Analysing body shape.
In our acting classes we had with Sarah Perry we focused on body shape and the meanings we can convey through them. Sarah Perry is a movement director/ coach who has had many clients before including Marvel, Jellyfish pictures, double negative and many more. She started off as an actor but shifted her focus to director she often also works with university students (like us the BA Hons animators for NUA and many more.)
In class she gave us a list of different actions that people perform without even knowing it, but as an animator we need to look out for these specific movements so that it makes our performance more realistic.
Travel, Stillness, Isolation, Transfer of weight, Jump, twist, turn, open, close, lean and fall.
When acting out our own performances for the mystery box we had to look out for each of these actions to add them into our animation, Sarah also wanted to show us extreme versions of these actions (where we would exaggerate what we are doing in a more cartoon like fashion) to show us that while realism is somewhat important to be able to understand animation its not exactly necessary, what matters is making it interesting.
We then went on to watch short slips of some animations like frozen and some Charlie Chaplin videos so that we could keep an eye out for the movements now that we know what to look out for.
This was really helpful as it made me look for these in my own performances so that I could transfer them into my animation.
She also gave us a list of still shape forms that we learned how to recognize such as Pin, wall, Ball, Screw and Pyramid. While these are incredibly helpful for creating positions while the character is still (making striking and interesting silhouettes) I didn't find it as useful as the actions list Sarah gave us. Particularly the transfer of weight one as that really changed how I viewed my animation and I think helped to make it more realistic in a way.
http://sarahperrymovement.com/about/
