I stumbled upon an animated short named “Wild Dogs” made by Catherine Hicks, a Ringling College of Art and design student. Exaggeration is a key component of the short’s ability to giving her characters personality and is effective in conveying the plotline without any of these characters speaking in any intelligible manner. The facial expressions of the dogs show a wide variety of emotions on display.
Animation has come a long way since the days of Gertie the Dinosaur. These expressions on the dogs’ faces show alot more than the stomping of a happy dinosaur. The dogs are able to show confusion, doubt, surprise, etc. At one of the points in the animation, the shorter dog is able to deceive the other to take the entire dinosaur skeleton instead of just the one bone. Through the motioning of the hands and the widening of the eyes, the animator is able to depict this situation without words.
Although the plot is a bit generic and straightfoward, this animation strives in its ability to present its characters with personality. The taller dog definately appears to be more gullible while the shorter dog is manipulating and aggressive. The quick transitions and changes in their facial expressions is also very well done like the aggressive dog that goes from growling to an extremely happy grin as he looks down at the bones which he will soon have. These facial expressions are very anthropomorphic. For example when the dog is whining and pouting about his stash of bones. Unfortuantely I don’t think the background of this animation is very special so thankfully these characters have alot to offer personality-wise. After reading Ch. 3 of Mice and Magic I learned how the addition of sound to animation must have had huge impact on the way characters could be portrayed. Although this short doesn’t really have the characters speaking words, it does have them making sounds to display their emotions.
I commented on Phillip De Marco’s blog and Samantha Francis’ blog
