lole wrote:
rachel_519 wrote:
I see what you mean. In cartoons, emotional expressions are usually both exaggerated and simplified by animation. That makes everything easier to read. Plus, the dialogue is all scripted, so that it flows better than dialogue in real life.
This is pretty exactly what I was going to say. In a cartoon, everything is ultra simplified, so when someone frowns you know they're sad (plus you know why, because the plot spell it out for you).
In real life it's more complex than that.
YES! I can even see the difference between a real smile and a fake smile on a show like Futurama. In real life, stuff like that is lost to me. I feel like it's taught me about body language and social skills, even if it's not like that in real life, since at least I know the contexts and the basic "outline" of what people would look like when feeling those emotions (even though it's way exaggerated and simplified).
Cartoons are also much better to me than live action, because those people are using real facial expressions, that I can't see, so if the plot and/or dialogue doesn't make that stuff obvious, I'll end up completely confused. I detest watching Mad Men partly because I can't understand what's going on when everyone's suddenly angry or there's sad music playing in the background, but I didn't see anything happen.
It's even better when the characters aren't human and have more body parts to emote with--like Starscream with his wings in Transformers: Prime, or the ponies' ears in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In real life, cats and dogs are a lot easier for me to read because even though their body language is
different for the same situations, they have more appendages and I don't have to just focus on the face. I can tell the cat's feeling by the ears and body and tail and eyes and vocalizations--it's much easier than with humans, who don't have those ears and tails!