Love. Leech. Tomato. by David Maas and BrainPets is a strange little film with bewildering animation set to a haunting, fragmented and beat-laced score. Chronicling the interaction of a leech and a tomato presented in a screen awash in watercolor effects, the film asks about the titular characters - could it be love?

The watercolor effect is the result of a lot of hard-core CG graphics work done by the team at BrainPets, and David Maas has been asked to talk at length about the process. Some of his comments follow.

But one thing that stands out about the film is that it does not appear to be restricted the way many independent 3D films are - the leech stretches beyond the bounds of his actual body, as you might do it if you were drawing it by hand - nor does it suffer from the wannabe syndrome so common to films that attempt to jettison a typical 3D look symply by passing a Photoshop watercolor filter over all the frames. The flexible animation and the watercolor treatment add up to something different, which is what BrainPets set out to do. The approach adds up to a good match for the subject matter.

"Up till now, I've mostly talked about production aspects of the film, or the fantastic cooperation behind the film's look - a fantastic non-photorealistic renderer (yes, that's all 3D straight out of the machine) developed by Thomas Luft and myself with the Filmakademie Badem-Wuertemmberg. One of the big passions behind the film is the question of what a traditional look such as aquarell is, and how this can be respectfully rendered via a cold piece of silicon. Thomas is a fantastic graphics researcher at the University of Konstanz who brings a great artistic touch to his work.

There are a number of aquarell renderers that produce convincing stills, but the illusion usually falls apart once the frames start advancing. Thomas has made coherence his topic, and the results are artistic. There's still a perceptible weirdness when you watch the film, but it's very interesting weirdness. Its odd because the 3D nature becomes obvious while the 2D look remains convincing. And this is a great moment. We're not out to mimic traditional medium; for animation, this is impossible anyway. There's no reference for what animated aquarell looks like, at least not with the elements available to us with 3D.

I'm going into these technical aspects because the passion in the film's story and design are similarly centered on these questions: how do you take hints or find forms in material, when you're working in a materialless environment? We haven't managed any glorious breakthrough (you can all sit back down again) but I'm happy with the film as a first go at these issues. Just as our shader system mixes 2D and 3D information to translate forms and calculate colors, we tried to approach the designs and animation to break out of the typical 3D rut.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT the BRAINPETS WEBSITE

The first way we tried to break out of this rut is through the quality of contact. Deforming a finger when it contacts a hard surface is the first thing an artist does in hand-drawn animation - before getting a grip on tweens. But technical limits often keep 3D artists in this hard-edged world, where geometry either slides or intersects instead of really touching. We animated using project:messiah, which has a nice balance of technical power and artistic accessibility.

The second thing we attempted is closely related: transformation. Hand-drawn animation allows you to fake frames from one thing to another, but 3D locks you into form and volume. Staying on character - keeping the character looking like his design - can be good, but one of the unique mechanisms of animation is breaking form, to transmute lines, replace objects and pinch clay. We haven't gotten this worked out to the extent we'd like, but we have made some advancements with this film. The look alone frees the artist up incredibly in this regard. The viewer is much more willing to accept that unreal things can and do happen, and much more willing to overlook technical botch-ups.

The third thing we paid attention to is metaphor. I feel many artists, particularly 3D artists, surrender their power as animators when they make character designs into objects. I think Don Hertzfeldt said something like the problem with 3D is that its all about nouns, when in fact animation should be about adjectives and adverbs. That's a fantastic observation. Animation has the unique option of functioning abstractly, making you feel something beyond the logic of the situation. And all too often, the first thing we 3D artists do is bind up our options with logic. We build 3D worlds and 3D characters. Before having time to think about the feel of any one object, and the possibilities it embodies to represent something, we've become slaves to the geometry and these world rules that have popped up out of nowhere.

"Don Hertzfeldt said something like the problem with 3D is that its all about nouns, when in fact animation should be about adjectives and adverbs."        --David Maas

As for the film... you'll just have to see it. I hope it runs in a festival near you, and if not, then a festival that you travel to. If not, I'll be releasing it afterwards. Hope you enjoy it, and that you don't think about anything I've mentioned while watching it. Afterwards, you can think about it all you want.

Some words about the team: I've spoken about Thomas, but will do so again. He really went all-out on this film, far beyond software development. He contributed to shading and rendering, and definitely left his mark on this film creatively. The producer, Tatjana, rose to the occassion everytime something got stuck. She's been invaluable creatively as well. Christopher Lutz animated the last shot, going nuts with scripts and rigs. Patrizio delivered - I wanted a score that fit the film: sensual, bizarre, odd, but very human. I love where we ended up with the sound and it makes the difference. Check the credits for all the indirect members of the team: I hope to update the BrainPets website soon with the full list."

       --David Maas, MAR 2007