The New Venue

11.October.2000 Walk of Life Based on a true story - Walk of Life tells the tale of the love between a girl and her dog ...and what comes between them. This is the latest animation from the Stanford University Digital Art Center (SUDAC). Created by Kim Chan Julie Daley Helena Roeber Alexis Tygenhof Story by Julie Chin Music by Christopher Tin Animated at SUDAC Stills from "Walk of Life" Interview with the filmmakers. New Venue: What is the appeal of digital animation? Julie: What I find appealing about digital filmmaking is the ability to create the illusion of life with such concrete, technological tools. In the absence of real actors, the animator or digital filmmaker must rely on his understanding of life and movement and transform this into film. As a digital animator, I am the director, camera woman, actress, and screen writer. New Venue: How do you take into account the fact that movies today can and will appear on multiple media (movie screen, tv set, computer monitor)? Julie: Our biggest concern was selecting our color palette, trying to achieve saturation levels that would be appropriate to as many media as possible. In considering quality and compression, we stayed with the highest level of quality we could, both in rendering and in compression. New Venue: Is "Walk of Life" really based on a true story? Julie: This story belongs to a recent Stanford graduate, Julie Chin. The story is based on a real experience Julie had with her own dog as a child. It was hit by a car and Julie took it home to try to revive it. New batteries fixed her broken toys, so she was hoping batteries would do the same with her dog. Her mom came home to find her stuffing batteries in the dog, which did not survive, and Julie's memory of trying to save the dog has stayed with her. Two years ago, Julie proposed it to her animation class at the SUDAC, but at the time, the complexity of the aesthetics discouraged the class from choosing it. A year later, our instructor, Gregory Niemeyer, brought it to the table again with a new aesthetic approach in mind. By suggesting the girl's world could be made of paper, he felt the story's premise could hold. New Venue: This film is very stylized. How did you choose this particular texture? Julie: The style is that of a child's "paper-doll world". Again, this aesthetic was chosen for many reasons. It allows for the story's premise: within a paper world, life doesn't follow the same rules and happy endings are always possible. Furthermore, we felt the style supplied the metaphor, age, and world of a child dealing with an event such as this in his/her life. New Venue: What tools do you use? Julie: We used Maya 2.5 for the project itself. The rendered stills were then put together in Final Cut Pro and exported as a QuickTime movie. Sound Edit 16 came in handy for sound conversion. New Venue: What limitations did you find with the technology you used? Julie: Maya worked well, although the rendering times were lengthy as we used ray tracing for all of our lighting. The rendered images were very large, so putting them together in Final Cut Pro meant performing some workarounds. We created a Final Cut Pro movie for each scene, and then imported those movies into a final movie file. New Venue: When it comes to movies or animation on the web, what would you like to see more of? Kim: I'd have to say that since I have much less exposure and experience with animation on the web, I'd instinctively prefer movies. However the web is an excellent vehicle to share animation with so in that sense I'd like to see it progress farther. Julie: I really just enjoy it all. I am fascinated with others' work on the web. New Venue: What's the next project? Julie: We don't have any plans for another project as a group. Alexis, Helena, and Julie will be returning to Stanford for one more year, though, so something new is possible. New Venue: What are your backgrounds in computer art and digital film? Kim Chan: I recently graduated from Stanford (class of 2000). I'm soon starting work as a visual designer at an Internet consulting firm. While at Stanford, I designed an interdisciplinary major in Computer-Generated Imagery which lead me to exposure in areas such as design, film, animation, and computer science. As an individually designed major student in graphics, I took a number of courses at SUDAC including the animation series. Julie Daley: I came to Stanford as a non-traditional transfer student from a community college, leaving a 14-year job with a bank as a systems analyst. Once at Stanford, I searched for the perfect major. When I could not find one that appealed to me, I designed my own. It includes courses in CS, HCI, Studio and Digital Art, 2D and 3D Animation, Product Design, Communications, and Psychology. Sudac has been a wonderful resource for me, providing classes in digital art and animation, as well as work as a project coordinator and research assistant. I will be studying in Florence this fall where I will take classes in art and cinema. I will graduate in next year with a BS in Interaction Design. Helena Roeber: I grew up in Germany where I experimented with film, photography and other traditional art forms. At Stanford, I study Computer Science and Studio Art with a focus on digital art. Within Computer Science I am interested in Java programming and web based applications, while I explore traditional animation and multimedia art in my art minor. I will graduate in June 2001. Alexis Tygenhof: I will graduate in June '01 with a BA in "Applications of Computer Generated Imagery in Film and Animation", a major that I designed myself and named such because "Computer Animation" is too pre-professional sounding for a Stanford major. I came to this field through the performing arts. I have been dancing since age four and in college, I began acting and choreographing. My sister, an aspiring film actress, inspired me to attend the USC Film School's summer intesive, through which I discovered computer animation. I then combined my new knowledge of film with the skills from my first major, Computer Science, to become an animator. Walk of Life is my first serious attempt at computer animation and I hope to follow it with another animated short that exceeds this first film emotionally and technically. New Venue: Where else can we see your work? Julie: www.stanford.edu/~kimchan www.stanford.edu/~jdaley www.stanford.edu/~hela View this movie. You can find out about other digital flicks in the New Venue Archives.