07/10/2015 - Visual Research 3

Week 05

Visual Research:

"Dum Spiro" (Cailly, Guenole, Hardion, Lemoine, Wackowiez, 2012)

Can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/51478122 

This is the animation I am going to analyse for my own project research, "Dum Spiro". I acknowledge that I have taken quite a few screenshots so I will refrain from writing too much on each one but group them together for relevance. 

1:

2:

This is from the first scene in the short animation. Both of the screenshots show a great amount of exaggeration as the main character is taking the message and leaving the scene. This short is 3D so if I found the right rig then this is something I could experiment with. I love the way his arms and even his body go all wavy and in the animation itself there is an extra sense of movement added with it. Its worth pointing out that this animation makes use of the "rubber hosing" technique used early on in animation. You can see what the term "rubber hosing" means just by looking at the second image.

3:

4:

5:

6:

In all of the screenshots above there is even more examples of exaggeration with the character. Most of these screenshots show frames that are gone really quickly but they still manage to add an extra sense of movement like the first two screenshots. There are some really nice arcs added to the exaggeration which  combine two key animation principles, arcs and exaggeration. This combination works great in this animation and it has definitely given me something to test out when I start animating or even when I do my storyboards. 

7:

This is another screenshot for exaggeration, The character himself does not exaggerate but I believe that the way they have added a couple more limbs is a form of exaggeration as the character himself doesn't originally have that many limbs. This technique seems to be used to indicate that the character is frantically moving his arms and legs in a panicked fashion because he is falling. This is something I could replicate in my own animations by possibly rendering out the character with a couple of different animations for the legs and arms. 

8:

This is the last screenshot for exaggeration, I have put this last because I feel this one the most can be analysed for exaggeration and performance the most. Nobody in their right mind would run away like that with their arms flailing behind them like a scarf would, so in this screenshot I would argue that their is definitely exaggeration in the character but there is also an element of exaggeration in the characters performance. If you tried to run like that in real life you would fall on your back, that's why I consider his performance to be exaggerated since its almost impossible for someone to run like that in real life.

9:

10:

The two screenshots above relate to my analyses of exaggerated performance. In the first screenshot the character is preparing to run off with the letter he has been tasked with delivering to someone. This is clearly an exaggerated pose for someone about to run off, for one, it would actually waste time wrapping your body up in that pose before actually beginning to run but that is coming from a common sense/reality perspective. In an animation perspective the pose allows the viewer to clearly see that he is about to run off the left of the screen. This is more of what I have analysed before in previous visual research, but I find it helpful analysing exaggerated poses being used effectively in 3D animation because that is the medium I will be using for this project and different pre-rigs will bend differently which is important for me to remember when selecting my pre-rig. The second screenshot briefly is the character returning because he left the letter the first time, I consider this also to be an exaggerated pose because not many people in real life situations would contort their body like that, we can see his shoulders are raised an his head is lower while his knees are closer together, all this helps to convey that the character feels silly and foolish for leaving the letter in the first place.

11: 

This last image shows the character running from the cover of one tree in the distance to another tree closer to the viewer. As you can see, exaggeration has been employed again to help emphasise that he is running. Especially in this seen, it happen so fast that if he was not exaggerated then it would be difficult for most of the viewers to clearly see that he is running.

Overall, this is a superb 3D animation that both exaggerates the performance and also the limbs/movement of the character. This has been a good eye opener to what I can really do with the right rig on my side and has provided me with invaluable research of which to influence how I work.