So I’ve been at Pixar for about 6 weeks, and there is one main point that just keeps getting slammed on me over and over again.

SHOW YOUR CHARACTER’S THOUGHT PROCESS WITH THE BODY LANGUAGE

Typically, animators will animate “to the dialog” -> the motion will be pretty, the arcs will be wonderful, the polish will be exquisite, but the acting just sucks. The body language is redundant and generic. Animators will take the wonderful language capabilities of the body and say the same thing that the dialog says. It’s redundant… really redundant… redundant… very redundant… completely redundant… boring, huh?

So how do you escape that? Well, this is something I’m always learning as well, but here are a few notes I’ve gathered: Think about the personality, feelings and thoughts of your character.

Personality: what is your character generally like? how does she hold herself? is she an introvert or extrovert? Personality will dictate your initial posing of the character, and how the feelings and thoughts are framed.
Feeling: what is your character like right now? what is the context of the scene? Feeling is layered onto the personality, an introvert who currently feels outgoing will look very different then someone outgoing who is feeling outgoing.
Thoughts: What is your character thinking? Thoughts are shaped by the personality, feeling and context. Thoughts are the last internal process. For instance, when you touch something hot, your body reacts first, then you think “SHIT, THAT IS HOT!” and it isn’t until after you think that you speak.

So, the actual spoken words are the final part of the process. The body says much more than words. And if you use the body to say different things than the words, you really start to hit empathy and entertainment with your animation. Imagine the entertainment in a scene where the body language says “SHIT, THAT IS HOT!” and the spoken line is “hehe, nice day isn’t it?”

Unfortunately, animators seem too caught up in the actual movement to think about the performance. Ultimately the performance is the key to animation- because as hard as it is to move characters believably, the average person won’t give a shit. The audience came to see a performance, they shouldn’t notice your character’s fluid wrist overlap and buttery movement.

Here is a music video in which Ben Stiller acts with no subtext (on purpose). It is sad, but his mock performance is strikingly similar to how many animators approach dialog.

Ben Stiller’s section is from roughly 1:08 to 2:15.

Questions? Anything need clarification?
I’ll find some good examples of showing thought process in my next post!

-Tom