COP3 Summer Research 3/10/2016

I have not done much during Summer and I only just found out what area I want to investigate into for COP3 which is body language. However, I still do not have a specific question of it and there are so much information around which worth researching. During the present, I mention about the reason why body language fascinates me and listing a bunch of questions that I would like to sort in my dissertation. For instance, why body language is still needed when speech and words have already done they job of explaining in a conversation? There are so many thing I can talk about but it should not be too board and need to be narrow down into more specific.

After the presentation, Annabeth asked me that what will this practise affect me as a profession in animation. To be honest, I have not really thought of that. I am doing body language mainly because I think it is interpreted differently and very objective. I like the fact that there are no correct or wrong answer to it, the message of the body language is alter by atmosphere, by mood and by people. If I really need to think of a way how it would help me as an animator, I would say that this project could definitely change the way I draw and design a character and how I make them alive which could also possibly enhance my skills on molding a character inside out. The characters would be more connected to the audience and understand universally when I figured how to use body language to express feelings on a different level.

The rest of the class also gave me advise on the topic I will be working on. Lauren who is doing a similar theme with me suggested a book that we could both looked at, it is about how animators act to get the perfect performance for the characters they create. 

Oscar introduced me to every frame a painting- visual comedy. I just watched it and the tips from the clip are so interesting and it has proofed that a lot of key moment could be driven by simple body language and maybe with some aid of sounds and staging. I think it is very useful for my topic and good quality films are good resources where the use of body language could be learnt from.

Max asked me to look at Geri's Game

I have watched it before (actually for many times) and this reminder is super useful because nearly all the pixar short films are in silent which are all needed to be studied once again! pixar tell the story clean and beautifully excluding dialogue and supporting characters in within, along with humour and innovative plots like the slowly walking Geri from one seat to another, the shoots continuously making illusions that there are more than one person in the story even when audiences have already been told at the very start of the animation. I think having a good no-dialogue animation might be impossible to have only the character, it might be supported by different camera angles, staging or tools to enhance it and make the story more refined.

Annabeth gave me an example of good character that only use body language which is the carpet in Aladdin. She leads me to think about how minimum of the body could used to tell a story.

There are so many things I would like to discover more and I think this week is going to be mainly focus on research and possibly find some relevant quote from some books.