Movement through live action film/tv

I was talking with my support tutor when they suggested a show, explaining personality coming from movement. The tv series called Peaky blinders has many characters, these characters do present a "don't mess with us" or "we don't care what you think" feeling from their walk, here's an example;

Just this simple walk establishes who they are and this can be used as performance for animators to express the feeling even more with the characters they create, which I hope to do with my animation. Just from observing I can feel the strength and power of these characters, almost feeling like they pose a threat which they are doing.

Colour Palettes (development of characters)

Colour is everywhere and helps visually describe many elements in everyday life and is an importance in animation, colours help to understand feelings and personalities, a character displays.  Understanding character roles, helps understand how the character is represented by colour, Ying and Yang is an example that demonstrates good and bad which I'm trying to incorporate into my character designs.

Many characters are being made and can be depicted wrong because of the colours used, this Article demonstrates what colours are used for different character types, placing them in good/bad category. 

I naturally choose colours already associated with my characters, being a goldish brown for my hero and a dark purple for my villain, as seen in this character design:

I've also taken the advantage of colour with my narrative backstory where I have created a concept that has an in-between colour symbolising the relationship of both characters in the past.

Character appearance (development)

After creating my base characters which can be seen in the blog previously, I started to work on their appearance, this being the face as I want to create a new style for myself. Here are examples:

Drawing these faces took a while and I wondered if it was even necessary to have for the animation as I'm going to be doing a walk cycle, from a side view perspective.

I then thought about the research on shapes and conveying personality through movement, and the idea sparked of leaving it to the audience's imagination. Letting the audience decide who this faceless character depicts is more important than the way they look and so I have decided to leave the face blank to also speed up the process.

Story telling (development of project)

My dissertation covers the topic of narrative structure, allowing me to discover ways of developing a narrative that is explored by characters. For the development of my practical, I have started to create a simple narrative that involves two characters, both representing the two roles I'm focusing on, being the Hero and Villian.

So far I'm using the knowledge I've gained from my research and I'm trying to identify how each character fits the role they act. this is the development so far:

As seen, the characters are undergoing a new style that I'm undertaking to understand values in greyscale, as I want to expand my knowledge as it will help with my understanding of colour theory. this was inspired by Sycra, a concept/character design artist on Youtube.

The characters designs are inspired by fantasy warrior types, I hope the characters develop alongside the narrative I create. As inspiration for the narrative structure, I have looked at the Lion King made by Disney and have picked out the most important parts that both the hero and villain act out. and am trying to incorporate the logic into their traits.

Man walking in 100 ways

I found a video of a guy doing 100 different walks on a treadmill, he illustrates from his movement so many character behaviours, He is able to even mimic feminine movement in his shape. here's the video:

Whats important about this video is the aspect that a simple form can depict all these different character roles which im trying to resemble, I want to create a simple figure that acts the way a "Hero" does and then applying the aesthetics on top so that the viewer then can identify who they are.

I also did an experiment of covering up the words on the video and asked people to tell me his personality trait and they identified most of them correctly, showing that movement from a simple form can show many behaviours

movement through ballet and curves

Simple shapes give an understanding of the form of the character which is what I'm trying to develop in the animation I am making. I was advised to look up a video from Vimeo of a ballet dancer performing and animated lines were rotoscoped on to her. Here's the clip:

This is so helpful as it basically represents what my animation idea is, using simple forms to play or reenact an action using the character personality traits and these produce curve lines that we can see in the video above.

Heres another example of a walk cycle by Felix Sputnik:

As you can see how the lines have different curves of motions, This will guide me when I do my practicle

Character movement through Traits (Tekken 7)

characters
  stance
    the stance depicts their fighting style, and this shows us that a character is either a "Hero" or "Villain" or has any of the characters roles from Propps character theory.

  I'm going to be talking about some examples from a game that has a variety of characters, all represented and depicted as different character roles and traits.

      Lucky Chloe

        Shows the traits of an all-out Japanese girl that is westernised and there is clearly an anime influence on her appearance. There's also the cultural aspect of an idol from the way she acts. Her visual representation feels heroic and positive using a freestyle dance fighting style.

      Shaheen

        Clearly depicts an Arabian vibe, his stance shows strength like a soldier which reflects his fighting style from a military background, the light colours help identify that he looks like a "Hero".

      Sergei Dragunov

        Just from his stance, we can already clearly identify that he's Russian using a Commando Sambo fighting style, his appearance also reflects his body language and attitude which also identifies that he looks like "Villain" trying to make orders to others.

  Why is this important?
    This is important for myself to understand what it is, from these specif stances and body language these characters depict. This will help make the character I present in my animation so that it is easily recognisable to the viewer what each character depicts

TimeTable/gantt chart

I had a meeting with Aly from student support to help me with keeping me organized with this project, so we made a timetable for me to keep a check of where I am and should be for my practical and dissertation.

It seems like I'm sticking to this timetable at this current time but due to an event upcoming in a weeks time may make me behind but I hope I don't get behind.

Thoughts

During this week i had have conversation with Different people about my idea and people have said the following

  -Think about other cultures besides Western and Eastern animation (implying my own culture)
  -Consider looking at peoples thought process of what is a Hero to them.
  -Make a simple character that can display all movement and then add aesthetics.

The talk with Aly also made me think about a game that shows good examples of cultures and aesthetics called Tekken, as i am a fan of the game this is going to be helpful as i know a lot about the characters and their backgrounds as discussed with Aly

starting the project

Mindmap

Made this a few weeks back showcasing planning of the essay.

Research

I created Pinterest boards for Hero's and Villain's which were to identify the characters I mentioned in the last blog:

Hero's
Villain's

Thinking about how these characters were made from peoples experience in life or from a result of what they think about when just creating a story, it's important as this could ultimately be a factor for testing my theory of what is considered to be the character roles we place.

Practical

I started to make a walk cycle as a test because it's going to help me understand the movement I want to create for the final product;

this is the simple guide I made

 and here's an almost finished walk

I'm hoping to create a simple character that then moves like the depictions of the character roles I've researched and explained in my Dissertation. This will develop as I start researching.

  

After 2nd tutorial with Fred

After meeting up with Fred I finally had an idea of where my essay is going. Heres the structure:

Before this meeting, I had researched what defines a Hero and Villain and analysed characters who have the qualities needed for these roles:

Also did some reading of Propps character theory and found these quotes which help with the knowledge leading this essay:

By the next tutorial, I will have bullet points of research and ideas ready to be discussed and have designed some concept of characters.

CoP 3 proposal

CoP Essay

Practical character design

For my practical i decided to work on showcasing my question in the form of character design, I focused on the three roles i talked about in my Essay, which are the Hero, Princess and False Hero who play big parts in a story.

The following images show them all together and as indivisuals. each indivisual has been described as their role and what they do in the story, alongside their personalities.

i love the final results of each character as i was trying to use the best  style i have to express each role.

Pulled section of Essay

I pulled out this massive section from my essay because I had a bit off an issue with it. this issue involved testing what I've written to see if it helps the argument or rather theory to prove Propp's character theory, here is the section:

The amount of detail used to convey the characters and background depends on the genre as it helps to represent what the series is all about, one example of a comedy slice of life anime is “Nichijou”, made to look simple with limited detail but is supported by the intense comedy animation sequences to make each sequence very exaggerated with detail, which adds on to the character personality trait. The character personality is easily established allowing the viewer to know how this character is going to react, showcasing the many situations of “Nichijou”(every day like) where the audience can relate to each character's position and can easily identify the expression of the character, thanks to how the animator conveyed the feeling of the character.

There are many sequences that gives the audience a chance to appreciate the animation but one, in particular, is the 4 minutes sequenced called “Nichijou everyday life part 65 (episode 16)”.

We are instantly introduced to 2 main protagonists that are confronted by a policeman looking for someone who is carrying a bag full of counterfeit bills, which one of the main girl protagonists is supposedly holding, and suits the description. She instantly over reacts with guilt causing the other main protagonist to question her friend and comes to the conclusion that it can’t be her, then suddenly the girl holding the bag raises her hands up ready to get cuffed which looks suspicious to the policeman, and her friend starts to overreact but still tries to reason if it truly is her friend, and ends up telling the policeman that “she is getting ready just in case a volleyball comes by” the policeman accepted the reasoning, but within the moment we see her bowing in front of the policeman with what it seems to be a counterfeit bill placed on the ground and therefore makes the policeman really suspicious of this girl. He questioned the girl if it is counterfeit money which she replies with it being real money and a bribe to let her go.

The scene then transitions to the policeman grabbing the bag intensively, opening it up; taking out what’s in the bag which appears to be her yaoi (homosexual) manga/comic, from this we see her start stressing, causing her to unleash her strength that could potential injure somebody. The animation from this point becomes intensive as she strikes the police officer, causing him to throw all the pages in the air, we then see her jumping high in the air to catch each page. As she lands collecting some of the pages, she looks up towards her friend who has one of the pages, with a surprised face as she looks at the comic; causing her to be traumatised allowing for her friend to take advantage, the animation then shows the girl going towards the traumatised friend to perform a wrestling move ending up with her friend slamming the ground and flying in the air as she collects the page, a posh man enters the scene picking up the pages causing him to receive a kick. seconds after, the girl counts how many pages she had collected she noticed a page was missing and it happened to be in the mouth of a goat chewing on the page, causing her to reperform the wrestling move on the goat. The sequence ends with her walking away with a lot of stress caused by the amount of strength she used. (Nichijou Everyday life part 65 (Episode 16), 2011)

As we can see, the animators were able to convey each character emotions and demonstrate the personality traits given to each character, which makes it easy to identify for the audience, I found some reviews that fans of the series have written about this episode.

NICHIJOU EVERYDAY LIFE PART 65 (EPISODE 16)
Your Bibliography: Nichijou Everyday life part 65 (Episode 16). (2011). [video] Japan: Kyoto Animation.

The test involved asking people if they could connect and relate to the character but it seemed like people either got confused at what was happening or they didn't find the intense moments in the animation funny enough. Some pointed out that it is another cultures comedy that only works if you have been exposed to most of it, which really surprised me and completely failed to help with the argument I was presenting, so I had to take it out and replace it with a film that still carries the culture but people can actuly relate to it because its got human asspects.

study task 5: Writing an Introduction

Within this essay I am to explore how animators visually convey character personality traits, I will be researching as to how characters are developed and created in a way to suit their respected personality traits, this will include looking at how characters are thought up through a few processes of gathering ideas and then are produced into the final drawing concepts. My essay will cover the different approaches involved as to how the character is created and then presented in an animation format. As to how the character is representing their traits, there will be further investigations into how animators use different techniques to showcase these traits.

There are various amounts of animations across all genres and styles that give the viewer a way to connect to the character’s personality traits, to discover what makes the viewer feel connected to the character I will find and compare related texts that indicate what goes on for the viewer and the animators. Most of these animations will consist between looking at American, European and Asian animations to compare how they convey a character’s personality trait and whether there is a stereotypical result between the three; from this result, we can correlate whether characters are made from a structure of set rules that all animators accept and follow or are made breaking the set rules as to how the character’s acts.

If the result of animators following a structure of set rules are true, there should be a further reason and research as to why animators convey these certain ways with these set rules. If there is we can determine that there is a structure to making a character, does it mean that the animator can choose to go against these set rules?

My hypothesis behind the role of how animators convey character personality traits is that in order for the animators to create these traits, there will be a lot of planning and referencing to actor’s performances in films. This should provide a theory whether it is possible to convey these traits from a personal or referencing stand point.

Study Task 4: Choosing a Research Question

My question is going to explore the topic, Aesthetics of character design and technique used to convey a characters personality traits. With research, I will be able to find solutions to my question that will be testable in order to define the result.

The process I would like to undertake will allow me to focus on finding out how personality traits work and how they are given to characters, I'm sure there are books on semiotics that specifically talk about personality traits in stories. Once I find information about personality traits I will depict the semiotics and try to explain how they work within a story.

books I can look into are:

Richard Williams (2009) 'The Animator's Survival Kit'

Propp, Y.V. and Scott, L. (1968) Morphology of the folk tale. Edited by Louis A. Wagner. 2nd edn. 

Su, Haitao, and Vincent Zhao. (2011) Alive Character Design. 1st ed.

Crossley, Kevin. Character Design From The Ground Up. 1st ed. Ilex Press, 2014. Print.

Thomas, Frank, Ollie Johnston, and Frank Thomas. The Illusion Of Life. 1st ed. New York: Hyperion, 1995. Print.

An animation I will be looking into is "Kimi no nawa"(your name) as it is a great example for personality traits studies.

Shinkai, Makoto. Your Name. Japan: CoMix Wave Films, 2016. film.

Since this film is about body swapping we can see how each character reacts in the other's body and how they have to interact with the others life.

Society

Reymond Williams book on Society explores and states about how society should work "Made by the people for the people" explains that we as a society should come together to make things by us for the people, in that sense we (general public) don't really follow this as much because of how the world works. We live in a society that has massive companies that want to just provide for the people and gain money for their services.

First thing's first manifesto quotes "life is unfair but can be changed by creatives, allowing people to work together and equally" this would be lovely in a creatives view, but the change is difficult to do from my understanding as creatives don't get as many options as an academic.

Being unique and working for themselves, does not work in society, rather working on our strengths with others provides a better result, which is why the industry is starting to incorporate more creatives to work with academic people.

Cultural relativism is important in society, defined as people choosing what's right from what their values are. but who is to say whose right or wrong. Basically, think about it in a way that puts you in the other person shoes. is it right for them?

these judgements are based on moral aspects, and treat yourself and others the same, using people is an act that breaks the moral code.

interesting concepts i learns in this lecture. a formed opinion would be "treat others the way you would like to be treated" 

politics

Garland, first things first manifesto mentions "stop wasting talent" as its important in life within our own practice and in the industry. The industry has always needed creatives to help imagine most products, for example, a car company called BMW or even a clothes company called Nike have logos that have been designed by a creative in a way to be recognised instantly.

Adbusters invented Culture jamming, and are a capitalist company that follow a pattern of jobs, that has been trapped in the system. it's a consumer against itself using memes. We become part of the problem which stops everyone looking at the real problems of the design. which I never really noticed.

Victor Papanek, stated that designers have talent, that should not be wasted, and those companies use a system that was designed to make consumers keep buying the products. one example is having a tv that stops working after a certain amount of years which is done by having the chip's inside fry, leaving the buyer no choice but to get a new TV.

"Doing you art to the best of your abilities" is what William Morris stated, making craft can be used as a political weapon. he also mentions how awful the system is where the producer does not care about the product and that its only for the profit. No love for the craft becomes a pointless object.

Globalisation spread the system of sharing and being equal amongst everyone which was to make everything progress better, one Organisation that spread this was the Bauhaus as it had a system that made everything fair and equal in its own way. they thought on a human level, A situation to explain this is a Police officer and a miner are not alike, but both are trying to get on with their life's trying to make a living.

study task 3

Adorno talks about television being presented to the audience in different ways that can bring an audience to watch programs "possibly, the public at large may be sensitized to the nefarious effect of some of these mechanisms."(Adorno, 1954) and that it is not about the programs but about being able to watch an imagery of some kind that brings satisfaction, " We are not concerned with the effectiveness of any particular show or program; but, we are concerned with the nature of present-day television and its imagery"(Adorno, 1954)

The audience has already been exposed to all these programs and shows that they understand the pattern leading them to not think much about what is being shown and allowing them to enjoy what is being viewed. " This procedure may ultimately bring forth a number of recommendations on how to deal with these stimuli to produce the most desirable effect of television."(Adorno, 1954)

An animation that relates to Adorno's book, are shows such as the Simpsons, Family guy and Futurama as the audience can relate and gain that satisfaction of knowing what type of show it is, all of these animations are part of the comedy genre.

Adorno, T. W. "How To Look At Television". The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television 8.3 (1954): 213-235. Web.

Culture

A theory by Reymond Williams discusses the difficulties of culture and its concepts in his opinion. It explores the encouragement of growth and how it could slowly progress, the process involves having multiple cultures working together; in the result that everyone can accept each other's culture. which I can see happening in this day and age, but still has a long way to reach its final goal. The world is getting into a uniform culture is another way to phrase it.

Culture can also be used as a weapon against other cultures. being cultured is a sign to others, "makes you better than others". I don't agree with this as it does not give someone the right to think they are better, what it is, in my opinion, is a way of having the advantage of what you know compared to others who have not researched the culture.

But as it stands, people abused it with aggression to take over another's culture. but this is not all bad because Globalization was the outcome, and this has helped with many of the economies around the world, for example, McDonoalds is around the whole globe because of globalisation and industrialisation.

Culture is mainly based on the qualities of a community, the qualities are: Fashion, Politics and multi-diversity. This represents many cultures, one example is British culture, Politics is governed by the government that is part of the royal family living in the UK. Fashion has various amounts of styles to represent the multi-diverse of different ethnicities. Art had a way to use culture as a weapon against governments, creating drawings about false politics is just one of a few examples.