Abstraction, exaggeration and experimental forms of perspective in 3D animation

Artists within the Fauvist, Expressionist, and Cubist Movements were intrigued by spatial and temporal compression. Portrayal of subject matter through simultaneous exposures of multiple perspectives yielded powerful contradictions to the extant codes of post-Renaissance art. This perceptual flattening inspired future generations to investigate the potential of a medium beyond obvious conventions of interaction between both artist and audience. Beyond the painters‟ canvases, cinema (and most notably, animation) grants artists the powerful medium of time with which to ply their creative experiments with visual abstraction and storytelling. Recently, popular three-dimensional („3D‟) computer-generated feature animated films have lacked this form of abstraction.3D modeling and animation packages immediately present an artist with a creation environment intrinsic in the concept of perspective. The ways in which the artist views and navigates the software environment are through either an orthogonal or a perspective-based virtual camera, with lens focal length distortion, film gate aspect ratio, and framing. Because of this, one can freely create geometries, objects, characters, and composed scenes as they appear similarly in both the real and virtual worlds, with less attention needed on the fundamentals of linear perspective, such as foreshortening or multiple-point perspective.This thesis examines the development of an experimental production approach to 3D animation using techniques such as abstract and exaggerated perspective, non-linear optics, experimental virtual camera controls, and optical illusion. These methods will be the foundation of a project that seeks to attain compositional freedom in 3D animation outside of historical constraints, which has been traditionally restricted by natural laws of visual perception. The goal is not only to develop a unique style meant to push the bounds of “expected” virtual reality (that is, virtual representations of physical objects achieving structural and textural similarity to the natural world), but enhance the already rich means of animated storytelling as a whole by implementing established creation tools in unique ways. This novel approach involves creating controlled child-parent relationships between geometries in a 3D environment and the camera that is viewing them. Two considerable results of this unorthodox animation production‟s application of complex controls over camera-to-geometry orientations are: 1) Virtual scenes of visually-articulate abstracted compositions, and 2) Manipulation of audience perception and sensory expectation.The proposed animated film is expected to vary in visual comprehensibility, in a way that exaggerates the predictable norms prominent in mainstream 3D animation. The result should highlight on the potential for more established media such as two-dimensional („2D‟) animation to inform decisions made and tools created for modern, evolving media. The effectiveness of this radical animation production approach will be evaluated based on the personal assessments and observations of myself and other anonymous individuals. Determinations following the completion of this project will lead to the clarification of how successfully the completed animation performs as an experimental narrative.M.S., Digital Media -- Drexel University, 201