Research from 'Animated Performance' by Nancy Beiman

Basic Details:

BEIMAN, N. (2010), Animated Performance, Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Extracted from the pages of 14 to 26 "Design for Living"

14.

• Introduction to thumbnails
  Thumbnails (n.) the first ideas or sketches of a designer noted down for future reference 
• Since characters are developed in the storyboard phase of an animated film, can storyboards be used for animation thumbnails? Answer: No
• Is there a difference between acting on a storyboard and acting for animation? Answer: Yes
• Storyboards are not the animated performance; they are the script. Storyboard is mainly concerned with the WHY of a film (telling the story). Animation (along with layout, art direction, and backgrounds) is concerned with HOW the story points are put across.
• An animator uses storyboards in the same way an actor uses scripts and director's notes. The storyboard sketches show the character's basic attitudes and give the animated film-maker a simple and inexpensive method of exploring character interactions and story development in a film. Storyboards do no exist in the singular. They are always part of a larger project.

26.

• A good voice actor can create 50 per cent of the animated performance. This is particularly evident when an animated character is designed as a caricature of the actor who provides the voice.
• It is a relatively simple matter to analyse the actor's characteristic movements and incorporate a caricatured version in the animated character's performance. Many excellent animated characters have done this very thing.
• The drawback to this system is that the caricatured references may not remain relevant as the film ages. If the original performance is good, this should not create a problem.
• The caricature of Rowan Atkinson as Zazu the Horbill is amusing, but the caricature is not essential to the performance; Zazu will remain amusing even if the audience is not familiar with the actor's other work.

28.

• When sound film became the standard in the late 1920s there was a lengthy period of trial and error where animators attempted different methods of portraying mouth movement for dialogue scenes.
• Mouth movement was seen as primary, or the most important action in a dialogue scene and drawn in laborious detail. As a result every mouth shape was emphasised equally and handled independently from the body action, which led to grotesque facial distortions.
• Animated performance took a quantum leap forward when animators at the Walt Disney Studio discovered that dialogue animation was in fact secondary action, and that dialogue delivery was 'put over' by body movement and attitudes rather than over-analysed mouth shapes.
• In The Delivery Boy (1931), the body action is used to create the character performances. The mouth shapes are underplayed and were clearly added after the action was blocked in.

29.

• The Disney animators began to animate body action first in dialogue scenes, using the soundtrack as a rough timing aid. Mouths would be added later after the character acting was improved.
• This approach eliminated the over-animated 1920s mouths and made the performances more believable and naturalistic.
• Fleischer Studios animator Shamus Culhane retrained at Disney to learn the new animation techniques.
• "...discovered at Disney's that there was a definite need for Body English. The louder the volume, the more violent the effort of the body to produce it. The size of the mouth was a very minor contribution to the end result..." -- Shamus Culhane, Animation: From Script to Screen

34.

• Remember that animation acting is movement with a purpose.
• A common animation error is to have the character changing body attitudes so often that there is literally a new pose for each new word.
• Over-animated action is every word and pose in this scene is equally emphasised resulting in frantic and over-animated action that confuses and tires the viewer.
• Animated dialogue is best performed by using key poses for dialogue phrases, rather than for individual words. This is why the system of blocking body system of blocking body action first and adding the mouths laters works so well. Fewer, well chosen poses lead to clearer action.
• Phrasing the action means that key poses will change in relation to a sentence, or partial sentence, rather than to individual words. Two basic attitudes might be all that is needed for a scene; body action moves between them, and secondary action on head, arms, and mouth combines with facial expression to vary the timing and minimise the chance of 'floating animation'. A 'moving hold' also keeps the animation form popping abruptly between key poses.

200.

• Animator/director Jamaal Bradley directed the Meet the Demoman short and co-directed the Meet the Spy short with Andrew Burke and Aaron Halifax for Valve Studios' Team Fortress 2 video game (2007). Here Jamaal describes how he uses a combination of writing, thumbnailing, and live-action reference to block the acting:
• "Once I have an understanding of the characters' behaviour and am fully aware of the context of the sequence I can start to plan my animation."
• "Not only do I take note of what is being said, but I also track where the breaths are taking place in the dialogue as well as pauses for thought... I feel this is important because your body reacts in different ways when you are speaking and breathing. I study this until I know it verbatim."
• "... thumbnailing the key poses that I want to hit. I usually have a broad idea of how I want the acting to be so these poses let me visualise what the character will be doing before I shoot my reference. It is kind of like jotting down notes before writing a story."
• "... third step before I start pushing pixels around is shooting my reference. This is just a loose blueprint of my acting choices. I shoot reference for a good amount of time so that I can get different choices that may go beyond my thumbnails or reinforce them."
• "The key word is "reference"... My animation may take a different shape because there will be several ideas that sprout form the footage. This may seem like a lot of planning but I have found that when you can work in production you have to cut down on the amount of time you spend reworking ideas because your vision wasn't clear and completely off base from what the director and supervisor were expecting. Seventy per cent of planning will make your animation go smoother in my experience."

226.

• Video game characters work within a time frame that is set by the player rather than the animator. The player is an unscripted additional character in the scenario; video games are interactive by nature.
• Video games once featured mostly simple repeat cycle animation. Games have more recently been incorporating more and more narrative into their structure.
• This is a challenging prospect since character powers and the pace of the game are directly related to the skills of the player, and scenes cannot be planned to run identically each time as in a linear story.
• Cutscenes or in-game cinematics reward the player for completing tasks and build character and story development. 
• Do games animators need the same acting skills as a feature or television animator?
  "... I would recommend ANY animator to learn acting skills to enhance their understanding of human movement. There will be 'go to' people for certain acting and action shots because not everyone has the same level of skill in every venue of animation, but there will be times that you have to step up and do various animation styles. With that being said the lines are becoming more and more blurred as technology advances. Some game studios have the same number of people working on a project as the award-winning feature houses... Good animation is good animation no matter the industry."

227.

• What is your opinion of games stories? Do you see them becoming sufficiently complex to develop strong characters, similar to those in a film? Has this already happened?
  "Video games have come a long way and the stories have become deeper. The hardest thing for game storytelling is incorporating a good story into an interactive world without taking the player out or disrupting the experience. The characters are complex, but how do you really show the depth of this simulated human and push that into the player's mind; actually making the player believe they are that person? Some games have done this with success and some have failed. Telling stories outside of the game and keeping it within the realm of the product opens an entire new experience for the players and even lets people who do not play games enjoy the world and characters.
  
  Storytelling is definitely getting better in games and most studious are trying to push the envelope in this area. Many feature houses are trying to incorporate making games and films simultaneously. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I see bigger signs of most production houses working together and building bigger projects that will be story heavy. Many games designers approach their development as an interactive cinema experience and have created some fantastic results. In due time games and film will have the same quality of character and animation."
• "We never thought of the characters as drawings. We thought of them as living creatures." - Chuck Jones, 1976

Note to self: Perhaps make an attempt to contact and interview Jamaal Bradley and ask him a few questions on topic.