REACHING CATHARSIS Within HYBRID ANIMATION

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REACHING CATHARSIS within HYBRID ANIMATION

EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TRADITIONAL ANIMATION

Samantha Schoonen Master of Animation, 2015 Avans / AKV / St. Joost Breda

August 17th, 2015

REACHING CATHARSIS within HYBRID ANIMATION

EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TRADITIONAL ANIMATION

Student: Samantha Schoonen Studentnr: 2030558 Graduation Program: Master of Animation Graduation Period: September 1st, 2014 up to August 30th, 2015

Tutors:

Mrs. Sarah Lughthart Mr. Leon van Rooij

Release Date: August 17th, 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Summary …………………………………………………………………………………………. 3 1) Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………….…. 4 2) Context ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 5 2.1 Theoretical Framework ……………………………………………… 5 2.2 Objective ……………………………………………………………………. 8 2.3 Research Question ……………………………………………………… 8 3) Methodology …………………………………………………………………………………… 10 4) Results …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 11 4.1 Emotional Storytelling ……………………………………………….. 11 4.1.1 Importance of emotion in stories ………………………. 11 4.1.2 Emotional response ………………………………………….. 13 4.1.3 Story elements …………………………………………………. 15 4.1.4 Conclusion ………………………………………………………… 17 4.2 Visual Storytelling ……………………………………………………… 19 4.2.1 Aesthetics & consistency …………………………………… 19 4.2.2 Composition ……………………………………………………… 19 4.2.3 Camera use ………………………………………………………. 22 4.2.4 Film Editing / Montage …………………………………………..…. 24 4.2.5 Conclusion ……………………………………………………….. 26 4.3 Hybrid animation ……………………………………………………… 27 4.3.1 History of hybrid animation ……………………………… 27 4.3.2 Basic principles of animation …………………………… 28 4.3.3 Differences between animation techniques …….. 29 4.3.4 Animating believable ………………………………………. 30 4.3.5 Visual style ………………………………………………………. 32 4.3.6 Conclusion ………………………………………………………. 34 5) Design & realization ………………………………………………………………………… 35 5.1 Emotional Storytelling applied …………………………………. 35 5.2 Visualization …………………………………………………………….. 36 6) Conclusion & discussion ………………………………………………………………….. 39 References ………………………………………………………………………………………. 41 Appendix ………………………………………………………………………………………… 48 A. Planning B. Animated movie analysis C. Directors statement D. Written Storyboard

SUMMARY

Nowadays, there are discussions that games lack deep-rooted emotional bonding and that traditional animation is being abandoned. Inspired by this fact, a preliminary investigation has been conducted to find out more about emotional animated movies and to figure out the current status of traditional animation. These early findings resulted in to the following final research project.

This research report addresses how catharsis can be reached within CGI animated shorts and games using emotional and visual storytelling and how this can be supported and improved by using traditional hand-drawn animation fundamentals and styles. This research report focuses mainly on feature animated films from well- known animation studios.

For this thesis both primary and secondary research methods have been used. Primary research has been done by performing small analysis on emotional feature animated movies. Secondary research was conducted using various books, articles and reviews which were found online.

One of the topics addressed in this research report is emotional storytelling. Research has been conducted on the importance of emotions in stories as well as on how emotions are triggered by stories. Human emotions are triggered by emphasizing with the characters emotions which drive the characters actions. Furthermore, story elements such as character goals, conflicts, the use of non-human characters and elements that cause deep-rooted emotions were studied. It became clear that certain elements, such as suspense and tension play an important role in accessing those deeper emotions.

Secondly, it was examined how emotions could be visualized in movies. Cinematography was studied to see how composition, color and lighting could add to the emotional burden of a story. Moreover, camera positions, angles and movement were researched to gain insight in how to show a story to the public. Furthermore, research touched upon how editing could contribute to showing emotions on screen and supporting the story. All those visual ways of telling the story add to the overall experience as well as of making the story clear to the audience.

Last, the topic of hybrid animation was studied to gain more insight on traditional animation as well was CGI animation, their advantages, differences and how to convey emotion using animation. On top of that, the visual style of the media was assessed to see whether style was dependent on the emotional response.

The short movie “Hunted” was designed and improved based on the results of this research. The visual storytelling was adjusted and guidelines for animating the movie were made.

If done correctly, most story elements combined with the use of visual storytelling, add to the emotional bond the audience develops with characters in a story. Traditional hand-drawn animation improves and supports the emotional response, because of its expressive style and possibility to exaggerate in the animation itself.

1) INTRODUCTION

I have always had a fascination for stories, art and games. When I was young, I watched animated movies over and over again and came to appreciate them more as time passed by. When I got older I started noticing their complex narrative structure, their lovely drawings and their design of certain characters. These stories got to me on an emotional level. After obtaining my bachelor in ICT, Media & Game Design, I decided to continue studying. I wanted to learn more about art and storytelling. The Master of Animation was the perfect choice for me to explore these fields.

I’ve already done research about storytelling in games and movies in my former study. There were many discussions whether or not stories are important to games and whether or not there is a lack of emotional bonding within games. Research revealed that storylines and characters are both important factors that play a decisive part in the consideration of purchasing a game.

Emotional storytelling can be used to grab the audience attention and intrigue them. The world changes constantly. Environmental issues are being brought up every once in a while, it gets people talking for a bit, but after a while it dumbs down and gets forgotten. It seems like nobody really recognizes the problems, nor the consequences. Being both an animal and a nature lover, it is important to me to increase awareness. Figuring out how movies reach this emotional bonding, can also aid the game industry. Emotional storytelling can be a useful tool for making better serious and entertainment games in the future. Yet to develop a game with proper character bonding is quite a challenge.

Animated movies are quite different from live action movies. The animation medium is used for different kinds of storytelling, for example, a world where animals can play a different part. Yet the medium is changing. There is a lot of discussion about the disappearance of traditional hand-drawn animation (e.g. Cinderella). Nowadays, CGI animation (Computer-generated Imagery, e.g. Kung Fu Panda) has taken over most of the animation industry. I have carried out prior research about this phenomenon which is further discussed in the Context Chapter. I concluded that most animation studios abandoned traditional hand-drawn animation for several reasons. CGI animation is more popular nowadays, because the new generations grew up with CGI animation. Furthermore, CGI animation is easier to produce and cheaper in is production. Additionally, traditional animated movies make less profit than CGI animation. This is blamed on the traditional medium, even though it has more to do with a poor choice of release dates, titles and bad storytelling. Traditional animation still has its value, like its own fundamentals and style characteristics. It should get a chance to coexist alongside CGI animation. New developments within CGI animation are still in progress in this area. It’s interesting to obtain more insight in CGI and traditional animation and to explore the boundaries of hybrid animation.

Based on my personal interests, I had decided to focus my research on emotional storytelling and on how to incorporate this into hybrid animated movies. Since Animation is so broadly defined, I have narrowed it down to feature films and shorts made by the bigger famous animation studios. These always got my attention on an emotional level.

In this research, the fundamentals of emotional storytelling and how this is applied in animated movies will be viewed upon. After that, visual storytelling, which implies composition and cinematography, will be taken into consideration. Finally, the usage of hybrid animation and how to animate believable in order to get emotions across will be discussed.

2) CONTEXT

2.1 THEORETIC FRAMEWORK

EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING

Some animated features are able to evoke wonder and get people involved within their movies. This is done by making them care about the characters. This triggers emotional bonding in which “Catharsis”, the purification and purgation of emotions through art (Merriam-Webster, 1995), plays a crucial role. Some big animation studios are able to evoke this reaction using emotional storytelling. Emotional storytelling is about getting the audience involved with the characters, their needs and experiencing their emotions within the story (O’Bannon, 2010).

For instance, Disney makes the characters behave naturally. The way in which the body and face move, gives the characters their own personality. The spectators get acquainted with the characters personalities and the relationships between the characters. This is due to the characters actions and reactions on events happening in their world.

For example, in the Lion King (1994), emotional storytelling demonstrates the bond between father and son. Due to this bonding they make the audience care and feel the characters emotions when a bond is respectively made, strengthened or broken. It is so well applied that almost everyone would burst into tears during the scene where Mufasa, the lion king, dies (figure 1). People project emotions on animals, because of our familiarity with them and the parallels between us. It is interesting to see that emotions can be triggered by projecting human emotions onto the animal kingdom. This is called anthropomorphism and is often used in fables. Here animals are used as Figure 1: Disney’s “The Lion King”, Scene: Mufasa dies. allegorical tools to convey messages about human nature (Cummings, 2013).

To further illustrate this, Disney and DreamWorks also use emotional storytelling for outcast figures. These are characters that don’t fit in. They let the characters deal with problems and relations that can lead to harsh decisions. Emotional storytelling is applied in a way to convince the public that the characters choice is the only possibility. For instance, Mulan (from Disney’s “Mulan”) didn’t have any other choice then to join the army because of women suppression. Moreover, her father was unable to fight battles and Mulan had dishonored her family twice earlier that day. Similarly, Hiccup (from DreamWorks’ “How to Train your Dragon”) decided to stay true to himself, despite of others. In the end, the protagonist reaches his goal and gains the acceptance of others.

Another movie that uses emotional storytelling very well is the Lorax (2012). The core message is about the environmental issue of deforestation, which is well addressed on an emotional level. In the story, there is a point where catharsis is reached. Due to the human greed for money, the last tree in paradise is cut down. This is a reflection of the real world problems. Earlier, we get to know the guardian of the forest and forest animals, which makes us care and creates emotional bonding.

Catharsis within Games

Video games deliver a whole different kind of experience than movies. The stories are interactive and are different in their narrative length.

Hill (2013) says that games lack real game tragedy. This is due to separate departments who work either on game design or narrative. According to him, they should work together, because storytelling structures and game pacing go hand in hand to reach several moments of catharsis that vary in intensity. According to Muncatchy (2011) players are expected to relate to the protagonist on a human level. He also stated that emotional experiences rely on a sense of wonder that was not always reached. He also suggested that developers need to be determined in what they want to tell and make the players care about the protagonist.

Within video games, emotional bonding is sometimes reached. Some emotions are triggered easily, but making the players feel deep lasting sadness or joy is difficult for game developers (Games Radar, 2012). Yet there are some games that have reached this emotional level, for example, in the game “Brothers: A tale of two sons”.

ART & ANIMATION STYLE

Emotional storytelling can be improved by visual storytelling. For they say; “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Some artists use this in their short movies.

One of those artists is Ben Hibon, a director and novel artist, known from the scene “Tale of the three brothers” within the Harry Potter Movies (figure 2). The way Hibon combines storytelling with artwork to complete his short stories is amazing. On top of that, he uses fluid scene transitions that add to the story and make it look incredible at the same time. According to him it is the story impression which counts. His background in graphic novel drawing shows in his astonishing scene layouts. He uses big contrasts with few colors to make the scenes readable and keeps the animations simple. Figure 2: Scene: Tale of the three brothers. Another artist, Kevin Dart, makes concept art and character designs for movies. He creates simple animations to tell his stories. He combines his flat style with a lot of pastel colors that makes it look like cell shaded animations (figure 3). He is able to catch the essence of the atmosphere using simple shapes, lines and textures. He adds this in his concept art and fake trailers. In my opinion, it looks astonishingly beautiful.

The final example is Cartoon Saloon, an Irish animation studio that uses simple flat and minimalistic appealing animation Figure 3: The City of Townsville – Powerpuff Girls within their feature films, i.e. the movie “The Secret of Kells” (2009) (figure 4). They combine historic art styles and culture with novel techniques. They use visual storytelling in a completely different way.

On the area of character design, the movies and art style of Tim Burton appeals to me. His animated characters often have long limbs, are slender and have an unearthly look and feel around them. Yet, they move and act like human beings. His movies often have a darker tone of voice which makes colors Figure 4: Movie still: “Secret of Kells”. stand out, similar to those of Ben Hibon.

TRADITIONAL ANIMATION & CGI TECHNOLOGY

Before the rise of computer technology, animated movies were much more of a craft. Animation started out with traditional 2D hand-drawn animation, the very core of animation. Companies like Disney developed new techniques and made traditional animation into a craft. When computer technology evolved, animation studios

6 embraced these new techniques. It made it easier to animate hand-drawn feature films, but they did stick with the 2D hand-drawn animation style (O’Hailey, 2010). Nowadays however, the big animation studio’s only release CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) animation which lead to much discussion whether 2D animation is dying or already dead (Touchmann & Francis, 2004).

All big animation studios abandoned 2D hand-drawn traditional animation. As an illustration, DreamWorks (Prince of Egypt, Spirit) decided to stop creating traditional features in 2006. This was when the movie “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas” was released with high expectations, but wasn’t as well received as they expected (Mainart, 2009). Their last animated movie by 20th Century Fox was Titan A.E. in 2000, which was a hand-drawn animated movie that also failed. After that, they owned Blue Sky Studios that created Ice Age in 2002, a CGI animated movie which was well received. Furthermore, Disney, the very heart of 2D hand-drawn animation announced in 2014 that they would no longer produce another hand-drawn movie and closed down their 2D animation department. Disney closed their 2D animation department to save money (Acuna, 2013). Additionally, CGI animation is faster and created more efficiently (Sims, 2014). Even though John Lasseter, the head of Pixar, once said that he “never understood why Disney and other studios thought that audiences weren’t interested in watching hand-drawn animation anymore.” (Lee, 2010). Computers are still just a tool. He also said: “Of all studios that should be doing 2-D animation, it should be Disney” (Corliss, 2006), and yet he didn’t stand by his word.

Moreover, the rise of new techniques has brought the 2D animation era to an end. Computer technology developed further. At first, it was a tool in service of hand-drawn animation which led to hybrid animation, using 3D techniques for new camera angles. After that, the rise of CGI animation began with movies like Toy Story and Shrek, which made the audience hungry for more. Also, the production of a CGI film is created faster and more efficiently than 2D animations (Sims, 2014). As CGI animation improved, so did cinematic techniques. This brought us to the 3D cinema era. Of course, CGI animation adapted easily to the 3D way of watching movies. However, 2D animation did not stand a chance to be watched in 3D and lacked that additional experience.

Furthermore, the new younger generation of children grew up with CGI animated movies. They are more familiar with 3D then they are with traditional animation and therefore prefer CGI animated movies. The fact that 2D animation raised less money than CGI animation made companies assume there was no longer a demand for traditional animation. However, Rodriguez (2013) studied the investments of 2D and CGI animations and contradicts the earlier assumptions. Companies blame the medium for the bad box-office, but they should look into other factors that made these movies fail, like release dates, bad marketing or just bad storytelling.

However, 2D animation isn’t dead yet. Big animation studios are getting themselves involved in this discussion. For instance, Laika (“The Boxtrolls”) announced on Comic Con 2014 that they actually want to create a 2D hand-drawn feature animation film in the future (Sciretta, 2014). In addition, DreamWorks is planning the new movie “Me and my Shadow”, which will have a 2D hand-drawn animated shadow within the CGI animated world (Connelly, 2012). Also, Cartoon Saloon, an Irish animation company, is just releasing their new 2D animated hand-drawn movie “Song of the Sea”.

Secondly, new initiatives are shown by former 2D animators. For example, former Disney animators began a crowd funding campaign in order to release a 2D hand- drawn animated short, known as “Hullabaloo” (figure 5), a steampunk movie (Hooton, 2014). This is a reaction to the Company’s decision to abandon 2D animation (Child, 2013). They want to show investors there is still a great affection for hand-drawn cartoons and a public for 2D feature length films. According to them, 2D animation is capable of conveying a truly incredible level of emotion Figure 5: Movie still: “Hullabaloo” (2014). and feeling (Indiegogo, 2014), one of the reasons to save 2D animation.

And finally, nowadays 2D and CGI techniques are being mixed into hybrids. There are companies that use CGI animation in order to make animating characters easier, but they do give it a 2D look and feel. One example is the 3D Pixar short “Night and Day” (Schaefer, 2013), and Disney’s “Get a Horse” (Breznican, 2014), where they merged an old Mickey Mouse movie within the CGI world. At the same time, Disney is developing new hybrid techniques such as cell shading, which is seen in the short “Paperman” (figure 6). These techniques might be used in Figure 6: Movie still: “Paperman” (2012). future movies (Connelly, 2013). The short “Feast” (figure 7), also by Disney, has this cell shading look achieved by using shading and lighting techniques where only surface colors are used. Developments within traditional animation techniques, like squash and stretch, are still missing in CGI.

In short, 2D hand-drawn animation still has a future. Big studios might have abandoned it, new techniques may Figure 7: Movie still: “Feast” (2014). have affected the rise of CGI animation and even though the new young generation might prefer CGI animation over traditional animation, 2D hand-drawn animation will eventually find its way back. Because some big animation studio’s do care and use the techniques, new initiatives by 2D animators are rising and last but not least, companies are exploring new techniques to preserve the 2D animated style. In the end, I am sure 2D will find its way back to the public and the underappreciation of 2D hand-drawn animation will come to an end. Maybe 2D animation will not return in a familiar form, but at least it will be preserved in some way. After all, a good story makes the movie, not the medium.

2.2 OBJECTIVE

What I prefer to achieve in the professional field of animation is to become an animator and storytelling artist that can create emotional bonding in both movies and games. Knowing games often lack emotional bonding, emotional storytelling will help to improve the gamer’s experience. I wonder what kind of storytelling methods can be used to reach the level of catharsis within games. All in all, emotional storytelling is well applied in animated features. Those kinds of movies move my inner core. I want to be able to provoke this feeling with my own stories.

Additionally, traditional hand-drawn animation is said to be capable of delivering a truly incredible level of emotion and feeling, but how does this happen? It is said that some forms of traditional animation, like the squash and stretch, cannot be well applied in CGI animation. I wonder how this can be achieved. Since new techniques within the industry are still being developed, considering CGI animation and cell shading methods, I would like to explore these methods to give traditional hand-drawn fundamentals a new life within CGI animation.

Because I value freedom, the area I want to work in is entertainment rather than advertising. This gives me more creative freedom. Because I want to stay true to myself, I would rather like to work in a small team of people that know each other well. Similar to Kevin Dart, who, even though he worked at big companies like DreamWorks and Disney, would rather be surrounded by a ‘family’. Fun is an important motivational factor in my work.

2.3 RESEARCH QUESTION

MAIN ISSUE

How can catharsis be reached within CGI animated shorts and games using emotional and visual storytelling and how can this be supported and improved using traditional hand-drawn animation fundamentals.

To answer this question, the following sub questions have to be asked in order to obtain the required information.

SUB QUESTIONS

- What does emotional storytelling imply? - What are the fundamental story elements of emotional storytelling? - What kinds of character traits make a story emotionally involving? - What is visual storytelling and how can this add to emotional storytelling? - Which techniques are used in hybrid animation today? - What are the fundamentals of traditional hand-drawn animation? - What are the differences between hand-drawn animation and CGI animation?

3) METHODOLOGY

The research questions will be answered through secondary research. This involves articles and books related to the questions and will be searched for on the web. Besides using general online search engines, Google Scholar and biep.nu as potential sources of information will also be used. Furthermore, Digital Tutors as a source of tutorials as well as Ted Talks, that might have a different view on the subjects, will be studied. Also, for emotional storytelling, primary research will be used by analyzing movies and games that have reached catharsis. The reliability of the sources will be examined on year of publication as well as the authors’ source. Finally, when important unanswered questions come up, these will be answered by asking professionals in the field of animation and games. For this study, I will also explore the different techniques for making a CGI animated movie look 2 dimensional. Sketches and other artwork will be made for visual storytelling and art style exploration. Storylines, artwork and the final movie will be made based on the research results.

4) RESULTS 

4.1 EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING

Stories are quite important in our society. In the old days, humans had shamans or tribe leaders. They were the ones in charge, telling people what to do to survive. Animators and storywriters are the shamans of modern day society. We are all born the same and will eventually die, but every creature acts to survive with his own survival strategies (Hooks, 2003). Those survival strategies are learned from stories. Humans are storytelling creatures, which is why humans like to be entertained by stories. It is our survival mechanism.

Stories are interwoven in our daily lives (Semerdjiev), but also in entertainment like books, movies and video games. This because catharsis, the purification and purgation of emotions through art (Merriam-Webster, 1995), is the goal of communication itself. All the things we do and experience become a story we can tell.

Stories vary from passive to interactive forms used in games. Most storylines are linear, but can also be non- linear. Yet the key element to all these kinds of entertainment will always be a good story. Movies that are watched over and over again are classics.

From the big animation studios, Walt Disney was engaged with telling tales that had an extremely provocative emotional burden (Wells, 2002). According to Disney, a high quality animation would be able to achieve these goals. It was about how and why the story is told to determine the motivation of the characters within the story. Disney also stated that he made his movies for himself and for the public. He did not care about critics. In his eyes, an honest person is somebody who is not afraid to show his emotions or to get back to his childhood while watching a movie.

But what makes a story great and appealing to the public? What makes a story work? Emotional storytelling is about getting the audience involved with the characters, their needs and experiencing their emotions within the story (O’Bannon, 2010). In these stories, it is not just about how well a story is told and memorized (Chang et al., 2014) there is also the overall emotional experience during the storyline that matters. It is about the intended emotional response that is created and putting the heart over the mind (Iglesias, 2005).

A human being has 4 emotional needs (Iglesias, 2005): 1) Need for new information 2) A bond with the main character that we can connect with and relate to. 3) A conflict resolution that is completed and closed and in which all questions are answered. 4) Entertainment and emotional impact.

To write with emotional impact, you need a meaningful theme that entertains, teaches, explores and reveals the human condition (Iglesias, 2005). The theme makes it clear what’s at stake and must feel like a matter of life and death (Caldwell, 2015). The more meaningful the theme, the deeper the emotions will be (Iglesias, 2005).

Movie genres are already associated with emotions (Visch et al., 2010). Genre prepares the viewers’ attention, creates expectations towards the narrative and sets an emotional mood. Within the fictional genres, comedy is associated with joy, drama with sadness and action with being impressive.

4.1.1 IMPORTANCE OF EMOTION IN STORIES

According to Momfort (2014) it is important to have emotional connections with the story where you can relate to. A unique appealing script needs a unique setting, fresh characters and something that moves us (Iglesias, 2005). You have to make your audience care (Momfort, 2014). This can be achieved by exposing a characters vulnerable side as early in the story as possible. Doing this will allow the audiences’ natural feelings, like compassion and sympathy, to be felt for the main protagonist. This distinct and solid emotional connection must be created to make your audience care later on.

According to Jessup (2012), the use of emotion within stories is the most important ingredient. Feelings are the energy of a story. People will always feel emotions for as long as they live. Jessup put the basic principles in a row for storytellers in person. But these principles can also be used in other settings.

5) Adding emotions into a story without making it feel forced is an act of balancing. When balancing, you should feel the emotions yourself. Otherwise, the audience isn’t going to feel them either. 6) Less is more. Put the emotions on a rating scale and don’t go over the red bar. Using a pause between emotional feelings is an underestimated emotional device and can be useful. It can strengthen the tension on particular moments and give weight to a scene. Pauses are also a good way of giving your audience time to process the emotions that occur and to enjoy the view. 7) Use the body as well as the voice. The body language has to match the emotional feelings of the character you are talking about. 8) The narrative action, dialogue and description can also add to emotions. Words are a powerful tool. Emotions get across better by describing what the audience is going to see. Mumfort (2014) states that heavy dialogue should not be used to explain fictional worlds. It’s better to do the “show, don’t tell” method.

EMPATHY & EMOTIONS

Characters in animated movies need to have emotions In order to empathize with them (Hooks, 2003). Humans only empathize with emotions instead of their actions. Actions are a response to emotions. We will discuss this matter more in-depth in the next Paragraph. Because actions are a response to emotions, we try to find the emotions underneath the actions of the character. This is called empathy.

According to Ed Hooks, there are 7 basic emotions: Happiness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt and sadness. This mostly matches with Plutchik’s wheel of emotion from 1980 (figure 8), where he describes 8 basic and 8 advanced emotions derived from 2 basic emotions.

Figure 8: Plutchik’s wheel of emotion from 1980

Those emotions can be seen as multiple shelves in a bookcase (Hooks, 2003). These bookcases are in somebodies head. The shelves start out empty when we are born and will fill up with books due to our experiences. We read the world with an outer periscope and analyze and categorize the actions on our emotional shelves. We observe and predict human nature. Film offers a space where the viewer can see their own inner being on screen (Chang, 2014). When an audience watches a movie, they should be able to see a reflection of themselves in these characters.

Feelings are mental associations and reactions to these emotions, being influenced by believes, memories and personal experiences (Hampton 2015). Our basic emotions are a part of our instinct and are essential for us to survive (Voris, 2009). Emotions take care of alerting us of immediate danger and prepare us to take action, whereas feelings warn us for anticipated dangers and ensure our long-term survival. Feelings are Low-key and sustainable whereas emotions can be quite intense and more temporarily.

4.1.2 EMOTIONAL RESPONSE

It is useful to know how the process of emotions in humans works in order to get an emotional response. An emotional reaction is a personal experience that varies per person and culture and the emotional state of the audience in time (Blom & Beckhaus, 2005). An emotion is often a response to something we hear, smell, see, taste or feel in our direct environment (Power, 2009). This can trigger a call for motivation, attention or action. This rapid reaction gets accompanied by a comprehensive judgment on this fast response and monitors, labels and gives feedback on the emotional process.

An emotion is an automatic response on events around you (Hooks, 2003). An emotional response is triggered by the thought process. This process can be animated, which is discussed in the chapter; Hybrid Animation. The thought process leads to conclusions. Here a short story to further illustrate this. Every person has his own norms and values and will respond differently on the same stimuli. For instance when you hear something approaching from behind, your thoughts will identify what kind of creature is nearing, at which speed and with what intentions he, she or it might be approaching. All this is based on your personal values. Your values will trigger an emotional response, like fear. When you live in a dangerous city, you might walk faster, start to run, look for a policeman in the neighborhood or for other people. However, in a calm village, you may assume it is a friend and simply turn around to see who it is, talk to him, ask for a name or just stop walking.

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE CRY?

Biological

Human tears can be a hormonal response. In both men and woman, the hormone prolactin is found in tears, which is also responsible for breast milk production (Luscombe, 2010; Holler, 2010). It could be that our nurturing instinct plays a part when we burst into tears.

According to Luscombe (2010), adults cry more easily when watching animated kids movies. She says Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3, has some theories about why people cry while watching animated movies. He states that animated movies can be more affecting than movies that rely on real people. This is because live- action movies are seen as someone else’s story. In animated movies, the audience cannot use that excuse, lowering their guards. People identify themselves with the characters more readily, because the characters are not alive. Plastic toys, for instance, don’t talk back, lecture you or put you under pressure. They are seen more like friends.

In Toy Story 3 (2010), the scene of the conveyor belt is based on what Unkrich would do when he would be in a crashing airplane with his family (Luscombe, 2010). The toys hold each other’s hands, and act like family members. Family Members respect each Figure 9: Still from ”Toy Story 3” (2010) other and always want to do what is right by them. In the scene

13 where Andy has to say goodbye to his toys, before he goes to college, the toys are presented as parents: They make kids happy; until those kids are ready to leave them behind. According to Holler (2010), every grown-up that has learned to love is emotionally filled. Another possible reason might be that children only watch animated movies for fun. They don’t see all the emotional and deep mature matter that we do notice as adults (Bowen, 2012).

Adults might also cry more easily because they have more knowledge and experience than children about some subjects (Cox et al., 2005). For example, children cannot understand the fact that death is permanent and inevitable before they are around the age of ten.

Death / Heroes & Villains

According to Hemenover & Schimmack (2007), the audience of a movie experiences mixtures of emotions at the same time. For instance, the audience can feel joy for the protagonist if the protagonist murders a villain, but at the same time feel pain for the villain while being fascinated by the film.

Research has been done to better understand the emotional response from children on death scenes in Disney movies (Cox et al., 2005). Positive and negative emotions from children were recorded while they were watching Disney scenes where protagonists and antagonists died. Negative emotions, like crying, were shown when the protagonist of the movie died. Positive emotional reactions were shown when the antagonist died. However, this was only the case in three “bad guy” death scenes. Most of the times there was no emotional response at all in this case.

In most Disney films, the antagonist murders the protagonist to further illustrate the evil nature of the antagonist. In some cases other characters grieve this death by showing sadness. The antagonist mostly died as a result of an accident. This happens because the protagonist is too good to kill the villain. Most times this death is justified because the antagonist did some bad things to the protagonist or to others. Sometimes death was reversible, but only for protagonist characters. Antagonists did not get a second chance in life.

Other Themes

In order to further investigate tear triggering events, animated movie events which made people cry have been analyzed. This analysis can be found in the appendix. It became clear that, besides death, other events like sacrifice, loneliness, separation and family bonds could likewise trigger people to cry.

IMMERSION

“Presence” is a conscious feeling of the viewer being present in the world. This is caused by spatial awareness and perception which is part of immersion (Visch et al., 2010). High immersion intensifies the experience of events and therefor the emotional response.

Visch et al. (2010) has done research on the emotional and cognitive effects of immersion in film viewing. Fictional World emotions and Artefact emotions were measured. (1) Fictional emotions are based on the illusion of being present within the fictional world. The viewer witnesses the fictional events in a world that seems real and therefor can help provoke strong emotions like sympathy, joy and fear. (2) Artefact emotions are based on the viewer’s awareness. This means that the movie can evoke emotions about itself, like emotions of fascination, admiration or enjoyment for the film.

MUSIC

Music is an important aspect of movies. Music can be a source of emotion in a film (Cohen, 2001). It contributes to the narrative and gives emotional meaning to events. This can be done in different ways. Music can be used to set the mood of a scene, keep people aroused, underscore attention on certain events or gain global attention. Music can also control the emotional response through background music. It can draw attention to certain objects or describe their meaning. You need this attention for concern. These stimuli can be triggered by music. Additionally, every emotion has a “situational meaning structure”, essential characteristics for getting a

14 particular emotional response. Moreover, music contributes to a sense of reality of the story. Furthermore, music can create an environment that sets expectations that can be violated or realized.

4.1.3 STORY ELEMENTS

Every story is built up using story elements, but which elements are important for emotional storytelling? First, we need to know which story elements are needed. We will first talk about the essentials, like character goals, objectives and obstacles. Secondly, we need to know that there are 3 types of storytelling emotions (Iglesias, 2005): - Voyeuristic: being curious to new information, also one of the emotional needs we discussed earlier. - Vicarious: Feeling the emotions of the character. - Visceral: This is what the audience feels because of the story. These feelings come from strong emotions, not from logic or reason. They experience the deep-rooted emotions that are seen as entertaining. Elements that cause these emotions are suspense, tension, anticipation, interest, curiosity and surprise. Within the Vicarious way of storytelling, we will talk about relations between the characters and the role anthropomorphism can play. In the final part we will discuss the elements of suspense and tension that are involved in the Visceral type.

OBJECTIVES & OBSTACLES

A character always has a goal to reach that is also known as the objective. Obstacles along their path will block the way to their objectives. Characters will have to take certain actions to overcome these obstacles and pursue their objective.

An objective has to be provable. An objective cannot be an emotion, because an emotion can’t be proven. You can’t do something that will lead to happiness. When animating a character, you should be able to freeze frame this character at any moment and ask him what he or she is doing or where they are going. This is their objective.

An obstacle can be seen as a conflict. Characters can be in conflict with themselves, situations or other characters. A scene can therefore be seen as a negotiation. When animating a situation where there is conflict with oneself, you can choose to animate the thought process more than the dialogue. This, for example, has been done with the character Gollum and his inner struggles. An emotion can also be an obstacle that leads to inner conflict.

There are 7 basic psychological motivations that trigger people to take action (Caldwell, 2015): (1) survival; (2) safety / security; (3) love / belonging; (4) esteem / self-respect; (5) need to know / understand; (6) spiritual / aesthetic; (7) self-realization / freedom. Characters perform an action until they realize they won’t be able to resolve the obstacle / conflict. Then they perform another action to get rid of the obstacle. They change their tactic. When an objective becomes a lost cause, another objective will take its place. Objectives of characters can change quickly due to their priorities and ever changing circumstances.

VICARIOUS: Anthropomorphism & relationships

Disney and Pixar mostly use other characters alongside humans within their movies (exception: Atlantis) (Munkittrick, 2014). Most of these movies require magic to get the non-human characters to communicate in the story. There are two kinds of animals that are used in these movies. (1) Anthropomorphous animals. They walk up straight and carry out human actions. Human emotions are projected on them and can trigger emotions from the audience (Cummings, 2013). Most times this is used in fables. Here animals are used as allegorical tools to convey messages about human nature. (2) Animals with a supernatural consciousness that can interact with humans.

Anthropomorphism suits the context of animation well (Atkinson, 2008). This is because animals evoke empathy in human beings. If you combine empathy with a simplified narrative, it can provoke sincere feelings from the audience. Sometimes when humans feel lonely they decide to get a pet. Anthropomorphism can be used to draw attention to these pet characteristics. This makes it easier for the audience to identify themselves with these pets.

When showing animals on screen they don’t have to be talking to be considered human-like (Atkinson, 2008). Nevertheless, they do need to think and behave like human beings. These distinct character personalities need human characteristics in order for the audience to relate to the characters. Without these characteristics the actions of the characters may feel unreal. Furthermore, without this personality, a story will not be understood by its audience.

There is only one movie in the history of Disney classics that does not have any reference to the existence of people, which is The Lion King (1994) (Munkittrick, 2014). In this movie, no evidence of human matter, or characteristics like walking up straight, appears. Note: Except for some short words like the suggestion of Zazu making a “throw rug” out of Scar and in the song of Hakuna Matata, where they use a spotlight and a liana as a swing set and make acrobatic moves.

It is critical to understand the relationship between human and non-human characters in Disney Pixar movies (Munkittrick, 2014). Pixar has certain aspects in their stories that differ from other animated movies:

1) In first place, Pixar doesn’t use any magic to let the animals interact with their surroundings. 2) Secondly, every setting where the movie takes place is in the human world, even if not shown directly, like in A Bugs Life (1998) (figure 10). 3) They use one main character that isn’t human but equally intelligent. 4) There is usually one human and one non-human character present that shows human intelligence.

Figure 10: Movie still from “A Bugs Life” (1998) containing references to human existence

In the movies of Pixar, the human can provide 2 different roles for the non-human character (Munkittrick, 2014): (1) The human as Villain, where they are part of the environment and play the opponent. (2) The human as Partner, where the characters cooperate as heroic team.

When developing Heroes and Villains in your story, know that both are just ordinary characters (Hooks, 2003). A Hero is just a regular person that has to overcome an extraordinary obstacle to get his or her desirable outcome. They risk death to gain their objective. A villain is a person who doesn’t see him or herself as a villain at all. They just have a fatal flaw which is expressed and seen as a good thing through their eyes.

Pixar lets us accept that non-human beings are sentient which is in contrast to reality (Munkittrick, 2014). They do this in most of their movies as if to send a message, the concept of non-human personhood. For if humans are the villain, the non-human characters discover and develop their personhood. The audience will experience that even items and animals have a mind of their own.

If the human is the partner, the non-human character often differs from their fellow species. They are sometimes rejected from their own species. When they are rejected, they frequently team up with a divergent

16 human character that has the same goals. The opposition might condemn and reject their behavior, because “New” things are unknown and therefor feared and dangerous. However, a big reward follows when the human character recognizes the non-human characters personhood. If the non-human characters are treated with respect, the outcome can be tremendous for humanity, like in WALL-E (2008) where humanity returned to earth.

Yet there is a third category, where no non-human main characters appear. In The Incredibles (2004), supernatural humans play a main part. In Brave (2012), they completely broke with the personhood of animals. They do this by changing humans into bears who lose their personhood completely. However, both movies teach us that, even though you’re not an average human being, it is the choices those characters make and the way they behave that makes them human. It is about our moral and emotional bonds. Moreover about brave souls, human or not, who fight for what is right.

VISCERAL: Suspense & tension

A story needs suspense and tension (Wendig, 2011); they are the drive of our narrative need to consume stories. Additionally, the story has to offer the audience something to care about. Scenes that are remembered are scenes with events that are important for our survival (Hooks, 2003). These are the Adrenaline moments in movies. You will need suspense and tension In order to turn a scene into an adrenaline moment.

Suspense is one of the elements that leaves the audience wondering, wanting to know about what will happen next, like Cliffhangers. Tension is actually the element that evokes emotions such as anxiety, fear, stress and worry in both the audience as well as the character (Curtemann, 2013).

You’ll need pacing for giving the audience room to breathe after each conflict when building tension (Wendig, 2011). Every conflict needs building up to raise the fear of danger. You can show a conflict might be about to happen in the future by only letting the audience know about it and after that, leave the character guessing. This creates dramatic irony (Wendig, 2011). Here, suspense is created by letting the audience guess whether or not the characters are aware of the danger at hand.

Another way to build tension is to raise the stakes. When doing this, it shows the audience what is at stake and the consequences if they might fail (Morrell, 2010). You can show the (small) chance of succeeding the mission to remind the character that the event is coming closer (Wendig, 2011). Moreover, what might help is letting the character do something unexpected and hated by the audience.

Furthermore, changes and plot twists naturally introduce tension (Morrell, 2010). It can get the character off balance, reacting badly or desperate, especially when she is confronted with her character flaws and weaknesses. These turning points are due to an event or a revelation happening (Caldwell, 2015) This leads to a change of plans, the point of no return or a major setback.

Next to physical tension, emotional tension is the most troubling and tangible of them all. It’s about fear, betrayals and psychological wounds that create a more tremulous and grand tension in the audience. Combining those two creates maximum evil.

It is important to give the audience a closed conflict resolution and all questions answered in the end, as stated by Iglesias at the start of this chapter. The audience wants answers and comfort, but only give it to them after postponing it for as long as possible (Wendig, 2011).

4.1.4 CONCLUSION

To get people emotionally involved in a story there are a few important things. A story works because of emotional impact that triggers deeper emotions. According to Walt Disney, a high quality animation would be able to achieve an emotional burden. Furthermore, you need an emotional connection with the character to care about and relate to them. This can be achieved by exposing a characters vulnerable side as early in the

17 story as possible. The audience has to feel “present” in the world to get engaged. This intensifies the experience and emotional response.

Humans empathize with the characters emotions underlying their actions. The thought process triggers our emotional response based on our values and personal experiences. These differ per person, culture and the emotional state of the person at that time. Human tears can be a hormonal response on the nurturing instinct. Adults cry easier than children, because they have more knowledge and experience on the subjects. This allows them to see the deeper mature emotional matter. Negative emotions are usually shown when good guys die unjustified, mostly at the hand of a bad guy. When conversed, we can feel a mixture of emotions at the same time: the pain and joy for both characters and fascination for the film in general.

Animated movies lower the guards of the audience because these stories are pure and are less considered to be somebody else’s story. Also, non-human characters are often used in animated movies, like objects and animals. Anthropomorphism suits animated movies and can create empathy in human beings because they can relate to their pets. In most Feature Animated movies there is at least one non-human intelligent character with a human personality. Without these human personalities the audience cannot relate to these animal characters. The human characters are depicted as either their opponents or partners in crime. Inanimate characters, like toys, are also easier to identify with because they won’t lecture you and are seen as friends. Whether human, animal or object, it’s the behavior and the choices of the character that makes him human. Everything is connected to moral and emotional bonds.

For storytelling emotions, elements like interest, curiosity, anticipation, surprise, suspense and tension, can help cause deep-rooted emotions. The last two are the drive of narrative feed besides something to care about. Emotional tension is about fear, betrayal and psychological wounds that creates the most tremulous tension of all. Music can contribute to increasing the tension as well. However, music is also responsible for setting the mood and drawing attention to certain events or objects.

4.2 VISUAL STORYTELLING

Visual Storytelling is about how the story is visualized. It is about perception. This implies using “film grammar”, the tools of mise-en-scène and montage.

The director’s job is knowing why shots are made and what the audience should feel and when (Van Sijll, 2005). New shots are created to show either new information or emotions (Weiss, 2009). It is important to know who the story or scene belongs to and what you want to tell your audience. We saw earlier that all questions need answers to satisfy the audience. This is also applied in shot sequences. A sequence of shots has a basic pattern; you start by showing a question followed by an answer.

There are several visual tools to help the director establish the emotions that the audience should experience. These are the composition, camera angles / movements and editing.

4.2.1 AESTHETICS & CONSISTENCY

All elements that form the world, such as images and sound within a movie are aesthetics (O’Reilly, 2009). In animation, aesthetics are quite different compared to live-action films. Proper aesthetics are important to tell a clear story. By paying attention to those aesthetics you can gain the audience’s trust. Furthermore, the audience can get engaged in the movie and reach catharsis. David O’Reilly also states that even if the visuals look is not realistic at all, movies can still communicate emotions and hold cinematic truth. This he reached with his own film “Please say something” (2009), because of coherence and consistency in the dialogue, design, sound, music and movement. If one of the set rules in the created world is broken, believability will be gone.

4.2.2 COMPOSITION

The choices of shots and therefor composition makes the difference between a movie that just tells a story and one that does this beautifully (Cassidy, 2006). The composition is used to direct the audience’s attention to the key realizations, decisions, objects and even emotional responses (Van Sijll, 2005). It is the art of looking for harmony and balance in a visual, using, for instance, symmetry (Weiss, 2009) or imbalance to give the story contrast (Van Sijll, 2005). Tension is brought into the composition by skewing the balance (Cassidy, 2006). This can be achieved by adding vertical or angled lines, by tilting the camera a few degrees or by using a wide-angle distorted lens. Subconsciously, people will feel that something is wrong, but won’t directly notice this. Balance is mostly established in a two-shot camera position, discussed later in this chapter. While framing a shot, you can use arches, windows, doorways and other natural frames. You can also use different shapes within the frame (Van Sijll, 2005), like circular (romantic, passive, safe, flexible), triangular (aggressive, dynamic) and rectangular (unnatural, ordered, rigid, direct) shapes to describe elements of the story. Organic and Geometric shapes can be used to divide nature from the human industrial world.

STAGING:

When staging a scene there are lines of movement that are felt as comfortable and uncomfortable. To us it is comfortable to read from left to right and from top to bottom. If the movement goes from right to left or bottom to top, this can be uncomfortable. This type of movement is often used for the antagonist. This is also the case for diagonal line movement. With movement in depth, linear tracks keep you on track. A side path might refer to getting off track. Depth can also be used to stage characters and events on different depth planes. These planes are divided in foreground, middle ground and background. They can move towards or away from each other and show the emotional distance between characters and objects or even change size in the frame. Furthermore, they use this to represent different time areas. Additionally Rack-Focus, creating depth by blurring out certain planes, can be used to put objects in focus or reveal hidden information surprising the audience. The background and foreground can be used to add information to your shot as well as set the mood (Cassidy, 2014). Subtle cues are important to fill in the story in certain parts.

USE OF COLOR

Color is used to set the mood and give the audience the right feeling (Cassidy, 2006). It plays a major part in movies. What colors are used dependents on the movies genre and style (Bacher, 2012). For a comedy, friendly and fresh daylight colors are used in contrast to the dark mood in a thriller. Hot colors might evoke aggressive emotion whereas cool colors calm them down. Both can be used to establish various atmospheres. In animated films, color works well with specific events. For every emotion/action curve, there should be a color mood curve (Bacher, 2012). The color palette is chosen based on different aspects of the films location, like the climate, seasons, time of the day and the weather.

Furthermore, Color is used to build to the climax of the movie (Bacher, 2012). Contrast color transitions help point out dramatic story changes, creating the proper emotional mood. These rules apply to both background as well as character color choices. Villain characters are often portrayed with black, red and purple, where Hero characters have a friendly color scheme combined with greys (figure 11). This further differs for comic characters and the age of the character.

Figure 11: Overall Color Scheme of Disney Villains (top) & Hero’s (bottom). (Source: BlackBat13 DeviantArt)

Every color has its own meaning and purposes in movies. Bellatoni (2014) wrote a full book about the use of color in movies. The meaning of colors according to Bellatoni is discussed below.

RED Red has different purposes. It is often used to express power. Bright Red helps to bring objects forward and makes space feel small. It makes things appear to move faster, raises anxiety levels, heart rates and might provoke anger. Warmer red is seen as sensual. On the other hand, rosy light tinted red as romantic. Yet darkened red is seen as mature, regal and elegant. Burgundy red, with a tint of blue, signals growth and maturity.

ORANGE Orange colors are generally seen as “nice”. According to research, the color opaque orange is the least dramatic but most upbeat color. It is the color of cosines, being warm and inviting. Orange in films is used as emotional glue to hold generations together. Light orange, like the changing glowing orange while the sun sets, has a romantic tone. This can warm and enlarge the range of our emotions. The romantic tone is also used in interiors. Changes in orange also indicate a change of power. A midday orange sky has a different meaning, like a warning signal of unhealthy polluted air. Dark orange and earthy terra cotta colors can provoke a positive reaction. Versatile orange is seen as exotic, sometimes used in silk as a contrast to daily seen colors in the west. But, in contrast, orange is also used in cheap motels and restaurants.

YELLOW Yellow is often used as a warning color, telling us to be cautious. In nature it is used to tell that some amphibians are venomous. It is also seen as a powerful life energy source, reminding us of the sun. Honey yellow, created by the sun, is the color of memories and dreams and creates long shadows in the afternoon. The color yellow is the longest remembered and associated with happiness as well. In movies it is therefore used as a signal for obsession. A full yellow environment raises anxiety levels and can provoke stress, making people lose their temper. It comes across as threatening and cruel. Yet, not bright lightened yellow is seen as elegant and sophisticated. Pastel yellow is associated with innocence. When bumped up to acid yellow, it becomes repellent.

GREEN Green has a double meaning. It signals health and vitality as well as danger and decay, like fresh food, spoiled meat and poisoned drinks. While green is associated with life and health, combined with the death of a person, it can be used as a tool for irony, giving the story a deeper emotional meaning. Used on the human body, it is seen as illness, but when projected on a witch, it is seen as malicious. It is also used to let the audience know something sinister is coming.

BLUE Blue has multiple meanings as well. It is associated with sadness, detachedness and can make people act passively. It is in contrast with the power of red, a color of powerlessness. Blue is seen as a synonym for dependability and loyalty. Furthermore, it can set the mood for the entire film. Blue is the coldest of all colors which makes small changes in the tone of the color, alter the mood completely. Steel blue and dark indigo are colors associated with intellect. Turquoise colors suggests openness, interaction and therefor chatter that makes time pass by quickly.

PURPLE Purple is associated with mystical, spiritual and paranormal events, the non-physical things. It shows that something is about to change or transform or a sense of loss. It is even associated with death.

LIGHTING

Lighting also has an important role in the composition. Lighting engages the viewer and enhances the story (Rangaswamy, 2000). Light has several roles: (1) directing the viewer’s attention, (2) set the mood and atmosphere, (3) create a sense of depth and (4) maintain visual continuity. These roles are explained in more detail below.

First of all, light directs the viewers’ attention. It can identify the areas of interest in larger scenes by highlighting them. Scale and balance add to this. Rim light can grab the attention of the viewer by defining the overall shape of an object, by popping them out from the dark background.

Secondly, light sets the mood and atmosphere. A high-key style of light is used in calm scenes. This implies soft lights that casts few shadows and therefor shows little contrast. High-key lights give the feeling of a peaceful place. Low-key style of lighting is used where much shadow is cast and few areas of interest are lit to create high contrast in order to indicate danger. Hard lights can be used to create crispy shadows which can indicate

21 loneliness in order to indicate cold and sterile unnatural environments. A generally dark scene gives a spooky effect. On the other hand, soft lights are used to create warm environments.

Thirdly, light deepens the dramatic impact by adding visual depth and complexity. Light is used to let the foreground and background stand out from each other. A blurry view of one of those planes can help with directing the viewer’s attention as well, as discussed earlier in Rack-Focus.

Finally, Light is used to maintain visual continuity. It lets the audience automatically group shots together with similar lighting, making it easier for the audience to understand the flow of the movie.

4.2.3 CAMERA USE

The movement and placement of the camera can contribute to bigger emotional impact as well (Cassidy, 2014). This is done by creating strong emotional messages (Weiss, 2009). Even the inner life of the characters can be visualized when applied properly. This is why every shot should have a well thought reasoning behind it. We will talk about the different camera positions, their angles and the possible camera movements to gain insight in how to apply the camera.

CAMERA POSITION

The camera position implies the framing of the subject, whether it is nearby or far away. Certain terms in the movie industry are used to explain camera positions.

Framing:  Extreme close-up (ECU): directs attention to the subject and makes them more memorable (Van Sijll, 2005). It can be used to underscore dramatic or explanatory elements within the scene.  Close-up (CU): reveals and isolates facial expressions and emotions. The subject becomes the most important element in the frame, without any distractions. When being close to a character the audience feels more sympathy (Van Sijll, 2005). The audience enters the character’s intimate space. The longer this lasts, the more sympathy the audience will feel. However, it might also create fear and aversion when done with the antagonist, which makes the audience want to escape.  Medium shot (MS): shows interaction between characters. It also shows the body language which helps showing the inner emotions.  Medium Wide shot (WS): To establish a scene showing the character from his knees up, close enough to show facial expressions.  Full Shot / Wide shot (WS): To establish a scene showing the entire character, and or to isolate a character.  Long Shot (LS): portrays characters in their environment by conveying scale, distance and geographic location.  Aerial: This shows the surrounding from a bird’s eye point-of-view and can have a symbolic use.

Two or more characters in the frame:  Point-of-View (POV): Seeing the movie through the eyes of the characters. This gives the audience a sense of intimacy with the characters (Van Sijll, 2005). It is used to evoke sympathy or fear, whether it is the protagonist or the antagonist’s POV, also seen in the CU.  Over the shoulder (OTS): creates a feeling of connection between the characters (Weiss, 2009). It is used to suggest intimacy, hatred, imprisonment, desire or tension within a relationship, depending on the staging and storyline (Van Sijll, 2005).  Two shot: to show harmony or imbalance between both characters in the shot (Van Sijll, 2005). This can be used to show the relationships between the characters.

Camera angles: The angle of the camera can make a huge difference on emotional impact (Weiss, 2009). Using a shot either at eye-level, low-level or bird’s eye perspective tells us more about the conflict. It tells us whether there’s little or much conflict or it can even take us out of the line of conflict.  High-angle: A high-angle or low-angle shot helps making an impact on the audience. A high-angle can be used to create a natural intimidating feeling. It makes characters look small, weak and vulnerable, which evokes sympathy. When used from a POV, this can create frightening feeling.  Eye-level: Scenes can be shot at eye level to give both characters a feeling of equality. When showing animals in the scene, their eye level is often used.  Low-angle: A low-angle is often used to give the subjects powers, making them look larger than they actually are. When used from a POV perspective, this contributes to the sense of vulnerability and sympathy for the character. With an upshot, the audience can better empathize with a threatening situation (Bacher, 2012).

CAMERA MOTION

Camera movement and framing helps the audience get a feeling for the distance between us and the objects and characters, (Cassidy 2014). It helps move objects closer or further away from each other. You can use establishing shots within your scene, but no more than once, unless there is an emotional reason to do it. Establishing shots are, for instance, crane down or boom up camera movements, discussed later on. Instead of cutting to the event directly, it is more elegant and surprising to use different combinations of camera movements to reveal new information. Jessica van Sijll (2005) and Brian Schaller (2005) wrote about camera movement. It is important to know about all possibilities in order to see which movement suits the shot best on an emotional basis. Their most important findings are shown below.

Figure 12: Different Camera motions Illustrated

 Pan: a horizontal camera movement that reveals new information, like location parameters, clues or characters. If used as a POV shot, it can add to the audience sympathy.  Tilt: vertical camera movement, which is used to reveal information while the camera is on a tripod.

o Tilt-Up: This can give information about details to the audience that would otherwise go unnoticed. A tilt-up can make subjects look larger and thicker. o Tilt-Down: This can add to the size of things by not showing them completely, but in parts. Furthermore, it can make the object look smaller and thinner.  Rotation / Roll: Has a disorienting effect on the audience. It can be used as a metaphor.  Dolly zoom / Zolly: moving the camera towards the object while adjusting the viewing angle of the lens by zooming in (Wikipedia, dolly zoom). This keeps the object at the same position and space while the surroundings are closing in on the object. The change of perspective combined with the size of the object staying equal, creates an unsettling effect, tension and a sense of doom. This effect is used to represent sensation or to suggest the noticing of a character.  Pedestal / Boom: Moving the camera physically in height. For instance, to get eye-to-eye with characters or to shoot something at the eye-level of a smaller creature.  Truck: Following the subject with the camera in the horizontal plane.

 Static shot: contributes to seeing changes when comparing two static shots.  Handheld: gives the feeling of a documentary style, making the footage feel more realistic instead of fictional. A bumpier shot can suggest instability. This is even more effective when combined with a stable shot. Handheld is often used when dramatic event are nearing. This dimension can be expanded by using a POV shot to create sympathy.  Steady-cam: The fluid version of the handheld shot that is often used to suggest dreams and fantasy worlds.

 Tracking Shot: This movement can change the character’s perception of something. It can change the characters position in the shot, which makes the character switch from good to bad.  Circular: These shots can aid in getting the audience intensely engaged in a conspiracy.  Push-In Push-Out: Narrowing and widening a shot like zooming in or out, revealing information, or even putting the focus on something. Furthermore, this can change the audience’s perception of the character.  Crane: mostly used for high-angle shots and can be moved in several directions. It is used to reveal secrets or to follow the action of a subject. With a crane down movement, the audience literally sinks into the scene and discovers what is important. Moreover, it is used to show the surroundings from above and then move down to eye level later on. The boom-up helps to reveal additional information of the scene and gives the characters context.

4.2.4 FILM EDITING / MONTAGE:

Editing is actually the manipulation of time and space (YMI, 2002). This ability gives directors the power to change the audience’s intellectual and emotional responses. The combined shots chosen by the editor create the rhythm and pacing, set the mood, develops the action, establishes time and space and guides the viewers’ attention.

According to Vsevold Pudovkin, there are five editing techniques (Van Sijll, 2005). These are: (1) contrast: adding contrasting elements behind each other; (2) parallelism: show that tragic events are coming up by letting others show or tell the time left till the event; (3) symbolism: shows a stronger metaphor for what is happening at that time; (4) simultaneity: two actions happening at the same time, a purely emotional method; and (5) leitmotif: a reiteration of the theme, shown in a different way.

Not everything has to be given away at the start when putting a movie together (Bacher, 2012). It is good to keep something special at hand for the climax, like superior camera angles, amazing colors and incredible movement. A movie should start slow by establishing the mood after which the pacing should pick up leading to the climax. This can be done by showing fast cuts between colors, camera angles and the usage of crazy staging. Nearing the end, the pace should slow down again.

If editing is done purposeful, it should guide the emotional response of the viewer. This can be accomplished by carefully choosing the shots that show the event over time. Montage is often used to form a larger idea to convey emotional transitions, passage of time or coming of age.

CUTS

When constructing time and space there are some rules that may never be broken while cutting:  180-degree rule: never put the camera on the other side of the line between two characters.  The eye-lines of the character and eye-line must match: eyes should be in line with the shot.  screen direction: the screen length should be in line with the length of an object.

Most common Cuts used in editing:  Straight cut: a cut to the action in order to make the context clear to the audience.  Jump-cut: a cut to a shot that changes only slightly while either the character or the background changes instantly to indicate the passage of time. In order to prevent unwanted jump-cuts the 30- degree rule is used. Here the camera angle should vary at least 30 degrees between the shots.  Smash-Cuts: These are used to underscore a scene by a sudden change in image or sound. This gives an uncomfortable feeling, which, when used sparingly, can be quite effective. Cutting from one shot to another, only differing in subjects size, while framing the same subject, can have unwanted side- effects: o Indecisive cut: Too little size change creating an unpleasant effect. It can be seen as a mistake or distraction by the audience. o Shock cut: Too much size change that creates a shock effect.  Cross cutting / Parallel editing / intercutting: cutting back and forth between two scenes. This creates the feeling that these scenes happen at the same time. Split screen does the same. Though, it shows both actions simultaneously.

SCENE TRANSITIONS:

 Match Cuts: softens the transitions between the scenes. They use the similarity of content, graphics, size, shape, color or even motions in action. It establishes the passage of time, motivation or the theme’s idea. A visual match-cut about an idea cuts from a question to a visual metaphor of the answer to show the inner thoughts of the character.  Dissolve / fade: often used to show the passing of time or to soften the cuts between images.  Swish / Whip Pan: moving the camera very fast from right to left or vice versa making the image become blurry. This transition is used to indicate the passing of time.  Audio transition: Transitions can also be done by using audio. Audio can be introduced to mask important events. For instance, when somebody is murdered, by adding the sound of thunder. Another transition is the Audio Bridge where Dialogue or Sound effects are continued in the next shot.

TIME MANIPULATION:

Pacing and intercutting can be used to expand time. They also add suspense by exploiting the scene without dialogue. This increases the audience’s fear for the next event. Using overlapping actions, which occur at the same time, adds great dramatic value. This underscores important plot twists, climaxes and emotional revelations. By showing the event from different camera angles in time, time is expanded. Another way to slow down the pacing is to let every shot be a breath of air.

 Slow-motion: Usually time is slowed down during traumatic or euphoric events. This is done to suggest two states of consciousness, expressing the character’s view on things to increase the audience’s sympathy.  Fast-motion: Time is sped up to underscore a scene and is often used in comedies. However, it can also work in dramatic events.

 Flashback: Showing important backstory of the character. This is only effective when a flashback moves the plot forward.  Flash-forward: a glance of future events which are imagined, projected or expected. It reveals important parts of the story that are about to occur.  Freeze Frame: A shot frozen in time, creating the illusion of a still photograph. It can be used to show an important moment, giving the audience more insight in the meaning of the story. Freeze frames are often applied in drama or to establish the facial expressions of the characters at certain moments in time.

4.2.5 CONCLUSION

Visual storytelling can add tremendously to emotional storytelling. In order to convey emotions in a scene it is important to have a clear understanding of the emotions that you want to trigger in your audience.

It doesn’t matter if camera movement, sound or animation is not done well, as long as it is consistent during the whole movie. These are then the rules of the story world and these rules shouldn’t be broken. If they are, believability will be lost.

Composition is the most important aspect of visual storytelling because it immediately directs the audience’s attention. This is realized by using balance, lines, perspective, framing, movement and depth. Using the proper color can help set the mood and feelings. It can also set the season, location and the time of the day. Lighting can add to the mood by using hard, soft or rim lights to define shapes and casting short or long shadows.

Camera use is connected to composition, especially when using the position of the camera to frame the object of choice in a certain way. Positions that can help evoke sympathy for the character are: Point of View, close- ups and high- or low-angle camera position. The Over The Shoulder shot and Two Shot can help in creating a feeling of connection to establish the characters relationships. Camera motion is often used to reveal things, like a pan, tilt and crane movement, but also to create dream worlds, disorientation, realizations and the idea of a documentary style.

In editing, time and space can be manipulated by using cuts, scene transitions and time manipulation. Cuts are often used to show parallel events happening, time transitions or shock effects. Scene transitions are used to indicate time transitions, soften cuts, mask important events or show visual metaphors as an answer to the questions. Time manipulation is mostly used to underscore scenes or to give additional information about the past or future.

4.3 HYBRID ANIMATION

Here the history of hybrid animation will be described. In the rest of this chapter, the basic principles of animation and how to apply them to Hybrid animation will be discussed. These basics are important to understand because this is the very foundation on how to animate. After that, the most important differences between the three animation techniques will be discussed. However, the focus will shift to the differences between traditional and CGI animation, as this is the most important research area. The advantages and disadvantages of both techniques and how these differ on animating will be analyzed. Of course, there will be a focus on emotion, and how to convey this into the scenes as an animator.

4.3.1 HISTORY OF HYBRID ANIMATION

Before the rise of computer technology, animated movies were much more of a craft. For more than 40 years, there had been only one animation technique for all feature length films (Mitchell, 2002). Animation started out with traditional 2D hand-drawn animation, the very core of animation. Over time, companies like Disney developed new animation techniques and turned these into a craft.

Stop motion was next in line to become popular. However, this genre only became popular when the movie The Nightmare before Christmas was released in 1993. After a few movies, the use of stop motion decreased quickly. Although, stop motion clay animations stayed quite popular amongst the public (Mitchell, 2002). Aardman made Chicken Run (2000) and Wallice & Gromit (1990). People are attracted to this style, as it makes people laugh. Humor and strong storytelling is also an important ingredient within these movies.

When computer technology evolved, animation studios embraced new techniques that made it much easier to animate a hand-drawn feature film (O’Hailey, 2010; Mitchell, 2002). This is called Hybrid animation where they combine 2D hand-drawn animation with CGI.

CGI has many advantages, like easily adjusting the camera positions by panning. It also gives more possibilities than using the multiplane camera Disney developed in the 1930’s. Furthermore, backgrounds don’t have to be redrawn when looked at from another point of view. It was used in the Disney Classic Beauty and the Beast (1991), where they used it in the ballroom scene (figure 13a). DreamWorks also used 3D for backgrounds considering the movies, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to Eldorado, and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron all from around the year 2000. Disney also used this technique differently in Mulan (1998) to give more depth to the 2D artwork scenery by folding it slightly in 3D space. Furthermore, CGI is used to handle large crowd scenes, like in Mulan (1998) (figure 13b).

Figure 13: (a) Stills from Beauty and the Beast, (b) Mulan, (c) The Iron Giant and (d) The Boxtrolls.

However, CGI was only used for the backgrounds and managing crowd scenes until The Iron Giant in 1999. In The Iron Giant, they animated the giant completely in CGI (figure 13c). Hand-made objects, like metal, feel more rigid. They also used this technique when animating the arm of the character John Silver in Treasure Planet (2002).

Additionally, the stop motion animation studio LAIKA is winning ground with movies like Coraline (2009) and The Boxtrolls (2014). Although, this last movie is not completely stop motion. Because of the use of visual effects and CGI it actually is a hybrid movie (Edwards, 2014) (figure 13d). They use CGI to expand the world, creating large crowds and expand their scenery. In some cases it was used in the realization of shots that were impossible using normal techniques.

However, the movie that changed all, was released in 1995 by Pixar, namely Toy Story, the first fully CGI animated movie. Many movies in this genre followed. Nowadays, the big animation studio’s only release CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) animations, leading to a lot of discussion whether 2D animation is dying or already dead, discussed earlier (Touchmann & Francis, 2004).

According to the former 2D animators, the founders of the short film Hullabaloo, 2D animation is capable of conveying a truly incredible level of emotion and feeling (Indiegogo, 2014). So, how is this conveyed? This leads to the question of the power of 2D animation compared to other animation techniques. Or even, how can these fundamentals be preserved in the CGI era of animation?

4.3.2 BASIC PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION

The rise of CGI animation has brought many CGI films on the market. Even though CGI is only a tool and can enable people to produce high quality animation as well as more bad computer animations (Lasseter, 1987). Animating using CGI software is not that different from 2D animation. Just add the same principles, tips and tricks to the animation, and characters will come to life (Lasseter, 1999). To add these principles to CGI animation, we have to understand what these principles imply. According to Lasseter (1987) and the book: “The Illusion of Life”, by Disney, there are 12 basic principles of animation:

1. Squash and Stretch - Defining the rigidity and mass of an object by distorting its shape during an action. 2. Anticipation - The preparation for an action. 3. Exaggeration - Accentuating the essence of an idea via the design and the action. 4. Follow Through & Overlapping Action - The termination of an action and establishing its relationship with the next action. 5. Slow In and Ease-Out - The spacing of the in-between frames to achieve subtlety in timing and movement. 6. Arcs - The visual path of action for natural movement. 7. Secondary Action - The action of an object resulting from another action, 8. Straight Ahead Action & Pose-To-Pose Action - The two Figure 14: Illustration of first three principles contrasting approaches to the creation of movement. 9. Staging - Presenting an idea so that it is unmistakably clear. 10. Timing - Spacing actions to define the weight and size of objects and the personality of characters. 11. Appeal - Creating a design or action that the audience enjoys watching. 12. Solid Drawing – Taking into account forms in 3D space and giving these volume and weight.

Motion Capture

The first four principles of animation cannot be recorded using motion capture (Atkinson, 2008). This is because the human body cannot go beyond their physical boundaries. Motion capture can naturally capture the data of some of these principles because this data comes naturally from life performances. When motion captured, some principles will still have to be worked upon by the animators themselves. These consider some physical and physiological qualities.

4.3.3 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ANIMATION TECHNIQUES

STOP MOTION V.S. OTHER

Animating In stop motion the animators use puppets for animating. This makes the animation more like a performance from the animator (Mitchell, 2002). In Stop Motion you animate by working forward, step by step. This is called Straight ahead action. If it doesn’t look right, you just start over. With hand-drawn animation, you can re-adjust your images, go forward and backwards in time. And with CGI animation, you can change whenever and wherever you want.

Tactile approach CGI doesn’t have a tactile approach like Stop Motion because you use a mouse or other tools to adjust the virtual figure. Yet a tactile approach was possible while working on “Jurassic park” (1993), using the Dinosaur Input Device. This was a stop-motion armature, which would communicate its movement to the computer.

Motion Blur Stop motion animation doesn’t use motion blur (Mitchell, 2002). This adds up to the unrealistic quality of this technique, making it look like fantasy. Yet it can be accomplished by using a computer to calculate the difference between objects and add motion blur to the fast moving objects. Motion blur can sometimes be important. For if in an animation the distance between positions of the object increase and the objects of the images don’t overlap from frame to frame, human eyes can start perceiving the animation as separate images (Lasseter, 1987). When motion blur cannot be used, squash and stretch animation is sometimes used as an alternative in 2D animation.

ADVANTAGES OF 2D V.S. CGI

2D animation became underappreciated because of the rise of CGI animation. Both techniques have their advantages, but what are these techniques and what are the differences?

Traditional Animation Advantages

2D hand-drawn animation is form of art, which has been refined for over 90 years (Finkelstein, 2003). According to Madmind (2007), there is one benefit to 2D that CGI animation will never have, which is visual freedom. Just think of the Looney Tunes Characters by Warner Brothers. The deformation and exaggeration of the characters reaction and facial expressions is their trademark. But when you try to put this in CGI animation, it will start to look silly, because the look of CGI feels more real than that of 2D animation. Also, there is visual freedom in the scene. The style of the drawings, colors, and ornaments can change easily. Transformation and morphing of objects in other objects is also more easily accomplished.

On top of that, 2D would be easier for traditional animators (Finkelstein, 2003). The process of making a CGI animated scene, compared to 2D animation, takes less time and effort, because of the minimization of the tools needed to create it (Caba Innovatives, 2013). However, this might have changed in time. Furthermore, using simple gestures in 2D animation can convey emotion, which is not possible in CGI.

Multi-perspective panoramas were used for suggesting camera movement in 2D animation, where different perspectives were put into a single coherent image (Finkelstein, 2003). They used a moving window to select several frames from this image for the background animation. CGI can help do this, panning the camera in the scene. However, CGI cannot do all of it. Figure 15: Librabry of “Beauty and the Beast”

There is a big difference in what can be made by hand and made using CGI. One example is the shot from the library in Beauty and the Beast (1991) (figure 15) (Finkelstein, 2003). 2D animation does not need to respect geometry and sometimes uses perspectives that are impossible to capture in a 3D scene (Patterson et al., 1994).

CGI Advantages

CGI also has its own advantages (Finkelstein, 2003). Even though it doesn’t have the same long history as traditional animation seeing as it only started in 1985 up to now. (1) CGI animation has automatic inbetweening. (2) The camera motion and angles are easy to use. (3) Objects and characters can be re-used in other scenes. (4) Another advantage is the look and feel, which is mostly more realistic. CGI animation is more bound to reality, where it would look weird if the sky would suddenly turn green (Madmind, 2007).

They use lighting and shading techniques, alongside texture mapping to accomplish this realistic feeling. Texture mapping of CGI animation can help to produce complex textures (Finkelstein, 2003). This technique is used in the Disney classic Aladdin (1992), where the carpet is CGI animated (figure 16). The carpet texture has so much detail that it wouldn’t work in a different way. The 2D quality of the animation didn’t get lost because it wasn’t a complex shape for animating. In all the other Aladdin movies and series, the carpet was hand-drawn. Using the 3D looking carpet decreased the effort per frame, and uses foreshortening and occlusion. Figure 16: CGI Carpet & hand-drawn Carpet from “Aladdin”.

4.3.4 ANIMATING BELIEVABLE

Shekhar (2015) wrote an article about why animated movies can induce strong emotions. He claims that every emotion is enhanced by exaggeration in animation. He also states that everything is animated with the purpose and power to provoke strong emotions from the audience. Those strong emotions will only be created by more experienced animators. Therefore, movies that are created in a team are stronger. They constantly review each other’s work and develop strong skills in animation. Besides, animated worlds are only restricted to the makers imagination and make everything possible (Shekhar, 2015).

It is stated that animators are actually actors with pencils and puppets (Mitchell, 2002), but this is not true according to Ed Hooks (2003). However, even animators follow acting classes to learn about the connection between the thought process and body movement (Mitchell, 2002). They benefit from studying this. Those acting classes are quite different from acting classes for actors. Animators and Actors work on a very different level. When actors do their job with acting they react on each other’s actions. For Acting and reacting is doing. But acting is action, where reacting is re-action.

DIFFERENCES 2D & CGI

There are some differences in animation techniques between 2D Hand-drawn animation and CGI animation (Lasseter, 1999). Both animation techniques use key frames to animate. However, in 2D hand-drawn animation, key frames are set by drawings. The timing and acting is done in these minimum values. The in- between drawings are made afterwards. In CGI animation, the in-between animation is calculated by the computer, which uses spline curves to connect the values used in the key frame animation.

Using key frames in traditional animation is completely different from CGI animation (Lasseter, 1999). With traditional animation, key frame poses are used. On the other hand, in CGI animation, you have to learn to

30 animate a key frame at each level of the hierarchy of your character. The fewer key frames, the better the computer will be able to calculate them.

Moreover, in CGI animation, make sure to animate in 2 different views, as it has to look great from different angles (Lasseter, 1999). This is also the reason why some animations can be copied and seeing as the audience won’t notice. You only have to change it slightly if it looks to similar to what you already showed.

In CGI animation, a pose cannot be on hold for some time because the action dies immediately when this is done (Lasseter, 1999). A “moving hold” is the solution. Letting some parts of the body continue to move slightly and extend the motion. In 2D animation, it is good to have lots of squash and stretch animation, but this cannot be done on a CGI object because it would look unbelievable on realistic characters, and vice versa.

Objects come in different sizes and shapes (Lasseter, 1999). The behavior of these objects doesn’t depend on the material texture rendered on the object in CGI, but on the animation. While animating these, use timing and spacing to indicate the weight of the object. If an object is heavy, it will move slower, take more time to get it moving and to change or stop the motion of the object. A light object however, changes faster in movement and acceleration and will move quicker. Moreover, when objects are moving fast, the loose parts of a character or object will follow the leading mass more slowly and drag along. The heavier the loose parts, the further behind they will be in comparison to the body and the longer it will take to stop them.

To establish the material even further, know that a rigid object will not squash and stretch that much compared to soft and flexible parts (Lasseter, 1987). In CGI animation, squash and stretch can be done by scaling the objects along the path of action, though the volume of the object should remain the same. This can be done by scaling back in the other 3D positions.

ANIMATING EMOTIONS

Thomas and Johnston (1981) in “the Illusion of Life”, talk about how animators portray an emotional response properly (Bates, 1994).

(1) the emotional state of the character must be clearly defined.

We discussed in chapter 4.1 that the body as well as the voice are equally important when telling stories as a narrator (Jessup, 2012). This can also be used in animation movies by the performance of the characters. The body language has to match the emotional feelings of the character.

(2) The emotion must be accentuated.

For instance, by using time wisely. Give the audience time to convey the emotional state in that situation. Mechanisms that can help are; foreshadowing the emotion, exaggeration and reducing other actions that occur simultaneously. With the last one, you can also direct the audience’s attention to every important action and movement, so that none of the characters emotions are lost (Lasseter, 1999). This can be done by letting the main character move faster than the others or slow down the action of other characters to direct attention to the main action. Actions should also overlap each other and not be brought to a “hold”. This is to keep the flow and continuity going.

(3) The thought process reveals the feeling.

According to Walt Disney, characters should move based on their thought process (Lasseter, 1999): "In most instances, the driving forces behind the action are the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character—or all three. Therefore, the mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body executes the action." In chapter 4.1 of this research, it is illustrated that thinking leads to conclusions, this in turn, triggers an emotional response (Hooks, 2003). These emotions, in turn, lead to action. Hooks agrees with Disney and Lasseter on this. Emotions are the driving force behind every action. However, they are not actable. This is due to the fact that acting is doing. Big emotions tend to lead to big actions. When thoughts come across they will delay the action.

Let the action be led by the eyes, followed by the head (Lasseter, 1999), then the main action of the body can follow. This is however reversed when an external force hits the body. The thought process leans on emotions. A happy character moves faster than a sad character. Likewise a young character will have more energy to put into actions than older ones.

When you animate two characters in a scene, the one who is listening will look at the other person for 80% of the time, whereas the one talking will only look at the other for 40% of the time. This has to do with the way we pick up information. The listener will look at the speaker for much longer to pick up expressions and body language. On the other hand, the speaker just watches whether the other person understood him or her.

To get the scene across realistically it is important that the timing of the blinking of the eyes matches the scene (Hooks, 2003). They say the eyes are the windows to our soul. Three blinks per minute are necessary to get your eyes moist. All the other blinks are carried out by the thought process. When you complete a thought, you blink. You also blink to communicate that you know what the other character is saying. Therefore it is a factor of human intelligence. Nervous people blink less than others. Moreover, blinks help to get out of the uncanny valley.

Besides the 3 rules for animating the emotional response there are certain questions animators should ask themselves when animating (Thomas & Johnston, 2003): 1. Is the character doing what the director wants in the sequence? 2. Is the character doing only one thing at a time? 3. Is the character getting across the story point in the scene you are doing? 4. Is the character acting as if there is something going on in his mind? 5. Does the character appear to be doing something on his own? 6. Can the audience tell what the character is thinking? 7. How are the characters actions affecting what the audience thinks? 8. Does the character have appeal? 9. Is it passionate? Is passion going into the drawing and does it show in the character? 10. Is it the simplest way to do it? 11. Have you made small story sketches of one important character to be sure everything is working before you make a lot of drawings? 12. Would anyone else besides your mother like what you have done?

4.3.5 VISUAL STYLE

We haven’t talked about style in the chapter of Visual Storytelling. It seemed to me it would fit better in the Hybrid Animation chapter because of the developments within this category.

Research has been done to figure out the way people react to expressive animated footage (Power, 2009). By rotoscoping a real-life footage video and stylizing this, the imagery was used as a metaphor, where the characters mindset was shown differently. Naturalistic live-action footage activates the areas of mindreading and recognition in the human brain. Expressive animated footage evokes brain responses which are associated with the emotional reward center. The amygdala, the brains center of emotion, responds stronger to impressionistic faces than it does to naturalistic faces. By using hand-drawn characters, it makes it easier to stay out of the uncanny valley, where things get scary if it seems too real, but not real enough (McMillan, 2013).

CELL SHADING

CONTOURS, LINES & STROKES

Pat Power (2009), who did research to expressive styles in CGI animation, states that drawn lines and brushstrokes have a far more expressive quality than normal lines. The hand-made quality of the lines is recognized by the brain’s mirror-neurons, seen as expressive human warmth. Empathy and expression are

32 closely linked together. Oatley (2013) also states that imperfection in art is humanity in art, which is actually the emotional reason to make hand-made movies.

Contour lines are mostly used in hand-drawn animated feature films (Kupferer, 2011). They borrowed this art style from comic books. Furthermore, in 2D cell animation, the inkers were responsible for the final version of the contour lines and therefor the quality of the movie. Kupferer explains that a contour is not necessarily the outline of an object, but is located within the outline border. While using Cell Shading, contour lines are not always visible.

Contour lines vary in speed, tone and thickness in order to initiate three-dimensional shapes. Yet other methods can be used to achieve this, like atmospheric perspective, scale and the position of the objects, as well as color and light. This means that contour lines are not required to define the weight and volume of shapes.

NEW TECHNIQUES

Disney’s Paperman (2012) uses a new technique that uses contour lines (McMillan, 2013). This movie is actually CGI animated, but looks hand-drawn animated. Disney decided to bring back the traditional animation and hand-drawn line techniques in front of the imagery.

Disney made the short Paperman in CGI the same way as other animation movies. However, they rendered it out flat with a cell shaded look (Oatley, 2013) (figure 17a), after which they drew the lines onto the key frames by hand in custom designed software. They used a vector-based drawing program to paint onto the CGI surface. This software pastes the drawings onto the CGI models and generates the in-betweens. Then those in- betweens were tweaked by hand because it didn’t work perfect. However, seeing as the lines were vector based, they could easily be adjusted. The paper textures were added during compositing.

Figure 17: (a) Making of Paperman, combining CGI & lines, (b) Movie Still from Feast.

With Disney’s short Feast (2014), they didn’t use the line art. However, they did use cell-shading techniques (figure 17b). They rendered thins out in a different way. There were some steps that had to be taken when they started rendering out the lighting keys. At first, only the Surface colors were rendered. The second step was the color correction, where they had to change the colors of every object individually to get this right. Then, they took care of the light shapes, like light falling into the room at a window, including atmospheric particles. After this they broke down all edges, giving them a soft texturing look. Finally, they added the depth of field and lens effects which gives a whole different look and feel to the movie than Paperman.

Another way to let a movie look cell shaded is to only make preview renders. These are just snapshots of the movie that are quickly generated (Oreilly, 2009). Using flat shading can also add to the cell-shading look. This is done by using no light sources and therefore no shadows.

To put these techniques into contrast, there is a new movie coming up by Sergio Pablos Animation Studios, named Klaus. This one looks like a CGI animated movie, but is completely hand-drawn. The studio

Figure 18: Teaser Trailer Still from “Klaus” (2016) 33 pushed the medium forwards by overcoming traditional technical limitations. The focus was set on Organic volumetric lighting and texturing that were established after the hand-drawn characters animation was done in TVPaint. During a talk at FMX 2015 in Stuttgart, it became clear that most things were done in the production stage, working on coloring, but especially the hard lights used in the overall movie, which highlight and cast strong shadows on the character. The shading is responsible for this volumetric look, as discussed above in the part about contour lines. It is interesting to see that most contour lines are missing. This is probably why the movie feels like CGI.

4.3.6 CONCLUSION

Hybrid animation nowadays is used in all kinds of shapes, varying from stop motion, to CGI. In the past decade many developments have been made in the area of CGI. CGI took over most parts of the industry. However, 2D traditional animation is more capable of conveying a truly incredible level of emotion and feeling. This is because the visual style of traditional animation is far more expressive than CGI.

1. Expressive animated footage activates the emotional reward center much stronger than realistic looking footage. 2. Hand-drawn lines and brushstrokes are far more expressive than normal lines. Hand-drawn lines are imperfect, which is the humanity in art. They express the hand-made human warmth, recognized by the brains mirror-neurons. 3. Traditional animation has total visual freedom in style as well as the scene. Deformation and exaggeration are only accomplished well in traditional animation. 4. Simple gestures in 2D animation can already convey emotion.

There are also some differences found between 2D and CGI and the way to animate. Motion capture is often used to animate CGI characters. Yet, some very important basic animation principles cannot be recorded and are hard to establish in CGI animation. CGI animation mostly looks very realistic which has its disadvantages:

1. Simple gestures cannot be done because characters look lifeless and the action dies immediately if they are on hold. 2. Some basic animation principles look awkward if added to CGI animation. The animation has to look more realistic to be believable because of his realistic style. Yet exaggeration is stated to be the enhancer of emotions, which is one of the basic principles that do not work well for CGI animation.

Expressing the feelings of characters is done by animating the thought process. Humans empathize with the emotion underneath the actions shown. The emotional state of the character therefor must be clearly defined as well as accentuated. The thought process has to be clear. It is seen through the eyes and the characters blinks when they think and how they think. Action is therefor led by the eyes, followed by the head and body movement.

Traditional animation expressiveness adds to emotion. If all of the above are added to CGI animation, knowing the basic animation principles, expressive line style and staying in the unrealistic style of animation, the audience will emphasize with the characters emotions more deeply and intense.

5) DESIGN & REALIZATION

5.1 EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING APPLIED

For my movie, I first had to figure out what kind of important events could trigger emotions. Therefor I analyzed what parts of animated movies made the audience cry. A lot of this information had already been shared on the web, like in forums, where people told each other which movies made them cry. It was interesting to see The Lion King being mentioned the most of all movies. However, other movies were also mentioned. The movie analyses can be found in the appendix.

People mostly cried when events like death, separation, loneliness or sacrifice took place. These are all sad events. However, tears of joy may happen during happy events such as when a relationship grows, new bonds are made or love is expressed. Sometimes, in family, people ‘hate’ each other. This is often due to overprotectiveness of the other character misinterpreted by the other family member. Yet, the characters love each other because of their family bond, which is usually expressed near the end of the film. Additionally, other events where we shed tears of joy for are happy endings, were the characters have grown to their full power and purpose by doing what is right. For instance, this is when the Emperor and the whole of China bow for Mulan (1998).

BACKGROUND

I wanted to make people feel those deep rooted emotions for my graduation movie. I wrote several stories with some important events and feelings in mind. Yet, I had to dispose of 2 complete different stories at first before getting on the right track. I had to go back to my core believes in order for me to find the proper writing material.

We learned from the research that the more meaningful a theme, the deeper the emotions will be. However, even if a theme is meaningful, it can still be outdated or dull because people have seen it before. Therefor the theme also has to be entertaining, teaching, exploring and revealing the human condition in order for it to make an emotional impact. That is why I went on a search for a meaningful theme that incorporated these values. Based on these values, I wrote my directors statement, which can be found in the appendix.

I wanted to make people aware of environmental issues. I therefor investigated which animated movies dealt with environmental issues and listed them, as found in the appendix. I noticed that humans were the cause in many movies that dealt with death. Also, human hunters and poachers caused several of these deaths. These events still happen in daily life. Not all people are aware of all kinds of hunting issues in the world. People know about poachers, but they don’t know their backstory. Poachers hunt down animals for their teeth, fur and bones to make medicine, clothes and other useless stuff. They usually sell those animal parts on the black market because the government has forbidden the hunt on certain animals.

What people don’t know is that the men who become poachers are usually left without any other options to gain money. This thought came to mind while reading an interview with a former poacher (Messenger, 2014). They have to hunt to make money and feed their families. In many cases, they had a fair job at first, but sometimes they get fired, make too little money or their harvest failed because of drought. Seeing as not many people are aware of this, I decided to tell a story about a poacher that has inner struggles when killing a Leopard with its child.

Most animated movies use animals in their movies. We saw earlier that these animals were portrayed being anthropomorphous characters. I wanted animals in my movie because I care about them. Luckily, according to my research, animals already evoke empathy in humans, which suits the emotional burden I wanted to convey. Of course, not all animals evoke people’s empathy. It’s mostly the cute and fluffy ones that do, and of course, not everybody is an animal lover.

To let animals evoke empathy in movies, they need to behave humanlike. However, the leopards in my movie don’t talk and walk up straight like humans do. Luckily, they don’t need the ability to talk in order for the audience to identify themselves with animal characters.

Nor are the animals able to communicate with humans. I always had the feeling that animals and humans miscommunicate. Especially when wild animals are involved, seeing as they never had contact with the human world. Yet, animals are not always seen as such. Sometimes, we humans project emotions and personalities on real animals. However, the Leopards need personality and the ability to think and behave like human beings. The human poacher is both the villain as well as the partner of the animals. The animals in this story think about their situation even though they don’t discover their personhood in this short story. Personhood is not always discovered in stories when a villain is present. The leopards will be equally intelligent to the humans. Even though animals in the real world don’t have a voice that people will listen to, we can, In animated movies, give animals the privilege of speaking up for themselves.

Family is a very important aspect that many people easily relate to. Usually, baby animals and their family are used in stories. The baby animals are easy to relate to because of our nurturing instincts discussed earlier. These nurturing instincts can sometimes make people emotional.

EVENTS

Not all emotional events can be told in a movie of just 3 minutes. Choices had to be made. Yet, I noticed that most events actually are accounted for in the inner battle of the poacher. This due to many iterations on former stories that coped with these events. The poacher himself has to deal with death, separation and loneliness. The poacher thinks about what will happen to the baby leopard if he shoots his mother. If the poacher does this, the baby will be left without his mother, dealing with death, being separated from his mother as well as staying behind on its own. I have the feeling some hunters can block out these emotions and forms of empathy by flipping a switch. Some poachers, who are forced to hunt, have learned to turn off their humanity as well.

This poacher struggles with these humanity emotions, makes it his vulnerable side. By exposing this vulnerable side as early as possible, it makes the audience care. Besides that, he is a man who is easily frustrated. He easily loses his temper. His anger drives his actions to be sometimes impulsive. This is one of his character flaws he has to learn to deal with. We learned that anger is one of the 8 basic emotions. It can start with annoyance shifting to anger and develop into rage.

WRITING THE STORY

All events were written down to make sure the story was well told. We know now that people emphasize with the emotions underneath the action. So every action is connected to an emotion. Since all character actions are reactions on their thought process, by triggering their emotions, all characters emotions were written down as well. Furthermore, all characters perform their actions to reach their objectives. According to Ed Hooks, objectives are important to work towards. I agree with him, because stories are already compressed in time. Animation is already time consuming. To have a character aimlessly wander around makes no sense. Therefor all actions of the characters were carefully chosen and connected to their objectives. To make it more complicated, all objectives were closely connected to survival because every character acts to survive. If you are curious to how I came to this process of writing, you can visit my blog: http://swann-design.tumblr.com/tagged/writingastory

5.2 VISUALIZATION

CAMERA WORKS

When all emotions, events and objectives were well connected, the story had to be visualized. All this information was organized in a table, which can be found in the appendix. After that, the staging and framing could be done more easily. Based on the emotions, it was easier to write down the possible camera positions,

36 their angles and movements. I found out that this is difficult when only having a script at hand. This because the storyboard artists still have to figure out how the characters feel when performing their actions. It becomes clearer what kind of shots will work when all of this is well thought off and written down by the director. The low angle camera position was often chosen to give the hunter a more threatening look while the leopards are often seen from a high angle camera position to give them the feeling of being helpless creatures. Near the end of the movie, the hunter kneels down in order for him to be at the same level as the leopards, to show his compassion and equality to the living creatures.

MOVING STORYBOARD

A moving storyboard was created instantly, because the storyboarding process was already written down. It made it easy to draw out camera angles and positions. Besides, camera movement could be shown more easily. It made it easier to see whether the lines of movement (see visual storytelling) would work. Furthermore, some earlier moving storyboard versions were already developed. For this reason, the moving storyboards could be easily adapted. Previous versions and the final version of the moving storyboard can be found here: http://swann-design.tumblr.com/tagged/storyboard

The hunter is often shown on the right side of the screen because antagonists and villains who are up to no good are often positioned there. The leopards, on the other hand, are shown on the left. To visualize the little leopard as a hero, she is running towards her mother from the upper left to the lower right of the screen. On the other hand, the hunter in the end becomes a hero by saving both Leopards. He is then shown walking from the upper left to the right towards the leopards. Yet, not all the chosen camera shots could be used. The action the characters were performing had to be clearly visualized. Therefor some camera angles were changed later on during animation.

COLOR

In a previous version of the story, the color, locations, the weather and time of the day were sorted out. A color mood board was made (figure 19). At first, the story started out in the early morning when all colors are fresh and sunny. The leopard got trapped during the hunt. She goes unconscious because she tumbled over when she got trapped and made a heavy fall on the ground. She then wakes up again in the late afternoon after which she tries to get her paw out of a foothold. The colors turn from exotic orange into a warm yellow as a warning that time is running short. The sun slowly sets and the leopard gets desperate. She finally falls asleep after losing faith. The sky turns dark blue, giving a calming but sad feeling. We don’t see this part until early morning, when all still is blue, just before the sunrise.

Figure 19: Color mood board Poachers usually enter the animal sanctuaries by night. The dark atmosphere gives the man a mystical look and raises the tension. The hunter and leopard find each other in the very early morning, when the sky turns from sad blue to red under the rising sun (figure 19 & 20). While time passes and the tension is released, the sky turns slowly into pink. I was inspired by the use of color in the movie, Pocahontas, where this tension in the early morning was also build by changing the color of the sky.

Figure 20: (a) Concept art early morning (left); (b) Concept art angry poacher.

VISUAL STYLE

We discovered that a 2D style is more expressive than a 3D style. We learned that expressive styles activate the emotional reward center of the brain and that the 2D look adds to the expression of the movie. Of course, it is questionable whether people really experience this, seeing as everybody is different. Yet in my opinion, I think they are right. I always felt something was missing in CGI movies. This was actually one of the reasons to do this research in the first place. Therefore the movie will have a flat look and feel (figure 21). The flat angular style appeals to me and will help in keeping the characters away from the uncanny valley.

Figure 21: Character Designs.

Since character animation will be done using CGI animation, the animations will be rendered out using cell- shading methods. The cell-shading style remains close to the roots of traditional animation. To further define this flat look and feel, the flat look I had in mind comes with an angular style, shown in the style mood board (figure 22). To convey this in the characters, they will be stylized and have a low-poly look and feel to gain an even bigger expressive effect.

Contour lines will be added to the characters if there is time left. These lines will be hand-drawn to express the hand-made human warmth that CGI cannot capture.

Figure 22: Mood board style.

ANIMATING

It will not be easy to establish certain traditional animation principles when animating in CGI. According to the research it is difficult to add exaggeration and squash and stretch animations. These are important because they enhance the emotional response. Of course, these principles are better established nowadays then they were 10 years ago. In the process of rigging, certain progression is made already.

For instance, they invented flexi planes, which can bend, squash and stretch. They are sometimes added to the character rigs to give them more flexibility. I have added some flexi planes in the rigs done on the models of the leopard to get a more stable animation. Exaggeration can be more easily added by these new inventions. Furthermore, exaggeration can be added by using blend shapes for facial expression. This implies making changes on a copy of the model and make these controllable. All in all, there are some workarounds to get these traditional animation principles in CGI animation, this takes more time and effort, but does pay off in the end. Of course, these inventions have their limits when animating and cannot be pushed as broadly as they can be in 2D animation.

The points stated on properly portraying the emotional response were kept in mind while animating the scenes. Time was taken to convey the emotional message and the audience will be given time to recognize the characters emotions.

6) CONCLUSIONS & DISCUSSION 

There are many ways to reach catharsis / emotional bonding in hybrid animated movies. As well as there are several options in the field of emotional storytelling and visual storytelling.

Emotions are automatic value responses on our surroundings triggered by the thought process. We form our conclusions based on personal values and experience that trigger our emotional response. Emotion is shown through character’s actions taken in order to reach their objectives. Humans empathize with the emotions underneath these actions. Emotions are essential for survival. The audience will remember scenes that are important for our survival. Therefor scenes with a deep-rooted emotional experience are remembered. Chang (2015) stated at the start of the research that it’s not only about how well a story is told or memorized, but the emotional experience that happens during the story. It is however, the emotional experience that takes care of the fact that the story is memorized at all. Combining physical and emotional tension can let the audience experience deep-rooted emotions. Other elements that cause these emotions are suspense, anticipation, interest, curiosity and surprise. It is interesting to see that the thought process, emotions and survival as well as the actions taken are deeply intertwined.

Seeing as emotional storytelling is all about getting your audience involved with the characters emotions, the audience has to be able to connect with and relate to the character. We came across several ways to do this. In all stories it is about our moral and emotional bonds. It is important to show the vulnerable side of your character as early in the story as possible. Furthermore the (non-human) character has to show human behavior and choices to make people care. Additionally, the use of Anthropomorphous animals evokes empathy, especially when this is used to highlight certain pet-like characteristics. These pets need to behave humanlike, have human characteristics to let the audience relate to them. This is questionable though, because in some animated movies, the animals are just animals as we know them. For instance, in Mulan, there Figure 23: Little brother from Mulan (1998) is little brother, the dog, who only shows dog behavior. Yet we care, because he is cute and funny. We already emphasize with animals from this world. Animals have some basic emotions that can lead to their actions. Animal characters could just act as they are if it is truly the emotion underneath the action that people emphasize with. Yet, by the animals’ humanlike choices and actions, they can better express the non-humans personhood. Death, separation, loneliness and sacrifice are tear triggering events. This of course correlates together with the experience of the audience. For adults have experienced love and death, which are emotions that children won’t understand yet. When these events are set in a family setting, most people, including children, are familiar with the subject. Therefor they should be able to relate more easily to the events.

On the area of animating, Disney and Shekhar both state that the quality of the animation enhances the emotional response. Yet, David O’Reilly contradicts this by saying that consistency is more important and therefor that when the animation is bad, it can still work. From my experience I can say that I actually agree with both opinions. It doesn’t matter how well it is animated, as long as the animation makes it clear what the character thinks and feels. For David’s movie Please Say Something it worked out fine.

Visual Storytelling adds to emotional storytelling. There are several tools that can help letting the audience experience the wanted emotion. One of them is composition. The staging, colors and lighting are balanced to set the mood, characters, direct the viewers’ attention, creating depth and maintaining visual continuity. The most important element that adds to the audience’s sympathy is the composition created by the Camera Positions. Especially the Close-Up and Point of View from the characters can evoke empathy or even fear, based on whether attention is directed to the protagonist or the antagonists. Also, the camera angle, using either a high or a low angle position, evokes sympathy by making characters look strong or weak. Combining these positions with a Pan or Handheld camera motion empowers the sympathy. The handheld motion gives

41 the viewer a more documentary feeling that adds to the feeling of being “Present” in the scene or even being the character when used from a P.O.V. perspective. We learned that the feeling of being “Present” in the world as well as a meaningful theme intensifies the emotional response.

Accentuating an emotion in animation is not only done by using time wisely, it can also be done in the editing part. This is done by underscoring the scene using smash-cuts, match-cut transitions using visual metaphors for the emotion or even time manipulation.

An animated movie doesn’t have to feel real, it has to be believable. If this is not the case, the movie won’t work. Of course this depends on the kind of movie you’re making. When it is an abstract film, it won’t be believable anyway. Animated movies have some advantages on this subject. In first place, they are not seen as somebody else’s story. Besides that, there is visual freedom. Traditional animation has its advantages over CGI animation. Things don’t have to look realistic to be believable. Therefor deformation and exaggeration can be easily applied. Exaggeration is the most important animation principle that enhances the emotion. Also, the 2D style is more expressive. Contour lines and strokes have a handmade quality which is associated with human warmth. Furthermore, expressive footage activates the emotional reward center of the brain. Last but not least, the style takes care of staying out of the uncanny valley, unlike in CGI animation. The more realistic an animated style becomes, the more the characters enter the uncanny valley. The realism has to stay consistent to be believable. Therefor objects and characters have to be animated more realistically to feel like they belong in that world. For instance, the movie Final Fantasy, this looks so realistic, it feels uncanny. You cannot do moving holds in this movie because of the level of realism. CGI animation has its own advantages that can be used to combine traditional animation with CGI animation. CGI animation uses automatic inbetweening, which saves much time. Of course, other things, like modeling and rigging the characters or modeling the entire environment take more time and effort. Furthermore, you have complete freedom and control of camera movement, not having to redraw backgrounds. Lastly, when done properly, objects and animations can be recycled easily.

CASE STUDY:

I want to illustrate with a movie that these formulas are not always used well. The Wild (2006), is a computer animated Disney classic that I have seen twice because I didn’t remember what the movie was about the first time. I watched it during my research period so I did notice a couple of things. But first, let us talk about the story. Here, a little Lion from the New York Zoo accidentally ends up on a ship sailing to Africa. He ran away after failing to roar and wanting to find it in the wild, like his dad said he did. In charge of father Lion, five other animals from the zoo set out to rescue him. They arrive in Africa after traversing New York and its sewers and even by sailing a boat themselves The story felt stolen from Madagascar, Finding Nemo and The Lion King, even though the animals did seem to have a better reason to set out for the wild when compared to Madagascar. Moreover, there was this really awkward plot twist where wildebeests, also called gnus, wanted to climb up on the food chain by becoming meat eaters. To make matters worse, this was on an island that was being evacuated because of a volcano that was about to erupt. What would be the use of climbing up on the food chain when all other animals left the island? All these plot twists and changes only raised questions more than raising the tension in the story. So, when building tension, think about what fits into the story. Anthropomorphism is applied here by giving all characters their own personality. Yet it felt that some only had character flaws. Many characters had a very annoying personality and did the same thing over and over again. It made the movie feel overcrowded. None of the characters grew to become something more or learned anything along the way. Nobody cared about them even though they did show human behavior and made human choices. The extra characters felt unnecessary, probably due to some of the characters not always having an objective or clear obstacle to overcome. I noticed that I didn’t care for any of the characters, except the little lion. This because he was actually separated from his family and was all alone out there in the wild, known as the tear triggering event. I came to pity him when I learned about his rescue team. Even though father lion was the main character, I did only care about father Lion when he was forced by his own friends to eat an annoying wild animal alive. Not because the animal was annoying, but because the other animals wanted to see his true wild nature.

Even though I am sure Disney used the visual tools well, seeing as the animated movie was beautifully rendered and the characters looked more realistic then those of Madagascar. New York City didn’t have any human characters walking about, streets felt empty and this caused another loss in believability. They also lost believability by having chameleons make a lion completely invisible. This could be due to the realistic rendering of the animals, which brought them close to the uncanny valley. If the movie was 2D animated, it would have looked less weird because of visual freedom. Even though, the characters were well animated, since the story was too bad to remember all of it, this proves that the quality of the animation isn’t responsible for making a good movie.

All in all, a good emotional animated movie depends on the story as well as its visual style, character depth and a plot that matters. Of course, there are points that weren’t discussed in this research, like character archetypes and story structure. These are factors that do help in writing good stories though. Furthermore, keep in mind that this research is based on both facts and opinions. In order to prove these opinions right, further research should be done.

REFERENCES 

FESTIVAL TALKS  Playgrounds Festival (2014) Talks from Ben Hibon, Kevin Dart, Jon Burgerman, Laika & Julian Frost, Tilburg & Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  Klik festival (2014, November 8), Talk from VFX supervisor Josh Staub about Disney’s 3D animated short “Feast”, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  FMX 2015, Film festival (2015, May 5), Talk from Creative Director Sergio Pablos, about content development. And the new movie “Klaus”. Stuttgart, Germany.

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Schaller, B. (2005, April 1). The 9 classic camera moves. Retrieved April 6, 2015 from Videomaker: http://www.videomaker.com/article/10775-the-9-classic-camera-moves Sciretta, P. (2014, July 26). Laika wants To Bring 2D Hand-Drawn Animation Back. Retrieved November 1, 2014, from Slash Film: http://www.slashfilm.com/laika-hand-drawn-animation/ Shekhar, A. (2015). Animated Works: Ability to Induce Strong Emotions. Retrieved June 9, 2015, from the artifice: http://the-artifice.com/animated-works-emotions/ Sims, A. (2014). Disney animator reveals what ‘Frozen’ would’ve looked like as a 2D, hand-drawn film. Retrieved November 2, 2014, from Hypable: http://www.hypable.com/2014/07/01/frozen-2d-handdrawn-animation- concept-art/ Thomas, F. and Johnston, O. (1981) Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. Abbeville Press, New York. Thomas, F. and Johnston, O. (2003) Animation Tips > Keys to Emotion in Animation. Retrieved June 9, 2015 from Frank & Ollie.com: http://www.frankanollie.com/KeysToEmotion.html Touchmann, M. & Francis, M. (2004, May 17). Turf war: Is 2D animation dying? Retrieved October 11, 2014, from Digital Arts Online: http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/creative-lifestyle/turf-war-is-2d- animation-dying/ Van Sijll, J. (2005). Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every. Michael Wiese Productions. Visch, V. T., Tan, E. S., & Molenaar, D. (2010). The emotional and cognitive effect of immersion in film viewing. Cognition and Emotion, 24(8), 1439-1445. Voris, J. (2009) Difference Between Emotions and Feelings. Retrieved May 23, 2015 from: John Voris.com: http://johnvoris.com/featured-articles/difference-between-emotions-and-feelings/ Weiss, T. (2009) Camera Blocking for emotional impact: How to tell stories with a camera. Presentation, retrieved march 20, 2015 from pixel workshop: http://www.pixelworkshop.at/files/lectures/Camera%20Blocking%20for%20Emotional%20Impact_paper.pdf Wells, P. (2002). Animation: genre and authorship (Vol. 13). Wallflower Press. Wikipedia. Dolly Zoom, Retrieved April 4, 2015 form Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_zoom Semerdjiev, S. Catharsis: The Common Goal of Storytelling and Life. Wendig, C. (2011, November 8th) 25 Things you should know about suspense and tension. Retrieved March 6, 2015 from Terrible minds: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/11/08/25-things-you-should-know-about- suspense-and-tension/ (YMI) Youth Media International Ltd. (2002) Film Editing: Manipulating Time and Space. Teacher’s Resource Guide.

BOOKS  Merriam-Webster, Inc. (Ed.). (1995). Merriam-Webster's encyclopedia of literature. Merriam-Webster. p. 217.  O'Hailey, T. (2010). Hybrid animation: integrating 2D and 3D assets. Taylor & Francis.

MOVIES & SHORTS  Secret of Kells (2009). Promotional Trailer, Cartoon Saloon, Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw2_HZTuQBE  The Lion King (1994). Scene: Mufasa’s Death, Disney, Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBIDvdlpHlk  The Lorax (2012). Scene - The last Truffula tree; Illumination Entertainment, Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9j6pUifdAk

IMAGES  Cover: Movie still “Paperman” (Disney, 2012). Downloaded From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM6cLnscmO8  Figure 1: Movie Still ”The Lion King” (Disney, 1994). Downloaded from: http://www.forafewmoviesmore.com/lists/top-5-saddest-movie-scenes/  Figure 2: Movie Still ”Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” (2010). Scene: Tale of the Three brothers. Downloaded from: http://www.framestore.com/work/harry-potter-and-deathly-hallows-p1-tale- three-brothers  Figure 3: Movie Still ”Powerpuff Girls Special – Dance Pantsed” (Nickelodeon, 2014). Scene: The City of Townsville. Downloaded from: http://kevindart.tumblr.com/page/3  Figure 4: Movie Still “Brendan and the Secret of Kells” (2009). Downloaded from: https://outnow.ch/Movies/2009/BrendanAndTheSecretOfKells/Bilder/001  Figure 5: Movie still “Hullabaloo” (2014). Downloaded From: https://www.facebook.com/SteampunkAnimation/photos_stream  Figure 6: Movie still “Paperman” (Disney, 2012). Downloaded From: http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2014/04/24/annecy-attendees-will-be-the- first-to-feast-their-eyes-on-quot-feast-quot-walt-disney-animation-studios-newest-short.aspx  Figure 7: Movie still “Feast” (Disney, 2014). Downloaded From: http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/disneys- feast-special-look/  Figure 8: Plutchik’s wheel of emotion from 1980. Downloaded from: http://jackbrummet.blogspot.nl/2011/09/robert-plutchiks-wheel-of-emotions.html  Figure 9: Movie Still ”Toy Story 3” (Pixar, 2010). Scene: The Conveyor Belt. Downloaded from: http://greenninja.org/video-teaching-guide/reincanation/  Figure 10: Movie still “A Bugs Life” (Pixar, 1998). Scene: Entering Bug City. Downloaded from: http://pixar.wikia.com/Bug_City  Figure 11: Overall Color Scheme of Disney Villains & Hero’s (by BlackBat13 on DeviantArt). Downloaded from: http://blackbat13.deviantart.com/art/Disney-Villains-312119300 & http://blackbat13.deviantart.com/art/Mouse-House-Heroes-505128348  Figure 12: Different Camera motions (Google SketchUp). Downloaded & adjusted from: http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/1220896  Figure 13: Movie stills o Beauty and the Beast (1991). Downloaded from: http://www.blu- raydefinition.com/reviews/beauty-and-the-beast-diamond-edition-blu-ray-review.html o Mulan (1998). Downloaded from: http://physics163semesterproject.wikispaces.com/A+Girl+Worth+Fighting+For o The Iron Giant (1999). Downloaded from: http://whysoblu.com/los-angeles-animation-festival- the-iron-giant/ o The Boxtrolls (2014). Downloaded from: http://www.technologytell.com/entertainment/51529/movie-review-boxtrolls/  Figure 14: Example first three animation principles.  Figure 15: Beauty and the Beast (Disney, 1991). Library Perspective from: (Finkelstein, 2003)  Figure 16: Carpet from Aladdin (Disney 1993) o CGI Carpet. Downloaded from: http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Carpet o Hand-drawn Carpet. Downloaded from: http://asjjohnson.deviantart.com/art/Carpet-v1- 348105041  Figure 17: o Making of Paperman (Disney, 2012). Downloaded from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZJLtujW6FY / http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TZJLtujW6FY/maxresdefault.jpg o Movie Still from Feast (Disney, 2014). Downloaded from: http://i2.wp.com/www.cgmeetup.net/home/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Making-of-Disney- Feast-16.jpg?resize=640%2C360  Figure 18: Teaser Trailer Still from “Klaus” (SPA Studios, 2016). Downloaded from: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.nl/2015/06/hand-drawn-animated-film-klaus.html  Figure 23: Little Brother movie still from Mulan (Disney, 1998). Downloaded from: http://images6.fanpop.com/image/articles/205000/disney-princess_205879_2.jpg?cache=1364435056

APPENDIX

A. Planning B. Animated movie analysis C. Directors statement D. Written Storyboard

A. PLANNING

Planning spread along periods: Period 3, Period 4, Period 5

1. Find online sources and books to answer the sub questions 2. Storytelling Research (1 month) a. Literature study to Emotional storytelling b. Analyzing emotional storytelling structure within movies & games. c. Write synopsis & script based on research. d. Write storytelling research Document 3. Artistic research (1 month) a. Literature study to Visual storytelling i. Storyboarding b. Literature study to Character design c. Visual experiments of style i. Mood boards ii. Color studies iii. Character Design iv. Costume Design v. Backgrounds d. Write Artistic Research Documents 4. Hybrid animation Research (1 month) a. Literature study to hybrid animation b. Prototypes of hybrid animation 5. Technical research (1 month) a. Modeling in Maya b. Texturing in Maya & Z-Brush c. Rigging in Maya d. Animating in Maya e. Experiment with 2D style techniques within Autodesk Maya. i. Shading / 2D cell shading ii. Lighting iii. Render techniques f. Write technical Research Document 6. Write actual research rapport based on other research documents (1 week) 7. Make final movie (2 months)

B. MOVIE ANALYSIS

REASONS TO CRY

To get to know on which events people cry the internet was searched on which movies the audience burst into tears. Several forums were searched and some movies and events popped up. Below, you find a list of movies, the events and important findings.

Table 1 - Tears of Grief: Death & Loss

Movie Event Cause the land before time (1988) Littlefoot’s mom dies bad guy The Lion King (1994) Mufasa dies bad guy Finding Nemo(2003) A barracuda snatched up Nemo’s mother bad guy Up (2009) Carl Loosing Ellie Disease Toy Story 3 (2010) The Incinerator Scene bad guy

Bambi (1942) mother dies Human: Hunter Beauty and the Beast (1991) When Belle almost loses the Beast Human: Gaston, a hunter Tarzan (1999) Kurchack, Tarzan’s second Father is killed Human: Clayton the Hunter Ice Age (2002) Manny’s background story Human: Hunters Brother Bear (2003) Kenai telling Coda he killed his mother Human: Kenai, a hunter The Princess and the Frog (2009) Ray the firefly is squished Human: Voodoo doctor Tangled (2010) Flinn rider dying Human: Witch

The iron giant (1999) Iron Giant saves the town Sacrifice Frozen (2013) Anna sacrificing herself to safe Elsa Sacrifice / Love Big Hero 6 (2014) Baymax staying behind, saving Hiro Sacrifice How to train your dragon 2 (2014) Dad got killed saving his son Sacrifice / Love

Table 2 - Tears of Sorrow: Separation & loneliness

Movie Tear triggering Scene Category Dumbo (1941) Mother gets locked away for protecting her child Separation The Fox and the hound (1981) Farewell song, saying goodbye to Frey Separation Pocahontas (1995) Saying goodbye forever to john smith Separation Monsters Inc. (2001) Sully saying goodbye to boo Separation Toy Story 2 (1999) Break up between Jessie and her Kid Separation Toy Story 3 (2010) Andy saying goodbye to his toys Separation Big Hero 6 (2014) Hiro seeing his brother projected on Baymax Separation The rescuers (1977) Madame medusa taking Teddy, Penny’s only friend and Separation possession

The rescuers (1977) Penny singing prayer with teddy bear Loneliness Lady and the Tramp (1955) The Dog Pound Song – when one of the dogs starts to cry Loneliness Oliver & Company (1988) Oliver all alone in the rain Loneliness The Little Mermaid (1989) The ship sails off for the wedding without Ariel Loneliness The Hunchback of the Notre The crowd throwing things at Quasimodo Loneliness Dame (1996) Lilo & Stitch (2002) Stitch saying: “I’m lost” Loneliness

Table 3 - Tears of joy: Bonds made

Movie Event relationship Little Mermaid (1989) Ariel telling her dad she loves him. Family A Goofy movie (1995) Father and son song while floating down the river Family Hunchback of the Notre Dame Quasimodo’s joy when Phoebus and Esmeralda get Friends / Love (1996) together. Mulan (1998) All of China bows for Mulan for saving them all. Gratefulness Up (2009) Carl gives Russel his Ellie badge Like a father Tangled (2010) Rapunzel being united with her family Family Frozen (2013) Anna saving Elsa Family How to train your dragon 2 (2014) When the love song from Dad is answered by Mom Family / Love

It is interesting to see that the events can be classified in 5 categories: death, sacrifice, separation, loneliness & relationships / family. These are the events where people can relate to easily based on analysis done on online forums.

ORIGINALITY:

Bowen (2012) compared a list of Pixar Films to DreamWorks to determine which studio was better. He compared the first 4 movies with each other, but forgot to mention Brave and How to train your dragon. Next to that, the movie Turbo, from DreamWorks came out, about a snail that wanted to race. This is in my opinion a Rip-off from Pixar’s Cars & Ratatouille. It gets harder to be original when time passes. For me, the battle between which studio is better doesn’t matter, because they will always produce some movies which will be better or worse than their former movies.

Table 4: a list of comparable movies.

Common Ground Pixar / Disney DreamWorks Ant colony A Bug’s Life (1998) Antz (1998) Monsters Monsters Inc. (2001) Shrek (2001) Fish Finding Nemo (2003) Shark Tale (2004) Superhero’s The Incredibles (2004) Megamind (2010) Zoo animals to the wild The Wild (2006) Madagascar(2005) Racing Cars (2006) Turbo (2013) China Mulan (1998) Kung Fu Panda (2008)

REFERENCE MATERIAL FOR ANIMATING

Table 5: catlike animals & hunters in movies.

Animals Humans Movie Hunter Movie Hunter Jungle Book Shere Khan Bambi Hunter The Lion King Simba Tarzan Clayton The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride Kiara Pocahontas John Smith Tarzan Leopard Brother Bear Kenai & Denahi Aladdin Radja The Rescuers Down Under Poacher Ice Age 3 Diego The fox and the Hound Boss Brave Father

MOVIES & ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Table 6: Environmental Issues

Movie Environmental issue Tarzan Animal trade Madagascar 2 Exotic animal trade Rio Exotic animal trade & animal extinction Rio 2 Deforestation The Lorax Deforestation Pocahontas Deforestation Panda Vision Fishing, global warming, Deforestation Happy Feet Plastic waste in the ocean / Global Warming Happy Feet 2 Plastic waste in the ocean / Global Warming Ice Age: The Meltdown Global Warming & animal extinction The Fox and the hound Hunting for pleasure Finding Nemo fishing Animals United Dam building Bee Movie disappearance of bees Cloudy with chance of meatballs food waste Cloudy with chance of meatballs 2 Ecosystem destruction How to train your dragon Plague

Forums investigated: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/sad-childhood-moments_n_4311422.html http://blogs.disney.com/oh-my-disney/2013/08/08/see-if-you-can-make-it-through-this-without-crying/ http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/classic-disney/answers/show/65015/any-disney-movies-made-cry http://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Buzz-Which-Animated-Movies-Made-You-Cry-3229531

C. DIRECTORS STATEMENT

THE HUNTER

When I was a child, I never played with dolls. I only played with animal toys which I gave their own personalities and made up my own stories. Because of my great love for animals, I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was young. I wanted to mean something for the animals. It hurts me to see that so many species have gone extinct within the last century, mostly due to human behavior. They hunt, destruct natural habitats, slaughter animals for their skins, meat, teeth and for useless research. Our environment is still changing drastically by our hands, getting destroyed for living and harvesting. To make people aware, emotional storytelling within movies can deliver this message.

This is the main reason why I started studying a Master course in Animation. I feel this urge to be part of writing those amazing stories and realizing them to astonishing movies. I want to evoke wonder, like Pixar within their very first series of movies. But most of all, I want to touch people’s hearts, make them feel sympathy and compassion for characters which have to deal with harsh decisions in life. And make the audience feel good with a happy ending, to let them know it’s never too late to change.

The movie will be about a poacher, who is just an ordinary man trying to make a living. Because he is poor, he doesn’t have any other choice than getting money by poaching. On the moment he wants to shoot a powerless Leopard, he changes his heart and mind.

A story works because of emotional impact with a meaningful theme for deeper emotional triggers. To get the people emotionally involved within this story, the focus will be on love, fear, death and doing the right thing. You need the emotional connection with the character to relate to by exposing a characters vulnerable side as early in the story as possible. Another way to get people involved is by building emotional tension triggering deep-rooted emotions. Emotional tension is about fear, betrayal, psychological wounds which creates the most tremulous tension of all. Emotional reactions depend on personal experience, but most people have been through the state of loving someone deeply.

To evoke sympathy for the animals, one character will be an intelligent animal with human behaviors. Anthropomorphism suits animated movies and can create empathy within human beings, because they can relate to their pets. If a characters personality doesn’t feel human, the audience cannot easily relate to these characters. That is why people will be able to relate to how the animals feel and understand the story from their side. People remember movies that touch them in an emotional way and astonish them more intensely.

Because of being the director, storywriter and animator of this story, all strings are within my hands. For me, this is really a way to explore the world of animation and learn about the different roles animation movie makers have. Animation is different from live-action movies and can more easily address harsh stories to a public in a different way. It can soften the message by using different visuals.

The style of the movie will not be determined by CGI techniques. The movie will be made using CGI animation, but will not have the look and feel of a CGI movie. There is something happening within the animation world. Disney abandoned 2D animation, along with many other big studios. Therefore I am going to explore the possibilities of getting this 2D look back within a CGI made movie. Disney is already on to this with their short movies “Paperman” & “Feast”. But there must be more to 2D movies then the look only. The fundamentals of 2D animation I will try to get back within animating, using squash and stretch techniques and the fundamentals of movement within hand-drawn animation. CGI animation takes less time animating, yet, I feel there is something missing and I want to find out what, by exploring these parts.

D. STORY WRITTEN OUT FOR STORYBOARDING

Legend Camera: S = Shot, A = angle, M = motion

S Character Action / image Camera Sound Emotion 1 Grass moving on the ground S: Wide shot Deer running A: High angle Grass moving M: Steady Big cat chasing Hunter Hunter investigating paw print S: C.U. Serenity  Kneeling down at paw print A: Above Snap Sound of trap,  Going over the print with his hand to reveal it M: Steady Roar of Cat S: C.U. Hunter looks up to the direction of the sound. A: Side Flying sound / leaves Distraction  Hunters face turns in direction of sound M: Tilt up moving  Birds are flying out of the bush. Blur Reveal Hunter Hunter walking with fast pace A: Front / side Footsteps approaching  A steady small pool, which reflects the up flying birds in the sky M: Steady Splash of water & surroundings. Footsteps leaving  A foot stamps in the water of the pool and leaves the pool again.  The pool gets steady again : Title appears in the water 2 Hunter Hunter walking carefully towards spot where roar came from, puts his A: Full shot Light footsteps, small Vigilance back against the big trunk, Turns, and watches carefully over tree trunk. sounds of rifle. Surprise Leopard Winda has back towards the hunter and shakes her paw. P.O.V. Hunter Trap chain is clinging S: Establishing shot. M: Steady zoom Leopard Winda pulls her stuck paw away from the trap / foothold. S: CU. A: High angle Frustration M: Steady Leopard Winda growls, her face turns in pain and anger S: CU. A: Low angle Growl Pain  Anger M: Steady Leopard Winda starts attacking the trap S: Full shot Grrrrrrr Aggressiveness  She gets into attack position and jumps from left to right A: Normal  She claws and growls to the trap. M: Pan with leopard to man  In the background we see the hunter getting ready to aim Reveal with blur Leopard Winda starts biting the trap S: Full Shot / Close up shoe Man gets up, walks in Rage  Man approaches leopard from behind, his shoe comes in the A: Low angle silently, last pace Vigilance image Surprise Winda turns around

S Character Action / image Camera Sound Emotion 3 Hunter Hunter is aiming straight at Winda, looking straight at the creature with S: CU. Face, POV, A: Low angle Anticipation both eyes open. M: Pan up Quickly Leopard Winda gets into defense position, keeping herself small, looking up, ready S: Full Shot  C.U. Grrrrrrr Anger & Fear / to jump, growling. A: High Angle, M: Steady Aggressiveness Rifle gets loaded: S: C.U. Loading gun sound  Rifle + hand movement A: Low Angle, M :Steady Leopard Winda gets back , trying to pull the trap off with all of her paws. S: Full Shot Rankling chain, pain Terror / Pain A: High Angle, M: steady growl, Hunter Hunter squeezes with one of his eyes. S: ECU. Body mass laying down Determination (Winda goes to lie down on her belly) M: Steady zoom Apprehension Hunter opens slowly both eyes, heightens brews Awe / Surprise Leopard Winda is laying down S: Medium Shot Acceptance  She tries to stand and falls through her paws A: Normal Falling body mass Submission  She looks up helplessly , then closes her eyes. M: Steady Mourn sound Hunter Hunter lowers his rifle and his brows S: Medium Shot Distraction  He looks up, gets up one brow, looks at the creature, and thinks A: Normal, M: Steady Pensiveness  He opens his mouth in awe. Boredom  He thinks of something else and gets his gun up quickly again Annoyance Leopard Shot of mother lying there helplessly S: Full shot Submission We see the bushes and in there, there is something moving. A: Low angle Moving Grass Sound Winda looks up in the direction of the bush M: Backup into bushes Interest 4 Little one Sanura comes slowly out of the bushes, asking for her mom. S: Full shot, A: High Angle Meowing sound M: Steady Leopard Mom tries to stand but falls down in pain, looking at Sanura. closing her S: OTS Sanura, A: Low angle Body impact Fear eyes again, she faints M: Steady Little one Sanura moves closer to her mother with asking hanging ears, focused S: Two shot side / front Little footsteps Vigilance  The hunter throws a rock at her A: Normal Rock impact  Sanura looks at the hunter. M Steady Surprise Hunter Hunter tries to scare of the child S: Medium Shot He sneers at her A: Low angle He moves his gun like: get out of here. M Steady Hunter Sanura gives heads to her mother S: Medium Shot, A: Low angle Purring sound? Pensiveness Hunter The Hunter closes both eyes very tight, and looks away from his target S: Medium Shot Fear He squeezes the trigger softly, his gun is shaking in his hand CU: Steady Terror The hunter opens one eye slowly and drops a tear. CU: Zoom / dolly? Remorse Little one Sanura is licking / nurturing her mother’s paw, pulls her ear S: CU: mother, Full Shot Sanura Licking sound Sadness / Grief

S Character Action / image Camera Sound Emotion 4 Hunter The hunter lowers his gun, and his head S: Medium, A: Normal Sadness He raises his head and looks around. M: Steady Pensiveness He sees a big branch S: Full Shot Branch, M: steady The hunter puts his rifle against a rock and grabs the branch. S: CU Hand lets go of rifle, grabs Sound of rifle, rock and branch twig Hunter He walks towards the little leopard S: OTS Full Footsteps approaching The little Leopard notices him walking, turns his head in direction A: Low Angle (OTS head) CU: Stick M: Steady Little one The little leopard looks at the hunter with big eyes, and slowly backs up, S: OTS Full Anticipation, but growls at the man A: High Angle Fear, Anger (OTS stick & Head) M: Steady following Hunter Hunter tries to calm down Sanura S: OTS Full / Middle  Approaching slowly A: High Angle  Normal Angle  Getting through his knees M Following Middle Shot  Lowering the stick, putting it aside Little One Sanura growls from a distance S: Establishing shot Grrrr Fear The hunter kneels down next to Winda and looks at the trap. A: Normal / Side, M: steady Hunter He opens the foothold with both hands S: Close up Great force sound Focused He carefully and slowly pulls of the trap from Winda’s Paw, A: High Angle, M: steady Hunter Gives a firm pull on the chain, which breaks S: Medium Shot OS full middle Sound of trap chain Anger and he throws away the trap. A: High Angle Sanura sees this M: Steady, following the trap. Little one Sanura opens her jaw and her eyes enlarge S: Close Up, A: Normal angle Amazement M: Steady Admiration The hunter grabs his gun. S: OTS The little child slowly moves forward A: High angle Hunter Sanura sees the hunter run of in great speed. S: OTS Desperation A: Low Angle 6 Hunter The hunter throws away his gun S: Medium Shot Gun falls on ground Disgust, Anger He lowers his head. He grabs something from his pockets A: Normal Angle M: Steady Sound of paper Sadness We see a family picture S: C.U. OTS, A:High Angle A tear wells up on the hunters face S: E.C.U. OTS, A: Low angle Hunter The hunter sinks down to his knees in desperation and weeps S: Full Shot Grief M: Zoom out  Fade out