3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Neural style transfer for character motion synthesis(2021) Ramgovind, Bryce JiranIn the field of animation, three-dimensional characters are assigned skeletons, or character rigs, to sim ulate the naturalistic movements of their real-world counterparts. Animators manipulate the character rig to allow for smooth, naturalistic movement. This research proposes using a combination of deep learning techniques to learn the manifold of human character motion, trained on motion capture data. The motion manifold is represented by the latent space of the convolutional auto-encoder. This repre sentation is subsequently transferred to any given locomotion, providing a high-quality motion sequence with a different style. This research builds upon the recent work of neural style transfer for images, but transports it to a new domain of human character motion. A qualitative study has been conducted on a group of participants to determine the success of the framework’s ability in transferring style to a newly synthesised locomotion. Participants were able to recognise stylised aspects within the synthesised loco motions generated from the deep learning framework. An investigation into the relationship between the amount of style and content on the style transfer constraint is presented. Further, the effect of varying gaits on the style transfer process between actors running and walking in a normal and zombie style are investigated. One should view style and content as an inter-related concept. This research provides an in terval of acceptable amounts of style. After a point, the more style placed on the style transfer constraint does not yield major changes on the newly synthesised locomotion. The zombie stylise motion manifold took longer to transfer when the actor was running. This research demonstrates that style transfer for human locomotion is capableItem When the skeletons escape the closet :managing the monsters in Izinyoka/Snakes(2019) Stoykov, StanimirThis dissertation aims to critically examine the Mzansi Bioskop formula for story-telling, prescribed by the DSTV channel, and highlight its problematic nature in terms of predictable narratives which could arguably perpetuate negative societal stereotypes of women, children, and the queer community. This research combines a written dissertation and the production of the short film Izinyoka/Snakes (2018), which examines the Mzansi Bioskop channel melodrama formula of current South African made-for-television film-making practices. The dissertation further compares case studies like Mandla N’s productions Plastic Money (2014) and Jozi to Kapa (2013) in order to analyse the impact of the formulaic approaches to cinematic representation. This dissertation and the film Izinyoka/Snakes (2018) propose the possibility and value of these film-making practices being used to construct a “camp” and satirical film-narrative and aesthetic, which ultimately provides avenues for exploring a world which exists beneath and alongside the surface of predictable genre formulations, narrative styles, and character relations that are currently pursued by the channel. This position is debated through the reading of historic film genres and concepts and their adaptation to the South African popular film formulae.Item The limits of work(2019) Gush, SimonThree essays and three short films exploring the relationship between land dispossession and the ideological production of work. The first essay responds to the iconic film of Harun Farocki, Workers Leaving the Factory (1995), by examining the history of photographic and filmic images of mine work in South Africa. The second essay explores the way in which the discourse around work and unemployment fail to critique the ideological production of work. The third essay is a conceptual mapping of the processes of land dispossession, its relation to wage labour and creation of frontier zones. The three films explore the dispossession and restitution of land in Salem, Eastern Cape. Each focussing alternatively on the legal processes, the 19th century historical dispossession and the contemporary challenges on the restituted farms.Item Narrative place-making : the narrative-spatial relationship in films made about Johannesburg(2018) Szentesi, Anita MargaretThis study aimed to explore the narrative-spatial relationship between the construction of mise-enscene and narrative in film form and the architectural considerations of place-making, to offer conceptual insights into how the idea of the human-place connection could be explored in the reading of selected film texts about Johannesburg. Through exploration, the study probed the discursive elusiveness of Johannesburg as place. An exploration was conducted into the notion that, like most cities in the world, Johannesburg cannot be rendered in a singular conceptual register, but allows for multiplicities of readings. An investigation was undertaken regarding how the design of the mise-en-scene in the selected filmic case studies functioned with the narrative structures, in an attempt to offer a coherent reading of a place that spawns multiple and at times diverged identities. The research was conducted through the critical analysis of selected film works that contained a strong sense of context, spatiality, locality and embodiment of characters within places inside the world of the story. A short poetic reflexive documentary film was made to accompany this research, titled Axis Johannesburg, which explored the formation of an artist’s identity in Johannesburg as achieved through his embodied practice of place-making. The construction of this short film, both formally and conceptually, offered an entry point into how to approach the multiplicity of readings and writing the tale of Johannesburg.Item Remembering Nostalgia: Trends of Nostalgia within contemporary animated films(2017) Bowyer, Jessica Patricia MaryThe use of 2D animations visual designs within contemporary 3D animated films has become a vastly more popular and far-reaching trend, with big animation companies like Pixar and Disney, releasing several films since 1995 that reveal a re-emergence of 2D nostalgia in main-stream animation. I believe this is a result of a desire in audiences for a more nostalgic aesthetics, in the form of 2D aesthetics in the character designs and overall style choices within contemporary 3D animated films. I will endeavour to explore this trend within this research report by discussing two films from director Brad Bird, The Iron Giant (1999) and The Incredibles (2004), that I feel explore this contemporary trend of nostalgia specifically within the animation industry, stressing the importance of the visual signifiers that I believe incorporate this current trend of nostalgia. This paper does not, however, look at nostalgia as a broad based cultural phenomenon, but rather looks at the aesthetics of nostalgia specifically in terms of my two case studies and feature film animation. To do this, this paper will look to define nostalgia in terms of animation, exploring the sentimental nostalgia that I believe is evident in my two case studies, after which it will look at the history of 2D and 3D animation, and how the developments within these two mediums made the aesthetic of my case studies possible. The majority of this paper will be dedicated to discussing my chosen case studies in terms of the visual indicators of nostalgia that can be found within them. Throughout this paper, I will attempt to show that the aesthetic of these two films is a direct result of the nostalgia that contemporary audiences and animation studios have for a specific style of animation and the lifestyle associated with it, from a time that embodies this: 1950s and 60s America.Item The tailored suit : a reimagining of Can Themba's The Suit(2011-09-22) Lelliott, Kitso LynnThis research report examines the period of 1950s Sophiatown and its socio-‐cultural legacy pertaining to race and gender. Though the establishment of a cosmopolitan black identity was significant in its undermining of Nationalist Party segregationist ideology, the struggle for equality was predicated on a racial struggle that subsumed a gendered agenda. The work of Can Themba and Drum magazine, which have become mythologized in the contemporary South African imaginary, are interrogated with particular emphasis on one of Themba’s iconic pieces, The Suit. Through engagement with Themba’s text, this research report foregrounds the processes through which black women have been subjected to multiple, compounded subjugation. In response to the representations of black femininity in The Suit, the film component of this report, The Tailored Suit, privileges the black woman, Matilda’s, articulations. It thus functions to foreground the agency of marginalised subjects. In articulating from the periphery, the subjugated destabilise the hierarchical social structures that would subordinate and objectify them. By engaging the representations in The Suit, part of an iconic historic moment prefiguring the contemporary socio-‐cultural milieu, the reimagining in The Tailored Suit offers a fragmented frame of reference, positing an alternative to a homogenising masculine discourse on history.