Why the muppets are such great inspiration for Animation

Lately I've been watching alot of Sesame Street. I have a one year old. She loves it. In terms of acting, the characters on the show can act better than most real actors. You always know what they are feeling and they dont even have faces that change (except of course the mouth) Its amazing how believable the performances are. The characters all have specific ways of moving. Alot of that is based on the characters up and down movement or what we call TZ (translation in Z) or Y if you work in Maya... If these characters had animation controls, there might be about 20. Its just goes to show you that it does not take a heavily rigged character to get acting ideas across. I always love hte head acting on the characters. The angle of the head can really tell you alot about how the character is feeling. Take a look some of the clips here

http://video.sesameworkshop.org/




Watch how grovers acting style is well contrasted with the other character. Also take note of how he moves.



Kermits acting is awesome. Its interesting to watch how his head accents the lines of dialogue. As far as staging goes, its is very clear who you should be looking at. The characters play very well off each other. Cookie moster also has funny interesting mouth movements. In general, this clip shows two great puppeteers at work, Jim Henson and Frank Oz.



This one is just great becasue you get to see bert go through different attitudes. Its also nice to see him with another real person and understand the difference between the two.

Oscar Nominees Blog

I was lucky enough to meet the nominees of this years oscar for animated short film. Ron Diamond of Animation World Network is bringing them around to all the studios to show their films and give them the royal treatment. I think its great that he does this, because animators quietly do their films with out all the hollywood glitz. Its nice to see them get the star treatment.

Check out the blog he has posted

AWN Oscartour

-Andrew

A Great Animation Resource

Carlos Baena just updated his website and it has loads of great animation resources...

Check it out

Carlos Website

More Brad Bird

Here is a really cool interview a fellow animator found with Brad Bird on "Airtalk"

Link to Airtalk interview (requires realplayer)

Link to file on Spline Doctors

its also available on itunes as a podcast. Keyword: airtalk

-Enjoy