How facial expressions are capable of changing an emotion

After some feedback on my original robot design I noticed that although it was as simple as i had originally planned it to be, It was going to take alot more than what i had designed to make it work and would take lots more research to get the job done.

So after speaking to my tutor about this he recommended "The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation" to further look at how Disney develop characters and also to show the research I am undertaking with model sheets.

Before changing the design of the robot I first looked at the Disney book and what they go through to create characters with real emotions as well as the techniques they use to create the link between animation and emotion.

The opening section of character development contains a quote from Walt Disney that I found useful as it gave me more of an idea of what i should be doing rather than what i had done with the character design. Walt mentions that, "I think you have to know these fellows definitely before you can draw them. When you start to caricature a person, you can't do it without knowing the person." this was helpful to me as instead of designing my robot to show emotion I went for a simple design so that modelling would not take an excess of priority or time.

Another quote from the character development chapter relates to Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and how he was changed from his original sketch. Walt said that, "Dopey isn't cute looking in these drawings. His body should be longer and his legs shorter. You should have the feeling about him that he is wearing somebody's cast-off coat, not as though he wore a big gown or something." and that "When anything happens, Dopey runs as fast as he can and gets ahead of the other dwarfs". Both of these appealed to me as i wanted the new design of the robots body to be a gentle giant approach. He would look more fierce than he is but when he hears a track he changes to the music and gives in to his new found emotions.

I also had a look into another book called "The Fundamentals of Animation". Essentially the book is a report on different types of animation and shows examples of how they have been used and gives a small description on each. A particular chapter that i found interesting and useful was a small section called "The Animator as Performer" which shows examples of how animators have used humans as a basis for characters in films. One of the focus areas was the popular antagonist from the Lord of the Rings franchise "Gollum" who was created with a "combination of a motion captured performance by Andy Serkis, and an extraordinarily nuanced use of computer-generated animation." The chapter also has a top ten tips to make your characters act which are:

1. Thinking tends to lead to conclusions; emotion tends to lead to action.
2. Your audience only empathises with emotion, not with thinking.
3. It is good for your character to have an obstacle of some kind.
4. A gesture does not necessarily have to illustrate the spoken word. Sometimes a gesture can speak of a different inner truth (study Gollum in The Lord of the Rings).
5. Animate the character's thoughts. All of them. The more specific the thoughts are the better it will be. (Look at The Iron Giant scene in which the giant eats the car in the junkyard. You will count something like 13 different thoughts in a 12-second tune frame.)
6. A character plays an action until something happens to make him play a different action. In other words, there should never be a moment when your character is doing nothing.
7. Definition of acting: Playing an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle.
8. Scenes begin in the middle, not at the beginning. You want to enter a scene as late as possible.
9. Dumb people and dumb characters do not think they are dumb. They think they are smart.
10. Don't start animating until you have your story set. Storyboard everything first. If a sequence lacks conflict or negotiation, try to fix it before starting the animation.

These rules were very helpful when it came to thinking through the schedule of my milestones and checkpoints. Tip 10 was my main focus as it showed how important the storyboards were towards the planning side of the production as well as highlighting when animation should begin. It also allows me to design the environments before modelling so i can get a better scope of what the robot will be experiencing.

So overall, Both books helped in similar ways though the Disney one was more useful in facial emotion and body language. For my next blog I am going to review a book devoted to the timing of animations with tips on the best ways to display emotions.

Till then!

Bibliography

• Thomas, Frank, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. New York: Hyperion, 1995. Print.
• Wells, Paul. The Fundamentals of Animation. Lausanne: AVA, 2006. Print.