Groves ‘06 pioneers new animation techniques
By Chip Shaffer
Published on Monday, February 13, 2006
Rebeckah Groves '06 was first exposed to animation during her freshman year; she is now working on her senior honors project for the Film Department.
When Buzz Lightyear flew onto the screen a decade ago, he seemed to herald the impending age of computer animation. More recently, the likes of Shrek, Nemo and Mr. Incredible have ensured the dominance of the genre. But creativity in traditional, two-dimensional animation is still thriving, at least here on Dartmouth's campus. Innovative Dartmouth animator Rebeckah Groves '06 uses nothing more than pen and paper to single-handedly redefine the scope of traditional animation.
Groves' animated works have the power to hold their audience captive because of her unique interpretations of the art. In most cartoons, the paper merely serves as a medium on which to draw, but in Groves' work, the paper plays just as crucial a role in the story as the characters themselves. The result, though hard to describe in words, is amazing to see.
She explains that she likes "to expand the medium as much as possible, [to] see what I can do beyond what people can think of." This "expansion of the medium" occurs largely through the interaction of the paper itself and the animation on the paper, between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. Groves emphasizes how it is "not just paper under the camera. Paper can do things you wouldn't expect." It is this "unexpected" aspect of her work that makes it so absorbing and fun to watch.
Ironically, Groves' beginning in animation occurred largely by chance. In her freshman year, she took a history of animation course taught by Professor David Ehrlich. As part of the curriculum, Ehrlich has his students create a flipbook. After viewing Groves' flipbook, he urged her to take more animation classes. Groves notes how "good at encouraging" Ehrlich is, and credits him with her continuing interest in the subject.
This led to the above-mentioned independent study project and a senior honors project she is currently working on. She is now experimenting to see what works and what doesn't in this venture, and next term she will use "what works" to create a story.
Even these early "experiments" are wonderful to watch. In her efforts to constantly expand the medium, Groves has focused on incorporating origami into her work, with incredible results. The most fascinating piece so far is an origami phoenix, which initially bursts into life from folded paper, but then burns to ashes only to be recreated from those same ashes. Groves notes that the "animation reflects what's going on inside my head, my life. It [the phoenix] doesn't look like that, but it is."
Though her work may be personally driven, it does not fail to interest the average viewer. It would be hard for anyone not to be mesmerized by Groves' talent. Describing her work, Ehrlich explained, "The viewer responds to the work on several layers. With Groves' film one first has a sense of fun and exhilaration watching the creatures play, and then the viewer realizes the underpinnings of how the work was made and becomes fascinated with the technical problem solving that occurred."
All of her animation moves so fluidly, as to leave the audience wondering how she did it: how drawn characters seamlessly shift from one piece of paper to another, how paper seems to crumple by itself, how the characters physically create other characters. Ehrlich remarked that "what Groves's been doing technically -- to my knowledge -- has never been done before."
To achieve these astonishing results takes "forever," as she puts it. The product of her nine-week independent study project was a two-and-a-half minute film, which may not seem like much until one realizes that for every second of film Groves had to animate eight pictures, which she does entirely by hand.
After graduation Groves is contemplating attending nursing school, while pursuing animation in her spare time. What she will come up with is anyone's guess, but whatever it is will undoubtedly continue to push animation to the limit, except that this limit will be constantly expanding with each of Groves' innovations.