01x04 - The Duality of Appeal

[bunniefuu]

[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]