The Development of ''9''

Research into the development of ''9''

                                                  Source: DVD cover of ''9''

The reason why I have chosen 9 is because it was beautifully made with a handful of crews, the production behind has a worth-mentioning development just like other masterpieces such as Wall E and The Incredible etc. The research will be only focusing on the developmental works on character designs and animation which are the most dominate factors to make this film successful.

First of all, in terms of Character Design, here I emphasis at how things are designed and developed to symbolize character's roles and personality rather than deliberate the process of creating a character. 9 is an action, fantasy animated feature with a background of post-apocalyptic world after post world war I Europe. There are 9 characters and some enemies to lead the entire film. Those 9 characters are small and it was made of a combination of hessian and mechanical components by a scientist who had passed out in the film. As an numerical order grows, each of the characters are become more refined. For example, No 1 is the very first one made by the scientist so it is crude and more rudimentary comparing with No 9. No 9 is the most exquisite one among the team. The success of the Character Design in 9 is that each character looks very different and characteristic individually, however, they look like a team as they are grouped together. It suddenly evokes me that the creation of the characters in The Incredible had the same achievement as well.

Source: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/pixar-kids/images/25728626/title/incredible-family-photo

Every stuff on the characters carries information and is reflected to their role.For instant, No 6 is meant to be portrayed as a an artist and his role is to assist and inspire everyone through his drawings. In order to strengthen its personality and role the crew had made an unremitting effort on character features. No. 6 has pen nibs as fingers, a hessian body with full of paint marks, a dreaded hair style and there is always a vessel of ink with him. Also, he is the only one who has green stripes linen. Those designs aid narrating and giving cues to viewers of which kind of role No.6 is playing.

Source: 3D World magazine October 2009

Furthermore, to visually convey to audience that a character is brave, independent and self-sufficient, weapon and appropriate costume are needed, therefore, No 7 has a helmet and necklet made of skull, long lance and craft just like a warrior. As a result of it, every feature or object has a power of characterizing, therefore, it is important to observe and identify the add-ons which aid charactering. 

      

Secondly, the entire animation had a efficient development behind. As we all know that the characters were anthropopathic dolls and because the characters had designed less facial features, no ears, nose and eyebrows, therefore,movements and facial expression were the most challenging part to animate. In order to imbue anthropopathy into character's motion, having live action video as reference allows animators to achieve it and enhance the believability of the entire animation.   

 

Animators had voices and dialogue ready before going through the animating process. In order to animate mouth movement, the acting-out method particularly aid animators to understand and observe how vowels affect the shape of a mouth. Animators often had a mirror on their working desk because they needed to refer themselves to animate any complex facial expressions on the characters. For instance, to animate the mouth movement of a word goodbye, animators will speak it in front of the mirror and observe the moving lips. Furthermore, video references are needed for some strong and exaggerated voices and the video references were captured while voice actors were giving their performance. In this case voice actors were actually having acting out.

Despite the animation on character faces, director also encouraged all the animators to perform as much as possible in order to get more-than-enough reference for character's motion. Animators firstly got cues and concept from director and animation director, then acted out in front of camera according to the synopsis. The captured video became the animation reference. For example, if the scene has a character wielding a sword toward the enemy, animators will actually hold a fake sward and act it out in the way director desired. The use of acting out is not only for supporting animators when they animate but also for helping animators to understand the nuance and body gesture through performing in their own physical action. In addition to the animation development, all the objects in animator's hand are made with a appropriate weight to let animators personally feel the weight of the weapon which helps getting the right poses. This kind of method is very wieldy use for instance Walts with Bashir had used acting out to help animating. Below pictures are some extras from ''9'' and '' Walts with Bashir'' . We can see that the outcome is similar to the acting out reference and perceived it is entirely made of rotoscoping, however, it was not. The animation in the film employed the similar developmental techniques as ''9'' in order to grasp human movement by referring and analyzing live action footage. 

                                                Source: Original DVD extra of ''9''

Source: Youtube video ''The making of Walts with Bashir'' ( p.s. It has been deleted by uploader)