Characters on the Grid: Elements of Style

Draw It Like This...

Animation can take a lot of forms.  The computer and the artistic mind work together to create all kinds of possibilities that weren't available decades ago.  Often, clients come to Novamation MEDIA knowing exactly what they want their animation to do, but they aren't quite sure how they want their animation to look.  Our animation projected time and cost is often calculated based on the complexity of the design.  At Novamation MEDIA, complexity is measured by Detail and Realism.  We can see a comparison of detail and realism by looking at a single object represented in different ways, like this plant.

To the extreme left is a photo of a plant.    It has a high level of realism because it is real.  It is a literal representation of a plant with nothing left to the imagination, and this also gives it a high level of detail.  The flecks in the soil and veins in the leaves have areas where the light illuminates and shades them.  It looks like a plant because it is a plant.  Next to it is a computer generated 3D model plant.  It has full shading, shadow and texture.  It looks like a plant because it has everything that the photo has including light and shade.

The more detail we take out of the representation, the more your brain needs to fill in the blanks.  The demonstration drawing of a plant doesn't have as much detail or realism as the 3D model, but you can still tell its a plant.  The image on the extreme right is an abstract drawing of a plant.  The "S" shaped green line looks like a stalk, and the two marks on the top look like leaves.  Your brain has to tell you this is a plant, but it is abstract or stylized with little detail or realism.  Your brain tells you it's a plant, but you would never think it's a REAL plant.

In this example, we increase and decrease detail and realism at the same time, but the truth is, you can separate detail and realism so that you can increase one without increasing the other.  In fact, you can even move them in opposite directions.  At Novamation MEDIA, we take detail and realism and place them on a grid that we call the McCloud rating system.  We use this to rate the complexity of the animation we are creating, and even use it to help calculate our project bidding.

Why "McCloud"

We call our rating system "McCloud" because it is based loosely on something called the picture plane, created by author Scott McCloud.  On McCloud's picture plane, Realism and detail are at their highest in the bottom right corner.  As you move to the right, detail drops.  As you move up, realism drops.   At the very top, images become so abstract that your brain can't tell what they represent.  At the far right, images aren't even images anymore, and words need to be used.

At Novamation MEDIA, we take the picture plane and turn it into a five by five grid, that doesn't come to a point at the top.  That's because our images can become abstract without losing realism, as we'll see.

Artist - Verica Hupe

We don't commonly animate A1 characters, but if we did, they would look like this one.  This is a Daz3 character done by Verica Hupe, who is not a Novamation MEDIA designer, and that's why this image isn't featured on the grid.  This character is about as close to a real human as a character can get without being an actual photograph.  She has individual hairs, the light on her skin has subsurface scattering and her eyes have a specular sheen.  Her body dimensions are exactly those of a real human.

Joyce is not quite human.  She has the same body dimensions of a real human, and she has individual hairs, but her flat skin tone and simple eyes make her less realistic, so she has less detail than a Daz Character.

Katie is a waitress, and Meg is about to order dinner.  They're kind of human, and kind of not.  These characters have detailed clothes and hair, and sometimes even have actual human photographs as faces, but their blocky build only makes them look real from far away.  They're great for architectural renderings and as extras in a crowd.

Cartoon representations of people, or realistic representations of toys.  This image is both.  The detail of the people was reduced to create these caricature toys.  Then the toys were rendered with a high quality.  The people were made abstract, but the toys have the highest level of detail.

David works in an animation design room and was created for a promotional piece.  This character is clearly a cartoon.  He has large, cartoon eyes, his body is not proportioned like a real human, and he is far less realistic.  However, he is realistically shaded with a distinct skin texture.  The cloth of his shirt is a detailed knit, and each strand of his hair is individual.  This is the high level of detail that can be expected from a 3D rendered character

Arnold was created for a character animation called "Everybody Dance".  Like David, he also has cartoon proportions.  Unlike David however, Arnold looks more like a well shaded cell cartoon character than a 3D rendered character. 

This is a method known as Two and a half D, and there are examples throughout the McCloud scale. 

Noah has flat color with almost no shading.  His proportions are like a cartoon character with large eyes and head.  He is clearly an animated illustration.  Noah is also Two and a Half D, with less shading detail than Arnold.  Noah is our last example on level C, but C's can have can have far less detail than Noah.

Hipster Joe has no features at all, he looks hand drawn but you can clearly see that he is a man with a beard holding a cup of coffee.  He looks hand-drawn, but he is Two and a Half D just like Noah, and bears the same detail number, even though he is the next level of abstraction from Noah.  Characters at this level of abstraction are used mostly for presentations and infographics.  They usually suggest a person type instead of an individual.

Steve is an IPM professional using a drone to perform a building inspection.  He is featureless, like Hipster Joe, but he has far more shading and detail, Steve is full 3D so he is both detailed and abstract.  Steve was designed for a training animation.  Like Joe, who is a hipster, Steve represents an archetype rather than an actual character.  

Earl is basically Steve with more detail.  Earl is colored like a cartoon, but is rendered a bit better than Steve.  Earl is basically still an archetype, but his the face and detail give Earl more personality than Joe or Steve, so he can fulfill the job of archetype or a character.  

Most story-line explainer videos ask for characters like Earl.

This is a jumble of geometric shapes, that your brain tells you is a little girl.  She's about as abstract as you can get a group of shapes and still have the audience see anything like a character.  Cartoon shaded like Hipster Joe and Noah, but far more abstract than either of them, this is more an icon than an actual character.  She was created to represent a statistic in an animated infographic.

That's not to say that something abstract can't have a high level of realism.  This is the same stylized little girl, but she is texturized and shaded with shadows and reflections.  She still looks abstract, but now your brain tells you that she's a sculpture.  This character icon has a high level of abstraction, and high detail.

To the right of the picture plane is where Scott McCloud puts text, and that's where you'll also find text on our scale.  We'll cover text-only animations in a different post.