GISELLE ESCOBEDO
Year 2 Course Website / Animation.VFX
1500 words
Beginning this project I knew that I desired my specialised study to be within the subject of 2D animation. Wanting to pursue animation as a career, this was one of the reasons behind my decision. Since animation as a whole is too broad to be a ‘specialised’ subject, I thought about the different elements that make up an animation. Researching into the ’12 principles of animation’, originally introduced by Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, as I found out through Tammy Coron’s blog on the subject, I concluded that for my specialist study I wanted to look into one of the twelve principles, namely exaggeration.
As stated by Angie Taylor on her blog article, ‘The 12 rules of animation’, ‘Exaggeration is a method of emphasising something to increase its significance or draw attention to it.’ It is based around not only the angles of a drawing, but also partly on how long that particular frame of animation is held for, putting emphasis on a certain action, or drawing attention away from said frame. If done correctly, exaggeration can bring inanimate objects and even characters as a whole, to life. Something I really admire about this technique is the fact that without it, an animation has a possibility of seeming dull and void of life. While exaggeration can bring the viewers’ attention to a certain thing within a frame or series of, it is also what makes a viewer engaged, in my opinion. While at times, exaggeration can take away the ‘real-ness’ of a character or object, I think it is something vital and adds a bit of fun to something otherwise plain.
In the 1938 Disney movie, ‘Snow White’, the names of the seven dwarfs, as identified by Snow White, correlate with the expressions that they respectively portray. The dwarf known as 'Bashful' for example, is immediately portrayed as exactly that, sporting an over exaggerated red face of flattery and a stereotypical coyness. This emphasis on each dwarfs expression and movements clearly give a significance and a personality to each one of them, making them always identifiable. This proves the worth of exaggerating facial expression within animation.
When exaggerating within animation, two things that are often overemphasised are both movement and the uses of facial expressions, especially in more cartoon-like styles of animation and in the early rubber hose genre of the 1920s-30s. Some of my favourite examples from this genre include ‘Swing you sinners!’ by Fleischer studios, and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies ‘The cookie carnival.’
Even in the first few opening frames of the animation, ‘Swing you sinners’, the character Bimbo is seen chasing a chicken. His supposedly ‘innocent’ walk cycle is exaggerated as he strolls behind the chicken, whistling a tune for a few frames before dramatically hopping forwards to grab the chicken. Without the emphasis on his walk cycle beforehand, I feel as if the exaggerated hop towards the chicken wouldn’t have been as impactful. This is just one example of the exaggeration that was widely used in this particular genre.
I started my research by looking into facial expressions as a whole. Diana Boadway-Masson’s blog titled ‘Facial animation 101’ highlighted many points that were very useful and informative. The blog talks about emotional hang time, something that is vital in creating believable expressions within animation. Since in real life, expressions don’t change instantaneously from happy to sad, there needs to be some emotional hang time between the two expressions, so a neutral expression perhaps of realisation would be placed in between the two expressions of happy and sad to create a better flow within the animation, making the facial expressions more believable.
As a part of my own research into this topic, I created some experimental art which I later turned into a short animation. Focusing on facial expression, I drew out different expressions on a character, highlighting some of the more basic face movements. From there, I took the character I created and proceeded to create an abstract sort of animation which showcased facial movement, one expression morphing into another and so on. I was inspired by ‘Your Face – Bill Plympton’ in which every single frame of animation was hand drawn traditionally and created into this three minute music video. The expressions shown in the animation are all weird and unusual, a sort of vibe or aesthetic that I would like to capture and incorporate into my FMP.
The short five second animation created by myself was also my first look into animating on Adobe Photoshop. I used the knowledge from Creativid Studios online tutorial 'A guide to the Photoshop timeline'. Overall, I found the process rather simple and I am happy with the outcome I produced. Next time I animate on Photoshop, which is the program I plan to create my FMP work on, I will research more into the techniques for animating more effectively using the Photoshop timeline and will look through more online and easily accessible YouTube tutorials.
Within human expression in general, there are supposedly six basic emotions that are universally recognised regardless of language or culture. These six emotions are respectively: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise. Arguably, some researchers believe that there are only four basic emotions; fear and surprise sharing many similarities in regards to the facial muscles that are used when expression said emotions. Not only that, but the expressions of disgust and anger shared expressive qualities such as a wrinkled nose.
Animators, when displaying expressions and emotion through their work, I would imagine have to clearly distinguish what emotion a character is displaying as to not confuse their audience. Whether that be through the exaggeration of certain facial expressions and muscles, props used in the frame or even other factors such as voice and gestures, there are many elements that determine how an artificial emotion is interpreted through a screen and what an audience sees it as.
