Week 3's session of Performance and Character today was about revisiting old theories and returning to basics. This involved watching clips from adverts and films looking at acting principles. One of these clips was an interview with Ed Hooks who was the writer of one of the core books in our course acting in animation. I felt I could learn a lot from this.
The clips we looked at was a commercial for wind power, the drunk Baymax scene from Disneys Big Hero 6, Omie, and a completion of walk cycles. Whilst watching these clips proved useful in analysing the performance I learned a lot from the Ed Hooks interview, key thing being a the acting depends on the characters purpose and what they're doing. A case in point would be when Hiro is trying to get Baymax back to his charging station without his Aunt Cass seeing which brought into play a series of performance actions.
Action - objective- obstacle. The obstacle of the chain incorporated conflict which was split into three things the animatior, the situation and the character itself. One thing that came to light was Disneys original plan to have drunk Baymax in a shopping cart which was a good idea for an Inktober piece and would've been funny in the film it would have its draw backs as we realised in the acting.
The character would hardly be doing any acting whilst confined to a shopping cart where as in the final version we would see him moving around showing how drunk he is. I felt this was very insightful and did provide some of the decision making that went into what scenes went into the final edit of the film hence the deleted scenes.
It also helped when we looked back on the other clips we looked at such as the Omie short story about a pig trying to get a cookie from the top of a fridge and using classic Wild E Coyote vs Road Runner antics to do so. It seemed clear this lesson was about the acting principles and did give me much to think about especially in my own animation work.
Looking at my animation work Johny had some feedback for me in terms of the characters performance in landing on the ground after jumping from the fence and the fall which seemed rather too slow. This wasn't knocking down my animating ablilties the run and jump abilities was fine but it still needed some refinement. I too did feel the fall and landing needed some refinement. Johny my tutor also mentioned how I needed to exaggerate a few things in the animation. In the lesson we learned that when doing reference footage we didn't need to do it precisely but exaggerate a few things in a cartoon like fashion.
Learning from Johny's feedback I also learned some things from James the technician who suggested looking at exaggerating the leap, push over the wall and on the landing. Such as the pull when the character is climbing the wall.
Looking back on todays session I would think that I have learned a little more about acting in animation and how I can best improve my animation. I would think the best element of the lesson was the Ed Hooks interview as it granted some insight into what we were doing and the clips we watched did help our ability to analyse the characters performance and how it performs. In hindsight I could see the sense of looking at the principles of acting and how it could benefit our own work. To help me with this I've decided to watch a film tonight and see if I can use what I've learned to analyses a characters performance.
In conclusion todays session was most helpful and I've learned more about acting in animation and hope to apply what I've learned to the exercises. In future I shall look into applying more of a performance to my characters animation and add more exaggeration.
The clips we looked at was a commercial for wind power, the drunk Baymax scene from Disneys Big Hero 6, Omie, and a completion of walk cycles. Whilst watching these clips proved useful in analysing the performance I learned a lot from the Ed Hooks interview, key thing being a the acting depends on the characters purpose and what they're doing. A case in point would be when Hiro is trying to get Baymax back to his charging station without his Aunt Cass seeing which brought into play a series of performance actions.
Action - objective- obstacle. The obstacle of the chain incorporated conflict which was split into three things the animatior, the situation and the character itself. One thing that came to light was Disneys original plan to have drunk Baymax in a shopping cart which was a good idea for an Inktober piece and would've been funny in the film it would have its draw backs as we realised in the acting.
The character would hardly be doing any acting whilst confined to a shopping cart where as in the final version we would see him moving around showing how drunk he is. I felt this was very insightful and did provide some of the decision making that went into what scenes went into the final edit of the film hence the deleted scenes.
It also helped when we looked back on the other clips we looked at such as the Omie short story about a pig trying to get a cookie from the top of a fridge and using classic Wild E Coyote vs Road Runner antics to do so. It seemed clear this lesson was about the acting principles and did give me much to think about especially in my own animation work.
Looking at my animation work Johny had some feedback for me in terms of the characters performance in landing on the ground after jumping from the fence and the fall which seemed rather too slow. This wasn't knocking down my animating ablilties the run and jump abilities was fine but it still needed some refinement. I too did feel the fall and landing needed some refinement. Johny my tutor also mentioned how I needed to exaggerate a few things in the animation. In the lesson we learned that when doing reference footage we didn't need to do it precisely but exaggerate a few things in a cartoon like fashion.
Learning from Johny's feedback I also learned some things from James the technician who suggested looking at exaggerating the leap, push over the wall and on the landing. Such as the pull when the character is climbing the wall.
Looking back on todays session I would think that I have learned a little more about acting in animation and how I can best improve my animation. I would think the best element of the lesson was the Ed Hooks interview as it granted some insight into what we were doing and the clips we watched did help our ability to analyse the characters performance and how it performs. In hindsight I could see the sense of looking at the principles of acting and how it could benefit our own work. To help me with this I've decided to watch a film tonight and see if I can use what I've learned to analyses a characters performance.
In conclusion todays session was most helpful and I've learned more about acting in animation and hope to apply what I've learned to the exercises. In future I shall look into applying more of a performance to my characters animation and add more exaggeration.
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