Theories of comedy 1

So to get to grips with understanding comedy I went on a little excursion outside of the animation universe and went into a little psychology. I found two very good sources of reaserch into what makes things funny, and comical

First I watched a TED talk given by Peter Mcgraw from The "Humor Reaserch Lab" or "HuRL" Get it? hehe...

So he makes several points in his talk about laughter and comedy. He describes that for something to be funny 3 conditions must be met. A violation, a benign nature about it (whatever that may be) and the two together form what is called a "Benign Violation". The violation in itself could be anything from something that seems out of place, a violation of social norms and moral norms and what he means by benign is that the entire situation is harmless, that it doesn't pose a threat.

This sounds all great to someone like me whos begging for some ounce of a formula for comedy. But now i dont think that this is the case. There is no formula for comedy, its is entirely dependent on so many factors like timing, engagment with the audience, setting, cultural background. This idea of a benign violation covers the entire field of comedy in general. In its raw form like this it doesn't seem to immediately apply itself to comedy performance in animation.

However, lets see how far we can go...

So in the case of my short film about bankrupt orcs who must atempt to earn cash in normal society before thier next battle.

Well, first off. We have a violation. Orcs trying to temporarly fit into a normal society breaks the visual norm. Whats benign about it?

Its possible that it could be multiple things. The fact that they have one mission and that is to simply get rich quick which is a non-threatening goal comming from Orcs who would rather be killing and being barbaric.

So from a quick application to my current material it seems to work, But I need to test out the idea on other people other than myself.

So for now, were getting closer but we need to dwell deeper.

3D Animation Acting test

So far  Ive not done anything remotely related to Orcs just yet, however, ive been doing these animation practice tests to get used to the whole animation process. Its not like drawing one character and thats it its a much more taxing mentally and you need to invest a lot more time into any animation, no matter how short.

I felt that I needed to really work on my acting skills, and create a short performance with a character with a distinctive personality.

I chose to use the new mery rig that just got released.
You can download it here: http://www.meryproject.com/ . Mery is very appealing, the controls and features such as the Picker (I like this very much) are similar to what you would find on a proper production rig. Plus the fact she looks very similar to Anna from Frozen.

Only thing I didn't like was the facial controls...

See that entire middle section? That is solely for controlling the shape of the eyes. Long gone are the days of those mediocre up and down eyelid movements! Nothing is labeled so the first time you open the rig in maya you have go and move and experiment with each slider to find out what each thing does. This is great in some regards, but you need to spend as less time as possible getting use to a rig so you can start animating as soon as possible.

Mery is great you can pull a lot of very expressive and interesting poses and expressions but its an advanced rig, I think it would put off alot of beginners seeing the facial controls.

Here is the little animation that I created that focused on acting performance with vocal animation. This was very hard, but i gave it a good go and came up with this. I used dialogue from the film "Mean Girls" (Really funny film):

"Irregardless...ex-boyfriends are just off-limits to friends I mean thats just like...the rules of feminism!"  

I tried to get accross a very gossipy and subtlety hectic kind of personality with the acting, At first up until the word "friends" it sounded like there was a lot of "you cant do that" "thats just totally out of the question." Then after that the dialogue changes slightly and becomes more confident and more of a higher order as if shes almost educating the person shes speaking to. Baring this in mind I draw out some gestural sketches and then started creating the key poses. And this is the final result:

Its still unfinished, because for some reason the maya file is permanently corrupted everytime i open it. its always like ooooooooooooooooh...BOOM!

I think it might have started when I accidentally duplicated a control or something. But its now totally and utterly impossible to work anymore on it. I had auto save on but all the auto saves are also completely and thoroughly destroyed. The last thing that i worked on was the playblast that you see here.

But all in all I had a lot of fun, and now on to the next animation creation sensation!!

Traditional adventures.

So this week, ive decided to try out and see if creating character animation traditionally - like y'know the best way to do it - would be worth incorperating into the production pipeline.

So I decdied to get out one of the old animation boards and start drawing in the realworld instead of on the computer.

So I set up a short sequence where the long headed orc "Mr Sneaky" tapping his head as if to imply "trust me." and taps his head knowingly.

Something easy and short todo. So with the gesture sketches done I then sat down and  drew the key poses.

I found at first that I was a bit uncomfortable with the whole process at first, however, I gave it a few days and it really became a very intuitive way to work. 

So after I had finished a good portion of the frames, I then used this wonderful pencil test machine, which suspends a camera above to photo each frame for pencil tests.

And this is the first pencil test

Personally I think It could be a lot better, I think I could have added more frames where he opens his mouth. It isn't finished yet, I would go ahead and add more frames of Mr sneaky at the beginning and end, probably inclining over before he turns his head. and maybe tapping his head more and returning to work.

Those are just some thoughts But overall this experiment has definitely answered one important question; Yes, traditional animation techniques WORK!!! I feel very happy working this way and i feel that my drawings are much better when I'm behind an animation board! :)

I'll continue to experiment with different mediums, but ill be definitely returning to traditionally creating animation in my Honours for sure

  

Frame Style test

Heres an example of what I want the final frames to look like in regards to the style.

I initially had in mind a cleaner style to this, but i felt that it would suck the life and weight out of the characters. So I chose to make the line work very scoured and rough, almost scratchy to reflect on the orks dirty and rough setting.

More animation tests

Heres a quick animation sketch. Im attempting to get a loose and stimulating feel the sketches, and i want this to continue this for the final frames.

Hard this with this one is that since this guy is front heavy, he would trample alot more,
also his other two legs away from us are missing.

Weight is difficult, but this is one of many tests ill do before i get it right!

As part of the production ill be doing animation tests that focuses on comedic performance.

so for reaserch purposes Ive decided to make some animation, this ones all about arine and his producer about to record a song.
Any crits would be nice.

And 

Mr Sneaky

I'd love a character with a very sneaky untrustworthy attire like this geezer. who stole and uses another brain.

more art

Hey have some more art

Beginings

Hello, welcome to the first development post of a 2d animated short film about dim orcs trying to make some money. Here is some inital concept art of some orcs to get the creative jucies cranking into action.

Orcs riding tricycles! why not?

 and one masked one with a vicious sword in his back thats healed over.