Theme
In responds to this week's theme play and self, I used my own image as a prototype to create a short animation and it is about the observation of my inner emotions.
Context
When we see the word ‘observation’, I would say the first reaction of most people is what can be observed with the eyes. However, I was wondering how those things that cannot be seen should be ‘observed’, and how they can be represented. Inspired by Duncan’s work, who recorded some movements of himself when living alone, which can represent his real self. I came up with the idea of using animation to express the true emotions from my heart. Emotions are complex phenomena (Plantin, 2015), it involving bodily manifestation but also internal neurophysiological parts. External emotions can be observed by voice, facial expressions, gestures and body posture, but internal emotions are difficult to see with the eyes. For example, we always say, 'it's okay, I'm fine', but in fact the real emotion is sadness. This is what I expressed in this animation, some of the true emotions of the self and the emotions shown to others.
Method
Character design
Firstly, I started by drawing some portraits of myself, recording some emotions, for example, fuming, sadness and crying.
Color chosen
In the first half of the animation, we can see a very large number of colors, different colors overlapping and alternating with each other. The real inner emotions themselves are complex and numerous. These colors are entwined to express the variety and change of emotions. In addition, I chose cool tones to represent the real emotion of sadness. For the last external emotion shown to others, I used warm tones of orange and yellow, which represent the positive and optimistic side.
Response
The Final animation is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlfkbHXmlEU
Reflection
After drawing and editing the whole animation, I felt that how to represent abstract things such as emotions, moods, etc. in animation would be a challenge in the further studies. Besides the connection of colors and lines, what other forms can express some complex emotions? There are still room for improvement on 2d hand drawing animation as well, how to make the picture and the movement of the characters more smooth is the point that I will focus on and improve afterwards.
