Emotion: Excitement

Excitement

What causes Excitement

Excitement is an interesting and powerful emotion and can be triggered in many ways. In the films I watched excitement can be expressed for many reasons. It can come from a passion or desire when you are inspired or love doing something. This could even be a huge challenge that a character is optimistic about facing.

Courtesy of Pixar

In Inside Out the challenge is getting used to Riley moving to San Francisco and Joy feels like it is her duty to keep Riley happy during these dramatic changes, this is her passion in life that is what excites here even when things are grim.

Excitement is also fueled by expectancy, a kid waiting for Christmas or just the weekend shows a build up of excitement and impatience over time. An example of repressed excitement would be waiting in line for a ride at a theme park.   Another method is surprise like getting a gift from someone or winning the lottery.

Courtesy of Disney

This scene of Vanelope's first reaction to her new race car really displays excitement. The movement she does is fast and sparky. She first stands in awe then she jumps up and down around the car dancing. The hand gestures as she points at the details show how much she is in her element discovering something that she loves that fuels her passion for racing. Another important aspect of this scene is the context in the story.  So excitement can be a window into a characters dreams and desires, there goals in life.
Excitement can also be triggered by just feeling really happy and confident. How ever Excitement can also come from fear.


Age and Personality

Excitement is shown differently depending on the personality and age of the individual. Kids and Toddlers generally get over excited over little things that adults wouldn't, this is because they are still learning about the world and every new experience can have a bigger reaction. However this also depends on personality some adults and teens get just as excited as kids.


Movement /Poses and Expressions

When excited are minds are in an arousel state this means the brain is less stable and far more unpredictable. The movement of excited is like lightning fast in small or big spurts. Smaller spurts when a little excited, to giant bursts of movement. When people are very excited they may dance and have less control on what they are doing. The chemicals that cause excitement are Adrenaline and endorphin's these chemicals create surges of energy through the brain. Other movements of excitement are jumping up and down, swinging arms and fast hand gestures. an anticipation for excitement would be when the body shivers, then jumping high up with arms up in the air exploding into movement like a rocket setting off. or a sparkler being lit.
Other gestures that show excitement could be

• heel of feet pushed up
• hands clenched to each other  
• arms in front of body raised out
• hands out like paws shaking.
• eyes in direction of the interesting object, person or activity
• many different shapes from squashed to stretched
• feet jumping one at a time like a dance
• fingers spread out widely
• head nodding back and forth lead by the torso and shoulders.

Character Design

A use of shape and colour can show excitable and happy as a personality trait. This creates more appeal for the character.

Joe Murray's Camp Lazlo

Lazlo's character design shows excitement using bright saturated colours that are appealing and welcoming. the bright orange represents warmth this makes the character feel more approachable. The use of shapes is simplistic and is easily readable. still represents the characters personality in silhouette.










Joy from Inside Out

Joy's design looks like a sparkler or a star this simple shape shows the happiness and excitement in her character.

The use of yellow and blue show she is literally like lightning. Yellow is used as a very positive colour and represents excitement and joy.

Giant eyes allow more expression.

                                                                           

                                                                       

references 

Images

Pixar/ https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/541698661413747060/

Pixar/ http://screenrant.com/inside-out-pixar-visit-concept-art-joy-sadness/

Disney/ https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/541698661413755712/

Cartoon Network/ http://camplazlo.wikia.com/wiki/File:Lazlo.png

videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=KaOEQJGig9c

websites

Levine S. (2015) How-does-the-feeling-of-being-excited-come-from-How-can-we-feel-excited-about-something  [online] available from 
https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-feeling-of-being-excited-come-from-How-can-we-feel-excited-about-something 16th October 2016