Visual Language: Form, Flow and Force Duet

An animation I looked at that explored Form, Flow and Force was the animated short Duet created by legendary Disney animator Glen Keane. The short is basically a story of life from birth to adulthood told through the perspective of a male and a female character. Their lives are separate yet intercept each other at various points in time. I love this animation as I was already fascinated with the idea of time-lapsing and when this technique is applied in an animation context, all the better. I have thought recently about why there are not more animations that use the time-lapsing technique of condensing a massive story into a very short space of time. I get it why there aren't many real-life time-lapses due to the colossal amount of time a project like that would take but the animator has the power to drastically pass time just with a pen and paper.



I found this animation very touching basically because the time-lapsing technique occurs on screen seamlessly. That is the skill of a good time-lapse, you don't need the convention of ten years later... we just understand it because we see visually occurring on screen. The success of this time-lapse appearing seamless is I feel down to excellent visualization of the human form. The characters movements are incredibly life-like even though as with Thought of You, when you actually look at each character, their designs are pretty simple. It is the physicality that remains lifelike yet we believe it when we see the girl age a few years in a jump.





The time-lapse also appears seamless because the characters movements are often completely in time to the music. But, whereas in Thought of You, the character's dancing matched the music, here, the character's physicality in their movements match the music, but also so does the physicality in their aging on screen.