Project 6 - Character Animation (part 1 Research)

For the beginning of this project I have been researching into basic body language, and movement. I looked at how body language can show a large amount of emotions through even the subtlest of movements and positions.

I find this topic very interesting because it can be used greatly in real life as well as in animation. Body language in real life tells us a lot about a person and how they are feeling. It can make us decide a lot of our own actions towards people and situations.

Our own body language can affect our own emotions as well as others, simply just standing tall and open can make you feel more confident as a person. A lot of tests have been made looking into body language and how it can affect moods and feelings without our conscious mind even knowing.

For this project I had to look at body language and how it's used and how I could use it in animation. Body language is a key feature in animation and is exaggerated most of the time, animators exaggerate body movements to make the emotions more realistic and believable. Sometimes this exaggeration is taken very far almost to the point of unrealistic. However, if the movements are based on real life body language it becomes a believable movement or emotion for the viewer.

To learn how to animate believable emotions and movement I need to learn how real life people move. I looked at different images of body movement to get a basic idea of shape and form.

Looking at real humans stood in positions helps to see obvious body language. This is good because in animation it would be obvious and exaggerated. However, in real life body language can be a lot more subtle. I need to look at both and get a good drawn and visual diary of all kinds of body language so I can animate emotions in lots of different ways.

 

I also looked at some gesture drawn body language which is a good help because it gives me an idea of the sketches I’m going to do for my own drawn research.

I think the gesture drawing is good because you can look at the different body shapes and initial poses which create body language.

The best form of research for body language is watching people in real life. It's good to sit and watch people to see all of the subtle movements of real daily life. This kind of life is good to take quick sketches from to get the basic shapes and movements.
For the more in-depth exaggerated emotions such as anger and excitement. I will find poses of people or act out these emotions to look at how the body reflex these intense emotions with exaggerated movement.