Last Wednesday, we had a meeting concerning our EMMA Field Research. There, we had to state our field of research. Seeing that I do not yet know what field I am gonna jump into, you had to state your interests and findings. (See other posts)
So, I stepped into that meeting quite blankly, no clear view on my possible subject(s). When we discussed things, however, (I skipped TF2), the statement was quickly made that my interests were all circling around realism. This quickly became apparent when we looked at two small movies I had seen. One was the Guild Wars 2 intro, and the other was 'The Tale of How'.
When I stated my finding that the Guild Wars 2 intro was not so good; I gave the explanation I had found a year earlier: the image would've been too complex to animate properly.
But then, they gave the example of 'The Tale of How'. How come, that this animation was 'good'? It was definately a complex image, no doubt! And even a hundred times more intricately animated as well...
We wondered at that, and then Sandra came to the conclusion that it might had everything to do with 'realism'. The 'Tale of How' all moved and animated beautifully - yet absolutely not realistic. The figures had weight, allright, and a proper anatomy, but their representation was flat, and the environment continually stirred with unseen winds that moved everything that could move. The movement on screen was a magic itself.
The Guild Wars intro, however, was presented in a world more tangible and recognizable than How's. We could see and recognize mountains, monsters with human elements, flowing water (and no moving curls like How's), and a more filmic approach. The animation, however, was too cropped up - too minimal to be seen as real in comparison to the very real graphics.
All my examples, my interests and even (I realized later) my own animations evolved around realism! So - that would be it then!
And yeah, the first thing I did was typing in 'Realism' in Google. And, alas, I ended up at the Wikipedia page 'Realism (Visual Arts)'. I scanned through the article, which was not all too inspiring, except when I read the the following sentence:
"In the broadest sense, realism in a work of art exists wherever something has been well observed and accurately depicted, even if the work as a whole does not strictly conform to the conditions of realism."
If a work does not strictly conforms itself to these 'conditions', can it still be called realism, then? What are these conditions?
I scanned through the internet some more, until I came across an article from Conceptart.org, which was discussing methods of different art types/schools. 'Construction' vs. 'Realism'. Even though many different views and opinions were expressed in the article, the basis would evolve around this: should one learn to 'observe' to purely copy shape and form into the most perfect sense - or should one learn how to construct the (i.e.) anatomy, be taught the inner workings of things so that one can construct them easier/with no reference?
The most interesting question arose somewhere halfway across the page: concept artists sometimes had to draw from their imagination for their projects. Objects do not always visibly or tangibly exist to draw them from sight.
This posed the following question to me: 'Can it still be realism if one is drawing from imagination?' So, can it still be called 'realism' even though subject matter is fictional?
This I discussion was extremely interesting, (and I haven't even read 10% of it all) where definitions like artistical expression, object reality and imaginative (from memory) design were laid down for discussion. I have no clear opinion about this, myself, but I would love to know more about this 'realism', and then especially towards fiction: can fiction be called real?
This sounds a bit dangerous to me, though, as I mentioned the escapism before, I tend to have periods in which I want fiction to be real. Maybe it's time for me to figure out how real fiction really is...
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