Isle of Dogs: The Wes Anderson Collection, a book that captured me by its cover;After all, before this, I had no idea that the film of the same name won the Best Director Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The cover picture presents a yellow-gray tone, so that the red three-dimensional text with low saturation can be both prominent and not eye-catching. The overall picture seeks a sense of balance in asymmetry, which is extremely comfortable for the eyes. From the water surface in the foreground to the "garbage mountain" in the distance, the gray tones are gradual, giving the picture a sense of space. And if you look closely at each dog on the cover, they have different expressions and directions in their eyes, representing their own stories.
Such intriguing images all show that this film has a high-end sense of design. So, before reading Isle of Dogs: The Wes Anderson Collection, I decided to watch the movie Isle of Dogs.
I have to say that the story of the movie "Isle of Dogs" has a deep metaphor;But let's not talk about the story for a moment, but let's talk about it as an animated film, which gives me a sense of "plausible and fake" – there are many times when I watch a movie, I feel like I'm watching a movie with real people and animals.
Maybe it's because it's a stop-motion animation!
Stop-motion animation is the process of shooting objects frame by frame and then projecting them continuously, resulting in a seemingly alive character or any bizarre character you can imagineTogether with hand-drawn animation and computer animation, it constitutes the three major categories of modern animation.
In the introduction to the book, it is written:
Stop-motion animation is arguably one of the most tangible forms of animation, born entirely in the real world. All the puppets are real and weighty, everything can be seen and touched, and all the pictures will have a slight loss of image quality due to the refraction of real light through the glass.
Therefore, the movie "Isle of Dogs" brought me a sense of both reality and illusion, blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy, bringing a special visual experience, and at the same time conforming to the metaphor of the film itself.
I suddenly felt that there were similarities between stop-motion animation and traditional gardens, the so-called "although made by man, it was like nature";Simulate reality with a physical entity, and then build a new "world".
All of the environments, backgrounds, characters, and dogs in the Isle of Dogs movie are small, handmade modelsAt the same time, there are three sizes of puppets: large, medium and small, which can be used to shoot different scenes near and far, and some have specially enlarged local models.
These small-scale models will involve multiple design jobs, such as puppet department, costume design, art design, graphic design, etc.;Of course, this is only the design and production related departments, and there are other departments such as photography, voice acting, etc. It's a huge system that underpins this animated film under a unified production philosophy and aesthetic tone.
Under the huge system, it is the ultimate pursuit of details;Any small detail that does not conform to the story setting or violates the reality may make the audience "play".
In Isle of Dogs, any change in the human puppet's face – every pronunciation, every frown, every time the eyes open wide – requires a new face to be made. Animators need to swap faces frame by frame.
When Tracy laughs, her cheeks move, her freckles move, and every freckle on every face has to be in exactly the same place — if not precisely positioned by millimeter standards, the freckles will fly like snowflakes on TV when rewinding video.
If you want to get a better understanding of Wes Anderson's creative philosophy, or how stop-motion animation is "produced" step by step, then Isle of Dogs: The Wes Anderson Collection is a great medium.