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Before trying to experiment with different forms of animation, I decided that it was best to try to film footage of myself doing the actions that I really wanted to do.
Originally, I could've easily placed my phone somewhere and record myself, however, I felt as though that was not necessarily the best option especially when my first experiment is rotoscoping and trying to use myself as reference for complicated movement.
So, in the end, I decided to book the soundstage room from the University.
There, I was able to get constructive feedback on my acting by Mark Buschbacher, who was one of the University's staff who helped film and give feedback on my work.
Throughout this experience I was really able to experiment with a range of acting emotions such as:
Evil
Smug/Confident
Annoyed
Fear
Playing around with some stylized walk cycles
Stylized sitting down/standing up movements
BODY LANGUAGE - RESEARCH
Body language, although we don't realize it, is the oldest language in the world. There are a lot of reasons why a person would behave the way they do due to their: mood, health, age, social background etc. Through our body language we are able to express our inner emotions even when trying to hide our emotions. We are able to sometimes be able to read people's minds through their body posture. (1)
For my research, I decided to use a few of the books that I had borrowed from the University's library. One of the books that I had chosen in particular was "Body Language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures" by Allan Pease. I had also used the book "Acting and Character Animation. The Art of Animated Films, Acting and Visualizing" by Rolf Giesen and Anna Khan.
I really wanted to exaggerate the use of the hands for my research and the reason why I chose the hand poses that I did.
In Allan Pease's book, there is a chapter called "Chapter 3: Palm Gestures".(2) It allowed me to understand what is considered an aggressive and dominant position through hand shapes (figure 17 and figure 18) when it comes to people who interact with each other.
The example it provided was extremely interesting since it gave a scenario of "What if you asked someone to help move an object from point A to point B?"
What I found intriguing was that even though I could hypothetically tell the person where to place the object, in the same vocal tone, body movement and facial gesture. The way my had positioned could tell my real intention of how I am feeling and how I approach the person helping me.
At first I wondered while reading this, "Wouldn't it be easy to lie by masking my real intentions?"
But the answer was quite fascinating, since it would be quite hard to lie since the way the palm moves matters quite a bit. There are three palm gestures that the book provides:
(Figure 16) Submissive Palm Position - it is when the palm is facing upwards and it is harmless. It comes across extremely gentle and non violent to the other person. I realised I didn't exactly use this position specifically for my reference footage, however, it was still helpful to know.
(Figure 17) Dominant Palm Position - It is when the palm is facing the opposite direction and it is facing downwards. Again, it is harmless, however, there is a hint of superiority through it. What I noticed was that I ended up using this palm position for my act "I am the King of the World!". I felt as though it was extremely important since it shows off the idea of authority and superiority to my character compared to the audience.
(Figure 18) Aggressive Palm Position - This is when the hand is closed into a fist and it has a pointed finger. The pointed figure is usually considered a rude and irritating gesture that people can generally use as they speak. I noticed that in my act based on the Wizard of Oz's line 'I will get you pretty, and your little dog too', that I used this hand pose quite a bit, throughout all of my attempts. I felt as though the pointing was quite effective since I was able to show the hostility of the character and how aggressive I come across to the audience.
In the same book, I noticed there was another chapter that I found intriguing and useful for my research and that was "Chapter 6: Arm Barriers" (3). The reason why I found this interesting was because I noticed there were different ways of showing an arm-cross gesture which helped convey different emotions. There were two gestures that I wanted to focus on specifically for my research:
(figure 67) Standard Arm - Cross Gesture: For this hand position, I found it interesting that there was an experiment conducted in a classroom. For this arm position to be done, they experimented with a professor who purposefully started to slander the character of important people. Due to this, since the students didn't agree with the professor's opinion, they all decided to cross their arms. So, through my research, I noticed that the cross arm positions are usually used by people who don't always tend to agree with the statement being said. I decided not to use this gesture specifically since it didn't express the hostility that I wanted through one of my acting sequences so I decided to keep researching.
(figure 68) Reinforced Arm - Cross Gesture: I decided to research more on this pose, since I found it more hostile and more aggressive by the way the arms are
extremely high up. Not only this, but it shows through the tension of the fists as the fingers clench on the arms. I felt as though this pose helped a lot more in my research, since I was able to use it for one of my reference sequences. The sequence I used it for particular was for the line "Well here's another fine mess you've gotten me into!" I wanted to display an
annoyed and aggressive personality through my experiment and I felt as though I was able to capture the emotion that I wanted to convey.
ACTING RESEARCH
Before filming my video references, what I found useful as I was researching was that most animators who wanted to be able to capture movement, were often encouraged to participate in acting classes.(3) The problem was that most artists were extremely introverted and they felt unwilling as well as uncomfortable to act. Personally, I am not an extroverted person, however, I had experience from a young age in Musical Theatre. So, I was not bothered by being in the Studio and recording myself to do the movements I wanted to animate. Not only this, but I felt as though it would allow my work to be a lot more personal if I ended up acting for my own research instead of using clips from online.
Even though I had mentioned that I had previous knowledge to acting, I still needed to learn more on how to adapt in the studio, trying to build a character through my acting. (4)
The concept of the actor needing to understand what is happening in the scene is extremely important since it is necessary to discuss things such as:
The importance of the character emotion in the scene?
What are the character's intentions/objectives in the scene? Does it come across to the audience?
How to help the actor's acting? Perhaps give them an idea of the scene by showing Character designs/Finished animation/Intended scene designs/Storyboards etc.
Since my research is based off character animation and not me creating a student film, I felt as though that I had to heavily focus more on the first two points. (5)
Throughout my acting research, I realized that it took me quite a bit of time for me to adapt to understanding the character emotions since I needed to fully understand the reason of the sequence. Not only this, but it also took a bit of time because I had to really achieve some basic understanding what movement in particular felt appropriate for the emotion I wanted to deliver.
CONCLUSION ON RESEARCH
I felt as though this experiment was extremely successful since I was able to nit pick lines from films and create my own twist on them in my own unique way. It really allowed me, to focus a lot on character animation by exaggerating my movements through my acting in an effective way which, was what I originally intended. However, I didn't want to do it too much that made it seem out of place.
I was pretty content and surprised that I had multiple attempts on different shots since it really allowed me to create and expand on some of the character animation that I wanted to act out.
I learned that whatever you do first isn't always going to be perfect. Due to this, I ended up realising that perhaps the reference footage that I have used in the past for previous work, may have not been effective since I didn't get to properly critique and analyse its effectively. After this experiment, it allowed me to put a lot more care into my work ethic as well as quality.
Finally, the use of constructive feedback, had helped a lot more than intended. I am someone who always allows criticism, since it helps me grow as a creator through my work.
REFERENCES:
(1) Giesen, R. and Khan, A. (2018) “Chapter 33 - Understanding Body Language,” in Acting and character animation: The art of animated films, acting, and visualizing. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 177–179.
(2) Pease, A. (2014) “Arm Barriers,” in Body language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures. New Delhi: Manjul Publishing House, pp. 89–92.
(3) Pease, A. (2014) “Palm Gestures,” in Body language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures. New Delhi: Manjul Publishing House, pp. 40–43.
(4) Hooks, E. (2017) “Animator versus stage actor – vive la différence!,” in Acting for animators 4th edition. London: Routledge, pp. 3–5.
(5)Hayes, D. and Webster, C. (2013) “Chapter 8: Working with Actors - Live Action and Animation,” in Acting and performance for Animation. New York: Focal Press, pp. 357–359.
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