Research - Body Language / Facial Expressions of Fear

Facial Expressions:

Research has identified people who are feeling fear or unease often do not make direct eye contact with another person and instead look at the floor, at their hands or surroundings. With this in mind, my character will take this into consideration by never looking directly at the camera and being weary of his surroundings while feeling this emotion. Fear in facial expressions is also often expressed by wide eyes, raised eyebrows and flared nostrils. Their mouth may be tightly clenched or the person may bite their upper or lower lip.

Body Language:

Body postures such as slouching or hunching often indicate fear in a person. This is because they want to minimise themselves physically in order to not be noticed. Some people may appear the opposite, with forms of aggressive behaviour such as squaring their shoulders and pushing out their chests to try and appear as big as possible and assert their dominance. The characters personality is one of less dominance and more submissive. This helps people feel sympathy for the character and will help the character to build a relationship with the audience. The most obvious sign of fear is shaking or rocking. This is also a common way of conveying fear in cartoons and animation as it is the symptom most associated with fear and clear for the audience to pick up on.

Examples:

Anonymous Tribal Man is now LOTO....

I have decided to call my character Loto. The name is a name common through out the pacific islands and means 'heart'. As the brief requires the character to have "heart and optimism", it is an appropriate name and sounds apt for the character. It is also a similar method to how Disney names their characters. Disney often gives their characters names that are in some way associated with the characters personality or story; in this case Loto's background is a tribesman from the pacific islands.

Creating the Scenery

Most of the terrain was created from one mesh object. A plane was created and converted to an editable poly. With a lot of height and width segments, the mesh was moulded into a rocky type terrain. The use of the soft selection tool made this easier to achieve. A cave object was created in the same way from another mesh and then placed on top of the existing terrain. Rock textures with bump maps were applied to these meshes to form the basic rock formations.

A palm tree object was creating by using a cylinder converted to an editable poly and deformed and bend to form the tree trunk. The palm leaves were created by finding a texture of a palm leaf and applying an opacity map. The leaf was then duplicated a few times and positioned to form the tree. All objects were grouped and repeated many times to create the jungle scene. Boulder objects were created and positioned through the scene. A billboard looking texture was added behind the trees to give the impression of depth in the jungle. The hair and fur modifier was used to create a grass effect in the jungle. The sky was created using a hemisphere with a sky texture applied. A sphere dummy was added so that a volume fog effect could be applied in order to give a realistic looking cloud effect for the sky. Finally cameras and lighting was added to the scene.

Creating the Character Model

To create the character model, a box object was created and converted to an editable poly. The vertices were then manipulated into position firstly to form the lower section of the tribal character starting with the feet and gradually working upwards. The quick slice and slice pane tools were used to add geometry to the mesh. To create the muscle definition on the character the extrude tools were used. I started modelling around a biped so that it was save time later on. I eventually deleted this biped as it made the character look too much in proportion, which often is not how Disney / cartoon characters appear. Once the mid-section of the character reached a symmetry modifier was applied to the object to mirror the body object in order to save time. A mesh smooth modifier was also applied at this point to smooth over the mesh and make it look more realistic. The characters upper body and arms were then formed in the same way by manipulating vertices into position. The mesh smooth modifier was then replaced with a turbo smooth modifier as it gave a better results and iterations turned up to two. Finally the head was created and spheres added to give the character eyes.

An unwrap UVW modifier was applied so the character could be textured. The mesh was divided into groups that could be easily unwrapped. A UVW template was then rendered. In the image file a skin colour and texture were applied and tribal type tattoos added. Back in 3ds Max the material was applied to the object and the specular and gloss levels adjusted. Finally a bump map was added to the material. A separate eye texture was applied to the eyes. The hair and fur modifier was used to give the character some hair. The hair was styled using the brush and cut tools of the hair and fur modifier and the properties adjusted to make the hair look like a short afro like cut.

A biped object was created and made to fit inside the character mesh. As the character only ever needed to clasp an object, it was decided that one biped finger would be applied to all the fingers on the mesh. Once the biped was in the correct position a physique modifier was applied to the character mesh. The physique modifier was something I had never used before. In all previous models I had used the skin modifier instead. Using a tutorial on the Internet the weighting of the tendons on the physique modifier was adjusted to sort out any pinching issues on the mesh. There was a problem with pinching on the upper leg area of the model when a trial walk sequence was applied. Time was not wasted on sorting this as the area of the mesh would later be covered by clothes and the issue would not be seen. Once all of these errors were corrected the bones was set to not render and shown as boxes rather than the bones. This is something that was discovered by mistake by a useful tool as it makes it easier to select the bones when animating.

To finish off the model the character was given some clothes. These were created by creating a plane and converting it to an editable poly. The mesh was then formed around the character mesh and then given a cloth modifier. The character mesh was set as an object that could be collided with so that it would move the cloth object when the character moved. The vertices around the point of contact with the character mesh were defined as nodes so the cloth would not fall off of the character. Finally a spear object was created and textured for the character to hold in the story.

Storyboard

The storyboard below helps illustrate the narrative to the animation. The main theme behind the story is that overcoming fear has its rewards. As cartoons are often used to in store beliefs and values in kids, I thought I would attempt in with my animation.



Storyboard Annotation

1 - Character is introduced hiding in the jungle. There are roaring sounds to infer that something is chasing him. He will demonstrate through body language and facial expressions being scared. This will firstly help the audience warm to him. It will show a vulnerable side to the character that will help the audience support him.

2 - Character will emerge from the jungle, creeping out slowly, checking he is not being followed. He will then step on an object, possibly a rock. This is so the emotion of pain and anger can be shown through body language and facial expression, with accompanying groans.

3 - Character enters a nearby cave as he wants to sit down and check out his injured foot.

4 - Mysterious eyes appear in the cave with accompanying roaring sounds. Through out the animation the mysterious animal will never be shown. This is to cut down on the modelling side of things so animation can be focussed on. Using sounds and showing the characters reaction to those sounds should be enough to infer the animal's presence. The cave will be partially lit through a crack in the ceiling illuminating the character. This will allow the character to be shown and his reactions to be obviously noticed, without seeing his ambient surroundings. Fear emotion will once again be shown by the character.

5 - Character overcomes his fear and shows aggression towards the animal. He then chases the animal into the shadows. Noises to infer a fight is going on, but not letting the audience know who is winning.

6 - Character emerges from cave with a new tiger fur attire. Puts on a pair of sunglasses to suggest he feels confident and cool. Walks off into the distance with a confident stride. This scene should comical.

Character Design

Below is a sketch of the character I am going to create. I have decided to go with a tribal man (name yet to be decided). One of the main reasons for this choice is the fact that he will not speak words, only grunts and groans. This means the animation can focus on the body language and facial expressions to communicate his emotions to the audience. This also means that the audience do not have to speak a particular language in order to understand the cartoon. This is important when Disney channels are available in 165 countries and in 33 languages. The other reason this idea was chosen was because it is something a bit different and I think could be interesting and comical.

The sketch makes my character look slightly evil / scary. This is due to my lack of drawing ability. He will be modelled to look friendlier, so he doesn't scare the intended audience.

Disney Research / Mood Board

On doing some research into Disney characters I discovered that Disney create many human and non human characters but often give them very human personalities even if they are non human looking. The newer Disney films created by Pixar Studios seem to be completely different from the more traditional Disney films. The main way in which they differ from 2D drawn type cartoons of the more traditional to the 3D looking graphics of newer films. This is probably down to the technology that has been available to Disney studios over their history but is an important change to note. Pixar characters are still usually non human but the films have an element of realism to them. The way in which this is achieved is by primarily realistic use of physics on objects in the films. The scenery is also more realistic looking and their is clear attention to detail.

There tends to be more comedic element in newer Disney films as well as the characters having more personality. The use of detail that is achieved in newer Disney films helps convey the feelings and emotions of the characters in a way the older films could not and certainly helps to build the characters persona and relationship with the audience. All of these findings need to be taken into consideration when designing my new Disney character.

The mood board below helps illustrate the wide range of Disney characters.