The third and final presentation for Creative Research is a wrap-up of the last year’s work. In the presentation I summarised what work I did last semester and how my vision statement adapted to fit this semester’s work.
The vision statement has remained more or less the same since deciding I was focusing on an animation heavy project and was using Acting for Animators as my main source of inspiration and reference.
I then discussed what parts of Acting for Animators I was focusing on. Last semester I was mostly looking at the workshops Ed Hooks did with his classes, whereas this semester I had been looking at his seven principles of acting. I showed some responses to these principles as well as comparisons to where my work was earlier and more recently. I also mentioned my research into animation style.
My presentation slides are available to view on Dropbox.
Feedback was generally positive from both students and mentors. In particular they liked comparison of earlier animations to newer animations and my evidence of applying research into practice. There were no major concerns about the project and any questions were mostly asking for clarifications.
I was asked to consider how I present my animations in future, with considering what camera angles I’m using and why. Camera positioning and cuts can serve as a powerful tool for narrative but I have been putting that among other cinematography to focus on animation instead.
I was particularly interested in the reactions people had to my animations. For the “face slap” animation there were a few chuckles and for the “waking up” animation there was a noticeable reaction from people where they could relate to being in that situation and understood exactly how that character is feeling. The word “subtle” was mentioned in describing my animations which has been a lot of my focus this semester.
For all of my animations shown there was no confusion what the animations where about, the scenes read across quite well. I was surprised to see people reacting positively to my animations. When you work on something for so long, sometimes you can forget that seeing that for the first time can be entertaining.
Overall I’m quite happy with how the presentation turned out and the project as a whole.