Artefact 2

The purpose of this artefact is to analyse the original scene from the film Manhattan, which was the basis for the animation I created for Artefact 1. Analysing the original footage will enable a better understanding of how the human body moves - whilst in a state of frustration and mild anger. This knowledge will help build towards Artefact 3, where the performance created for Artefact 1 will be re-animated. The aim is to compare Artefacts 1 and 3 and observe how the latter artefact has been refined and improved to express an increasingly believable performance.

After viewing the original scene several times and collecting images of the key poses found in the footage, time was spent referring to Disney’s 12 principles of animation, in order to find the most relevant areas to focus on. Disney’s fourth principle ‘Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose’ is crucially important because it describes two different approaches to animation. Pose to Pose is a methodical and largely pre-planned approach to animation, whereas Straight Ahead Action can be viewed as a more creative and unconstrained approach; ‘With Pose to Pose, there is clarity and strength. In Straight Ahead Action, there is spontaneity.’ (Thomas and Johnston, 1997) With this in mind, Straight Ahead Action appeared to be a more suitable approach to use for capturing the performance being analysed in this artefact. Woody Allen’s character in Manhattan uses very sporadic gestures, especially with his arms that fit nicely with the spontaneous method of Straight Ahead Action.

‘Arcs’ (Disney’s seventh principle) is another important area to focus on because the performance being analysed is that of a human being. ‘Very few organisms are capable of moves that have a mechanical in and out or up and down precision.’ (Thomas and Johnston, 1997) This is an important point because if the principle of Arcs is ignored, the performance will be robotic, lifeless and will fail to convince anyone to believe in it. Examples of Arcs can be found throughout Allen’s performance and will need to be incorporated into the animation for Artefact 3.

Finally, the third principle to make a point of is ‘Exaggeration’ (Disney’s tenth principle). Exaggeration is a very important part of animation because when an audience merely looks at a fictional character, they immediately understand that it is not real; it is only through the character’s actions that the illusion of life is created and the audience is forced to forget reality by becoming absorbed by the performance. The scene which is the focus here is already quite openly expressive and includes lots of gesture and movement, so in order to convey that same level of action through a digital character, the motion must be even more exaggerative. This is difficult to achieve largely because whilst animating, it becomes hard to maintain an objective view of the performance being created. There is always a worry that what you are doing is ‘too much’, or ‘over the-top’, similar feelings are illustrated by Dave Hand in ‘The Illusion of Life’ where he explains how Walt Disney continually criticised a particular piece of his work for not exaggerating enough (Thomas and Johnston, 1997).

Artefact 2 in part has been a method of preparation for my next artefact. The information discussed here will be applied to Artefact 3 in order to improve the performance seen in Artefact 1, with particular attention given to the three Disney principles mentioned earlier; as well as the repeated referral to the original footage. It should also be noted that the intention of Artefact 3 is not to mimic the original performance. Rather, to use the information and principles extracted from the footage together with the reading material, which can be found both here and in the main research essay, to create a new performance that has a realistic and believable personality of its own.