Stage25:Showreel and Summary

I have summarised my work in fmp as follows.

  • Character and scene design
  • Storyboard and dynamic storyboard
  • Modelling of characters and scenes
  • Character texture
  • Character rigging (body and expressions)
  • Animation
  • Lighting
  • Rendering
  • Sound effects
  • Editing compositing

I was involved in all the work in this fmp, complete from 2D design to final rendering, which encompassed many aspects and gave me a lot of experience in the 3D animation process. This time I mainly focused on modelling and rigging, as my internship was also about modelling, topology and rigging, so I combined the skills I gained from my work to help me with the pre-fmp work. The downside was that I spent a lot of time in pre-production so I didn’t have a lot of time to do performance animation. In terms of camera language, I was actually trying to narrate an ironic animation for the first time, and I found it difficult to tell a story in a very short time. I wanted to show the addiction of modern youth to video games and the social condition of laziness, which was also inspired by some ironic illustrations and my own state.

For the future I will continue to work on modelling and binding, although these are two modules in the company, a good rigging is more dependent on a good topological model. So I will continue to work hard on the these aspect, including painting weights, and I will also expand my skills in 3D, including proficiency with software such as Zbrush. The content of my internship and the process of FMP has been documented in my previous blog. I have been exposed to and learned about the rigging of various models including characters, clothes, props, cars and other aspects of objects, and FMP has helped me to become more proficient in these skills.

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Stage24: Rendering and Sound effects

I used the school’s render farm for this render, although it was a bit of a struggle as I found that the render farm often reported errors and I found that some shots would skip frames.

Although I usually preview the animation when I’m done in maya, I still adjust the speed of each clip slightly or delete some frames once it’s rendered.

This time I used PR to compose the sequence frames, edit the colour grading and make sound effects. For the dubbing I spent a lot of time looking for material including sound effects and background music. I think my animated short has a high demand for sound because there are a lot of sound effects to match the action and ambient sounds. Although I already had some sound effects from working on the dynamic subs, the final version incorporates the action for a more accurate positioning. It also makes up for some of my movement deficiencies, as I’m not very animated, but I’m still happy with the musical effects.

One of the things I struggled with the most regarding colour grading was the amount of time spent painting to render a sense of atmosphere due to inaccurate computer screen colours, and one thing I regret is that I didn’t render depth of field and motion blur, which I wish I had done in post, but it was more difficult. I hope to go through the colour grading to make up for the lack of colour tendency in the images rendered directly in maya. Added warm highlights and dark shadows.

Before and after contrast.

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Thesis10: Reference

Web Links

https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/analyzing-political-cartoons

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/10/02/15-years-of-dreamworks-animation-and-its-complicated-legacy/?sh=7d4e9e606669

https://www.hypable.com/irony-the-secret-to-pixar-plotting/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-28/social-media-short-film-irony-takes-teen-from-perth-to-pixar/9705432

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/05/humor-and-surprise-endings-computer-animation-fest

https://chicagomaroon.com/article/2020/3/3/self-defeating-irony-progressive-animation/

https://engagingandeffective.com/16-movie-scenes-to-teach-irony-and-other-literary-elements/

Bibliography

Colson, H.L., 2002. Contrast and assimilation in verbal irony. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(2), pp.111-142.

Ezell, S.K., 2016. Humor and satire on contemporary television: Animation and the American joke. London: Routledge.

Griswold, C.L., 2002. Irony in the Platonic dialogues. Philosophy and Literature, 26(1), pp.84-106.

Haverkate, H., 1990. A speech act analysis of irony. Journal of pragmatics, 14(1), pp.77-109.

Kim, Y.J., 2014. A Study of Ironic Features in Full-length Animation of PDI Dreamworks and Pixar-Focusing on< Shrek Forever After> and. Cartoon and Animation Studies, pp.1-17.

Lasseter, J., 1987, August. Principles of traditional animation applied to 3D computer animation. In Proceedings of the 14th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques (pp. 35-44).

MacDowell, J., 2016. Irony in film. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

McGowan, D., 2019. Animated Personalities: Cartoon Characters and Stardom in American Theatrical Shorts. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Muecke, D.C., 2017. Irony and the Ironic (Vol. 12). Milton Park : Taylor & Francis.

Stabile, C.A. and Harrison, M. eds., 2003. Prime time animation: television animation and American culture. London: Routledge.

Stafford, B.M., 2001. Visual analogy: Consciousness as the art of connecting. United States: MIT press.

Stock, O., Strapparava, C. and Valitutti, A., 2008. Ironic expressions and moving words. International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, 22(05), pp.1045-1057.

Uglow, J., 2011. William Hogarth: A Life and a World. London: Faber & Faber.

Verstraten, P., 2016. Humour and irony in Dutch post-war fiction film. Nieuwe Prinsengracht: Amsterdam University Press.

Wells, P., 2006. The fundamentals of animation. United Kingdom:Ava Publishing.

Filmography

Aladdin [DVD]. 1992. Ron Clements, John Musker dir. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.

Alice in Wonderland [film]. 2010. Tim Burton dir. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.

Monster company [film]. 1999. Weston, ‎Massachusetts dir. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.

Ratatouille [film]. 2007. Jan Pinkava dir. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.

The Lion King [DVD]. 1994. Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff dir. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.

Zombie Bride [film]. 2005. Tim Burton dir. California: Tim Burton Production.

Zootopia [film]. 2016. Byron Howard dir. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.

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Stage23: Animation (4)

Cam12、Cam18-Cam20

Cam12 is the action of bringing in the food.

Playblast

There are two characters in Cam18, the takeaway man is animated walking and the fat man is struggling to climb out of the rubbish to get his takeaway. In this shot I recreated the scene again in order to fill the room with more rubbish and to create a phenomenon that traps him and makes it difficult for him to move.

The character in this shot is much fatter than the character in the previous shot and I then scaled the controller and adjusted the model to make the character’s body and limbs even fatter. A body movement is shown through the waist, chest and crotch controls.

Playblast

Cam19 is the animation of him surrounded by rubbish, with a mute expression, still chewing. I increased the amount of rubbish around him and added a chest and head bobbing back and forth to the chewing animation.

Playblast

This shot of Cam20 is about the protagonist who has become so fat that he is close to being a pig, unable to move, and is then hoisted downwards by a crane and the slaughterhouse man pulls him away. The driver waves for the takeaway to put the protagonist down.

Playblast

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Stage22: Animation (3)

Cam9、Cam13-Cm17

These shots feature the end of repetition and the chewing animation advancing more and more. There is also more and more rubbish around the feet.

For the animation of the trash dropping I used the automatic settlement of the kinetics. This is because I felt that it was more natural to use the computer’s own arithmetic than to animate the drops and collisions manually myself.
I watched the relevant video instruction.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1M4411y7BB?from=search&seid=11748828183623976052&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Eb411A7mX/?spm_id_from=333.788.videocard.0

First of all I grouped all the rubbish and turned it into passive collision objects, the floor was also a passive collision object. Then the falling coke as well as the burger boxes, both active objects.

Active falling objects combined with the magnetic field of gravity produce the effect of free fall.

Playblast

The Cam13 action has two parts, an expressive action: surprise, and an animation of the mouth chewing. The surprise expression is mainly indicated by the expressions all over the place including the raising of the eyebrows, the enlargement of the eyes and the displacement of the nose and mouth lights. Then the chewing is animated by the opening and closing of the mouth.

This is followed by two more chewing animations and two dropping animations, which are repeated and fast-paced to bring the story to a climax and connect to the later shots where he is eating more and more and can hardly walk.

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Thesis9: Discuss in conjunction with FMP

Due to my above research and investigation on satirical animation, I also have a more specific and profound summary and Research on my FMP satirical animation. The narrative animation I want to do this time, more accurately, satirical animation, is to express some cruel or unbearable reality through animation works. There is no doubt that there are many problems in our society, such as dependence on technology, taxation, obesity and the depreciation of workers. But this is not a real threat. The real threat is that we refuse to recognize these problems to prove our addiction to them. The plot of my animation this time is: a person addicted to computer games becomes the raw material of the food he eats by constantly eating. This is a simple story, which takes place in a room, and the process is very similar to a cycle. I call it a new way of eating, that is, “we become what we eat”. The whole sub story intuitively shows a fat man who is addicted to computer games and greedily eats all kinds of takeout food. Day after day, there was more and more garbage in the room. The fat man was trapped in the garbage cage and finally couldn’t move. He was sent to slaughter by the takeout shop and turned into a raw material for food.

Inspired satire illustration

There’s no doubt that our society is plagued with problems like dependence on technology, taxes, obesity, devaluation of workers etc. But that is not the real threat. The real threat is the fact that we refuse to acknowledge these problems to justify our addiction to them. On the other hand, artist John Holocraft looks at these problems without batting an eyelid and presents them is a very creative and satirical way.

Voluntarily destroying our health.

We become what we eat.

Social media controls both our mind and body.

You never know the face behind the screen.

On the basis of three semesters of Animation Practice and film language cognition, I want to complete a narrative animation short film combining the two. In general, in my graduation project, I hope to create a meaningful animation to express my thoughts and feelings about some social status quo with story, logic and creativity. I hope my animation can arouse others’ reflection and thinking, which is the purpose of my animation creation. I am willing to use exaggerated and ironic animation to express my views and understanding. Because of my reflection on my life and observation of the current social situation, I found that more and more young people reveal a lazy nature. Most children in today’s world are in a ‘mobile phone’ environment, so they often ‘forget to eat and sleep’ and look at interesting things on the screen.

I think there are many satirical two-dimensional animations, but to make satirical three-dimensional animations, we need to shape the character of the character, we need character animations that meet the character and characteristics, and finally we need to do a good job in the rhythm of the story, first fast and then slow, so that the audience can understand the content of the story. What I spend a lot of time doing is analyzing the characteristics and narrative style of other satirical animation, and then completing the storyboard and layout. Then I created characters and scenes independently, including maps and equipment, and finally lights and rendering. I focused on strengthening my ability in role creation and rigging, combined with my internship and some tutorials. I want to show the exaggeration and atmosphere brought by the picture, and the character animation is not too complex. I made more preparations for the character modeling, including the details of the scene, because compared with some fighting animation, satire animation requires many obscure but reasonable elements. It is an animation that allows the audience to watch it repeatedly without feeling boring. There will also be thinking and arrangement in detail.

In fact, what I want to reveal is the essence of people’s increasing dependence on computer technology. It is also in the environment of reaching out for clothes and opening up food, and even indulging in delicious food. This makes more and more young people trapped in their greed and laziness, and finally become the waste of being slaughtered. Based on this, the satirical elements of my satirical animation are about the following. The first is the scene, a dirty room full of garbage, suggesting that the character is a desperate eater and a lazy man. The second is the protagonist, a fat man who is addicted to online games. His body has become out of shape due to eating and not exercising. In the image of this fat man, I thickened his arms and feet and enlarged the hunchback shape of his body to achieve the effect of irony. The third is the secondary character: the delivery man. He forms a contrast with the protagonist. Then his part is not shown to create a sense of terror and mystery. Finally, it is revealed that he is here to deliver goods. Finally, he sends the pig eater to the slaughterhouse. The fourth is the dim light. I want to pursue a very gray atmosphere, which makes people feel very depressed. The rhythm of animation can be said to be fast, because I want to take repeated shots, which is a narrative skill to enhance satire. I repeatedly photographed the scenes of him eating and the garbage generated in the room, making the music and narration faster and more obvious, so as to reveal the ironic scene that he turned into a pig in the end.

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Stage21: Animation (2)

Cam6-Cam8、Cam10-Cam11

The animation for Cam6 is relatively simple being a door opening movement, mainly a following movement of the arms. There is also the animation of the door opening, which is a deceleration animation with a curve like this.

Playblast

The movement of Cam7 is to go out and bring in the takeaway, which is mainly a large bending movement of the body, also following the movement. There is also an IK in one arm and aFK in the other.

Playblast

Cam8 is the animation of picking up a burger and coke and approaching the camera.

Playblast

Cam10 is a finger movement of two hands.

Playblast

Cam11 is a shot of the takeaway man walking, a large overhead angle. I then did a longer shot of him walking as it will be used again later on.

I referred to some web photos, and one of the more difficult things is that the character has large feet, so the animation of the two feet cannot be very large or it would not fit the character’s personality traits, but it has to follow the movement of walking

Playblast

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Stage20: Animation (1)

Cam1-Cam5

Cam1 is a push shot and I wanted to show the viewer the cluttered room first and foremost rather than the characters, so the shot is set lower and goes through the rubbish. And the character is just playing the game, holding the mouse in his right hand and moving it, with a slight twitch in both feet.

The main movements in this shot are the raising and lowering of a few fingers and the ‘Follow Through and Overlapping Action’ of the arm and shoulder and wrist as the hand holding the mouse shifts, following the 12 rules of animation.

Playblast

Cam2 is following the camera, moving with the character’s hand movements.
This section is dominated by two movements, the picking up of the burger and the biting of the food by the mouth. The hand movements are mainly controlled by the controller which bends the fingers to achieve the grasping effect. The mouth is controlled by an opening and closing controller and the corner of the mouth bobs up and down.

Playblast

Cam3 is also a follow shot, following the hand holding the coke. The main thing is the way the Coke straw is put in the mouth at the end, the way the mouth puffs up, and the winking animation.

Playblast

Cam4 is the coke throwing shot. I animated this shot manually and I don’t think it’s very good and not natural enough. Because I wanted the arm to have a flinging motion, but the character is quite fat and the arm model would be interspersed if the arm made a large turn, so it wasn’t done that way. The angle of this throw is a bit out of place in order to not be natural enough.

Playblast

The focus of Cam5 is on the change of expression, at first it is a more nervous state so the features are squeezed and the eyebrows are facing downwards. Later on, there is a knock at the door, so it is a surprise, and the features spread out, with the mouth and eyebrows shifting more. As well as a blinking animation that accompanies the turning of the head. Then there is the following movement of the body when standing up. Because the character is quite fat, I found it relatively difficult to adjust the animation as well, and some of the overlapping movements are somewhat inconspicuous. Considering his size, he should be a fat man with limited mobility, so I made his movements at a slower pace as well.

Playblast

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Stage19: Test for Rigging and Texture

I first tested the previous character bindings.

Before I started animating, I set up the cameras for each scene and then I put the characters in their designated positions and posed them according to the dynamic storyboard to test the mapping effects and the character bindings etc.

I then make sure that the first frame of each shot is correct and that the lighting colours are satisfactory, and I render so that when I’m done animating I just do a batch render and don’t need to tweak the frame.

First frame shot rendering of 20 shots.

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Thesis8: Results and Findings (2)

Chapter3​

3.1 Narrative and structure​

3.2 Timing and pacing​

3.3 Characters​

3.4 Scenes​

3.5 Color​

3.6 Sound​

3.7 The difference between ironic animation and traditional cartoon animation​

Characterisation and comparison of the elements of ironic animation

In satirical animation, narration refers to telling a story or a series of stories in a certain order, whether real or fictional. It is the basic way for human beings to understand and respond to the world. Narrative generally represents two levels of meaning: “what to say” and “how to say”. “‘what to tell’ refers to the content of the story and ‘how to tell’ refers to the way, so the narrative style refers to the style reflected in the narrative content. Satirical animation is generally a combination of documentary narrative style, virtual narrative style and realistic narrative style. When creating film and television works, artists must consider how to bring the speculative results of subjective artistic thinking to the eyes of the audience , let the audience have real visual and auditory feelings. Based on the theme characteristics of reality, the narrative style of satirical animation is documentary. It is based on the events in real life, and processes, transforms and optimizes them without changing the original events, so as to make them close to life, which has practical significance. The stories it tells are similar as a whole, showing a realistic scene Or based on reality, materialize events and exaggerate the outcome, so as to make the narrative more impact

In the virtual narrative style, virtual characters and virtual events are generally used to narrate stories. When imagination is active, subconscious and unconscious desires and feelings are easily activated and appear through dream like hallucinations. Virtual characters and events are created by the creator’s endless imagination, which allows the audience to understand them endlessly. As a form of artistic expression, satire Stabbing animation is not to copy reality or life, but to convey the creator’s aesthetic value and moral judgment through artistic image, which is the hidden part of image and story, and the meaning carefully designed and processed by the creator and expressed through image. The treatment of virtual narration lies in the virtualization of real life, not directly expressing real life, but through association and analogy Narration is not a direct presentation of real life, but through association, analogy and symbolism.

Generally, satirical cartoons or films have complete plot occurrence, development, climax and ending, and have accurate positioning for the satirical content, so they will have a concise beginning, say the theme, simple and rapid development. The climax takes a little time to show the twists and turns, and the ending is also simple and clear. They say the theme without procrastination, and the plot is highly concentrated. Strong Harmonic analysis is how to express the rich moral and interesting artistic characteristics of ironic animation with short, concise and concentrated content, take the discussion of the evil of human nature and the disclosure of real social problems as the core content, and fully express the theme through various expression methods to arouse people’s thinking

Some ironic animations usually use a very short time to express ironic fragments, but in the context of the whole big story, they use a small fragment to compactly express an ironic phenomenon, artistically reproduce or show human and social problems, achieve the purpose of teasing and satirizing under the visual impact, and produce a relatively perfect artistic effect. The irony of the plot development form in the short animation, It ignores the integrity of the plot, has no cause and effect, and directly focuses on the story. The concentrated plot not only sublimates the theme of the work, but also makes the story attractive and enhances the satirical effect. Due to the limited time and unique satirical characteristics, the arrangement of satirical animation short films is compact and concentrated in the plot. It generally revolves around a simple part of the story narration The powerful contradiction makes the central plot in the story more concentrated, and the audience’s attention also focuses on the central plot, highlighting the expression effect and triggering people’s thinking of seeing the big from the small.

In the cartoon, many classic clown images are used to satirize the dark comedy. When it comes to clowns, they can be traced back to the masked priests worshipped by the religion in the primitive society, and later evolved into clowns who performed funny programs at the carnival. They are not the mainstream characters. They are not subject to the moral criticism and constraints of the traditional social reality, so the consequences of clowns Therefore, the clown role in animation usually has the function of subverting social cognition and critically mocking social reality.

In animation, the satire of dark comedy is reflected by many classic clown images. When it comes to clowns, they can be traced back to masked priests worshipped by religion in primitive society, and later evolved into clowns who performed funny programs at carnivals. They are not mainstream characters. They are not subject to the moral criticism and constraints of traditional social reality, so the consequences of clowns can be determined without social morality. Therefore, the role of clown in animation usually undertakes the function of subverting social cognition and critically mocking social reality.

Usually, in animation, the protagonist usually undertakes the arduous task of saving the world, and is just and brave enough. Although the supporting role is different from the protagonist’s great mission, it is usually arranged by the director to care about unexpected occasions and add humorous language to make the film interesting and thought-provoking
The symbolic meaning of the scene in ironic animation is generally presented directly as a ready-made external thing with perceptual interest, not itself, but the broader and more general meaning it implies. The focus of symbol is not the meaning of ontology, but the new meaning derived from ontology, so as to provide infinite space for thinking and imagination.

Symbolic reference is common in satirical animation, and symbolism is often used to construct meaningful characters. Of course, symbolic scene construction is in contrast to realistic scene construction, that is, extracting typical elements of specific forms and expressing specific themes with other simple or complex roles. This type of scene construction needs to provide better inspiration and guidance in a limited time, and convey the symbolic significance and profound theme that the creator intends to embody in the narrative process.

Symbolic scenes are different from realistic scenes and exaggerated scenes. In most cases, the scene in ironic animation is separated from the complete scene, which generally has two forms. The common one is to replace the scene with an abstract background, which can set off the atmosphere of the story and focus on the characters, which is more conducive to the shaping and characterization of the characters. Another common symbolic scene shaping form is to use strong contrast colors or monotonous colors to create a sense of visual discomfort and conflict without departing from the scene itself, so as to make the artistic expression of the scene stronger.

In ironic animation, the establishment and expression of main tone are relatively flexible. There is no need to use absolute cold and warm or specific colors to locate the tone. When the composition and intention are good, you can use alternating cold and warm colors to create the picture. In terms of color warmth, brightness and purity, the emotion brought by ironic animation to the audience is not absolute. This experience is also related to the audience’s psychological state and environment. The relationship between color and emotion is relative. Using extremely low saturation or exaggerated high contrast colors will give people a visual impact and set the tone for ironic animation.

In the process of drawing works, the use of different colors will bring different psychological feelings to the audience. The color design of satirical animation characters should be unified with the style of the whole film, and the colors that can match the behavior characteristics of comic images should be selected to fully express their emotional characteristics. Color is not only to enrich the vision and play a decorative role, but also to arouse the audience’s emotional experience through visual stimulation. This experience directly affects the audience’s cognition of the role image and understanding of the picture content. Satirical animation enables the director to use the emotional characteristics of color to emphasize the character image and imply that the audience forms a specific attitude towards the character, so that the audience can perceive the information the director wants to express faster and more accurately.

In animation, the satire of dark comedy is reflected by many classic clown images. When it comes to clowns, they can be traced back to masked priests worshipped by religion in primitive society, and later evolved into clowns who performed funny programs at carnivals. They are not mainstream characters. They are not subject to the moral criticism and constraints of traditional social reality, so the consequences of clowns can be determined without social morality. Therefore, the role of clown in animation usually undertakes the function of subverting social cognition and critically mocking social reality. Usually, in animation, the protagonist usually undertakes the arduous task of saving the world, and is just and brave enough. Although the supporting role is different from the protagonist’s great mission, it is usually arranged by the director to care about unexpected occasions and add humorous language to make the film interesting and thought-provoking

The symbolic meaning of the scene in ironic animation is generally presented directly as a ready-made external thing with perceptual interest, not itself, but the broader and more general meaning it implies. The focus of symbol is not the meaning of ontology, but the new meaning derived from ontology, so as to provide infinite space for thinking and imagination. Symbolic reference is common in satirical animation, and symbolism is often used to construct meaningful characters. Of course, symbolic scene construction is in contrast to realistic scene construction, that is, extracting typical elements of specific forms and expressing specific themes with other simple or complex roles. This type of scene construction needs to provide better inspiration and guidance in a limited time, and convey the symbolic significance and profound theme that the creator intends to embody in the narrative process.

Symbolic scenes are different from realistic scenes and exaggerated scenes. In most cases, the scene in ironic animation is separated from the complete scene, which generally has two forms. The common one is to replace the scene with an abstract background, which can set off the atmosphere of the story and focus on the characters, which is more conducive to the shaping and characterization of the characters. Another common symbolic scene shaping form is to use strong contrast colors or monotonous colors to create a sense of visual discomfort and conflict without departing from the scene itself, so as to make the artistic expression of the scene stronger.

In ironic animation, the establishment and expression of main tone are relatively flexible. There is no need to use absolute cold and warm or specific colors to locate the tone. When the composition and intention are good, you can use alternating cold and warm colors to create the picture. In terms of color warmth, brightness and purity, the emotion brought by ironic animation to the audience is not absolute. This experience is also related to the audience’s psychological state and environment. The relationship between color and emotion is relative. Using extremely low saturation or exaggerated high contrast colors will give people a visual impact and set the tone for ironic animation.

In the process of drawing works, the use of different colors will bring different psychological feelings to the audience. The color design of satirical animation characters should be unified with the style of the whole film, and the colors that can match the behavior characteristics of comic images should be selected to fully express their emotional characteristics. Color is not only to enrich the vision and play a decorative role, but also to arouse the audience’s emotional experience through visual stimulation. This experience directly affects the audience’s cognition of the role image and understanding of the picture content. Satirical animation enables the director to use the emotional characteristics of color to emphasize the character image and imply that the audience forms a specific attitude towards the character, so that the audience can perceive the information the director wants to express faster and more accurately.

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