Movement Over Mind

Transcribe from Journal Entry, 30 April 1998

Because of its photographic appearance, the magic of stop-motion animation (dubbed “Claymation” by Will Vinton Studio), is that the mind says, “This cannot move!” but it moves.

The mind says, “This cannot move!” but it moves.

The magic of line-and-cel animation comes when we sit back and realize each image was drawn by human hands. How can such motion and emotion be captured in mere pencil, one minute increment at a time?

In computer animation, the mind says, “This is not real and no human hands touched it,” so it is a kind of robot-controlled marionette, a strange synthetic theatre where characters live their fleeting, impossible lives, electronic grasses blow in a simulated breeze, and a virtual camera probes the viewing pyramid’s colossus of computed secrets.