Hey Guys!<br><br>I loved this tutorial by Victor! I read it yesterday night....and its really a nice stuff. Thanks Sachin for telling everyone about this, its really helpful.<br><br>Here's one new tutorial by my animation guru Keith Lango on Breakdowns and Overlapps. Its great!! Few days back I recieved VTS 19 from Keith, and the next day I read this article/tutorial. This is cool, and now I know that I can animte better than before....thanks to Keith!<br><br><a href="http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/overlap/overlap.html" target="_blank">http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/overlap/overlap.html</a><br><br>Here's one more ariticle by Shawn Kelly.....Its from the Animation Mentor Newsletter. It has also helped me a lot! I also helped me a lot in posing and getting the right feel.<br><br><font style="font-style: italic;" size="1">
Hello Animators!
<br><br>
Welcome back! Last month we talked about multiple character shots, and
in particular, about how important it is to keep your secondary
characters doing secondary actions. How you usually want to try to have
only one primary character in any shot at any given moment, and to use
your knowledge of composition, staging, and motion to lead the eye of
the audience through any shot, no matter how many characters are
talking, or how busy the scene is.
<br><br>If you've read more than a couple of these, you know I'm just
jumping randomly around to whatever happens to seem interesting to
write about each month, so sticking with tradition, this month we're
making a big random jump out of the "practical application" world and
taking a short detour into something a little more conversational. A
little more intangible, I guess.
<br><br>
This month I want to talk about acting just a little bit.
<br><br>
Not how to do it, but why it's important to try.
<br><br>
Here's a little pop quiz: raise your hand out there if you're an actor...
<br><br>
Anyone?
<br><br>Okay, well - that's sort of a trick question. If you are an
animator, you *ARE* an actor. If you want to become an animator, then
you're signing up for a lifetime of studying acting, and I think it's
important that you think of yourself that way.
<br><br><b>TIP #6: A great animator IS a great actor, and that needs to be a goal for each and every one of you.</b>
<br><br>
Don't believe me?
<br><br>Okay, what is an actor's job? An actor's job is to become their
character so completely that they can deliver a performance that an
audience can believe in. An actor's job is to take the direction from
the Director, and to deliver the required story-points, emotions, and
actions -- all without any dialogue or narration, if necessary.
<br><br>
How is that any different from an animator's job?
<br><br>We have to do the same exact thing, only on top of the actor's job
we also have to be masters of body-mechanics, physics, and artistic
presentation (composition, staging, silhouette, etc.) In fact, I'd
argue that our job is often more difficult than an actor's job, because
we have to do almost everything an actor does, and then on top of that,
we have to have the ability to break that performance down into tiny
24-frame-per-second increments! <br><br>
Actors have the luxury of living in the real world. They have real
props, and real actors to interact with. If an actor is going to storm
out of a door, he gets into the character's head, tries to feel the
emotion of his character as truly and deeply as he can, makes sure he
knows where his marks are, and that's it! Off he goes, storming through
the door, angry as all get-out, and slams the door behind him.
<br><br>That actor doesn't have to think, "Okay, I'm really really mad, so
I'm going to storm through that door. So, hmmm... Okay, first, I want
to take a step with my left foot, so I better shift my hips over my
right foot, and rotate them on the x-axis so my right hip drives
upwards as the weight of my body comes to rest completely on that right
foot. Oh, and I better remember to counter that with the shoulders, and
offset the overlap of the arms as I swing around to take that first
step, or I'll probably just fall over."
<br><br>NO! An actor just thinks "storm through the door" and that's it!
His body will automatically do all of the things you have to truly
break down into minute individual (but deeply inter-related) actions.
<br><br>Animators have to create a performance (hopefully) every bit as
evocative as that actor, AND be a master of how the body mechanics will
work and everything else besides. <br><br>
It isn't an easy job, but boy is it a fun puzzle to tackle, and so satisfying when you really nail it.
<br><br>
Here's the thing - people don't give animators enough credit.
<br><br>
Remember the first time you saw that T-Rex in Jurassic Park busting
through the trees, almost on top of the jeep? The whole theater
screamed! Afterward, people were talking about how scary that T-Rex
was.
<br><br>What? What T-Rex? It wasn't real! The T-Rex didn't scare anyone!
The *ANIMATOR* made them all scream! Sure, the music, and directing add
to any scary moment, but the animator is the single person who brought
that dinosaur to life to such an extent that a theater full of people
screamed.
<br><br>
How cool is *THAT*!?
<br><br>
Or what about Buzz and Woody from Toy Story? How many times have you heard kids talking about how funny Buzz and Woody are?
<br><br>But Buzz and Woody never made anyone laugh. They never made anyone
cry, or scream, or feel inspired. Buzz and Woody are only ideas.
They're a bunch of math, and that's it. They're a file full of bits and
bytes and ones and zeros!
<br><br>The Pixar animators breathed such life into Buzz and Woody, that
children all over the world believed, truly believed - even if only for
those 80 minutes, that those characters were truly alive. That Buzz had
real feelings. That Woody had real dreams.
<br><br>
That's some pretty powerful stuff, if you ask me.
<br><br>
It's the closest we've got to real magic.
<br><br>Sometimes, as an animator, you might wish for some recognition, or
dream of the day when a poster trumpets the fact that a character was
animated by Glen Keane or James Baxter, rather than pointing out that
Mr. Bigshot Celebrity spent two whole days recording the voice track.
<br><br>Will that ever happen? Maybe. I doubt it, but who knows. Either
way, it doesn't really matter, because in the end, the magic of this
animation stuff doesn't have anything to do with individual
recognition. It inspires kids! It spreads laughter around the world. It
gets people thinking about things they normally might not think about.
It lets people of all walks of life recognize universal truths about
themselves and their neighbors. At the very least, it lets people
escape their lives, no matter how hard those lives are, at least for a
couple hours. <br><br>
The point, I guess, is this: if you don't make a conscious effort to
study at least the rudimentary basics of acting, you will NEVER imbue a
character like Woody with the life that Woody's audience so wants to
see. They WANT to believe in him. They WANT to identify with him. You
only have to give them a real chance! If you don't truly become your
character when you're filming your reference, you are short-changing
the audience, and whatever performance you come up with will never be
as powerfully evocative as it could have been.
<br><br>If you ignore the principles of acting, you might be a good
animator, but you will never be great. In short, you will have blown it
as an animator. You will have squandered an opportunity to help
entertain, inspire, and touch people, even in that small way for that
short period of time. <br><br>
And honestly? If you aren't gunning for becoming "great," then you
might as well just give up now, because you'll never get past
"mediocre" with that attitude. <br><br>
Am I the best actor? Am I "great?" Of course not! Not even close. I
have a ton to learn about acting (and always will - yet another of the
many facets of our art form that are far too complex to ever completely
master), but I do know enough to know that the pursuit of acting skills
is as important to my animator's toolbox as any nice figure-8 arcs are.
<br><br>
And I also know that getting lazy, stopping your learning process, and
saying "okay, I'm good enough" is Step 1 in the "How to Become a
Washed-Up Burned-Out Has-Been Animator" manual.
<br><br>Will I ever be a "great" actor? Will you? Beats me. That isn't the
point. The point is that I'll spend the rest of my career trying to
push my art to that level, and even if I'm never the Greatest
Actor/Animator On Earth (which, come on - let's face it - probably
isn't ever going to happen), at least I'll know that I spent every day
trying my best to get there. <br><br>
And in the end, isn't that what truly matters? Isn't that what will
give your life, (and by extension, your work) that feeling of
satisfaction, growth, youth, and fun?
<br><br>I should apologize for how preachy that got. I just think acting is
such an important and overlooked skill for animators. Future articles
might get into more practical "acting tips," but then again, I never
really know until I sit down what I'll be blathering about, so who
knows. <br><br>
Whatever the next article is about, I promise it'll be more practical!
<br><br>
As always, keep animating, and have FUN!
<br><br>
- Shawn
<br><br></font><font size="2">hope you like them....<img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0"><br>Good luck everyone!<br>-A<br></font>
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