Nouns, Inc.

Animator/director/stick figure genius Don Hertzfeld has a great way of describing the current CG conventional wisdom…

CG models and perfect life drawings leave me cold. All that a realistic, representational drawing of a bicycle tells me is, “bicycle.” There’s so much more mood and psychology to bring to the film if your artwork communicates more than just nouns. It’s why photorealism in animation is usually so boring and pointless. It’s all nouns. Ninety percent of CG animation is all nouns. I can’t feel anything going on behind the image.… If you’re going to strip animation of all its subjective power and just show me what things look like in real life you might as well be shooting live action.

You should read the whole article, though. I’m always inspired by Don’s success as an independent short film maker.

Sadly I don’t have much to show for it so far (for a variety of reasons- I won’t bore you with the details) but I’ve been wanting to do fewer “noun” projects and more “adjective” and “adverb” projects. Especially adverbs. I like adverbs. I have a few adverbs cooking in the lab right now, actually. I should probably start sharing their progress soon.