Why Beowulf is Good for Animation

Friday, November 09, 2007
By: Ryan Ball

Robert Zemeckis’ performance-capture adaptation of the epic poem Beowulf has had a handful of press screenings and is generally being embraced by attendees, myself among them. However, the film is taking a bit of a beating in the animation community, mostly from people who haven’t even seen it. I understand the reaction, but I think it stems from a narrow view of what animation is. It may not have animator-driven performances like Ratatouille or The Simpsons, but it’s exactly the kind of movie we need to succeed right now.

Moving a puppet one frame at a time is not the same as drawing moving pictures, yet stop-motion is accepted as animation nonetheless. Animation is the process of bringing life to something that is inanimate. Does that exclude Kermit the Frog? Was Jim Henson any less of an animator than Chuck Jones just because he chose to work in real-time versus tiny increments? Did his characters feel any less real? Don’t get me wrong, I believe there will never be a fitting substitute for the blood, sweat and tears that go into a performance generated by a master craftsman at a drawing table or a miniature set with an articulated puppet. I’ll always prefer a hand-crafted film to something made possible by technological shortcuts, but sometimes the end justifies the means.

Beowulf is a very good film. Even my wife, who is not so much an animation fan, really enjoyed it. In addition to offering a great story and compelling characters, the movie represents something that we really need right now. It’s an animated movie for adults, and it’s opening in wide release in the United States. This is huge, folks. If the film does well, it could open all kinds of doors. Studio execs who only see dollar signs in cuddly critters making broad jokes to pop-music soundtracks will wake up and realize that audiences want to see different kinds of stories told with digital technology. For moviegoers who don’t normally attend animated films, Beowulf could also be the perfect vehicle for easing them into the fold. They won’t be jarred by something that is too far removed from live-action, and they won’t be embarrassed to show up without a kid. Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille and 20th Century Fox’s The Simpsons recently laid a bit of groundwork in this area by stepping outside the family film box and capturing the imagination of grown-ups, perhaps even more than the small children they brought with them or, more importantly, didn’t bring with them.

The general public doesn’t care if something is mo-capped or key-framed, they just want to be entertained. So the fear that performance-capture movies will become the new standard is mostly unfounded. True, studios will largely favor their economic model, but the money they save by not hiring a room full of animators will be largely offset by the expensive stars they tap to perform the roles. Besides, the big key-frame studios aren’t going anywhere. Imagine the possibilities if Pixar suddenly felt free to create a PG-13 fantasy, action or horror flick. What if DreamWorks Animation believed they could make money by creating a CG graphic novel adaptation along the lines of Sin City or 300?

The prospect of seeing more diverse stories told by our reigning master animators is very exciting, but it may all hinge on the success of Beowulf. If the movie flops, we’re likely to be looking at an endless string of silly talking animal movies and cutesy family fare. There’s a place for that sort of thing, and I often enjoy them, but is that really all we have to look forward to? I seriously doubt that those are the only kinds of stories people like John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Glen Keane, Ron Clements, John Musker and Chris Wedge want to tell.

From the works of Japanese maestro Hayao Miyazaki to the recent French releases The Triplets of Belleville, Renaissance and Persepolis, we’re seeing a good number foreign filmmakers daring to bring fresh stories to the screen with animation. Meanwhile, here in the States, it’s all about playing it safe with tried-and-true formulas for attracting the widest audience possible. Change may ride on the back of one brave movie that breaks from the pack and collects its spoils at the box office. And if that film happens to be a performance-capture production, then so be it.

Am I way off base here? Let us know what you think.

Reader Comments

• chris Henderson : producer :

  Friday, November 09, 2007

  well said, I have been a believer that it\\\'s just a matter of time before an animated film reaches an older audience. I felt it would come with a strong enough story that people would spread the word that it was an enjoyable movie to watch. I hope this movie is that, one with a strong enough story that the audience will forget the medium or the technique and just \\\"get involved\\\" in the movie. if it is, and it succeeds in reaching a larger audience, then it is true the entire animation community will benefit from it.

• Emiliano Stefanach : Director : Animalada

  Friday, November 09, 2007

  This is truth well told. I cannot agree with you more.
  I personally go to the movies to feel, not to analize.
  So entertainment must be the rule and there is a wide spectrum with that premise. A new world for the animation industry.

• Bill Drastal : Digital Illustrator : Age of Learning

  Friday, November 09, 2007

  This film may be good for pushing the idea that 3D technology is not just limited to kiddy stories about talking animals and such, but its not going to be good for the animators as they are pushed more and more out of the process. This sort of motion capture ,Yes, requires animators to sit at a desk tweaking the movement and streamlining the performance, but it knocks the importance of the animator down. All the decisions on what the character does, oh he/she emotes, performs, its all up to the actor and director.
  So I have to ask what\\\'s the point of translating the actor\\\'s to 3D in the first place? If its to achieve a stylized look, why not use a process like 300 or Sky Captain. I mean if the idea is to capture to realistic movements of actors, and even match the 3D models to look like the actors, why not just film the actors and leave it at that? You animate a story because you want to show something that isn\\\'t real, come to life, and that\\\'s what hand drawn, puppeteers, stop motion and 3D animated films do. Mo-caping an entire 3D movie like this seem like an extra process that\\\'s unnecessary. All it does is lessen the need for the craft that animators spend their lives learning to perfect. Animation is going to be reduced to a skill that is open to people who will only have to sit at screen and push a mouse around and follow directions. So no I can\\\'t see this being very good for animation.

• Daryl-Rhys Taylor : animation student :

  Saturday, November 10, 2007

  It\'s not that I don\'t believe that animation can\'t be for adults, I just don\'t understand logically, artistically and money wise, why anyone would want to spend time and money recreating live-action in the computer. Why not just film it that way and add computer effects for the few monsters you need later. Save some money. Anyway motion-capture is like a high-tech rotoscoping, a bit of a cheat if you ask me. Besides that it looks very creepy and disturbing.

• Kevin Koch :

  Saturday, November 10, 2007

  Was Jim Henson any less of an animator than Chuck Jones just because he chose to work in real-time versus tiny increments?
  
  I think there\'s merit in much of what you write, but the rhetorical question above is nonsense. Real-time puppetry, in which the puppeteer\'s physical performance IS the performance, is not animation by any reasonable definition.
  
  Much as animators may admire puppetry, and puppeteers may admire animation, they\'re two different things. And, if mo-cap keeps evolving to the point where there\'s minimal frame-by-frame creative work required by animators (and some might argue we\'ve reached that point), then mo-cap also becomes something other than animation.

• Marlin Johnson :

  Saturday, November 10, 2007

  There\'s a caveat in there somewhere. Kermit looks like a sock when he appears on TV now. He doesn\'t look real at all anymore, and that\'s partly because of CGI animation which does make inanimate 3D objects look real. People\'s tastes have grown and changed and thus their visual sense is no longer so easily fooled. That is also Beowulf\'s problem. CGI can make things move smoothly - maybe too smoothly - but the problem is that a CGI character might look \"real\", but it won\'t look convincing as a realistic entity. IMO, only those objects and characters that are stylized - as in Ratatouille - work convincingly when rendered in CGI animation. The more realistic the character, the less convincing it looks when likewise rendered. Kind of ironic, isn\'t it - real humans are as tricky to render in 3D animation as they were in old-fashioned 2D. I\"ll be eager to see Beowulf if only to see if the old problems with the new media have been conquered. I hope they have or will be, because if so, the sky\'s the limit!

• Shira Melenson : Editor : Aniboom.com

  Sunday, November 11, 2007

  Whoa there...I\'m willing to debate whether motion-capture is a legitimate form of animation (I\'m not a fan - creepiness factor and redundancy in method), but Jim Henson was a puppeteer, not an animator. Puppetry is an art in its own right and should be left out of this discussion.

• Raf Anzovin : President : Anzovin Studio

  Sunday, November 11, 2007

  I\'d have to take the view that Beowulf, though it may be a great film for all I know, cannot be good for animation for adults because it is not an animated film. Your analogy to Jim Henson is apt, since performance capture, even if assisted by animators, has far more in common with puppetry then it does with animation. There\'s nothing wrong with that--it\'s as legitimate a method of cinematic storytelling as anything else--but to call it animation devalues the unique artistic quality animation has.
  
  Animation, from its very earliest days, has never been particularly good at reproducing the real world. What animation does do extremely well is caricature, both in caricatured appearance and in caricatured motion. The great animators never copied the motion of reality--like any other artist, they took reality and heightened it, accentuated it, and made us see it in a new light. Animation is uniquely capable of revealing the inner life within each character, unfettered by the constraints of the real world.
  
  The danger posed by films like Beowulf is that it may breed the assumption that this is what \"animation\" for adults looks like, potentially closing the door on any real animated films with grown up themes. And animation is a potentially extremely broad and rich field with so much more potential then is being used now. But Beowulf, good or bad, is not going to help us realize any of that potential.

• chris Henderson : producer :

  Monday, November 12, 2007

  people you are missing the point...animation is not just for animators, I know, I must be crazy to say that, but there are other positions in this field, art directors, layout, prop design, character designers, background painters, all of which would find work opportunities as the field of animation expands to include an adult audience.
  the point of the article was that this movie could be strong enough in STORY, that the audience would forget about the technique and just enjoy the movie.
  we are just caught up in a debate as to whether or not mo-cap is animation, and that\'s not the point.
  in my opinion, the point is that if Beowulf succeeds in bringing an older audience to the theater, it could open the doors for more \"older themed\" animatiion films in the future.
  and that, is why, this could be good for our industry.

• K.S. Randall : Director / Producer :

  Tuesday, November 13, 2007

  I apoligize in advance to those who love this film. My verdict: This movie is another Polar Express disaster. None of the clips offered have ever grabbed hold of my attention, and I\'ve seen a ton of animation in my short life (traditional to 3D; American and foreign).
  
  The biggest problem with Zemeckis\' work is that he never puts emotions into his character\'s eyes. If your going to do super-realism animation, your characters had better express warmth, heart, and emotion. Anyone in the western world knows that when we meet a person we look straight at that person\'s eyes. It\'s just habit, I guess.I\"ve seen super-realism portraits can do better than what I\'ve seen in this movie\'s trailer.
  
  This was the very story that inspired Tolkien to write his Lord of the Rings trilogy. In my opinion, a Beowulf movie should be equal to or surpass Peter Jackson\'s interpretation of Lord of the Rings.
  
  Compared to Jim Henson\'s work, I think this is no match. Sorry guys, but the audience could connect to the Henson\'s puppet creations despite the fact everyone knew the puppets weren\'t real.
  
  Another thing: Ray Winstone, the actor who did Beowulf, rushed through his lines too much. The way he says the lines makes me think he wanted to return to the beach ASAP. Was the script too boring or was his tan fading away? Maybe he was depressed that this wasn\'t a live-action movie.

• Into Animation :

  Wednesday, November 14, 2007

  \"This is huge, folks. If the film does well, it could open all kinds of doors. Studio execs who only see dollar signs in cuddly critters making broad jokes to pop-music soundtracks will wake up and realize that audiences want to see different kinds of stories told with digital technology.\"
  
  We already have all kinds of stories (for the mature audiences) told with digital technology. As you mentioned Sin City, 300. Also, Lord of the Ring, King Kong, Superman, Batman, and so on. The controversy with Beowulf is; attempting to called itself an \"Animated\" feature.
  
  \"The general public doesn’t care if something is mo-capped or key-framed, they just want to be entertained. So the fear that performance-capture movies will become the new standard is mostly unfounded.\"
  
  True, however, you are maybe trivializing or skimming over a crtically important issue. Is this really Animation? Animation is created frame-by-frame ( I do not consider rotoscoping as animation). Beowulf, is mostly live action motion capture. To me, it\'s a very heavy special effects movie.
  
  Academy of Motion Picture A & S are way behind and needs to catch up very fast and perhaps create some new categories, with more specific Oscar eligibilities requirements that the studios must provide evidence or documentation , if there is doubt by the Academy. In my view, the existing category of Best Visual Effects is much more applicable to Beowulf. Ideally, in competition, sports, or contests, you have to have rules and a somewhat level playing field.
  
  A side note: Just quickly glancing other message boards and forums and comments by the just regular film goers; they cannot understand why Beowulf did not just use the original live actors. I also agree. What studios may be missing if they go this route in hyper realism; the audiences generally want to relate to real human beings. This can apply to Animated characters too, but I am talking in general of what most of the audiences and why they see movies. \'We\' experience or live vicariously through the real human performers on the screen.

• Jean-Denis Haas : Animator : ILM

  Wednesday, November 14, 2007

  Great article and my thoughts exactly.
  
  I really hope that Beowulf will be a success in order to pave the way for more adult stories. Adult themes don\'t have to be trapped in kiddie environment and characters, why not have everything be adult? What Zemeckis and other potential directors have to do is give the animators more freedom so that they can improve upon the mocap. Mocap is not a magic formula and there is a lot of work needed to clean it up and make it work. Extra effort has to get applied to the eyes, because if they look dead, the character is dead. Beowulf is getting better at it, but it\'s still not there. I liked the movie, but they should have shot specific reference with locked cameras and rotoscoped their facial performance frame by frame (just like animation is done frame by frame - most people complain about mocap and rotoscoping only because it robs the artist of his/her creative choices; it\'s just another tool for animation, but because someone else is doing \"all the performance work\" and not the animator, they get all upset).
  
  Once an adult market opens up, then it will be easier to really do what should be done, push the medium and the look. I would have loved to see more dramatic lighting, especially in the dining hall with the candles and the torches, with shots like Marlon Brando in \"Apocalypse Now.\"
  \"Beowulf\" should have been done in a \"300\" type of way, with real actors and fake BGs, because the extra level of intensity and believability performance wise is still not there, and if you\'re going for photoreal already, then you gain more by using real actors (but I understand the reasons not to, it gives the director full control).

• Michael Sporn : director : Michael Sporn Animation, Inc.

  Monday, November 19, 2007

  This article is nonsense. If you feel you can compare the \"animation\" of Jim Henson\'s puppetry to the animation of a Chuck Jones film, you\'re not able to grasp the problem that animators have.
  Yes, it\'s important to see animation grow up, but I\'m not suggesting that a grown up film like \"No Country For Old Men\" is animated film merely because I like it. \"Beowulf\" is manipulated live action; it is not animation. It has been dressed up by computer artists at a whopping high cost ($150 million). Because it looks like it might have been drawn does not make it animated.

• chris Henderson : producer :

  Monday, November 19, 2007

  I can\'t understand why you want to compare \"no country for old men\" to Beowulf, has anyone in this thread made any claim that \'no country for old men\' was animated? whereas I could see that Beowulf can be considered as animated. maybe it does use mo-cap, and the characters are maybe too photo-realistic, but the sets, the world that was created, as well as the creatures were created and animated in a similar vein as any other animated creature or character.
  i believe there are many ways something can be considered animated, stop motion, collage or cut out, and I believe mo-cap can be used in this way as well. what if they used mo-cap to get the walk cycle down pat, then wrapped it with an outrageous design, not a realistic human form, but some \"Burton-esque tall skinny wizard\" type of character, that could be seen as animation. I hope folks in the animation industry can accept these techniques into their domain, it only benefits all us us if we open our minds and accept this for the greater good of the industry.

• Pedro : Animator :

  Monday, November 19, 2007

  It is not the story that is under the loop here. It is the art of animation. I do not beleive this story can not be told by traditional 2D or 3D key frame animation. As a animator motion capture just is not animation in the sense of how the artform came to be. It is like a computer painting the painting... it would be a shame if this artform dissapears.

• Patrick Adams : Freelance Animator : Electric Comb Studios

  Saturday, December 01, 2007

  Chris Henderson makes a great point, how DID they mo-cap that dragon?
  
  Every time I see animators having this debate all i can think is, \\\"Ok, we have the new definition, everyone throw out your Muybridge books. The term \\\'animation\\\' now only applies to moving images created without any reference whatsoever.\\\"
  
  How many times have we all seen the \\\"making of\\\" bits which show the high priced hollywood talent being precisely videotaped while recording voice work for a \\\"traditional\\\" animation piece from Disney or Dreamworks or whoever? Do they record those PERFORMANCES so that they can forbid their animators from making use of them as reference? Do they say, \\\" Geez, some natural motion arcs would really help sell the action here, too bad we employ a department of purists who are going to insist on coming up with each frame blind, off the top of their head...\\\"
  
  And where is this \\\"purist\\\" sensibility really coming from in the end? Is it coming from the legions of tweeners who were essential to the success of traditional 2D animation, yet never had the opportunity to rise through the flooded ranks of artists to become lead key animator for a supporting character with four scenes and nine lines of dialogue?
  
  Does it come from animators who religiously weep for all the inkers who were put out of work by xerox? The colorists put out of work by computers? Do they never forget how \\\"cheap\\\" computer techniques killed off the sacred optical and cel techniques, techniques which required dozens of dedicated, full-time technicians who slaved away on mechanical processes after all the \\\"artistic\\\" contributions had decided months or years before?
  
  Does it come from animators who simply hate how much more animation there is these days? Do they hate how much more opportunity there is for individuals and small groups to take these tools, automated processes, and, *gasp*, reference techniques and tell stories of their own, without the requirement for the same vast investment of (either) money or time which the optical techniques required to produce the same run length?
  
  Or could it come from that place inside all animators, that place we all find in ourselves when we realize that we can\\\'t really plug away and build the epic story we envisioned, dreamed of, frame by frame on our own, through sheer force of will and dedication of every waking minute. That it would take other artists, that it would mean scaling back the vision, and that years of learning and experimentation had yielded less than a few minutes of anything animated to show anyone. Did the realization that it was that difficult, that no matter how talented, how intuitive, how keen an observer, how artful a character animator we knew were, did that recognition of the painstaking difficulty elevate all things \\\"traditional\\\" to the territory of sacrosanct? Did we wish to incorporate ourselves into an esoteric circle by virtue of having undertaken the same Sisyphean ordeal?
  
  Or maybe I\\\'m wrong about that, maybe it just comes from people for whom stretch and squash represent the last vestige of the time in their youth when they could still believe in magic. I\\\'d like to think that the movie-magic that I seek out now is something more rarified, more sophisticated, and yet somehow much more likely to happen upon as more people get to showcase personal observation, and present more personal stories, more unique styles, more things than we would have ever seen when the tools were in the hands of relatively so few people.
  
  The tools, the techiniques, the short-cuts, the \\\"cheap\\\" stuff have never, and will never relegate artistry into obsolescence. They have, instead, put more professionals to the test of artistry, as opposed to simply craft, and the two should never be confused. Story, character, visual design, foley, scoring- every year a greater number of individuals get the opportunity to showcase their artistic decisions (as well as their grasp of craft) because of tools that take some element of arbitrary grind out of the process.
  
  Anyone who thinks Motion Capture data simply needs to be \\\"tweaked\\\" to look compelling has never worked with it. Anyone who thinks a \\\"performance\\\" mapped onto a rigged skeleton or facial mesh automatically jumps onto the screen as a character has never tried to light or render anything in a 3D program. How it looks still requires the same artistic decisions it always has, how many purely technical inputs it takes to get there is all that changes.
  
  Beowulf succeeds in the same way 300 did, amazing visuals, innovative eye candy. It fails for the same reason 300 did, internal inconsistencies in tone and style, and story and characters that ultimately fall short within their medium. Transposing the way the characters are rendered in either would change nothing. Painstakingly keying exagerated, charicatured, comic styles of movement would never help within storylines so dark. Live action people still don\\\'t quite read as compelling and consistent within a purely digital landscape, and a 3D CG full cast of characters still aren\\\'t quite capable of pulling off verisimilitude. But I think the latter will come to fruition sooner the former, just as I hope that one day soon producers will realize just how jarring it is to immersion in a story to have the image of recognizable hollywood personalities bounce around your head while they voice animated characters. And that is as much a problem for Ratatouille as it is for any other animated hollywood feature.
  
  And just as a technical note, the only reason rotoscoping was so inferior a technique in the way-back byegone days was that it required depth shading to look compelling, \\\"real\\\" movement being less exaggerated than comic charicature movement, and with traditional cels it was too expensive to accomplish properly. 3D CG provides that textural depth, so important in the hierarchy of human visual processing, and that\\\'s why less exaggerated movement still succeeds.
  
  I\\\'ll stop before I go on about how thoroughly compelling and successful limited animation techniques can be for the right story and characters and how it applies to all of this.
  
  Apologies for the rant, it\\\'s been building in me for some time.

• Jacob DeBee : non : non

  Tuesday, October 06, 2009

  I think it would be cool to make my first animation