Animators by day Animation teachers by night.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Work with an image.


Mike Wu and I had a class this week working on a two-character dialogue assignment. Everyone in class did very well with week one as far as the blocking they showed. Most of the shots the students showed were very clear , but what was consistently lacking was the performance oriented details. Much of this comes from relying on the line read and not exploring much further beyond that. The line read is only going to give you so much. Mike always says, "Lead the line. Don't let the line lead you". You have to fully know and understand a character in order to give a convincing performance. We segued this idea into showing some Mr. Bean footage to illustrate our point. I personally feel that Rowan Atkinson is one of the top 5 physical comedians/performers of all time. In researching him and his inspirations, I came to learn that Rowan always envisioned the behavior and mannerisms of Mr. Bean to fall in line with those of a mischievous 9 year-old boy. What a wonderful springboard to launch from. If you have a clear vision in your head as to who the character is, or what you think he/she represents, this then puts you in a better position to latch on to an image of something that can help steer you toward making interesting choices. These may manifest in body language, expression, or gesture. The more you bring to the party before you've picked up your mouse, the better your animation will be. 2-D, 3-D, or live-action,..... if you don't know your character you're screwed.

If you have a character oriented assignment/challenge that you seem to have a hard time overcoming, revisit or create a backstory for the character and give yourself an image that will help shape the mannerisms and performance of who you're animating. Doing so will help you to make unique choices, steering you away from animation cliches and provide you with fertile ground to plant an interesting, organic performance. Be it a 9 year-old boy or a pneumatic drill, an image can help shape a good piece of animation into a performance that brings a character to life.

-Adam


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbyQHgiv1z4

5 Comments:

Blogger myung said...

lol, that makes sense why Mr. Beans character is always so curious. Seems like being like a kid lets him explore ideas and situations with no biased opinions and so there's almost no limitations to how he can react.
The video wont load for some reason. maybe too many ppl are looking at them.
Hope you guys are doing well. Can't wait to see some kickass animations!!
What do you guys think of happy feet? I kinda want to watch it cause its doing so well... but ugh, mocap. hahaha

cheers!

1:47 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I grew up in Scotland and love Rowan Atkinson. His work on Mr. Bean was great and I'm definitely glad that you pointed him out. He conveys so much while saying so little.

10:40 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I recently caught Johnny Depp on Inside the Actors studio. Very interesting, his approach to each of his characters was always an amalgamation of several, definite personas. He could even recall the list for each one of his characters.

This character was so-and-so meets so- and-so with a little bit of so and so sprinkled in for good measure.

12:59 PM

 
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Blogger Razelle Adams said...

I am a super fan of yours Mr. Bean. You always makes me laugh.

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