Category: Sub tab 2.3 FMP（Nigel）

This week I’m making a plan for the overall framework of my dissertation, and that’s all I can think of at the moment.

The thesis as a whole looks at the main characters in the animation, analysing them in detail in terms of costume, colour, dialogue behaviour and set facilities. Learn about the creative team’s approach to creating a great animated character by blending cultural elements with the character.

This book, written by COCO’s director, John Lasseter, goes into great detail about the design process, the early stages of the project, and the philosophy behind the creation of the characters.

This week I have titled my dissertation: Exploring character design and its cultural significance in the Pixar film Coco.
Rather than discussing the impact of cultural differences on animated characters, I thought it would be better to examine how to create great animated characters with a strong cultural atmosphere. With the animated films I have seen so far, I think COCO is one of the most iconic animated films, with the production team combining Mexican culture and animation with each other, as well as the film being well received in Mexico. Of course, there are many other great cultural fusion animated films, such as Luca and Moana.

This week I have been reading a lot of literature on the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘animation’.

Reference：

Lacroix, C., 2004. Images of animated others: The orientalization of Disney’s cartoon heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Popular Communication, 2(4), pp.213-229.

van Rooij, M., 2019. Carefully constructed yet curiously real: How major American animation studios generate empathy through a shared style of character design. Animation, 14(3), pp.191-206.

Robinson, T., Callister, M., Magoffin, D. and Moore, J., 2007. The portrayal of older characters in Disney animated films. Journal of aging studies, 21(3), pp.203-213.

This week, in conjunction with Nigel’s feedback from last term, I changed the title of the topic to -Characterisation of body language in 3D animation.
I also wrote some outline about the thesis, asked a few questions and got some inspiration after the conversation with Nigel.
I deviated from the scope of the thesis that I had set before, ‘culture’, and I focused more on the behavioural aspects of animated characters this time, and I needed to make a major change to the thesis.

This week I have been discussing feedback from last term’s dissertation with Nigel, listening to comments and looking for some dissertation literature on character body language, Nigel suggested that I look online for some design ideas from creative teams, and videos to study.

Kline, C. and Blumberg, B., 1999. The art and science of synthetic character design. In Proceedings of the AISB 1999 Symposium on AI and Creativity in Entertainment and Visual Art (pp. 1-6).

To suggest a way of creating synthetic characters, Kline and Blumberg offer a notion that “draws inspiration from conventional animation and modern philosophy.” Because 3D animated figures are more lifelike, viewers are more likely to feel sympathy for them. After the audience empathises with the character, the behaviours of the character can be regarded as satisfying a need. A character in a movie realises actions that are not or cannot be taken in real life, and this can resonate with them.

van Rooij, M., 2019. Carefully constructed yet curiously real: How major American animation studios generate empathy through a shared style of character design. Animation, 14(3), pp.191-206.

In this article about “Zootopia,” Rooij makes the argument that Pixar movies are defying the “Valley of Fear theory” of cinema. Digital sets, virtual cameras, and perceptual cues are used by the creators to build a convincing three-dimensional world in which the characters “live,” anthropomorphic animals with both bestial and human emotions. This realism allows the characters to be accepted by the audience, to strike a chord with them, and even to create the illusion of immersion.
Instead of the audience reacting with rejection and terror, Pixar’s animators have made the characters more realistic, causing the audience to enjoy the characters and even find common ground in them.

Chen, K.L., Chen, I.P. and Hsieh, C.M., 2020. Analysis of facial feature design for 3D animation characters. Visual Communication Quarterly, 27(2), pp.70-83.

At:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15551393.2020.1732218

We can draw the conclusion that “character background information does influence character design” based on Chen’s argument. The data from his thesis reveals that male and female facial looks differ in that face shapes are more significant than specific facial traits, and that the degree of exaggeration of a character’s features varies with age, with older male figures being an exception. They demonstrate that character traits can affect the audience’s initial perception of a character, even if the character’s position changes in the course of the plot. This helps the story become more interesting and surprising.

Power, P., 2008. Character animation and the embodied mind—brain. Animation, 3(1), pp.25-48.

At:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1746847708088734?casa_token=bme5OWuncUoAAAAA:U6YY1E5th1Q9RQmM6CVgEFYpuQk0zm5ehgnwGHIEEoCY_QLoNVJpm6VJwaElmM5p2P6Osay9sjdPwQ

According to Power’s thesis research, it was discovered that the stories and aesthetics of 3D animated characters are influenced by language and culture, and that “artists and scientists “need to be educated across disciplines or with each other”” To create outstanding characters, character designers must integrate various disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

After watching some videos on character animation this week, I started to reflect on whether the direction of my dissertation was a little too broad and should be narrowed down.

Analysis of character traits in 3D animation-analysis of the top 50 animated movies in the US 3D animation box office

This week, based on the references I found for my dissertation, the direction of my dissertation was set as how the behaviour that different characters should behave in the same scenario context would look like. In replacing the variables ‘personality’, ‘appearance’, ‘background’ and other factors, is it possible to explore some inherent design principles that could provide some ideas for character designers.

Below is a reference to the paper I looked up.

Chen, K.L., Chen, I.P. and Hsieh, C.M., 2020. Analysis of facial feature design for 3D animation characters. Visual Communication Quarterly, 27(2), pp.70-83.

Thomas, S., Ferstl, Y., McDonnell, R. and Ennis, C., 2022, March. Investigating how speech and animation realism influence the perceived personality of virtual characters and agents. In 2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) (pp. 11-20). IEEE.

Khalis, F.M. and Mustaffa, N., 2017. Cultural inspirations towards Malaysian animation character design. Malaysian Journal of Communication, 33(1), pp.487-501.

At this stage, I am interested in character modelling, facial features, movement and behaviour and contextualisation. 3D animation differs from 2D animation in that it focuses more on the emotions and body language of the characters, which allows the audience to quickly immerse themselves in the characters. I sometimes wonder why characters in films are styled the way they are, and whether there are fixed rules or standards of direction. I think the success of characterisation determines how good a film is, so the physical movements and appearance of the characters are very important.