For this experiment, I wanted to create a cocky type of character which was extremely fun to do. The line that I ended up using 'I am the king of the world!', which I felt as though was extremely appropriate. The line is from the film 'Titanic (1999).'
Since I found smug characters, extremely difficult to portray, I decided to play around with an idea that I found uncomfortable with so I can become more familiarized with it for this experiment.
I found it interesting since the original had Jack be extremely enthusiastic on being on one of the biggest boats known for mankind at the time. The idea of something being new and how the idea of discovering new things seemed very exciting for him. I like how it contrasted with mine, since Jack's emotion felt more wholesome and wholehearted while my twist made my character come off as extremely confident and someone who has too much power.
The original scene is here:
DIFFERENT ATTEMPTS
Attempt 1:
Before trying to get into the role properly, I felt as though it was appropriate for me to use a prop. The use of the staff was important since I wanted to really emphasize on the idea of royalty and the power that the character that I wanted would have. I felt as though the body felt too stiff, however, I didn't want it to be too flowy since it would look out of place for the character I wanted to explore. What I did like was the idea of whacking the staff on the floor, to again, create this confident character.
Attempt 2:
Since I had some idea on what I wanted to do with the staff, I decided to try a second attempt. Again, I really liked the idea of me whacking the staff against the ground but I also liked the idea of me having a step forward as I say the rest of my line. Again, I was able to show the confident personality through my animation. In the end of my act with how my hands stay on my hip, helps create an extremely sturdy and dynamic shape that again, emphasizes the cockiness of this character.
Attempt 3:
So, instead of trying to go for a somewhat energetic character, I decided to change it up a bit and go for someone who is more calm but still has a hint of the personality that I want to show. There are actions that are repeated similarly to the previous attempts, but instead of finishing on a dynamic pose similar to a superhero, I decide to instead sway my arm going around my figure. When watching this over and over, it feels as though it is a taunt towards people, which I found pretty funny. Nevertheless, I will still able to show my idea across.
Attempt 4 - Final Attempt
This was the final attempt that I had done for my research. I believe I was able to mix the ideas between the different attempts to create a product I was extremely proud of.
I was able to create a dramatic effect by using pauses between certain parts of the words so I could emphasize the words that were important. For example, I was able to keep a calm position throughout my acting however there is a contrast with the harsh movement of the staff as well as the emphasis of the 'K' in King. Little details like that helped make this experiment a success.
For this emotion, I decided to use the line, "I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too", from the film 'The Wizard of Oz. I decided to use this line specifically since I felt as though I could play around with the body shape as well as the hands. I really wanted to exaggerate the shake of the hand throughout the piece. The slouched body came in a lot later since it fit with the whole theme of being evil. I found it quite amusing since, the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz was an extremely thin and tall character through her character design, especially through her shoes and hat, but in my twist, she is instead old and decrepit. I really enjoyed to see the contrast of the real scene to my version of it. Another thing to note that I found interesting was how fast she said her line and how the soundtrack of the film helps amplify it. Through my rendition of the line, I decided to say it slowly and more creepily, to really allow the audience to be scared of the severity of the character's words through my acting. I also wanted to try to really emphasize on the sentence 'and your little dog too', so I can really play around with the idea of wanting to harm the animal since I really want to play around with a messed up character.
Here is the original video:
EVIL EMOTION - MY VERSION
DIFFERENT ATTEMPTS
Attempt 1:
For my first attempt, it was more of me trying to familiarize myself with the character that I wanted to show. After analyzing it, I realized I really liked the idea of the pointing, however, it felt too rushed and not exactly a lot of movement.
Attempt 2:
For my second attempt, I still tried to experiment with the hand shaking movement as well as pointing at the camera, felt like it was extremely effective with the line. I learned from the idea of not rushing the line, keeping it at a steady pace was the best option. I also enjoyed the movement of the hands at the beginning, a very sinister kind of movement. However, the body still felt stiff to me.
Attempt 3:
For my third attempt, I started to notice that I tried to understand my intention of the character before even reciting the line. I felt as though this was extremely effective when trying to understand the body language of the character. I started to pick up on traits that I found extremely effective throughout my attempts, which again, as mentioned previously were through the hands. I even started to do different points of the lines 'my pretty' and 'your little dog too'. I felt as though it was extremely effective through the feedback that I have gotten since it really started to display the importance of the two different characters that I refer to, especially the dog. In the Wizard of Oz, the camera cuts away as the Witch of the West says, 'your dog too', so I wanted to take advantage of the idea of me being seen on camera as I say this line. This is when I started to notice the more sinister side to my character when doing this version.
Attempt 4:
I realized it was quite similar to the third version, however, I felt more confident as I started to film, since I started to familiarize the role that I was doing. I wanted to create an evil witch character through these voice lines and I believe that this was the base for me to expand on.
ATTEMPT 5 - FINAL VERSION
For the final version, this is when I started to play around with the body language. I wanted to create quite a slouched out posture and play around with the movement as I pointed at the camera. I got to mix the qualities that I got to find effective throughout my acting. This is when I believe, I showed a more threatening aura towards the audience when I bring up the line 'your little dog too'.
Before trying to experiment with different forms of animation, I decided that it was best to try to film footage of myself doing the actions that I really wanted to do.
Originally, I could've easily placed my phone somewhere and record myself, however, I felt as though that was not necessarily the best option especially when my first experiment is rotoscoping and trying to use myself as reference for complicated movement.
So, in the end, I decided to book the soundstage room from the University.
There, I was able to get constructive feedback on my acting by Mark Buschbacher, who was one of the University's staff who helped film and give feedback on my work.
Throughout this experience I was really able to experiment with a range of acting emotions such as:
Evil
Smug/Confident
Annoyed
Fear
Playing around with some stylized walk cycles
Stylized sitting down/standing up movements
BODY LANGUAGE - RESEARCH
Body language, although we don't realize it, is the oldest language in the world. There are a lot of reasons why a person would behave the way they do due to their: mood, health, age, social background etc. Through our body language we are able to express our inner emotions even when trying to hide our emotions. We are able to sometimes be able to read people's minds through their body posture. (1)
For my research, I decided to use a few of the books that I had borrowed from the University's library. One of the books that I had chosen in particular was "Body Language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures" by Allan Pease. I had also used the book "Acting and Character Animation. The Art of Animated Films, Acting and Visualizing" by Rolf Giesen and Anna Khan.
I really wanted to exaggerate the use of the hands for my research and the reason why I chose the hand poses that I did.
In Allan Pease's book, there is a chapter called "Chapter 3: Palm Gestures".(2) It allowed me to understand what is considered an aggressive and dominant position through hand shapes (figure 17 and figure 18) when it comes to people who interact with each other.
The book I borrowed from the University's library to understand gestures.
Body Language: How to read other's thoughts by their gestures in pages 42-43
The example it provided was extremely interesting since it gave a scenario of "What if you asked someone to help move an object from point A to point B?"
What I found intriguing was that even though I could hypothetically tell the person where to place the object, in the same vocal tone, body movement and facial gesture. The way my had positioned could tell my real intention of how I am feeling and how I approach the person helping me.
At first I wondered while reading this, "Wouldn't it be easy to lie by masking my real intentions?"
But the answer was quite fascinating, since it would be quite hard to lie since the way the palm moves matters quite a bit. There are three palm gestures that the book provides:
(Figure 16) Submissive Palm Position - it is when the palm is facing upwards and it is harmless. It comes across extremely gentle and non violent to the other person. I realised I didn't exactly use this position specifically for my reference footage, however, it was still helpful to know.
(Figure 17) Dominant Palm Position - It is when the palm is facing the opposite direction and it is facing downwards. Again, it is harmless, however, there is a hint of superiority through it. What I noticed was that I ended up using this palm position for my act "I am the King of the World!". I felt as though it was extremely important since it shows off the idea of authority and superiority to my character compared to the audience.
(Figure 18) Aggressive Palm Position - This is when the hand is closed into a fist and it has a pointed finger. The pointed figure is usually considered a rude and irritating gesture that people can generally use as they speak. I noticed that in my act based on the Wizard of Oz's line 'I will get you pretty, and your little dog too', that I used this hand pose quite a bit, throughout all of my attempts. I felt as though the pointing was quite effective since I was able to show the hostility of the character and how aggressive I come across to the audience.
In the same book, I noticed there was another chapter that I found intriguing and useful for my research and that was "Chapter 6: Arm Barriers" (3). The reason why I found this interesting was because I noticed there were different ways of showing an arm-cross gesture which helped convey different emotions. There were two gestures that I wanted to focus on specifically for my research:
(figure 67) Body Language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures in pages 89-91
(figure 67) Standard Arm - Cross Gesture: For this hand position, I found it interesting that there was an experiment conducted in a classroom. For this arm position to be done, they experimented with a professor who purposefully started to slander the character of important people. Due to this, since the students didn't agree with the professor's opinion, they all decided to cross their arms. So, through my research, I noticed that the cross arm positions are usually used by people who don't always tend to agree with the statement being said. I decided not to use this gesture specifically since it didn't express the hostility that I wanted through one of my acting sequences so I decided to keep researching.
(figure 68) Body Language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures in pages 90-91
(figure 68) Reinforced Arm - Cross Gesture: I decided to research more on this pose, since I found it more hostile and more aggressive by the way the arms are
extremely high up. Not only this, but it shows through the tension of the fists as the fingers clench on the arms. I felt as though this pose helped a lot more in my research, since I was able to use it for one of my reference sequences. The sequence I used it for particular was for the line "Well here's another fine mess you've gotten me into!" I wanted to display an
annoyed and aggressive personality through my experiment and I felt as though I was able to capture the emotion that I wanted to convey.
ACTING RESEARCH
Before filming my video references, what I found useful as I was researching was that most animators who wanted to be able to capture movement, were often encouraged to participate in acting classes.(3) The problem was that most artists were extremely introverted and they felt unwilling as well as uncomfortable to act. Personally, I am not an extroverted person, however, I had experience from a young age in Musical Theatre. So, I was not bothered by being in the Studio and recording myself to do the movements I wanted to animate. Not only this, but I felt as though it would allow my work to be a lot more personal if I ended up acting for my own research instead of using clips from online.
Even though I had mentioned that I had previous knowledge to acting, I still needed to learn more on how to adapt in the studio, trying to build a character through my acting. (4)
The concept of the actor needing to understand what is happening in the scene is extremely important since it is necessary to discuss things such as:
The importance of the character emotion in the scene?
What are the character's intentions/objectives in the scene? Does it come across to the audience?
How to help the actor's acting? Perhaps give them an idea of the scene by showing Character designs/Finished animation/Intended scene designs/Storyboards etc.
Since my research is based off character animation and not me creating a student film, I felt as though that I had to heavily focus more on the first two points. (5)
Throughout my acting research, I realized that it took me quite a bit of time for me to adapt to understanding the character emotions since I needed to fully understand the reason of the sequence. Not only this, but it also took a bit of time because I had to really achieve some basic understanding what movement in particular felt appropriate for the emotion I wanted to deliver.
CONCLUSION ON RESEARCH
I felt as though this experiment was extremely successful since I was able to nit pick lines from films and create my own twist on them in my own unique way. It really allowed me, to focus a lot on character animation by exaggerating my movements through my acting in an effective way which, was what I originally intended. However, I didn't want to do it too much that made it seem out of place.
I was pretty content and surprised that I had multiple attempts on different shots since it really allowed me to create and expand on some of the character animation that I wanted to act out.
I learned that whatever you do first isn't always going to be perfect. Due to this, I ended up realising that perhaps the reference footage that I have used in the past for previous work, may have not been effective since I didn't get to properly critique and analyse its effectively. After this experiment, it allowed me to put a lot more care into my work ethic as well as quality.
Finally, the use of constructive feedback, had helped a lot more than intended. I am someone who always allows criticism, since it helps me grow as a creator through my work.
REFERENCES:
(1) Giesen, R. and Khan, A. (2018) “Chapter 33 - Understanding Body Language,” in Acting and character animation: The art of animated films, acting, and visualizing. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 177–179.
(2) Pease, A. (2014) “Arm Barriers,” in Body language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures. New Delhi: Manjul Publishing House, pp. 89–92.
(3) Pease, A. (2014) “Palm Gestures,” in Body language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures. New Delhi: Manjul Publishing House, pp. 40–43.
(4) Hooks, E. (2017) “Animator versus stage actor – vive la différence!,” in Acting for animators 4th edition. London: Routledge, pp. 3–5.
(5)Hayes, D. and Webster, C. (2013) “Chapter 8: Working with Actors - Live Action and Animation,” in Acting and performance for Animation. New York: Focal Press, pp. 357–359.
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