Animation Tips & Tricks, Volume I - Animation Mentor

him.That actor doesn't have to think, "Okay, I'm really really mad, so I'm going to storm through that door. So, hmmm... Okay, first, I wantto take a step with my left foot, so I better shift my hips over my right foot, and rotate them on the x-axis so my right hip drivesupwards as the weight of my body comes to rest completely on that right foot. Oh, and I better remember to counter that with theshoulders, and offset the overlap of the arms as I swing around to take that first step, or I'll probably just fall over."NO! An actor just thinks "storm through the door" and that's it! His body will automatically do all of the things you have to truly breakdown into minute individual (but deeply inter-related) actions.Animators have to create a performance (hopefully) every bit as evocative as that actor, AND be a master of how the body mechanicswill work and everything else besides.It isn't an easy job, but boy is it a fun puzzle to tackle, and so satisfying when you really nail it.Here's the thing - people don't give animators enough credit.Remember the first time you saw that T-Rex in Jurassic Park busting through the trees, almost on top of the jeep? The whole theaterscreamed! Afterward, people were talking about how scary that T-Rex was.What? What T-Rex? It wasn't real! The T-Rex didn't scare anyone! The *ANIMATOR* made them all scream! Sure, the music, anddirecting add to any scary moment, but the animator is the single person who brought that dinosaur to life to such an extent thata theater full of people screamed.How cool is *THAT*!?Or what about Buzz and Woody from Toy Story? How many times have you heard kids talking about how funny Buzz and Woodyare?But Buzz and Woody never made anyone laugh. They never made anyone cry, or scream, or feel inspired. Buzz and Woody are onlyideas. They're a bunch of math, and that's it. They're a file full of bits and bytes and ones and zeros!The Pixar animators breathed such life into Buzz and Woody, that children all over the world believed, truly believed - even if only forthose 80 minutes, that those characters were truly alive. That Buzz had real feelings. That Woody had real dreams.That's some pretty powerful stuff, if you ask me.It's the closest we've got to real magic.Sometimes, as an animator, you might wish for some recognition, or dream of the day when a poster trumpets the fact that acharacter was animated by Glen Keane or James Baxter, rather than pointing out that Mr. Bigshot Celebrity spent two whole daysrecording the voice track.Will that ever happen? Maybe. I doubt it, but who knows. Either way, it doesn't really matter, because in the end, the magic of thisanimation stuff doesn't have anything to do with individual recognition. It inspires kids! It spreads laughter around the world. It getspeople thinking about things they normally might not think about. It lets people of all walks of life recognize universal truths aboutthemselves and their neighbors. At the very least, it lets people escape their lives, no matter how hard those lives are, at least for acouple hours.The point, I guess, is this: if you don't make a conscious effort to study at least the rudimentary basics of acting, you will NEVERimbue a character like Woody with the life that Woody's audience so wants to see. They WANT to believe in him. They WANT toidentify with him. You only have to give them a real chance! If you don't truly become your character when you're filming yourreference, you are short-changing the audience, and whatever performance you come up with will never be as powerfully evocativeas it could have been.26Copyright 2008 by AnimationMentor.com. All rights reserved. This ebook may not be reprinted or distributed in electronic, print, web, or other format withoutexpress written permission.