Post 13 - Meeting with Darren Wall & Idea

 

I had a meeting with my supervisor for both the Negotiated Skills module, as well as the Research Practice module. I pitched an idea to him that I had recently. The original idea was to explore effective emotion conveyance with an basic object, or in a full figure rig with very few features (effectively featureless). This would result in a set of animations with the high resolution and low resolution characters. I would then compare the two for effectiveness of motion. However, as we both discussed this idea, it didn't seem to have much in the way of substance, rationale or purpose. So after researching this more, I have come up with the following proposal:

Emotion Motion - A Study into the effective techniques and methods for expressing emotion, character and motive driven action in game cinematics.

The need to communicate the essence of a character is very apparent in current generation computer games. Unlike film, games usually use short cut scenes to tell a narrative in between game-play. This means that all content within a cut scene must communicate emotions, expressions and characteristics as clearly as possible. An interesting quite to confirm this is by writer Heidi Landgraf.

"To further involve gamers in the plot, more cinematics are being used so that gamers can see exchanges between characters and the subtext of what a character is thinking. It’s in a cinematic where an animator must control how users see the scene and where the animation is created through the lens of a camera shot, which is similar to watching a small ‘movie’ unfold."

Landgraf, H. (2009)

The aim is to create a series of short animations (or scenes, depicting a clear emotion, gesture, or motive driven action. This will entail a significant amount of research into subtle and secondary motions, as well as body language and the conveyance of feeling. This will be accomplished using a rigged character (or characters where appropriate), which also includes facial rigging. Roughing out of the animation will be done using the 'low res' feature of the rig in order to assess the level of success in the full body expression and emotion being conveyed. Areas to look into will include:

- What could be gained from a study of this nature?

- What is required to communicate clear character traits?
- What information is lost with the low resolution character in comparison to the hi resolution character?

- What actions or movements would need to be emphasized to communicate a great level of
emotion?

The final artefact/s of this project will be a series of animations depicting varying emotions, gestures and motive driven actions, which should be easily recognisable in the context of cinematics.


Important areas include: 


-Weight, timing, anticipation, and emotion
-Game cinematics. (short space of time, need to learn the character, follow them and empathize with them).

Landgraf in the same article also includes a quote from Animator Mentor graduate Bill Buckley, who said:

"If you can get your audience to empathise with a character, they will follow you to the ends of the earth."


Buckley, B. (2009)





Animator Mentor article - LINK