Animation Practice, Process & Production - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2025

This study examines the use of enhanced trackable markings in semi-automatic animation rotoscoping with EbSynth, an open-source free software, to uncover new efficiencies and streamline the animation workflow. Unlike generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as Runway, Stable Diffusion and Sora, which use machine learning (ML) and neural network (NN) techniques, EbSynth uses example-based synthesis (EBS) algorithms to create images for animation sequences based on one or more keyframe inputs. This research examines how distinctive facial markings – dotted markers, contour lines and character-specific markings – affect the manual labour involved in frame-by-frame editing in semi-automatic rotoscoping, particularly in scenarios where the animated character’s design significantly deviates from the live-action actor’s facial features. Through a series of controlled experiments with an actress portraying various facial movements and expressions, we analysed the effectiveness of these markings in improving the accuracy and reducing the need for subsequent adjustments in rotoscoped sequences. This research addresses a gap in empirical studies regarding the practical application of semi-automatic tools in animation, particularly in optimizing the rotoscoping process. By detailing the impact of character-specific trackable markings, this study contributes to the academic field while also providing practical guidelines for animators seeking to integrate semi-automation technologies such as EbSynth into their creative processes.

This article examines the effects of video compression on the believable integration of computer-generated (CG) characters among live-action film elements. Compression is requisite for the delivery of moving-image content to a variety of end-user applications, including cinema, online streaming, Blu-ray and digital video files. The most common standards for compressing consumer-targeted video content include H.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and H.265/High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), each of which provide separate pros and cons depending on the type of footage and the degree of compression required. This research investigates a previously unexplored question: to what extent does the type and degree of compression affect how well virtual actors (vactors) appear to coexist within profilmic scenes? By extension, what visual results linked to compression have the greatest impact on compromising a vactor’s believable integration within a shot? Analyses of two feature films and a web-based advertisement at various compression strengths provide data that strongly suggests that compression is more detrimental to the believability of CG vs. profilmic characters within the same shot. Additionally, as compression strength increases, CG characters become more graphically abstracted, negatively impacting the quality of their visual integration, whereas profilmic actors remain recognizably human and plausibly integrated – a phenomenon I dub ‘epiphanic resolution’. This research provides novel insights regarding the relationship between the finished video product as delivered by a film company vs. how it may be perceived when viewed in different formats by a variety of audiences.

Definitions of animation often imply the existence of static objects which are brought to life by an animator, implying that objects pre-exist the forces that move them. Effects animation (FX) is common in film, games and visualization but does not easily fit these common definitions. FX includes the simulation of natural phenomena such as water, fire and smoke. In this type of animation, movement is primary and pre-exists objects. In contrast to the common idea that FX artists are not animators and FX is not really animation, this article argues that 3D animation can be different and do more if we take FX as paradigmatic of the medium. The article draws on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of intensive difference and describes processes used in three of the author’s recent animation projects. By bringing FX workflows into productive dialogue with Deleuze’s thought, the article aims to inspire new ways of approaching 3D animation production and pedagogy.

Historically, alcohol and the sport of snooker have been consumed together by both spectators and players. Alcohol, functioning as a drink of social lubrication, joy and emotional distancing, has long served the game in numerous ways. For me personally, the smell of stale ale and the atmosphere of snooker are entangled. The sport conjures vivid childhood memories of being in clubs, where the scents are trodden into carpets within rooms where only the tables are lit. The green baize glows warmly, and casts illumination onto players’ faces as they lean forward to take their shots. This article outlines the methods and processes that shaped God Bless You (2023), a digital 3D animated film and interactive installation. The project explored my childhood experiences of growing up around snooker environments and the above themes, translating compressed memories and sensory reflections through motion capture performance and experimental immersive processes.

In this essay, I map a maze of practice, detailing the research and production of the short animated film The Looking Game, completed during my MA at the Royal College of Art in 2023. The Looking Game is a complex film with faux-operational, faux-interactive and structuralist elements. Executed in paper cut-outs, it depicts a fictitious gameplay environment inspired by eye-tracking. The narrator’s instructions command a set of large red roving dots, which represent the visual attentions of a fabricated audience. The dots obey instruction where possible, until the game becomes unplayable. The narrator breaks from her function, making mistakes and attempting to connect. A simulation of a simulation, the film demonstrates animation as a means of imitation and a dialogic audience-film relation. The labyrinth is applied as a metaphor in the structuring of the film, and in revealing the architecture of my experimental animation practice.

Paul Klee’s 1922 work The Twittering Machine depicts four birds perched on a contraption, a handle ready to turn and make them sing. The title seems to suggest a torrent of tunelessness, an unhappy marriage of mechanization and nature. A good metaphor for our new encounter with generative AI. This article asks how generative AI can inform experimental animation practice, detailing a year of exploratory work across hand drawing and AI animation. The human–machine encounter explored here is notably different from the digital making experience, operating less like a linear, rational process and more like a virtual chemical exchange, prone to blowing up at any moment. The mysterious products of generative AI switch between wonder and cliché, appearing as ‘ifantasms’ and then evaporating back into the latent space. The words – first generative AI condition – textual instructions given to an un-seen other to produce never-seen before outputs – present a new paradigm for how word and image interact, a novel outcome delivered for every written wish. The arrival of this nominally original artefact, concocted from a mass of amalgamated data, brings us to a crossroads, an ‘access-all’ moment in which any of us can summon up sophisticated images, regardless of individual skill or knowledge. But, doing something easily is not the same as understanding something well. The words we use and the outcomes we claim can easily produce a stasis, a feedback loop of borrowed virtuosity and aesthetic cliché. As creative investigators, what moves can we make to get beyond the AI slop? This practice-focused piece charts a year of ‘messing with the machine’, a series of experimental image and animation tests devised to establish rules for engagement with generative AI. Here, generative AI is explored as a form of chance method, best suited to producing unruly outcomes and disrupting linear approaches. Discussion is contextualized in relation to a digital animation practice, noticing a new form of ‘material resistance’ in the AI encounter. The work under discussion is infused with the absurdist spirit of Robert Breer and George Brecht, John Cage and Erik Satie, an exhortation to open up Pandora’s box and make this surprising thing do surprising things.