or computer-generatedcharacters frame by frame.

Motion capture movies, however, are simply capturing and enhancing a performance created by an actor whose movements are translated into a digital puppet. That seems to be more accurately digital puppetry than animation to me, because even the extra manipulations artists do on the film are simply meant to help convey the feeling of the actor's original performance.
 
I think that's a solid definition. I mean, you see the old greats like Frank & Ollie talk about their animation process and it's clear that they are the ones defining that performance. Whether it's Baloo's nervous gestures or hunting down little old lady reference for the Sleeping Beauty's fairies, the animator is the actor in that role.

Compare this to mocap and the guy in the suit becomes the actor... and all the "animator" is doing is a bit of clean-up on the captured data.


In one featurette I saw about Avatar, I thought the producer made a good point... that we shouldn't think of the performance capture process in Avatar as replacing animation, so much as it is replacing the makeup artist as a kind of digital prosthetic.
 
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