Ethics - What is Good?

Themes of ethics are ones that I particularly enjoy exploring, because good and bad morals have changed completely throughout the centuries. Even nowadays it's difficult to determine whether certain things are ethically good or bad, and that's the most fascinating thing about. We often turn to the law or religious books to decide where we stand on our ethics, since they are decided by large groups to define. However, these contradict what true ethics are. There are plenty of theories that contradict each other, but I for one follow the Subjective Relativism theory, in which there are no universally decided morals, just what we decide for ourselves. I also think Cultural Relativism is defined from this, in which ethics are derived from our cultural understanding of them. Meaning some things are ethically wrong in one country but not in another country. This is, however, due to what I stated about law and religion deciding our ethics.

While I do see the importance of law and order, they don't entirely define our ethics, because some laws are ethically wrong overall, such as the law that gay people can't get married. It's an unfair law but still a law nonetheless. These are also ethics decided for us by the government, and following ethics enforced by others is a detriment to society.

There is also an issue of self-righteousness due to the connotations of ethics. If a person does something that they think is right and tells people how right it was then that's the type of mentality that can lead to fascism. Hitler, for example, did what he did because he believed it was the right thing to do and refused to accept that it wasn't, and he got that much power because he led people on to believe it was right as well. The mentality still exists as well, as there are plenty of political groups out there, KKK, UKIP, BNP, and EDL, that strongly believe what they are doing is ethically right to point where logic and reason is not a factor anymore. Their goals are set in stone so there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. That's not how ethics work in a perfect world, because one man's ethics should not be enforced onto other people, otherwise large groups of fascists will continue to be a problem. Although there is also an essence of ego-gratification in this, which is an uncontrollable aspect of human nature. It works in the way that a person will have similar ethics to a group and said group will use that to manipulate this person to join them, and once that person feels accepted in the group, they get the urge to enforce the ethics onto others, and as the numbers increase, so does the satisfaction of the group members.

I always love exploring themes like this, because they inspire a lot of ideas regarding character traits and motivations. I also think there are issues that can be addressed within a narrative about this that can lead to some very memorable storytelling. In fact, they are commonly used as themes in The Legend of Korra, since the villains in that series are all portrayed as villains with a tonne of layers that define their motivations through what they deem as right.

City and Film - Memorable Landscaping in Animation

An admirable trait for visual mediums is often the ability to portray a city setting in a memorable fashion. It is a common trope among film noir that the city setting is emphasised greatly and portrayed in a dark manner, with heavy shadow, edgy locations, and high contrast streetlights in a nighttime setting. In sci fi films set in the future, it is often imperative that the city setting be as imaginative and ambitiously designed as possible. This is why films like Blade Runner and Metropolis are popular examples of future settings.

The use of architecture is not only limited to live-action film either, cartoons like Batman: the Animated Series, and Futurama focus greatly on the city and landscapes. The video game, The Wolf Among Us is deliberately film noir inspired in terms of approach towards the areas of the city scenes are set in.

It is common for animations that take place in a fictional world to take inspiration from real life and other fictional settings and landscapes. For examples, there is an area in Dark Souls called Anor Londo that is based on the Milan Cathedral, and was remarkably designed to make the player feel accomplished as they make it there. In fact Dark Souls is known very well for its ability to tell the story in the architecture. Similarly to how Adventure Time hints at its backstory, the areas in Dark Souls are designed with mise-en-scene that effectively hints at the game's lore.

Consumerism - Persuasion, Brand, Society, Culture

Consumerism is something I am both for and against. I am for consumerism because it has and still does help the country develop, but the means in which consumerism is taken advantage of are still really unethical. The consumerist society is all driven by the products we buy and the gratification society gains from it. The devices we own, the movies we watch, and the objects we bought, they are all drawn by our egos and the sense that we our accepted if we own these products. Granted, after looking at psychoanalysis (which does play a large role in consumerism), I've grown to accept that our culture is solely driven by the things we own, since changing this would be like changing human nature, almost impossible. We all have a tendency to compare ourselves to others, and advertisers take advantage of this to sell their products. Again, it's unethical but effective, and it seems to be the only possible method towards advertising at this point.

My problems with consumerism come from personal feelings of anguish, having never owned a smart phone whereas literally everybody I know owns one. It's a really dumb thing but what with most of the marketing these days being focused towards people that own smart phones, I sometimes feel left out. This because I don't own a god damn phone. This is exactly what the companies that makes these products want me and everybody else to feel. It's a screwed up system indeed, now that a product as simple as a portable phone can cause disharmony because of consumerism.

Knowing this would be beneficial if I wanted to be an animator for advertising companies, since I know it's all about ego gratification, and what we as a society deem pleasurable.

Studio Brief: Creative/Animated Visual Response

Since my essay for this module is about how executive producers change stories and narratives to suit their needs, my visual response would have to be appropriate for this. I want to see if I can incorporate this into animation, but given the time restraints, I may not be able to be too overly ambitious with this. I was thinking if I did make one, it would have to be purely visual-driven, and not fully animated. What I mean by this is the animation would have be very cheap and simple, which I can totally do. This could actually be beneficial as well, to see if I can be entertaining without actually using "good" animation.

Think of something along the lines Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt or South Park, which get away with being rather crappy looking by being hilarious and fun to watch.

My idea is to take the feedback given by network executives, vocalise them, and animate the reactions in whatever context comes to mind. I'll choose from a list I made by looking at the twitter account @TvNetworkNotes, which posts real responses given to writers, directors, artists, etc. by network executive producers. This would of course be purely comedic and satirical, because these notes are rich with material!

I'd do several takes for each note and animate each of the audio samples depending on how much time I have, but I imagine this would be no more than 1 minute long, depending on how much time I have. It's something that relates to my point about executive producers changing material, not entirely getting the point of the stories, and trying too hard to pander to audiences, even if it means affecting the quality of the product.

Psychoanalysis: How it can Apply to Animation

This is a very deep and complex look at how humanity functions beyond our animalistic desires, and how we differentiate to each other. I can't exactly summarise everything beyond the great Sigmund Freud's amazing "Mind's Three Structures" theory - Id, our deep and natural desires as a species; Super Ego, what we call our conscience, basically governs how we act socially and what we see as right and wrong; Ego, how we act consciously depending on what the super ego convinces us - but it is very important as a tool for understanding characters and being able to write them in such a manner to make them realistic.

There are multiple versions of this metaphor that depict the position of the super ego differently.

Of course, naturally the human psyche is split into far more elements than just those three, but this is just a summary, following the rule of thirds, that shortens them down to three. How this applies to animation is not really any different to any form of media. As I said, characters are far more engaging within a story when the character is written with their psyche in mind. If a character has this level of depth, audiences will engage with them far more and understand their actions. 

Psychoanalysis can also be applied to stories depending on their genre. A psychological horror like the Silent Hill games for example will take advantage of the character's emotions, desires, and nature. They also tend to adapt to the player's gaming habits and use them to affect the story and scare them. Movies and TV shows use the human psyche for surrealist purposes, like portraying characters as unconscious beings within a dream-like atmosphere. Un Chien Andalou, for example, is deliberately made to resemble a dream, and they do so by having no consistent narrative structure or characters, but the characters act like they lack any ego or even super ego and therefore act very strangely. This is basically showing how people would act given the mentality of the unconscious mind.

I will definitely be incorporating Psychoanalysis to my future projects, as I am very enthusiastic about the idea of making psychological horror/thrillers. It is also useful to me for satirical purposes, as I feel like psychoanalysis factors a lot in most of the issues we face, and I enjoy poking fun at human nature because it's something we can't control.