Let’s talk a little bit about ‘being on modal’.
In animation, there are visual references that are established to help things looking consistent. Unlike live action films, the actors, sets, and scenery must all be drawn, and doing so where everything looks ‘as it should’ can be a monumental task.
After all without a semblance of consistency, characters would look different from scene to scene, maybe even unrecognizable in some cases. But it’s not only visuals that can suffer without these guidelines, tone and plot integrity can be jeopardized as well if the work doesn’t look polished and professional.
In anime, these reference materials are called settei (short for setting). Character designs/modals, architecture, and other important visual elements are drawn by the designer design team at multiple angles to give the animators a clear vision of what and how to draw what is needed. In this case we are going to focus on the character designs for Giorno from Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5, Golden Wind.
So why deviate from the designs that a painstaking amount of time and effort is put into keeping consistent? To figure that out, we need to ask, ‘What aspects of the animation are deviating?’ and ‘What does it do for the animation?’
Let’s talk a little bit about ‘being on modal’.
In animation, there are visual references that are established to help things looking consistent. Unlike live action films, the actors, sets, and scenery must all be drawn, and doing so where everything looks ‘as it should’ can be a monumental task.
After all without a semblance of consistency, characters would look different from scene to scene, maybe even unrecognizable in some cases. But it’s not only visuals that can suffer without these guidelines, tone and plot integrity can be jeopardized as well if the work doesn’t look polished and professional.
In anime, these reference materials are called settei (short for setting). Character designs/modals, architecture, and other important visual elements are drawn by the designer design team at multiple angles to give the animators a clear vision of what and how to draw what is needed. In this case we are going to focus on the character designs for Giorno from Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5, Golden Wind.
So why deviate from the designs that a painstaking amount of time and effort is put into keeping consistent? To figure that out, we need to ask, ‘What aspects of the animation are deviating?’ and ‘What does it do for the animation?’
The first thing we can notice is the added texture.
The characters on the screen appear coarse, almost scratchy. And even though it’s not ‘real to life’ per se, it’s an added layer that we can relate to. Involving all five senses is a challenge in cinema.
At the end of the day, all cinema is are images projected onto a two-dimensional surface, often accompanied by sound. Typically, taste and smell are ruled out (though not always) leaving visual, auditory, and surprisingly, our sense of touch. Perhaps that’s the reason the key animator, Takahiro Kishida, deviated ‘off modal’ – to further involve us as viewers in what’s happening onscreen.
This added texture also allows intricate details of muscles moving under the skin, or the malleable squishyness of Girono’s ear, to be captured in greater detail. Something that might have come off stiff in the highly polished and structured character designs that Jo Jo’s is known for.
Instead, Kishida leverages the stylization to draw out the action in a slow burn, little movements are made in a constant a consistent pulse like a drum roll that then pop or snap with a short bursts of larger movements.
This works especially well given the overlapping movements between the three characters onscreen. Standard practice with limited animation is to have only one subject move at a time, but instead we have characters clothes shifting, speaking, blinking, and ears popping all within the same span of time – just as it would if real actors occupied their space.
Since this is one of our first interactions with Giorno, the illusion that this character lives and breathes (or that we can imagine them living and breathing in our world) is a triumph of animation, character modals be damned! ☕
The first thing we can notice is the added texture.
The characters on the screen appear coarse, almost scratchy. And even though it’s not ‘real to life’ per se, it’s an added layer that we can relate to. Involving all five senses is a challenge in cinema.
At the end of the day, all cinema is are images projected onto a two-dimensional surface, often accompanied by sound. Typically, taste and smell are ruled out (though not always) leaving visual, auditory, and surprisingly, our sense of touch. Perhaps that’s the reason the key animator, Takahiro Kishida, deviated ‘off modal’ – to further involve us as viewers in what’s happening onscreen.
This added texture also allows intricate details of muscles moving under the skin, or the malleable squishyness of Girono’s ear, to be captured in greater detail. Something that might have come off stiff in the highly polished and structured character designs that Jo Jo’s is known for.
Instead, Kishida leverages the stylization to draw out the action in a slow burn, little movements are made in a constant a consistent pulse like a drum roll that then pop or snap with a short bursts of larger movements.
This works especially well given the overlapping movements between the three characters onscreen. Standard practice with limited animation is to have only one subject move at a time, but instead we have characters clothes shifting, speaking, blinking, and ears popping all within the same span of time – just as it would if real actors occupied their space.
Since this is one of our first interactions with Giorno, the illusion that this character lives and breathes (or that we can imagine them living and breathing in our world) is a triumph of animation, character modals be damned! ☕
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