Acting Advice from Peter Sellers

Peter Sellers

While doing some research recently on a project I stumbled across a quote from the late great Peter Sellers, on how he approached creating a character. 

Sellers said "I start with the voice. I find out how the character sounds...after the voice comes the looks of the man...after that I discover how the character walks...and then something strange happens...the man you play begins to exist."

It's the same with animation. 

Pantomime Animation Demo Reel

Above is a collection of some of the best pantomime animation shots completed by students at Animation Apprentice.  Pantomime animation is the art of performance without dialogue, in the tradition of the old silent movie stars such as Chaplin or Keaton - or a modern incarnation such as Mr Bean. Good pantomime animation communicates to the audience what the character is thinking and feeling - without dialogue. 

Michael Caine Acting Lessons For Animators

 

Animated characters need to look at each other, so their eyes don't wander around screen.  Watch the short video above with acting legend Michael Caine for some tips from the master of screen acting.  The video itself is a little dated (1980s) but the lessons remain just as important today.  According to Caine, the number one lesson for stage actors is to "hold on to each others' eyes".  And, what is true for stage actors is true for animators too.  You can watch Caine's acting advice in the video above - the important part is all in the first 5 minutes.

Acting and Performance Reel 2024

Above is a selection of the best acting and performance animation created by students at Animation Apprentice. The "Character Performance" reel includes work created by many of our talented students. All of our graduates should have at least one compelling acting shot on their reel, and one of the best ways to do this is to enter the monthly 11 Second Club.  Congratulations to all our students and recent graduates on their excellent work.

Character Animation by David Davis

A number of our students are currently tackling the 11 Second Club, the monthly competition in which animators compete to bring a line of dialogue to life, testing not just their technical skills but also their powers of imagination. Students must find performance and acting choices that create an entertaining and well-realised piece of animation. In the example above, one of my former students David Davis demonstrates strong, well-chosen choices for this very witty piece of character animation.

How To Create Thumbnails for Animation

 

How do you create thumbnail sketches for character animation? Learning how to create thumbnail sketches is a very important skill, even for animators who don't draw well, because thumbnail sketches are an important tool for planning animation.  Even 3D animators who aren't that comfortable with drawing are encouraged to have a go at the thumbnailing process, because it is so valuable for planning character animation.  Watch the video above to see how to create simple but expressive thumbnail sketches for this month's "11 Second Club". 

What is "Grammelot"?

What is Grammelot? And why do animators need it? Sometimes you want your characters to speak, but what they are actually saying isn't really that important.  Much more significant is the tone, and what that tone tells us about the character doing the speaking.  Think of the adults in the old Charlie Brown feature films; they spoke in a dreary unintelligible monotone.  We didn't know what they were saying, but we didn't need to - their tone of voice told us everything we needed to know.  And the content of their speech was far less important than what the Peanuts' kids had to say.

Lipsync: Open Wide on the Big Vowels

Wide on the big vowels

When animating Lipsync, animators should never forget to open the mouth wide on the main vowels, especially "A", "EE", and "O" shapes.

The trick with animating good dialogue is to avoid the timing of the mouth shapes feeling soft and mushy. 

By opening wide on the big vowels, animators can get more texture into a dialogue shot, more "light and shade", so that the animation "hits the accents", and makes a more positive statement.

The timing of the open and shut of the jaw should be nice and snappy, with only a single frame ease-in to the wide mouth position.

Using Live Action Reference for Animation

Live Action Ref by Eilin Berrio Pena

One of the skills that junior animators must master is how to use live action reference to inform their animation.

When you go and watch a Pixar or Disney movie, you see animation, not live action. But there is plenty of live action there - it's just behind the scenes. Animators typically film themselves acting out their shot, and then use that reference to create animation. Below is an example from two students, Eilin Berrio Pena and Paloma Zhu, showing how they filmed live action reference to enter the monthly 11 Second Club Competition. 

The Secret of Animating Lipsync

Above is a short video on how to animate lipsync, showing how to keep the process as simple as possible.  The idea is to break things down into easy sections so as to make sure that your work starts off simple and gradually grows in complexity as you layer in the detail. At its simplest, good lipsync is just about opening and closing the mouth on the vowels, and closing it on the consonants. But, developing a system to keep it simple and at the same time get a sophisticated result, is all part of mastering the art and craft of animation.

The Cobbler Escapes from His Cell

Above is a shot that I animated on "The Thief and the Cobbler". It is a useful example of how to use live action reference to creating animation. This shot was animated in around 1991, and to get it right I filmed myself acting it out, using an old-fashioned video camera on a tripod, mounted near the ground to get the right camera angle. Then, I played back the footage frame by frame on the VCR, tracing over the key poses with a blue pencil on a piece of paper pressed against the glass of the TV screen, anchored with some peg bars. By doing this I was able to figure out all the key poses, and make sure the weight shifts were believable and based on real reference. 

Stanislavski's 7 Questions for Actors & Animators

Constantin Stanislavski

Recently some of my students have been preparing for this month's 11 Second Club Competition. This month's line of dialogue is very short, just a woman's voice saying "what's happening?". 

The rest of the eleven second clip is made up of sound effects - the spooky sound of a siren wailing and distant rain.

All this makes for a very open brief - the scene could be about almost anything, and this permits a great deal of flexibility and creativity.

An open brief can be a good thing - it allows for plenty of invention, but it also presents a challenge - what is the scene really about?  And how do we interpret it?

Why Animators Should Avoid a Profile View

Two characters talking in profile view

One of the most common mistakes made by junior animators when they start out animating is to compose characters in profile.

When two characters are talking to one other, it seems logical that staging them in profile should work fine, but compositionally it doesn't work well.

Meet Thep - New Free Mummy Maya Rig

Meet Thep!

We're liking this cartoon mummy rig named Thep; he's fun and cartoony and you can get a great performance out of him. You can find him here for free download at the Squiggly Rigs official site.

Thep is the first character made with the Squiggly rig system.  Built to allow plenty of flexibility and exaggeration, Thep comes "equipped with some cool features to allow him to act as cartoony as possible without losing appeal".

Thep is a good choice for students starting on acting and lipsync; he works well with a cartoony voice, such as one from the Sesame Street wav archive.

Consider Thep for acting and pantomime shots, or for short dialogue scenes; he has good facial expressions and a wide variety of mouth shapes.

Improv for Animators Starts October 7th

Improv with Bruce MacKinnon and Framestore

Actor and comedian Bruce McKinnon, (The Office, Guardians of The Galaxy, Bohemian Rhapsody, Inside No.9, Black Mirror) has teamed up with Ross Burgess, Head of animation at Framestore, to create a "fun and fast paced improv course, specifically designed for animators", starting on 7th October in Central London.

The purpose of the class is to "push animators creatively and explore through workshop how actors approach character movement and comedic storytelling."

As we know, animators are actors (we must give a performance), and we strongly recommend our students take acting classes in order to improve their acting skills and choices. 

Dialogue & Lipsync Tutorial

Dialogue by Joris Van Laar

We've uploaded a new tutorial on animating Dialogue & Lipsync to our Vimeo channel.

In this 8-part video, we explain how to approach the challenge of animating dialogue and lipsync, breaking the process down into a simple, dependable workflow.

How to Build and Block a Scene

Animation Blocking on Stepped Curves: Mark Masters

One of the biggest challenges encountered by student animators is how to block out a shot from scratch, starting off with nothing but a blank screen and a character rig.

In animation you get nothing for free. You start off with a digital puppet, usually in a stiff "T-pose", and you have to figure out the rest yourself.

In a new series of videos, we show how to take a reaction shot - a cartoony "take" - from zero to hero.

Why Every Animation Needs an Idea

Animators need an idea

Every Shot Needs an Idea. One of the most common mistakes made by junior animators is to animate a scene of dialogue without clearly thinking through what the shot is really about.

Animators are actors, with a pencil, or a mouse. Like stage or screen actors, animators must always think carefully about what their character is thinking about. Who is the character talking to, and what is the scene about? What do they want, and what do they fear?

These things are important because unless these questions are asked, and answered, the scene will tend to feel empty of meaning, and lack compelling interest.

Why Animators Need "Head Muppeting"

What is "Head Muppeting" in animation? It's a term I first heard used by veteran animator Sydney Padua when she was teaching an animation class at Escape Studios.

"Head Muppeting" is a similar concept to that of "hitting the accents", developed by Richard Williams in his book The Animator's Survival Kit.

It means that, when you are animating a dialogue shot, you need to keep the character's head in motion, to make the audience believe that the character is saying the lines.

Animating Dialogue: Avoid Famous Lines

Animators: avoid lines like "go ahead punk..."

One of the most common mistakes junior animators often make when selecting their first line of dialogue to animate is to pick one of their favourite lines from a movie, usually spoken by a famous actor.

The reason that this is a bad idea is that famous lines spoken by famous actors tend to come with too much baggage.