Case Study 03 - "Life is Beautiful"

Case Study 03 - "Life is Beautiful"

"Life is Beautiful" - Ben Brand

https://vimeo.com/76127035

The reason I have chosen this as my third case study is because it follows the tough life of a short character. This intrigued me because of how the animator has animated a short character in a normal sized world. There are plenty of animations where the characters are small like this but they tend to be in a world where they are all the same and they live in a world built for it. This animation sets itself up for exploring how a small character would move around a world that is much larger than himself. 

I would like to direct you to roughly 1:30 in the video and watch the way that the character exits the scene. A normal sized person would take on a few steps and they would be out of the scene. This character, however, is obviously a lot shorter and he takes a lot more steps to exit the scene, but, I would argue that he stills exits the scene roughly the same time as a normal sized character would. Also, I can see where the animator has actually been a little lazy with his walk, it's when the character turns from the ladder to exit the scene. it just doesn't look believable the way he turns. I have noticed though that the animator has actually shown very little walking in the whole animation. I think that the animator has realized the limitations of the walk and has restricted its use which of course is a very important thing to realize with a rig, what is it's limitations. All that being said, when the characters legs are no longer in view in the first scene his walk looks really smooth and believable and suits his personality and physique. I think it's just the shortness of the legs that prohibit more believable movements.

Below is actually a GIF of what I am describing here.

As for the character performance, I really enjoyed it. You can really see the characters mood coming through at the start and how it changes from the "I'm actually going to jump", peaceful look to the relief of death when his soul emerges and floats towards the sky. I really got the sense that the character tried to go through life without making a big deal of how he was treated. This is evident when he is crossing the road, you would think that he would have learned from his whole life that crossing the road would always be like that and perhaps he would have learnt somehow to avoid it but instead the character has learnt to deal with it and doesn't seem too phased when he gets kicked around. 

My conclusion is that when animating a small character it is best to do so in the context that they are in a large world. This allows for some interesting character performances as the audience would likely be amused and impressed at how a character performs some simple tasks. When it comes to animating such a character, I imagine it must be a lot about really quick movements to emphasize how they have to work a lot harder to move at a normal pace. All this culminates in a strong character performance from such a little character.

Summary:

I have now done three short case studies on 3D animations. I intend on doing some with stop motion, 2D animation and film/theatre, all with the intent of analyzing character performances and perhaps how different mediums allow/restrict for different performances. 3D can clearly give a believable sense of movement but it can also give a stylized one as well. The same can go for 2D but maybe it comes more difficult for stop motion where the rigs have to be able to stand on their own which obviously restricts how they move. Then film/theatre are totally realistic but they would struggle to get more stylised movements which is where 3D and 2D animation really come into their own.