Looking back...

After conducting a body of research for this project I feel I have learnt a lot. I now understand that emotion in animation is not triggered as simply as having a character with big eyes and a big head so we connect to them easier, it is more complicated than that. I have read interesting theories that the emotions we feel towards animated characters and fiction in general might not actually be particularly valid. Instead we could actually just being easily manipulated and the emotions we feel are in fact as fictitious as the fictional characters we feel them for.

But I have come to the conclusion that the emotions we feel for animated characters are neither a hundred percent accurate, nor a hundred percent fake. What we feel I now believe to be somewhat in the middle of the two. Of course we cannot feel for an animated character in the same way we would for a loved one, yet we also cannot just disregard whatever we do feel when we witness an upsetting scene in an animated film for example as not real, I feel we do definitely feel something, that is just a part of the movie going experience.

When looking back at my practical I think it is rather successful at answering the question I was setting out to answer. In particular, I feel it does a good job in answering the question of how animation evokes emotion with performance. I am glad I also made a second practical that demonstrated a further understanding of how animation evokes emotions with mediums that are less literal, for example with colour and expression. I felt this second practical does successfully answer that question in a sense of colour and expression. Although having said that, I do wish I had more time to work on it. The animation is very static and therefore I do not feel is very strong as it's own animation, I think it only really works when you see it next to my first practical. I feel creating this practical has been very useful in helping me to understand how I can exaggerate a performance. All in all, I feel like I have learnt a lot this module and the lessons I have learnt are very applicable to animations I might create in the future.