Ed's Newsletter - December 2003

ANIMATED THANKS
to Susie Wilson for including me in the fabulous Projector Animation Festival in Dundee, Scotland, to Felicity Blastland and Martin Capey for a swell time at Swansea Animation Days in Wales and to Lee Litas for the exciting and new Cineme' Festival in Chicago. High fives and hugs to you all. Your hard work and commitment enriches our industry. It's not easy to produce an animation event. You are much appreciated.

THE CLEVERIST CD YOU WILL EVER HEAR IS DAVID MESPLE'S "THE SINGING HIGHWAY"!
No, wait! I'm serious. This fellow captured the sounds of rumble strips on the highways and made music out of it. Rumble strips are those things along the side of the highway that you run into if you get sleepy and drift off in your car. According to Mesple's explanation, the average spacing between rumble strips is designed to make an E-Flat tone, which will arouse the driver. So he drove along a bunch of highways and figured a way to vary the distance (frequency) between the strips, capturing sound from the left wheels and sound from the right wheels. He says the highway is like a vinyl LP, your wheels are like a diamond needle, and your car is like a resonator. His CD includes songs like "Viva Las Vegas", "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Sweet Home Alabama". It is the damnest thing I have ever encountered, and I think this is the perfect gift for the animator that has everything. I also think David Mesple just might be a genius. Like many geniuses, he is an instructor of drawing, painting and collage at Metropolitan State College and the Community College of Denver. If you will make a $5 -$10 contribution to ASIFA/Colorado, 6585 W. 62nd Place, Arvada, CO 80003, David Mesple will send you your very own copy of "The Singing Highway". Contact him at davidmesple@earthlink.net. "Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells!..."

AND AS LONG AS WE'RE TALKING ABOUT GENIUSES...
...let's mention PETER PLANTEC who is already certifiable. Read what the legendary Ray Kurzweil has to say about him: Peter has written an exciting and amazing new book entitled "Virtual Humans - A Build-It-Yourself-Kit, Complete with Software and Step-by-Step Instructions" This is a soup-to-nuts overview of the current state of art in the creation of Virtual Humans and provides software for you to roll your own. Peter's idea is that what is missing in virtual humans is PERSONALITY. He sets out here to help you understand how to create a Virtual Human with emotional nuance. Plantec, who also happens to be a psychologist (!), provides a lot of history along the way and had a true knack for making complicated concepts understandable to the non-genius among us. Beyond that, he is a personable and delightful host. You will enjoy being in his company. Highly recommended. (Disclaimer: I was honored to contribute a short section about acting theory to this book. I am not in any way a co-author however. This is Peter Plantec's baby.<g>)

LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION
Oh, wow! This re-mastered four-disc set of the greats is simply glorious. Bugs has a full disc all to himself, as do Porky and Daffy. Almost all of the legendary cartoons are here, excepting maybe "What's Opera, Doc?". And the extras are REALLY extras. Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and Michael Barrier are excellent tour guides. The set also includes a much-deserved tribute to musician Carl Stallings. This is definitely a must-have for your library. I found it for $44 plus change on Overstock.com.

NOTE: I am currently booking Acting for Animators workshops for 2004. Take a look at the following schedule and, if I am going to be in your general vicinity, let's talk.

ED HOOKS'S UPCOMING SCHEDULE

January 12-13 Microsoft, Redmond, Washington, http://www.fasastudio.com/default.htm?c00=1 (private class)
January 26-30 Animex 2004, Teesside, England (http://animex.tees.ac.uk/default.cfm)

Feb 1-10 Italy - Rome, Florence (vacation, but if anybody wants me to teach....)

March 22-26 Game Developers Conference, San Jose, CA. (http://www.gdconf.com/)

May 6-9 FMX '04, Stuttgart Germany (keynote speaker)

June 7-11 Annecy, France (I'm not teaching, I'm just going. Drop me a note if you'll be there and we'll hook up for a French brew.)
June 18-19 Zurich Switzerland. This is an open Acting for Animators class sponsored by FOCAL and ASIFA-Switzerland. For more info, contact Robi Rengler at: rengler@mail.tnca.edu.tw

CRAFT NOTES
"ANIMATING ELDERLY CHARACTERS"

A recent segment on ABC News caught my attention because it dealt with the affirmaties of old age. One of the network's researchers, Dr. Bruce A. Farrell, an associate professor in the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said that 12 to 25 percent of elderly people have significant pain problems at any one point in time. Forty five to eighty percent of the elderly in nursing homes are plagued by significant pain.

From an animator's or stage actor's perspective, you begin the creation of an elderly character by asking where in his or her body the character has pain. And then you cause the character to move so as not to hurt. This is what we mean when we say an old man is "favoring his left leg" or "seems to have a stiff back".

If a character has an arthritic spine, it will be stiff and painful. If he wants to turn to the left, he must shift his feet and swivel his entire body instead of twisting the trunk of his body at the hips. It is the same with the neck. If a character has an arthritic spine, he is likely to have an arthritic neck. That means you can't have him swivel his neck around to look left and right. You have to move the entire body, starting with the feet. And remember that his center of balance will be affected. He has to account for that or he will topple over.

COMMON PAINS AND AILMENTS The most common causes of elderly pain are musculoskeletal in origin, such as low back pain and arthritis of the hip, knees, shoulders and hands. Another common cause is related to injuries or diseases of the nerves associated with conditions like diabetes, shingles or phantom limb pain such as with amputations or injury from trauma.

A factor that is important to animators and actors is that many elderly people have more than one source of pain at a time. Arthritis is a good example, where they may have more than one joint or one area of the body that's affected simultaneously.

If your character is sedentary, he/she is more likely to have musculoskeletal problems. Exercise decreases body pain. It is a vicious cycle. The more sedentary a character is the more likely he is to hurt, and the more likely he is to hurt the more likely he is to be sedentary.

Dr. Farrell points out that pain initially keeps people from doing the things they enjoy most, like getting out of the house and socializing. As it increases, it inhibits their abilities to do household chores like cooking and cleaning.

Pain affects sleep, especially if the elderly person is taking pain medication to manage it. If the medication wears off in the middle of the night, he will wake up in pain.

In terms of behavior, many elderly people are stoic about their pain. They wake up with it and expect it and, in a way, adjust to it. The elderly are also likely to have problems with memory. In their case, they may not remember today the kind of pain they had yesterday.

CHARACTER LOCOMOTION

Before you can address the matter of locomotion, it is a good idea to answer these biographical questions about how sedentary your character is and why. Address the memory-loss thing. Ask yourself where the character's power center is. I have seen elderly people that are stooped over into a sort of tilt position. They seem to lean forward, shifting their power center from hips to upper chest and then totter. Their upper extremities sort of fall forward and their bottom part stays underneath so as not to lose balance. I've actually walked around in my living room trying to do it just to see if I'm right about the observation. It's not easy to do but it will work if your spine is stiff and if you don't try to go too fast.

THE BED ON WHICH IT ALL RESTS IS INTENTION

Having discovered your character's pains and aches and style of movement, you have to then decide why he is moving at all. What is his destination? Where did he come from? The purpose of movement is destination.

I still remember a performance I saw in New York in 1970. An actress named Sudie Bond was playing an elderly woman on a walker. The action on stage in this play was taking place mainly toward the front or apron area. Sudie Bond entered from stage right and crossed to far stage left. It took her the better part of an entire act to do it! I never ever was able to catch her actually moving. I would get distracted by the up-front action and then glance back at Ms. Bond. She would have moved six inches while I wasn't looking, like a sloth in a tree. I just loved it! She was totally in character and totally in pain. She could only creep along. It was justified acting.