Context of Practise 3: Research Post 1

Context of Practise 3
Research Post 1

• I have decided to create a series of research posts, which will go through my process of exploring and breaking down the topic. They will also look at specific books at a time, in order to break down the research workload, also.

• This week:
• I looked at the books: "Acting for Animators" by Ed Hooks, and his responses to me from my email, "The Animators Survival Kit" by Richard Williams and a video series by Aaron Blaise, which explores the principles of animation. 
• What Went Well:
• I found there was a lot of research into Acting for Animators, as the methods of acting apply for animation, as well. Ed Hooks explained to me that a lot of audience response and the way and audience will relate to the character is mainly due to a deep psychological, evolutionary basis. For example, an audience will feel empathy for a character, if a character is expressing emotion. Some areas of further exploration from this can be body-language and movement, which feeds into why a certain character may react certain ways to things and how this is then demonstrated to an audience. 
• Here are the written notes I made from The Animators Survival Kit, Aaron Blaises' video tutorials and further notes on Acting for Animators.

• I initially took these principles explained by Richard Williams and Aaron Blaise into practise, by producing an animation of a daisy blowing in the wind. This doesn't have acting or personality, like what I had learnt from Ed Hooks, but it simplifies what I had learnt, so I can build upon it when I do animate a character.

• What Could Be Improved:
• There's a lot of information at the moment and a lot to write about in terms of character personality in animation, so I think I need to narrow this down a little bit more. This could be exploring "How animators use appeal and body language to express a characters unique personality in animation," or "How animators use acting to emote in order to convey character personality." This still needs work!
• Next week:
• I will be doing more research by looking at the books: Drawn to Life by Walt Stanchfield.