A Study on Posture Patterns in Ideal Epic Characters of Indian Animated Feature Films

Abstract

Indian culture is well known for its values and ethics. These values have been passed on to the younger generations through stories from or related to the two great epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The characters - Krishna and Rama - of these epics are considered as examples of ideal beings. Most of the verbal as well as visual forms of storytelling, depended on these epics for their content. These forms included static visual expressions as temple mural paintings and animated and staged sequences of shadow puppetry. With the advent of television and cinema, the role of these traditional forms of creative visual story telling was replaced by animation videos, to which the young minds express great affinity to. Since animation videos keep under control the audio-visual interaction capacity of the children, they are the most suitable channels to imbibe values to the younger generation, as researchers have proven. Although there are proper descriptions in traditional texts, about the visual presentation of these ideal characters, contemporary Indian animation videos, especially some television series, does not seem to adhere to the traditional definitions when creating animated versions of these character concepts. Visual styles of epic characters in some animated videos even tend to be contradictory to the traditional concepts. This points to the need for some guidelines for the visual design of ideal epic characters in Indian animated media. To verify and initiate the process, still frames from Indian animated feature films, with the selected character-postures are being observed. For posture evaluation, traditional definitions of poses Bhangas are being compared with the samples, taking the concept of line of action in animation as a guide. The study relies on the Rasa Theory of Indian Aesthetics from Natyashastra for theoretical background. xii This study compares the posture patterns of divine character concepts in Indian animated feature films with the traditional descriptions of divine character..