Acting, Over-acting and Under-acting.
During my last job as a storyboard artist I discovered that I had a tendency (compared to the other storyboarders) to make my characters act in a subdued, understated way. After a while I figured out that I was subconsciously taking my inspiration from "Peanuts". The script and the actors' readings of their lines suggested this approach to me and I couldn't really break out of it, even though I saw that this was making my scenes look somewhat different from the rest of the show.
Which brings me to the general subject of acting in modern animation. At some point it seems like animators stopped "acting" out their characters and instead fell back on a suite of standard expressions. The "one eyebrow down, one eyebrow up" expression, the "hand rubbing the back of the neck to indicate discomfort" expression, the "sly rogue" expression with the eyelds at half-mast and the lopsided smile. Often these expressions seem to be employed without any regard for what the characters are actually supposed to be feeling at the moment.
Looking back at the "Golden Age" of Disney, I would have to say that the acting in, say, Pinocchio, while definiely far better than the modern style, is still somewhat annoying if you think about it. The way the characters keep bobbing their heads up and down on every syllable, for example. My theory is that the animators of that time were raised on vaudeville and other kinds of theatre in which the acting has to be extremely broad for expressions and gestures to be read by the people in the back rows.
I'm starting to think that limited animation is a better choice for dialogue scenes and that full animation should be reserved for action scenes. There must be a way to keep the characters in motion (so that they don't look dead) without making them go spastic. I've begun to notice recently that the most compelling animated characters I've seen have been done using a minimum of drawings (Miyazake's children are a great example. This is another one: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/bunny.php)
Which brings me to the general subject of acting in modern animation. At some point it seems like animators stopped "acting" out their characters and instead fell back on a suite of standard expressions. The "one eyebrow down, one eyebrow up" expression, the "hand rubbing the back of the neck to indicate discomfort" expression, the "sly rogue" expression with the eyelds at half-mast and the lopsided smile. Often these expressions seem to be employed without any regard for what the characters are actually supposed to be feeling at the moment.
Looking back at the "Golden Age" of Disney, I would have to say that the acting in, say, Pinocchio, while definiely far better than the modern style, is still somewhat annoying if you think about it. The way the characters keep bobbing their heads up and down on every syllable, for example. My theory is that the animators of that time were raised on vaudeville and other kinds of theatre in which the acting has to be extremely broad for expressions and gestures to be read by the people in the back rows.
I'm starting to think that limited animation is a better choice for dialogue scenes and that full animation should be reserved for action scenes. There must be a way to keep the characters in motion (so that they don't look dead) without making them go spastic. I've begun to notice recently that the most compelling animated characters I've seen have been done using a minimum of drawings (Miyazake's children are a great example. This is another one: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/bunny.php)
posted by Mark Borok at
7:02 PM
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