Acting Poses.

First Year students are just starting their acting to dialog exercises. When we watched the interviews with character animators I was struck by what the guy who animated Milo said about how he starts by looking for that "one pose: that will define the scene. It got me thinking about how often I see students (and I've been guilty of it myself aswell) just plow into a scene starting at frame one and going forward from there. The first frame is probably the least important in the whole scene, it takes the human brain about 3 frames to even realize what its looking at after cutting to a new shot, and yet if you lock in your first drawing it will inevitably influence the keys that follow. So I thought I'd encourage you all to think about it from another point of view. What's the most important moment in you dialogue and what do you want that moment to feel and look like? Perhaps that should be your starting point. Try some different possibilities, the chances of you finding the best pose you can do on the first go are one in a billion. Here are some quick sketches I put down while thinking about emotions and attitudes.

Click on a pic to enlarge it.