I’m not dead!!! – MA – Write up/research discussion, general update

So to give some context to the title and the ‘SPOOOOOKY’ gif. I recently had surgery to remove my appendix after it got infected and I started having agonising pain in my lower abdominal area when I returned home for what was suppose to be a short weekend visit, which is reason why I’ve been a bit silent lately. I’m on a speedy recovery and I hope to return back to Nottingham before the end of term to catch myself up, but to sum it all up, I’m okay 🙂

Research Topics

After completing my learning agreement, I now have a clear understanding of what my project is and where research is going to be leading to.

One topic I’ll be discussing will be about Albert Mehrabian’s theory on communication. A professor in Psychology, he researched into the importance of verbal and nonverbal communication where he found that visual communication had more of an impact on an audience member than the other two. Within my project I aim to test his theory through research and experimentation by showing a focus group a few animated performances (which I will animate) and test what form of communication stood out to them more.

Another topic I will be looking into is research into behind the scenes videos from films/shows/video games of voice actors portraying characters. The aim for this will be to see if the portrayal of a VA impacts or influence how the character came out in the finished medium, or if not how did the directors choose the role for the character. It’s an area that can be thrown back and forth depending on where I look, but can be quite interesting if I find the data I’m looking for.

One other topic I will look into is reading some of Ed Hooks ‘Acting for Animation’ books. the aim for this is to not only improve my skills as an animator but see but how much body language is useful for an animated performance in terms of conveying a characters thoughts and emotion through their movements. With this research I can relate it back to the data I collect with Mehrabian’s theory.

These are roughly the main areas I’ll be looking into, of course each area have their own sub research sections that’ll help with the overall project, but I don’t want to ramble too much in this post, otherwise no one’s going to read it 😀

The next step I’m going to be taking is looking at my project and putting it all in a rough schedule for me to follow for the next two terms so I won’t be losing my mind and reach the end deadline. I’ll also be returning to Notts this week/weekend, so I’ll be able to discuss all this with mu tutors to help me out. Plus I need to start thinking about where is my next step after MA, so I’ll need to do some studio hunting soon.

Doodle

CAN YOU FEEL IT NOW MR. KRABS!!!!

Here’s another entry from the inktober challenge which I didn’t finished. The tagline was “Roasted” and for some reason I chose to do Mr Krabs being roasted over a grill… I think I need help…