When we draw, we in a sense, draw symbols. For instance when we draw a hand it is not a real hand, it is a symbol of a hand. To a viewer, though, it is a hand. Due to the standardized use of body language, most gestures have actually become symbols. As an example, by certain manipulations of the fingers you can create a symbol of prayer, obscenity, stop or go, stay or come, accusation, just a minute, shhhh, I’d like a ride, and many others.
In animation we make use of those facts. We not only move our characters around the stage, but we have them deliver their lines and their actions in symbolic ways. That is the fastest and surest way of communicating our story. There need be no worry that using these symbols will lead to a gutless and repetitious performance. The individualism of each artist plus the physiognomy and personality of each character will prevent that.
Gesture study is a period where we acquaint ourselves with these symbols. We learn how to manipulate the figure to evoke certain emotional or psychological responses. The variances are infinite within certain boundaries. When those boundaries are overstepped suddenly it becomes a different gesture — one that has its own symbolic meaning. Of course, the same gesture used in different settings can produce different symbols. In animation we have to develop a sensitivity to these gestural symbols so we can present the proper one for each particular story point, action, or emotion. So as we draw, we are symbolizing emotions, actions, movements, activities, adventures and humor by means of gestures.
Common everyday gesture is something that doesn’t have to be learned. It is something we do all the time. It comes natural to us, we don’t have to be trained to gesture. The reason drawing gestures is so difficult, is because we get caught up in the many problems of “drawing” that we lose sight of it. Reality is what we are trying to draw and reality is the first thing that fades from our minds as we begin to draw “things.”
In the evening classes I have tried to get the students to stop “drawing” and with as few lines as possible, get the gesture down. Here are a few drawings that are indicative of that approach.
In my suggestion sketches, I try to point out how the parts of the body work to produce a certain gesture. Again, it’s not something you have to learn — it is something you have to see, or remember, or feel, or if need be, create or fabricate. Creating a pose doesn’t mean coming up with a never before seen pose, it merely means that you manipulate the body parts to express the gesture you want.
For instance, here is a pose where the guy is showing something in a magazine to a gal. Simple enough! Is the gal interested? I thought she should be, so I bent her forward a little more. As a result, the two heads together seem to gather energy. As you can see the first girl’s head didn’t go far enough so I pushed it a little farther. The heads the student drew, stacked one over the other, are rather static. In my book of drawing rules it says, “Don’t stack two objects perpendicular to each other. Also don’t have the upper arm perfectly horizontal and the lower arm perfectly perpendicular — those two angles are one half of a square, and as for squares, let me quote a paragraph from Thomas Berger’s great tale, Little Big Man.
I got a choking sensation when I heard the news. There was already so many white men around Laramie you could hardly breathe, and I didn’t sleep well in them rectangular barracks, on account of having been trained by the Cheyenne to favor the circular dwelling. I think I have mentioned their feeling about circles, the earth and so on. They was set against the ninety-degree angle, which brought continuity to a dead stop. Old Lodge Skins used to say: “There’s no power in a square.
Also in my book of rules it says to create interest in the object of, the reason for, or the significance of the pose, which in this case is two people’s engrossment in a magazine.
All athletes have certain goals in whatever game they play or feat they undertake. Each of them do certain exercises to strengthen the muscles they must use for the task. Most athletes train intensely with long hours of physical and mental preparation. Diet plays an important part also. Experimentation, inventiveness, resourcefulness, originality, imagination, ingenuity, creativity? Yes! The better trained an athlete is, the more innovative he can be during a contest, match, or tournament. Actually the best learning is acquired while performing. Ultimately the performance must take over where the preparation ends.
And so it is with an artist. There must be periods of study — anatomy, composition, perspective, design, etc. — but when drawing, (performing) those things are put behind, then acting and gesture guides the pencil or pen. I have tried to fashion the evening classes into a performance activity. One where all thoughts of “training” are put aside and we step out on stage and do the thing we have been training for, that is, to act on paper.
In Edward Dwight Easty’s book, On Method Acting, he says:
There is a difference between the art of living one’s part and merely representing or playing it. An actor must create a living human being on stage with all the complexities of the character: his behavior, thoughts, emotions, and their subsequent transitions. He must never settle for less.
Also from the chapter titled “On the Art of Acting” came this:
An actor’s instrument is his whole self. It is his body, his mind and being, complete with thoughts, emotions, sensitivity, imagination, honesty, and awareness.
These are things that pertain to us as animation artists. We just happen to use a different medium. Easty goes on to say
The painter can paint until he alone is artistically satisfied; the musician and composer can work until their music is a part of them before scheduling a concert; the writer–author may write and rewrite over a period of years before he is satisfied. The actor, however, is more or less trapped in a Seine of time schedules centered around rehearsals in which he has to consciously create his art on time.
Sound like us? You bet it does! Like all movie actors, our work appears on film and is presented to audiences all over the world.
Let me continue quoting from the chapter “On the Art of Acting.”
unlike other professions where an eight-hour day is deemed the normal amount of time to be devoted, acting requires a constant adherence to the profession itself. The actor’s day should begin long before he reaches the theatre for the evening’s performance. Whether he is working on a role or not, his day should begin as an actor when he awakens. Whether it be personal introspection, surveillance of life around him, appreciation of nature and her laws; awareness of people and their problems, or trying to wake up in the morning as the character he is playing, the actor must continually strive for perceptivity. For by seeing deeper than the surface aspects of life, he is able to broaden his own scope of any character he portrays. The depth of his art will depend greatly upon this perceptiveness.
Wow!
I’m tempted to go on but think I should shut up so you can use the time to reread some of that good stuff.