Finished animation of an intro to Sarah Manning that was done for my class.
Essays under the cut.
Process:
For my five to ten second animation I decided to create a short introduction scene to a character in the show Orphan Black. I based it off a moment on her introduction into the show. I knew I wanted to create a walk cycle, because a major part of the character is her solidarity and ultimately the loss of it. Sarah is also about action so I wanted to show the action of this scene in an interesting way. I knew I wanted to pan up and out to a full view of Sarah before showing her face.
Originally I had wanted to imitate the camera turning as it pans up, and finally zooming out when her face was shown. Since that was a little out of my skill set, I decided to do the pan out first and then a cut to her face. It was more difficult than I had expected to keep her looking like the same person throughout the animation and that was definitely the part I struggled with the most.
I started with a rough lined/stick figure structure, then a sketch, and finally the lines of Sarah. When working, I started with a beginning and end, then worked in the frames between as I continually checked to make sure that my animation moved smoothly. I looked at both the original scene that was filmed as well as walk cycle studies and examples.
The scene originally took place in a train station in Canada, so when looking for sound, I tried to find a distinguishable train station sound and found that a disembodied train station sound is much more eerie and not as specific as I has expected it to be. Instead I chose the sound of a street to show she was somewhere with people so it gave in some insight to her character, that she doesn't necessarily fall into public politeness, but rather looks rough even around strangers. I found the sound of someone walking as well and put in her steps. Ultimately, the animation didn't end up the way I had originally planned it to turn out, but I feel like I worked well within my somewhat stumbling animation skills.
What I like:
When watching an animation, reading a comic, looking at art, and watching shows, I love an obscurity. I really like not knowing seeing the whole picture of something. I find that using the viewer's ability to fill in the blanks can be very clever and extremely interesting.
It gives the reader a question. It can be the back of a chair where the sitter is obscured but you can see who they're speaking with. A character researching something important but you can't quite see over their shoulder. The reveal of a character, when before you've nly heard their voice.
This has been done really well in shows such as The Avengers when Loki infiltrates a German party, a pan from his feet up to his back, with details of his clothing and accessories before you're revealed to see exactly what you know. Or in Spirited Away when Chihiro is cleaning a water spirit and we can see her, but for a moment we cannot see what she is grabbing at in the sludge which leads to an almost magician scarf trick of items flowing out.
I think this can be used in the wrong way, unfortunately by people who like them. A fairly good example can be Steven Moffat in his writing of Doctor Who. He's recently been presenting a person but obscuring their real background story or identity. It gets built on in every episode without any information that allows the viewers to understand or even assume what is going on. Instead it forces a complete lack of knowledge onto the viewers that is frustrating rather than intriguing.
Someone who did this well, was the shoe Heroes with their character Nikki who suffered from dissociative identity disorder. Her deceased sister Jessica's personality was taking over, leaving holes in Nikki's memory, as well as in the story line for the viewers. Rather than leaving a complete hole and just showing the aftermath of what Jessica did, the viewers catch sight of Jessica in Nikki's reflection, or even before that, there were cracked mirrors that split Nikki's reflection. Even with the lack of information, there was still some provided that created a continual interest.
Information and obscurity in story telling is very important and powerful. Even the smallest things can lead to suspense in a single scene as well as over the course of an entire story's plot. The important thing to remember is that people like to solve puzzles. If you give them an empty box then it's just frustrating, but you give a box that has a couple pieces missing, a couple pieces extra, or a couple pieces from a different puzzle, then it creates a different sort of interest that leaves them wanting missing, remaining, or correct pieces.
