Realism and constructing belief in Titan A.E.

Paul Wells’ notes on hyper realism discuss differences between two and three-dimensional animation, highlighting how two-dimensional cel-animated scenes aren’t as experimental as three-dimensional animation:

Later, when discussing Art Clokey’s thoughts on clay animation (in Frierson, 1993), Wells sates: “Three-dimensional animation, in his view, is therefore, more ‘real’ as it is executed in a real world space and enables animators to work in essentially ‘live-action’ conditions, but with greater creative freedom and control.” (1998, p. 57).

Maureen Furniss writes that live action, “mimesis”, and animation, “abstraction”, are on opposite ends of a scale. Their example for mimesis is Sleep (Warhol, 1964) and for abstraction, Circles (originally known as Kreise) (Fischinger, 1933), with The Three Caballeros (Ferguson, Geronimi & Kinney, 1944) being the mid-point of the scale. A cel-based animation, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Cottrell, Hand & Jackson, 1937) “would appear on the abstraction side but closer to the mid-point of The Three Caballeros” because it “has a relatively naturalistic look and employs some characters based on human models” and “its characters and landscapes can be described as caricatures, or abstractions of reality, to some extent”. (2007, pp. 5-6). Titan A.E. would also fall around this same area on the scale. Although it is a science fiction film with aliens and spaceships, which would not be possible to film with a camera because they don’t exist in these forms, the animation stye makes it believable, which I will return to later.

Between 1:01:26 and 1:07:26 in Titan A.E., after being stranded by Korso at a drifter colony, Cale and Akima have repaired and launched an old spaceship to try and find the lost Titan spaceship before Korso and his crew. They enter a large ice crystal field, pursued by Korso, and narrowly escape, leaving Korso to take evasive manoeuvres and lose his mark. This sequence features a mixture of traditional 2D cel animation, computer generated 3D animation, and a mixture of the two combined. Previously discussed notes on hyper realism can be applied to this sequence:

Wells discussed how “[the camera] movement tends to be limited to lateral left-to-right pans across the backgrounds or up-and-down tilts examining a character or environment” (p. 37), but this sequence explicitly counters this observation. As Korso moves through the bridge of his spaceship, the camera view is moving fluidly with him, and when Stith is at her weapons console the camera view is rotating around her. This is all occurring within the confines of the spaceship’s bridge, allowing a viewer to feel more than just a fly on the wall with simple left-right or up-down camera movement, but rather feel as part of the action.

Shortly after, spectacular views of outside the spaceships are seen with the gigantic ice crystals crashing into each other and splitting into thousands of pieces. These are 3D animated and are in stark contrast to the interior 2D cel-animated scenes. Returning to Wells’ notes on Art Clokey’s thoughts on clay animation, the three-dimensional animation here is perceived to be “more ‘real’” (p. 57) and helps build suspense and a sense of danger for the characters. The reflection of the spaceships rippling along the textures of the ice crystals adds to that sense of hyper realism and immersion within the scene. The animation in this scene is closest to mimesis than abstraction, providing a glimpse through the eyes of the characters and allowing an audience to see what the characters would be seeing when they look out the window of their spaceship. This is reinforced by Gune’s radar sensors detecting the reflection of a single spaceship as multiple, a critical plot element which allows Cale and Akima to escape. Wells’ comparison between two-dimensional and three-dimensional animation apply to this scene, as the three-dimensional animation adds the hyper-realistic and “real world” feel to the scene.