Animation

Friday, 30 May 2014

Representation and Ethics

In the article,the writer believes that the film Rio 2 is a little stereotypical in terms of representations of some of the characters, as the lead characters are voiced by white Americans. However, Rio 2 uses non-white voice actors for the singing, dancing, the wacky sidekicks are stereo typically voiced by African-American actors.

PEPs is when racial stereotyping is used in animation. Problem contexts, Entertainment contexts and Performance contexts. Dr Charles Da Costa, who is a British lecturer, has written on racial stereotyping in animation says "Within PEPs, black people and other genotypes have to be associated with vexing circumstances," and "Strive to pacify, make others happy and be exceptional or extraordinary – far from 'normal'. Villainy, exoticism, jocularity and athleticism are common indicators of this malaise. Images of ethnicity do not need to be conveyed within the narrow scope of PEPs."
He believes that the slow, expensive, labour-intensive process of producing could also be a factor as decisions on character and performance must be made very quickly in order for design and production processes to commence and advance. So with the representations of ethnicity and epidermal type, family animation often finds itself in a bind. It would consciously and subconsciously weighs financial against moral obligations, then unconsciously goes for the 'safe' representational defaults stereotypes.

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/06/repressed-brits-evil-mexicans-arab-villains-hollywood-animated-movies-stereotypes

Thursday, 15 May 2014

Animation Test

Here is the first animation test of 'The Traveler' jumping, as frustrated as it was, I succeeded in drawing frame by frame of the actor jumping. How I animated this was in the software Photoshop, I made the original video into layers and drew over each frame and colored it in. I learnt that too many layers and drawing them over can be stressful as well, so I changed the limit into four, as it makes it easier for me to organise the clips.