Week 04
Visual Research:
"Man" - Steve Cutts (Copyright © 2012 stevecutts.com)
This animation is titled "Man" and is basically highlighting villainous, horrible humans who have no care for the planet and the other life on it. This of course doesn't represent all of humanity but it does do a good job of capturing humanity in its inglorious nature. The reason I have chosen to analyse this animation is for the character performance. The way the main character holds himself is really well animated so that is what I will talk about under the screenshots below.
1:
This first screenshot is from the first walk cycle we see of him. I want to draw focus to the way his hands are clenched into fists which help to show his attitude, which is an over confident, arrogant individual. There are also subtleties in the position of his facial features which give him a menacing look. From the little smirk of his mouth to the little scrunched bits under his eyes, it all helps to give the character a menace.
2:
This is the character a little bit further into the animation. Here he now has a fur coat and some leather snakeskin boots. I want to point out again, his clenched fists. They seem to add an uneasy, dangerous factor to his character. He still has his menacing facial features as well.
3:
For this screenshot I want you to ignore the dead bear as I want to focus on the performance of the character. Not much has changed since the last screenshot but now he is in an action pose rather than solely a walk cycle. Here his eyebrows are pointed downwards as he smiles. This shows the mean streak in him as he holds the bears head (now we can acknowledge the dead bear!) while seeming proud of his accomplishments, but again, the smile makes this seem all that more sinister. He even has pointed teeth here which help to show his dangerous side.
4:
This screenshot obviously is referring to deforestation...but that's not the important part of this, although knowing the context of which a character is in greatly helps to visualise the characters performance. The way he is now skipping through the forest, turning all the trees to paper as he skips along shows that he has no care for nature and his menacing facial features have not changed since the start. This scene is just him skipping and twirling through the forest zapping trees into piles of paper (with his magical wand), The characters performance here is malicious and carefree which is executed perfectly.
5:
This is the last scene of the animation where the main character is sitting atop a big rubbish dump on a throne (smoking a cigar). The way he is leaning back helps to portray the character relaxed and happy with his success, which is a continuation of his arrogant ways throughout. We can see that he has no remorse for what he has done, or that he even realises the damage he has done. All this can be gathered from this one screenshot with his posture.
Overall I found this an enjoyable piece to watch with a really strong character performance from our main character "man". Everything about the way he moves and the way he holds himself gets his personality across without any confusion.
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