Michael Mercer and Professor Kelly Loosli, Theatre and Media Arts
Brigham Young University’s Animation program is well on its way to becoming legendary. With the combined heroism of the faculty, the students, the administration, and others, there has risen a collegiate experience that rivals that of private art institutions. Yet no university program has room enough for all the knowledge and skills needed for specialty occupations, and so perhaps the greatest success of any education is the transmission of the skills and desire to learn and discover. This has most assuredly been the case with the Animation program. My goal with this research and production project was to obtain for myself an education in what it takes to be an art director and leader in the animation and entertainment industries, and many positions therein require very highly developed artistic abilities. My desire was to discover how to obtain these abilities, obtain them, and then to compile my research into a book that could instruct others in the skills necessary to pursue this path for their own, so that others might follow suit and help to change the decay of moral values in the entertainment industry and in society.
The monies received were utilized for the purchase of needed art supplies, instruction manuals, and traveling.
A report of my experience could be summed up in a word: overwhelming. My initial approach was naïve in its scope. Simply the discovery of what I needed to be doing has proved exceedingly difficult and time consuming. While there are many vital and important concepts that I have learned in the Animation program, in order to obtain a firm understanding of how to build a solid foundation in all aspects of my design skills I have had to piece together wisdom from many instructors, professionals, and disciplines. I have found essential pearls of wisdom from animators, painters, sculptors, industrial designers, comic book artists, illustrators, academic artists, and many others. I do not believe any discipline has a monopoly on essential artistic knowledge and skills, yet I do believe many professionals, whether voluntarily or inadvertently, are unaware of their own weaknesses, and fewer still have the capacity and knowledge to go about conquering their artistic weaknesses without a mentor. It is in the cross-disciplined artist that one finds a truly enlightened soul, and their artwork breathes, and these artists are very few in the world, and fewer still are able to teach what they have learned. Those I have found have almost exclusively been in the animation, comic book, and video game industries.
Thus my quest and thirst for greater knowledge and skill has led me to many philosophies, techniques, mediums, and purposes, and I have determined it is in the production of 3D animations that the greatest amount of these philosophies are capable of being incorporated. In short, my opinion is that the animated film is the most difficult, complex, and powerful art form on the planet, and while in America it is often seen as a child’s medium, its capacity for beauty, depth, and legacy is without bounds. That I thought I could obtain even a child’s grasp of how to create an animated film is, looking back, exceedingly humbling. Nevertheless I have obtained substantial, if superficial, knowledge in many disciplines, and the value of this has been a large increase in my understanding of a great many artistic disciplines and how their respective strengths best integrate into the story-telling of a 3D animation.
My next step was, and continues to be, the acquiring of these skills and techniques. This one has proved difficult because, unlike my initial research, obtaining artistic skill is tedious and time-consuming, and even the best of us can only become expert at one or two aspects of artistic discipline.
And again, I began this journey believing I could master them all—in a year’s time, and produce finished, polished, and professional artwork relating to numerous stories. However, I have been able to give hundreds of hours to the following projects.
I have worked on the development of the following stories: Roak-Aradun, the Girl Without Hands, the Arabian Horse, Izzy, the Wizard of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, the Goldenleaves, and the Spanish Mermaid. These stories have spanned the following mediums: traditional role-playing games, 3D feature animations, 3D short films, children’s books, and comic books. Four of the projects required that I write or adapt scripts. I have storyboarded, designed characters, designed environments, created texture packets, gathered thousands of reference photos, painted color scripts, and spent countless hours studying people and animals from life.
In these various studies I have needed financial assistance in obtaining sketchbooks, art supplies, memberships to zoos, museums, national parks, and gas money for my travels.
I have also used ORCA money to take highly specialized extracurricular classes, most notable of which was an ecorche class where I learned, drew, sculpted, and memorized every bone and muscle of the human body. I can now identify every bump and lump on a human being without textbook aid—something that no one I know, even the instructors who taught me, has been able to accomplish. Now that I have a solid grasp on human anatomy, I am applying this knowledge to the animal kingdom. I am also learning how to deform and caricature these shapes for use in animation.
In my original proposal I intended on creating a publication which would contain the artwork I have created for these various projects as well as guidance, instruction, and wisdom for the aspiring leader in the animation industry. Not only did it prove impossible for the ORCA grant to supply sufficient funds for the publication of a book, but it is impossible for me, in my barely-graduated state, to provide much more than a rudimentary pass at instruction. The knowledge I have learned is the seeds of much more than a book—but the beginning of an entire school of art—and a new and more comprehensive understanding of what aspects of art are valuable and how to go about learning them. Before I can preach these principles I first have to master them, and it is evident to me that it will yet take many years. Thus I must satisfy myself, and hopefully the demands of the ORCA administration with the great many doors I have opened and the solid foundation which I have built by my thorough research.