#studiocase-study

Animator/StudioCase-Study South Park Studios

Biography

South Park is an American comedy animation series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone containing socio-critical dark humour and crude language. It is intended for mature audiences and has been aired for 21 seasons so far.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker met in film class at the University of Colorado in 1992. That was the time when they created their first short animation “The Spirit of Christmas – Jesus vs. Frosty”. They animated the film using only construction paper, glue and a very old 8 mm film camera, and premiered it at the 1992 student film screening.

After seeing the Jesus vs. Frosty animation in 1995, Fox executive Brian Graden hired Stone and Parker to make another animated short as a video Christmas card that he could send to friends. As a result, Jesus vs. Santa was created.

The film has been for a few month on the internet where it then caught the attention of Comedy Central. Parker and Stone were hired to develop the South Park series, which premiered in the United States in 1997.

 Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus  vs. Frosty

The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus  vs. Santa

First episode: “Cartman gets an anal probe”.

Animator/StudioCase-Study South Park Studios

Creative works

For the pilot episode construction paper and traditional stop motion cutout animation techniques were used. This first episode took over 3 months to complete and was hand animated by a very small team.

After that, the following episodes have been produced by computer animation, providing a similar look to the originals while requiring a minimum of the production time.

The characters and objects are composed of simple geometrical shapes and primary colours and in a two-dimensional look. Most child characters are the same size and shape, and are distinguished by their clothing, hair and skin colours. Their movements are animated in an intentionally rough fashion.

In the beginning, the cardboard cutouts were scanned and re-drawn with CorelDRAW, then imported into PowerAnimator to animate the characters. Beginning with season five, the animators began using Maya instead of PowerAnimator. The show's visual quality has improved in recent seasons, though several other techniques are used to intentionally preserve the cheap cutout animation look.

All the animation is done by a small team of animators and they move the characters and props every 2 frames (at 24 frames per second). Parker and Stone continue to perform most of the voice acting, and Parker is the primary writer and director. 

Each episode is typically written and produced during the week preceding its broadcast which allows the show to respond to a cultural event quicker than other animation series.

The images below show some of the steps in production:

Storyboards are drawn after the animators have the script.

This is what the scene looks like in the animation software Maya.

Here’s the final image from the episode.

Examples of the paper textures.

Example of a storyboard.

Comments of the creators on episode “The Coon” http://southpark.cc.com/collections/2478/season-13-creator-commentary/2

How animation has evolved: From hand cut, construction paper animation to fully rendered in animation software, example cut-out 1997 (left), Maya 2017 (right).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I49nvr1PZA

Up to date: Parody of events, shortly after they happened in real life.

Parody of The Walking Dead.

Animator/StudioCase-Study South Park Studios

Influence on the animators

In a You Tube interview with “The Paley Center for Media” Matt Stone and Trey Parker were asked to speak about the comedy influences in their early days. For both it was clear that the one big influence had been Monty Python, which Parker explains as following:

The thing that we took from Monty Python was, [that] they were just in their own world and they just didn’t give a f* about what the normal comedy thing to do was and I think that’s what from the beginning with South Park we were like “we got to do that!”. Even if everyone starts saying “oh, we need more of this, we need more of that.” And I just said “whatever!”, and the Python episodes just got weirder and weirder and kind of just went away and that’s what we wanted to do, too.

https://youtu.be/imDdPW6r7U0 You Tube interview with “The Paley Center for Media”

And they cling to this idea. Since the beginning of South Park the episodes have become weirder and funnier with all strange things one can imagine (or cannot imagine), with incredibly stupid ideas that are such hilarious that it is again funny in a hysterical manner.

Some examples of crude ideas:

The boys arrive in a place called Imaginationland, where all the beings created by human imagination reside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCvlrNIDub8

Christopher Reeve gets superpowers from stem cells.

Kyle's father’s life long dream was to be turned into a dolphin.

Kyle has undergone surgery to be a tall black guy.

Animator/StudioCase-Study Pixar Animation Studios

Influence of the animator

Of course Pixar was not the only studio working on computer animation in the 1990s, but with Toy Story they set a milestone, both technologically and creatively. Pixar had developed a formula for animation and storytelling that drew in their audiences. Before that Disney had been pretty much the only maker of animated films, and based on the success of "Toy Story" and subsequent Pixar films, a whole animation industry was born in Hollywood. Pixar showed the world, that animation films can be successful. There are now other animation studios competing with Pixar, and a wide acceptance of animation in modern films. Pixar has brought change to what audiences enjoy, and the film industry has adapted to the times. Where there used to be cartoons and many classic animated films from Disney, we now see CGI as the dominant form of animation.

Pixar seems to have pushed the industry in this direction of technology exploration and even beyond that. Its influence is massive. Also, now this technology is not only used in animation films but in all films using animated characters (Star Wars, Avatar), which are able to interact with “real” people like any human being.

Dreamworks Animations

More Animation Studios.

Working on “Inside Out”

Pixar Image Computer, 1986

Animator/StudioCase-Study Pixar Animation Studios

Creative works

There are two important aspects that make Pixar ‘s work so unique: The development of their characters and their ability of great storytelling. For Pixar it is most important that the audience is experiencing a connection to the character, which is usually behaving like a human. When designing a character, a Pixar artist needs to know what to exaggerate and what to suppress, what to add to give a hint of background and depth, and what to do to develop personality.

The story on the other hand is the other key: the stories are emotional, they have depth, are entertaining, witty and smart. The films are interesting for children, but also for adults.

The process of animation is long and complex. A typical Pixar animation takes four to five years to complete. Pixar's filmmaking process needs planning and implementation, all centred on storytelling in which they are using traditional skills, like drawing, painting, sculpturing and storytelling.

Character Geri (short film Geri’s game)

Colour script for Finding Nemo

Model Remy (Ratatouille)

3D Mesh of Buzz Lightyear (Toy Story)

Colour Script for Monster University

Animator/StudioCase-Study Pixar Animation Studios

Biography

Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California that is a subcompany of The Walt Disney Company. Pixar originally started in 1979 as the Graphics Group, a part of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. After being purchased by Steve Jobs in 1986, the Graphics Group was renamed Pixar Animation Studios and began to focus its efforts on perfecting the computer animation process.

Founder Ed Cadmull with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter

Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films as Toy Story – which was the first computer-animated feature film (1995), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), Wall-E (2008), Up (2009) and Finding Dory (2016), all in all the studio has released 19 feature films, with Coco coming to cinemas this year (2017).

Pixars first attempts in film storytelling have been with short films and commercials, with every short film being emotional and innovative. The studio uses short films for experimenting with new technologies and developing new ways of storytelling.

The studio has won 16 Oscars, seven Golden Globe Awards, and eleven Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Many of Pixar's films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature since its inauguration in 2001, with eight winning.

Pixars Short films

Pixar’s feature films

The History of Pixar Animation Studios

Animator/StudioCase-Study Aardman Studios

Influences on the animator

In an online interview with “The AU Review” Peter Lord and David Sproxton spoke about how the works of Ray Harryhausen had an impact on their love for animations when they were growing up. And Peter Lord explain why this was so fascinating for them: “Ray Harryhausen invented monsters and dinosaurs in live action films, he was brilliant and a superb technician. Although we never did his sorts of films, we were inspired by them and the craft.”

David Sproxton: “He created these fantasy worlds where all the CG and special FX stuff happened. He did it on small scale sets with models he’d made himself. When we saw the films we didn’t know how he made them but they took you to another world and there was something very exciting about that. I was always intrigued by the stop frame kids stuff we used to see like The Magic Round About and The Wombles. There’s something instinctive and magical about seeing dolls come to life; we always imagine they would when we were younger so I think that’s why stop frame has such an appeal; it’s very, very instinctive.

The magic roundabout

Animator/StudioCase-Study Aardman Studios

Creative works

Although Aardman Studios have evolved over the years and do now every kind of animation as 2D, 3D, CGI and Paper Craft to name a few, their main focus is still on Stop Motion animation, especially for their movie section. This provides an old-school charisma and the audience loves the imperfectness of the clay figures that are in every aspect charming and created with much love on detail. Also every animation they created has witty and funny elements.

Stop Motion production though is a slow process. The newest movie “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!” for example took 525 people – including 33 animators – five years to put together, a long process that yielded a mere four seconds of screen action per week. The puppets need to be repositioned up to 24 times per second of film to create the illusion of seamless movement, making the 88-minute movie a labour-intensive process.

Working on “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!”

Set “Shaun the Sheep Movie“