El Vendedor de Humo

This animation, originally I liked for the style and story, but looking back at it now, it's a really good example of how an animation doesn't need dialogue in order to get across the meaning and actions of the characters. By just using gestures and certain poses and expressions, myself as the audience was able to grasp what each character wanted and it was made pretty clear. I was really torn whether or not I should include dialogue in my animation, as by just using gestures and expressions it would give me a good chance to practice performance, but I found in some areas it would be hard to put across the context without dialogue. It brings to mind that if I were to create a non-spoken animation, the story would have to accomodate for this. The animation below is one that can be either with or without dialogue and I think either way, it would work. It's not an English animation so it makes me think that without dialogue there is no issue of language barriers, everyone knows gestures and emotions and if done right, the audience should know exactly what the creators intended.

Just because my animation will have dialogue in it, I think it's important to realise that the performance, gestures and emotions should still be as clear as if there was no dialogue. The emotion of a specific scene should be able to come across without the need of anything but the character itself. El Vendedor de Humo makes each scene clear with the animation, but also the tone is shifted with the lighting. I need to keep all these things in mind when creating my animation, especially when I do my reference videos as this is where I can really act it out, and get a feel for the scene and what I want my animation to look like.


El Vendedor de Humo from PrimerFrame on Vimeo.