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.

COP 3: Taking Inspiration From Aladdin and Understanding How to Animate Robin Williams

Now I am not the first person to attempt animating Robin Williams. I discuss this to a further extent in my essay but of course Disney animators took on the comedian with animating his voice acting for the character of the Genie from Aladdin. I didn't look too closely at this film, namely because I knew how perfect this was an example of how animation can aid a performance such as Robin Williams therefore knew too much investigation would lead to me almost trying to replicate that animation. In that film Williams improvised many hours of comedic dialogue in the sound booth. This gave the animators the exciting task of animating his many riffs. Williams supplied the descriptions, then it was up to the animators to communicate these descriptions to an audience visually.

COP 3: Taking Inspiration From Mr Madila

When developing my animation, Oscar advised me that in order to use animation to its full advantage, I should add surreal elements so that the animation evokes more emotion. I looked to the animated short Mr Madila for inspiration on how to accomplish this. In the short Mr Madila is being interviewed by the animator. Mr Madila is very eccentric, this is highlighted through the use of exaggeration, one minute he's normal size, then the next when he's increasing the volume of his head, his body will grow dramatically in size. This has the excellent effect of taking the viewer through the mad surreal experience the animator is going through. Furthermore, surreal visuals are incorporated very successfully. Mr Madila might describe a very odd spiritual experience, then we the viewer can not just enjoy this experience through Mr Madila describing it to us but also through the visuals. This short has definitely inspired me with my own animation.

COP 3: Animating Robin Williams

With animating Robin Williams, I was conscious of how much time I'd already spent on the previous two failed projects so new I needed to begin the production process as soon as possible so the less pre-production work the better. Creating cartoonised versions of Marc Maron and Robin Williams was fairly easy as I drew them in a way that they could be animated fairly quickly, yet also be pretty recognisable.

I then set about developing keyframes for the animation. Constantly refering back to my question of focus; How Does Animation Evoke Emotion?, I made sure to keep in mind that in this twenty second clip, a clip of which Williams expresses a large variety of emotions, I needed to make sure my animation evoked all these emotions. If he sounded angry in a clip, I needed to express this in my animation. But not just express what is there, at this point my intentions were very clear, I needed to exaggerate on what was already there.

As you can see, when creating these keyframes, I felt it was important to keep the essence of Williams throughout. That is why I made sure when creating a facial expression to try to use him as reference first. This is different to the technique I was attempting before when I was trying to animate a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I was using reference then but there I was essentially copying so I wasn't really making anything my own. Here, all his actions I've completely made up, it is literally just my interpretation of his dialogue. 

COP 3: A Fresh Start (Again)

I decided to go back to the drawing board to start over with a fresh idea that could work as it's own piece but also tie in effortlessly with my research proposal. The key criticism of my last proposed idea was that what I was creating was not my own. I was heavily encouraged to use something that already existed and make it my own. I happened to have been listening to American comedian Marc Maron's WTF Podcast, in one episode he interviewed the late actor/comedian Robin Williams.

I felt that a twenty second clip from this interview would be the perfect thing for me to animate. No visuals already existed, it is just audio, therefore this allowed me the freedom to use animation to it's full potential to create anything. Furthermore, due to the comic genius of Robin Williams, he could serve as the perfect subject to animate. He had the incredible ability to riff from one improvised comedic situation to the next in a matter of seconds.

But due to the limitations of this podcast, he is only able to describe his comedy. Through the use of animation, I can add to what his there and aid his descriptions with visuals. Furthermore I can use animation to evoke emotion through exaggeration. The physicality of the man is already incredibly dynamic and over-the-top but there are certain things that are possible through animation that are not in real-life due to the limitations of the laws of physics.

COP 3: Hitting a wall

Unfortunately, it soon became evident for me after receiving feedback on my practical that my animated version of a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest idea was not going to work. After presenting my idea thus far, the feedback I received criticised my choice to animate a scene with the movie as reference. It was pointed out to me that what I was attempting to do was basically rotoscope the scene, and therefore would not really be answering the question that I had set out to ask of How Does Animation Evoke Emotion? The fact that the characters already existed in a visual form meant that by using animation, I was not really going to be adding much to what was already there.

It was recommended to me that I should instead consider using the original book as reference, finding the scene I wanted to animate and animate my interpretations of the character from the book. But while I acknowledged this was probably going to be my best option, I had begun to feel fatigued with where the project was going. I felt that by this point it had drifted so far from my original aim that I decided to therefore abandon the idea altogether and start afresh. I knew that this was a risky move being already quite far into the time I had to work on my practical, but i felt it was better to start fresh with a clear aim than carry on in a way that is almost like forcing a jigsaw puzzle piece to fit.

COP 3: Developing other animated versions of OFOtCN characters

I had been given feedback at this stage in the animation development process that because Nicholson's performance is so iconic with that character, it might be an idea to separate my work from him slightly. Many would say Randle McMurphy is Nicholson's most notable performance. Nicholson embodies that character, and for me, a very big fan of the movie who hasn't read the book, I'm not sure to this day how much of that character we see in the film is Randle McMurphy and how much is Jack Nicholson. I acknowledged that my animation probably couldn't really add too much to what is already there with Nicholson's performance as it is so iconic. Therefore focussing more on the side characters seemed a more sensible route to go.

The side characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are all unique in their own way with their physicality's and personalities. I wanted to animate a scene in which the aspects of each character's personality are prominent. The scene I chose is one in which Randle McMurphy is in group therapy and is trying to persuade Nurse Ratchet to let the patients watch the World Series on TV. 

Ratchet agrees if it is put to a vote. The rest of the scene follows McMurphy trying to convince the other patients to raise their hands. This scene I feel would work very well because each character reacts when McMurphy asks them to vote in a way that is very much in their personality.

The first side character I started drawing to create an animated version of was Charlie Cheswick. When drawing Chewsick, I made sure to watch the scene multiple times and study the character's physicality, in particular his facial expressions.

COP 3: Developing Final Designs of Animated Versions of OFOtCN Characters

I'd spent a lot of time with Jack Nicholson's Randle McMurphy at this point and new that he was not the only character I wanted to animate from the movie. The character The Chief is perhaps the second most important character in the film and I feel is very much the second beating heart of the film who evokes much emotion. 

Furthermore, I really wanted to animate a scene in which Randle and Chief interact because of the stark contrasts in their physicality's and their personalities. While Randle personality is very charismatic, loud, excitable, prone to boredom and bursts of anger, The Chief's personality is very reserved, calm and quiet. Both these character's physicality's are different too; Randle is shorter, faster, more agitated, his hair is very rough looking standing up like a peacock with very sharp eyebrows.  The Chief on the other hand is built almost like a tree with very wide shoulders and a very tall frame. The differences in these characters lean themselves very easily to the exaggeration animation can create. 

Above are the final designs I created of the two characters. I feel they are simplified enough to work as separate animated characters, yet represent the personality of the two characters.