Is animation supposed to be art or entertainment?
I have been animating nonstop for almost six months now for NATA. I thought I would take this opportunity to address some issues I've been having with the idea of animation.
Without a doubt, the ultimate purpose of animation in this context is to entertain. That is the point. That is why other animators on this site and I animate. There is not a fixed structure required to make an entertaining animation, yet somehow, I find that I always end up looking for one.
Over the past few months, I have reached a point where I only really enjoy an animation if it has a clear, easy to understand plot and evokes some sort of feeling (humorous, sad, etc). Anything that deviates even slightly, I label as "unprofessional", "pretentious", or even just "bad". I do this when I look at my own videos and I do this when I look at other people's. I find that I can't even enjoy going to art galleries any more because I can't help but feel that everything there is just missing something. Maybe that's the correct way to think, and maybe it's not, but either way, it means less enjoyment for me, so as a content consumer as well as creator, I feel like that is a bad thing.
To be fair, I am not sure that animation is the right medium for those "unconventional" forms of entertainment. I think it is unprofessional if you make a movie with the disclaimer that you, the artist, have no idea what it means. I think it is bad if there was supposed to be a plot, but it wasn't thought out well enough for it to make sense. I'm even guilty of making movies like that, especially recently, and I'm trying to get past that and make better movies. But still, I am just not sure that it is a good thing to jump to conclusions immediately like we so often do. Is there anything wrong with having a movie where the plot is abstract and not literal and forces you to consider the other elements of the movie to fully realize the meaning? Is there anything wrong with making movies for oneself, rather than for the audience? Isn't that the point of art? Then again, this is all awfully hypocritical, because I myself jump to the same conclusions I'm ranting about.
I'm curious to know what you all think about this. I don't really know what side is the correct side, but I do know that, for better or for worse, I now look for that specific formula.
Other news
I feel bad for doing this, but I ended up just using some of my friends in real life for the voices in my final NATA entry. It's not that the voices submitted to me were bad or anything. In fact, I was really impressed by all of them, and I now know that Newgrounds is a great resource for voice actors for future projects. However, due to life getting in the way, I just had to go with the most convenient option, for my own sake. Sorry about that, guys, but my priority right now is keeping my head above the water. Next project that needs voices, though, I promise I'll follow through!
I'm not really going to get into why life was getting in the way, but I'm just going to say that everything's been rather overwhelming recently. To (somewhat sarcastically) quote The Catcher in the Rye, "it's so goddamn depressing. It really is." In addition to the more private issues, although NATA has been fun, it does get stressful after six months, which is a contributing factor in the decline of quality in my recent videos. I like the way my current video is going, though, so we'll see what happens with this one. It's funny to think that in a few weeks, this will all be over. It's been great to be a part of, and I hope it has also been great following along.
-Dave
Hikarian
Art versus entertainment... In the world of animation it seems like two sides of the same coin. When I first began animating, I only did it with thoughts on the entertainment, while I've later become so obsessed with the art that I sometimes forget all about the structure. A teacher of mine once said that the most difficult thing about animation is that it is both a form of art as well as a kind of craftmanship at the same time - especially as you get further into it.
Well... If we had a good story, we might as well choose to write it as a book, tell it as a joke, or just make a plain old live action movie out of it. But we choose to animate it instead, and I guess that's where the "art" comes in. Uh, well it could be a kind of paradox, because it really does seem like you can't have a good animated movie (by the old standards) without some kind of structure/entertainment value. On the other hand, it's hard to take seriously if it isn't somewhat well drawn. But even a movie with an abstract plot line doesn't seem like a mistake to me as long at it's intentional...
Pahgawk
Right, I agree with what your teacher said. I guess there's also a distinction between art as a component of animation (i.e. the drawing style) and the whole movie as a work of art, and both of those also require consideration. It's always neat to see a bit of abstraction executed nicely, but then again, I guess it's really hard to pull it off well.