WEEK 9 SUMMARY

WEEK BEGINNING - February 11th, 2019

WEEK ENDING - February 17th, 2019

MONDAY - Mystery Box Briefing

Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/mystery-box-briefing.html

"I'm really interested to see how this project will go, considering it's the first real CGI animation I'm going to be doing! I have to storyboard some idea for what I could do for this animation, and at the minute I'm not entirely sure what that could involve. I'm sure I'll have something by the time the next session rolls around! There's a performance workshop on Wednesday, where I can start working on more realised ideas!"

WEDNESDAY - Performance Workshop

Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/mystery-box-performance-workshop.html

"Did I enjoy this session though? Kinda. I think it was the repetition that got me; I realise it's important and understand this is entirely a me-thing, but doing the same short performance over and over with changes so minor each time just didn't seem too interesting to me. I much prefer going with more wild ideas and trying something entirely new each time."

THURSDAY - Performance Analysis

Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/mystery-box-performance-analysis.html

SUMMARY

This week was all about introducing the Mystery Box unit, and stuff surrounding it. And while my excitement for it dwindled a little bit from session to session this week, I'm still overall enthusiastic! The choice for what medium we do this task in is exciting, since it's our first real experience with choosing what we could expertise in! I've not really been a fan of producing stop motion, so I think CG is the way for me to go. Like I said, my enthusiasm dwindled a little bit, but that was mostly due to not actually animating this week. I understand that the performance element is important, and it's entirely a "me" thing that I let not animating get to me.

MYSTERY BOX - PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

This is, essentially, a part 2 to this post. This session, we were analysing our performances from yesterday.

But first, some theory. Mostly, it was the theory of performance itself. Within the Larbon Movement analysis, there are 4 main things to take into account: Body, Effort, Space and Shape. We delved a little deeper into Effort specifically, and learned it was made up of time, weight and direction.

We did a mini-analysis of a Charlie Chaplin short, looking at how Chaplin's performance is exaggerated and carnivalesque.

(A clip from one of Charlie Chaplin's films - credit: Charlie Chaplin)

The two main things picked up from this clip was how he moves very directly and that his poses are very clean cut. For the latter, this means that you could abstract his form as far as you want, and still get the idea of what exact pose he's making. There's no subtlety, there's no small movements, it's all LOUD. The reason for this, ironically, is because of there's no sound from Chaplin at all. He had to communicate entirely through his body, letting audiences know what he's feeling by moving and posing very clearly and cleanly.

Exaggerated poses like this break the Kinosphere; the personal bubble. By going into extreme reaches from it's X, Y and Z axis, you can achieve more far-reaching poses, where you dial your movements up to more than natural. Contrast that with smaller, closer poses, which are called near-reach poses. Anything between those two are just mid-reach poses.

Next, we moved on to the 5 main poses of physical acting. There are:

• THE PIN - Straight up, thin poses.
• THE WALL - Wide and tall, making yourself seem bigger
• THE BALL - Somewhat sphere-like, making yourself seem smaller
• THE SCREW - Your pose has some kind of twist in it (usually from the hips)
• THE PYRAMID - Poses where your base are larger than the top

Using the "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?" progression reel from last time, me and some of the others were asked to come up and show how the opening few shots use all 5 of these pose types.

After the presentation wrapped up, we went back and looked at our own performances from yesterday, and saw how the poses could be pushed further, especially after learning about the 5 Poses and Kinosphere. I looked at the poses from the last session, and tried to draw basic interpretations of them but with the added notes and enhanced performance elements.

I feel like this session was really beneficial to my Mystery Box animation! It's going to help out with making the performance more engaging, as well as following more of the animation principles than I would beforehand.

MYSTERY BOX - PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP

This post will be going over the performance workshop we did for our Mystery Box project.

We started off with a warmup game, called "Chase the Chicken". We had to imagine we were following a sequence of events:

1. Chasing a runaway chicken
2. Reaction to seeing it get away
3. Grow sad about it
4. React to clouds parting, sun shining, and seeing more chickens
5. Sneaking up on a chicken
6. Successfully catching it

We'd block out our own sequences, each time being more focused on one particular area of it. One stage that would prove important later on was exaggerating our movements, so we can show what the character is feeling through their body language, as clearly as possible.

Once Chase the Chicken was done, we moved on to work on our own Mystery Box animations, and blocking out what movements we wanted for it. We all came up with some individual ideas, which we would workshop across the rest of the session. I had a few ideas, mostly having indifferent or positive reactions to what was in the box. But ultimately, I found the one negative reaction the most interesting. The events would go as follows:

1. Character walks across, just overshooting the box
2. They look back, becoming curious of the box
3. They check their watch, have they got time to look in the box?
4. They do! The character walks to the box
5. Crouches down to look in the box, and...
6. SHOCK! Something surprising and dangerous is in the box
7. Character backs up, hands in the air

When I brought the performance of my idea to the rest of the class, we worked on making it better. The first step was to understand the character's thought process more, so I said out loud what they're saying instead of remaining silent. The expressions and body movements were pushed further, to be more exaggerated. Timing was also considered, seeing how the sequence in the end will have to fit into a time threshold.

After that, we split off into groups and all tried to interpret each other's prompts. Daisy, Jenny and August all tried my blocking out, and I chose August's as what I'd use in the end! After I chose him, we took photos of what the key blocking points were. These are essentially base lines for the actual storyboard to start from!

So the next step from here is performance analysis, which is tomorrow. Did I enjoy this session though? Kinda. I think it was the repetition that got me; I realise it's important and understand this is entirely a me-thing, but doing the same short performance over and over with changes so minor each time just didn't seem too interesting to me. I much prefer going with more wild ideas and trying something entirely new each time.