10 SYNTHESIS

In writing up a reflection of the practical element of my project, I identified 10 activities or themes I had done, examined or experimented with to inform my practice.

1) Cinema: I visit the cinema once or twice a week. It gives me more of an understanding of acting, cinematography and the many other elements involved in film production. It allows me to disseminate the effectiveness of these methods and examine how they benefit the story.

2) Drawing: I've drawn a lot of faces and tried to capture emotion in various different people

3) Uncanny: I researched the uncanny valley and how it impacts audience empathy with characters

4) Medium: I animated with 3 different mediums to achieve a different visual style with each short animated clip

5) Acting: I studied Ed Hooks' book "Acting for Animators" to learn that no face is neutral because every thought is accompanied by an action, even very subtle ones

6) Exaggeration: This was the most important. Even subtle emotions are exaggerated in animation.

7) Rotoscoping: I wanted to see if animation that wasn't exaggerated in the slightest could still have the same weight and resonance as other animation.

8) Technology: The theme of my whole module. I used various technologies to measure the potential of each to create empathetic characters

Sketchbook Development Continued

I'm continuing to look into faces, relatability and performance.

A quote from David Robson and related photographs I've found. We all strive to relate to anything we possibly can, which implies that facial animation doesn't have to be excessively complex for people to understand or empathise with a character. The best example I can think of is Charlie Brown, who's face is incredibly simplistically designed.

I did a few drawings of faces around me to capture different emotions.

A character's performance is supported by the costumes they wear, the lighting, the context of the scene, the shot framing, the editing, their position in relation to other on-screen characters and about a billion other things. The animation alone plays a small part

More drawings and photographs of "neutral" faces

Carrying on my Practical Piece

I'm making great progress with my practical element, although I fear I'll not be able to do all the animation I'd like due to the time constraints. I'd have liked to animate in stop motion as well as with motion capture to have a broader breadth of examples from which I can draw my conclusion.

A frame of one of the clips in progress, drawn traditionally. This shot will be animated on twos, but to try and keep with the smoothness of the 3D CGI head, I've added plenty of ones to it.

At first, I drew lots of dope sheets but then realised I didn't need them. When animating on TV paint and with Maya, I can just import the audio files and animate accordingly. With animating on paper, I've used the Maya animation as reference, so I can work out timing of the lip syncing.

COP Session: Sentient Spaces

This session was really interesting, and taught us about how we could imbue inactive spaces and objects with personality in a way that I hadn't considered before in animation. In some cases this is very literal, such as in Seth Boyden's "An Object at rest" Where the object is sentient to the point where it has eyes and facial expressions.

The rock is the focal point of the animation

The concept of making an object sentient can also be more metaphorical and abstract, such as having a place SEEM alive, such as in Disney's "the old mill". When weather, or something that isn't sentient seems to take on a life of it's own, it's pathetic fallacy.

I made a 6 frame looping sentient space, inspired by the Disney short "the little house"

Practical Planning (STUDY TASK 7)

My project is very experimental. I'll judge its success based upon the range of responses I receive from people upon showing them the clips.

I've recorded the two clips I'll animate based on. One is exaggerated and the other is more subtle. In both clips I say, "Oh my god, what's wrong with you, man?"

Exaggerated

Subtle

I've written my dope sheets as well so I can have CRISP lip syncing for each clip.

I've been given a really intuitive face rig in MAYA from Daniel Goodman in third year, as my area of interest is in animating, not modelling or rigging. I'm going to start animating with it in a couple of days. I'm also going to design the 2D face I'll be animating to look similar to the 3D face. I want the only variable in the experiment to be the medium in which the faces are animated, so the faces must be drawn and modelled in the same style.

Useful One on One Crit

We streamlined my topic and made it more comprehensible:

"To what extent has technological advancement in character animation allowed the potential to create more nuanced and empathetic characters?"

CGI characters are more realistic to the extent that they act as if they were live action. I'll reference live action filmmaking techniques that imbue characters with emotion, such as the Kuleshov effect, and analyse the importance of other variables on how a character feels such as the context of a scene or the cinematography.

The Kuleshov effect tells us that the audience can derive emotion from a character's neutral expression by seeing the context they're in.

I'll study the uncanny valley, which is the point where an animated character becomes realistically human but not quite. The slight inaccuracies are jarring and disconcerting and make the character hard to relate to.

This crit helped cement what I'd like to make for my practical piece; a series of aide by side facial animation clips in different mediums, and then seeing how each of them resonate with an audience.

Developing my Sketchbook

The sketches and pictures I acquired while researching what makes a face relatable and emotional.

Close ups are the most commonly used means of showing a character's emotional state. It shows us in intimate, personal detail.

A great quote from John Lassetter. It relates to how facial animation is improved by evolving technology, but the potential only exists if there's artistry behind it.

 I looked at how they made Gill Man from creature from the Black Lagoon a relatable and powerful character, despite having limited facial movement.

I drew my own neutral facial expression from a photograph. However, plenty of emotions could be projected onto this face. Mistrust, tiredness, anger, grief, longing etc.

Practical Approaches to my Question (STUDY TASK 5)

My question tackles to concept of technology influencing the way characters are animated. I intend to investigate whether certain mediums allow for animated characters to be more nuanced and relatable compared to characters animated with other techniques. Do audiences inherently relate more to a CGI character than a hand drawn character? My research so far helps me understand that if an animated character is too realistic, an audience finds it disconcerting and uncanny. Also, other elements inform how relatable a character is. Abstract things like colour, pace of editing, sound, shot framing all help to build on a character's emotional performance.

Also, it is possible to imbue a character without a face with personality, such as in Chuck Jones' 'The Dot and the Line' and '2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL.

I intend to animate the same clips in three or four different mediums. I will animate a close up, intimate character in CGI, I will rotoscope them and I shall hand draw them. If I have time I would like to incorporate motion capture. The practical piece will be far more experimental than finalised and will produce several short animated clips that can be compared to one another. I analyse the success of each medium of animation, I'll show the clips to people and see what reactions each clip warrants.

Proto-question and Draft Introduction (STUDY TASK 4)

As character animation techniques become more advanced thanks to animation technology, does the way we tell stories change along with the way characters change?


The way that characters are animated in western full-length feature animations has become more advanced thanks to technology. Computer generated animation has allowed for more subtlety in character animation to the extent that we can animate realistic breathing and complex micro-expressions that are difficult to capture with hand drawn animation. In Toy Story, for example, “Woody is famed for his complexity, and the number of distinct facial movements … were designed to satiate an audience appetite for more astute virtual beings” (Greg Hilty, Watch Me Move) As character animation becomes more advanced, there is more potential to create characters with a larger breadth of emotion, as well as more characters to tell panoptic stories without the effort of hand-drawn animation, and on a larger scale. “Even the hand-drawn Disney movies incorporated CGI … when there was a hoard of something” (How CGI Transformed Animated Storytelling, a video essay). Technological advancements have been important to creating meaningful, emotional character animation since the 1930s. In Snow White “New Techniques by the Effects Department and Inkers and Painters created … realistic tears to help with the sincerity of the scenes” (Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life). However, this has never been more prevalent than with the dawn of computer animation. Computer aided character animation has leaked into stop motion films, with Laika hooking up the largest stop motion animatronic to wires and moving them with a computer to create fluid movement that’s more convincing. The more nuanced, technologically advanced and convincing the character animation is, the more impactful the story is.

Initial Ideas and Feedback to my Proposed Research Question

My NOTES.

I presented my ideas to my peers and got positive feedback. I've definitely found my area of interest but need to condense it and focus more on something specific.

Proposed research topics:

As character animation techniques become more advanced thanks to animation technology, does the way we tell stories change along with the way characters change?

Animated films have become more complex, the characters more three dimensional and the worlds more broad. To what extent is this due to improvements in character animation?

Does the medium of animation effect the kind of story the film tells due to advancements and limitations of the technology?

Images and THEORY Relating to Movement in Animation (STUDY TASK 3)

Concepts I'm keen to explore:

• Movement
• Character
• Storytelling
• Technology
• Evolution of animated films

Moodboard of images relating to my topic

1920s cel animation

When films were silent, characters were exaggerated to tell stories clearly. They displayed 2 or 3 character traits through physicality. Characters were simpler, motivations were simpler. Stories were simpler.

Exaggerated emotions

With advancements in animation technology, characters had more nuanced movement and thus more subtle, complex emotions.

Hilty, G. 2013. Watch Me Move: The Animation Show, Merrell, London

"The second type of character to flourish in animation was the more sustained personality whose motivations could mature over the course of a longer film." - Watch Me Move - The Animation Show

The advancement of technology relates back to my topic of how characters evolved and how animated characters grew more nuanced alongside this new technology

Reading Texts and Watching Videos (STUDY TASK 2)

This YouTube video delves deeply into how the medium of animation impacts storytelling:




Just Write, 2017. How CGI Transformed Animated Storytelling [Online Video] Accessed 02/11/2017

CGI films tell more complex stories than 2D films because they allow for more dynamic camera effects and crowd animation. "3D animated movies have a lot in common with action blockbusters... it's a lot easier to make things move" - 

Thomas, F, Johnston, O, 1981.  The Illusion Of Life, Disney Editions, USA

"The Illusion of Life" tells how Disney rotoscoped actors to find the ESSENCE of a character. "Live action could dominate the animator, or it could teach him. It could stifle imagination".

The BIRTH of rotoscoping. "The Collins Film" refers to Burlesque Comedian Eddie Collins who interpreted Dopey the Dwarf

Reference for Cinderella

EXAGGERATION

Establishing a Research Question (STUDY TASK 1)

Does the way we animate characters affect how we tell stories?

My interests. I focused on narrative structure in animated films and how that's influenced by character and cinematography.

When I focused my interests into theories I was drawn to comparing animation and live action. Are animated blockbusters more formulaic and simplistic in story structure than live action films, and why? In what ways does the medium of animation enhance storytelling and in what ways does it limit storytelling?

5 Different Animations

HOW DO AESTHETICS AND STYLE REFLECT THE CONTENT, FUNCTION, STYLE AND AUDIENCE OF ANIMATION?


Animation 1: Criminal Tango (1985), Dir - Solveig Von Kleist, France

This film was made by scratching directly onto the film reel and was inspired by Hollywood film noir. At the time of production, geopolitical tensions between the West and the Communist Eastern Bloc rose as an arms race took place. France played a large role in the Cold War, building it's foreign policy first in conjunction with, and then in opposition to, the United States


Animation 2: Doctor Bees (2013), Dir - Harry Partridge, UK

Harry Partridge makes short form online cartoons, often steeply based in parody and satire. Dr Bees was released at a time when superhero films were hugely popular worldwide. They were what cowboy films were to people in the 1950s. Britain had just hosted the London 2012 Olympic Games, but that's unrelated to the message of this animation.

Animation 3: Piconzé (1972), Dir -Ype Nakashima, Brazil

This was Brazil's first ever animated film released in colour. It was released when the watergate scandal took place, which saw the impeachment of President Nixon following a string of crimes involving illegal campaign funding and sabotage of political opponents by an organisation named CREEP (Campaign to Re-Elect the President). In Brazil at that time, the Brazil Independence Cup was taking place to mark the 150th anniversary of the country's independence from Portugal.

Animation 4:  Garbancito De La Mancha (1945), Dir - Arturo Moreno, Spain

This was Spain's first animated feature film in which an orphan child fights an ogre to rescue his friends. The classic story of an underdog hero championing a great threat was a popular one during this era. The film was released under difficult circumstances with the turbulence of the 2nd World War. At the time, Spain was ruled by tight-fisted dictator Fransisco Franco and had just been denied entry to the United Nations after the war.

Animation 5: Beloved Beauty (1958), Dir - Vladimir Degtyaryov, Russia

This stop motion film, based on beloved Russian folk tales, was released at a time when mistrust was brewing between the Soviet Union and the Western World after the 2nd World War. That year, the soviets performed 36 nuclear tests.

My Module Evaluation (OAUN401)

This module went well, but I thought my biggest weakness was my lack of time management. I left a lot of the work too late which means I didn’t have time to properly proofread my final essay to ensure I had met all the criteria. Also, had I put more thought and research into my sketchbook work from an earlier stage, I would have been more inventive with my drawings and explored a broader range of topics related to my theme.

Having said that, I’m pleased with my sketchbook. I think it has a unique tone and a couple of actually funny parts. The best decision I made was to ditch my first concertina and restart it over two-thirds of the way through the module. The first concertina was lacklustre, I felt. I went for a variety of tones varying from comedic to abstract and very visual to slightly more serious, which was nice as it shook up the formula from page to page, but in drawing so many different snippets of ideas I felt that I never allowed myself the chance to really explore one as a train of thought, which meant I never leapt far from my initial quote. In next year’s module I’d like to take one idea and develop on it.

So, on one hand I felt that I didn’t convey a wide enough range of topics/styles and on the other and I’d have liked to further explore just one topic/style.

The essay went well, with the interim feedback proving to be really helpful to ensure I wasn’t flying off the straight and narrow. I didn’t devote as much time to the third 1000-word segment as I’d have liked to, but I feel it was concisely written and justifies my practical body of work well. Essay writing is certainly one of my stronger suits. I’m happy that I have found a writing style that works and I look forward to developing it further in the next module. I want to make it more concise and use a variety of sentence lengths that give a sense of rhythm to the piece.

I’m also pleased with my animation proposal. It links well to the concertina stylistically as well as tonally, and I put a great deal of thought into the symbolism behind the characters and the colour scheme. I also feel I justified these choices by linking them back to my research, evidenced in the essay.

The most important thing I’ve learned during this module is the value of research. It’s inspired me to seek out new artists, observe more around me and sketch more. I appreciate how this module, especially the lecture programme, introduced me to cultures and artworks I’d never have discovered ordinarily which give me so much more to draw from. I enjoyed the lectures, even the ones that weren’t so specifically tailored to my area of study because they made me think about art outside the bubble of simply animation. I attended the lectures and blogged them consistently, although my blogging in other areas of the module, such as my keeping track of my general progress, has had a tendency to be sparse.