Acting For Animation by Sarah Ayton

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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