After some thought last year, weighing in what I want to do for the future, I decided that I should ‘clean my closet’ first. And one of the things that stood out in that closet was Janus development. There have been no new sales for Janus for quite a long time now, unsurprisingly, because I never really made any respectable effort in its marketing. Besides a few clients, its userbase has equally been quiet. And so I’ve decided to retire Janus from commercial development, and the main reason is that I can’t see myself guaranteeing the same kind of support that Janus users have enjoyed through the years for free.
It feels like a nominal thing to say that Janus is no longer being developed because Janus dev hasn’t been as active, and I’m pretty sure only a very few are concerned with its development anyway. If anything, announcing the fact will simply get me off that spectral hook of ‘developer obligation’ for EOL products. At least that’s what I hope.
I’ve always said in the past that Janus was never meant to be a mainstream tool. But over the course of the years, I learned one major reason why: many LWers didn’t try it. Part of me comprehends the rationale that the Janus video tutorials described a workflow that they didn’t like, or was confusing. But this is what I couldn’t understand: despite the complaints of the lack of a render layer system in LW, why people wouldn’t even attempt a free try in the hopes that they make something out of it.
Then there was the price point of 200 bucks (later 100 bucks) which might have made it totally incompatible with their idea of a layering system, no matter how well (or badly) designed. I kept hearing their demands to NT to put a layering system in there as part of their LW upgrade path, avoiding the need to invest in a 100-200 dollar plugin. Apparently, they’ve been waiting for a long time: at least 7 years.
What strikes me ironically, in retrospect, is that if they had invested in Janus from the beginning, it would have been a free Janus upgrade path from then on. Of course, I can’t say that I would have guaranteed it, though it seems likely since it was the case despite the minimal community support behind it. It would have been a very small price to pay to have such a tool that early on in LW9.5 — LW 2015 still does not have a functional equivalent of Janus or a render layer system. I say that in retrospect; a few Janus users have been saying it for years.
Most LWers have lived without a proper layering system, because the need is not truly pressing for most of them; I think despite their complaints, they can wait 7 more years if they have to.
Whether or not I would have stopped development regardless of its popularity is something I will never know myself. To me, Janus, as a commercial product, has run its course. I think it does a lot more than what was advertised, which is a good thing for me as a developer; I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, but more grateful for the things I’ve learned developing this tool. Janus is still available to be bought, but no support will be given (unless I can actually afford to), and I will try my darnedest to ignore bug fix requests: it’s easy to get obsessed with them, and they eat up lots of my time.
This is not to say that I’m through with Janus: I use it daily, and I will continue to code it to solve problems that I encounter myself. I may yet support Janus in the context of a company as a technical consultant, which is a better use of my time, and I can be actually recompensed for my work. I may fork it, or create a derivative for other progs like Maya — who knows, really? The future unknown, and I’d rather not try to plan or predict. I’ve focused on tools for the most part of my vfx career, and left creative pursuits largely untravelled. And that’s where I’m headed next.
That Bruce Lee quote is great and I apply that to almost every other thing in my life, especially when thinking about laying on the hurt. But in animation production, it doesn’t apply. And being such a cg elder, I would propose a re-phrasing of Lee’s indelible words.
“Having limitation is not limitation.”
I’ve recently completed two works of two different styles. Both were bourne in the meditation that I may die in the middle of a commercial and, in dismay, realise that I have not created anything worthwhile. It’s pretty grim stuff: it’s the only stuff that promotes serious obligation. Much can be said about it, and such will be said … in due time.
But the point here is one of limitation. The works I have completed had serious limitations imposed on them; so serious, that at one point, I actually had to disagree to agree with my wife’s sensitive sensibilities; despite its merits, despite even my own opinion for it, the limitation could help it not out of its limbo.
Presently, I present Quiet Time:
Quiet Time’s look is sparse, isn’t it? I don’t find it particularly eyeball-busting, eye-candy-sweet. I like the colours I chose for it, though it could have gone through a few more passes of second-thoughts and fresh-looks. But the key point in understanding this small production was that from the outset, the predicted practical rigours of doing almost everything by myself must contribute significantly to the design choices if I were to realistically get it done; though no particular deadline was set at the beginning, I knew that if more than six months elapsed after I began, it will likely remain unfinished. Therefore, I actually imposed rational limitations that I would adhere to despite the fits of suppressed artistry boiling in the intestines that I will dot me down the schedule.
Some of those limitations were: a.) a fixed general position of the camera, b.) no camera movements, c.) 12 frames per second, d.) no fur fx, e.) stylised/non-photorealistic rendering, f.) no more than 20 shots.
Fixing the camera into a general position and not moving it offered one obvious technical advantage: it was possible to render the backdrop image (or even paint it) only once for each viewpoint, thus saving me production render time. But the more poignant effect of a fixed camera is that it changes the very nature of the storytelling. And this is one aspect that I enjoyed, more than any other aspect, about the short. By limiting the point of view, I’m forced to tell the story only by zooming and panning. Of course, I actually break this rule in the short for two shots, but it is not an example to say the limitation didn’t work. In fact, the limitation set the rhythm by which breaking it served as the useful counterpoint to everything else: peaks, plains, and valleys, as it were.
Deciding on 12 frames per second was also necessary. The obvious technical advantage was that I had less frames to render! It also meant that the performance had more give: follow-through animation could have less subtlety because the mind will fill it in. The creative impact was that this changed the performance of the character; it changed the timing of the performance, and the edit that cut itself around it: I could afford to hold for longer in certain shots without looking odd. It also meant that the performance itself had to be distinct and unambiguous.
Rejecting fur was a fair argument; on the one hand, I wasn’t happy with the look of the sheep’s ‘fur’. On the other, omitting fur was not only for the sake of the sheep character, but the whole look of the frame; if fur was on the sheep, then why not pick on the grass, or the shepherd’s hair, or the tree’s leaves, or the bird’s feathers to be of a similar detail? And if there is one thing I learned in my fine arts college that echoes to this day, it is the principle of echo: that things inside the frame echo things within the frame, or what may be abstracted to belong in the frame, even if it be outside the frame. The echo principle can be understood as a ‘totality principle’, or a ‘context principle’, or a ‘holistic principle’, or a ‘”I’ll see you and raise you” principle’ . Even though the sheep’s ‘fur’ leaves much to be desired, its sacrifice served the greater good, which is the short and its weird story.
By the very omission of fur, this consequently drove the final look to that very generic and ambiguous term called non-photorealistic rendering (NPR). I did not choose on a cartoony look, but instead on a subtly abusedly-modified Lambertian shading. Some NPR techniques are actually complicated, and the easily-controllable Lambertian approach reaffirmed the very rational why I had imposed this limitation.
And lastly, my arbitrary 20-shot limitation (I had 15 shots all up) was based on recent experience doing an episodic animation; I figured that I started to feel unhinged at 40 shots; so I halved it, thus it became ‘arbitrary’.
Now I move on to a more recent completion. I present you Poleis – White War (Stairwell Scene).
This began, and ended, quite simply as, what we industry vets coolly term, an “environment” piece. The first and biggest limitation that I set up was a.) that the camera was going to be fixed, and I will only have to render only one frame of the environment; I imposed this limitation because I wanted to focus on dressing the set with details, put a mood, apply a photographic touch; b.) no character was going to be involved, as it was truly just an environment piece.
Quiet Time’s six etched regulations were perfectly obeyed; and as seen in the videos, Poleis’s Stairwell Scene only had two limitations which were clearly broken. For my sins I paid dearly enough. But of the sins that I suffered greatest was the compromise of having to reject the very sensible opinion to re-frame the composition to suit the animation of the character. For this did not suit it as an environment piece, and having spent copious amount of time for the composition of the shot, I could not, for sanity’s sake, come to terms with that good comment.
But the question is why I broke the limitations, and what lessons, good and bad, did I discern.
I broke the camera movement limitation due to directorial ambiguity: is this an environment, which is better served with movement (ie presence of parallax), or is this an environment piece trying to make a piece to a larger — yet non-existing — ‘story’? I chose to remain faithful to the initial purpose of ‘environment’ and rejected ‘story’. I am not sure what I learned from my decision, but I think I understand myself more: my initial intentions are the catalysts — the muse, if you will — of these small ideas. And by keeping to the original idea, or even the lowly purpose, I feel to have stuck with my guns, and thus corroborate, support, and encourage the instinct, the intuition.
The character’s presence breaks the other limitation, but it is an easier rationale to impart: the environment is certainly better equipped with a breathing being, or failing that, simply a worthy subject matter. Its animation was kept purposely simple (some liked it very much, while some found it lacking), its composition distant as to not draw attention to itself for the specialness it intrinsically is, for the environment is the thing to be absorbed primarily, even if the eye is looking at the character. If anything, the addition of the character affirms basic principles of photography of having a subject matter, no matter how subjective, to photograph. If I had failed to produce a character in the middle of the scene, I would have resorted to rain or hard wind to rush inside through the window and disrupt the interior: the wind would have been my character, my subject matter.
One of the other realisations coming from these projects is the honesty of what a story is. My rejection of Poleis as a ‘story’ versus an environment piece is revealing to me, and encouraged me to look at things more honestly. I had to admit that telling a story is not the only thing we ought to be doing, nor is the only thing we can do.
In my line of work, I encounter a lot so-called ‘creative individuals’ with great pretensions to ‘story’, as though everything they touch, however menial, is elevated to the expectation and glory of ‘story’. A self-admitted meaningless series of disconnected, disembodied moving pixels is deviously described as a ‘story’; a ‘brand’ production company harps that brands tell a story, when in fact, brands are simply messages, and many false ones at that. To these posers, ‘story’ is nothing but buzzword; they’d sooner sell you a can of Coke and call it an epic because they licenced to use Wagner for their soundtrack; a cynical attempt to make a counterfeit human connection for the sake of advertising dollars.
Having completed the Stairwell Scene just before the new year following closely at the heel of Quiet Time, it gives me a completeness of, if anything else, having created something. As unromantic as that may sound, I realise these are small steps, but let’s not err to belittle these steps: for one day I may yet be free. Are the works substantial? No, but I thank God that it is not the point. The works have substance enough to say they are there and they have been done: finished — for now. But not only that: it creates substance in my brain, in my spirit. After the conclusion of the Quiet Time project, I secretly wondered if that would be my last. I shuddered at the thought that I would die with a legacy called Quiet Time, being ‘cute’ as it was, and be forgotten, or worse, be faintly remembered as that guy who did that ‘cute stuff’. I suppose that because the works themselves have little personal substance — more works of craft than art — I am all the more eager to press on urgently with it. For me, there is no choice; unless going mad is a choice.