WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:01.819 --> 00:00:07.200 Siamés “The Wolf” is a music video animation driven by its use of positive and negative 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:08.200 space. 00:00:08.200 --> 00:00:11.990 I’m going to talk about what that is and how it’s important for animation in particular 00:00:11.990 --> 00:00:15.509 after giving you the chance to watch the animation. 00:00:15.509 --> 00:00:19.140 Here it is. 00:00:19.140 --> 00:00:22.320 A little bit of background on this video. 00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:25.619 It is completely 2D, animated in Toon Boom Animate. 00:00:25.619 --> 00:00:28.699 Don’t let parts like these fool you. 00:00:28.699 --> 00:00:32.259 Careful attention to perspective is what gives the animation depth. 00:00:32.259 --> 00:00:37.660 The pink lines in the process video are for measuring perspective while drawing the artwork. 00:00:37.660 --> 00:00:43.030 I actually learned a new animation term while doing the research for this episode: Sakuga. 00:00:43.030 --> 00:00:48.510 The word itself just means, “animation,” but fans of Japanese animation use the word 00:00:48.510 --> 00:00:54.039 sakuga to describe a scene that has much higher quality animation than the rest of the episode. 00:00:54.039 --> 00:00:55.039 Animators “do good sakuga” to heighten the drama of the moment. 00:00:55.039 --> 00:01:01.840 So in The Wolf, there’s good sakuga during every climactic moment and action sequence. 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:05.920 Now to talk about positive and negative space. 00:01:05.920 --> 00:01:11.350 Except for red eyes and one pink scene, The Wolf is entirely black and white, which makes 00:01:11.350 --> 00:01:15.250 framing for every part of the animation very important. 00:01:15.250 --> 00:01:19.729 With only two tones to work with, you have to be sure the viewer will see the main subject 00:01:19.729 --> 00:01:24.070 of the art first and not get confused by all of the other black and white things going 00:01:24.070 --> 00:01:25.070 on. 00:01:25.070 --> 00:01:29.720 One of the ways to do this is by paying attention to positive and negative space. 00:01:29.720 --> 00:01:34.430 Pick any image from the animation, and look: what is the main subject of the picture? 00:01:34.430 --> 00:01:36.670 What is the less important background stuff? 00:01:36.670 --> 00:01:43.060 The most important things you want your viewers to see make up positive space. 00:01:43.060 --> 00:01:46.200 Everything else is negative space. 00:01:46.200 --> 00:01:49.640 So if you’ve got a picture of a person, the person is positive space, the surrounding 00:01:49.640 --> 00:01:56.090 area is negative space, even if there is no art there and it’s a solid color or transparent. 00:01:56.090 --> 00:01:59.600 Picture of a glass, the glass is the main subject positive space. 00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:01.930 Surrounding area is negative space. 00:02:01.930 --> 00:02:07.670 You’ll notice some pictures have a really big area of positive space, and some have 00:02:07.670 --> 00:02:14.690 a really big area of negative space. 00:02:14.690 --> 00:02:19.030 People tend to notice positive space naturally, but for an artist it’s important to pay 00:02:19.030 --> 00:02:22.830 attention to the shape of these negative space areas too. 00:02:22.830 --> 00:02:27.090 Checking to make sure the size and proportion of holes in and around a subject is one way 00:02:27.090 --> 00:02:29.500 to ensure your art is accurate. 00:02:29.500 --> 00:02:35.860 An interesting exercise is to draw negative space, to see what is not there instead of 00:02:35.860 --> 00:02:36.860 what is. 00:02:36.860 --> 00:02:37.860 The resulting picture should still be the same. 00:02:37.860 --> 00:02:41.550 The only difference is you focused on drawing the outlines of empty areas instead of outlines 00:02:41.550 --> 00:02:48.130 of an item. 00:02:48.130 --> 00:02:50.620 Okay blah blah blah, so what? 00:02:50.620 --> 00:02:54.870 Well, artists who are really conscious of balancing positive and negative space can 00:02:54.870 --> 00:02:59.760 do crazy stuff, like make negative space have its own shape and meaning. 00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:05.320 They can manipulate emotions by shoving stuff in your face, or making it tiny and distant. 00:03:05.320 --> 00:03:08.340 They can create optical illusions. 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:13.310 For animators in particular, checking the shapes of positive and negative space is important 00:03:13.310 --> 00:03:15.320 for clear posing. 00:03:15.320 --> 00:03:17.900 Is your character an unidentified lump? 00:03:17.900 --> 00:03:21.690 Or does its silhouette actually communicate something? 00:03:21.690 --> 00:03:26.870 Without colors to work with, The Wolf is forced to use distinct shapes, and to carefully balance 00:03:26.870 --> 00:03:30.190 how much black and white are in the main subject versus the background. 00:03:30.190 --> 00:03:34.670 So you get a picture like this, where the positive space and its shadow have more black 00:03:34.670 --> 00:03:37.220 than the background to draw your attention. 00:03:37.220 --> 00:03:41.700 And sometimes it’s the opposite - the positive space is predominantly white and the negative 00:03:41.700 --> 00:03:43.850 space, black. 00:03:43.850 --> 00:03:47.760 The Wolf uses black and white for lighting too, of course, so the animators did some 00:03:47.760 --> 00:03:54.090 really cool stuff, like have the positive space emerge out of the negative space. 00:03:54.090 --> 00:03:56.480 All of this is negative space, both the black and the white. 00:03:56.480 --> 00:03:57.920 It’s just a background. 00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:00.180 The wolf is the only positive space. 00:04:00.180 --> 00:04:02.630 It’s hidden at first is all. 00:04:02.630 --> 00:04:06.650 Our brain doesn’t identify white or black as more important, by the way. 00:04:06.650 --> 00:04:10.270 What your brain does notice is contrast. 00:04:10.270 --> 00:04:14.620 As a result, most of these scenes work just as well with the colors reversed. 00:04:14.620 --> 00:04:20.000 So as long as your positive space is remarkably different (in high contrast) from the background, 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:22.480 your audience will notice it first. 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:27.310 The fact contrast draws attention is one of many reasons cartoon characters usually have 00:04:27.310 --> 00:04:32.130 outlines darker than the outlines used on the backgrounds. 00:04:32.130 --> 00:04:37.970 The Wolf doesn’t have that, so instead the animators decide when the outlines are going 00:04:37.970 --> 00:04:42.760 to be black to set them apart from the negative space, and when the outlines are white because 00:04:42.760 --> 00:04:44.410 the negative space is pure black.