Pitch Week

It's that time of the year again. Except there seems to be a bit more added pressure on us this year. Got my little team of computer artists years 1-3 on tuesday to mentor as well as my own pitch to my peers and staff on Friday. Most of the work i am going to do at the moment is going to be preparing for this presentation.
At the moment i have been working on refining my aims and objectives, and looking into context and rationale as well as questions i would like to answer during my research. I have also started to look at appropriate books and websites for inspiration and guidance.

Project Aim
To explore the relationship between character design and performance in conveying a character's personality and to demonstrate how one can manipulate the audience's interpretation of characters through this relationship.

Objectives
Review and evaluate existing literature and other media concerning character design for animation and discuss the effect of 'successful' character design.

Compare and contrast examples of character animation in regards to performance, to discover the extent to which it shows the character's personality.

Conduct practice-based research, experimenting with a range of character designs to identify how the use of design can affect personality in performance. Create and analyze examples of differing personalities.

Create an animated sequence which shows an original character design and the development of performance through a personality arc. Convey findings from research and experiments.

Evaluate research and analyze the importance of the research aim with reference to the created artifact. Evaluate how well the artifact meets the aim, and if there is any further research required.

Context
Animations, Films, Books
Previous researchers' work.
Character designs.

Rationale
Character Design, Character personality and Character performance are all interlinked.
Characters can totally being an animation to life,
Memorable characters are often those with depth.

Stages of Enquiry
What makes successful character design?
How do characters with different personalities differ in performance in animation?
How can performance lead the audience to believe there's more to characters beyond appearance?
Why would a character feel they need to act a certain way?
How can two characters who look the same act differently?
How can a personality arc be shown through performance?
What sort of trigger or influence would cause a personality arc?
Can a character design be deceiving?
Have people's expectations of characters changed since the dawn of animation?
Do stereotypes have a role in character design?