Hi, I wanted to ask some questions for a survey.
Can you rank this from highest to lowest , what is the quality you prioritise in an animation? Thank you very much in advance.
character design? computer effects? color ? graphics quality? background sounds/music? storyline?
personally i rank them in these order:
1.) storyline
2.) character design
3.) background sounds/music
4.) graphics quality
5.) color
6.) computer effects
I think timing should be in the top three.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
1.) storyline
2.) character design
3.) graphics quality
I think you can have a very nice piece with just these 3 elements.
4.) for CG I'd add lighting here
5.) background sounds/music
6.) color
7.) computer effects
Story is the most important thing in film. (duh)
Everything else is necessary as well though, to support the story.
I think catagorizing film elements in numbers in order of their importance is a bit superfluous, I think.
--Z
From a production POV, prioritieis are important. It's good to know where you want to put your time and money. The list will also change from project to project - I could see "Cars" putting color before music and "Fantasia" putting music before color. Of course both had music and color, but the emphasis was different. Wouldn't you say once they took singing out of animated film, the emphasis on music changed?
When working on personal projects, I think you make choices based on some similar, perhaps unwritten, lists.
There is not a whole lot of wiggle room in this question, your list is about how it works out.
Well, you'll probably get something close to the order you've listed from most creative types. Story usually coming first. (if you've ever read/seen/heard an interview with Brad Bird, you'll hear him chant it like a mantra). Depending on who you ask, character or story might fight for first place.
Actually, although those two should probably stay at the top in most instances, I don't accept the premise that you can rank these elements in a definitive order. I believe what aspect gets x amount of emphasis can depend on the particular project. It all just has to add up to something that's entertaining. Too much story could weigh down a piece that's really more of an action or slapstick comedy. (not animation, but for example some of the best Godzilla movies don't usually make a lot of sense and they are immensely entertaining*...but sometimes there is a lame, groan-inducing "pollution is bad" storyline that just takes up precious monster-kicking ass time.)
Then again, a bunch of great special effects by themselves can get pretty boring without a good story behind them.
* Also, my Godzilla example illustrates how the specific audience can affect what order of importance these things might fall into. Different people are entertained by different things.
Ted Nunes - www.tedtoons.com
I'd say you would have to place equal weight on some things here.
A brilliant film can be reduced to crap with bad or inapropriate sound design, on the other hand great sound won't help a film that doesn't make sense. Character design has to fit the story. So these things are kind of tied together. In the end you will see films that exclude one of these ingredients completely and still works well. I would say spend as much time as possible thinking all of these things through in the planning stage.
To me it's all story. The correct division would be character/plot. And again, while I disagree with some of the things Robert McKee says, I do agree that a good writer/filmmaker needs to make character and plot functions of each other. The character does something or something is done to them, causing a "plot," there are (often unexpected) developments, which effects the character. A plotless 'character piece' is really just a collection of mannerisms. It needs to be a cycle.
And again, color is a part of graphics quality. Recently, I've been studying a lot of Maurice Noble and Phil DeGard's work on the Looney Tunes. Those backgrounds have a lot of character and tell the story to an amazing degree. And editing pace is going to effect design. If you're cutting quickly, everything has to read very quickly. On the other hand, if a BG's on the screen for a long time, it should have more detail. And you should always be aware of the subject of a particular shot. It could be a face or a building or a tree. But whatever it is, it should be the most interesting thing in that shot.
I think it's more important to make sure everything's telling the story in some way than it is attach importance to one thing. If you make a film that relies on character animation (for instance) to the exclusion of backgrounds, music, etc, what you get is a piece that lacks texture.