Live Action Meets Cartoons

The interaction of live-action and animation has been around almost as long as animation itself, but for the sake of brevity I'll fast forward to its use in more recent feature-length films for my illustrations.

My earliest memory of this genre of animation was in 1977 when I went to see Pete's Dragon. I was fascinated by the idea of an animated cartton character living in a "real" world. And Elliot the dragon was a cartoon in every sense of the word. He had pink hair, eyes that changed color based on his mood, and impossibly small pink wings which somehow enabled him to fly.

Back then putting a cartoon character on screen with real people for a feature length film was a feat in itself. There was no attempt made to light the character beyond altering his paint colors to suit the overall light in the scene. And somehow anything more complicated was not necessary. The movie was very well done, the character was interesting and it worked. It also helped that Elliot had the power to become invisible, so for a significant part his screen time he wasn't even there. That saved a lot of time and money for the ink and paint department!

In 1988 I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The cartoon in a live-action world had come a long way in ten years. And though I never much cared for the story or the characters in this movie, it's look is unique, groundbreaking, and undeniably pivotal in the history of animation. It set off a whole host of copycats, especially in TV commercials. At this point animators were doing an amazing technical job of giving the cartoon characters weight and dimension, though it's still pretty plain that there are some lighting issues. No matter how starkly a scene was lit, the cartoon characters always had a softer, diffused look.

In 1996 Space Jam came along and brought Bugs Bunny and his gang back for a resurgence in popularity. It was the next generation of the same idea, making cartoon characters even more real. Use of computers began to lead to more seamless lighting and overall appearance.

And these days ainmated characters interact in the live-action world all the time, relatively unnoticed. The animation and rendering of 3d characters with computers is so nearly perfect now that it's no big deal to see a live-action movie where the main character is animated.

My vision for Rubik is to let him stand out, to give him the wieght, accurate lighting, and atmospheric presence that 3d animation technology allows, but also to have him remain a cartoon, with some of the exaggerated physical properties associated with cartoon characters, as well as a subtle "hand-drawn" cel outline. His shiny cube surfaces and fairly smooth features would allow for materials which can look realistic, but which also lend themselves to a cartoonish appearance. And the fact that he's a Rubik's Cube makes bright cartoon colors a given. I feel like it's important to keep some contact with Rubik's origin in Saturday Morning animation.