COP 3: Research Methodology

My research methodology for my essay consisted a lot of looking at two specific examples of where animation has really connected with it's audience emotionally. I looked specifically at the animation studios Studio Ghibli and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Both these companies I found to be very different but still with a great amount of respect for each other in their different techniques and processes. Hayao Miyazaki while admired the technical quality of early Disney animated films, felt what they lacked were realistic characters with a deep emotional connection.

What he felt he could accomplish with his movies was visually making his films as technically advanced with very real characters in surreal worlds. I looked very closely at films by the two studios and separated them both into two case studies. With Disney I looked at the very first of their animated films Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and with Studio Ghibli I looked at their studio as a whole, in particularly how they use the technique 'ma'. 'Ma' basically means moments of quiet where nothing is happening, Studio Ghibli use this technique to create a greater emotional connection with their audiences.

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.

COP 3: Demonstrating I Understand How to Evoke Emotion Through Animation With a Second Practical

I feel I had demonstrated well how animation can be used to evoke emotion through animation in a very literal sense. If Robin Williams laughs in the audio, I animated him laughing and exaggerated this by having him lean further back with his head more titled, if he suddenly shouted, I would have him jump into a different pose. It was all exaggerated successfully but all in a literal sense, which is fine because the focus of my practical is more specific to how animation evokes emotion with performance. But I felt like I needed to show that I have an understanding of how animation can evoke animation in other ways outside of performance.

I was advised to make another practical that focussed on how another element of animation can be used to evoke emotion. In a second practical I decided to focus on how animation evokes emotion through the use of colour and expression. There would be no characters in this animation, nor any objects. It would be entirely surreal. For example if Robin Williams shouts with a hint of anger in his voice or makes a bold statement I would represent this visually with a giant red square that dominates the shot.

COP 3: Adding Finishing Touches to the Animated Robin Williams Animation

Now I feel like with my animation process I basically went from attempting to animate one great actor to another, maybe I should have gone with animating someone lesser known. But there is a reason both these actors are so notable, in particular with Robin Williams. Not only does he bring so much comedy and charisma to all of his performances, but he is also able to bring so much emotion. On the making of Aladdin Rom Clements and John Musker said 'the great thing about Robin, aside from his improv, was that he could really come up with some sincere emotion and I think it was important in this character and with all the characters to really get the audience invested in his plight'.

I needed to not neglect this emotional connection Williams would have with not just the character, but the audience too. He starts off relaxed in the clip, then excites the viewer and Maron with a riff, brings them up, then lets them down gently, it is in these quiet moments that I feel most emotion lies.

Upon showing my animation thus far to people for feedback, I was told positive things, although a few finishing touches needed to be made. I had finished the movements of going from one pose to another. But what was missing was what should occur in-between that. There was still a lot of static shots where Williams, a man known to not sit still would be exactly that, still. It only needed a slight tweaking. For example, I went back and added in secondary movements. Where he holds his arm up, instead of keeping it hanging perfectly still there until the next shot, I altered it so it would lower slightly, like how a real arm would act.

Furthermore Eleanor gave me feedback that a lot of the animation could do with being more exaggerated, if only slightly. One of my weaknesses as an animator is often being a tad timid to really push how far you can take exaggeration with animation. A lot of the time I am more concerned with creating realistic movements that I forget the medium I am working in. I went back and altered this slightly. For example, in a shot where he leans back to dive forward, I leaned him slightly further backwards so when he does jump forwards it's that bit more impacting on top of dialogue where we hear him shouting.

COP 3: Animating Robin Williams Part 2

Upon showcasing to my peers the animation I had created so far, I received positive feedback. Although at the stage I was at, the animation was looking rather limited. It moved from keyframe to keyframe easily enough but there was not enough flow of movement. The footage was looking too static and robotic. Furthermore I was also advised that I was not including enough secondary movement. For example I needed to add little movements that will aid in Robin Williams' performance. As I've stated in my essay, sometimes an eyebrow movement can be as effective as a jump up onto a table, the little movements need just as much attention as the big movements. 

I knew I wanted to use reference for all of Williams' keyframes. But even though there is a lot of Robin Williams content out there, I knew I wasn't going to find every facial expression I wanted to animate pulled by him, even though the man had a very expressive face. Therefore sometimes I would need to use the people around me for reference.

The above facial expression is pretty close to the one I wanted to use in a shot in the animation, but not quite. That is when Eleanor posed for me. 

COP 3: Things to consider when animating Robin Williams' Performance

Richard Williams in the Animator's Survival Kit stated the fact that legendary animator Bill Tytla said that the three things in animation are anticipation, action and reaction.

Similarly, Charlie Chaplin had stated that the importance of acting, especially in silent film is: Tell them what you're going to do, do it and tell them that you've done it. They are both stating the same thing, that to show action clearly, one must anticipate the action, perform the action and show a reaction.

In the Every Frame a Painting Episode Robin Williams - In Motion, Zhou talks about how Robin Williams moved on screen. He had the impressive ability to express a character through not what they were saying, but what they were doing, to the point where in many of his movies, much the time you could watch it in silent and still understand exactly what's going on.

COP 3: Applying Surrealness to My Animation

So as I'd spoke about previous, Mr Madila uses animation to create visuals that aid Mr Madila's mad descriptions. Well here I want to use animation to aid Robin Williams descriptions when he is riffing to communicate the media better to an audience and evoke more emotion. When originally showing the clip to people in my class, feedback I had received was that they didn't understand what the two comedians were talking about. And while this was of course bound to happen since I was just using a twenty second exert from a full hour long interview, how I could use animation was by filling in the gaps where the audience might not understand what is going on, so try to tell the story visually. This can only be done to a certain extent using these two characters in an environment that obeys the laws of physics. That is why I needed to add in more surreal elements.

For example, in one bit Robin Williams talks of the comedian Freaky Ralph who set himself on fire. Now all that happens here is that he describes this scenario and it's up to the viewer to picture this scenario. But I thought that an effective use of animation would be to actually visualise this. That is why when he says the word 'fire' I animated his head actually setting on fire. Then Maron who asks 'to close?' instantly puts it out with a fire extinguisher. I thought this little bit was a really nice way to use animation to it's full potential and gage a closer attention from  the audience, this description is less likely to be missed now I've visualised it because having seen it visually it is potentially more likely to stick in your brain.