Friday 4 December 2015

@Phil [Minor Project] 27: Sound & Language Ideas: Gibberish, Simlish etc.

The inspiration
Jackie linked me to a really effective Character-based animation about some of the properties of Oxygen and its interactions with other periodic elements. This animation's reliance is on physical comedy, expressions and a voiceover. Similar to my Elements Academy characters, some of the periodic elements have been adapted as elementary school children. This animation got me thinking about my use of sound in my eventual Elements Academy animation...


Why not a voiceover?
Using a voiceover does not feel right for my animation, I feel it's too direct and could take the focus away from what's important about the animation, how the elements interact.

If not a voiceover, what?
Elements Academy will be so much more about what the characters do than what they say; this leads to the interesting proposal of rather than my characters speaking a specific language such as English, I'm looking to go the route of The Sims Simlish language, and Despicable Me's Minions by having my characters use a gibberish-based language. Using a gibberish-based language would mean characters body language, tone and expressions take centre stage.

A gibberish-based language, why?
If Elements Academy was a real web series, using such a language would remove the need for translation for viewing by non-English speakers, thus reducing costs and increasing its ability to reach a wider audience; in practice taking further advantage of the internet's multinational connectivity, thus increasing the marketability of the product and widening the dissemination potential of Elements Academy merchandise.

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