Animated Narratives Week 6 - Stolen Dialogue 02

This week, we were expected to portray a character expressing a piece of ‘stolen dialogue’ where the body language / expression of the character shows that they are feeling the exact opposite. My group chose the classic ‘I love you’, but have expanded the level of miscommunication to even greater height. Our idea involved two characters, an introverted gamer with their extroverted partner. The central premise is that the partner wants to hang out physically whilst the gamer would prefer online interactions. The interactions were held during an online game (like Sims) via text. All dialogue between the characters are always interpreted the wrong way and it seems like the characters are communicating on two completely different levels. At the grand finale, the classic ‘I love you’ is said by the partner in annoyance, but because of the texting context (no tone of voice) it is understood as an act of appreciation.

I have decided to complete two character sketches that hopefully capture the original personality of the characters. There’s the upright, big-eyed, smiling happy partner, then there's the slouching, unshaven gamer with heavy eye bags. Due to the nature of the split screen action (need to display both their expressions / body language in real life, and game actions) a different type of thumbnail is chosen. Context of the images are shown to viewers via the quote. The first image shows the reality of the situation and how the two characters are feeling, with viewers beginning to question why one is clearly upset and another appears joyous. Through the ‘in-game’ capture, insight is offered into the thoughts of the oblivious gamer.

My work was inspired by that of Gleane Keane and Jin Kim from Disney, whose works had a very strong influence on the Disney style of today. An attempt was made to study their expression sheets because they are just so on point (it’s hard to describe in words). Their sketches are perfectly exaggerated so it’s very clear into the thinking of the character, yet not so exaggerated to the point where characters become distorted. 

This ‘study’ made me learn so much about exaggerations and expressions, and made me realise that I still have a lot to learn. Sure I can draw pretty characters, but they always seem to have no personality (there’s nothing to them other than aesthetic). So much story, thoughts and feelings could be conveyed even through the tiniest tweak to the facial muscles of the character. By making the character sketches first, I wanted to nail down the nature of each character, and hopefully made my work interesting through the contrast between personality and action. The joyous character always appears agitated, whilst the gloomy character is very passionate.