OUAN505 - Applied Animation: Academic Texts

OUAN505 - Academic Texts:

After having read through some of the academic texts posted on eStudio, I chose 'Drawing Voices' by Jacqueline Goss as my favourite as I found it particularly useful having done a bit of a sound production and animating to those sounds.

The article's main observation is that of immigration and travelling to the U.S. Goss explored stories from that of her friends, colleagues, and students of their experiences getting into the country. She asked them to use the popular World of Warcraft online game to create a character to tell their story as she believed this would be more interesting than filming them and so on.

The article talks about how it is good to leave in some of the flaws of a recorded interview such as 'ums' and 'ahs' as it represents a more natural flow of speech and conversation. Pauses indicate thought and allow the audience to understand what is happening and how the speaker feels and reacts to a situation. When those slight imperfections are taken out, a piece of speech can seem quite flat and monotonous making it harder to assess the situation.

Goss looks at how her interviewees go about choosing a character and how this may or may not suit the tone of the story being told by said character. For instance, she took note that one person used an ugly, savage-looking orc to represent their recollection of events even though the speech didn't match the appearance of the character - soft tone, warm. She described this phenomenon quite similar to that of the 'Elephant Man' of which an appearance might be very deceiving from the personality of the person, but we somehow seem to 'match' them together and an often uncanny opposite eventually becomes the perfect accompaniment. After some time, the orc eventually fits in with the voice and we see past it's grotesque appearance and have a connection with it.

The most prominent point I think was made in the article was that it is relatively achievable to obtain a different hair colour, style, different facial features, eye colour, and anything physical. However, if someone truly wants to know the real you, they should listen to your voice as your voice never really changes and will always reflect how you truly feel and act towards others and situations. I completely understand this and connect with it very much. I think the interviews Goss carried out represent this statement very well as although each participant was able to choose a character to represent them, their voice was the most honest and realistic as it couldn't be changed.