Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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Browsing Wits School of Arts (ETDs) by SDG "SDG-17: Partnerships for the goals"

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    Analysing the player's involvement in video game character animation
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021) Ponde, Rugare; Whitcher, Ray
    This dissertation investigates the impact of animation on player interest in an existing video game character. There is high demand and expectation regarding character animation quality, yet understanding and achieving this standard is complex and challenging. The quality of a character’s animation is often derived from its direct appeal to the audience and how its representation informs their impression. However, there is a gap in the literature where there is little on how style representation plays a role in character perception and identification in video games. A practice-led approach was used to understand the relationship between player involvement and the player-character's appeal. The process involved the creation of an animation reel to demonstrate how a popular video game character's acceptance can change based on a player's perception of style in the character's animation. I used Link from the video game Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (Nintendo, 2018). The reel was presented to adults between 18 and 35 to review the animations. Using the process of creative exegesis, the theories and concepts about character appeal, animation design, and player involvement were combined to analyse and critique the contributing factors that inform the perception of the creative work. The results from this study indicate that a change in movement style impacted the perception of Link and the participant's demonstrated interest to play him. This study confirms that style representations are an important design consideration to improve a character’s appeal. This topic may benefit the art and technique of character design and how to improve on it.
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    Black Writings: The Modal Mixtape Sampling and Remixing the Ethos of South African Poor Theatre with the Film Medium
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-03) Sono, Sipho Alex; Jansen van Veuren, Mocke
    Let’s imagine I’m standing in a record store aisle, with all these nostalgic “records” of film and theatre that I’m too young and perhaps too black to be drawn to, but still somehow feel connected to. Not only that, but I can’t shake the feeling that these records have informed me as a South African and could form new work in a strong way. I'm trying to make a “song”, a cohesive language for my practice as a filmmaker, with an underpinning interest, ethos and an understanding of South African Poor Theatre. In my hand I have a Grotowski “record”, called Towards Poor Theatre (1976), that is the main sample for my track. I’m also “digging through crates”, looking at the Theatre of the Oppressed by Augasto Boal (1974) and other theories of theatre in film, to mix together to make the song. I’ve been listening to tracks by Athol Fugard and Barney Simon, as sources of inspiration. As Pharrell Williams describes chords as “coordinates pointing us to emotion” (2019) , I have begun to think that maybe plays such Woza Albert (1971) and Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972 ) and their recordings for BBC (1982 and 1983) can serve as chords and indicators to the direction for my filmic practice. Although you might not find a section entitled “methodology” in this paper, what you will find is that it is underpinned by practice based research methodologies, in the interest of Walter Mignolo’s epistemology disobedience. In this paper, I employ DJ Lyneé Denise’s concept of The DJ Scholarship (2013) as a research methodology, which sees the paralleling between the roles of the research to those of a DJ, borrowing ideas and recontextualising them . I sample theatre concepts, ideas and theories to mix and remix them and eventually form my own knowledge around my filmic practice. This notion of deejaying also exists in the research question itself, as it seeks to attempt a blending of two artistic disciplines. It is further carried in the way I approach film and storytelling, through the editing process, cutting, scratching, loop and rewinding for further indentation. This research further makes use of auto-ethnographic methods for meaning making and epistemic disobedience. These methods are employed through personal anecdotes and reflexivity as additive interrogators and informers to the research exploration. This research project also makes use of the personal, in the research film as a means to explore therapeutic processes for film as well as an exploration of the personal as a political enquiry. Auto-Ethnography functions in the crux of this research, it is an inquiry of the self, as a black “born free” South African and my relationship with Poor and Protest Theatre as an inherited artistic voice. As I stand in the middle of this record-store of theoretical frameworks and literature, I am also analysing the “records” which pick and sample. I am studying them and thinking about what they represent and what they indicate about me and the ethos of my filmmaking practice in a traumatised, post-apartheid South Africa . So let’s get to mixing.
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    Situating the Camera Club of Johannesburg in South African Histories of Photography 1960–1989
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-05) Meyersfeld, Michael; Doherty, Christo
    In this research report I present my dissertation together with a self-curated hard-cover book containing one hundred photographs. The two must be viewed as a single entity, with the dissertation providing the supporting evidence for the images selected. In this part of the research report, I discuss the Camera Club of Johannesburg (CCJ), focusing on the work produced by the black and white print section during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Given the progressive outlook of the leadership of the CCJ, work produced during these three decades was rarely seen at other South African clubs. The general apathy of the South African art world towards photography, combined with a sceptical view of camera club photography, resulted in these works being largely ignored. At a time when South African photography was mainly predicated on press and documentary photography, a relatively small group of dedicated photographers were aspiring to produce art with the camera. A selection of these works is shown in an accompanying hard-cover book containing 100 images curated by the author. To situate cameras clubs in the history of photography, I discuss three dominant movements: the Pictorialists, the Photo-Secessionists, and Group f/64. These movements emanated from dissenting voices within camera clubs, with Group f/64 being an example of like-minded photographers opposed to any form of manipulated photography. To highlight the difference between most South African clubs and the CCJ, I discuss the Johannesburg Photographic Society (JPS), the oldest and largest club in Johannesburg, and the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa (CCCSA), formed due to the exclusionary policies of apartheid. Both these clubs remained largely committed to Pictorialism. Both have ceased to exist. By way of contrast, I discuss three overseas clubs, each of which became highly successful by operating outside the prevailing club system to keep their work contemporary. These are the Photo Club Riga, Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante and the Lexington Camera Club. I argue that the CCJ operated at a different level from most other clubs in South Africa, that the work produced was progressive, and where the keywords of the founding statement of the CCJ – “where originality was not stifled by conventional judging” – were prophetic.