The Final Year: Initial Thoughts and Getting Started

After a long summer, I'm ready to make the final push towards finishing my time at University. I think.
At the end of last year I proposed looking into Performance for my dissertation, and I'm still thinking that this is the way forward. I'm very much interested in this as a dissertation topic, as it is one that I think will benefit me greatly, being interested in pursuing traditional animation. Not only this, but I would love to learn more about what makes a good performance, and how this can be used to benefit my practice further.


As it stands, I'm not sure just yet what I'm going to focus on/write about for this project. Though I have made a start at getting down ideas.

- What makes a good performance?
- How important are references? Does bad reference result in bad animation?
- How performance can effect how much/well we relate to characters
- Uncanny valley
- Talking to professionals about video referencing and the importance of it
- Take an acting class?
- Questioning animators/dancers/actors?
- Analysis of good/bad performances
- Creating animation line tests based on found out information
- Testing how well performance can be captured using different media/animation programs/techniques

After speaking with Annabeth:
- Good practice of an animated performance. If you don't do this, what happens?
- History of animated performance
- Is it a luxury that small companies don't reference on the same scale as, say, Disney, who are famous for their referencing.
- How do you get around not having reference?
- Line tests of simple movements, animated without and with reference.
- Comparison of with/without reference to rotoscoping


I think the potential is there for an interesting dissertation, but at this moment I think I need to focus on expanding my initial sources and key texts. Once I have expanded my initial knowledge on this subject, I will have a better understanding of which direction I want to take my essay in.