Animation people keep talking about emotion... I think building an emotional moment is first of all a matter of storytelling, and not so much of acting. Do we find a film sequence... emotional, if we haven't seen the rest of the film? Do we cry just by watching someone else cry? I don't think so. We cry because we get involved in a sad event/moment. There is an emotional buildup as the story unfolds, and we need TIME to get involved with the characters, the more time we spend, the more we get involved, it's... inescapable... :) Read the Little Prince, it talks about this. Once we're involved, we can cry at the sad or tragic events. Events! Not characters. We don't become emotional because we see a character becoming emotional, but because we understand the problems that character faces. Just watch an emotional scene from a movie, out of context... you won't cry because you won't be in the mood, you won't be part of that story.
Another problem is that animators animate shots, and on a demo reel for instance... how can you expect to create an emotional moment, when there is no story and everything is out of context. Still, animation shots are being criticized for not having.... hm, hm, enough emotion. Watch Bobby Beck's demo reel and tell me if you can cry at the emotional shots that in the context of the whole movie made you cry, or at least, become emotional... I'm sure you won't, a shot on itself can't build up emotion.... unless it's a 5 minutes shot or so... that tells a story. Actually, if a 10 seconds shot could tell an emotional story, it could make you feel sad, or feel... something anyway... So on Bobby’s reel you might find a sequence of shots that tell a little bit of a sad story. So I'm sure you'll feel the sadness, but if you tell me you'll cry at watching just 10 second of... whatever, the saddest thing in the world, I wouldn't believe you. Or I'd be worried about you in any case :D To get deep into a tragic event for example and get people care about the characters, you need time. Way more time than available in an animated shot, and even, preferably, more time than available in an animated short.
Comments
|
About me
I'm a character animator, visual artist, game dev, and music composer. I like to doodle, write, experiment, and plan my next big thing. I love tech that inspires and enables art. I have a formal background in music composition. And I like to walk around the world and see things up close. Archives
February 2022
|