Jack

Here, I present to you, my Amazing Wooden Man. His name is Jack. It's kind of a play on the rock band, Jack's Mannequin. This guy is a fully posable character, he can do anything I want him to. It took me about a weekend to create him, and then many more weeks to "rig" him, that is creating a virtual skeleton inside him so I can pose him, like a toy action figure. The one thing you'll probably notice about him, is that he's kind of missing a face, and no, it's not because of the pretty much nonexistent production budget. As a matter of fact, for a while I toyed with the idea of showing his facial expressions through a "pencil drawn" face, as if somebody had scribbled a smiley face on his head just for the heck of it. As you can see I gave up this idea, mostly because I wanted to focus on the showing his emotion through his physical character, his motions, the way he holds himself. Why? Because I think that is really the essence of animation, bringing characters to life. Making them feel real enough that you, the audience, can relate to and almost see them as real. Look at Luxo Jr., the Pixar Short with the little lamp that hops around. If you haven't ever seen it, you can check it out here. It's a very short, simple film, that has influenced and partially inspired mine. The lamp has no face at all, and he can really do nothing but hop around. Yet you can still feel what he's thinking. You see the simple emotions in this little lamp, his enthrallment with the ball, his childish disappointment when it's gone, and his total excitement when he finds a new one. This emotion is one of the biggest things that I want to see in my film when it's complete. Now you might be reading this and kind of laughing to yourself. Maybe animation isn't your thing, and you'd rather have intense action films like the classic Matrix, or Rush Hour. Well to tell the truth, I'm a bit of an action flick fan myself. I really enjoy seeing a good well done fight sequence. Then why am I so enthralled with animation? Because the same basic idea applies to an intense live action film, as it does to a cute humorous animated short. That idea: story telling. And I suppose that what I've been getting at through this whole post. I said that showing emotion through a character is the essence of animation. But animation is only part of the whole film, only one part, that works together with all other aspects of the film to tell a story. And that story telling, is the essence of filmmaking. It's an age old tradition, and an art. An art that I've set out to learn.