anthea hearts animation mentor

The Making of a Character

So much thought and preparation goes into an acting performance. As we move away from the basic body mechanics of movement and into the performance of acting it has made me think more deeply about defining a character. What is a character? And how do you get one? Well for now the answer alludes me. Now that I have selected the audio clip I will be animating to for the next 5 weeks, I have begun to think about the kind of character I want to portray in this animation. I did some test reference last week, but that for me was just the beginning, I mostly used this to narrow down my choices, using the reference capture as a way to guage if the clip was usable or not. If nothing came to mind or the capture ended up boring I felt that the animation would too and scrapped that idea. I chose the Queen of Sheba clip for this project and now have to decide what kind of character performance Bishop will give, blocking is due Sunday. I spent yesterday and today pulling reference movies to look at performances and characters to insipre me. Some movies I chose to look at were Elizabeth, The Imprtance of Being Earnest, Casino, Cleopatra. I still want to look at some more like Willy Wonka, The Godfather and Silence of the Lambs. And I know what you are thinking, how could this list of totally unrelated movies help you in any way? Are you out of your mind lady? Well, no, I just have a theory that if I do my homework and come up with a unique character that I have come to know that it will show in the animation. Here's to hoping it works.

posted by anthea @ 5:41 PM