Research from 'Acting and Performance for Animation' by Derek Hayes and Chris Webster Pt 2

Basic Details:
Hayes, D & Webster, C 2013, Acting and Performance for Animation, Focal Press, UK.

Extracted from the pages of 61 to 76 "Character and Personality"

61.

• The key here is the word interesting. Without that interest, a character is in danger of becoming reduced to the status of manikin. At the heart of any great story are the characters that inhabit, shape and determine the story.
• This does not simply apply to performance-based stories; the same holds true of all stories based on characters regardless if this is in theatre, literature, film, radio or animation. The most important aspect is characters, recognisable and believable characters with personality. Regardless of the exact nature of character, it is largely through these characters, though not exclusively, the narrative of the story is delivered.
• It is those human traits that attract us to the characters and make them recognisable, not the clothes they wear or the role they play.
• ... if the storytelling is to be interesting then the characters within the story need to be interesting.

62.

• Character Development
  The nature of the character will shape the nature of the character's performance.
• Character development may begin with concept design, a part of the process that precedes the writing of a final script and continues through the design process including storyboarding and on into production... may be impractical for feature films or TV series, but may be true of episodic one-off short productions (As opposed to TV series).
• Progression of characters Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck from 1D nature to complex individuals with distinct psychological traits is impractical as characters cannot be developed over the period of a feature film or a TV series as it is important to maintain continuity throughout.
• Any development needs to be completed and the characters established before the production begins, or at least the parameters for the performance needs to be set.
• ... it could b argued that the very nature of feature films is to tell stories about the changes the character undergo.
• Begin to explore the physical nature of your characters based on the script and in doing so look for personality traits that emerge from your concept art in addition to those that may already be established in the script. It may be useful for you to use a range of media that allow for different qualities to surface. You may find that modelling your characters at this early stage allows you to discover aspects of your character that drawings or paintings don't allow.

63.

• The director, the producer, and the designers will normally collaborate as a team. Role of animators are largely secondary.
• It is critical that you consider the practical implications on animation production when making your designs.

64.

• The way actors perform will make the story come alive in ways beyond what was originally envisaged. In order to do that, it is necessary for the actors to be comfortable with the characters they are acting.
• Issues such as the physicality and psychology of a character will not only determine empathy but also that almost illusive but very tangible quality that Disney termed appeal.
• Formats
  The development of the animated character may also be dependent on the format the characters for which they are being designed.
• When designing new characters, artists and designers may need to ensure that their designs are suited for multiformats; large screen, hand-held devices, print, computer games, etc.
• The duration of each of the formats will determine or impact the narrative structure and, in turn, the narrative will determine the character's performance within the story.

66.

• Animator as Actor
  The animated character may well be the concept of a writer and developed by a designer, a producer, or a director, but it is often the animator who makes the character tangible, believable, and ultimately real.
• The animator has the power of transforming the characters from an idea, a concept, and design into a living personality.

67.

• If the animator fails to appreciate and explore the personality within a character, the character will never be anything other than a tailor's dummy and not really worthy of the term character. A less than thorough approach to the development of your characters will more than likely result in an unbelievable performance, and there is nothing more certain to kill a good script stone dead than a poor performance.
• ... a poor performance, other than lack of animation skills or laziness on the part of the animator, it the animator's inability to empathise or completely understand the character.
• We must consider ourselves as actors and as such develop those acting skills as well.
• If we are agreed that Homer Simpson is a believable character, it is due entirely to the skills of the designer, the scriptwriter, the voice artist, and the performance skills of the animator.

68.

• For figurative animation that simply requires action, it may be enough for the animator to think that this or that character does this or that action.
• Performances that require a high degree of emotional engagement and refined acting from the characters, then it may be far better for an animator to know why a character does what it does.
• Barry Purves' expertise in animation performance and acting is underpinned by his in-depth knowledge and appreciation of the characters he works with. It is this that enables him to achieve believable and nuanced performances with a wide range of characters.
• In his animated version of Verdi's opera Rigoletto (1993), we are presented with a wealth of character that are not simply animated beautifully; they live and breathe and die. Achilles (1995), a story told in a manner that reflects Barry's interest and knowledge of the classics and theatre clearly demonstrates his deep understanding and empathy with the personalities that he breathes life into.
• At his hands, puppets made of rubber and wire are transformers from inanimate objects to believable personalities capable of love, hate and murder.
• Each character will demonstrate a distinct personality that shows them to be individuals with an inherent attitude that is demonstrated in their relationship to things, circumstances, and most importantly of all, other personalities. The smallest of details may provide a catalyst for a performance.

69.

• Games animation requires a good sense of action timing and the economy of movement that ensures a good game-play experience.
• Others can handle drama very well, like Barry Purves, whereas others have a highly developed sense of comic timing.
• Important for the audience to be fully aware of a character's personality and have an understanding of the psychological state of the protagonists. It is through the personality of character that the audience will experience an empathy with the character and their situations and then to react to them in a way that the director had intended. It is vital that the personality must be evident to the audience, not necessarily liked but recognised.
• It is great timing by the animators that allow the personality of Bambi to come across, and it is this personality and his very real loss that extracts the emotional response from the audience.

76.

• When designing characters for animation, you must keep the animation process uppermost in your mind. The designs must be appropriate to the concept, the narrative, and the characters, but you must consider the consequences of your designs

Extracted from the pages of 105 to 137 "Making a Performance"

105.

• "Human acting as I understand it doesn't mean acting just like humans, it means expressing unique and specific things in response to what is specifically happening and what the character should be feeling about what is actually happening, such as humans naturally do. It can still be cartoony or exaggerated, and is completely compatible with cartoony physics." -- John Kricfalusi

106.

• As animators and directors, we need to be attuned to the possibilities of nonverbal communication because nobody gets by without it; in fact, we are made uneasy when we can't detect body language that ought to be there, and our characters will only really come alive when we make them give off the right signals. The right stance will mean the difference between a person and a sign and an understanding of nonverbal signals will help create a real personality.
• The Uncanny Valley
  The Uncanny Valley is a term coined by professor of robotics Masahiro Mori and is the hypothesis that the more human a robot's (and by extension a CG or puppet character's) appearance becomes, the more empathetic and positive will be the response of an observer, up to a point where that response turns to one of revulsion. As the simulation gets progressively further from the robotic and closer to the human, the empathetic response will start to return. This "dip" in response can be seen plotted on the graph and gives rise to the uncanny valley term.

• The more human a character's appearance becomes, viewers will respond with more empathy, up to a point where that response turns to one of revulsion.

107.

• The reasons behind this aversion are not fully understood and still subject to research and speculation, including the idea that no matter how good the simulated person comes we will still be able to tell, subconsciously, that they are somehow "other" but it is very interesting from a performance point of view. Though it was once thought that CG films would naturally have to progress to absolute realism, it can now be seen that we can stylise our characters as much as we like without losing empathy for them.
• "One of my problems with full animation is, often times, people do beautiful movement, but it's not specific movement. Old people move the same way as young people, women move the same as men, and fat people move the same as thin people... and people don't move the same. Everybody moves different..." -- Brad Bird
• In The Incredibles, Brad Bird set out to make sure that each character could be recognised by their movement as much as by their design. 
• His aim was to create within his team an agreement on who the character was and how he or she moved so that even if they all had the same body shape they could be distinguished by their movement. 

109.

• Despite the fact that "the eyes are the windows to the soul" and our eyes are drawn to face when people speak, we are actually taking in an enormous amount of information from a person's stance, from hand positions, and the way we tilt our heads; we communicate with our whole body.
• Our hips and shoulders are the pivot points in the body and these are the the places where we show the weight of a character, with women generally carrying more weight lower down in the hips and men carrying more in the shoulders and we can immediately imagine a curvaceous woman leading with her hips or a brawny man moving with rolling shoulder movements.

114.

• "Find the golden pose, and build the scene around that pose." -- Ollie Johnston
• The "golden pose" is the one that says what you want the animation to say in that scene.
• A really good pose will read well and will show what the character is thinking.
• Chuck Jones was a master of the pose that was both funny and meaningful at the same time; he never let himself or his animators over-animate things and always made sure that the important poses read well.
• ... he made sure that he didn't have the character freeze in position but, with judicious use of cushioning and overlapping action, like a tail or ear that caught up just a little latter, he could make a much more subtle effect and keep the character alive.

115.

• When the characters touch, they seem to acknowledge each other's reality, quite apart from the one we give them, and it seems odd that this idea isn't used more often.
• Think how seldom we see characters touching in a simple, natural way, and how contact is often restricted to the Prince's kiss or the bad guy's punch.
• Once upon a time, acting was taught in this way, as a series of gestures that meant something specific.
• The work of Stanislavsky signalled the end for exaggerated staginess... but this telegraphing of the emotional state of the character is still too often part of the journeyman animator's repertoire, and many animators would like there to be a simple system of visual clues to emotional states.
• www.businessballs.com/body-langauge.htm
• Effort
  The physicality of a performance is vital if the character is going to be believable. Without weight and a sense of the forces acting on and through the character, all the clever posing will go for nothing.
• We need to put some sense of effort that goes into being that way.
• A cloud will need to move itself and react to the forces that act upon it.

119.

• The amount of Exaggeration we use is entirely up to us and depends on the way we have designed our universe. A very cartoony universe will allow for a lot more squash and stretch, a more realistic one will demand less though all will benefit from a certain amount of exaggeration.

137.

• By giving each character their own repertoire of gestures, you help create their personality.
• The physicality of a character comes from the effort they put into each action; they need to be solid and believable, but effort is driven by motivation and motivation will change the nature of an action.
• Silence and pauses are just as important as sound and movement. Movement like music, needs pacing and rhythm, accents, and pauses in order to let it read.
• Animation is an art of simplification and exaggeration; let the action read.
• Reflex actions are non-intentional and are driven by internal forces we can't control. What is important for performance, however, is what comes after, how the character's reaction to the stimulus reveal facets of his personality.
• Comedy is not about the animation, it's about the joke. If you can get the gag over the minimum of movement, do that rather than over animate and kill it with embellishments. As long as the action does not run counter to the personality you have created for the character, you can so as much or as little as is needed.

Extracted from the pages of 167 to 189 "Working with Actors"

167.

• Usually been the case that working with actors in animation has involved recording them to provide voices for our characters, and this is still the way that animators and directors most often engage with actors.
• Combine live action of an actor's performance with animation and this something that is very prevalent in the world of advertising, whether it be cartoon characters interacting with kids in a breakfast cereal commercial or a drawn man creating a car out of a cardboard box.
• Becoming more and more common that we have the opportunity to use actors in a motion capture studio to create a character performance.

169.

• The Voices
  Casting
  It is self-defeating having a famous actor, with a very recognisable voice, if the audience is going to see the actor every time the character speaks, rather than your character on the screen.
• Get the right voice, an actor who can put across what you want the character to portray and the right sound for the character.
• Dreamworks uses more star voices than Pixar.

172.

• Cartoony or Noncartoony Voices?
  Working out what the vocal characteristics of a character are going to be is, in many ways, a similar procedure with cartoon voices as with naturalistic voices; as with everything else is has to come out of the personality and serve the needs of the story.
• This is where the director who has a good idea of what she is after can work with the actor to create a character performance, with the director building on what is in the script to give the actor a sense of the tone and feel of the piece.

185.

• The first practical example of how motion capture influenced animation probably comes with the development of rotoscoping by the Fleischer Brothers around 1915 and first used on the Out of the Inkwell series starring Koko the clown. The process of tracing off, by hand, individual frames of previously filmed footage of a live subject gave the animation a completely naturalistic action.
• Using rotoscoping, and other techniques and methods of referencing live motion, quickly became standard practice, particularly in feature film animation where a higher standard of animation with more naturalistic action was sought.
• Disney's Snow White and the Fleischer Bros. Mr Bug goes to Town are both examples of rotoscope.
• Rotoscoping in Snow White has been criticised as creating a seperation between characters done in this way, like Snow White herself, and those done in a traditional animation way, like the Dwarfs, but in the Fleischer film it serves to enhance the difference between the world of humans and that of the insects who are the main characters.
• There is a very big difference between simply capturing motion and capturing a performance. In searching for ever more naturalistic animation that involves capturing the traits and behaviour of individual personalities, we have seen the rise of the animated performer.
• A new breed of actor has been born from the discipline and foremost amongst them is Andy Serkis. Serkis has become widely acclaimed for his various roles and has won a number of awards.

186.

• The role of the actor creating a performance capture sequence is not dissimilar to that of an animator dealing with a figurative character based subject. They will both need to 'become' the character they are acting if they are to get the best possible performance.
• If they can think like the character they are then in a better position to be able to move like them and if they can move like them they can then begin to act like them.
• In order to avoid formulaic or generic movements, it is important to understand that personalities have individual mannerisms.
• Mannerisms that may be associated with a particular character and are then associated with that character by the audience need to be build up over a period of time.

187.

• "The character, the narrative, the hook into how that performance may work, those processes are all the same... Your end result is to provide a believable, empathic character for an audience, who will respond to it. It works because they engage with it... by giving it a rhythm that represents life, the audience breathes life into it and they believe it. It only works if the audience believe it and the easiest route I've found, to that, is me believing it first." -- William "Todd" Jones
• So it's important that the performances you are using for performance capture are treated like any other actor since what they provide will be the basis of the character performance.

188.

• There will also need to be assistance on set that will help the actor to give a believable performance, especially where outside forces are concerned.
• Bullet hits in live-action films are often made more dynamic by harnessing the actor to a rope and pulling him over so that it appears that an outside force is acting on him and he doesn't have to push himself over.
• The same trick is used in the motion capture studio to simulate bullet hits and other techniques need to be invented to portray other forces impacting on the character.
• "For physical impacts etc., say like firing a gun, etc., I would actually get onto the mo-cap area and hold the gun and make it 'fire' so that the whole jolt shows in the character's body and doesn't simply look like its them acting the recoil. I actually hold the prop and hit it with my other hand to create the recoil effect." -- Billy Allison

189.

• If there is one constant thing in life, it is to change. Everything changes, all the time and animation is no exception to the rule. In recent years, we have seen very many changes to the way in which animation is produced, distributed., and consumed but far from seeing these developments as a threat I believe that most animators are very keen to adopt new technologies and embrace these changes.
• Get a better understanding of what the actor has to do by doing some acting yourself, whether it be amateur dramatics, stand-up, or acting classes.
• If the audience is to believe in a character, the actor has to believe in him too, and for that to happen, you need to believe in the character and the actor's ability to create him.