Collaboration: Research - Acting for Animators

Since we have our first acting class Monday I decided to start reading Acting for Animators by Ed Hooks (Third Edition) which talks about how we use acting in animations, here are some notes I made. - Paris

Seven Essential Acting Principles

1. Thinking tends to lead to conclusions and emotions tends to lead to action. (“The mind is the pilot” - Disney, 1935 - when it comes to characters) emotion feels like they exist independently from thought unless we make a conscious effort to analyse it. Emotions begin and ends with the thinking brain - “I think therefore I am” - René Descartes, 1637. 
2. We humans empathise only with emotion. Your job as a character animator is to create in the audience a sense of empathy with your character. 
3. Theatrical reality it's not the same as regular reality. 
4. Acting is doing; acting is also reacting. 
5. Your character should play action until something happens to make him play a different action. (Obstacle). 
6. Scenes begin in the middle not at the beginning. 
7. A scene is a negotiation. Negotiations you have to be able to win or lose, there are three types of conflict when it comes to negotiation: self, environment or situation. 

• Every scenes needs conflict, objective and obstacle for it to be theatrical. 
• Emotion - An automatic value response. Our emotions depend on how much we value something and the mental associations we hold. 
• Empathy - Feeling into. Empathy is we feel into the same thing as a character. Psychotic people cannot empathise which is what makes them psychopaths, they could kill a family at dinner then finish their dinner with no remorse because they cannot feel into anything. 
• Sympathise - Feeling for. Sympathy is we feel for our character, but we don’t want an audience to sympathise for our character for too long as they will emotionally disconnect with our character. Human nature is survival so when a character wallows too long in negatives and can’t get it together they pursue death over life and we are hardwired to respond negatively to that behaviour. 
• Anticipation is different for actors than it is animators. For animators it means to anticipate a movement like a baseball player throwing a ball. For actors it's an error to anticipate something before it actually happens, i.e. answering a phone before it rings.

Insight Perspectives and Suggestions

• Acting is more about what is underneath the words. When we have a thought, it is not the word that emerges first; it is head and eye movement, shoulder and neck movement. 
• The higher the power centre, the quicker the rhythm of the character. Anxiety is a high and heady power center. Confidence, on the other hand, manifest itself in a feeling of weight, a low power centre. 
• Goofy’s power centre was underneath his feet, pushing him straight up. When he walked it was as if he was on bedsprings because he was moving forward by the power center was pushing up. 
• Our sense of sight is a lot more powerful than our sense of hearing so what you show is going to count for more than what you tell it. 
• Do not put a gesture and with every word. The impulse to communicate comes from within and just gestures are a primary a form of expression as words are. Think of them as a form of truth telling for a character. Get inside and connect with his feelings and let that be the motivation for gesture. 
• Psychological gestures are gesture we do that we don’t realise we do like fiddling with a ring or bring a hand to the mouth a lot whilst talking etc. 
• Humans often contradictory messages. It is normal but unconscious behaviour for the words to say one thing and our body to say another.