Acting and Character Animation

The Art of Animated Films, Acting and Visualizing

Rolf Giesen, Anna Khan

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351651073
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

Animation has a lot to do with acting. That is, character animation, not the standardized, mechanical process of animation. Acting and animation are highly creative processes. This book is divided into two parts: From film history we learn about the importance of actors and the variety of acting that goes into animation; then, we will turn to the actor's point of view to describe the various techniques involved. Through exhaustive research and interviews with people ranging from the late Ray Harryhausen, Jim Danforth, Joe Letteri, and Bruno Bozzetto, this book will be the primary source for animators and animation actors.

Key Features

• Interviews with industry legends are found throughout this exhaustive work on animation
• From film history we learn about the importance of actors and the variety of acting that goes into animation, then turn to the actor's point of view to describe the various techniques involved
• Coverage of acting from Vaudeville to Rotoscoping to Performance Capture
• Case studies throughout bring the content to life while providing actionable tools and techniques that can be used immediately

PART I

The Story of Actors & Acting in Animation

1

Time for Creation

Homunculi

Acting and animating are arts of simulation and reproduction: the dream of creating animal and human life by means other than natural reproduction.

The so-called Homunculus was the realm of Doctor Faustus, the legendary necromancer and astrologer who became a durable character in the literature where he sold his soul to the devil, a predecessor of Frankenstein, and it was the realm of the Swiss alchemist Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, otherwise known as Paracelsus, a sixteenth century master of holistic medicine and natural healing, who is said to have been interested in artificially made human beings, a concern that in those days came close to black magic.

In Universal’s The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), VFX experts John P. Fulton and David Stanley Horsley created such homunculi optically by miniaturizing live actors while an artist like Ray Harryhausen even animated a (winged) homunculus stop-frame, as an evil magician’s aid in his “super-spectacle” The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

Today’s alchemists who call themselves scientists create artificial life through genetic engineering and human cloning. Animators, however, accomplish the process in a much simpler way. They create their little men (this is what homunculi means translated from Latin) by using digital imagery or simply a pen.

Facing auspicious occasions, animators will have a chance of not only acting but also creating. In some early animation, as in the Out of the Inkwell series by Max Fleischer, the hand of the animator appears and it looks as if the drawn character was touched by the hand of God. Animators invent characters that virtually do not exist. In such cases, some of them actually might feel like being God and say so. “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” Colin Clive screamed when portraying Frankenstein in front of James Whale’s camera. This attitude was parodied in Chuck Jones’ short cartoon Duck Amuck (1953) in which Daffy Duck fights the malicious hand of a mischievous animator who turns out to be Bugs Bunny. But sometimes the creations might be more powerful than the creator itself. They seem to develop a life of their own like Pinocchio did.

In 1965, famed Czech stop-motion producer Jiří Trnka (1912–1969) wrote and directed an 18-minute short film, a parable titled Ruka (The Hand) that dealt with personality cult: A harlequin potter is happy to create his daily output of flower vases, but then a huge Stalinist hand appears that threatens and manipulates him to sculpt nothing else than memorials of a giant hand.

2

Chalk-Talking on a Vaudeville Stage

At the turn of the century, in vaudeville, caricaturists and show-and-swift cartoonists had to have acting ability as they presented their creations live on stage. They were in direct touch with the audience. They were true animateurs.

The master certainly was Winsor McCay (c. 1867–1934), “America’s greatest cartoonist,” the famed creator of the strip Little Nemo in Slumberland and an accomplished entertainer. When he entered the art of animation, it was intended to become part of his live act on stage presenting his animation and interacting with it by giving a Brontosaurus lady named Gertie on screen commands that she would follow or not.

This was one of the rare cases that a cartoonist and animator became a true stage actor.

McCay had drawn his Gertie the Dinosaur in 1913, accordingly over a period of six months, starting with the key frames and filling in the “in-betweens.” He had brought the series of drawings to the Vitagraph Company of America in January 1914 to have them photographed frame by frame. The next month the film was premiered at the Palace Theatre in Chicago where McCay entered the stage, armed with chalk, and began sketching on a blackboard. Personal appearances of cartoonists on stage were part of many vaudeville acts. This was followed by a screening of How a Mosquito Operates, Gertie’s predecessor. Then McCay returned to the stage, cracking a bullwhip like an animal trainer to introduce Gertie, “the only dinosaur in captivity.”

Gertie on screen would do, at least sometimes, what McCay ordered her on “tricks” to do on stage. “Gertie—yes, her name is Gertie,” McCay addressed his audience, “will come out of that cave and do everything I tell her to do.” Then, armed with his whip, he would turn to Gertie: “Come out, Gertie, and make a pretty bow. Be a good girl and bow to the audience. Thanks! Now raise your right foot. That’s good! Now raise your left foot.” A sea serpent rears its ugly head out of the water. “Never mind that sea serpent! Gertie, raise your left foot.” But Gertie is distracted. “You’re a bad girl, shame on you!” When scolded Gertie begins to weep bitterly. “Oh, don’t cry. Here, catch this pumpkin.” For the first time in imagery live action becomes an interactive part of an animated cartoon. Gertie opens her mouth to catch the pumpkin. “Now will you raise your left foot?” Gertie devours a tree and shrieks when a mammoth passes by. “Gertie, don’t hurt Jumbo.” Gertie tosses the mammoth in the lake. “Gertie loves music. Play for her and she’ll dance.” While Gertie dances to the music, standing upright on her hind legs, she gets sprayed with water by Jumbo and hurls a boulder at the vengeful mammoth that escapes. After such action, Gertie is tired and takes some rest until a flying reptile turns up. “Did you see that four-winged lizard?” Gertie nods. “Sure? Are you in the habit of seeing things?” Gertie shakes her head. “Are you fibbing to me? Will you have a little drink? There’s a lake. Take a little drink if you want it.” McCay doesn’t have to tell her twice. Gertie cleans up the whole lake. At the end of the show, McCay goes one step further. He walks offstage and returns in drawn form: “Gertie will now show that she isn’t afraid of me and take me for a ride.” Gertie would open her mouth and the McCay cartoon character would step in to be lifted on her back swinging his whip while she exits.

McCay’s Mosquito and McCay’s Gertie—they are both animals and they act that way. Gertie, however, is more animal than the Mosquito that is unnamed but, although it follows its instincts, has a human personality. It loves to be at the center of attention, and while Gertie bows to the audience at McCay’s command, the Mosquito pulls off a feat for the audience at his own request. Gertie is a showcase: the first animated stage personality, the Mosquito’s stage is man’s daily life. His natural goal: to make this life miserable by his blood-sucking antics. Humans have empathy for Gertie as you would have for an overgrown pet. The Mosquito is no pet, never will be, but we like that critter too. He—and it’s certainly him, not It!—behaves mischievously like a brat and has fun. We feel sorry for him when he explodes having sucked too much blood. We don’t feel sorry for the sleeper who lost a few drops of blood. The Mosquito is the first screen animal in animation history that evokes human feelings and true empathy.

With the end of vaudeville personal appearances like those of McCay would become rare, and personalities like Walt Disney had to be prerecorded to appear as a host on screen or television together with their cartoon characters. In these recordings you see, however, that Disney had enormous acting abilities. And that his animals, like McCay’s, make themselves understood by communicating on a wavelength with the audience. Not only their performances, it’s their personality that captures the audience.

3

Magicians and Masquerades

Besides the vaudevillian actor, early trickfilm refers to magic as an extension of similar stage presentations. The illusion to let persons and things appear and disappear could be easily accomplished cinematographically.

Trickfilm pioneer Georges Méliès (1861–1938) was a proprietor of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris, where he developed and presented many stage illusions before he turned to filmmaking. In 1896, he used the stop trick (or substitution splice) to create the illusion of the Vanishing Lady (Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin) on film. The Edison Manufacturing Company used the same trick one year earlier to substitute an actress’ head with a dummy to reconstruct The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. It was more than just stopping the camera. The illusion was based on a seamless match cut that linked two separately staged shots.

James Stuart Blackton (1875–1941), co-founder of the Vitagraph Company of America, started as a cartoonist and a chalk-talker like his client Winsor McCay. He seemed to have been one of the firsts to use the stop trick in combination with drawings:...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Authors
• Introduction: Neverland or No End to Childhood
• Part I: The Story of Actors & Acting in Animation
• Part II: Creativity Training for Writers, Producers, and Animators—A Practical Guide
• Part III: Q & A
• Selected Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index