In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- In the blink of an eye
- Walking with style
- Talking heads (and bodies)
All animation principles and techniques portrayed in this book will help you create appealing and fluid movements for your characters. But movements alone are useless: they need a reason to exist; they ought to have meaning. From subtleties such as blinking eyes, to full body motion and lip sync, everything must have a purpose.
The animator must know the character and understand the motivations behind each action. You need to ask yourself some questions before you start drawing or moving controls on screen. There is a useful and widely used acting technique known as W.O.F.A.I.M. that helps us answer the main questions. It stands for:
- Wants: Ask yourself what your character wants and, and more importantly, why does it want it?
- Objectives: When your character wants something, it's probably with an objective in mind. This can be an immediate one, such as throwing a baseball, or a long term objective (our character may be throwing that baseball in training for the final game).
- Feelings: How is your character feeling? Is he nervous? Shy? Afraid? Angry? Frustrated? Know the emotional state of your character.
- As-if: Is your character impersonating someone else? Think of a child character trying to fake his voice and talk like his father over the telephone.
- Intentions: A bit like the objectives, people perform actions with an intention behind them. If the objective is throwing a baseball, the intention may be to make the batter miss it.
- Moment before: What happened to our character just before this scene? This is important to know how and where to start.
Ask yourself these questions before each shot. This quick technique very efficiently allows you to plan and create convincing animation clips, and you should use it in every recipe of this chapter.
Note that covering all aspects of acting for animation is definitely beyond the scope of this book. Along with books, specific training in acting for animation or regular acting classes, you can try searching for tips and lessons on the Internet (once again, YouTube could be your best friend).
Something you probably already do is watch movies and TV shows. While doing that, pay attention to how your favorite characters are portrayed by their actors. Try to understand how some words written in the script are brought to life with great finesse by the actors. It's a good idea to look for movie excerpts you think have a similar mood to what you're trying to portray.