Voir (2021) s01e04 Episode Script

[film projector whirs]
[whistling music plays]
[man] I was particularly thinking
about appeal.
Like, what makes something appealing?
Why are you drawn to something,
and something else "Meh, meh"?
I noticed that my wife has got
this instinctual sense of harmony.
We were sitting at the breakfast table,
and there was a salt shaker,
and I just moved it just a little bit out.
So she came back and sat down,
and we just started talking.
And she just kinda went
[squeaks]put it back.
And I said, "Why'd you do that?"
"Why'd I do what?"
"Well, that. You just had to adjust
the salt shaker and the sugar bowl."
"I don't know, it just feels better."
It's like, yes, see? That's it!
[Taylor] In animation,
we use this word, "appeal."
And it means, well, a lot of things.
To me, a character
who is appealing must be imperfect.
'Cause it doesn't mean
that it's cute or pretty.
[scoffs]
It's a mystery.
[Taylor] Most people associate it
with the Disney princesses
or adorable animals.
But it is deeper than that.
And when it comes to artists,
we tend to use one definition.
If I had to say it simply,
I'd say, "Appeal is harmony."
When we're creating art,
we are creating harmonic chords.
And there's music to our drawings,
and you can hear it. You can feel it.
[Taylor] Think of it this way,
there is a certain relationship
between all of the elements of a face.
If I move Sailor Moon's eyes like this,
I'm creating an imbalance.
Same if I were to move her nose.
Every time I change one thing,
I have to rebalance
her face to feel harmonious.
That's appeal.
Or take a look at Cruella de Vil.
Her figure is made up
of triangles and squares.
By contrast, her coat and hair are made up
of these sweeping curves.
All together, these straights
and curves balance each other out.
This is also appealing.
[Glen] You can have an appealing monster
that's communicating aggressiveness
and danger and anger.
Or a little baby'sinnocence has got
appeal in its sweetness and openness.
And it's more than just harmony.
It's harmony with a message.
It's saying something to you.
[Taylor] Appeal is a universal concept
found across many cultures.
It applies to heroes, villains,
tiny soot sprites, a dot and a line.
But over the years, something interesting
has happened to female protagonists.
[woman] I think sometimes
the word "appealing" gets misused
to try to create perfection.
When it comes to executives and marketing
and and that kind of a thing, they
they get those two mixed up.
Because, I think, they're looking
more to the business side of it
and what will sell.
If it's a it's a female image,
it has to be beautiful.
It's like, having the perfect hair,
the perfect design, the beauty,
things that they consider to be appeal.
When really, it's the appeal
of who the character is,
and then you work that design around that.
[Taylor] Let's compare female characters
with their male counterparts.
For men, you'll see a decent variety
of shapes and sizes.
But for women, they tend to fall within
a much more narrow range of options.
Usually, a round face
with big eyes and a small nose.
There are some exceptions,
but there is also an overwhelming trend.
[Brenda] And I think we're beginning
to push out of that,
but it's it's hard, because the audience
has been conditioned to expect that.
So so it's gonna take a little bit,
but we're inching that way.
[Taylor] All of these designs have appeal.
And just because they're popular
does not mean they lack artistic merit.
The question is, why do so many stay
within a particular style of femininity?
What's driving the decision?
Art or business?
Every animated character is influenced
by this push and pull.
Appeal is the end goal.
How we get there is a different story.
[dramatic music plays]
[man] My full name would be
Luis Fernando Gadea Rodriquez.
That's a Spanish name.
I go with Luis Gadea. It's easier.
The inspiration that I like the most
would be in the everyday.
If I'm in the train,
every single person is a character.
You see how they dress.
You see the colors they use,
the shapes that they're defined with.
And then I create a library
in my head of things
that I could use for potential characters.
In animation, it's always taught similar,
that you want round shapes.
Very big eyes.
A specific space in between the eyes.
And that defines, uh,
an appeal to the drawing, right?
If you wanna go really cartoony,
they push the head a lot, way bigger,
which is sometimes even bigger
than the the rest of the body, right?
I learned that, that I should use curves.
And yeah, it's true. It works.
But can you get that appeal
with just straight lines?
That's a challenge.
[Taylor] And that's the challenge today.
We've asked Luis to help us design
a female character
that uses some
of these straight and edgy elements.
While he's doing that,
let's look at some of the basics.
Designing a character starts out
by playing with basic shapes.
This character's silhouette
is three circles.
But if you change two of them
into triangles, now who is it?
With a little rearranging,
these shapes can express different ideas.
Sometimes an artist will use
one dominant shape.
Other times, they'll combine
multiple shapes.
A silhouette is an outline,
an idea of the character.
But what really defines
a character is the line.
A line can be straight, thin, thick,
jagged, or curved.
A line can convey personality.
Or an emotion.
The line can be used
to communicate everything
from the simplistic to the complex.
And every artist has their own approach.
Something I look for in my design is
to dramatize change of direction.
A French curve is literally a a curve
that starts here and rolls up this way
and then goes down into a straight
and then into a curve again.
A French curve is
in in the design of a humerus
in the femur.
It's all through nature, every tree.
You draw a tree,
and it's actually spiraling upwards.
It's just this beautiful, rhythmic curve.
And it becomes the, uh the building block
for appeal, I think.
And you are discovering it
and applying it to to your work.
[dramatic music plays]
[Taylor] So here are
three takes of our character.
We've named her Clio.
Now the question is,
which one do we like better?
[Luis] Let's start with "A."
On "A," I went
with a more exaggerated figure.
You can tell the the feet
are very long, right?
And they have a specific shape.
Let's go to "B."
If you see the little sketch
on the side, it's based on a bottle.
It has big hips, a straight line,
and then it goes two straight lines
towards the end.
And then for letter "C," I went
with a more, like, odd shape for the face.
The ears, they have a more,
like, straight lines than curves.
[Taylor] After giving it some thought,
we've decided to go with option "B."
And even though we like this version
of Clio, it's not quite there yet.
So we have to give Luis
As an artist, I need to be able to draw
that character X many times.
Like, if I need to do it a hundred times,
I I need to be able to do it.
[Taylor] Most of the notes we gave Luis
were to make Clio more animation-friendly.
[Luis] You can do an exercise. It's tough.
Do a very nice drawing
that you feel proud then just rip it up.
Let's see if you could do that.
If you are able to do that,
you're good to go.
[Taylor] After many tweaks
and many drawings,
we have a version of Clio
that we're happy with.
But there's something we're leaving out.
Because in most situations,
there's at least one other factor
that comes into play,
merchandising.
[Neil Armstrong]
That's one small step for man
[Taylor] It's 1969,
and there's a new cartoon on ABC.
[theme music plays]
Hot Wheels! ♪
[Taylor] It's called Hot Wheels,
and it's financed
by the toy company Mattel.
Other cartoons had corporate sponsors.
Busch does it.
You can't say "beer" better than Busch.
[Taylor] But Hot Wheels
w as something different.
It began as a toy
and then became a cartoon.
The FCC criticized it
as a 30-minute commercial,
and after two seasons, ABC canceled it.
Twelve years later, a new head
of the FCC was appointed, Mark S. Fowler.
All these elements, networks, groups
[Taylor] He deregulated
a lot of TV standards,
including children's programming.
So toy companies tried once again.
First, with Strawberry Shortcake.
And then with
He-Man ♪
[announcer]
And the Masters of the Universe!
[Taylor] He-Man was a smash hit
and completely changed
the way cartoons were made.
Now, a toy company
could come up with an idea
and create a cartoon to sell it.
In North America today,
toys and cartoons are closely tied
together from the beginning.
There's even a word for it.
How "toyetic" can you get?
[announcer] "Toyetic" is a word created
by marketing people.
It means an object or device,
featured in a cartoon,
that could easily become
a mass-produced toy.
[Taylor] Female characters trend
towards this version of femininity,
because companies
are responding to what we buy.
If Clio had to be a toy,
there would be meeting after meeting
to get her just right.
She would have to be pretty
and glamorous but relatable.
Clumsy but not awkward. Smart
but not too smart. Funny but not silly.
Girly but also sporty.
Aspirational but approachable.
Flirty but not sexy.
She would need to be everything
to everyone.
There are exceptions
to this way of doing business,
and we happen to have the freedom
to simply design Clio as a character.
So we decided to try something else.
What if we took Clio and made her CG?
CG animation is highly specialized.
From modeling to rigging to lighting,
each process has its own artist
to help recreate
the illusion of life in 3D space.
But the first problem
of turning Clio into CG is the very thing
that made her distinctive, her silhouette.
[Luis] Because normally, it's really hard
to find characters with these sharp edges,
so I just decided to go for it
and see how it looks.
[Taylor] If we were animating Clio in 2D,
this wouldn't really be a problem.
All we would do
is draw her slightly differently,
depending on the angle.
Take a look at Clio's chin here
versus here.
If we look at her hair on the left
versus the one on the right.
These little inconsistencies help keep her
appealing from one drawing to another.
[Luis] Well, I guess in 2D
you can animate anything.
So in a few frames, you can just cheat it.
That's the beautiful thing of 2D.
You can do whatever you want.
There's a fluidity that you can get
to traditional animation
and a and a spontaneity
in the pencil work
that you're not gonna get in CG.
You can still create that illusion,
but it's just harder to get to
because you have to break
perfection to get that.
And that's the tricky part.
I, as a character designer, need to know
that this character
needs to look correct in all angles.
[Taylor] One of the difficult parts
of modeling Clio
will be preserving
the straight and edgy elements.
So if we have a sharp bend in the hip,
it might look good in 2D from this angle,
but turn it into 3D,
and it might not look right.
The computer wants to make
things mathematically perfect.
So we have to go in there
and push the computer to make
something that feels more natural,
while maintaining
the feeling of the original drawing.
[Glen] If you're dealing
with computer animation,
you are dealing with the actual form,
and it matters, the edges of the form.
There's an organic edge
that's an appealing design
that's gotta be there.
Like, right now, it's
a little bit too high, so, like, the
You want it lower?
Yeah, so, like, it flows this way into it.
I can do a draw-over, so
[Glen] And I realized you can't just tell
people in CG, "Make it more appealing."
No, you've gotta be very specific,
like the corners of a mouth
just drove me crazy when I looked at CG.
I found myself looking in the mirror
and seeing the way
the corner of my mouth curves,
and I discovered that Leyendecker
had already been doing that.
And corners of the mouth
were the darkest parts,
because you could see
the teeth setting in there,
and there was, like, a little curve
that was in the corners of the mouth.
And when I was designing,
uh, like Rapunzel for Tangled,
I started designing those kinds
of little things in there, and
Design is design. You just have to know
which medium you're working in.
[Taylor] With everyone
having specialized jobs,
it's very easy to cut yourself off.
Somebody who does rigging might never talk
to someone who does lighting.
And because of all of this,
collaboration is even more important.
[Brenda] There's a growth that happens
with collaboration.
The energy, the back-and-forth,
the the ping-pong, you know,
"What about this?" "No, what about that?"
"What about this?" "Yeah, and then"
"That's a stupid idea, but ""Oh, okay."
- Always in the middle of that.
- Of course.
[Brenda] It's just, it's invigorating,
and it's inspiring.
- You don't wanna
- We'll start to lose the shape and
[Brenda] I am a director,
but I'm not the auteur.
[woman] She starts off
in this conference room
[Brenda] No director
is the absolute end-all,
be-all of everything of a film.
And that was a shape,
and at least the framing
[dramatic music plays]
[woman] Animators really like
to cheat things to camera.
So we don't [laughs]
We don't like to animate
how it should look in, like, 360 space
because flesh squishes
and geometry doesn't.
[Taylor] Animating in CG
is all about understanding
how computers interpret 3D space.
Sometimes the computer comes up
with very strange ideas,
which can only be solved by yelling at it.
- [Luis] What?
- [woman] I think it's broken!
What's that?
I don't know.
[Taylor] The end goal
of character design today
is the same as it was a hundred years ago,
to hand it off to an animator.
And this is where another aspect
of appeal comes in.
When the still image starts to move.
[Brenda] One of the things I think
a truly good CG animator has to have
is the ability to think imperfectly.
In traditional animation,
it's all about imperfections.
If you want a certain expression,
you can elongate the eyeball,
you can make the mouth go weird,
you can, you know,
make the face to weird things
or the hands go "bloop"
further than they need to pop things.
And the human eye won't see it as that,
but they'll feel it.
[Taylor] Animators are imitating life,
and the job is to make these characters
move and behave in a believable fashion.
The limits come from how much time
and money we have
and how far everyone is willing to push.
[Brenda] And I pushed really hard
with Merida.
Oh, Mom.
I was, like,
I want her face to get [grunts]
scrunched and pissed off, you know?
And I want her to be able
to really express herself.
[pants and grunts]
[Glen] Appeal is something
that's actually speaking to you.
It's not just in the design. It's,
"Do I connect?
Do I relate to this moment?"
- Will you come down to dinner?
- [Belle] No.
Don't animate what the character's doing.
Animate what the character is thinking,
what the character is feeling.
Crawl into their skin.
Live in their skin and
That's what the people
are gonna connect with.
That's where the appeal
is going to come from.
I mean, it's why Belle yells at the Beast
when he yells at her.
It's like, "Oh, I'm not taking that."
That hurts!
If you'd hold still,
it wouldn't hurt as much!
[Brenda] 'Cause I had a
It's like, I have a temper.
If someone does something to me,
I'll react!
And and I think, you know,
kids people found that relatable.
[Taylor] Appeal isn't just about
what a character looks like
but how they make us feel.
And when we talk about appeal,
we are also talking about taste,
which is subjective and hard to quantify.
Regardless, the end goal
of this entire process
is to make a character
that we hope you connect with.
I wish people knew
how much we put into our work.
How much what we do is based on discovery.
If you are animating a character,
you've invested yourself in them.
When I was a kid, I had a terrible temper.
You know, and when you got
a bad temper like that,
you know that that's not the way
you really wanna be.
But you feel like you're kinda
trapped inside this beastie body there.
When it came time to animate the Beast,
I knew what that was like.
A prince is trapped in there.
And you can see it in his eyes.
[no audible dialogue]
I wish people knew
how much we put into what we animate,
that they're really getting a glimpse
into the animator themselves.
[mystical music plays]