Below, I have examined the styles of three animations that I am currently heavily inspired by. Here I have noted down what stands out the most to me, the majority of these notes being based upon the style of the animations. I feel that this has given me a lot to think about on terms of what makes an animation style effective and how I can further better my own. The first image here is from She-ra Princesses of Power. This animation has inspired me a lot during my progress this term. This is mostly in regard to character design, character development, and plot content. Features such as simplicity in facial structure have been a huge influence in my style itself as I now try to minimize the amount of detail around the face. With the animation, it is also quite simple, however, it retains a good amount of realism with how the characters move and interact – this is kept relatively consistent. This is something that I would be inclined to do with my body of work.
I would be lying if I said that Kipo and the age of wonder beasts didn’t inspire me in some format. I particularly adore this show and the style of animation- one of my favourite aspects about it is its use of cinematography. This heavily resonated with me as I was able to feel the emotions from the story more intensely along with the character dialogue. With my animation, my aim is to attempt to have a similar goal. At the moment, our team is currently thinking along the colour hues of our animation to be based on blue/purple hues, therefore looking at Kipo for reference has been a huge help in determining how this might turn out for my group.
Lastly, I also re-watched Spirited Away in order to understand more about how Studio Ghibli effectively uses a mixture of realism and cartoon styles to portray the style that they are well known for. Moreover, I chose this particular movie as I felt that the use of expressions is something I can learn from. This is specifically shown in the main character Chihiro, whom I was heavily inspired by for my animatic. Her expression in the scene shown below was one that influenced my character to be frightened and flee into nearby bushes. If I hadn’t looked into how Studio Ghibli portrays expression, I would have not given much thought to how other parts of the face might alternate in relation to the emotion- for example, how Chihiro’s hair becomes almost static-like, her eyes become larger and shoulders tenser. Whilst thinking about my animation, this is something I thought a lot about.
In conclusion, I found this activity of examining the styles of the below animations really beneficial towards my journey into the subject of animation.
Image reference links:
https://math.scholastic.com/issues/2019-20/090219/she-ra.html
https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/10/21430682/kipo-and-the-age-of-wonderbeasts-season-3-release-date-netflix
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ImageLinks/ExpressiveHair