Richard's thoughts - More ideas on anthropomorphism

More ideas have circulated since, including the the acting aspect that is part of the 'MERGE' idea. I remember watching 'Horton Hears a Who' thinking about the acting that the characters have, the Dr Suess styled designs somewhat complement the exaggerated actions. In particular the 'Who' characters are bendy and wide faced, which give the animators the freedom to play with facial expressions and over-the-top movements.

The Mayor has most of these traits, scenes with him are always captivating to watch. The character is rigged like he would appear in a late 20's Disney cartoon, his body is stretched and very bouncy almost like there is little weight to him. A good example is from the featurette that I have posted below, it demonstrates a scene which he appears in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dzSfuuTqA

The featurette also covers other acting ideas, such as the pitching process the crew do. The director has to describe each of his boards out by acting as the character. The process is very amusing to watch but it helps the animators in achieving what the director wants on screen including what the actor does in his voice or perhaps the performance of the character on screen.

The featurette also covers the great idea of two simultaneous actions, one with Horton crossing the bridge of certain death and The Mayor going to the dentists office. What plays out, to a humoured effect, is a change to the stakes in both situations. The dentists office becomes much more distressing than the bridge, with The Mayor being poked and pushed around like in a slapstick silent film. The final product lends itself to an amusing scene as well as some tremendous animation.

The acting idea is something that I definitely want to express interest in my studies of my anthropomorphic essay, it certainly places very well in the CGI category.

Jamie Bowen - Acting with Animation

Here's a Clip from the Making of Disney Pixar's 'UP',

I really thought this bought a different side to the question. Megan has looked at Rango, which uses what they call 'emotion capture' which makes actors act out a scene to give the animators almost a perfect view of what the scenes acting will go like.

 

In this clip, they show the process of capturing a very natural capture of emotion. As the director of 'UP' Pete Doctor said, they wanted to capture the innocence of the child actor (Jordan Nagai), that trained actors almost lack. I think this makes the character Russell one of the most natural and funniest characters to come out of Disney Pixar.

Again it is just another way to bring a stronger sense of human acting to the computer animated world.

I think this whole acting and computer animation is a good direction to go with, as Tony says animation is basically acting (no offense VFX) =)

Megan Potter: Post 1

Hey guys!

Since we haven't quite decided on our official question for the presentation I thought I'd get the ball rolling by sharing some of my current research on 'Rango' which just so happens to be the focus of my personal essay.

I get the feeling from the discussion we had on Wednesday that we were starting to move towards the idea of how 3D films are able to use the technology in order to capture extreme realism and likeness when it comes to the original actors and their performances and so I thought this would be a good example to show you.

This is just a way to open the channel for discussion and research so please say if this is not the direction you guys wish to go in with the presentation and then we can proceed to figure out what we do want to focus on for our presentation.

Thanks  :)

Introduction

Hello!

We are a group of Animation and VFX students studying 3D Feature Films for our group presentation.

The purpose of this blog is to share research and ideas between each other and give us a strong body of work at the end of this module.

We hope you enjoy!