Research

Here is some research I carried out to inspire my character and story design. The most interesting aspect of this module to me is that the character can portray to the audience what it is feeling without the need for it to make any sound what so ever. The mediums in which it does this are body language, hand signals and facial expressions.

Geri's Game (Pixar Short Film)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m7dcbIKvlw

In this video, we can see a good example of the aforementioned on a character you'd normally associate with speech, a human. Geri does use some sound in this piece, but only to aid the visuals, rather than visuals aiding sound such as speech does. This video shows more of an emphasis on strong use of fingers and hands. I will take this into account when modelling my character and will make sure that it has fully functioning hands that can be manipulated realistically.

Big Buck Bunny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk

This animation uses a lot of posture and appendage based (in this case the ears) movement to depict the emotion of the character. Again, notice the large hands that make signs and movements very clearly. Even with the massive disproportion of the character, the fact that he has tiny legs and huge arms, body language that humans would use is still clearly understandable. The use of the characters large brow is also very interesting and I will be taking this into account when creating my character.

Wall-E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYoiXtfebzU

Wall-e is a very interesting character due to the fact that he has no facial features, really no real face at all, but is still able to portray emotion with clever use of the metal around his eyes. This is a really inspiring piece of character design, showing that it is possible to portray emotion with a very basic set of features.

After doing this research I have decided that I would like to take some inspiration from all of the above. I like how the brow of the character can create expressions in its own right by position alone. The use of hands has been very clear to me as one of the most important aspects of expression, sometimes by itself or in conjunction with other limbs. I will be keeping all of these ideas in mind when I design my character.