Being Funny

I understand that Science has seven big fundamental questions of the order 'How did Life start'. I can't remember what the other six are, but one of them must surely be 'Why are some people funny and others not'. I am happy to say that Science has now solved this problem, with the little help from its animation friends and a morphing program.

"The characteristics of a feminine face imply that the person may be agreeable and co-operative, which can be causal in our first impressions of comedians as being friendly and funny."
Dr Little used computer software to blend together 179 different facial aspects of 20 top comedians, resulting in the "perfect comedy face".
And picked Ricky Gervais as having the perfect comedy face - so that proves it.
Find out more at: "http://www.itv.com/news/entertainment_0e6a2a3f4a4578cb05bb63d81a59b4f7.html

I would like to see the system applied to Politicians, and a few others who we might put our trust in.


A recent study regarding 'Prejudices and what we look like' can be found at http://www.badscience.net/?p=219. It supports the obvious in that we are attracted to beautiful people, but that is partly because - as those of us in the movie business know - the good are beautiful and the bad are ugly. Disney made a mint out of it; and anyone working in the Animation industry is aware that a Cartoon's face is its fortune.

The constant reinforcement of what is Good and Bad stemming from the worlds of advertising, movies, and fashion may be conditioning our brains in a way that Religion did in history.

If computer games are making children violent then animation has a lot to answer for. On the other hand, if animation can define the 'Perfect Comedy Face' then perhaps there is a 'Perfect Tragedy Face', or a perfect face for any attribute you can think of.

It would certainly be handy for checking passport photos, Internet dating photos, and personal photos for our CV, but I can see the possibility of plastic surgery opening up new fields of expertise with body parts as yet unexplored.


Stan

Writing for Animation

By chance today I see that Microsoft has just taken out a patent on software to help "children write stories". I wondered if Microsoft are trying to put me out of business! But on checking their patent, it seems to be related to manipulating images- so that's OK.

The easiest way to get children to start writing is to let them write 'All About Me', covering what their favourite food, sport, lessons, etc, are, and what they dislike most. Of course, Social Networking and Blogs are just that in a more elaborate form.

Writing about oneself is a great therapy - as is talking about oneself. And part of that therapy is due to the fact that someone is actually interested in us. But of course, not everyone who is interested in us has the same motives.
There are lots of online questionnaires asking us details of our buying habits and social activities so they can draw up a 'Profile' for marketing; that's innocent enough, and we all know what it is about.

But supposing these marketing profiles and our networking/blog profiles were matched up, it would give a fairly accurate picture of who we are and what we look like. Well, the 'Big Brother' idea has been done to death, but I'm thinking in terms of creating characters for stories.

Would it ever be possible to feed a computer a profile of someone based on their Blog/Network profile, and buying habits, and get a reasonably accurate image of the person?
I for one, wouldn't say it couldn't be done. I shall be keeping a beady eye out for more Microsoft patents.

Stan

Children's Art Therapy

I was nine when WW2 started, and remember laying in the Air raid shelter with my cousins, and crying "What have we done to them?", as the bombs fell. The 'We' being my cousins and me, as we felt that we were being personally targeted.


Such children's drawings as this one are typical of all wars as children try to make sense of a senseless world. But war is just one area where Art offers therapy.

This picture came from the site:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5223.shtml


Art therapy is used for terminally ill children, and children suffering trauma from accidents, illness, loss of loved ones, and the like, but also the broad range of Special Needs children who are physically/mentally handicapped, or suffer from communication problems.

More can be found on:

Art Therapy and Special Needs


Stan

stan@MakeMovies.co.uk

Scribbling

I've just come across an interesting site at http://www.arts.ufl.edu/ART/RT_ROOM/teach/young_in_art/sequence/scribbling.html dealing with scribbling; the earliest stages of drawing.

I once worked with Special Needs children, and had a 14 year old boy who was brain damaged He had a mentality of a 3yr old, and his teacher dismissed him as unteachable, but I included him in the animation class.

I gave him a pile of paper and coloured crayons, and then asked him to scribble. The end result was a pile of scribbled paper in different colours which I shot as a sequence so they animated. He was delighted, and wanted to do more. Unfortunately I was not able to work with him again, but there is no doubt in my mind that scribbling would have helped him in some way.

Very young children will often scribble a meaningless mess, and when asked what it is, say Mummy, or Rover, or whatever comes to their mind. It is a big conceptual jump for children to associate a mark with person or object.
Another interesting site is at http://www.bartelart.com/arted/wallscribblers.html which deals with the therapeutic aspect of scribbling.

Not being an animator but needing to draw storyboards, I learnt to do quick sketches by scribbling on scrap paper very quickly to get the feel of the pencil. It's a bit like practising your scales until you can do it without thinking.
I've read somewhere that if you are right-handed, then scribbling or writing with your left hand will develope parts of the brain that other excercises haven't reached.

The drawing at the top was done by my daughter when she was three. She said it was 'A squirrel in its house at the top of a tree'.
She became quite a competent artist though suffering from dyslexia. It is interesting to note that it is common for Special Needs children to be better than average artists, yet this ability is rarely exploited.

On speaking to a teacher about dyslexia, she told me that it is common among criminals, and I am aware of it being common among truants as I've worked with children who have been dismissed from school for truancy.

Typically they were not able to keep up with other children when it came to reading and writing, and were not offered alternative ways to express themselves. Something as simple as scribbling might well offer one contribution to the problem.

Checkout: Scribbling

Stan

Drawing Age

Did you know that most of us reach our 'Drawing age' at around 10 years old? That is, unless we have a talent for drawing or intend using it in our hobbies or work, we don't improve much after that age.
You might like to look at some drawings in http://www.tiddles.co.uk/ a site for 'Badly drawn cats'.
Cats seem to be the most drawn animal, and the one most featured in comics, animation, and children's stories.

This is my effort. I can draw a bit better than this, but while showing children how to make faces using letters and numbers, I discovered that I could draw Henry's Cat (www.henryscat.com) using the letters from the word Miow. It then became my starting point for lessons.

Psychologists are very interested in children's drawings; teachers rarely are, but they could learn a lot if they had the training to do so.
One site that offers this is http://ericae.net/eac/eac0103.htm which outlines the
'Goodenough Harris Draw A Man' test.

There are a number of sites with such tests.
Another good one is http://www.architecture-mind.com/childrens%20drawings%20kellog.html
which shows children's pictures of houses.

There has been much concern about children's literacy. My generation (born 1930) had only reading as a hobby. Not even radio as the ones we had operated on accumulators which lasted a few hours at most, so it is not surprising my generation could read and write reasonably well.

But today children are brought up on visual images. They may not read much but they can operate machines that have icons instead of text, and this is fast becoming the preferred form of communicating, as we increasing communicate via machines rather than face-to-face.

I once suggested that perhaps written language is a passing phase, and one day we'll go back to communicating directly in pictures. Whether they are drawn by hand or machine is another matter.

More info: Children's Drawings


Stan

Doodling

All animators are doodlers. Typically they start at school and draw pictures in their notebooks when they should be listening to their teachers. People bored at meetings doodle, and graffiti is a form of doodling. It is one of our natural instincts that has never really been utilised for education.

There is a clear cut distinction between doodling and drawing, with doodling it is organic; a shape grows without real purpose. Quite often it is a letter or shape that exists, and it vaguely reminds you of something so you add a bit here and there, and then it takes on a form of its own.

I once wrote a book called 'How Do You Doodle' based on using letters, numbers, and simple shapes as starting points for children to create pictures. The numbers 0 - 9 can all be easily used as noses (www.makemovies.co.uk) As writing developed from pictures, it does not take much imagination to reverse the trend.

An interesting site is at http://www.zefrank.com/gallery/dtoy_gal/index.html which has some animated shapes you can doodle with. Although these are limited, they make a good introduction to animation for children.

Another fun site is at http://www.morphases.com/editor/ This doesn't require any drawing skill, but allows you to change the facial features around in many ways.
Although it calls itself Morphases, it isn't actually morphing in the way animation changes a picture from one shape to another. An introduction to the principles of animation can be found on http://cartoonster.com/ It is one of many sites that show basic techniques.

There are very many 'Morphing' programs used for Special Effects (SFX), but the idea was first popularised in Felix the Cat going back to the earliest days of animation. And of course the Aardman Animation creation 'Morph', the little clayman who could change himself into anything, and initiated the highly successful 'Creature Comforts' and all that followed.

Other Doodling sites: Doodle


Stan

Draw a Pig

I came across this site http://drawapig.desktopcreatures.com/ while looking for psychological drawing tests.

Teaching children to draw gives a good insight into how they think and see the world. I was surprised to find that children in London still draw houses with smoke coming out of the chimneys even though most have never seen this happen. But then, most houses still have chimney pots even though they are not used. Children draw what they think as against what they see.

Pigs are difficult animals to animate. They don't have hand-like trotters; vary little in features, and typically described as fat-ugly-greedy-dirty. In fact a good cliche for all we dislike, and this may be because in some ways they can appear quite human; more so than a cat or dog.

Thier place in animation is to represent the villian as in 'Animal Farm'. Of course, we all love Miss Piggy in the Muppets, but that because she associates with other loveable characters.
Foxes and Wolves are also villians while dogs are heroes. Cats seem to take on any role, as do monkeys, while horses are always good.
The psychological links between people and animals has always been exploited, and never more so than in animation. Drawing animals gives some useful insight into how we see the world.

Some more drawing test sites: Psychological Drawing Tests



Stan

stan@MakeMovies.co.uk