My third Artefact explored using blinks to convey emotion depending on the emotional state in which the character is feeling. Through further research into the topic, I came across some questions that are useful to ask yourself before delving into blinks knowing nothing about them. A couple of these were what is my character’s emotional state right now? What are they reacting to? How do I blink when I feel that way? Etc. If a character is sad, nervous or shy then he/she/it will blink more and if a character is angry, curious or bored then he/she/it will blink less. I also studied how to key frame a basic blink and an organic blink to see the differences between the two. After this knowledge and questions it was easier to be able observe people to see how their blinking reacted in the certain situations. For this Artefact, I chose a clip from ‘A Disquiet Follows my Soul (2009)’, I felt it had a lot of potential for expressing the character’s eye, as it is quite sad, she’s confused and she’s also talking about death. I felt it’s a clip for a strong subtle facial animation with less body language.

When speaking about more blinks due to sadness and less blinks due to being angry. I believed I would gain a better understanding and response from the audience if I used a more emotional clip, as there are more blinks to be used which enables me to test my timing and spacing when capturing the emotion. It becomes more of a challenge than it would be with animating an angry character with less blinks.

The feedback from the audience was strong in terms of the blinking relating to the characters emotional state. They believed the character and her thought process behind the dialogue and the amount and timing of the blinks worked along with the dialogue. Also, when she looks up, it shows a sign of hope in how she is feeling and then bringing her head back down shows the lack of confidence she has.  In term of animation, they mentioned that her head and shoulders were too stiff and in the beginning of the screen there wasn’t enough movement. Overall they thought the animating and subtleties were good quality and they could see the improvements in my animating skills throughout each Artefact, which was really pleasing.  

I found that there are certain factors with blinking such as when the head turns it can add anticipation. They can also add life to a scene if the character is looking to ‘dead’. But most importantly is the thought process and the change of thought is to why we blink. After my experimenting, research and findings from subtext and blinks, I would like to create my next Artefact using no dialogue, sound or cinematography to capture interior monologue. 

Through relating back to my research document  and studying further reading into subtext I noticed an interesting clip in the ‘Incredibles, 2004’ animated feature film. At the beginning when Mr Incredible is being interviewed he says ‘who enjoys the pressures of being super’. Through subtext, Mr Incredibles body language says something completely different than to his dialogue. He shows that he actually does enjoy the pressures of being super. This is something that has inspired me, by noticing subtext within acting films and clips than I didn’t before I researched further.

I chose a clip from the Requiem for a Dream, 2000. I felt as though the subtleties in what the character is saying could be used well to express subtext.

I decided to show the clip without the dialogue being played to see whether the audience still connected to the character the same.  As quoted ‘If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.’ (Alfred Hitchcock, 2012) I feel this was something vital to test whist studying the use of subtext. 

The feedback from the clip without dialogue was quite positive. They could sense that she was upset and quite annoyed from her facials expression and mainly her body language looking down, not really looking up that were good acting choices to portray what she was feeling. From this I showed the same audience the scene with the dialogue to see whether they felt the same.

The feedback from my focus group was positive, meaning the animation seems to be animated a lot better than my first Artefact. In my original pass at this animation the focus group mentioned that there wasn’t enough movement in her hips, especially when she moved her hands to left and right. There should still be some twist within the lower body when she makes these gestures. The group also pointed out that the movement of her hand gestures should be on particular words of the dialogue, such as ‘bed’ and ‘dishes’. As shown in the Artefact above, I improved what was discussed and also added other extra subtleties.

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n terms of feedback for the overall subtext within the performance, the audience seem well connected with the character’s inner feelings and thought process, showing that she is upset, annoyed and lonely. They felt the same yet more emotion when the dialogue was heard. This feedback also included people with no studied animation background. However, I felt that there wasn’t enough contrast between the dialogue and the thought process, like in the ‘Incredibles, 2004’ clip I mentioned above.  I feel I could have used operative words to capture a stronger subtext performance, though the audience still believed it portrayed a good experiment of subtext.

Following on from this Artefact, I thought this would be a great opportunity to continue the feedback and research to start my next Artefact about blinking. As Shawn Kelly says “If the body is 90% of the acting performance, the eyes are 90% of the facial performance. After considering what the body will be doing, the next most important thing is definitely your eye performance.”(Shawn Kelly, 2009).  I feel this is a strong piece of research to discover, as the main use of blinking is through a character’s thought process.