Animators are NOT actors - Part 5

This is another post about my personal opinion that animators are not actors. To recap on some past post about this topic, you can click on the tutorials tab and read the older posts. But I want to make sure something is clear about what I'm saying. I encourage all animators, especially my students, to always record themselves when preparing to animate. The animator should rehearse the scene and act out the parts that he will animate. This will help the animator understand how the body moves and behaves in certain motions and expressions. Also, recording yourself is a quick and easy source of reference. The animator should and must use theater, staging, and film techniques as they produce believable and natural character animation. The more we know and practice out these scenes, the better we understand what to animate.

However, animators are not actors. At no point do most animators get in front of the camera or go on stage and act in front of an audience. We don't have that experience. We don't have that mind set or training. That is not what we do. We, like Ward Kimball has said, as animators observe and then we recreate. Or in other words, let's get as many references as we can, use our own judgement, use the principles of animation, and we animate. Animators cannot depend on their own acting skills to be the main source of acting references. What tends to happen, is overacting.... in a very bad way. (Before I continue, never make the confusion between over acting and the principle of Exaggeration. As Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston said in the book, Illusion of Life, the principle of Exaggeration was to remain true to reality, just presenting it in a wilder, more extreme form.) The animators, unfortunately are not good at acting, therefore the animation suffers due to a bad performance. Also, the animator may overact in their video recording because they are trying to add exaggeration to their live performance so that it helps them in creating the animation. The can be a very big problem. If the animator acts out the scene with exaggeration and then try to exaggerate it more in the animation, then they crossed over the line into overacting. And thus, created good animation with bad acting.

Another thing that can happen, is that the animator's gender may show in the animation of a character with the opposite gender. Since a lot of animators rely on their personal acting choices, they then add unconscious mannerisms they have to the animation. They also use their gender behavior archetypes that do not belong to the character with the opposite gender. For example, they way a male animator moves will not work for a female character, no matter how hard he tries to act like a woman. If any my students are reading this, they have heard the next example many times. It's one of my favorite examples on this topic and it always make people laugh when I tell it. Here's the example: I animated a commercial years ago of children playing. One the children was a little girl skipping along the side walk. I tried to animate this little girl skipping, so I used a reference video. I recorded myself skipping. After all, I only needed to know how the skipping works and then I can simply adjust it to make it look like a little girl... right? Well, it wasn't that simple. Every time I animated, the little girl looked like big adult man! Haha... I tried to exaggerate the skip when I recorded myself. But no matter how hard I tried, it didn't look right.... until... I asked my niece to skip for me while I recorded her. And Eureka! it worked! That's when I realized I was doing this all wrong... I needed to know how the skip felt and recording myself helped... but the look of the animation depended on a better source and a more accurate source. That's why I needed my niece's help.

To further support my idea that animators are NOT actors, here is a video from the behind the scenes of classic Disney films. The animators and film makers used the voice actors, dancers, models, and other actors as the live model references for the animation. These live models, who perform in front of an audience on either stage or screen, who have been trained to act, who have the experience of acting, and do nothing but act are the best source materials that any animator could have. That is why some of the best character animation ever seen are in these films. Take a look below.

I know that some animators will disagree with me and I know that they'll show me books, videos, or whatever to dispute my point. However, I am telling you that everything I said is true. Take a look at the video that I posted here and then look at the animation. Search for "animation progression" on youtube. You'll see that some animator do what I'm telling you not to do. You'll see that the animation isn't bad... it's most likely great! But look at the acting... that's the point of all this... the acting is where it's weak. I hope this helps you in your future animation projects and to better develop your animations through many accurate source references.

Later animators!

Here are the links to the continuation of this topic
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4