Acting Reference: Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge

Alex DeLarge isn't exactly a typical psychologically distraught character, but rather a charismatic yet amoral character with psychotic tendencies. Malcolm McDowell's portrayal of the character is intentionally done so that audience finds the character sinister, threatening, and also strangely likable. To put it simply, in a metaphorical sense, this performance is sort of the ancestor of the general portrayal of The Joker, from most modern Batman adaptations. Alex DeLarge's mental breakdown actually results in him losing his ability to be the psychotic man he was in the beginning, rather than the other way round like it usually is. His performance is relevant to my project because I want my character to have a negative side that audiences would appreciate, due to my performance.

 

I want to emphasise the fact that what Malcolm McDowell does is play this character in a manner that supposedly makes the audience care and empathise with him. The character having a monologue that plays throughout the film immediately puts the audience's viewpoint in his perspective, and Malcolm McDowell plays the character with such charisma that it makes audience understand Alex DeLarge, and his desire for "ultra violence". This both reflects Malcolm McDowell's love for the character, and Kubrick's view towards humanity, that people all still have a primal urge for violence, that has been around since the dawn of man. Perhaps, in that sense, Alex DeLarge gives audiences that satisfaction by treating them like equals and living as freely as does on our behalf? Mainly, it is Malcolm McDowell's performance that gives me the sense that he is as human as anyone else, despite being clearly psychotic.

Acting Reference: Jack Nicholson in The Shining

In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Jack Nicholson pulls off a fantastic performance as a man slowly descending into madness. His portrayal of this character is brilliantly done throughout the film. His performance in this film portrays the character's descent in both a subtle and non-subtle manner, because Nicholson finds a perfect balance between the two. He manages to jump between chewing the scenery and moving in a subtle manner, while a lot of his lines are read silently, they can also be quite manic without being delivered in an overly loud voice. His performance typically reaches a level just below over-the-top so that feels believable and genuinely makes the audience uncomfortable.

His performance in this scene is a perfect example of how his madness is established through the way his lines are delivered and his body language. He starts out walking down that corridor in a slow pace whilst jerking his arms angrily, and stills shows a lot of stress when he sits at the bar. I can then detect a transition from this stress to a seemingly relaxed state when he sees Lloyd and moves his hands from his face. It gives me sense that this is his way of venting, by hallucinating and creating this scenario where he's talking to a friend and drinking beer. I also get a sense that he comfortable in this scenario, but the shaky and manic body language, as well as the manner in which Nicholson reads his lines also gives the audience discomfort, as his madness is still extremely evident.

Cinematography/Layout in Animation

Cinematography is an aspect of film that I personally hold very dear to me. Having studied this in the past, though only in the context of live-action cinema, I wanted to see if this knowledge can be applied to animation.

I mean, obviously it can but I wanted to look at which animations stand out specifically to me, in terms of layout and cinematography, as well as look at live-action examples (most of which will be from Stanley Kubrick films, since his films have the greatest and most influential cinematography ever) and see they work at assisting the narrative.

One thing I adore about animating in 3D, using Maya, is the ability to control the camera, because it means I have full control over every shot, and I can manipulate it in a manner that is not possible, or at least as freely, in 2D.

Acting Reference: Introduction

I have been looking at several different actors that will inspire my performance in this animation. Since I am trying to establish a character's descent into madness, I feel like it is appropriate that I look at performances from different characters and actors, and see how their madness is establish within their performance. I might also use this as an opportunity to learn about how the cinematography and post-development techniques are used to establish this as well. After looking at these actors and characters, I will try and act out versions of their scenes that stand out to me, as proof of concept, then apply whatever techniques I've learned into both my reference videos, and my actual performance in the animation.

So I plan on looking at appropriate actors and characters, analysing their performances, and applying that knowledge into my own performance.

Brief Selection - Part 2: Syfy Brief - What is the Problem?

Syfy set up a YCN brief recently, due to their apparent loss of viewers, and it very much fit in with what I wanted to achieve from this module. I'm happy to do this because it seems very relevant to me, personally. This is a good opportunity to understand audiences better, especially within the realm of entertainment and storytelling. What do I specifically need to know first?

For starters, what are the problems the brief describes?

Syfy has been losing viewing figures lately, and there are multiple reasons for this. Audiences are not appreciating the content of Syfy enough to see the channel as anything relevant on the same level as other TV channels, and don't see it as a place to go for sci fi. They are often overlooked because they must compete with higher budget TV channels, some that aren't sci fi oriented, that air sci fi of higher quality to conventional audiences. Syfy doesn't have the budget to broadcast Hollywood blockbusters, and they are overlooked because of this.

So I know the problem, but what are they asking me to do about it? What do they want to achieve?

They seem intent on letting a target audience of sci fi fans of the age range 18 to 25 know that the level of passion they have for sci fi is extremely high and that my work should convince them of that. They are asking me to make something, it could be anything since this is an open brief, that will communicate the idea that the Syfy brand is a creative and imaginative one, and that the Syfy channel should be sold more for what it represents ("Imagine Greater") than just the content they air.

Who will benefit from this, though?
This will be beneficial for Syfy, of course. They want sci fi fans to see Syfy as a creative environment, where people go to fulfil their need for something imaginative. Audiences will also benefit from this, if what they gain from this is as great as Syfy wants it to be.

What message are they trying to convey?
Quite simply, they want to send the message that they are a more than a channel, but a creative realm of ideas. They are fun and entertaining, imaginative, can enrich people's lives, passionate about the sci fi genre. That Syfy is a place for sci fi fans, by sci fi fans. To be the ultimate fan!

Who exactly are the audience for this brief
I highlight "exactly" because while the brief only says "18-25 sci fi fans", I believe it goes much deeper than that, but I'll go more into detail with this in a later post. To put it simply, the target audience is not race and gender biased. They are people that enjoy sci fi, good story-telling, engaging stories, and fun ideas.

So we know the message and the audience, we just need to know how the message will be delivered.
Going by these bullet points in the brief:

• Be the ultimate fan
• Be impactful
• Be engaging
• Be playful
• Be surprising

They're kind of vague, but I can see where they're coming from. They want whatever I make to establish that they are huge fans of sci fi, and they want to do it in a manner that relates to the genre, while being light-hearted about it. They also want my work to have an impact and to do that, I need to engage with their audience's love for surprise and the unexpected.

Can I foresee any issues with this brief?
I don't think so. I guess the fact that this is an open brief is kind of overwhelming, because I'm not sure what I could make that relates to my area of practice. I guess an ident would be the most appropriate.

Brief Selection - Part 1:

I will be taking part in some selected briefs to practice some areas of interest involving my skills as an animator. I looked at and considered several areas I need to focus on in the future. I thought a lot about it and I feel that the areas to focus on are, character design, 2D animation, and appealing to a target audience. The reason for this is that for character design, I have a bad habit of designing a character and going with the first design I come up with. I tend to get lucky from doing this, of course, but I want to spend more time on character design so that I can get used to it and develop each character I design more and more until they are perfect. I want to practice 2D animation, because that is the medium I am undoubtedly the most interested in, and I want to maintain, or even improve, the skills I already have while I'm learning 3D in my other module. I want to develop my understanding on target audiences because I want to know how to appeal to an audience, in terms of how to advertise myself and possibly even others, and creating appropriate content for specific audiences; because while I enjoy storytelling, I never really take target audience into consideration enough and I want to take my current knowledge even deeper, because I know I'm capable of being successful at this, having gotten high grades in the past in media studies, when looking at audience theory.

Animating Emotions: Proof of Concept

Since I'm going to focus a lot on extreme emotions throughout my animation, I thought I'd start by practicing animating emotions. I already made a bunch of emotions to draw on a sheet, but I made that so that I could make a storyboard and scene layout sheets whilst taking the limitations of the character's model into consideration, I never actually animated them. So here's a proof of concept I made with Moom making random gestures and transitioning between facial expressions:

Interim Crit - Responses

So the responses for my interim critique were fairly positive, overall. Everybody seemed happy with my approach and, and I managed to catch some wincing amongst the group when I described what sound effects I would use for the arm breaking, so I know to definitely keep my sound effect for that in.

In terms of feedback, though, I was mainly advised to plan my lighting effects more clearly, since I mainly just designed the room and not really took notice of the type of lighting (I guess I just assumed everybody would know what the lighting would be like, since the idea was in my head at the time), so I'll do some more concept artwork for the room that gives a clear depiction of what the lighting would be like.

I was also told to look at more actors for reference, to observe and analyse their performances, the different manners in which they act. I can therefore get a clearer understanding for how to act the way I want to, crazy but in an over-the-top manner. I also thought to look at other animated characters for reference, rather than just live action, and I thought about the animations for the character, Artorias the Abyss Walker, from the video game Dark Souls. Who, just like my character, has a broken arm.

Finally, I was told to take advantage of the prop I chose, a computer wheel chair. At the moment, Moom only interacts with it a few times. The idea would be that he moves quite frantically on it, and the chair rolls around everywhere in the environment.

Some great advice, overall. I will definitely make those changes. I'm expecting to find myself take advantage of the environment I've created once I actually model it.

Acting in Animation

I've been intrigued with acting in animation for a long time. It's always been something I've taken into consideration as an animator, because I've always seen it as a major fundamental. They should add it to the 12 fundamentals... make it 13 fundamentals already! Anyway, in a theoretical standpoint, I would consider both the voice-acting and the character animation together to equal that of importance, in conjunction to theatrical and/or live action acting. The voice actors work their well-earned energy into the delivery of their dialogue, the storyboard artists, directors, scene planners, and animators then work out the key-poses for the character animation, using the same exact mindset as any live-action actor would of "how do I convey this emotion" or "how should my body language work in conjunction to this setting" and "does the tone of this voice add or fit in with my actions."

Some animators even use real actors (sometimes the voice actors themselves) to play out a scene so that they know what key poses to draw, like this clip from Alice in Wonderland, where the actors play up the characters rather well in the reference footage, and the audio from that footage was even used for the movie. You can see Walt Disney, presumably, drawing the key poses he's looking at while they are filming.

This is different to rotoscoping, however. When you rotoscope, you draw over the frames, which is different to using footage as reference. Actors will often chew the scenery a little when they are being animated, though. A Scanner Darkly is an example of that happening.

Acting in animation can sometimes work without reference, however. Take the Ren & Stimpy Show for example. There doesn't seem to be much mention of any sort of real-life reference John Kricfalusi used when he was creating the poses for that show. He would normally draw every key pose on a layout sheet, without using a reference, and given the nature of his animation style, it does add a lot to the amount of exaggeration each pose contains. These layout sheets would normally follow a storyboard for the scenes, since they were normally just rough ideas on how the scene would play out. 

This took a lot of work, however, as the layout artists would have to pitch different poses for the layout sheets and they would sometimes go through a tonne of different key poses until they decide which one is funniest, and most unique one. They worked though, and as a result, the acting was always funny and memorable whenever they used this method.

There isn't really anything wrong with either method, since they both convey emotion very well in their own ways. Ren & Stimpy's cartoony style and tone is reflected in the character's acting and is what makes it funny. The acting in Disney films is incredibly exaggerated, in terms of style, but using reference videos prevents them from automatically making something look too silly, which is good for when the films try to be emotional.

Animation Skills

I recently learned to animate on Maya. The given task allowed me to practice what I had learned on objects designed for animation. The animations were to demonstrate five key words for Maya: Turntable, pendulum, overlapping pendulum, bouncy balls, and anticipation.

Turntable was pretty simple. I just had to create an object and make the camera rotate around it, using the "turntable" tool, for animating, and set the easing in and out, with the Graph Editor, in a manner that lets the camera turn constantly.

It's pretty dark but It works fine.

Pendulum was quite simply animating the motion of a pendulum. Rather familiar territory for an animator, but this was just standard practice for learning the software. The easing was accomplished using the graph editor.

Overlapping Pendulum was much more advanced, for having to animate both a swinging in an arc motion, and the overlapping action. This meant that as one part of the pendulum swung, so did the others, and taking the laws of physics into account, this meant that, given the nature of the object, the end of the object would move freely and the closer to the main joint the pendulum was, the more stiff it would be.

Bouncy Balls was, again, very much standard for an animator learning new software. I simply had two different coloured balls, one a solid and the other squishy, and I simply had to animated them both bouncing, while taking account their solidity.

Anticipation was there to practice my ability to animate an anticipation motion, which would then lead to a follow-through movement. I took the green ball and made it crash into a wall, stay there, and then finally bounce back.

Strike a Pose

So for this task, I had to strike poses, depending on what type of emotion I was supposed to convey, and make Moom's model copy those actions. This was a particularly fun task, as I could act as wacky and over-the-top as possible, since it's animation. I've always seen animation as a purely visual medium, so the character's actions on-screen must be emphasised completely; I wanted my poses to fit that idea, and I basically pretended I was in a silent movie, since the acting back then was supposed to emphasise the emotions, since the films had to be told visually with not much dialogue and any sound effects to work off of.

This emotion was "Happiness"

Obviously not how anyone would realistically show emotion, but this is animation after all. I wanted to take body language into consideration, and that meant using the entire body's actions.

Turned out well. I captured the actions rather well and managed to exaggerate the facial expressions too. I added a plane and a spot-light for comedic effect as well. That wasn't entirely necessary, but I just thought I'd have a little fun with it.

This here's "Envy"

I figured I would establish envy by acting jealous. I thought a lot about how I would act blatantly envious towards someone, so I imagined someone winning the lottery right across the room from me and thought of this pose. I figured my body wouldn't be facing directly towards them, since I'm acting uninterested but my envy leads me to look in that direction. Since I'm jealous as well, I'd look with a sour expression.

This is how it turned out. It was really awkward crossing the arms like that, since his hands were so huge, but I did my best. Again, I love how this turned out, especially with pouty facial expression. 

And this one is "Confusion"

For this one, I couldn't exactly move my entire body, so I only really focused on the upper half of my body, while my legs would just stay in a regular standing pose. An easy signifier for confusion, though, is head scratching, even though it realistically isn't an action I would typically do when I'm confused. So head-scratching was what I went with, but how would I exaggerate an action as simple as head scratching? Notice my left arm is motionless, and my head is tilted towards the right arm; this draws the viewers' eyes towards the action I'm performing and tells them right away that I'm supposed to be confused. I also topped it all off with a "thinking" facial expression.

This is how it turned out. I added a few extra details to it. I added a slight bend to the legs and slumped the arm forward. This gives the character more of a dopey gesture to add to the emotion of "confusion" that he wants to convey. I manipulated the eyes too, so that his facial expressions are emphasised. I tried making it look as though he was making an "ehhhh" sound, with the way I shaped his mouth. 

This emotion is "Fear"

Language suggesting I "just witnessed true horror" was what I thought. As usual, I ignored the rule of subtlety (less is more) in favour of the cartoony pose. Leaning as far back as possible with my legs far apart, both hands on my head, whilst screaming (I didn't actually scream, just opened my mouth) seemed to exaggerate this emotion rather well.

Here, I changed the angle of the legs, and took the hands of the head. I also really wanted to make the eyes pop out as far as they could go, without the face clipping through them. Not too different to the reference picture, however; I just manipulated Moom's body language in a manner that felt the most natural to me.

Lastly, here's "Anticipation"

This was a tough one to pull off, because I wasn't 100% clear on how to pose in a manner that suggest I'm expecting something to happen. I tried leaning forward in a way that suggests I'm looking closer at something, and put my hand to mouth in supposed intrigue.

This worked out well in the end. I added an action to the left arm so that it supports the rest of the body language, rather than just sort of hiding behind my back like in the reference photo. I kind of improvised with the eyes and eye brow, since they weren't exactly clear in the photograph. I think the facial expression compliments the entire pose very well.

Modelling Skills

I've started working with Maya (3D animating/modelling software) to develop my skills beyond the traditional 2D animation software, and so far I'm finding it pretty challenging but still lots of fun. Since I'm accustomed to this yet, I was given a very simple task of making a 3D model of a truck.

I think it went pretty well. I learned a lot about Maya during the making of this. I even made an animation of this truck, just for funsies:

Next I was tasked into making another object of my choice. I tried not to go overboard with my decision (and by I overboard, I mean I was originally going to pick the Great Sword of Artorias from Dark Souls) so I settled with making a very simple coffee mug.

I think it went pretty well. This took some trial and error, of course. I find that that's a good method for me to learn about the software. It takes some time getting used to though so I did get help from others, telling me about the different tools and reminding me of what I can do. In the end, I've learned quite a bit and I'm looking to learn how to animate as well.