Research from 'The Fundamentals of Animation' by Paul Wells Pt 1

Basic Details:
Wells P 2006, The Fundamentals of Animation, AVA Publishing SA UK.

Extracted from Pg 33 of  "Story and Design"

• Animators should try and engage with other art forms, particularly those that privilege movement- for example, dance; and those that tell stories by other means- for example, opera, through music.
• Animation is basically an art of 'metaphor' and is perfect for all kinds of role-play to show different perspectives and ideas about the culture we live in.
• 'Acting' is at the core of affecting animation, and it is particularly important to concentrate on body language and physical gesture as the tools of expression.
• Make sure that your 'acting' through the figure is simple and clear- one simple gesture is better than five noisy ones.
• Try not to move everything in every frame- pauses are beneficial and silences can be dramatically effective.
• Not all animation should aspire to be 'realistic', but it should be credible. Establish the 'illogical logic' of the world you create and give it credibility.
• Try to make sure that all the elements of your animated world are used to tell your story- for example, colour, design, lighting, etc.- and that these elements are integrated in a coherent way.
• Animation is a form of choreography, so don't just concentrate on the face and don't be afraid of showing your whole figure in the frame. Hold poses, stretch movement and change the rhythm- 25 frames do not have to be divided equally. Animation is not mathematics and there are no set laws.
• Try to capture the 'essence' of your character's figure in the design, and build a specific vocabulary of movement for it, so that the 'meaning' in the acting will be clear and distinctive.
• Embrace the artifice and illusionism of animation, so that you are able to create 'plays within plays' or 'films within films' to condense your plot, but more importantly to 'illuminate' a supposedly-known or taken-for-granted world, from a different perspective.

Extracted from Pg 36-37 of  "Storyboards and Narrative"

36.

• There can be three stages to the storyboarding process: a thumbnail version, either created by one of more animators developing sequences; the reference version, which has a provisional, but agreed structure, with more detailed and larger drawings; and a fixed version, the final structured storyboard that is used in the 'animatic' or 'story reel', is correspondent to the provisional soundtrack and informs the finalisation of a shooting script.
• Director Pete Doctor: 'We work off a "beat board". As we are developing the story, we pin a number of story "beats"- basic scene ideas, images, exchanges- on to a board and shuffle them around until we really get the essence of the story, what is the basic "plot". Sometimes we use blue cards to signal various character points- character attributes that we want to nail down. As we use blue cards to signal various character points- character attributes that we want to nail down.

37.

• Editor Lee Unkrich: '... A story reel is effectively a "rough draft" of the movie. We take all the storyboards and combine them with temporary dialogue that we record with employees at PIXAR, and we put in sound effects and music, and edit things together so that we create out "movie", and try and make it as watchable as the finished film that you go and see in the theatre.'

Extracted from Pg 46 of  "Character Development"

• ... creating characters who serve the core conceptual premise of the programmes, and second, the creation of a simple character descriptor that sits alongside the key visualisations and model sheets.
• Creating some key character notes is fundamental to the consistent construction of a main character, both for an individual animator and for a jobbing animator using the information 'bible' of a commercial series... in children's entertainment, that the character has a dominant arguably stereotypical trait, in order to have complete immediacy for the audience.

Extracted from Pg 50-51 of  "Layout and thinking Cinematically"

50.

• Layout is essentially the technical version of storyboarding in which camera movement, effects work, and specific design elements to enhance action and performance are addressed. The layout artist creates the settings and architectural environments of the scenes, and must consider time, place, scale, mood, atmosphere, the dynamics of the proposed action, lighting and the overall 'style'.

51.

Golden Layout Rules of the Disney Veterans

• One quick look is all the audience gets- keep it simple, direct, like a poster; it must sell an idea.
• Fancy rendering at a later date cannot save a poor original conception.
• Always keep screen directions clear. This will be your biggest headache- don't overlook it.
• Keep informed on: art in history- architecture, costumes and landscapes
• Keep informed on: styles, media, textures, surfaces, composition, and drawing .
• Keep informed on: technical information- effects given by different lenses, ground glass, filters, gels, etc.
• Mood can be established by timing and movement.

Extracted from Pg 78-79 of  "The Animator as Performer"

78.

• Whether working through the pencil, a puppet or pixels, the need to express thought, emotion and action is fundamental to effective animated sequences, and while many voice artists are given credit for the performances in animated films- particularly so that 'starts' can sell animated features- it is the animator who creates the performance of the character through visual means.
• The universally acknowledged 'Gollum' from The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a combination of a motion captured performance by Andy Serkis, and an extraordinarily nuanced use of computer-generated animation. Audiences forget that they are watching a CGI character... because of the capacity for Gollum to think, feel and express his tragic contradictions.
• Director Brad Bird has suggested that the art of character animation is like 'catching lighting in a bottle one volt at a time', because the animator must work on brief seconds of complex personal exchange over a long period of time; time which passes in live action, literally at the moment of its execution. This attention to detail is reflected in the relationship between the boy and the iron giant in Bird's adaptation of Ted Hughes' poetic narrative.
• Many of the performance issues in relation to animation are intrinsically related to the casting of the voices.

79.

• Thinking tends to lead to conclusions; emotion tends to lead to action.
• Your audience only empathises with emotion, not with thinking.
• It is good for your character to have an obstacle of some kind. 
• A gesture does not necessarily have to illustrate the spoken word. Sometimes a gesture can speak of a different inner truth (Study Gollum in The Lord of the Rings).
• Animate the character's thoughts. All of them. The more specific the thoughts are, the better it will be. (Look at The Iron Giant scene in which the giant eats the car in the junkyard. You will count something like 13 different thoughts in a 12 second time frame.)
• A character plays an action until something happens to make him play a different action. In other words, there should never be a moment when your character is doing nothing.
• Definition of acting: Playing an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle.
• Scenes begin in the middle, not at the beginning. You want to enter a scene as late as possible.
• Dumb people and dumb characters do not think they are dumb. They think they are smart.
• Don't start animating until you have your story set. Storyboard everything first. If a sequence lacks of conflict or negotiation, try to fix it before starting the animation.