How Does the Character’s Motivation Affect Its Body Mechanics? (How Do You Determine the Initiation Source for the Movement of a Character?)

Every character is different,and they all have their own unique backstory and history which will affect their decisions, acting choices, desires, and so forth, but if we're talking about body mechanics, there are many things that are simply right or wrong, independent of that specific character's traits or motivations.

Timing is something that will be affected greatly by motivation - a character going up some stairs will certainly climb the stairs at a much different speed if a Tiger is chasing them than if the authorities are waiting at the top of the stairs to arrest him - however, the actual body mechanics would be pretty much the same.

When we talk about body mechanics, we're basically talking about how the body works together. What moves what, and why. These things are based on our anatomy and the physical rules of our universe (gravity, physics, etc), not on personality traits or situations.

The man running from the Tiger and the man about to be arrested both have the same basic body mechanics. Each must put his right foot onto a stair, anticipate down and shift his weight to the right, rotating his chest in all three axis subtly as his left arm starts to move back, all of which allow him to start to raise his left foot to the stairs.

Tiger-Victim will be moving through those motions much faster than the Accused Criminal, but essentially they'll be doing the same thing with subtle differences. Tiger-Victim, because of his velocity, will have his weight much more forward throughout his flight up the stairs, and will have less up and down to his steps, and less obvious weight shifts, probably. Accused Criminal's slow and fearful ascent will be characterized by much more deliberate and obvious weight shifts, body weight that is strictly above the feet, and a much more upright posture.

But these are small differences within the basic body mechanics required to climb a flight of stairs. They're doing the same thing, just at different speeds, and the different speeds demand slight adjustments to the poses, but the basic foundation of what has to happen is still there for each of them. In some ways, Tiger-Victim is simply exaggerating some of the mechanics while toning down others - but the mechanics remain.

As for the general idea of initiating movement, it's usually a good general rule to think of the hips as the engine of any internally generated large body movements for your characters. It tends to be the first thing we move, probably because we can't move anywhere until we unbalance ourselves, and the hips are the center of our mass and weight. In order to move (take any steps), we *must* become unbalanced, and the only way to do that is to move your butt!

Of course, externally motivated movements are a whole other matter, as a frying pan to the head is going to cause your character's head to move before the rest of his body!

So, in closing, I guess I'd say to move your butt and avoid frying pans.

Good luck and have fun!

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 12.24

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What Tips Can You Share about Your Observations of Real Life Body Language and How You Apply Them When You Animate?

Honestly, my observations of real-life body language basically lead me to believe that there are no rock-solid rules of body language!

Everyone is different. At any given instant in time, none of us are exactly the same. Even if we are having a shared experience, we all have uniquely different backgrounds, experiences, and personalities that are affecting every single thing we do.

For example, imagine the body language that goes into someone seeing an old friend they haven't seen in a long time. Imagine all the complexities that will inform the "body language" of that moment! Were they good friends or casual friends? Were they lovers? Did they part on good terms? Did they have a fight? Do they recognize each other immediately or does it take a few seconds? Are they hand-shakers, huggers, or high-fivers? Are they happy or sad to see each other? Or more extreme - are they completely ecstatic or totally mortified to have run into each other?

It truly all comes down to you as the artist envisioning the situation these unique characters find themselves in, letting yourself become an ACTOR, getting into your character's heads and - taking into account everything that makes them who they are - figuring out exactly how they'd react to the situation.

There is no rule that says, "When two old friends meet, they shall look at each other's face for 17 frames, recognize each other, give a 1/2 smile, wave for 20 frames, give a full smile, and then shake hands." Every situation will be radically different, unique, and based entirely on their backgrounds, life story, and personalities.

Sometimes it's nice to have solid rules we can fall back on in order to help us construct a performance. "You cannot lift your left foot off the ground for more than an instant unless you move your butt to be over your right foot." Rules like that are pretty rock-solid, and they sure are comforting when you're trying to work out the complexities of the body mechanics in your scene.

However, when it comes to something as big and all-encompassing as "body language," the only rule I'd say is rock solid is that we are all too different for rules to apply.
But guess what? That's what makes this stuff so fun!

Every performance will be unique. Every reaction to every situation should be based on that particular character's back story, personality, and immediate (and long-term) desires and goals. Because of that, every reaction *should* be unique in its own way.

This specific thing, more than almost anything else, is what will bring your characters to life, and help you craft a performance that is memorable because of its uniqueness and the sense of authenticity that will lend to it.

Have fun, and good luck!
Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 10.31

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What Makes an Acting Shot Shine?

In many ways, this is quite a subjective question we've got here, for the success of a character is the result of a subtle relationship between the performance and its audience. What choices an animator makes helps to inform and develop that relationship, leaving the audience with a good handle on the personality we wish to portray. It's quite cool, really!

Since it is subjective, I can only talk about what works for myself, sitting in the audience, (probably eating something unhealthy), but maybe this will provide an some insight into what we can all work on to better connect with the me's out there.

For myself, the most important part of an acting shot is that the character stays true to itself. Every important acting decision made should be followed by the question, "Would the character do this?". This is a great way to self-evaluate and begin to dive deeper into the nuances of the character. Just this one simple question will allow the formulation of new ideas that would otherwise remain undiscovered, particularly if the pressure is on to jump into producing footage. When acting out a scene in character, a skilled performer is able to live inside this question and be spontaneous and it is this that makes the performance compelling to watch. Going out of character is a quick way to losing your audience, which is not what we want at all!

This brings us on to being interesting. Our ultimate goal is to engage the audience and provoke an emotional response from them. By exploring the performance we can come up with a bunch in different in-character ideas and then pick the ones that work best. Sometimes It could be a small detail such as the way a finger moves through a gesture, or maybe a broader, more goofy comic choice. Either way, we've just come up with something no one else have thought of, and which has just given depth to the character, making it seem more real! Well done, us!

Now we come to the animation stuff. The technical bits and bobs that go with making our scenes work. By this I mean the application of the principles of animation, composition, staging and so on. Watching beautiful, fluid animation can of course be spine-tingling, but see how it's lower on my list? Admittedly it's a three part list of all important stuff, but you know what I mean. You can have the most technically brilliant animation in the world, but if the performance is flat or out of character, then you have missed your chance at adding to the illusion of an independent entity. It's probably also true, to some extent, that people will forgive some minor technical imperfections if the acting is right on the money. Polish is nothing without substance, but there is no reason why we can't have both, so let's do that!

Ultimately an acting shot shines for the depth of character exemplified within it. Our goal is to provide the sense of a living, breathing universe that exists not only within the viewing frustum, but in its own little reality.

If we've got all this stuff going on in your acting shots, then we've certainly got the viewer's attention. I think our hero's going to be just fine in there. :)

Guest blogger Kevan Shorey

By: Unknown On 14.55

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Tips & Tricks on How to Make a Shot Stand Out

Before you try to make your shot stand out it's important to remember the type of shot it is, and its purpose. Some shots you don’t want to stand out, and sometimes a shot will stand out regardless of what you do, simply because of its place in the movie or what takes place.

There are a lot of good tips for this particular topic that you can find in any of your animation books. In books like the Illusion of Life you can find lots of tips on how to get the viewer to react, and how to come up with believable acting. But in an effort to provide something new, and being more of a cartoony guy myself, here are some additional things of my own.

Keep in mind that if you employ all of these it will probably be too much.

• THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO IS FORGET ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW TO BE RIGHT OR WRONG ABOUT ANIMATION. Keep in mind that you have to know the rules to break the rules.


• Caricature to the extreme -- i.e. if a person jumps when startled, hold them in the air for an impossible amount of time. If they scream the jaw might drop to the floor.


• Push. Shapes, lines of action, poses, facial expression, timing, breakdowns, contrast. Go further than what we are used to seeing.


• Animate to sound effects in your head - sounds crazy I know. For example, if you are animating a character stretching and in your head you hear the stretching of a rubber band, how does that affect your performance?


• The Simile. Use a simile quite literally to define a performance. For example, if you were to say “when he laughs his stomach shakes like a bowl full of jelly.” Instead of just having the stomach shake up and down, I would animate it as if it was literally jelly.


• Use pop music to help define your texture in timing. I’m talkin’ about those horrible songs that you never want to admit to liking, but you find yourself singing in the shower. They are popular, because they are catchy; they are catchy because of their rhythm. Sometimes to shake things up a bit I will take a rhythm from a song I heard and throw it somewhere into my shot.


• Push your pose.


• Art as inspiration. I will often look at art and say if you had to animate to that style what would that look like. How would an animated Picasso move? If emotionally my character felt broken apart, that's exactly what I might try to do. Sleeping Beauty is a good example of art inspired animation.


• Off Model. This is a tricky thing to do, but if you do it right it can be effective. You can quite literally change the look of the character, like when Ren will sometime take on a more human facial expression. Or it can be more subtle, like when the Tramp mimics a human barking orders in Lady and The Tramp. One quite literally changes the look of the character and the other pushes the expression slightly more than you’re used to seeing.

Most of these I’ve learned by watching any Looney Tunes or Ren & Stimpy cartoon, so you should probably do that first.

Guest Blogger Nick Bruno

By: Unknown On 10.48

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When Deciding on Acting Choices What Factors Help you Decide on Poses?

The most important thing needs to be the communication of the pose. You should choose your poses based on what that pose is saying to the audience. The pose should, in some way, accentuate the emotion or intention of the character, and augment the performance. The body pose should echo the face in most instances (a shy pose with a cocky facial expression just feels weird and confusing), so that's a good indicator as well.

There is no hard and fast rule for this, as sometimes the performance will call for a character hiding their emotions. In these cases, you usually want to betray the emotions in some way, at least to the audience if not to the other characters, through subtle shifts in the pantomime body poses, or through the eye animation, etc.

But in general, my recommendation would be to film your video reference over and over and over, until you are no longer thinking about the actual words of the line, and instead are thinking only about the subtext (what the character means instead of what they are saying) and are actually feeling the true emotions of the characters. If you can get yourself to that place in your video reference, you will discover some very communicative body poses that will take your performance to a whole new level!

Good luck, and have fun!!

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 09.14

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How Important Is an Acting Shot for Getting a Job in the Gaming Industry

As a student who's just finishing school, it's hard to have every kind of animation on your reel, physical and acting. How important is an acting shot going to be for getting a job in games industry as those are the only companies which have entry-level jobs.
-Shiva

Hi Shiva - thanks so much for coming by the blog!

This is a difficult question to answer, because both types of scenes are very important to have on your demo reel. However, I do think that having strong physical "action tests" on a demo reel is more important than strong "acting tests" for junior animators. As you say, many studios hiring for junior animation positions aren't as interested in your acting shots, as the juniors may primarily be doing more physical work.

Additionally, at even the largest studios, it's the physical stuff that is the most important. You might have some great acting choices, but if your weight and balance are wrong, or your arcs aren't appealing, or the force just isn't there -- well, those great acting choices alone are not going to get you that job. The best acting shots can be destroyed by very small mistakes in body mechanics (how the body works - what moves what, etc).

In my mind, a decent acting scene with bad body mechanics is a demo-reel killer. It screams "newbie," and tells the recruiters that you haven't yet mastered the basics. However, a shot with great body mechanics and only "ok" acting choices -- this isn't ideal, but it certainly doesn't ruin the reel. It will still show that you know the basic fundamentals, and show your potential as an animator.

In light of that difference, I guess I'd have to say that the physical stuff is more important to focus on when you're newer to this stuff, and is certainly the stuff to make sure really shines on your demo reel.

Best of luck!

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 13.58

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What Does an Animator Have to Learn about Traditional Acting? How Should This Learning be Applied to our Animation?

First, I'd recommend checking out a couple older Tips & Tricks articles from back in the day related to acting:

Acting

Operative Words


The quick answer would be that as an animator, your job is to bring the character to life, which means that in a very real way, you have to be an actor. Your job is to BECOME the character, especially in your reference and planning, if you want the performance to be unique and believable. This is a must.

As animators, we don't necessarily have to know *everything* about acting. Generally, we are being given an existing line reading, for example, but we also must know how to dissect that line reading and figure out what the actor was thinking when he delivered that bit of dialogue. What was his subtext? What is the operative word? What are his motivations? What does he WANT most in the scene, and what is preventing him from having it? Sometimes you have to make some of this stuff up to create a whole picture that you can work with, but it's very important to go through the process.

To me, the main stuff I find that I apply to animation is: subtext (it's often better to animate what the character MEANS rather than what they are SAYING), operative words, backstory (who the character is, where they came from before the scene, where they will be after the scene), the desires of the character, and the obstacles keeping them away from their desires. In my video reference (using all of the above), I always try to truly get into my character's head, and TRULY feel the emotions and desires the character is feeling. When I don't quite get it to that level, my reference always ends up being useless and predictable. However, when I *do* try hard to become the character as much as I can, the reference is always a huge help.

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 09.32

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