‘Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn.’ (Norman McLaren)
This quote can be recited by heart by most people in the animation field, usually in the pursuit of the fleeting definition and nature of animation itself, along with some historic and prehistoric accounts of the depiction of motion. In some cases it would be in association with the ‘persistence of vision’ theory, which explains that the retina of the human eye retains any image received for a fraction of a second, allowing a rapid succession of still images to be perceived as in motion[1].
If we believe in the ‘persistence of vision’, we must consider true that any sequence of images that is not correlative and played at the ideal speed will not fulfill the illusion of movement. Yet, if we watch Blinkity Blank (Norman McLaren, 1955), we will soon realize that, even when there are empty frames and non-consecutive images, the film is completely permeated by movement.
We could try to say that all the empty frames are “filled in” by the eye, so there is no true emptiness. But wouldn’t that mean that the so called ‘persistence’ lasts longer than stated, and that it can tie together completely unrelated images? Could that still be the retina at work, or is it something entirely different? At this point the entire construct would lie bare in front of us: there is no such thing as a ‘persistence of vision’. In fact, this has been proven wrong scientifically as early as 1912 [2]. Why, if it has been proven false for so long, we keep thinking of it as true? It could be due to its simplicity, but I believe that this model of thought does not require for its explanation of apparent movement to be true, as it takes its force from a linear conception of movement.
To get rid of this conception, I propose a non-linear model of (In)Consistency. In this model perception is understood as an indivisible consistent flow (i.e. a duration). Yet, given that the moving image is based on a sampling of this flow, the possibility for a breach or inconsistency appears. The main difference would be then that, while persistence considers perception itself as a sampling of a solid reality, consistency considers perception as a flowing filter of a reality that contains in itself every possibility. For example, Blinkity Blank repeatedly take us from a drawn frame to another one, passing through an empty duration that exists in between. Instead of filling the emptiness with the echo of an image (persistence), in the non-drawn frame there is pure movement, in every direction at the same time. The actual movement that we perceive is projected from a drawn frame, through this space of multiple possibilities,in order to be caught by the next drawn frame, thus completing the motion. As in the Kuleshov effect for montage, the trajectory or the meaning of the middle frame is given by its context. But what happens if the next drawn frame doesn’t “catch” the movement? The motion will not brake suddenly in the encounter of a unsympathetic un-correlative image. Instead it will continue without the sustain of a color or a shape, until it disperses, gets picked up by other movement, or exits the frame. In this way, we will realize that movement is (as McLaren states) without drawings, but it requires drawings to be carried out, performed, actualized, and separated from the background noise [3].
This way of understanding movement beyond the visible frame by means of disappearing parts or inconstant characters, volumes, etc., allows for inconsistencies, without excluding them from motion.
What we find in Blinkity Blank as a black or empty frame is actually what already happens between any two frames, but expanded. We can think of Bugs Bunny when, being caught in the shower, covers himself with a towel: the actual movement is not drawn, but it exists in the in-between, and is returned to us by the consistency of the overlapping towel. There is also the God character of Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004), inconsistent in shape but consistent in motion, or the animation style of The Girl without Hands (Sébastien Laudenbach, 2016) with its disappearing yet remaining bodies.
However, even when confronted so frontally by science and art, the hegemony of the persistence model is still very strong. For example, video compression is based on the assumption that between most frames there won’t be much difference. Some televisions today will “enhance” video by generating an in-between frame. And even in most animation softwares the intended process is to interpolate between value a and value b. In other words, persistence is the disdain for the void; it is the assumption that, as in Zeno’s paradox, there is always something in between. In (In)Consistency, this space is one of pure motion, there are infinite possibilities as a quantum space of images forms in the viewer’s mind, an aperture for a foreign element to intrude the sequence and bring something new. It can be a smear frame, a metamorphosis, or something completely different. Between a and b there could be c, d, or perhaps nothing at all. It all remains between the frames, and beyond the visible.
Matias Poggini is an Animator and Director from Buenos Aires, Argentina. While studying at Universidad del Cine, he collaborated at the development of the first magazine of the University writing articles and doing illustrations for it. He also works in the industry as an animator and is currently developing a short film.
[1] Some examples of this explanation of the perception of movement (and by this list I don’t intend to belittle or criticize the content of the books or the experience of the authors, just call the attention onto this specific subject) are: Wells, P. (1998), Understanding Animation, London, Routledge; Webster, C. (2005), Animation: The Mechanics of Motion, Oxford, Focal Press; Whitehead, M. (2003), Animation, Harpenden, Pocket Essentials; Barry, V. (2010), Animación: La magia en movimiento, Santiago de Chile, Editorial Pehuen; Laybourne, K. (1979), The Animation Book, New York, Crown Publishers; Patmore, C. (2003), The complete animation course, London, Thames & Hudson Ltd.
[2] See Wertheimer, M. (1912) Experimentelle Studien über das Sehen von Bewegung. Z. Psychologie 61: 161-265. See also Münsterberg, Hugo M (1916), The Photoplay. A Psychological Study. New York: D. Appleton and Company, p. 14. From: “La Persistencia Retiniana y El Fenómeno Phi como error en la explicación del Movimiento Aparente en Cinematografía y Televisión.” Pascual, Miguel Ángel Martín, Barcelona, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Facultad de Ciencias de la Comunicación.
[3] In here I think that the in-between frame, the pure movement frame is in fact the Deleuzian plane of immanence or consistency more than a image-movement.
The concept you’re looking for in called the phi phenomenon and it’s over a century old as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi_phenomenon
also persitence of vision was not disproven by Wertheimer (as far as I understand it) he merely said that it’s not what motion perception is based on. (although it’s part of the process)
But you’re right, over a century on it’s about time animation scholars get their science right and stop talking about persistance of vision.
Interesting article, very.
A couple of things: “movement” applies almost exclusively to (persistent and reliable) “things”, while there is so much work done that does not depict or rely on “things”.
In the absence of persistant “things”, focusing on movement is less relevant than dealing with “transformation” or “evolution” (my jury is still out on that, not sure what to call “it”).
It would also be helpful if one reached beyond (or beneath) the eye metaphor: in perception, the eye has very little to do or at least, a lot less to do with perception than what we tend to credit it with.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty puts it this way: “We derive meaning from the experience while simultaneously projecting meaning into it” (this does not happen “in” the eye…;-).
He also made it clear that “perception is constitutive”, something so very basic, many people have a hard time coming to grips with (for example, people still teach figure drawing based on the apriori “knowledge” of the figure, supposedly the same for all, and not on the dynamic nature of perception itself, “each one of us is a brand new point of view on the world”…).
Husserl would call that reliance on an objective world “ontologizing”, which is somewhat related to “taking the (visible) world for granted.”
Also called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.”
It seems to me that persistence or consistency of vision pale when reflected upon in the light of the consistency of (the will to) experience.
We should indeed be discussing the illusion of movement/motion. Dick Tomasovic uses the word “mouvant” (in French) to distinguish what happens in animation from actual mouvement as you describe it.
To me when discussing animation it goes without saying that we are discussing the illusion of…, and that the actual animation only really happens in our brain (and indeed, you are right we therefore all perceive differently). But yes we probably should be specific.
The “motion” effect is actually the Beta effect, Phi is even faster, when instead of perceiving movement you “catch a glimpse” of movement without anything sustaining it. I do have to do more research on the subject ( or maybe you can give a hand) but these examples are always accompanied by this high contrast, symmetrical un-oriented objects (a.k.a. circles in a circle), and I think motion can be performed with less elements when the object has a clear orientation (for example, a bouncing ball will distort in different ways, conveying a trajectory of it’s movement in less frames).
So, these circles could be the bare minimum required for movement, but design could stretch these limits a lot (and I believe it does, in things like smears and such).
What do you think?
And you are right, is not that persistence doesn’t exist at all, but it doesn’t have anything to do with movement… so as a concept is better dead than alive, really. We can leave persistence to the optometrists, oculists and so on.
—-
I agree in thinking perception as an amalgam of different senses, and at some point that concept could be used for animation (where we can find a sense of tact and sound with much ease. Taste and smell could be trickier). And of course, there is an individual/personal/special point of view, but I wouldn’t say that there’s a lack of objective reality. There are hundreds of books that could argue for either of these proposals better than I will ever be able to, which is the reason why I try to keep as strictly as possible in the realm of animation. In this case I dipped my toe into the waters of The Nature of Reality, but I do want to say that if my references are visual only is because I have tried to (artificially and ideally) separate the movement from the drawing (by drawing I mean: shape, color, value, or any visual image, no matter the subject) in order to analyze it (and to also criticize the persistence of vision in the same ground) . Involving more senses would have made it confusing and besides the point. I also assume an ideal but individualized viewer, so we are probably agreeing on that.
I would define movement as a qualitative change in a system, with that change happening, either along or inbetween the frames, but never IN the frame. That is, in no still image can there be movement, because there is no change in the system. In this definition, transformations would be a movement, or even the other way around, spatial-motion as a kind of transformation (something that, perhaps by intuition, is in the common nomenclature of most animation software).
But I do believe that any movement or transformation requires of “things”. The opposite would be a state of absolute change/stillness: Complete solid color with no change, or absolute change like the kind you find in tv noise (which could also be a complete collapse of a space filled with things). In such extreme I would doubt to call it animation.
—
Lastly, it is sufficient to speak about animation in general, without making reference to an illusion. You don’t make a constant reference to the sculpture not being flesh, a photo not being reality and so on.
Thanks a lot for the comments, is always a pleasure to know you are being read.
The perception of motion, both in the frame-by-frame process of animation and in the continuous flow of reality, is complex. Focussing on the “in-between” is a worthy meditation for animation, or indeed for any sequence of images separated from the continuous flow of our reality.
However, I feel that your consideration that “perception as a flowing filter of a reality that contains in itself every possibility” is a mute point concerning the perception of movement in animation.
The animator considers the best position for objects on each frame to continue the perception of implied motion. Implied motion can be triggered by a still or moving image. The perception of movement (in this sense) happens in not only the brain’s visual cortex but also other regions such as the memory and motor cortexes. As the phenomenologist, Maxine Sheets-Johnston insists, “we grow kinetically into our bodies”; movement, perceived in us, the world around us, and in animation is inextricably linked and nonseparable.
For the motion to become implied, the animator has to consider the position of each object on each frame to best continue the illusion of flow. The in-between is not one of “every possibility”, it is one of a momentary void where perception is carried from one state to another. If that carrying process were to be interrupted by any other possibility, the motion would no longer become implied but interrupted.
I don’t agree with you in absolute terms. I do believe that all of what you say applies to naturalist or realist animation, but not for the whole spectrum of motion.
What you propose is explicitly not present in Blinkity Blank, where there are no characters, bodies or world to relate to. Of course, movement relates to what we can experience in the physical world, but that doesn’t impede for shapes to simply pop in and out of existence. Also you can see the inconsistencies that I refer to in the essay.
I would make a strong difference between what you call implied motion and motion. They are not the same. The perception I talk about is of motion itself. It is clear with snappy movements (Warner cartoons for example) where the movement is felt, but not seen or even drawn. The drawing may imply it, but the movement transcends it. Is not the single drawing that performs movement, no matter how well implied it is. Is the drawing inscribed in time and among other frames that makes movement.
What you refer to as carrying process is what I call consistency. A different amount of consistency will have different effects. The amount of disconnection or dissonance produced will be the result of the qualitative difference between two or more frames, and the difference itself is resolved in the inbetween.
Perhaps I could expand a little bit on this: What I call un-sympathetic image in the essay is a contrasting image, something that will clash. A very basic example could be a black-white-black sequence to feel a flash.
An un-correlative image would be an image that is not situated in the trajectory sequence (between 0 and 1 there is 0.5). A common use of un-correlative images could be vibrations. The consistency is given by their approximation to the middle position. Neither of these options will break the animation, or the movement, and there is factual, hard evidence of this. If we can agree or disagree in the philosophical reasons and implications, that is something different.
Painting has shown us, and this for a vey long time, that the figure/ground differentiation is not reliable, nor desirable, that real emotion occurs when they take turn coming to (our/my) attention and we experience moments of “grace”, “caught” between the two.
Let’s face it, “habitual” animation is as lame as the worst of 19th Century French Salon painting. While you had Turner and all exploring and making visible a visual world much closer to our “ordinary” experience than (for example) Puvis de Chavannes, then, as now, the consensus was that visible reality was/is experienced along the line of academic painting and/or photo-realism.
For most people, many animators included, “the eye works like a camera and we all see the same things”.
But, as Giacometti so rightly said: “Realism is balderdash, the problem with it is that it’s got nothing to do with reality.” (Superb Giacometti retrospective being held in Québec right now: https://www.mnbaq.org/en/exhibition/alberto-giacometti-1253)
What painting (and music, as well as literature) have shown us for a very long time is that “fragmentation” is much more connected to our lived experience than the pablum of linear depiction of “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (the so-called “objective reality”) we are inundated with.
Problem is, a fragmented experience depicted truthfully will turn off so many viewers, most animation viewers are craving entertainment, not an experience of truth, that is the expectation they come to animation with.
And many animators are only too happy to cater to that, the lowest common denominator.
As James Baldwin so rightly said:
“People cannot bear their reality.
They prefer fantasy over a truthful recreation of their experience” (as quoted in “I Am Not Your Negro”).
As I said in one of my articles on this very forum: “Can (should) Animation reach beyond the “entertainment dependency?” http://blog.animationstudies.org/?p=1052
I’ll add that it seems to me that Matias’ article is pointing to “fragmentation” -and our ability to accept it- as a valid (re)presentation of our experience.