11 seconds club – December 2010

An older entry for the 11 seconds club competition, ranked pretty well back then:

 

 

Enjoy!

Movement, Attitude defining Character

Just thought to post something I’ve witnessed a few days ago, because I thought it was pretty interesting. Most of us probably do that often (animators, I mean)

I was waiting in my car to pick up someone, in a car park nearby some offices buildings. In front of me there were about 3 cars, one of them was a nice Mercedes, one was an older Wolkswagen and one a Fiat, about 8 years old or so.

A guy walked off the building and by the way he was walking and by his attitude, posture, walk speed and almost “intention” I knew he was going to stop and get into the Mercedes. I was right

These kind of things I think are valuable stuff for us animators, it made me think in reverse, after I’ve seen it: what did I see that made me know he will go to the luxury car. What exactly about his walk made me think that? he walked slowly, head up, like a noble posture. He wasn’t dressed particularly expensive, but I think even a still photo/frame of him walking would have led us to think he was going towards the luxury car – because you could have read his attitude, status, character, even from a single pose.

It’s also a pretty cool feeling when you see your instincts work, this probably gets better and better the more knowledge we acquire about acting and with more visual experience we get.

As a side note, I’ve seen the same situation ( not 100% similar though ) a few days ago, looking through our offices window. This time it was a lady walking quite quickly towards cars parked on a line, next to the kerbs. She only started to slow down and “prepare” the gestures of getting in the car as she got to about 2 m away from her car  – and the whole body language was just hinted, slightly by the head angle, general posture, hands movement and getting the hand holding the keys “ready” to unlock the doors. I think that we can get a lot of information when watching someone if we closely look at subtle gestures that people do subconsciously. Then we can work with that, putting an emphasis on what we can exaggerate…

Animation is so cool because of the whole process involved, which brings together so many disciplines in different forms.

I hope this will be helpful, somehow

Thanks for reading.

11 seconds club – August 2011 entry

My entry for the 11 second club competition for August 2011. It’s a kid who loves karate and kung fu films and he just loves the film he’s looking at so much… that he almost memorized some scenes.
Hope you like it