Interview with Shanen Pae

   Shanen Pae is a close friend of mine whom I was incredibly fortunate to befriend just a few years back. Having studied at the the Art Centre College of Design, she has recently been busy working as a visual development concept artist, and has been hired to work on several well known game titles (With one of them being "Mafia 3"). And so, I decided to ask her a few questions to see what her perspective as concept artist is on narrative storytelling:

1. What are your thoughts on colors and lighting when painting a setting and creating that atmosphere that is suitable to a specific scene?

Storytelling! I tend to be very direct and just light things in a way that frames the focus of the image, along with creating nice shapes in the composition. Dark against light, light against dark, a backlit silhouette, a figure through venetian blinds. If you're doing sequentials, it's good to plan out your scene for consistency and design your frames around that space you've set up. 

2. What are the most important features of a character in hopes of bringing out their personality?

Relatability. Substance is foremost - a great design communicates your first impression of what a character is like, great acting either confirms or defies it. Yes, that tiny anthropomorphized kitty with the large eyes and round head is adorable as she seems, or, ah! The giant barbarian with the handlebar moustache is actually a cowardly lunk.

3. Is it possible to evoke empathy during the concept stage?

Yes! Again, creating with context is what clues people's imaginations in on what a character is like or what's happening in a scene. It's fine to do the concept art guy™ standing around in space if you're figuring out the design part, people do look at these kinds of pictures and say, "I relate to this because it looks like me," or, "he looks like an ex-boyfriend of mine" and find themselves immediately connecting in that way. I'm a big fan of emotion through action, though, and a sucker for storyboard panels or things that are otherwise beautifully cinematic. Two kids playing Nintendo in the long red lights of the 5pm sun, a lover's quarrel admist a sea of grey, apathetic faces, hellfire raining down on us from the Northern Lights, all the things you can imagine and capture in a still image.

4. Have you considered how well most of your concepts translate into the finished product?

Ya! For a lot of things you just have technical restrictions, like when something's gonna be 3D printed the modeller'll tell you that edges have to be a certain minimum thickness, things like that. Sometimes it's a matter of time or ambition or skill, sometimes it's a matter of art direction and marketing hierarchy, the bane of the independent creative. 

5. How much do you go about in the facial details/expressions and body language of a character?

As much as they'll pay me, haha. Jk. it's important to me, especially for personal projects. I won't talk about draftsmanship, because a pixel game like Earthbound was enough to make me bawl my eyes out. But you need to concentrate on the messages you're trying to communicate through your work, always, and consider the whole package involved in getting those points across. I'm influenced by anime and Disney, and character acting is something I find not only aesthetically juicy but a channel for my own feelings, too, so I pay special attention to it. Don't you feel a pang of Chihiro's sadness when you see her glassy eyes and giant Ghibli teardrops? So good.

Email Interview with Ed Hooks

   Whilst Rosy has passed on the videos and recordings she had made for her CoP2 project (Which I still hope to make good use of for my research), I still found it necessary to personally email Ed Hooks on a particular section of his book, that being his chapter on animation in video games. Seeing as the book was written in 2011, I wanted to know whether his opinion had changed since then, especially after the release of critically acclaimed titles such as "The Last of Us", and even "Beyond: Two Souls", which I believe focus on a more interactive form of storytelling (Along with many other recent games) as compared to older games that had originally focused solely on gameplay.

  Needless to say, I was absolutely nervous as I wrote this email, fearing that my questions would be nothing but nonsensical to the father of acting in animation. But, taking a deep breath, I decided to go right ahead and ask him the first few questions that came to mind. It was through his site that I was able to find his email, and thanks to Rosy (Again), we were able to properly speak to one another from there.

This was the message that I had sent him through his site, when he attempted
to contact me, there were once again issues with my Yahoo email. But fortunately,
by mentioning Rosy, he went on to contact her about me so that I could share with
him another one of emails for contact.

My first email:

'Hello Sir!

Rosy forwarded me your email!

I am terribly sorry about the email issues, for some reason my Yahoo email has been having a lot of issues as of late. But I am sure we will be able to communicate through this email instead (If not, my professional email is wholahayola@gmail.com)

Thank you so, so much for the incredibly fast response!

I would like to start off by saying that I absolutely enjoyed reading your book "Acting for Animators", out of all the books I have been reading for my research, your book has given me so much to think and write about (I especially find the aspect of empathy to be an incredibly interesting topic and issue to look into when it comes to acting in animation). I however do have a few questions to ask about your Video Games chapter.

I was wondering whether your opinion has changed since then? About whether video game acting has actually improved since then?

Your chapter on empathy especially got me curious about whether you have tried any other games aside from "Ico". I was wondering what your thoughts on games such as "The Last of Us" might be, especially? And whether you have managed to find games that have more humour to them as compared to "Call of Duty"?

I am still listing down some more questions to ask, but for now, I am absolutely dying to know about your thoughts on the progression of video games so far.

Thank you kindly!

Yours Sincerely,

Rebecca Wong Si-Lin'

His response (About an hour later):

'Hey Rebecca,

I'm glad you found me. <g> I often have difficulty with e-mail addresses in the far east. The company that hosts my domain name, edhooks.com, is Earthlink, and it blocks many addresses over there, presumably because of piracy issues. It is a hassle.

In answer to your question, my answer will probably surprise you: I do not play video games. I teach for all of the major studios -- most recently for Valve and Warner Brothers Games -- and I understand the acting issues the studios encounter, but I do not personally play games. Well, Monument Valley on my iPad now and then, but that's about it. Having said that, I do make it a practice to study the walk-throughs now and then. When I know I am going to be teaching at a particular studio, I will always review their most recent games to see what I might be dealing with.

"The Last of Us" is basically a game-length cinematic, IMO, and it has much stronger performance than the typical game. It also has a very clever design, putting a child in a lead roll. That - all by itself - is going to evoke an emotional response in the player because it triggers an evolutionary impulse to protect our children. Very smart.

"Ico" was the first game I saw that did anything special with empathy, which is why I mentioned it in the book. An essential element of empathy is distance. You cannot empathize with yourself and, since the player is imposing himself or herself on his or her avatar, the player cannot empathize with his own avatar. At least not to the extent that the avatar is responsive to direct instruction. (Go left, shoot gun, turn 360 degrees….)

My impression is that cinematics in general are being phased out. The smaller the platform, the less well the cinematics function. That evolution has caused the studio job of Level Designer to be the hot ticket, career wise. Especially the Level Designer who has some understanding of acting, emotion and empathy. When I first started teaching at the game companies, it was really difficult to get Designers to take the class. They considered that anything and everything having to do with acting was something for the animators to worry about. They were thinking of themselves mainly as programmers, and so there was a systemic division in most studios -- programmers on one side, animators on the other. Mocap was somewhere in the middle but, in the beginning, I also rarely had mocap directors in the class. Today, it is different. Wherever I teach, the classes have representatives of all divisions, and I expect that trend to continue.

Ed'

   I will surely be sending more questions his way as I progress in my dissertation, until then, I do believe that I have gotten quite a bit of useful information from this response alone. I am glad that I had finally taken the chance to contact him. Hopefully I will be a lot less awkward in my next email to him.

Second Tutorial Session

   Today's tutorial session was another incredibly productive one, to say the least (I'm starting to think that 20 minutes might not even be enough for these tutorials the further we progress for this module, heh), though I am still trying to figure out how on earth I am going to write all of this down and keep all my note and research gathering in check as I work on my dissertation and practical piece. Anyway, there was a lot that was discussed upon today, so hopefully I actually remember the particularly important bits that I can make proper use of for my project.
  
   Aside from demonstrating whatever project planning and time management that we have done for this project (Which I have already shown during last week's casual tutorial), we were also had to show any sort of progress we happen to have for our practical piece. And while I didn't necessarily have any sort of prototyping to show, I did have a few rough sketches to show for today on the main character and monsters that will be featured in the concept bible (And to a lesser extent, the short animation that will go with it).

   Having shared whatever sketches I have brought in today, Annabeth kindly reminded me on the importance of how a good story should have a metaphor, and that these monster concepts should actually represent something. For my project, I do actually have an idea on what my monsters are meant to represent. As I continued sketching out concepts, I began to realise how they all tend to revolve around religion, and that these demons and distorted images of saints could possibly represent a possible rapture even, in terms of the storyline (At this moment, I am constantly thinking about movies such as "Cloverfield" when it comes to the situation that takes place within the story, but it definitely is an interesting idea where only a small selection of human remains).

   Breaking away from the stereotypes of most horror games is indeed a challenge, so the next best thing to do is to find someway to go about it where these well known traditions, stereotypes and tropes can still be applied effectively. Taking the ordinary and giving it the twist it needs will be one of the biggest challenges I will have to face during this project.

   I was also advised to do a little study on video games (So there are definitely a lot of playthroughs to watch over the next few months, this data can also be added to the appendix of my essay) and collect data by looking into what my competition is doing, what tropes have been used over the years with most horror games, regardless of what horror genre it is (Why is the dark scary? What are the origin of these fears?). What locations (Subways, Shopping Malls, Motels, Museums... Hospitals), tools and situations are the most used? This will help further develop the design bible and story building (As well as something to reference in the essay).

  In terms of literature research, I was referred to the site Gamasutra and magazines Edge, Retro and Imagine FX that should be available in the library.

Research from 'Human Motion Based on Actor Physique Using Motion Capture' by Jong Sze Joon

Basic Details:

JONG, S. J. (2008), Human Motion Based on Actor Physique Using Motion Capture, Germany: VDM Publishing.

2.

• Motion Capture (Mocap) has some very useful applications for many types of users. Its purpose is not simply to duplicate the movements of an actor, as some people have naively stated (Trager, 1994). By employing specific Mocap application, this research studies realistic human motion of various subject with different physical attributes.
• Every individual has his/her own pattern of movement based on the nature of his/her physique, and yet every repetitive movement is always different in a slightly distinct manner.
• If a repetitive motion cycle of a particular individual can be sampled, it is clear that every time the cycle is repeated, the exact same algorithm of movement will not be achieved. For instance, when a person swings his hand from up to down and repeats the motion for a few times, the duration, velocity, angle, distance and level of the each swing are different.
• These subtle nuances in every biological motion serve as the essence to define realistic motion. It illuminates the identity of the person's behavioural pattern thus providing ideal characteristics that distinguishes every other individual.
• According to Pullen (2002), the term 'Motion Capture' generally refers to any method for obtaining data that describes the motion of a human or animal. 
• As the availability of Mocap data has increased, there has been more and more interest in using it as a basis  for creating computer animations where life-like motion is required.
• There are still various difficulties that arise based on its application, such as the question of the accuracy of the capture data and how much artificial data is filled in during the "clean up" process.

2-3.

• There are other cases whereby human motion data is not suitable to be applied to a non-human character. As a result, the art of keyframe animation is still being practiced.

3.

• Mocap is perhaps the most widely used technique for acquiring realistic motion. Recent production of feature films such as King Kong, The Matrix trilogy, Star Wars, The Polar Express and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, to name a few, employ Mocap techniques.
• Hyper-realistic virtual Computer-generated (CG) characters will be an element of the future of digital storytelling.
• One of the highest demands of Mocap is the gaming industry.
• Mocap is used to create 3D character animation and natural simulations in a performance oriented way.
• Mocap is also known as "Performance Animation".
• Its sole purpose is not simply to duplicate the movements of an actor or animator, but also as a process of taking and recording a human's emotion.

4.

• According to White (1986) and Ratner (2003), a similar technique, which is commonly used in animation production, called "Rotoscoping", was later invented in 1915 by Max Fleischer, a cartoonist; in an attempt to automate the production of animated cartoons by painstakingly traced the image of the live-action movement and captured film frame by frame onto paper in his series "Out of the Inkwell".
• In the early 20th century, this technique was used in traditional 2D cell animation by animators who traced individual frames of film to create individual frames of drawn animation.
• Later in 1930's Walt Disney and his animators employed it carefully and very effectively in 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', 'Sleeping Beauty' and other animated feature-films. The technique has since developed into automated tracking functions, mostly within compositing softwares.
• In the mid 1980's, the type of Mocap used was really an extension of rotoscoping where an actor's movements were filmed from more than one view.
• Markers were attached to the subject and visible on the film, and were then manually encoded as corresponding points on the 3D representation of the character in the computer. This process is called 'Photogammetry'.
• Even though rotoscoping and Mocap are based on the same principles, the execution of the two is different. In the case of rotoscoping, artists trace human motion but interpret it with the model of the animated character.
• In the case of Mocap, human motion is copied and the data is directly applied to the animated character.

4-5.

• The temptation to use this captured motion and call it "animation" has led computer animators who practiced the art of traditional animation to regard Mocap as "Satan's Rotoscope" or "Devil's Rotoscope" (a term widely used by many though attributed to Steph Greenberg, 2000)

5.

• Mocap is now globally projected more into Computer Generated character animation. Basically, the Mocap system enables the animator to record the precise movement of a human subject in time and space for immediate or delayed analysis and playback, which can later be modified and applied to an existing 3D character model in any 3D platform.
• However, no matter how advanced the technology, the most important thing about Mocap is the actor's ability to act.
• This is supported by Grifter's (2000) statement that animation is not only about the timing, weight and 'character' of the motion; it is about acting and performance. This is one of the main reasons Mocap is regarded as 'Performance Animation'.
• From a more subjective point of view, White (1986) and Williams (2001) remarked that the goal of animation is not to create human-like motion, but to impart unique personalities to animated characters, to give them the "illusion of life".
• Both rotoscope and Mocap impose human motion on animated characters, which make them seem subtle and lifeless in comparison to those animated or hand-keyframed by skilled artists.
• This is because actors cannot break the law of reality and physics to fill in the Principles of Animation applied in a keyframe animation.

6.

• Mocap is used for games production, television, film production and education.
• Industry is increasingly depending on Mocap to produce fast yet realistic animation for their characters.
• The demand on gaming and feature-films enabled animation companies to allocate sufficient budget to apply Motion Capture application into their production.
• Mocap technology is frequently used in digital puppetry systems to aid in the performance of Computer-Generated characters in real-time.

7.

• In spite of the limitations, Mocap seems to have a positive response in the local animation industry and most likely the usage of Mocap will increase in the near future. This theory is subject to change based on the job market of the industry.

8.

• Most animators are often particularly concerned about the subtle detail such as slight nuances within a character's motion. This is because the nuances often define the level of realism in animation.
• Most key-frame methods practiced are difficult to achieve realistic motion due to the interpolation variables of tweening between keys.
• Realistic motions performed by human do not translate by those type of curves in animation.

9.

• Increased interest in using the information in Mocap data to assist animators in the creation of a character's base motion. If the animator required additional predefined movements for the character sets, the base data can be reduced or retargeted using a standard 3D application.

10.

• When adapting data to virtual characters, the animation will look more realistic in the sense that proper weight allocation manages the movements of the character.

39.

• The prominent twelve Principles of Animation by animators Thomas and Johnston (1981) serve as a fundamental guideline to most of animators, traditional cell animators, computer animators, or even Mocap animators.
• The Mocap animators, however, use these principles at different occasions throughout the animation process and in different ways than the other animators.
• A Mocap animator should consider the methods of application upon certain principles within the animation process. There are three distinct points within the process, the preparation stage, the capture session itself, and the post processing stage.
• Squash and Stretch: This is the first principle that cannot be achieved by a performer. Some people have attempted to add this property to captured motion data either by hand or procedurally, but the results have not been promising.

40.

• Timing: The performance, whether animated or acted, has to have the right timing to convey the necessary perception.
• Anticipation: A good performer can show anticipation to a certain degree, but is limited by the law of physics.
• Staging: A principle of filmmaking in general, the layout of the scene and positioning of the camera and characters are equally important in animation and live action performance.
• Follow-through and overlapping action: The opposite of anticipation.
• Straight-ahead action and pose-to-pose action: In computer animation, most of the characters' motions are created using a variation of the pose-to-pose action method, creating key poses for different parts instead of posing the whole character at a particular frame. This is done by creating keyframes and letting the software produce the in-between frames by some kind of interpolation defined by the animator.

41.

• Motion Capture is completely straight-ahead action; as such, it generates keyframes at every frame. This makes it very difficult to modify. Pose-to-pose action can be achieved through Motion Capture by selecting significant keyframes, deleting the rest, and allowing the computer to do the in-between as before.
• Ease-in and ease-out: Principles are based on real-world physics, so they can easily be achieved by capturing the motion of a live performance.
• Arcs: Another principle aimed at emulating realistic movement, which can be represented as a set of different types of arcs. When using keyframe animation, these curves are usually smooth between keyframes. With motion data, however, they are coarse and noisy, representing the natural nuances of realistic motion.
• Secondary motion: Secondary motion represents a lot of extra work with keyframe animation, whereas with Mocap it is a part of the performance. One has to be able to collect it, however, which may not be captured by an Optical system if markers are added to the clothes, but an electromagnetic tracker or electromechanical suit would not be able to collect that kind of data easily.

42.

• Exaggeration: The principle of exaggeration implies approaching or crossing the boundaries of physical reality in order to enhance or dramatise the character's performance. We must decide if capturing a live performance would be acceptable, or even feasible, for the level of exaggeration needed.
• Appeal: This principle applies for both live action and animation.
• Personality: When using Mocap, this is the number one reason to use a talented performer, as opposed to just anybody who can move.

Rough Gantt Chart

   With my literature research underway (At the present moment, I still do have quite a few books to read through and take notes from as well as require a bit more time in figuring out whether I still need to email a few practitioners) and the fact that I already have a pretty good idea on what I will be doing for the practical side of this project, I spent this morning putting together a rough gantt chart for myself to which I can refer to until the very end of this module. 
   
   I should try to keep my research gathering (Or methodology) to at least a month so that I will actually have more time to properly work on my dissertation and practical piece (I especially need quite a bit of time in putting together my practical piece, seeing as I hope to work with collaborator, who should most definitely be given enough time for his own contribution). Various events that I will be attending (Such as Manchester Animation Festival and Thought Bubble) have also been taken into account, as well as all the sessions that we need to attend for CoP3, PPP3 and Extended Practice.

First Tutorial Session

   Considering the fact that my mind has been all over the place in the past few weeks whilst getting this dissertation together, I felt that I was finally progressing in a better direction during today's tutorial session with Annabeth.

   Despite the fact that we have narrowed it down to video games since my presentation (Instead of attempting to cover all forms of media, though they still could be briefly written about within the dissertation), there are definitely a lot of areas that can still be discussed upon from there.

   I was gently reminded that it should be the acting that I must analyse in this dissertation (A good reminder seeing as I tend to go off topic way too easily), and not the premise of the story (Granted, that can be mentioned if it adds to my argument), otherwise, I should simply be focusing on screenplay writing than acting in animation.

   Other games that I was referred to are 'Eternal Sonata', 'Ni No Kuni', 'Shenmue', 'Team Fortress 2', 'Ico' (Seeing that it was also mentioned in Ed Hooks' book), 'Shadow of the Colossus', 'Journey' (Unique for their lack of dialogue), and particularly, 'Thomas was not alone' (Regarded as one of the most uniquely empathetic indie games around, the game is unique for its minimalistic approach (Think "The Dot and the Line"), which makes one question just how far they can remove you from that emotional marker. The quality of the movements of these 'characters' give off a special sort of performance hardly ever seen in most games. But another question that comes to mind is whether the voice over contributes far more to the game than the animation does?

   I should definitely focus on more recent game titles (Seeing as I have to show how far games have come along as well as how much more still needs to be done before they can reach the same level as empathy as contemporary animations in other medias), but old game titles from past consoles can also be briefly mentioned in a background write up on the progress of games.

   While I do believe that there are a few good examples where games with heavy dialogue can still tell a good story, exposition is still considered a no-no when it comes to successful storytelling for games (And quite frankly, not many can pull it off).

   All these indie games tends to lead to another interesting question, about why is it that independent game developers are much more successful in producing as compared to major game studios, while both types of studios definitely have their hits and misses, indie games are faring much better when it comes to presenting games as works of art as compared to bigger studios.

   Another game that Annabeth referred me to was 'Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons', which could be use as my argument against Ed Hook's statement due to its quality acting and performance. These following games have a more unique style to them and are necessary for comparison with more realistically styled games. And while 'Heavy Rain' and 'Beyond: Two Souls' have already been listed under my list of references, I feel that it is necessary to have a much more thorough look into Quantic Dreams' works due to their specialty in motion capture technology and heavy focus on dramatic narratives (And so 'Fareneheit' and 'Kara' also comes to mind by this stage).

   I also still feel that interviewing Ed Hooks (Or at least asking a few questions) would benefit me in my research, to see how much his opinion has changed since his book was first published. The only issue I am presently dealing with at the moment is figuring out how to properly word what it is that I wish to say to Mr Hooks, while I disagree with some of the things that he has written, I most certainly do not want to come off antagonistic in any way. In the meantime, I definitely still have a lot more books to read up on, but at the same time, I should probably consider what questions I should actually ask before I run out of time.

Lecture Notes 2: Methodologies and Critical Analysis

• Every CoP3 project submitted has to have a methodology and critical analysis.
• Evidence to use logic, reasoning and critical judgement to analyse ideas from a range of primary and secondary sources, and critical and theoretical methodologies to evaluate examples from the relevant subject discipline. -- 20%
• Evidence the capacity for undertaking a wide range of independent practical and theoretical research that demonstrates an informed critical, testable, logical form of research taking. (Self planning and independent management, and critical decision making) -- 20%
• Every Research Project needs to have a methodology.
• Will have some sort of methodology, even if it is still ill thought out, or you don't recognise it as such.
• Some plan of attack to get through this module.

Methodology pretty much means:

1. A logical, systematic, and structured way of organising a research project and gathering necessary information.
2. Evidence that you have reflected critically on various research methods and chosen the ones that are most appropriate for your particular research project.
3. Strategy and what is the best strategy in terms of research gathering.

• Therefore, a methodology is unique to each project.
• Refer to Palgrave Study Skills.

1. What kind of research methods are you going to use? Quantitative, or qualitative, or a mixture of both?
2. What will the method enable you to discover?
3. What might they prevent you from discovering?
4. What sort of problems do you envisage in setting up these methods?
5. What are their benefits?
6. Refer to Chapter 13-15 of The Postgraduate Research Handbook by Gina Wisker

Methodology may include

1. Literature Review - Libraries, Journals, Internet (May not have the most reliable sources)
2. Questionnaires
3. Interviews
4. Sketchbooks/Critical Diaries/Reflective Logs

• Outline your methodology at the start of your dissertation.
• Set out your way of approaching the investigation to this question (An introduction should be 500 words max.), the strategy to going about this project.
• Try not to use quotes for your introduction.
• Focus on flashing out on one issue than attempting to focus on all of them.
• You get more marks for attempting to outline your methodology.
• Reasoned Thinking: Using evidence and logic to come to your conclusions
• Think about the bias of those sources
• Where was the author/artist/designer/photographer situated?
• Try to consider the different point of views, where the creator was coming from intellectually; emotionally; philosophically, politically
• Where am I coming from?
• Consider the influence of one or more of the following: the time; place; society; politics; economics; technology; philosophy; scientific thought...
• Marxist, neoliberal, sociological, psychological, postmodernist, technological, fundamentalist, positivist

Argument

1. What do I want to say? (Never lose sight of your central argument)
2. Have i got the evidence to back it up?
3. Could you find more evidence to support your conclusions?
4. Where else do I need to look in order to find more evidence?
5. Am I expressing myself clearly and logically?

Triangulation

1. Pitting alternative theories against the same body of data

Bad Argument

1. Contradict themselves
2. Have no relationship with precious statements
3. Do not have logical sequence
4. Are based on assumptions that were never questioned
5. Appeal to authorities that are known to be limited or suspect (Dictionaries, historical traditions long since discredited, research now challenge, famous people, writers of fiction)
6. Present opinion as argument unsupported by evidence
7. Take no account of exceptions of counter claims
8. Try to claim absolute instead of qualified truths.

A clear logical plan:

1. Keep it simple-refine what you want to say and focus on a few key issues
2. Look into your key issues in depth and bring in the maximum evidence in to support your views
3. Discuss your issues and the evidence you have found in a clear and logical manner.
4. Move from the general to the specific.

Evaluation

1. You need to show the reader that you are evaluating the evidence for its relevance and reliability
2. Looking at and coming to conclusions about the value of your evidence.

Critical Analysis of a text: Step by Step

1. Identify an aspect of your specialist subject that you would like to explore
2. Select a writer or theorist and a particular piece of writing about your specialist subject
3. Make notes that identify the key points in the writing
4. What evidence is used to support or prove the key points
5. Is it convincing? What else needs to be said in order to prove the key points?
6. Write a response to the piece of writing and comment on: the implications for your work: do you agree/disagree with what has been said? Does it help to support your views/argument? The thoughts you have had as the result of reading this piece; on the evidence used by the writer.

Visual Analysis: Step by Step

1. The following prompts could be used when analysing a piece of visual work:
   Comment on the usage of: Line, Colour, Tone, Texture, Form, Composition
2. How are these related to the function of, or message communicated by the piece?
3. How are they related to context, media and materials available; technology prevalent at the time the work was made?
4. What evidence do you have to support your conclusions?

Research from 'Animated Performance' by Nancy Beiman

Basic Details:

BEIMAN, N. (2010), Animated Performance, Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Extracted from the pages of 14 to 26 "Design for Living"

14.

• Introduction to thumbnails
  Thumbnails (n.) the first ideas or sketches of a designer noted down for future reference 
• Since characters are developed in the storyboard phase of an animated film, can storyboards be used for animation thumbnails? Answer: No
• Is there a difference between acting on a storyboard and acting for animation? Answer: Yes
• Storyboards are not the animated performance; they are the script. Storyboard is mainly concerned with the WHY of a film (telling the story). Animation (along with layout, art direction, and backgrounds) is concerned with HOW the story points are put across.
• An animator uses storyboards in the same way an actor uses scripts and director's notes. The storyboard sketches show the character's basic attitudes and give the animated film-maker a simple and inexpensive method of exploring character interactions and story development in a film. Storyboards do no exist in the singular. They are always part of a larger project.

26.

• A good voice actor can create 50 per cent of the animated performance. This is particularly evident when an animated character is designed as a caricature of the actor who provides the voice.
• It is a relatively simple matter to analyse the actor's characteristic movements and incorporate a caricatured version in the animated character's performance. Many excellent animated characters have done this very thing.
• The drawback to this system is that the caricatured references may not remain relevant as the film ages. If the original performance is good, this should not create a problem.
• The caricature of Rowan Atkinson as Zazu the Horbill is amusing, but the caricature is not essential to the performance; Zazu will remain amusing even if the audience is not familiar with the actor's other work.

28.

• When sound film became the standard in the late 1920s there was a lengthy period of trial and error where animators attempted different methods of portraying mouth movement for dialogue scenes.
• Mouth movement was seen as primary, or the most important action in a dialogue scene and drawn in laborious detail. As a result every mouth shape was emphasised equally and handled independently from the body action, which led to grotesque facial distortions.
• Animated performance took a quantum leap forward when animators at the Walt Disney Studio discovered that dialogue animation was in fact secondary action, and that dialogue delivery was 'put over' by body movement and attitudes rather than over-analysed mouth shapes.
• In The Delivery Boy (1931), the body action is used to create the character performances. The mouth shapes are underplayed and were clearly added after the action was blocked in.

29.

• The Disney animators began to animate body action first in dialogue scenes, using the soundtrack as a rough timing aid. Mouths would be added later after the character acting was improved.
• This approach eliminated the over-animated 1920s mouths and made the performances more believable and naturalistic.
• Fleischer Studios animator Shamus Culhane retrained at Disney to learn the new animation techniques.
• "...discovered at Disney's that there was a definite need for Body English. The louder the volume, the more violent the effort of the body to produce it. The size of the mouth was a very minor contribution to the end result..." -- Shamus Culhane, Animation: From Script to Screen

34.

• Remember that animation acting is movement with a purpose.
• A common animation error is to have the character changing body attitudes so often that there is literally a new pose for each new word.
• Over-animated action is every word and pose in this scene is equally emphasised resulting in frantic and over-animated action that confuses and tires the viewer.
• Animated dialogue is best performed by using key poses for dialogue phrases, rather than for individual words. This is why the system of blocking body system of blocking body action first and adding the mouths laters works so well. Fewer, well chosen poses lead to clearer action.
• Phrasing the action means that key poses will change in relation to a sentence, or partial sentence, rather than to individual words. Two basic attitudes might be all that is needed for a scene; body action moves between them, and secondary action on head, arms, and mouth combines with facial expression to vary the timing and minimise the chance of 'floating animation'. A 'moving hold' also keeps the animation form popping abruptly between key poses.

200.

• Animator/director Jamaal Bradley directed the Meet the Demoman short and co-directed the Meet the Spy short with Andrew Burke and Aaron Halifax for Valve Studios' Team Fortress 2 video game (2007). Here Jamaal describes how he uses a combination of writing, thumbnailing, and live-action reference to block the acting:
• "Once I have an understanding of the characters' behaviour and am fully aware of the context of the sequence I can start to plan my animation."
• "Not only do I take note of what is being said, but I also track where the breaths are taking place in the dialogue as well as pauses for thought... I feel this is important because your body reacts in different ways when you are speaking and breathing. I study this until I know it verbatim."
• "... thumbnailing the key poses that I want to hit. I usually have a broad idea of how I want the acting to be so these poses let me visualise what the character will be doing before I shoot my reference. It is kind of like jotting down notes before writing a story."
• "... third step before I start pushing pixels around is shooting my reference. This is just a loose blueprint of my acting choices. I shoot reference for a good amount of time so that I can get different choices that may go beyond my thumbnails or reinforce them."
• "The key word is "reference"... My animation may take a different shape because there will be several ideas that sprout form the footage. This may seem like a lot of planning but I have found that when you can work in production you have to cut down on the amount of time you spend reworking ideas because your vision wasn't clear and completely off base from what the director and supervisor were expecting. Seventy per cent of planning will make your animation go smoother in my experience."

226.

• Video game characters work within a time frame that is set by the player rather than the animator. The player is an unscripted additional character in the scenario; video games are interactive by nature.
• Video games once featured mostly simple repeat cycle animation. Games have more recently been incorporating more and more narrative into their structure.
• This is a challenging prospect since character powers and the pace of the game are directly related to the skills of the player, and scenes cannot be planned to run identically each time as in a linear story.
• Cutscenes or in-game cinematics reward the player for completing tasks and build character and story development. 
• Do games animators need the same acting skills as a feature or television animator?
  "... I would recommend ANY animator to learn acting skills to enhance their understanding of human movement. There will be 'go to' people for certain acting and action shots because not everyone has the same level of skill in every venue of animation, but there will be times that you have to step up and do various animation styles. With that being said the lines are becoming more and more blurred as technology advances. Some game studios have the same number of people working on a project as the award-winning feature houses... Good animation is good animation no matter the industry."

227.

• What is your opinion of games stories? Do you see them becoming sufficiently complex to develop strong characters, similar to those in a film? Has this already happened?
  "Video games have come a long way and the stories have become deeper. The hardest thing for game storytelling is incorporating a good story into an interactive world without taking the player out or disrupting the experience. The characters are complex, but how do you really show the depth of this simulated human and push that into the player's mind; actually making the player believe they are that person? Some games have done this with success and some have failed. Telling stories outside of the game and keeping it within the realm of the product opens an entire new experience for the players and even lets people who do not play games enjoy the world and characters.
  
  Storytelling is definitely getting better in games and most studious are trying to push the envelope in this area. Many feature houses are trying to incorporate making games and films simultaneously. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I see bigger signs of most production houses working together and building bigger projects that will be story heavy. Many games designers approach their development as an interactive cinema experience and have created some fantastic results. In due time games and film will have the same quality of character and animation."
• "We never thought of the characters as drawings. We thought of them as living creatures." - Chuck Jones, 1976

Note to self: Perhaps make an attempt to contact and interview Jamaal Bradley and ask him a few questions on topic.