After a brief hiatus, the AM Memoirs series returns right here on The Man Behind the Controller! I know I'm excited too! As I mentioned in my last AM Memoirs post, I decided to take a semester off from my time at Animation Mentor to recharge because after animating non-stop for nearly a year I needed a break. I decided to dedicate some more time to my blog, work on some personal projects, and enjoy a few Saturdays where I wasn't cramming hours of animation to turn in my assignment on Sunday (You AM students know what I'm talking about!). But, this post isn't about how I kicked up my feet during my time off. No, today I'm going to tell you about my experience in class 4 of Animation Mentor, Intro to Acting.
I was pretty nervous going into this class because the concept of Acting and really bringing a character to life was an intimidating thing to me at the time. Especially, since I've never animated an acting shot before. But, in order to be a good animator you have to be ok with animating shots you've never done before. So, I pulled up my big boy pants, cracked my animator knuckles, and let me tell you...it kinda kicked my ass a bit.
The concept of incorporating acting principles into a shot was pretty overwhelming for me. I had to learn things like how to set up the composition of a shot to portray emotion, how to create lines of actions through lip corners and eye angles, and how to wrap my mind around how to animate appealing mouth shapes for lip sync. Not to mention, I had to get back into the swings of things of being a student while working full-time. I took a break to save myself from burnout and that time off was great and all, but man I was really feeling it for the first half of the semester.
But after powering through a lot of trial and error (and some tears here and there), I got through it and learned a lot in the process.
Acting is a very interesting field in animation. Not only do you have to execute your posing and animation principles well, but you have to consider how the audience is connecting to your character on an emotional level.
Do you want your audience to love, love, cry, or you do you want them to get angry, feel sad, or be stricken with fear? You also have to ask yourself questions like who is my character, what is their goal, and how should the audience respond to my character's personality and behavior. These might seem like simple questions, but then can be pretty difficult to answer, especially if you're transitioning from body mechanics to an acting performance for the first time.
Once, you do figure these questions out, you have to be able to sell the performance to drive the emotion across to your audience. This can be something as simple as lifting an eyebrow or rotating the jaw around to create a nice arc in the lip sync or even some subtle nuances in the body mechanics like the waving of a hand or the tapping of a finger on a table. But, at the same time you don't want to overdue any of these things or just throw them in there to have the character do something because then it becomes busy and contrived.
Intentionality is key in animation, but especially when it comes down to acting. And let me tell you, that crap is hard. Figuring out what to be intentionality about in your performance and how to best execute it is not an easy feat to accomplish and requires you to really get the head of your character and research what makes a good acting scene.
Something that I am learning having gone through class 4 and now in the middle of class 5 of the acting courses, is that acting is not my strong suit. It's definitely an art that needs to be honed in order to get a truly immersive acting experience in your shot. But hey, same can be said for all kinds of animation. So, even though it's not my forte, I'm gonna keep learning as much as I can to get better at it and I'd encourage you guys to do the same!
That about wraps it up for me today. Let me know what you think about acting in animation in the comments below and Happy Animating!
P.S. Here's my most recent AM progress reel!
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