Qian Tang MA 3D computer animation – Page 6 – Just another myblog.arts site

Week 3 : Mise-en-scene Analysis & Summary

Part 1 :

Settings & Props:

This video is set in a cave transformed into a crystal-filled cave. The characters are the hero and heroine, a little fox and two mice.

Costume, Hair & Make up:

In this scene everyone is wearing pajamas，the heroine’s dress is full of dust.

Facial Expressions & Body Language:

The female foxes have exaggerated facial and body movements, getting so excited that they slap the male foxes after the turn, to crying later. It is clear that the female fox is very upset at the moment and that she is angry with the male fox.

Lighting and Colour:

The color palette is yellowish and the lighting is soft, creating a rather sad and warm atmosphere.

Positing of characters/objects within the frame:

It is easy to see from the language and actions of the two foxes that the male fox is not only a husband but also the father of a child.

What role dose the shot choice(Cinematography)play in the scene.

The first shot shows the overall setting, followed by the shading transitions from panorama to close up to close-up, showing the relationship between the characters’ demeanour.

part 2 :

Can you describe the mise-en-scene in this picture? How are the characters placed in the frame?

The scene is set with a man and a woman lying on a bed in the room. The man’s hair is white and the woman is young and beautiful. And the bed is relatively neat and the room is relatively clean, suggesting that they have only been here a short time. And the expressions on the two men’s faces do not look joyful; instead, the two men look rather nervous or thinking about something. The figures are placed in the middle, but the overall lighting does not give the setting an ambiguous atmosphere.

Part 3 :

Can you describe the relationship between the characters?

The woman sitting is the new mistress of the house and the man standing next to her is the butler. They are not familiar with each other and the housekeeper seems rather stereotypically strict, which makes the mistress uncomfortable.

how do we know what the relationship is ?

Can you describe how the mise-en-scene works together to tell us what the relationship is?

As can be seen from their costumes, the one seated is the hostess, while the one standing is her housekeeper. The housekeeper, on the other hand, seems to have little interest in the mistress and is very oppressive. The mistress, on the other hand, is more formal and therefore less natural in her behaviour. It was enough to see that their relationship was not very good.

Part 4 :

Can you describe the mise-en-scene in this picture?

The people around her have long beards and wear long robes and are mostly male, suggesting that there may be a lower status for women in her environment.

This is a medium shot, People in the middle of the shot.

Positive direction. (The position of the camera lens at a vertical angle to the front of the subject)

The overall palette is yellowish and cold, which makes it feel depressing.

The girl had a headscarf around her head and wrapped herself up tightly. Looking around in the street, and with fear and worry visible on her face.

Week 3 : Note

Note

Mise-en-Scene:

Settings & Props

Costume,Hair & Make Up

Facial Expressions & Body Language

Lighting and Colour

Positing of characters/objects within the frame

Costume, hair & make-up:

act as an instant indicator to us of character’s personality, status and job.
Examples: 101 Dalmatians, Barry Lydon
Facial expressions & body language:

Facial expressions provide clear indicator of how sb is feeling
Body language indicate how someone is feeling towards another character/ reflect state of their relationships
Positioning of characters & objects in a frame

positioning in a frame can draw our attention to an important char/obj
an animator can use positioning to indicate relationships between peoples
Lighting & color

can be used to achieve a variety of effects:

highlight important char / obj in a frame
make char look mysterious by shading
reflect mental states / hidden emotions
color- cultural meaning/ emotional

Low key Lighting:

created by using only key & back lights
produces sharp contrasts of light
High Contrast Lighting:

Examples: Street of Crocodiles, Citizen Kane

High Key Lighting:

more filler lights are used. lighting is natural and realistic to eyes

Example: The barber of

Natural lighting:

Examples: Alice, Paperman, The French Connection, The Hunger Games

Color and film:

Examples: Cries and Whispers, Amelie, The Secret of Kells, The Revenant(cold color, color contrasts, cooler or warmer)

films have color plate to control the proportion, contrasts, etc

DOP:

The distance from the near to the farthest

Deep Focus: both close and distant planes are shown in sharps focus, which allows film makers emphasize a char/ object which is far away from cam.

9 types of shots:

Extreme close-up: The Incredibles, The Hunger Games
Close-up: Bug Bunny, The Hunger Games, American Honey
Medium close-up: This Art Club Has a Problem!, The Third Man
Medium Shot: There will be good
Long Shot: Wall-E
Extreme Long Shot
A one-shot
A two-shot
A group shot
High Angle Shot
Low Angle Shot
POV

Moving Shots:

Pan shot
Tilt shot
Traveling shot
Crane shot
Animation art and cinema

from outset animation was destined to be multi-cultural, multi functional medium fulled medium fueled by technological change.

Hollywood the avant garde

1913 Raoul barre a painter and invented the peg system providing a universal registration system

1915 saw the introduction of cel, clear acetate that could be drawn on without having to redraw the background in every frame

Art Element Vocabulary

line
shape: the feeling of the out fit of obj in 2d perspective
form: the feeling of the volume of obj in 3d perspective
color
volume
space
texture

Week 3 : walk cycle & Emotional walking

The walking animation counts as one of the basic animations.

Rough-Blocking walk cycle:

For the lighting screenshot, I used some parallel light

Emotional walking；

Moving forward.

Emotional walking.

This is a cautious walking animation, which is not as good as it could be because it is rather short and not very well curved.

Week 2 : Solid Posing

Pose is the most common method used when creating animations. So it is essential to do this exercise.

This is an interactive combination of actions. A boy holds a girl. I saw this combination pose when I was watching a TV series and wanted to try out a combination pose。

**The pose is a fist swing, inspired by a friend of mine who loves these kinds of action movies。**

**This pose is a lounging pose on the sofa, a more lazy state.Inspired by the once famous Chinese pose “Ge You Ping”**

**The pose is of a shy young girl excited to see something she likes.**

**This pose is of a man who is tired after a run and is resting.**

Through this pose practice, I found that my pose could be more fluid and smooth.

Week 2 : Notes and summaries

The question : Use the remainder of the session to research examples of politics affecting media in one or more of the following media.

I think all these aspects are a medium of cultural communication, film, animation, advertising, television, games. As cultural products, they have a subtle influence on the way human beings interact and behave in their lives. Cultural export and cultural aggression can shake the ideological foundations of a country. For example, China does not have a Christmas festival, but nowadays it is no less popular than its own Dragon Boat Festival, which is a cultural invasion. Furthermore, cultural export, such as Bruce Lee’s films, has led people overseas to believe that everyone knows Chinese kung fu. Then there are the familiar Chinese Fuwa from the Beijing Olympics, the Nezha’s Magic Boy Descendants, etc.

The most direct impact of advertising is on the economy, but not all advertising is linked to the economy, for example, during the election campaign, some advertising is for the President and Prime Minister. Advertising can spread public opinion and build opinions. And the people who do the advertising likewise have a partisan orientation.

Note:

Generally, people can influence or persuade audiences in the following areas:

Social media
Broadcast News and events
Film and Animation
Television
Media platforms that have potential to influence or persuade an audience:

Broadcasts
Print Media
Mainstream Film and Animation
Independent film and animation
Games
Podcasts
Social media / internet profile
Some messages which are used in moving image:

Subliminal or masked content
Overt / Propagandist intentions
Persuasive / commercial targets
Documentary / Investigative
Independent / Personal struggle, observation or experience
Some main topics of politics in film and media:

Political persuasion
Commercial persuasion
Race
Gender
Equality
Disability
Ethics

Animated Documentarys:

1.Neighbours (1952 film)

2.Tower (Kevin Maitland, 2016)

3.The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay 1918)

4.Fight for the Dardanelles (1915)

5.Prelude to War (1942)

6.A Is For Autism (1992)

7.Waltz with Bashir (2008)

8.As the creative treatment of actuality (1933)

9.Chicago 10 (Brett Morgen, 2007)

10.Montage of Heck (Brett Morgan, 2016)

Taxonomy of Animated Documentary:

has been recorded or created frame by frame
is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator
has been presented as a documentary by its producers and/or received as a documentary by audiences, festivals or critics.

Some important elements for Good poses and gestures:

Better proportion of body parts
Bigger eyes and ears
Spine and fluidity:

charactors spine should maintain it’s fluidity
the shape of spine should be curves
the shape of spine should help charactor balance their bodies

Week 2 : Ball & Tail Animation

This exercise is an essential tail movement for animation.

A bouncing blob with a tail presupposes that the blob is a weighted bouncing ball and that the tail can also sway naturally with the mass of the ball. When the ball makes its first bounce, it should take longer to hit the ground to build up momentum for the second bounce. In terms of the tail swing, it should swing at a greater angle. Personally, I don’t think this work was done very well and will adjust it later.

Changing the tail for the second time to make it softer.

Week 1 : The Animation studios/forms of animation/animators who imitated or resisted Disney’s hy

At present, the United States is the best producer of 3D animation films. On the one hand, when producers from other countries are not experienced enough, they naturally have to learn from the production models of these masterpieces, and the style will be more similar, on the other hand, people have also been nurtured by these masterpieces to have a certain aesthetic tendency. As there are many Disney-style masterpieces, it is natural that works that lean towards this style are more likely to feel familiar and more likely to be considered masterpieces. In animated films, species other than people are given souls, and they take on the characteristics of animals and the personalities of people. The animal characters become human, allowing the audience to see the human in the characters, to feel familiar and feel believable, and thus to capture human emotions. Cartoon animals are never a reflection of real animals, they are a special group of animals from a mythical world, replicating human characteristics and weaknesses, unlike themselves in the animal kingdom.

Week 1 ：Bouncing Ball with Travel & Obstacle Course

This week I created two animation ,one bouncing ball with travel and one in the obstacle course.

Bouncing Ball with Travel

Independent small ball bouncing. The preset material is a small plastic ball, which is thrown outwards and falls naturally. Personally, I think that more consideration should be given to the physical factors such as the ball’s own weight and material. Near the end, the ball should be rolling slowly, then wobble a few times as if it were not falling, and finally stop. Will pay attention to these issues in subsequent work.

2.Bouncing Ball Obstacle Course

Before doing this assignment, my preconception was that a small ball of similar material and mass to a ping pong ball would undergo a natural motion within an environment. The small ball would fall naturally and collide with the lighter mass of a spinning board, fall onto a seesaw, and due to the square on the other side of the seesaw, be subjected to parallel motion where the square receives pressure from the small ball and bounces it up to the right side where it falls naturally. After doing this, I found that the physical environment could be improved further. Firstly, when the ball is bounced by the square and falls to the right side after the parallel plate, the length of the parallel plate should be lengthened and a trap should be set above the U-track where the ball can fall quite reasonably. Again, the angle of the lower pipe could be improved, with a larger angle, the ball could fall faster. Or improve the speed of the ball’s movement. Finally, I want to preset the layout of the physical environment and the mass of the moving objects in the next design, which will reduce many iterations of adjustments in the production and in time consumption.

Week 1 ：Good & Bad Animation according to my understanding

I believe that the premise of a good animation is to have its own unique signature and unique style. Even in some technical improvements and innovations. Not something that is copied exactly and without any technical improvements or innovations, even if it is not as good as the original and does not make sense.

I have a very good example here, Cars and Superfly. The character design shows that the characters are very similar to each other. The overall style is similar and Superfly doesn’t improve on it or even make it more dull. In terms of content, it is plagiarised and stitched together with no idea of its own, and the story is relatively unconvincing and unconventional. Technically, the overall movement is stiff, not copying the essence, not improving or innovating. I don’t think it’s possible to call the animation good in this context.

From my personal point of view, I think a good animation is something like the following, with a well-connected storyline, original content, characters with character and a very imaginative film, which not only reflects the unique French dark humour, but also includes a lot of innovative song and dance elements. The film is also thought-provoking, with a profound philosophy of life and death coming from the mouths of the animated characters.