Ed's Newsletter - May 2009

SHORT ANIMATION BOXED SETS
Over the past three days, I have screened the 54 short animations included in the 3-box set of Acme Filmworks' Animation Show of Shows. This collection is one-stop shopping for anybody who wants to see what the parameters of the short form might be. Almost every conceivable style of animation is represented here, and included are many Academy Award winners and nominees. Michael Dudok de Wit's "Father and Daughter" is here, as are Sharon Colman's "Badgered" and Chris Landreth's "Ryan". There are several by Bill Plympton, and I enjoyed "When the Day Breaks", a 1999 Oscar nominee by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis. The folks at Animation World Network are making the collection available at what I think is a very reasonable price. You can buy individual volumes for US$5 or the entire 3-box collection for US$90. I enthusiastically recommend that you get the collection.

ACTING FOR ANIMATORS WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
May 5-8, Stuttgart, Germany - FMX International Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Digital Media
May 11, Erfurt, Germany - KI.KA (children's pub-caster)
May 14-17, Kalamazoo, Michigan - Kalamazoo Animation Festival International
June 17, Greenwich, Connecticut - Blue Sky Studios
Nov 18-27, Swansea Animation Days (SAND), South Wales
Planning: India (will be this Fall sometime--Working on it. Stay tuned)

CRAFT NOTES
Walter Stanchfield: Drawn to Life
(20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes)

Focal Press has published a two-volume compilation of notes from Walt Stanchfield's Gesture Analysis classes. These lectures are not only entertaining to read, they are important. The books, edited by Don Hahn in association with Walt Stanchfield's widow, Dee, are in the same must-have league as Illusion of Life, by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

I have used the publication of the Stanchfield notes as an opportunity to connect some dots between performance animation as Walt talked about it and the way I teach it in my Acting for Animators workshops. As I hope you will agree, it is fascinating how well they mesh. It is almost like two perspectives on the same thing: "micro" (Stanchfield) and "macro" (Hooks).

Where Stanchfield seems to shed light on my perspective I've inserted a comment or two. I am also including some excerpts from the books simply because they are brilliant and require neither amplification nor response.

(Notes and excerpts from Drawn to Life will continue over the next couple of newsletters. Enjoy!)

From Vol. 1:

A scene of animation is more or less a series of gesture drawings. ... That is why I continually suggest (implore) that you do not attempt to copy the model, but rather capture and draw the gesture.... Draw verbs, not nouns. A noun is a thing that can be named; a verb is that thing given the breath of life. (p. 69)

I love that! "Draw verbs, not nouns." Walt's notes in these books unilaterally refer to workshop sketches based on live models. Of course he knew that, in a movie, the individual drawings in an animated sequence must function to tell the larger scripted story. But he does not talk much about that relationship in these lectures. Instead, he focuses on how to endow quick sketches with the illusion of life. When he says - as he often does - that a drawing should tell a story, he is not talking about the story in the movie. He means the story in the pose. For instance, if a woman is looking at a bird in a tree, she should actively be looking at it - not simply tilting her head this way and holding her arms out that way. Walt's "story" in this example would be "the woman watches the bird in the tree". She is actively watching (verb). You want to capture the inner impulse of the action in your drawing.

In my Acting for Animators workshops, I also talk about the necessity for a character to "do" something, which is similar to Walt's perspective. I, too, think you should animate verbs and not nouns. But when I refer to "story", I am talking about the overall story being told in the movie. A character, in my view, should 100 percent of the time be playing an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle. Theatrical reality is not the same thing as regular reality. An animator may be able to endow a character with the illusion of life - capturing Walt's "verb"--but the drawing still might not be theatrically valid. Using the same example of a woman watching a bird, I would encourage the animator to ask why she is watching the bird in the first place. What is her objective? To identify the species of bird it is, perhaps? Maybe she is a serious bird watcher? And there would need to be conflict (obstacle). Maybe a rainstorm is imminent? Maybe she left her glasses back at home? Maybe there are dense leaves in the tree, blocking her view? The answers to all of those questions are derived from the character's role in the story being told. So, yes, an animated character should be captured as Walt's "verb", but it should also be captured so as to fit into the rest of the movie.

Side note: Many new stage actors have the mistaken idea that, if they can learn how to be "natural", "emotional" and "spontaneous", that will make them good actors. The fact is that emotion by itself has zero theatrical value. Yes, acting happens in an arena of emotion, but theatrical reality is compressed in time and space. Regular reality is what happens at the mall or the grocery store. Theatrical reality requires structure: action, obstacle and objective.

The ability to animate is akin to the ability to act. Animation is, in effect, acting on paper. This doesn't mean an animator must be able to act well on stage or before a camera, but that he must certainly be sensitive to poses and gestures that portray the various moods and emotions that story telling demands. (p. 81)

"Animators are actors with pencils ...(or with a computer)" We have all heard this a million times and, in a way, it is true. Just keep in mind that stage actors and animators come at acting in significantly different ways. An animator, when she is doing her job, necessarily pays close attention to the actual physical movement involved in a character's gesture.

A stage actor determines gesture as it relates to a specific character. An anxious character, for instance, would tend to gesture more frenetically than, say, a Darth Vader. Woody Allen's gestures look a whole lot different from Tom Hanks's. But if Tom Hanks were playing a character named Woody Allen, he would try to find in himself the impulses and energy that would express themselves in the kind of gestures Allen would make. An actor's goal regarding gestures is different than that of an animator. An actor is trying to get to a point of connection with his character that will allow the gestures to happen naturally, without planning. In performance, stage actors do not think consciously about gestures or their impact on anybody. If a stage actor thinks about gesturing, it is considered an acting error.

An animator, therefore, has an extra mental step to perform when it comes to acting. He first must empathize with the feeling that led to the gesture he is trying to capture. Keep in mind that there is a reason for every single movement. After he has the feeling in his heart, he then starts trying to transfer that to paper or to the computer. The transferring part of an animator's job is a very left-brain kind of activity. Empathy and feeling are oriented to the right brain. Computer animation is, almost by definition, more left-brain oriented, more analytical. A stage actor in performance, if he is any good, remains mostly in the right-brain mode. Antonin Artaud famously observed in his book The Theatre and It's Double, "An actor is an athlete of the heart." A good character animator must also be an athlete of heart, plus something of an engineer. I really do think animating is a more challenging art than stage acting, because of that extra step.

We (animators) are performers but our audience is hidden from us. We are actors but there is no applause. (p. 105)

In animation you usually have one thing to say at a time, so everything on your drawing should relate to that one thing. ... Simplicity will prove to be one of your best allies... (p. 108)

Gesture drawing is to the animator what acting is to the stage or movie actor. What the actor portrays on the stage or before the camera is what the animator draws on paper. (p. 122)

That is true if you are thinking of actor and animator both giving performances. Just keep in mind that stage actors do not arrive at a final performance the same way that animators do. Stage actors strive to act "in the present moment"; animators do not have a "present moment". They have 24-frames-make-a-second, or the illusion of a present moment.

It is utterly impossible for a person to do nothing. (p. 126)

You're telling a story in drawing ....and you don't want to burden your audience with how much you know about anatomy...Just tell the story with simple, easy -to-read gesture drawings. (p. 148)

. . . Although we use poses in animation, every pose is in reality an action. (p. 164)

I'm not advocating abandoning the study of the figure. Anatomy is a vital tool in drawing, but do not mesmerize yourself into thinking that knowing the figure is going to make an artist of you. (p. 194)

If art was easy, anybody could do it. At its best, it is a process of exposing, not of hiding. I teach stage actors that, when acting is "right", it feels like undressing in public, telling secrets about yourself. The better actor you become, the more willing you must be to expose the truth inside yourself. It is sort of like walking a high wire without a net. Some people love the challenge, and others simply do not want to get up there at all. The same is true of the finest animators. Great animation has a tendency to pick up an audience member's heart and toss it in the air.

...To Be Continued

Until next month...be safe!
"Actors are Shamans"