COP3 Artist Research From 'The puppet show' Kara Walker

From the book 'The puppet show', it introduces quite a lot of puppet artists and their work. I selected two of them to study because they work is unique in terms of the media and the concept also the use of body language of the characters are worth looking and studying at.

Kara Walker 

Walker includes a lot of messages in her work. The reason why she uses paper cut out is due to her race and how audience would perceived these story from her. Using silhouette would not allow audience to look at the full picture and leave an imagination space but at the same time there are still a lot of information from the characters could be understand from their outline or their costumes. The content of her animation is quite dark and violent, partially it is demonstrating the history, partially she is negotiating the result of it as well. The mixture of the violence and the beautiful and delicate art piece make a big contrast and give audience this complicated feeling.

The use of body language and music is the main source of communicating the story between Walker and the audience. Her work is pristine and she claimed that she would animate it as if a child playing around her toy. I think keeping the body language simple and clean is as essential as having drawing skills in animation. 

-jiggle movement

-allow imagination from audience

-no expressions or emotions seen

-only emphasising on the characters and the movement of them

-show emotion only moves and adjustment of the joints

-the staging and the backgrounds help a lot in the storytelling.

-I think the media she use is very advance, it is a very skilful media to use in order to achieve her thoughts behind all these images, but as an character based animation, I think it is best to get the characters' face available for the audience to see. Also with smooth actions with the 12 principles of animation. like the cut-out animation in Harry Potter and the deathly hollows, it is better to show silhouette in animation in that way. After all, the purpose of fine art and pure animation is different so personally think cut out animation without being processed by computer is not an appropriate media to enhance character performance.