{"id":2883,"date":"2015-08-06T14:29:41","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T18:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/?p=2883"},"modified":"2015-10-02T14:53:19","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T18:53:19","slug":"from-sketch-to-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/2015\/08\/06\/from-sketch-to-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"From Sketch to Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

In their work on Big Hero 6<\/em>, Frozen<\/em>, and other films, CFA alums are stretching the limits of animation and imagination<\/h2>\n

By Lara Ehrlich | Photo courtesy of Disney<\/h4>\n

Banner image: For <\/span><\/em>Big Hero 6<\/span>, Disney created San Fransokyo (pictured), the largest set piece ever made for an animated feature; it\u2019s populated by hundreds of thousands of citizens.<\/span><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

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\"Rocks<\/p>\n

For her indie feature film Rocks in My Pockets<\/em>, animator Signe Baumane developed the story and created storyboards\u2014thumbnail sketches that illustrate the staging for each scene\u2014before she and Wendy Cong Zhao (\u201911, COM\u201911) added color, vocals, music, movement, and effects. Courtesy of Wendy Cong Zhao and Signe Baumane<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The man on the computer screen<\/strong>, buried to his shoulders in thick, white goo, strains to move. His shadow looms behind him, breaks apart, and melts into the distance as he slogs inexorably to the edge of the frame. It\u2019s an animated image, or gif, and the artist bringing him to life is Wendy Cong Zhao<\/a>, who achieves the illusion of strenuous movement in a series of 34 line drawings. In this and other gifs she shares on her blog, the classically trained painter is beginning to experiment with animation.<\/p>\n

This experimentation has led her to rethink how she creates art, and to deviate from the idea that a single artwork is the end goal. When studying fine art, she says, \u201cwe work for a long time on one drawing or painting. Then, we hang it up and take a long time to study it.\u201d In animation, however, the illusion of movement is achieved by connecting tens, hundreds, thousands\u2014hundreds of thousands\u2014of individual drawings. \u201cWhen they\u2019re all moving together, each drawing is only seen for a split second,\u201d she says. \u201cEach could be very good, but it\u2019s not about that. On screen, you see the film as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

The illusion of movement has captivated audiences since the first animated film. J. Stuart Blackton\u2019s Enchanted Drawing<\/em><\/a> (1900) featured a tuxedoed man coaxing chalkboard drawings to life through stop-motion animation. From the costume to the staging, Blackton presents animation as a magic trick, and in the decades since, even as audiences and films have become more sophisticated, the spell holds.<\/p>\n

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