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Acting for Animation - Padlet Task: Acting Theory

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Acting for Animation - Padlet Task: Acting Theory

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Acting originated from Greece, from there we have branching techniques which derive from the original Greek theatre.

The origin of western acting structure was founded in late 19th Century, starting with Science of Aesthetics where each part of the body was categorised using a list of emotions that could be portrayed from a movement or position. The creator of this was Francois Deslarte(1811-1871). The technique would later evolve, due to its limitations of having an exact emotion represented in a fixed or finite way. Emotions are more granular than this, so portraying anything in between emotions can become conflicted or constrained.

If we then move on to one of the most popular techniques used today, Method acting, we can see how over time the limitations of Aesthetics acting were resolved as we apply more empathetic understanding to the character being portrayed. One of the major drawbacks of this method is that actors have been known to become too engrossed in a role, where the character will bleed into their real life. To what degree this occurs must rely heavily on a strong psychology sense of identity to hold onto. Actors frequently living in similar situations to their upcoming roles months in advance.

We can see the foundations of Method acting from the Stanislavsky Technique which was built primarily around recollection of events in the actor's life to use to deliver the scene. Also, in this technique the actor is always being asked to empathise, asking themselves what their character would do.

Each acting technique always asking the actor to think about how their character impacts the scene and other characters too. When we take these principles and apply them into a digital animation study, we then approach the role of a playwriter.

If we take Aristotle’s Poetics as an example, we can see that the requirement for believable acting and playwrighting has spanned centuries:

“Thus if the story adopted by the poet has a strict unity, it must either be concisely told and appear truncated; or, if it conform to the Epic canon of length, it must seem weak and watery. (Such length implies some loss of unity,) if, I mean, the poem is constructed out of several actions, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, which have many such parts, each with a certain   magnitude   of   its   own.   Yet   these   poems   are   as   perfect   as   possible   in structure; each is, in the highest degree attainable, an imitation of a single action.

If, then, Tragedy is superior to Epic poetry in all these respects, and, moreover, fulfils its specific function better as an art for each art ought to produce, not any chance pleasure, but the pleasure proper to it, as already stated it plainly follows that Tragedy is the higher art, as attaining its end more perfectly. Thus   much   may   suffice   concerning   Tragic   and   Epic   poetry   in   general;   their several kinds and parts, with the number of each and their differences; the causes that make a poem good or bad; the objections of the critics and the answers to these objections“ (THE POETICS OFARISTOTLE By Aristotle – Translated by S.H.Butcher)

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Final Animation & Reflection

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Final Animation & Reflection

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This video is a playblast of my final animation.

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, I did not have the time to fully complete this animation the way I truly envisioned it. The end result is so very close, especially the first 3 seconds. Towards the end of the clip is where it needs most of the work as I started on the feedback changes quite late into the semester, just making the deadline by the skin of my teeth. It was a challenge, however I felt like I thrived during this time.

Things to edit and improve for Future showreel:
* Arm and hands
* Adding VFX magic effects instead of a ball stand in
* Refine eyes
* Refine mouth animation towards the end

Reflection:
I feel that I did very well with the resources and the time that was available to me. Overall, this module has been incredibly fun, which in turn has lead me on a path to further push my animating skills in lip sync and facial animation. With that in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed animating with a character that is well known around the world, singing to a very recognisable song, which is sung in Elsa's voice by Idina Menzel.
This task has helped me realise than all those silly animations I come up with to go with songs/music in my imagination, can indeed come to fruition if you really put your mind to it and make it work. Alternatively, with this in mind, I have a deep rooted passion for musicals, especially if animation is included. The world is your oyster with animation and music. In addition to my reflection on this task, I feel that I animated Elsa with that particular rig quite well, even if the rig was not an official Disney rig. This is because I pushed myself to keep her looking like I assume, and how we all assume how Elsa would look in an animation due to her character and the Frozen franchise being so popular. Using the knowledge I gained from studying and researching her character more thoroughly, I feel this helped me produce better quality animation from help from my reference footage.
I guess if I am going down this path of facial animation, I'll have to stop being so shy and let out the hidden entertainer and performer that I am deep down.

What I have Learned:
Creating animated musical scenes are a great opportunity to use many principles of animation to push the character. In turn, this helps make the body movement, expressions and mouth shapes look more appealing by using your own interpretation of the character singing a song. Sometimes, when professional singers make certain notes, their mouths and or faces make unusual shapes, that looks somewhat strange yet needed to make the sound. With animation, you can tone down those shapes to make them softer and again, more appealing to the audience. It is also a great way to show emotion through facial expressions that you might not normally see or make when singing.

Camera angles are VERY important. This can help set the tone of the scene and show case the character appropriately with more context to the scene. "I want to stay there with her from that angle" is what someone said in a feedback session. I feel this change really helped my animation to improve. You can see the character more clearly, in tandem with her emotional changes, which I feel are more impactful.

When in doubt, get feedback!

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Acting for Animation - Main task: Wrapping it up

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Acting for Animation - Main task: Wrapping it up

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This video was my last attempt at a decent enough camera angle and just before I wrap up the final animation on Elsa.
Thanks to one of my peers, I managed to fix the issue with Elsa's eyes and the arm gesture. as I was having tangent issues with the controls and where she was looking initially. During this time, I created a sphere to act as a stand-in for Elsa's magic.

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Feedback 3

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Feedback 3

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This was my first attempt at re-animating the second half and trying out a new camera style.
Again, I knew it looked off, and after some additional feedback towards the end of my time animating this, I changed the camera again, and hopefully fixed the animation mistakes along the way

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Feedback 2

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Feedback 2

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This was my attempt to quickly animate the second half of the original idea so I could show my tutor and fellow peers how I envisioned it.
Unfortunately, with all animation planning, some things have to be edited or scrapped completely. This was the case for my animation. After some much needed feedback from my tutors and peers, they suggested that I scrap the camera change completely and keep the audience captured in the moment with her close to the camera. I was running out of time, and I had some swift choices to make.
Changes:
*Scrapped camera change
*Scrapped book reading idea
*Keep camera close, then pull away from her towards the end
*Keep her seated in the same position through-out to keep it consistent.

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Feedback

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Feedback

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The video below is my first attempt of going into spline on the first 2 seconds of her coming towards the camera.
After a feedback session with my tutors and peers, it was suggested that I "calm down" the head movement, as she was all over the place. I agree, after viewing the playblast it looked too much. In addition to this change, because I recorded my reference footage with myself sat on the floor with my legs crossed, I needed to also animate Elsa sat on the floor.

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Acting for Animation - Main task: Reference Footage Part 2

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Acting for Animation - Main task: Reference Footage Part 2

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I ended up using only the first half of my original footage, where she(or, me in this case) is close to the camera. From there, I asked my Husband to stand in my place for a re-shoot of the second half as I felt she had lost a bit of life from her. Switching from cheeky to boring that quickly, I can imagine that would feel like a disappointment to the audience. I envisioned her to be a bit more enthusiastic in her story telling, and somewhat dramatic as it is supposed to be "glorious Christmas tales from long ago".
When animating Elsa, Disney animators stated that "Elsa's movement when she is making magic is like a dance". For this, I asked my husband to move his arm and hand with a gracious flow to replicate Elsa's body gesture when she creates the snow magic. I could imagine that this is something she would do during a musical number, as it is common for the Frozen franchise, and mainly the character in herself, to do so.

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Reference Footage

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Reference Footage

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For a bit of fun, I thought I would dress up like Elsa to record my reference footage. Wearing make-up and a wig similar to hers, in fact helped me a lot to capture and push Elsa's facial expressions without making her rig look unappealing and keeping it close to how I assume Disney would most likely animate her.
For my footage, I recorded how I was originally planning to animate my task. With this in mind, I knew as well as dressing up like Elsa I had to act like Elsa, or how I assume she would act in my animation.
I wanted her to look fierce yet cheeky for the first scene of her coming towards the camera, then regal and content when the scene switches to see Elsa reading to the children. There was an attempt, which is seen in my footage below.

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Animatic

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Animatic

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Elsa starts in a hunch position - Anticipation
She swings towards the camera/audience, pulling a cheeky attempt to look scary with her half snarl, half smile, "clawed" hands and her face under lit to emphasise on the "scary".
Her face softens into a surprise, shocked expression as she says "ghosts", her "clawed" hands soften too, her arms gliding down. - Squash and stretch with "ghOsts" and "StOries" "oh" sounds.
Her whole face has shifted into a gentle and happy smile, as if to comfort you from the shock of "scary ghosts". She pulls away from the camera, completely unthreatening.
Scene Change - Elsa is now sat on a chair next to a fire, surrounded by the towns folk children at her feet, listening intently her the Queen reading a book to them. (Large room with X-mas tree)
As she tells "tales of the glories, of Christmas's long, long - ago" Elsa creates her snow magic with her free hand. She extends her arm upwards to gesture the magic to fly up and towards the camera, cutting off the scene as she sings "Ago".

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Becoming Elsa & Methodology

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Acting for Animation - Main Task: Becoming Elsa & Methodology

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To keep my vision fresh in my mind, after watching all the Elsa scenes I could find where she was singing, or as we can see below, very odd looking screen captures from the movies and shorts. I hit google image search and saved the images below to study how Disney use animation principles, such as; squash and stretch on her face and/or mouth during some scenes to emphasise a cartoonish movement whilst, kind of, still keeping her looking beautiful. I knew I wanted this technique in my animation to mimic the style and make Elsa as authentic as possible. She was her, and nobody else, regardless of her trademark hair and dress.
In addition to this study, Elsa's expressions are all in the eyes mostly. She has BIG, almond shaped eyes with dark make-up around them to make them look even bigger. To me this is more of a mature, almost sultry look to her rather than the typical Princess mould of big round innocent child-like eyes. Her eye look is easy to replicate on a normal human face with make-up, and I took that opportunity to go a bit further with my reference footage.

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Idea proposal:

In week 6, we were asked to start building ideas for our main task, which was to be a 5-10 second long animated clip of your choice from a list of themes. With this in mind, I instantly jumped at the opportunity to animate someone singing.

Classic Disney Animation has always been something I have been deeply inspired by throughout my life. All those moments when they burst into song with wonderful animation to go hand in hand with it, the melodies and appeal of the characters staying with you in your heart forever. The rush of nostalgia and pure child-like happiness coming to meet you like an old friend when you hear the music.

The biggest challenge for me was, which song was I going to pick? So many choices!

It was by chance during a time where I was searching for character rigs for a different module that I came across a custom made Elsa from Disney's Frozen. She is completely free, which instantly gave me an idea that made me feel extremely confident and excited to pitch an idea of Elsa singing a song to my tutor.

Link to Rig: https://animprops.com/product/elsa-rig/

During the same time, it was coming close to Christmas. I was listening to a Christmas song album sung by Idina Menzel, the voice actress and singing voice for Elsa. This went in tandem with my idea to animate Elsa, singing along to one of these songs.

The Pitch:

For this idea I wanted to keep Elsa's personality, facial expressions and body gestures as close to how Disney portrayed her as possible. Having watched and re-watched the full length animated features of Frozen and Frozen II, I studied Elsa's body language, mannerisms and facial expressions during her musical numbers. In addition to this, I also watched and studied the animated shorts of Frozen Fever and Olaf's Frozen Adventure, all of which are available to stream on Disney+ steaming service.
In the Frozen franchise, a Christmas theme has already been done with Olaf's Frozen Adventure, However I wanted to come up with my own, since "Elsa" is singing traditional Christmas songs in my imagination thanks to Idina Menzel's album!

Inspired by all the musical numbers that I had previously watched, I wanted to animate Elsa singing to "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year", as In my head, that was the most vivid and exciting idea that I could imagine, and I knew straight away what I wanted to to.

Story Context:

Elsa, the snow Queen of Norwegian royalty, is hosting a Christmas party for the people of her kingdom. Singing with joy about how it's the most wonderful time of the year, the Queen spends this time with her subjects. From hosting the party, toasting marshmallows and carolling out in the snow, the scene would jump from one to the other like a music video montage.
However, after some feedback, my idea was far too long and it needed to be around 10 seconds.
I decided to cut down my original pitch, and shorten in to a part where I knew I could get the most acting out of Elsa for this task.

For this clip, she is telling the children of her kingdom "Scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories, of Christmases long, long ago".

Link to Song from youtube: https://youtu.be/eeDZVeJoTrM?t=45

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Acting for Animation Task 5 - Rhythm and Music

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Acting for Animation Task 5 - Rhythm and Music

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For our fifth week animation task, we were asked to create an animation that included the character, standing somewhere, say the kitchen, waiting for something. then, suddenly music starts playing, and our character reacts.

I will go ahead and say this now, I really struggled with this task.

You will see how bad it is, and it's my own fault for not syncing up the reference footage and the song audio along with the metronome.

Originally, I took inspiration from the movie Clerks II (2006) where the character Jay, mimics and parodies the dance from Silence of the Lambs (1991) to the Song "Goodbye Horses" - by Q Lazzarus. my character was going to be a student waiting for her microwave meal to cook after a long day. She is a bit fed up, but perks up after she is surprised to hear "Goodbye Horses", and boogies away softly.

I think if my reference footage was from a better angle and I wasn't wearing my pyjamas, along with syncing up the metronome, audio and animation properly.

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Acting for Animation Task 4 - Acting is Doing

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Acting for Animation Task 4 - Acting is Doing

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For our fourth week animation task, we were asked to animate a short clip themed around "acting is doing". We had a few choices to work with for this task, however I chose to do "sketching" as I am more than familiar with this action.

So guess who stars as our ambitious young female artist? that's right! Mery again! For Mery's role this time around, her character is a young and studious artist who is determined to prove herself at the next art competition for gifted youngsters!
Extremely Focused and Scrunching her face with determination, Mery plans out the size of her still life prop with her thumb, then scribbles away on her sketch pad.

Using reference of myself again (seeing a pattern here, aren't we?) I wanted to show how she is really focused and in the zone through facial expression and subtle body movements rather than and over exaggerated wobbly limbs. Sometimes, when we are focused on something so much, we zone out and our body does things we don't notice. For example, when I am concentrating, I clench my jaw and purse my lips. This is something I brought into my reference footage to use for my animation, as I felt that made the scene more relatable and it is a very common thing to see in other people too.

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For our third week task, we were asked to create an animation of a character listening to a dialogue clip and reacting to it.

For this task, I chose to use a custom sound clip taken from Youtube. Yet again, out comes Mery to this time be a young woman in her 20's, sat having a cup of tea and chilling out with her male co-worker, who, funny enough is admitting to her that he's got his girlfriends underwear on! and he STILL has them on! Having been friends with her co-worker for most of her life, she is shocked, amused, and then embarrassed by his underwear statement. She is speechless.

Again, using myself for reference footage, I recorded myself reacting to this dialogue.

"Yeah I'm really worried..." Mery looks confused. Why are you worried?
"I've put my girlfriends underwear on this morning"...... Mery looks shocked then amused. Oh for goodness sake.
"I've still got them on!"....Mery looks embarrassed. Ohh goood nooo!

I really wanted to capture the changes in emotion for this task. For the reference footage, I reacted as genuine as I could to use for my animation.

Mery's pose starts off as open and relaxed, moving into concern and curiousness, leaning forward slightly out of interest. once her co-worker says he has got his girlfriends underwear on, she recoils, closing herself off by bringing her arms in, one hand covering her mouth. She tries not to be rude, however she cannot help but laugh. "I've still got them on!" he exclaims, Mery cringes with embarrassment, still slightly amused, holding her face in her palm.

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Acting for Animation Task 2 - Power Centres

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Acting for Animation Task 2 - Power Centres

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For our second week task, we were asked two different poses with break-downs in between each pose.

I chose to use Mery again to portray a teenage girl character that is so engrossed in her texting to her friend, she gets a big shock when a spooky skeleton pops up to disturb her flow and drop the phone!

Using reference footage of myself rather than using other sources, I created the first pose, focusing the power centre in her upper chest. I envisioned the two opposite poses, with the first being her hunched over her phone, face relaxed, oblivious. The second pose being her bolted upright, back straight, face shocked and no phone in sight, thanks to Mr Skeleton.

To accommodate this, for a realistic reaction from me in the reference footage, My husband filmed me miming texting on a phone. Due to me not paying attention, my Husband drops a heavy metal object on the wooden floor resulting in a loud, unexpected sound, resulting in my genuine shock.

I really wanted to show the expression change for the two poses. I pushed the rig to make the exaggerated expressions work without looking unappealing.

I would like to revisit this task in the future to use for an animation show reel.

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For our first week, we were asked to create "one killer pose" to show that we can pose and set up a character in a certain situation, to speak volumes of what the character is doing without the actual use of moment and sound.

I chose "chilling out" as my pose for this weeks task.

As you can see from the collection of images below this post, I was inspired by people lounging and relaxing through these images.

Character Bio for this task:

Mery is a woman in her late twenties, no husband or partner along with 3 kids of varying ages between 2 and 5. She gets home from work, cooks the dinner and spends time with her children. After hours of back and forth toddler melt downs and fighting sleep, Mery finally gets a moments peace. "I'll just rest my eyes for a bit..." she says with a yawn escaping her lips. Within moments, she fast asleep.

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"Chilling out"

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"Chilling out"

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"Chilling Out"

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"Chilling Out"

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“‘chilling Out” pose 2 Sketch by me. Man is sunning himself on a pool float whilst enjoying a cool beverage.

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“Chilling Out” pose 1 Sketch by me. Woman is exhausted from walking around in the summer heat, takes a break with a melting ice-pop