Ed's Newsletter - January 2005

ISSAC KERLOW, author of "The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Effects" and former director of digital production at Walt Disney Company has written an excellent and insightful article for VFXWorld.com entitled "Creative Human Character Animation: The Incredibles vs. The Polar Express". Highly recommended.

CONGRATS TO MY GOOD FRIEND MARC VULCANO who has docked with Sony Imageworks as a Senior Animator.

"PSSTŠHEY, EUROPEŠ NEED A GOOD PHOTOGRAPHER?"
Check out Ken Dickinson: http://kenswebsite.co.uk. I first met Ken at the 2003 Swansea Animation Days where he was the official event photographer, and I knew at once that he is way beyond the norm. He has an artist's eye for personality, nuance and color that just knocks me out. He ought to have an exhibit somewhere.

THANKS TO TIBURON ELECTRONIC ARTS in Orlando, Florida for a great workshop. In particular, Tina O'Hailey more than earned her spurs, making it happen in the first place and then being the perfect host. Also, it was a delight to once again run into several of the talented animators from Disney's Orlando studio!

SWANSEA ANIMATION DAYS in Swansea South Wales was a rousing success due largely to the hard work of Felicity Blastland and Martin Capey. Plus the enthusiastic support of the Welsh Development Agency. SAND is, by the way, the only animation event I know of that includes medical applications of animation in its schedule. Many young animators tend to think that movies and games are the only games in town. Not so. The work in medical applications is jaw dropping awesome. You can browse a photo diary of the 2004 SAND events at http://www.sand.org.uk

AND FINALLY, ANIMATED THANKS TO THE NATIONAL FILM AND TELEVISION SCHOOL in Beaconsfield UK for inviting me to teach. I had a wonderful time!

ED HOOKS'S UPCOMING SCHEDULE

Jan 22-23 College of Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan

Jan 31-Feb 4 Animex International Festival of Animation, Teesside England

Feb 7-8 Valve, Bellevue Washington

Feb 19-20 Singapore - public class. For info contact Margaret Miles

March 7-8 Game Developers Conference, San Francisco

April 20-23 Louisiana State University Animation Festival, Baton Rouge

April 28 - May 1, FMX Animation Festival, Stuttgart Germany

May 2-3 Filmakademie Baden-Wurtemberg, Ludwigsberg, Germany

June 6-11 Annecy, France

June 13-15 Full Sail School of Computer Animation, Winter Park, Florida

CRAFT NOTES
SHAKESPEARE TALKS TO ANIMATORS

In Act III, scene 2 of "Hamlet", Shakespeare set forth what he considered to be the key to good acting. Nobody has yet improved on it, and I want to show you how the Bard's words might apply equally as well to good performance animation.

The plot setup is that Hamlet has hired a rag-tag group of actors for an important performance and is concerned that they might muck it up. And so he lectures them on the subject of acting.

HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines.

Keep it simple! The animator is here to serve the story. The play is the thing, not the actor. When the director lays out a sequence, try to do it like he says. You can kick around acting theory and such later over a couple of brews.

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Here is a primary distinction between stage actors and animators. For the stage actor, it is an acting error to be caught "indicating". To indicate is to try to show the audience how you feel, and it is unnecessary because stage actors work in the present moment. Audiences are smart enough to know what is going on without being beaten over the head. The stage actor learns to play simple actions in pursuit of objectives. Let the emotions take care of themselves.

An animator on the other hand has no present moment. He has only the illusion of a present moment and must therefore become a master of indication. This is what Ollie and Frank meant when they talked about endowing animation with the illusion of life. In a sense, the stage actor works from the inside-out, and the animator works from the outside-in. Yet both artists must take care not to overdo it. Your art is a form of indication, but you do not want your character to indicate. You want to keep your character honest.

O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

Hayao Miyazaki was asked once what is the difference between his style of animation and western animation. He answered by slowly clapping his hands and explaining that we only hear the sound of the clap. We don't hear what is between the claps. But in Japan, he explained, that space between the claps is called "ma". Miyazaki pointed out that western animators tend to be afraid of ma. They want to keep making the sound of the clap because, if they do not, they are afraid they will lose their audience. Myazaki is not afraid of ma. Instead of running from it, he puts an emphasis on it, filling the space with intention and emotion.

The truth is that acting has almost nothing to do with words. Audiences empathize with emotion, not words.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor.

A few generations after Shakespeare, Artonin Artaud (1895-1948) came along and pointed out that actors are athletes of the heart. It takes courage to be a good actor because you are exposing yourself and your own values. The same is true for animators. If you worry about exposing, your animation is likely to be too pedestrian. You must animate with your heart, trusting that your own honest values will let you know what is enough and what is too much.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Good actors and good animators are keen observers of human nature. This was Charlie Chaplin's great gift, by the way. Before Chaplin, comedy was Keystone Kops stuff, pratfalls, Kops slipping on banana peels, crashing cars into trees. Chaplin realized that the humor was not in the banana-peel fall but in the embarrassment that follows it - particularly if a pretty girl happens to be watching. He understood what Shakespeare understood. You must always hold the mirror up to nature. Wile E. Coyote is funny because his obsession rings true. Who among us is not obsessed by something?

Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.

Don't hang your animation hat on rubber chicken jokes. Trust human nature and deeper values. Yes, rubber chicken jokes will make some in the audience laugh, but they are cheap currency that will in time de-value your work. I am reminded of this dictum whenever I see animated characters in feature films doing too many high-fives or engaging in flatulent bathroom humor.

Never condescend to your audience. Do not play "down" to them with cheap jokes.

O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely), that neither having th' accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Reform it altogether!

He would not like it, but Jim Carey comes to my mind. He has based his entire persona on being a living Chuck Jones cartoon. It was cute for a while, but he forgot one very important fact: Chuck Jones was meticulously honest about human behavior. He did not traffic in random schtick. The jokes came from the situation and the character.

And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.

Animation directors and producers often fall too much in love with their voice performers, encouraging them to improvise in recording sessions. Sometimes you can get a fresh and funny bit out of it but, as often as not, when the artist starts cracking jokes and carrying on in session, he does so to the detriment of the story. Don't laugh at your own jokes. If you think you are funny, the audience almost surely will not.

Go make you ready.