research

Animating Human Dolls (AHD) is an original method, still under development, for animating non-realistic characters with the Motion / Performance Capture technology. Using this method, the human body which is taking place in an animation production is being moved (re-animated) using the 12 Principles of Animation, coming from Walt Disney's methodology.

Nikopoulos has used an early version of this method during the film THEOX (2017) and after that the same method but with deeper development was also used in the performance show URBANOX (2019). In order this method to be developed, except from the deep study of the 12 Principles of Animation and how they can be adopted onto the human body, the researcher is also studying a physical theater acting technique inspired by Jacques Lecoq method.

The physical, non verbal expressions of the human body during the acting behind the mask technique is similar a lot with the physical, non verbal expressions of the very first Disney films, during the '30s. The Animating Human Dolls method came up as an idea from a very different point of view though, than the Disney's animation process. It was born during the study of a shadow theater group in Corfu island, called Koum Kou Art. One of the very important resaults that came up by studying the shadow puppet movement behind the berde (scene) was that the animating flow was not only going from the shadow puppet player to the character but it was also returning from the character back to the player. This caused the puppet player changing his pysical pose depending on which character he / she was playing.

So having this note about animating the shadow theater puppets as a guideline, the researcher tried to invert the role of the performer / animator to the performer as an animated object, which the director was moving verbally during this / her performance.