Acting in Animation

Acting? What does that have to do with Animation?

More than you'd expect, it seems

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Today I took a look at Doron A. Meir's article on acting and animation. While the title intrigued me, the content did more so. In his article, Meir covers what it really means to bring a character to life in animation. He doesn't just mean the story or even the design, but the movement of a character in itself, whether you were the one directing the story or just working off a given script, Meir stresses the importance of acting.

Meir claims that modern animations have come to lack the higher quality of acting in their animation as seen in older works. He sees the characters as well modeled, but poorly developed and poorly acted. He sees the character move, but he can no longer feel them working as an individual character. Meir's definition of acting requires that the animator can think, feel, react, and retain the consistency of the character in a way that makes the audience believe that the character is a real, living, breathing (where applicable), thinking individual: a practice that is much harder than you may think.

While Meir may have a good point, they provide little to no evidence to support their claims on neither the loss of acting nor any way to bring it back to the spotlight. Meir gives us no clear examples of a poorly acted and well-acted character in any more detail than a name. This, unfortunately, detracts from their interesting argument a little, giving us no more than some textbook terms on how to feel, react, and set the mood.

Despite the detraction from his validity, Meir does bring up an interesting point, whether or not this is becoming less prevalent: how to do more than make a character move. What Meir misses in the things he sees are the extra thoughts and effort to truly develop a character. Sometimes I can see what he means by it, too. I need to be sure to, with my own characters, bring to life their personalities and make them empathize-able on-screen to the viewers.

See the article yourself at:

http://www.animationarena.com/acting-and-animation.html

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