On reflection I felt that the hand drawn element was more successful on a personal level to me, as a continuation of my efforts to study and observe non-verbal communication. I began by studying and observing body motion through working with the motion captured animation, then moved onto studying and observing facial expression by drawing via rotoscoping. The culmination of this study was the expression of body and facial communication via hand drawn animation. In hindsight, this part of the artifact was an opportunity for me to digest the subtle movements and OEB cues I had observed from my studies through motion capture and rotoscopy, and reprocess and represent them within my freeform animation. The journey proved valuable on a personal level, with the result that I was better able to express difficult concepts within my freeform animation and use it as a method of self-reflection, but also, to articulate via the animation such inner emotions that were not being shown by the filmed OEB. (For example, the use of flickering, garish abstract colours to indicate emotional distress, the blurring of outlines of the character, rendering them smaller and more vulnerable, see chapter 5 for further discussion.) For viewers though, the indication was that the freeform animation departed from the aim to highlight and accentuate the ability to perceive cues related to interpreting OEB, but became more of an entertaining experience, with abstraction and
symbolism used to communicate subtleties. The freeform animation proved potent as a method specific to the medium of animation to communicate my personal inner emotions, and provided fresh insights as a self-reflective methodological approach, but proved somewhat unsuccessful
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as a medium to unlock perception in the viewer of subtle OEB cues, but conversely successful in communicating to the viewer via the use of abstract and symbolic cues. In this way, the freeform animation provided an added dimension unique to the medium of animation itself, an ability to show, thought visuals such as colour, line, abstraction and symbols, an inner world and emotion that the more strictured motion captured and rotoscoped sections (which followed closely to the filmed footage of OEB) were failing to convey. The aim of the artifact was less about delivering a finished artwork for public consumption but more about the value of the critical reflection through exploration through practice. This final, freeform stage of animation tested the play between subtle and more restricted animation rendering (the closely controlled motion-capture and rotoscopy sections) against more a more semiotised or exaggerated
performative animation. The more positive engagement from the audience offers some evidence of the value of the process I have undertaken of using iterative animation as a reflective tool.
6.3.4 Conclusion to the animation perception study
There is an inherent difficulty in using animation as a tool of study, in this case, a method to find out about how people respond to, read, or make sense of different means of corporeal expression. It is very difficult to extricate aesthetic concerns and reactions from an animated piece. The expectation is often that an animation has been made to entertain, even when used in a documentary sense dealing with serious and real issues such as Wonderland: The Trouble with
Love and Sex (2011), previously discussed in chapter 2.2.1. It is a tension that as the animator
and director of this artifact, I could not relinquish. I wanted my artifact to be entertaining, and this is most visible (and clearly effective) in the “happy” freeform section of the piece, where the looser style and departure from rigorously rendering the body and facial motions to follow the live action was relaxed and an element of narrative was allowed into the piece. The artifact is admittedly (by animation standards) long at 10 minutes duration. It was also designed with a specific purpose whose main drive was not to entertain or produce a narrative. However, I did not wish for viewers to become bored and disengaged and fail to watch the entire piece, as happened with one viewer who was very scathing (and rude) in their feedback and whose language might well have been moderated had they continue to watch to the serious section of the artifact. I cannot know how many other viewers had similar reactions of boredom and
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switched off part way through the piece, never leaving feedback, and the animator in me does still wish I could have married more entertainment with purpose to the piece, through greater skill in design, cutting and quality of animation.
The choice of questions is also problematic, in that many of the questions revolved around asking respondents how they “liked” or “disliked” a section or the piece as a whole, potentially drawing the viewers away from the piece as an academic tool and further into the realm of how the piece entertained. This was a problem, but it was also a deliberate choice, reasoning that as an ice-breaking technique, people are much more comfortable talking about what they liked and didn’t like than being asked to make erudite statements that they might feel judged upon. The questions were designed to be disarming, to enable the qualitative data to flow and be induced from viewers in a way that did not seem too contrived. By keeping the questions fairly loose, it would appear that expansive responses where induced from viewers, with the result that interesting, unprompted and qualitative data was obtained.
The imperfections unavoidably embedded within this piece, both within the artifact and the design and presentation of the artifact itself, coupled with the data obtained from the viewer feedback, have allowed me to start building a structure upon which to carry this research forward onto the next stage. Some approaches proved more successful than others in provoking the viewer to focus and observe minute gestures. The rotoscoping in particular worked well for directing viewers to notice details such as crinkling of eyes, though even aspects of the motion captured animation, suitably adjusted in light of the feedback received, could be used to help people notice otherwise overlooked motions. The hand drawn sections, while entertaining and evocative, did not seem to help viewers pick up on real gestures, though through their use of symbols, abstracted gestural movement and colour, these sections worked well in expressing the story and emotion of the animator behind the artifact. In chapter 7 I expand upon the contribution to knowledge gleaned from the research so far, but also suggest methods and strategies learnt from this stage to progress to further proposed research.
However, in short, the initial positive findings taken from presenting the motion-captured sections in isolation were turned on their head, and returned to back up previous assertions made by other researchers and animators that taking real movements in their purity (in this case, untouched motion capture data), without any adjustment from the artist’s hand can result
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in a poorer experience. The motion captured sections measured up badly in comparison to the other animated sections, and in particular when placed in such close proximity to live action footage. On the basis of both the viewers’ response, and my own artistic reflection, it seems hard to deny that the animated dinosaur was the weakest character in rendered approach, lacking in empathy and character appeal when placed next to the other animations. Partly this might be that 2D animation might be more forgiving than 3D, where audiences expect a more polished and realistic approach. Perhaps with access to a team of highly skilled 3D animators a more appealing motion-captured character might have been achieved, but this was not possible within the limited resources available to one practitioner researcher. However, the problem would still have remained that (in this case) the aim of the piece was to use the motion capture data directly into the character without any tweaking or emphasis from the animator’s hand. The oddness of the initial findings contradicted the final findings (which fit with the consensus) and further research and experiments are suggested in chapter 6.3.1 so that this anomaly might be explored further.
By contrast, and perhaps surprisingly, the rotoscoped sections, while remaining close to the original filmed footage, did appear to encourage viewers to look more closely at the facial expressions of the character, and appeared to induce more interest in the subtlety of the facial expressions. While this might in some measure be due to the novelty of seeing closely traced facial rotoscopy, this too bears further exploration (ideas for which are discussed in chapter 6.3.2).
The freeform animation worked well as a medium for the practitioner researcher to express their innermost emotions, and tended to be considered the most entertaining part of the artifact (see chapter 6.3.3).
However, it was from feedback gleaned from the animation perception study, and born from the experience and evocative reflection of this journey of three animated stages (with the fourth stage the perception study) that a rudimentary conclusion could be formed which required a fifth stage to be added to the research.