Thursday 4 December 2014

What is Animation?

I recently stumbled upon an interview with Bob Godfrey by Martin Pickles in Cartoon Brew and I realised how similar my philosophy of animation is to his. I truly admire Disney style 2D animation and I am in awe at the expertise of the nine old men, but I do love the simplicity of quirky non realistic animation. I love the work of Ivan Maximov and Michaela Pavlatova to name a few.

In the interview (which took place at Godfrey's Acme Studio in the East End of London in 2006), Godfrey said:
“Well animation is not live action, I think that says it. Anything that is not live action which is actuality but is drawn is animation. And the thing about animation is that there are absolutely no rules. I mean these schools that are springing up all over the place ‘How to Walk, ‘How to Run,’ based on live action. How a live action man runs, how a live action person walks, you know, people in animation don’t have to walk, I mean they don’t even have to have legs, they can go up in the air.
“In animation you can do absolutely everything and I said I think that the only two restrictions are your bank balance and your mind. And, well, your imagination that you can grow, you know, providing the budget will allow you to. And when people are confronted with this absolute freedom they tend to freak out, they tend to say ‘We want limitations, we want gravity.’ Basically, there is no gravity in animation, animation is free, it can fly, it can go anywhere. And I don’t think enough people realize this, they’re too earth bound. It’s not earth bound, it’s fantasy.”


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