Meg Park

Becoming more specific

I've been looking at a few sources for inspiration for my concept. I am continuing to look at how character design and performance can be shown through animation, more specifically how initial reactions to character design can cause inaccurate interpretations of the character's behavoir.

What makes successful character design?

In order for my study to be successful i will need to strive to create a successful character design which incorporates my concept above. I have been looking at the characters of Beast (Beauty and the Beast) and Stitch (Lilo and Stitch) and have taken a lot of inspiration from them. Because both characters display a change in personality, but not necessarily design, we see also a transformation in their movements and behavoirs through animation. I will continue to look at these more thoroughly, as well as others that i will hopefully discover in time.

How can performance lead one to believe that there's more to a character beyond their appearance?

I hope to lead the audience into believing a certain thing about a character, simply by looking at their design, and then convey the opposite through animating the character. Hopefully the audience will experience surprise and therefore my character will become memorable.

Why would a character feel they need to act a certain way around others?

Another character i have been looking at is Jack Skellington. Jack feels he needs to be a scary pumpkin king, the king of halloween, when really he longs for more to life than constant halloween. His true self is shown through his lament, and eventually his joy when he discovers Christmas Town.

And so it begins.

Welcome to my blog!

I have organised my posts with labels, 'inspiration' for example, which can be used to quickly see all the posts i have made in conjunction to that area. Hopefully it's straightforward enough.

As excited as i am to start creating my honours project, i have been finding it difficult to come up with a solid idea to base my research upon. Through a mind mapping process i have discovered where my interests lie and i am very interested in doing a project involving animation, character animation in particular. I thought about looking at empathy with characters in film and games but on further deliberation decided that it could turn far too scientific for me to be comfortable with.

What i want to come away with are the skills to do what i love doing, which is mostly character design and animation!

I've decided to look at how character design can compliment character performance in animation, and how it can be twisted and turned so that the audience is surprised by what is sometimes the opposite to their immediate expectations. I plan to use this new inspiration to research into existing forms of this, the creation of anti-heroes and interesting characters through their stereotype-breaking design.

I plan to look at what the world has responded to, most popular films, animations and games and perhaps the reasons why their characters are so likeable. I shall read into previous research and conduct my own through watching these characters and deciding what one typically takes away from the film/game experience.

It's all a bit fuzzy at the moment and i guess i'm trying to big it up quite a lot :) I really am excited with where my project will go, i am aiming to create a piece of animation that i can be proud of to show future potential employers as well as a research dissertation that shows my competence in the field.

Watch this space for more awesomenesssssss