Creating the Illusion of Depth and Volume in Animated

Creating the Illusion of Depth and Volume in
Animated Forms without Contour Lines
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Animation
Department in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Arts
Savannah College of Art and Design
By
Tyler Johnathan Kupferer
Savannah, Georgia
August 2011
Table of Contents
Thesis Abstract
I. Introduction
II. Visual Theory
III. Why Contour Lines Are the Prevailing Style
IV. Prior Examples of Animation without Contour Lines
VI. Creating Appealing Lineless Styles with Digital Animation Tools
VII. Conclusion
Appendix A: List of Figures
Appendix B: Filmography
Bibliography
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Thesis Abstract
This thesis will explore the application and development of animation styles that do not use
contour lines to define the edges of overlapping visual forms. Through examination of historical
and contemporary animation, the author will demonstrate how to achieve the illusion of depth
and volume without contour lines. Although lineless styles have existed since the beginning
of animation, this paper will emphasize the use of modern digital illustration tools. It will also
consider how digital production pipelines beget new methods of stylizing animation.
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I. Introduction
Throughout the history of animation, mainstream content has gravitated toward specific styles
based on the influence of popular content and emerging technology. The inventions of plasticine,
cel animation, rotoscopes and Xerox transfer are all early examples. This evolution of technology
has historically benefited traditional 2D cel animation the most, but the introduction of computer
graphics has changed that trend. Computers and similar digital tools have brought about a
dramatic transformation of the industry, rendering traditional animation methods obsolete.
Hardware and software both allow for the creation and manipulation of animated content that
was not possible twenty years ago, redefining even the most economic types of animation.
For most filmmakers, a goal of central importance is creating a convincing representation of
a believable world on the screen.1 In order to create believable characters and worlds, an artist
must deliver a clear portrayal of visual forms. This portrayal can be achieved in a variety of ways,
including new digital methods that have only recently been developed.
Most dominant animation styles of the 20th century used a simple but effective device to define
forms: the contour line. Initially a useful tool in a developing industry, the contour line became
a beneficiary of its own success. By the mid-20th century, it was almost always present in
contemporary animation. However, the development of digital animation hardware and software
during the past two decades has made new methods applicable on a larger scale. In the past,
contour lines were essential for a division of labor and cost efficiency, but now they are rendered
irrelevant by modern digital animation technology. Although this technology can be both twodimensional and three-dimensional creation tools, the two-dimensional realm has received less
consideration until now. Many useful methods exist for creating the illusion of depth and volume
1 With the exception of holography, the physical nature of a screen is always two-dimensional. The challenge of a
filmmaker is often to portray a three-dimensional world on the two-dimensional surface of the screen (Block 14). In the
medium of animation the need to always portray a three-dimensional world, or even a figurative world for that matter,
is less prevalent. For the purposes of this paper, however, a believable three-dimensional illusion is the desired result.
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in 2D animated art. By better understanding these methods and the older techniques from which
they evolved, animated films will have a greater expanse of stylistic options than ever before.
II. Visual Theory
Within the realm of all artistic expression exists the mark, defined most simply as a trace or
blemish left on a surface (Wayne and Peters 22).2 While many types of marks exist, the line serves
a valuable purpose as an indicator of forms and boundaries. In relation to drawing, the line is “the
essential element in delineation” (Mendelowitz 287).
One of the most common uses for a line is the representation of contours. Contour is the concept
of using lines to explain a form (Hayes 38).3 As opposed to an outline, a contour line is not
restricted to the outer boundaries of an object.4 While an outline appears as a line surrounding a
given shape, a contour line gives the impression of being located just inside this border, so it more
appropriately belongs to the form of an object. Additionally, a contour line boasts variation of
thickness, tone and speed, giving it the capacity to suggest three-dimensional form (Wayne and
Peters 128). For example, in Albrecht Dürer’s pen drawing My Dear Agnes (Fig. 1), lines are used
not only to describe the surface as it turns away at the edges of the form, but also inside the form.
Parallel lines of varying weight across the arms, neck and chest of the figure seem to suggest the
direction of the surface as well as the angle of the light striking the figure. A relatively limited use
of lines within the drawing is still effective enough to convey shape, texture and lighting.
Although the contour line is perhaps the most fundamental way of showing three-dimensional
form, it is far from the only way. Defining space overall can be done using a multitude of other
2 The mark has in total three major ramifications. It may also serve as an indication of the presence that made the
mark and/or an indicator of spatial quantities like distance, area and volume (Wayne and Peters 21).
3 Form refers to the configuration of an object in space, defining spatial limits, structure and organization (Wayne
and Peters 120).
4 The outline is a simpler concept than the contour line. Defined solely as the boundary that separates a form from
its surroundings, outline is best reserved for depicting literal flat shapes; it draws the viewer’s attention to the twodimensional spread of the area it surrounds (Wayne and Peters 128).
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proven methods. Wayne and Peters list relative position, diagonals, overlapping, atmospheric
perspective, relative scale, and foreground, midground and background as fundamental ways of
creating three-dimensional space (30). They also discuss how value, lighting and color can represent
space and form (147, 223-224). Hayes cites light and shade as instruments of form whenever
“realism necessitates the use of devices which to some extent reflect visual appearances” (16).
These concepts become essential when considering how to create the illusion of three-dimensional
forms without contour lines. A “contourless” piece of work is one that is devoid of any distinct
contour lines that differ in color and value from the shapes they touch. In Fig. 2, a digital drawing
of an apple conveys the spherical form of the object using a simple contour that wraps the
receding edge of the form and shows the overlapping shapes around the stem. In Fig. 3, the same
object is rendered without contour lines, and the same forms are now conveyed using shifting
values of grey. Both drawings create the same illusion of three-dimensional form, but they do so
using different visual devices.
The definition of contourless art is massive in scope. Contour lines are an imaginary invention
of artistic stylization, and do not exist in natural human vision. Therefore, any art that attempts
to emulate the view of a human eye should not feature contour lines. In The Calling of Saint
Matthew by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Fig. 4), contour lines are nonexistent. The forms
are defined by a strong light source, shadows and folding textures on the figures’ clothing. The
visual devices in the piece, when considered collectively, suggest a style that comes as close to true
human eyesight as is possible in this medium.
When comparing Caravaggio’s grand Baroque painting to the pen sketch by Dürer, it is apparent
that contour lines are often a tool of efficiency. The imaginary, simplistic nature of the contour
is what removes it from visual cues associated with the real world. The advantage of this
simplification allows the contour to convey similar ideas with less information. Because of this,
contour lines are often a useful tool for simplification of figurative art but should be abandoned
when realism is given priority over efficiency (Hayes 38).
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III. Why Contour Lines Are the Prevailing Style
The mere fact that contour lines are so efficient when rendering three-dimensional forms makes
them an appealing candidate for any business-minded artist. It is not surprising, then, that
contour lines played a large role in the expansive growth of animation.
In the early 20th century, the pioneers of animation were often singular artists, branching out
from a similar creative realm and exploring the medium of animation as more of a curiosity
than a fully developed art form. Originally, no single style dominated the public’s perception of
animation (Furniss 17). Before too long, though, popular media sources quickly began to affect
the look of successful mainstream animation. By the time the craft had matured, the contour
line quickly became the dominant tool for defining three-dimensional forms. Three major
factors played into the preeminence of the contour: artists adapting their own styles from other
mediums, the industrialization of animation production and the powerful influence of popular
animation studios on the public.
Early animated cinema, much like its live action cousin, had a need for narrative, visual
iconography and storytelling that could be best satisfied by looking toward other established
media for inspiration. Comics, which were already a well-established genre by the end of the 19th
century, proved to be a large source of influence for live action cinema in its earliest days. Much of
this was based on simple gag setups, where the plot of a short comic could be quickly adapted into
a film successfully (Crafton 36). Early dabblers in animation, such as James Stewart Blackton and
Walter R. Booth, did much of the same thing when creating gag animation and trick photography
to accompany their stage shows. Visual gags from comic strips were adapted directly into theatrical
performances, and the performer brought the drawings to life as a sort of magic trick (Crafton 25).
Windsor McCay was the first to make a conscious decision to not only adapt the ideas of a comic
strip, but the stylization and characters as well. Already a well-established cartoon artist with comic
series like Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland, McCay was not bashful
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when promoting his name and his work. He used his fame as a cartoonist to propel his career
in motion pictures and vaudeville. His first film, Little Nemo (1911) (Fig. 5), borrows characters
from the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip (Crafton 98). In the film, McCay portrays himself
attempting to create 4,000 drawings of the Little Nemo characters to the disbelief of his fellow
artists. When he finally does complete the drawings, he holds the stack up to the camera like a
large flipbook. The remainder of the film is two minutes of actual animation by McCay.
The painstakingly slow process comically portrayed in Little Nemo was not far off from the truth.
McCay went on to make more animated films for his vaudeville act, The Story of a Mosquito
(1912) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), but each one involved a laborious process of drawing
every frame by hand, background included. Still, the films were a hit. McCay’s unique sense of
showmanship, combined with such novel animation, made his vaudeville routines wildly popular
with audiences (Canemaker, Winsor McCay 15).
Likely inspired by the success of McCay’s early moving cartoons, the American branch of the
Éclair film studio planned a direct adaptation of another comic strip called “The Newlyweds and
their Baby” by George McManus. McManus himself played almost no role in the creation of the
films. Instead, it was Émile Cohl, considered by many as the true father of the animated cartoon,
who single-handedly drew and animated thirteen “Newlyweds” cartoons between March 1913
and January 1914. Whereas McCay spent immense amounts of time and effort drawing every
frame of animation individually, Cohl drew the “Newlyweds” characters on paper and then made
cutout puppets that sped up the animation process (Crafton 83). Still, the animated versions of
the “Newlyweds” characters adhered strictly to McManus’ own work. Success in the animated
film was, at this point, still closely tied to recognizable characters from other mediums.
Even with his cutout method, Cohl was like McCay in that he did almost everything himself. The
fast pace of the film industry, however, demanded more efficient ways to produce cartoons. The
Canadian Raoul Barré is credited with the slash system that Cohl used for “Newlyweds”, but more
importantly, Barré introduced the perf and peg system for aligning drawings. The basic concept
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of this system is still used in traditional 2D production setups today, where punch holes in the top
(or bottom) of the animation paper can be held in place using a peg bar (Furniss 18).
What really drove the 2D animation system forward and allowed specialization of labor was
the cel (Callahan 225). A catchall term for any clear, flexible drawing material, cels allowed true
separation of moving elements of a scene from static ones. As cels became thinner and more
transparent, they also allowed for the characters themselves to be further broken down into
multiple parts, depending on frequency of movement.
It was cartoonist and animator Earl Hurd who originally patented the cel system in late 1914. A
precursor to that system had already been patented by inventor Joseph Randolph Bray, whose
original idea kept static images on one piece of celluloid with new drawings cycled underneath.
Bray quickly saw the added utility of Hurd’s reversed method and hired him, making him a
partner at the Bray-Hurd Patent Company (Furniss 19). The patent at first hampered the use of
cel animation by other studios since royalty fees were adding on to what was already an expensive
system. By the time the patent ran out in 1932, the system was well accepted. It quickly became
the industry norm.
The other long-lasting legacy of Bray was his own studio managerial and organizational practices.
The rapid growth of capitalism in the early 20th century left capitalists looking for new ways to
streamline output of factories and increase worker output. This led to the popularity of scientific
management, a concept developed by Frederick W. Taylor and commonly known as Taylorism.
Bray’s managerial techniques at this company were a poster-child for the applications of scientific
management. He stressed the unquestioned authority of upper-level management, and the clear
distinction between bosses and subordinates (Crafton 164).
Taylorism emphasized the role of management as an analytical tool, whose role was to organize
and analyze its workforce to the highest possible efficiency. The effect of Bray’s Taylorized
approach was far-reaching in the animation industry. The mass of studios that replicated their
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systems from the Bray model carried similar setups into the 1910s and 1920s. As Crafton puts it,
“This concept, allied with cel technology, provided the praxis of studio animation” (167).
The maturation of the 2D cel animation process created elite workers in all specialized areas of
the animation process. The use of contour animation allowed inkers, who drew the final version
of the contour lines, to play a massive role in the quality of the finished product. Maureen Furniss
describes the weight of the inking department:
At the Disney studio, before the advent of photocopying, studio inkers were strictly
trained to hold pens correctly and to trace animators’ images with a high degree of
accuracy. Another group of employees, called ‘line checkers’, later measured the thickness
of the inkers’ lines to assure uniformity. The individuals in these positions were very
skillful. Craig noted that, during the 1950s at Disney, ‘an animator wouldn’t even need to
clean up his drawings, because a good inker knew what lines to pick up’; she stressed that
‘inking was a skill and an art, and not just a production-line job’. (75)
This demonstrates the significant role that the contour line played during the “golden age”
of animation. Inking was a key separation point between rough animators and the clean-up
department. The fact that animators were allowed to forgo any type of clean-up (leaving it instead
to the skilled artists in the inking department) demonstrates a deep division between these two
disciplines. Animators were strictly trained to focus on staging, motion and acting, while inkers
were concerned with details. This separation was essential in the days of cel animation to produce
the highest quality product via hand-drawn methods.
The important role of the inking department started to wane when the Xerox process was
introduced during the 1950s. The process allowed animators’ drawings to be copied directly onto
cels, virtually eliminating the inking department. This affected the actual style of the finished
animation. The rigid, clean colored contour lines seen in Lady and the Tramp (1955) gave way to
the grey, textured lines of 101 Dalmatians (1961), the first Disney feature to use the process. The
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introduction of color copiers in the 1980s allowed colored contours to return. This made contour
lines less prevalent in newer Disney feature films, though never entirely absent (Furniss 75).
Limited animation was another cost-cutting measure that affected the evolution and influence of
cel animation during this time. Since the early days of animation, virtually all studios have used
cycles as a means to reduce the number of drawings needed to make a film. Often they would
create techniques to supplement the cycling, in order to “hide” it. Most common during that time
were varied backgrounds and excessive camera movement (Furniss 136). United Productions of
America5 was the first studio to use limited animation for artistic purposes. The founders saw it
as a stylistic complement to their work’s minimalist designs and stylized colors. UPA stood apart
from the major studios not only for its modern design sense, but also by its choice of storylines.
The studio favored plots based around human characters, as opposed to the anthropomorphized
animals of Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM films (Furniss 140).
Unfortunately, UPA’s unique approach to limited animation was short-lived. The changing nature
of the Hollywood film industry during the 1950s led to the demise of many short film units
at studios, while at the same time the Red Scare was at its peak. Anti-communism sentiment
forced Hubley and many other UPA artists out of work, and without its top creative minds, the
studio began a downward spiral. UPA attempted to produce new content for television such as
“The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show” in 1956. Using normal production techniques, however, the
project became too expensive. The show lasted only three months (Beck 208).
Learning from shortcomings of “The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show,” company executives
focused on ways of making television animation more practical. Televised series required a
greater quantity of shows within tighter schedules. The limited animation techniques originally
5 Originally formed as Industrial Film and Poster Service in 1943 by Steve Bosustow, Henry Schwartz and John
Hubley, United Productions of America was a response to the founders’ resentment toward the ultra-realistic style
of major studios of the time. Hubley believed that the practice of replicating cinematic realism was restricting the
creative possibility of the animated medium, and founded the new studio on the premise of creating animation as a
modern art form (Bendazzi 130).
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designed by the UPA founders as a stylistic choice became a cost-cutting measure, and the
quality of work suffered greatly (Rieder 23).
Limited animation practices continued to evolve into the 1960s and 1970s.6 By the 1980s, it reached
a level of maturity that allowed for massive amounts of cheap (although not necessarily good)
animation to be produced for television. This was the final level of evolution for purely traditional
animation, and at no point had it abandoned its two greatest allies: the cel and the contour. The
animation empires that reigned by the end of the 1980s were all built upon this aging system.
Beyond these practical reasons, the other major factor that played into the preeminence of
contoured 2D animation was a constant push by major animation studios to promote their own
aesthetics. Since the industrialization of the animation industry, large studios have often made
continuous, conscientious efforts to condition the public toward particular styles. Most responsible
for this, especially in the first half of the 20th century, was the Walt Disney Company. Between about
1930 and 1950, in a time when the public image of animation was shifting from that of a curiosity to
full-fledged entertainment medium, Walt Disney and his artists were merciless in imposing the idea
that their brand and style of animation was superior. Giannalberto Bendazzi writes:
For a long time, Disney was the only standard: not only did he defeat competition, he
also erased it, because in the mind of his viewers, his animation was accepted as the only
possible one. On the negative side, his work fed the general public’s reluctance to accept
alternative proposals for more cultured, stimulating or simply different animated cinema.
Disney, himself, contributed in reinforcing his ‘cartoon monopoly’ by publicly describing
animation and by theorizing about it as if it had never existed in any other forms but those
he himself had created—needless to say, his keen sense of public relations assisted him in
his quest for animation superiority. (70)
6 Hanna-Barbera Productions perfected the use of economical limited animation, allowing them to produce the
majority of American television animation for nearly three decades. Founders William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
used limited animation specifically for cost cutting, compared to the purely stylistic motivations of early UPA. These
methods significantly reduced the number of drawings needed. Only certain parts of characters were animated at a
time, and then photocopied onto cels to simulate talking or acting (Sennett 49).
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More than any other single cartooning entity, the Walt Disney studio intentionally shaped
the public’s perception of what animation should be. For them it was good business. Keeping
audiences expecting a certain result and then delivering it in every permutation meant more
revenue. However, this was at the cost of other animation styles and strategies. Artists looking
beyond conventional means of animation found less support from audiences once Disney had
established his brand of animation as the only acceptable option.
A perfect example of this trend is Oskar Fischinger’s experience while working on Fantasia
(1940). As an independent artist by nature, Fischinger quickly became frustrated with the large
scale, mass production nature of the Disney process and quit after only nine months. Later he
expressed his disgust that the project did not represent his own work, dismissing it as “the most
inartistic product of a factory” (Canemaker, “The Original Laureate of an Abstract Poetry”).
IV. Prior Examples of Animation without Contour Lines
The many factors that thrust contoured styles into the mainstream were not total in their
domination. Many independent artists and animators developed styles that defied commonality.
Today they are well-recognized for their individuality. Historically, much of this came from two
groups: the European abstractionists of the 1920s and 1930s and the National Film Board of Canada
in the 1960s and 1970s. These artists demonstrated the many styles that contourless animation can
take, although it was often the work of a single person pursuing a unique style.
The earliest significant example of non-figurative animated form is German film director
Walther Ruttmann. Trained in architecture, fine arts and music, Ruttman worked in painting
and engraving before dedicating himself to developing a theory of abstract cinema. This pursuit
led him to Lichtspiel Opus I (1921) (Fig. 6) and three continuations on the series, all abstract
painted animation synchronized to orchestral arrangements (Bendazzi 28). The shapes featured
in these films are devoid of outline and solid color, utilizing instead gradient and shading to
create some degree of form. However, the films operate on what appears to be a flat plane, with
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the moving shapes strongly acknowledging the picture plane by restricting their movements to
entering and exiting the visual space.7
Like Ruttman, Oskar Fischinger began in painting and pursued cinema as a means of
communicating ideas that static art could not. His early attempts to illustrate written word
fell short when his audience had difficulty understanding his work. What Fischinger realized,
however, was that the motion of those forms would allow him to better communicate his ideas.
His works such as Komposition in Blau (1935) and the studio-backed An Optical Poem (1938)
demonstrate how Fischinger primarily used movement to convey the shape and form of the
objects featured in his films (Bendazzi 122).
The abstract animations of Ruttman and Fischinger are fundamental examples of moving forms
that do not use contour lines. Later artists demonstrated that contourless animation did not have
to be restricted to abstraction. Several artists supported by the National Film Board of Canada
produced work in the 1960s and 1970s that demonstrated figurative visual elements using a
variety of methods. Ryan Larkin created Cityscape (1964) and Syrinx (1965) using oil paint
(Bendazzi 262). Even his Academy Award-nominated Walking (1968) used some degree of lineless
painted forms. During his time working at the NFB, Jacques Drouin employed a pin screen
method (Bendazzi 263). His film Mindscape (1976) (Fig. 7) portrays emotive characters and
detailed environments all without the use of contour lines. Lastly, Caroline Leaf is well known for
her animation using sand on glass, in which sand is manipulated on a plane of flat glass, under-lit
by a light source. Her classic film The Owl Who Married A Goose (1974) displays the characters as
moving silhouetted forms against a white negative space. The characters remain mostly flat, but
move throughout the empty white space as if it was three-dimensional (Bendazzi 269).
Contourless animation is not limited to 2D, of course. Any style of animation based on
photography or realistic visual rendering lacks contour lines, and technically qualifies as a
7 Other European individualist artists such as Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling did similar work exploring the
transformation and metamorphosis of shapes within an ambiguous black space, although their films lacked the color
and tonal gradation of Ruttman’s work (Bendazzi 30).
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contourless aesthetic. In that sense, stop motion represents another type of contourless animation.
Although stop motion and clay animation were developed alongside the earliest of drawn
animation,8 stop motion failed to pick up the momentum of cel animation. The cel system allowed
for a division of labor in the production stage that stop motion could not match, yielding most of
the limelight to the cel process (Frierson 64).
This selection of historical contourless examples is not complete in its scope by any means, but it
provides a framework for what has been explored in this style, and what sort of potential lies in
its expansion. Most significant is that all of these contourless styles, produced without any digital
systems, were limited in their size and scope, since the specialized processes needed for producing
contourless animation did not lend themselves to elaborate division of labor.
V. Modern Application of Contourless Style
While there are many strong examples of contourless design in 2D animation throughout
the 20th century, it took the success of the 3D animated film to make the idea of contourless
animation acceptable to the modern mainstream audience. The earliest of computer graphics
technology started out as visualization tools for scientists and engineers in the 1950s. During
the 1960s, the technology advanced, allowing for primitive 2D and 3D geometry to be created
with pen input devices and displayed on monitors. By the late 1970s, computer graphics began to
achieve a level of practicality for film and television production (Masson 388-427).
The early 1990s saw the widespread integration of computer graphics into filmmaking with the
release of blockbusters such as James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1990) and Steven
Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). Disney, in collaboration with Pixar, developed the Computer
Animation Production System (CAPS), which allowed drawings to be scanned and colored
8 Stop motion animation emerged from the same kind of lightning sketching and trick photography that led to
drawn animation in the 1900s decade. Early films like Billy Bitzer’s The Sculptor’s Nightmare (1908) and James Stuwart
Blackton’s Chew Chew Land (1910) used clay animation in its most limited capacity, to show objects of that very
material coming to life. This is quite similar to the earliest of drawn animation, such as Blackton’s Humorous Phases
of Funny Faces (1906), where the physical state of the materials being animated is always revealed to the audience in
advance (Frierson, 57).
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digitally. The Little Mermaid (1989) was the first Disney feature to try the CAPS technology, and
The Rescuers Down Under (1990) was the first 100% digitally painted feature film (Masson 144).
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992) featured further implementation of 3D
rendered imagery with the 2D traditional animation. While these films were beginning to utilize
contourless animation, it was still reserved to environmental shots and background plates.
The release of Pixar’s Toy Story (1995) marked the beginning of the 3D animated feature film.
Its success prompted Pixar to continue making features, while other CGI studios like PDI/
DreamWorks and Blue Sky took to a similar cause. So great was the effect of CG films, most
animation studios converted entirely to CG productions or were dissolved by the early 2000s
(Masson 434-435).
Although the success of CG animation caused a sharp decline in 2D traditional work in the
early 2000s, some notable success has come out of Disney’s short film efforts. A good example
of modern contourless animation in a studio environment is Destino (2003) (Fig. 8). A project
originally planned by Salvador Dali in 1946, Destino was produced with a specific effort to merge
the Surrealist movement with modern animation methods. This resulted in director Dominique
Monfery choosing to leave contour lines off the character animation so that it would integrate
more pleasingly with the painted aesthetic of the film.
Destino was produced primarily at Walt Disney Animation France, in collaboration with the
Burbank animation studio. Monfrey began production by reviewing the already-completed work
from 1946 and deciding to make the film true to the original vision. This required finding a nontypical way to render the characters, one that would match the painting style of Dali. Monfrey states,
“One important fact is that we have 2D character animation but we don’t have lines on the character.
Also, the volume of the character is revealed more by light and shadow than by color. In order to
better match Dali, we decided to remove that dark line that usually outlines the character sheet”
(Desowitz, “Channeling Dali to Make Destino”).
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Monfrey’s decision to remove the contour lines from character animation directly reflects the
styles more commonly associated with painting. While the animation was completed by the
French studio on paper, it was scanned and colored using CAPS. The Disney studio had used
this system for over a decade to paint within contour lines, but in this unique instance, the tool
was eliminating contour lines during the painting process. Once digitized and painted, the 2D
animation was combined with the 3D elements of the film, which were modeled and textured in
Autodesk Maya (Desowitz, “Disney/Dali’s Completed Destino Kicks Off Annecy Fest”).
This collection of modern digital tools is what made Destino a viable project in 2003, compared to
the abandoned project of 1946, which would have required replicating the hand-painted aesthetic
of Dali on thousands of individual cels and combining it with animated painted backgrounds. A
process so strongly rooted in one artist’s style would be contrary to the system of divided labor
associated with the Disney studio at that time.
The animated short Lorenzo (2004) (Fig. 9) followed on the success of Destino by
demonstrating another experimental approach to 2D stylization, this time capturing the
expressiveness and spontaneity of tempera paintings using interpretive software. The film
was conceptualized in 1943 and uncovered alongside Destino. Director Mike Gabriel wrote
and designed the film entirely himself, creating fast, expressive paintings to convey the visual
aesthetic he wanted to achieve in the film. From these paintings, the team’s software expert,
Dan Teece, created an entire CG application called Sable that would apply textured brush
stroke to vector lines. In an online interview with art historian Ron Barbagallo, digital effect
supervisor John Murrah noted the utility of the software by saying “The only other alternative
would have been to paint every frame individually, which would have given the film a very
distracting and chattery look. This is a great example of adapting technology for a particular
artistic purpose” (Barbagallo, “Lorenzo”).
Achieving the frame-by-frame painted look that Gabriel wanted would have been an expensive
and laborious undertaking if actually done by hand. Using a digital process allowed the
15
filmmakers to apply Gabriel’s own brush strokes to the entirety of the animation, as if a singular
artist had painted every frame. Computer graphics technology allowed the production designers
to distribute labor across many artists while still maintained a singular look and feel.
Baidir (2009) (Fig. 10), which is currently only viewable as a teaser, displays a terrific example
of modern contourless 2D style. The teaser, which is meant to advertise a proposed 26 episode
television series, demonstrates another unique advantage of contourless 2D style. It allows for
much more seamless integration of 2D characters with 3D environments. The rendered 3D
backgrounds of Baidir are styled to reflect the solid fills of the character animation. What makes
the union successful is the flexibility of both styles to work toward each other. The 2D animation
abandons contour lines to look more like 3D rendering, and the 3D environments strip down
shading and textures to look more like the 2D. The result is a digital hybrid style that retains the
visual appeal of the conceptual source material.
The short film Duck Heart Telsacoil (2009) (Fig. 11) also displays a willingness to adapt a style to
the strengths of a particular technology. It was conceptualized to be an idealized application of
motion tween animation.9 Characters and environments in the film were designed to alleviate
the problems commonly associated with limited Flash tween animation. The most notable of
these is joint gaps. The way that 2D character “rigs” are often structured causes an issue at the
points of overlapping geometry. Shapes with complex lines or textures do not transform and
distort naturally around points of articulation, causing gaps between the artwork (Georgenes
128). Character designs in Duck Heart Teslacoil avoided this problem by eliminating all contour
lines and textures from the characters themselves. Without complex details to reveal overlap, the
contourless body parts merged seamlessly. Flat shapes appeared to rotate three-dimensionally
because no texture existed to reveal that the surface was actually static.
9 Character animation achieved with motion tweens relies on a collection of graphical sprites, or symbols. Each
shape usually represents a body part or prop related to the character, such as eyes, legs, hands, clothes, etc. These
overlapping shapes are manipulated individually to create different poses and expressions for the character, and the
poses are then tweened to create fluid motion between posed extremes (Georgenes 108).
16
The challenge that remained was how to give the characters a strong presence in the visual scene
and how to create a continued illusion of three-dimensionality. To create the effect of a traditional
rostrum camera setup, cel flares were simulated by adding drop shadow effects to all character
animation throughout the film.10 The size and weight of the drop shadow varied depending
on if the shot was a close-up or wide shot. This suggested the proximity of the camera to the
photographed surface. A vignette was applied to the composited shot to enhance the rostrum
aesthetic and eliminate any remaining fields of solid, flat colors.
Overall, the treatment of the character art and its compositing with the environment created
a very flat visual aesthetic for the film, but this was intentional. Embracing the 2D cutout look
provided an appropriate application for contourless character design that was acceptable to
modern audiences. The disadvantage, however, was that while this style was economical, it
lacked the engaging nature of films with high visual depth. In order to make a film that creates
convincing three-dimensional imagery in 2D contourless animation, and artist must employ a
number of specialized production techniques.
VI. Creating Appealing Lineless Styles with Digital Animation Tools
Modern films that feature contourless styles demonstrate the variety of different ways that threedimensional form can be represented. The Girl and the Fox (2011) (Fig. 12), the accompanying
visual component to this thesis paper, served as an ideal testing ground for a variety of
contemporary methods for stylizing contourless forms in 2D animation. The goal of The Girl and
the Fox was to adapt the idea of contourless 2D characters into a style that reversed the approach
of Duck Heart Teslacoil. Instead of building a visual style around the concept of flat space, The Girl
and the Fox overwhelmingly features deep space in character movement, shot design and visual
cues. Throughout the development process, techniques were designed and implemented to test
10 A rostrum camera setup is the traditional way of capturing 2D animation on to film, consisting of a camera
mounted vertically above a flat image plane where the art is mounted and lit (“rostrum camera”). Cel flares are the
diffused shadows that surround the edges of a figure on a cel, cast by the downward lights used in a rostrum setup.
17
which methods would best generate the illusion of deep space. The results suggest three major
types of methods for creating this illusion for 2D animation: movement, texture and lighting.
Movement and transformation over time, an attribute that is unique to motion pictures, can
have a huge impact on how shapes and forms are perceived by an audience. In Oskar Fischinger’s
piece An Optical Poem (1937), solid colored geometric shapes create a sense of deep, threedimensional space by skewing, shrinking and growing as they move past the viewing plane. These
shapes, while devoid of any contours or shading, still create the illusion that they exist in a threedimensional world. Fischinger’s work is a classic example of how movement alone can create a
sense of three-dimensionality. Movement includes translation, rotation, scaling and morphing of
figures. All of these methods can demonstrate the three-dimensionality of a form by transforming
it in a way that corresponds to silhouettes in the natural world.
The character animation in The Girl and the Fox was created using hand-drawn frame-by-frame
animation, as opposed to the 2D symbol rigs of Duck Heart Teslacoil. Drawn forms have far
more potential to be posed and moved in a way that conveys three-dimensionality compared
to combinations of flat shapes. This also allowed for an essential mode of creating deep space
within a film: moving objects in z-space. Often cited as one of the most effective ways to create a
strong visual effect in cinema, movement along the z-axis also helps bring shape to a world and
characters pictured in a film (Block 172). Hand-drawn characters can change their orientation
toward the camera as they move, so not only will they scale and transform as a whole, but their
individual parts will shift in size and angle.
The second category used to portray three-dimensional form is texture. In its general form,
texture is the perceived surface quality of an object, used to enhance and reinforce a mood or idea
(Mayer 418). In this specific context, texture refers to a distortion of objects in a 2D composition
that helps to distinguish figure-ground relationships. In a traditional animation setup, some
degree of texture is unavoidable. The choice of drawing medium affects how backgrounds, cels,
and effects look when captured on camera. Multiple layers of stacked cels in a scene often produce
18
cel flares that call attention to the edges of figures.11 The quality of the film or video itself can
create scratches, lines or noise across the image. Comparatively, no texture exists by default in
a digital image; it must be applied via bitmaps or procedural functions. Because the creation of
textures is an additive process in digital graphics, artists have the ability to select the ideal surface
quality regardless of creation method.
In The Girl and the Fox, backgrounds were the most prominent feature to use textures for figureground distinction. Pencil sketches made for each layout were scanned and painted over with
Photoshop brushes in a way that allowed the texture of the graphite to remain visible. This added
a coarse line quality throughout the images, giving the final color pass a more convincing fauxpaint look. This gave the backgrounds a clear visual distinction from the smooth, solid nature of
the character animation.
The background art in The Girl and the Fox also made heavy use of the illusion of atmospheric
perspective. A fundamental method for creating three-dimensional space, atmospheric
perspective is the visual effect that the atmosphere has on distant objects. Exaggerating this effect
in art strengthens the illusion that the rendered objects are a considerable distance from the
viewer, and gives additional cues to how far apart objects are in space (Wayne and Peters 30). All
background paintings in The Girl and the Fox contained some degree of atmospheric perspective
to add depth and tone to the film’s compositions. Shots designed for multiplaning featured distant
layers painted with dull, flat tones while layers meant to appear closer were higher in saturation
and deeper in tonal value.
A final way to emphasize figure-ground relationships in 2D compositions is to lower depth of
field. In live action cinematography, depth of field is the acceptable range of objects in focus
11 While historically the bane of traditional animation camera operators, cel flares can actually be an effective
method of exaggerating figure-ground differences. They were used in Duck Heart Teslacoil to further the paper cutout
aesthetic and display characters more prominently. Like strong outlines, however, cel flares have a tendency to flatten
a composition. The flat shadows make characters appear to be sitting on top of a background instead of existing
inside an environment, and were not utilized in The Girl and the Fox.
19
through a camera lens (Block 51). In animation, this acceptable range can be simulated with a 3D
camera or replicated in 2D by applying blurs to background and foreground elements.
Both methods were used in The Girl and the Fox; close-ups of characters placed heavy focus blur
effects on background images, while shots with effects simulation or complex 3D compositing
actually set a focus range for the 3D camera used.12 The resulting effect displayed separation of
objects in a more realistic sense, anchoring the visual style in a world that more closely echoed
how humans view reality.
The third category of methods, lighting, plays perhaps the biggest role in how three-dimensional
forms are perceived. Hayes states on the subject of drawing, “If realism necessitates the use of
devices which to some extent reflect visual appearances, there will come a stage at which some
suggestion of light and shade come into play, for it is an axiom of natural vision that without light
we should see nothing” (16).
When it comes to animation, lighting is broken down into three components: highlights,
tones and shadows (O’Hailey 160). Any illustrated form, if contourless, must have a color that
makes up the mass of the shape. In its most simple form, this fill is a solid, flat color. Adding
the effect of lighting to the shape gives it three-dimensional form (Hayes 30). Highlights and
tones are indicators of where the geometry of the object starts to turn away from the viewing
plane. Highlights represent the edge of a form that is exposed to a light source, while tone is
the opposite. It shows the part of a form that is facing away from a lighting source, casting
any shadows that will appear on other parts of the scene. Both highlights and tones are effects
overlays, and traditionally were rendered by effects animators, separate from character animation
(O’Hailey 206). In digital production systems, however, it is possible to move parts of this process
to the compositing stage and eliminate repetitive animation work.
12 Although objects that are pulled out of focus become visually flat, the overall effect creates a limited spatial
composition because of the overlapping forms (Block 51).
20
While designing the contourless style for The Girl and the Fox, it became apparent that simply
removing the contour lines from the characters’ designs caused a serious problem. Devoid of
any other three-dimensionality cues, characters were left looking flat and awkwardly offset from
their environments. Because of the strong lighting of the production design, it became necessary
to add tone to all animation throughout the film. Tones were rendered by clean-up and painting
artists based on key drawings from the director. This often required a process of trial and error,
trying to find how to best shape the edges of the tones to display the most important part of the
character forms.13
The cast shadow does more to place an object in a three-dimensional space than define the
dimensions of the object itself. A cast shadow is the silhouette of one form projected onto another
form (Hayes 27). In the case of character animation, it becomes the silhouettes of characters and
props cast upon other characters and their surroundings. Cast shadows have a special role that
also allows an artist to convey the spatial relationship between two objects in an environment.
They can be drawn by hand or simulated in digital 2D to various degrees of success.
In rare instances, character shadows in The Girl and the Fox were drawn by hand to match the
movement of the character along the ground place. More often, the characters’ shadows were
simulated using 3D lighting in After Effects. Character animation was embedded with alpha
channel information to allow simulated light to pass through translucent parts of the video.14
The resulting silhouette of the animation was projected onto a hidden ground plane, where only
the resulting shadow was visible. This could be precisely composited with the 2D backgrounds
13 Tones, along with shadows, are often not exact representations of how they would look if realistically rendered.
Because of the countless subtle variations in the surfaces casting and receiving the shadows, realistic tones and
shadows would be too complex and distracting when rendered with a 2D style. This is why the use of “toon shaders”
in 3D production is rarely successful. The well-trained mind of a human artist is still required to simplify the
shadowed areas to mesh with stylized 2D character art (O’Hailey 206).
14 This requires the use of alpha channels around the animated character so that the simulator knows the solid
boundaries of the form being lit. The method works best when the direction of the perceived light is perpendicular
to the surface of the digital animation cel. The more the perceived light source was parallel to the surface of the cel,
the less effective this strategy is. In these cases, a second, invisible cel of animation was set perpendicular to the light,
casting a shadow that appeared to come from the visible layer.
21
created by layout artists, leaving an accurate shadow that did not reveal the nature of its 3D
origins. The useful consequence was that the method was considerably faster than rendering
shadows by hand, while at the same time somewhat more accurate. All the while, the final image
served the 2D look and feel of the film’s style.
The technique that links these three levels of lighting together is the gradient. Any naturally lit
object has some degree of falloff along its surface. This causes the surface to always be somewhat
unevenly lit (Wayne and Peters 156). To replicate this, solid fills in 2D animated forms can be
given subtle gradients that follow the lighting sources that are suggested by the highlights, tones
and shadows. In another sense, gradients can be thought of as transitions between highlights,
fills and tones. In fact, 3D rendered objects usually feature a gradient that is automatically created
where highlights and tones transition through light diffusion.
Gradients in The Girl and the Fox were of two distinct types: either linear or radial. Linear
gradients were achieved with direct ramp effects, applied to animation in After Effects where
a light source was predominantly overhead. Most gradients were radial, achieved using point
lights cast onto 3D layers in After Effects. Point lights could be quickly pushed closer or pulled
farther away from a digital cel to adjust the intensity and radius of the light’s effect, so that more
immediate falloff could be created for unevenly lit scenes and subtle gradients could be saved
for shots with greater ambient lighting. The center point of the gradient could also be quickly
customized just by moving around the point light in X and Y dimensions.
The combination of visual strategies used in The Girl and the Fox is only one possible configuration.
Any of these methods, combined with other ideas, can serve to create the convincing illusion of
three-dimensional forms in an animated film.15 What is most important is that all of these methods
are digitally designed and implemented. While similar effects can be accomplished in the physical
realm, digital tools make the process faster, cheaper and more customizable.
15 Viewers of The Girl and the Fox have often remarked that they felt like they were watching a 3D CG film rather
than a hand-drawn 2D film. One conjecture for this effect is that the variety of digital simulation methods used in the
film, combined with the lack of familiar outlines, reminds the viewer subconsciously of a 3D CG film.
22
VII. Conclusion
The notion of the paperless animation studio is not a new one. It has been talked of for
some time now, probably since the first computer arrived on the animation scene. However,
until now, the necessary software and hardware have not really been available to make it
a plausible reality. Die-hard traditionalists have maintained that paper-based drawing is
required to achieve the highest quality of drawing and subtlety of line. (White 412)
The vision that Tony White puts forth in his book Animation from Pencils to Pixels: Classical
Techniques for the Digital Animator is, in retrospect, still a bit conservative. Hardware and
software have not only caught up with all the functionally of a traditional animation process,
they have surpassed it in almost every way.
Like live-action film and television, animation has always been tied to commerce. In the world
of independent artists, animation is an open and viable medium suited well for complex and
elaborate artistic expression. In the world of business, however, budgets and deadlines always put
restrictions on what is feasible when creating animated films. During much of the 20th century,
these restrictions led to the large-scale adoption of the most economically feasible tools of the
time. Hand-drawn, cel animation proved to be the best option when it used contours to carry art
from rough stages into clean-up and paint.
Today, however, computer graphics software on desktop systems allows for extreme low-cost
alternatives to traditional systems. Not only do they sidestep the requirement of a line transfer
to cels, removing the practical need for contour lines, digital systems also make the alternative
techniques to contours much more economically feasible. Shading, shadows, textures and camera
effects are all available in a digital compositing environment as an easy means of creating deep,
sophisticated animated styles without the use of contour lines.
23
The contoured aesthetic is still a perfectly viable and effective means of stylizing animated
characters and environments, but its dominance of mainstream animation is finally beginning to
wane. In feature films, contourless aesthetics have already replaced the 2D contour within the last
ten years. Perhaps in the coming decade, the progress made by the 3D contourless formula will
continue to propagate an interest in contourless 2D animation styles. Ultimately, the versatility
and efficiency of digital tools will allow a greater application and acceptance for a diverse
landscape of all visual animation styles.
24
Appendix A: List of Figures
Figure 1.
My Dear Agnes. (1495).
Albrecht Dürer. Pen
drawing in bistre on
white paper
Figure 2.
A digital drawing of an
apple using contour lines
Figure 3.
The apple of Figure 2
without contour lines
25
Figure 4.
The Calling of Saint
Matthew. (1599-1602).
Michelangelo Merisi
da Caravaggio.
Oil on canvas.
Figure 5.
Little Nemo. (1911).
Windsor McCay.
Figure 6.
Lichtspiel Opus I. (1921).
Walther Ruttmann.
26
Figure 7.
Mindscape. (1976).
Jacques Drouin.
Figure 8.
Destino. (2003).
Salvador Dalí, John
Hench, Donald W. Ernst.
Dir. Dominique Monféry.
Figure 9.
Lorenzo. (2004).
Dir. Mike Gabriel.
27
Figure 10.
Baidir. (2009)
Charles Lefebvre,
Slimane Aniss,
Thierry Rivière.
Figure 11.
Duck Heart Teslacoil.
(2009). Tyler J. Kupferer.
Figure 12.
The Girl and the Fox.
(2011). Tyler J. Kupferer.
28
Appendix B: Filmography
101 Dalmatians. Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Wolfgang Reitherman. 1961. Walt Disney
Pictures. MP4 file.
An Optical Poem. Oskar Fischinger. 1937. AVI file.
Baidir (Teaser). Charles Lefebvre, Slimane Aniss, Thierry Rivière. 2009. Web. 2 May 2011.
Destino. Salvador Dalí, John Hench, Donald W. Ernst. Dir. Dominique Monféry. Prod. Baker
Bloodworth, Roy E. Disney. 2003. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010. DVD.
Duck Heart Teslacoil. Tyler J. Kupferer. 2009. Base14. DVD.
Lady and the Tramp. Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske. 1955. Walt Disney
Pictures. MP4 file.
Lichtspiel Opus I. Walter Ruttmann. 1921. AVI file.
Little Nemo. Windsor McCay. 1911. MP4 file.
Lorenzo. Dir. Mike Gabriel. 2004. Video Recording.
Mindscape. Jacques Drouin. National Film Board of Canada, 1976. Web. 3 May 2011.
Syrinx. Ryan Larkin. National Film Board of Canada, 1965. MP4 file.
The Girl and the Fox. Tyler J. Kupferer. Prod. Nicholas W. Allred. 2011. Base14. DVD.
The Owl Who Married A Goose. Caroline Leaf. National Film Board of Canada, 1974. MP4 file.
29
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