Intertextuality

As an animator, intertextuality, did not appeal to me at all! Not only did it tell us that we can never create something original (even though I was already quite aware of that) but also the "death of the author", that we can't control how viewers receive things. This to me kind of conflicted with semiotics as that in a sense said that if you create the sign correctly you can influence how an individual will receive something. Such as a dark menacing looking character will generally be assumed to be an evil character by those viewing.

However at the same time I see why you can't control it as every person will interpret something differently from another person.

Overall intertextuality is not so much how viewers receive things but how things relate to one another and link together in people's minds. Using my previous example of red, some will link red to love, others to danger, maybe some even to blood. Intertextuality is how someone can take one thing and change it to make it into something else so as an animator I am constantly using intertextuality in my work as I research and find inspiration from other artists. However links are not always conscious or purposeful but sometimes can be unconscious links.

Intertextuality can also move which I found interesting such as jeans were designed and made for cowboys to use as they are tough material, however how people everywhere wear jeans. Intertextuality moved and no longer are jeans just for cowboys.

Although intertextuality is something I use during my course it did not particularly appeal to me very much even though I agree with it. :)

Semiotics, read the signs!

Two more lectures, two more topics, however these are kind of intertwined topics as intertextuality is a branch of semiotics.

In basic these lectures were about how signs such as language or pictures relate to different people, in my case this would be how I as an animator communicate to an audience through my animation. How the characters are designed, the colours, the environment, these all give a particular signal to an audience. If a character looks dark and sinister this will give an impression to the audience that this character is evil, or if I decorated an environment with warm bright colours would reflect a feeling of warmth and friendly atmosphere in this environment. So every part of the design as an animator must be carefully done and thought through.

There are many examples of highly talented concept artists that purposely design something for a particular meaning and purpose within a movie/game etc.

My two favourite concept artists that I have seen so far would have to be Feng Zhu and Zhu Li. Helps that they have same names to remember them :)

Feng Zhu
http://www.fengzhudesign.com/

Zhu Li
http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/talented-game-concept-artist-zhu-li/

Both are stunning artists that create amazing works.

Although I was aware that it is important to consider every part of a design as I have been told during University it was good to have it displayed in a more theoretical way of how people will interpret different signs on an image. Such as important information for me and character design that we were told was that scientists have discovered that we find beauty in symmetry, so if a face is symmetrical we consider it to be more 'beautiful'. I will definately take this into account during character creation processes and can manipulate how the character will look to others.

I also thought the fact that people are naturally semiotic was interesting, that we always try to make sense of the shapes and signs we see infront of us. This relates to one lecture this week with Martin as we did an exercise for creating composition. We did a rapid fire series of compositions with 30 seconds each just drawing lines randomly then at the end our minds would naturally try to make sense of these lines and possibly create a composition. He told us that are minds try to "find the recognisable shapes in chaos" which I found very interesting and true.

Every individual will interpret a sign automatically in a different way such as some will interpret the colour of red for love whereas others will interpret red as danger! It was useful to learn the two types of signs to apply to animation.

Signifier: The physical indication or presence of a sign

Signified: The mental concept of a sign.

Iconic: Most representative representation of sign e.g picture of a cat

Arbitary: Symbolic representation

Overall I picked out some bits of information of semiotics to be useful however it is not something I would research and look into myself again as it does not grasp my interest too much. I will however keep the concept of semiotics in mind as I create and design animation as it is important to know how to appeal to and manipulate a viewers mind....... scary :)

Too real or not too real? :) That is the question!

The first lecture of the semester was based on realism. What is it to make something realistic? Reproducing reality? Using colour/correct proportions/depth to convince viewers of realism? Photo realism?

A good phrase was used that although images can be made to look realistic it's not real. An example of this is photo-manipulation in Photoshop, where the image will look very realistic and can even convince viewers that what they are seeing is real, however it is not.

These were some interesting points raised aswell as how different animators approach realism, both 2D and 3D in the seminar later.

The entire lecture reminded me of a documentary I had seen a couple of years ago called My Fake Baby.http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational/watch/v15565477Tt8Gmz96
A fascinating documentary but also quite sad as these women use these realistic babies to replace what they don't have or have lost. Also interesting how some find the babies appealing and cute and others are disturbed that they are TOO real. Personally I think it would creep me out if I saw a baby thinking it was real only to discover that it isn't. A topic that was also brought up later in the seminar during animation discussions. Would it be amazing or creepy to completely master the human form in animation? This is referred to as the uncanny valley. Where things are so real it can become destabilizing, a point I had never really thought of before and so caught my interest especially in relation to the documentary.

Personally I think it would be unnecessary to master the human form in animation as I believe the beauty of animation is that you can create something that is pure fantasy and imagination. We can make them look to be real but know it is not, a pure fantasy brought to life.

Realism is an interpretation or transformation of what we see, an attempt to reproduce reality. However I found interesting the views of those that oppose recreation of reality completely! Even paintings were considered by this man to be a "corruption of reality" which I found to be quite a sad quote really as being an artist I like to not only create it myself but enjoy viewing other artworks. I also believe that beautiful worlds and images from the imagination can be only created through art, a big example of this is the movie Avatar where they created an entire world. Although fantasy, it was based using concepts from reality, which were discussed later as part of the seminars.

However it was soon discovered that some people found the world to be too real and became depressed and suicidal that they could never go to this world of Pandora. Which raises the point told by Plato as a part of his theory of forms, that creating representations of the world is illusory and can be dangerous. An extreme example of a movie capable of hypermediating.

In the modern world however the entire media is based on making things look better than they actually are! Which creates a lot of pressure on people such as in advertising and as a result has created the existence of things such as plastic surgery, photoshopping, models, extreme games such as Second life etc.

Are people creating there own fake reality?
As an animator personally these lectures and seminars raised very interesting questions and thoughts for me to discuss and think about.