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Image
Hovering somewhere between airbrushed sterility, wall-stencilled sharpness and manga-styled appearance, the look of 10 Transforming Youths's faces employs Pop-effects to iconicise the individual portraits which comprise the animation. The faces of the 5 boys and 5 girls exude a calmly disquieting passivity. No action or even desire is suggested by their faces: indeed, their 'emptiness' is exactly what youth marketers/branders would most like youth to be. In this sense, their sullen lack of presence is perfectly achieved via the graphic flatness of their chiselled features.While the faces are distinct from each other - replete with racial suggestions in their visage and physiognomy - their pupils are completely identical in size. Their placement within the panorama frame is also fixed, aligning their movement with robotic precision. Like mannequins of ideal youth, they sail through life and space with neither reaction nor response to the void of their surroundings.
But aside from these conceptual concerns, the bulk of the animation has centres on the emotional tonality of each youth. Each youth I now regard as an individual character. Some of them physically age by gaining weight and appearing puffy; others oppositely become thin and withered. Some of them will appear anxious in their transformed state; others will appear comfortable – jolly, even. 10 Transforming Youths proposes the notion of ‘aging’ as something to be interpreted not simply in years, but in the effect of having lived life. Some of the animation’s characters thus appear to have lived hard, leaving their transformation to evidence degrees of either physical or psychological wear. Others appear to have lived a happy life, carrying their age with grace, comfort and wisdom. These aspects of the youths’ characterisation is subtle, but it has been an important facet in determining the individual approaches to transformation with each youth. Ultimately, it is the nuance of transformation in each individual youth that the work aims to impart to an audience. While the work has a high-impact visual appeal due to its adopted visualisation, the audience’s contemplation of the youths’ transformation is envisaged as the optimal experience.
Animation
10 Transforming Youths employs a technique of animation and compositing originally developed in works like The Body Malleable and Vox. Hand drawn images are converted into vector images (using Freehand) which are then animated (also using Freehand). The resulting look is highly-graphic, and the movement is deliberately unnatural. This is in opposition to the mania for highly realistic 3D-CGI animation typical of blockbuster children’s entertainment. 10 Transforming Youths eschews such mainstream operations for overtly Pop graphic sensibilities.More importantly, the meld of hard-edged 'super-flat' graphics with computer generated motion and morphing generates a conscious collapse between pseudo-realistic effect (the smoothness of movement generated by CG mathematically-correct motion simulation and depth) the reality of the non-photographic 'pseudo-ness' (the 'superflatness' of the image that in no way attempts to convince the viewer that it is 'real'). While this connundrum has been exploited to highlight sexual and bodily titilation and repulsion in The Body Malleable and Vox. here such an effect offers to the viewer an unscientifc yet palpable projection of aging upon the body. The youths' faces do not age according to correct physiological dynamics of change, but rather they literally morph between 2 semiotic states - the state of 'being young' and the state of 'being old'.
To achieve and maintain this precise effect, the drafting and design of the youths' faces were broken down in the 2 key states. Careful vector alignment between these forms then enabled a highly detailed blending between those key frame, which in turn generates the final effect of 'pseduo-aging' and 'pseudo-rejuvenation'.
Overlay of the two key frames of Boy 1 (Gus) in young state and old state Outline of the 72 blend steps between the keyframes of Boy 1 (Gus) in young state and old state Close-up of the blend steps The final animation runs for 32 minutes and covers a matrix of possibilities for each face to age or not age, to open its mouth or not, and at 6 different points across the panorama field of the 4 screens. The luminous fog 'landscape' and all the indiidual veins, swirls wafts and trails of luminous fog were produced from filming black ink in water, then reverseing the footage and layering it up in After Effects. All the final sequencing, compositing and layering of all elements was also done in After Effects. The animation's dimensions across the 4 screens is a custom hyper-widescreen of 4096 pixels wide by 502 pixels high.
After Effects was also crucial in rendering everything at a frame rate of 100 frames per second instead of the standard 25 frames per second. This was to enact as smooth as possibly a left-to-right movement and eliminate any strobing effects. A final rendered Quicktime movie is presented in looping mode on site.
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