Believable versus Realistic

Recently on CartoonBrew, Amid posted a link to an article from Salon in which they interviewed designer Shannon Tindle about the current state of character design in animation. Shannon does not come out and say that the character designs are bad, or at the very least unsettling-looking, but the idea is mostly implied. You can find that post and a link to the full interview--which is highly worth reading--here.

The part of the interview that I found most interesting is actually in the part that Amid quotes in his post. Shannon says:

“For me, it should be something that’s believable but not necessarily realistic. Those are two things that people interchange quite a bit on productions...From my point of view, it’s been proven that realism is not really appealing to an audience...A lot of people are actually afraid of stylizing characters in animated films, period. They tend to want to push it to be more realistic, but the first thing people see in an animated film is the characters, and if it’s a character that doesn’t have an appealing, believable design, they’re not going to feel any connection to it.”

This idea of characters that are believable, but not necessarily realistic is one that has always resonated with me, and though, I am no animator--outside of my few amateur attempts at short cartoons--when I have a go a creating a character voice, the idea of creating a believable character, not necessarily a realistic character is the major goal. However, this is not something that I came to on my own. I remember reading it in an interview from another great character designer and animator: Chuck Jones.

In the book Chuck Jones: Conversations, an interview from 1999 with Ron Barbagallo is printed in which Chuck says:

"Why do they want it to be realistic? I mean Bugs Bunny doesn't look anything like a rabbit and Daffy doesn't look anything like a duck. They're not realistic, they're believable. That's the key.
In some of the huge new films, it seems to me that they are just showing off instead of entertaining. It's using a tool because it's there.
When Walt Disney needed an opening for Pinocchio, they invented the multiplane camera, and it worked. But they didn't invent the multiplane camera and then use it for everything."

And this interview was made when the most technologically advanced film released was A Bug's Life. I find it interesting that artists today are still making those kinds of observations. Trying to make characters more realistic does not make movies or television better. Rocky and Bullwinkle is genius. It looks terrible, but it is genius. What about Looney Tunes? Have you ever watched One Froggy Evening and thought, You know what would make this even better? If the frog looked more like this:
The idea that characters should be believable is one that Chuck Jones and animators like him discovered in the twenties, thirties, and forties, and yet animation studios continue to strive to make animated films more and more realistic. Can we please return to compelling stories and believable characters, and leave behind the modern day masturbatory technology fests?

I leave you with one last comparison. Hopefully this will drive home the point that technology for technology's sake can do more harm than good.



CG