We are living in some crazy and fairly stressful times. The past two weeks have been both insanely hectic and extremely boring for me as I struggled to regain a sense of normalcy with my university switching to online courses and sending all of the freshmen living on campus back home. Now that I’ve finally settled back in, I’ve been able to motivate myself to write this post. With that being said, I apologize for the long wait for this post and the next one will be out some time this week.
Photo by me, Kennedy Hearn.
As hectic as my life has been, it’s nice to get back into my work flow. Thankfully, I’ve had the idea for this blog post for quite some time and I finally get to write it. I absolutely adored this movie and I feel as though the animation techniques utilized by all 27 head animators and their 10 assistants are a great model to showcase how tedious stop motion animation truly is.
If you haven’t yet seen Isle of Dogs, I recommend you do so before reading this post as there will likely be some spoilers, but I will not be focusing on the story as much as I will on the actual animation of the film and the long, detailed process the crew went through to bring the film and its characters to life.
Below is a link to the trailer for the film.
Wes Anderson, the director of this film, is well known for his very unique style of framing for shots, dialogue, and character building. Isle of Dogs is not his first rodeo when it comes to stop motion animation as he has also directed The Fantastic Mr. Fox, another great film.
Anderson’s style is still very prominent in this film with the symmetry of his shots, his color palettes, and his use of tracking, despite using a difficult medium to portray his story. Anderson and his team of animators must have a keen eye for detail as each shot must be just right to ensure that the shot after it is continuous with the film.
For the animators, they were not only tasked with creating the puppets for each character, but also for creating each scene and making sure that every detail such as lighting, movement, and framing were accurate for what the scene calls for, maintaining Anderson’s style of storytelling along the way.
This, to me, is extremely fascinating. Stop motion animation is already difficult enough, but to maintain the small details that make up Anderson’s style in such a difficult medium takes a lot of attention to detail and careful planning to ensure that shots are framed in a specific way, that the palette fits his style, and many other details. While most of his style is noticable in the dialogue and narrative surrounding his characters and screenwriting, I still appreciate the animators’ ability to envision the scene in the way Anderson imagined it and their ability to bring this world to life.
The creation of scenes and characters themselves is a long, difficult process. Ultimately, each character needed multiple faces that either made different expressions, had bruises, or with cut outs for different mouth inserts for when the characters are speaking. Each of these individual pieces were handcrafted, as opposed to 3D printed as some other productions have chosen to do. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to 3D print the individual pieces as it saves the animators time. In this case, animators became extremely in touch with the characters they were creating as they had to meticulously recreate their character multiple times, and likely had to analyze the shots they created just as meticulously, if not more.
Speaking of the scenes they created, there is an incredible amount of detail in some of them, which is mind-blowing to me. There are some scenes of the “trash island” in the film that contains vast piles and mountains of trash. The amount of texture in these scenes amazes me becuase I cannot fathom how long it must have taken to create such a background. The same applies to fight scenes we see throughout the movie and their clouds of smoke that seem to dissipate just as smoke would normally, or the large explosion that occurs within the movie and the debris and fallout that behaves as it normally would in a real explosion.
Below is a short video that showcases some of the elements I mentioned above, as I think the artists deserve every bit of acclaim for the work they did, as I cannot begin to grasp how they did their job and made it look so effortless and technically perfect.
Animation, overall, is a long, tedious process that should not be taken lightly as these animators worked diligently and tirelessly to ensure that their work was perfect.
Each of the dogs were created by making a silicone mold and placing the armature inside which allows animators to move the puppets in a way that their movements will be firm and solid. Then they hand punched millions of hairs into the dogs and manipluated them in scenes to keep it as realistic as possible. In windy scenes, you can actually see the dogs’ fur move with the wind.
Overall this movie took two years to complete, from the beginning pitch to creating and animating the characters, to recording the voiceovers from the actors, to editing the film and scenes together, and ultimately releasing it.
I personally believe this film is a great example of expert animation, and the clip I’m embedding below shows the most difficult scene the animators had to animate, which took six months to do so.
I hope for all new filmmakers or just for the average film watcher, that this post was able to give you a better sense of appreciation for the hardwork and diligence that this production crew put in to this film to make it as beautiful as it is.
In the mean time, I’ll be attempting to apply a similar level of hardwork and diligence to my countless assignments and group projects.
Until next time, you can find me peering through the viewfinder.
Through the Viewfinder 