"Bus Stop" Prompt - (Acting for Animation)
- penspeare
- Mar 24, 2022
- 17 min read
Updated: May 10, 2022
Bus Stop Brief
I have a few "To Do" lists scattered throughout this blog post that I was initially going to remove when I finished them all and officially uploaded the posts to be marked. However, I was told, "nah, keep 'em in! It's cool to see your thought process!", so remain they will.
The Concept:
(2D animation)
Mozza and Skunk wait at the bus stop. Skunk is severely hungover and almost doubled over, trying not to be sick. Mozza merrily dances on the other side, oblivious to Skunk, much to latter mentioned’s chagrin. Skunk stretches, releasing a stink cloud shaped like an arm, from his armpit, which then uppercuts an unwitting Mozza in the jaw.
We don't need to worry too much about character design, especially given the time period, but I think character design is a really, really important way to convey theatrical ideas that complement the actual actions of what is going on. It's a quick way for the audience to find out who the characters are and what they're all about in such a small timeframe. I have a dilemma because I love working on character design, but I know I don't a lot of time, so...
I was discussing with Sarah about the shape language of the characters, most notably of Skunk's. Talking about how the character design of Skunk itself isn't necessarily round, but the body language that he is conveying in the animation is. He might not necessarily be "approachable" as many round characters are, but the round posture he is giving out suggests he is pretty harmless. Given his hungover state, I would say he isn't going to risk moving that much anyway. This is in direct contrast with Mozza's general posture in both character design as well as the animation itself, where he is extremely straight and stiff. He's quite blocky with triangular accents; the two combined giving a sense that he is in his own self-absorbed world, his "all eyebrows, no eyes" design choice adding to this.
Other Media
The bus stop brief made me think of a character annoying the other just by being there, which then reminded me of Mojo Jojo waiting at a pedestrian crossing:
I think it would be funny to have one character with a terrible affliction of misophonia, while the other, a bit of a "space cadet", stands there loudly chewing gum.
That sort of dynamic reminded me of this short, a crossover of sorts featuring Mojo Jojo from The Powerpuff Girls and Ed from Ed, Edd and Eddy:
Here's a link to the video if the embedded one doesn't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hubOYitOQAc
08/02/2022: I got myself stuck in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, just so happened to be reading about Morrissey, then I discovered The Simpsons made this parody of him in 2021 that I somehow completely missed:
It's an interesting piece of secondary research to see how Morrissey has been translated into cartoon form as "Quilloughby" from the fictional band "The Snuffs".
Quilloughby ft. Lisa Simpson - Everyone Is Horrid Except Me (And Possibly You) (From "The Simpsons"), hollywoodrecords via YouTube. 13th May 2021. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of6CPxjh7lk [Accessed: 08/02/2022]
Above is a slide taken from the lecture Sarah provided us with on the 7 Acting Concepts. Taking these into consideration is beneficial to ensuring a good performance from actors, so conveying it through animated characters is no different. In fact, as Ed Hooks states all throughout his book Acting for Animators, animators must take particular consideration these 7 concepts. A live actor acts quite naturally, for the most part, not really needing to actually think through their actions and reactions. However, Hook states how "a stage actor does not think about poses and gestures [whereas] an animator must pay close attention to the actual physical movement involved in a character's gesture" - each action and movement is planned out in some way or another.
"No storyboard is required[...]" although no storyboard is required, during my Jam I realised I should have drawn out Hedgehoge's expressions between her sitting up and her face melting; it was a purely straight ahead approach for her facial expressions changing so it ended up turning out really, really weird looking.
After watching the examples of previous years' Bus Stop briefs, there were a lot of gum chewers or bubble popping... so I don't want to do that anymore. Maybe the other character just smells really bad, and the first one has a really sensitive nose rather than misophonia. Maybe a mix of the two.
...thank goodness I was playing around with a side project and all I can think of at the bus stop is my prim and proper character based on this fella:
The side project in question is (or will be) on my blog in a personal projects category. It's called Animated Portraits that I want to use as an exercise to help me get better at character animation. The Morissey one is a parody on the old Leek Spin meme from about fifteen years ago and the fact that Morissey had a whole "thing" where, during The Smiths concerts, he would spin around, or keep in his back pocket, bouquets of gladioli flowers that fans would throw on stage. Here's the other mood board exploring that specifically:
I'll share some of the thumbnails I made regarding the character design of my animated Morissey portrait. Bear in mind though that some of them are specifically related to my animated portraits exercises, which is why there are notes regarding certain specifications for staging:
(Also just to note regarding the thumbnails, there are lyrics scribbled onto the page alongside some poses. That's very specific to the animated portrait exercise!)
I actually remembered to date these doodles too so, as you can see, they're pretty recent (it's the 27th January as I'm typing up this bit); literally drew them up last week. Perfect timing for the Acting for Animation module! I really like how the character design has developed for him though, so I'll snatch at the opportunity to make him my prim and proper character for the bus stop. For this project, he will be called Mozza. But who will be Mozza's foe?
All I've been thinking of is Mozza dancing about to his MP3 player as if he's alone. It went to this from the original misophonic and stoic character originally. I was worried about how boring it would look if he was just standing there, because the point of this assignment is to really embrace the theatrical side of animation.
Maybe make him straighter; adds to his pompousness
Research and Ideation
In the book Fundamentals of Character Design: How to Create Engaging Characters for Illustration, Animation & Visual Development (2020), illustrator Vanessa Morales discusses the research and ideation stage of character development. I especially enjoy her section on it as it enables my obsession for mood boards and mind maps and, if you couldn't already tell from the entirety of my animation blog, I make use of them whenever I can. They are so much fun to make, but they really get the creative cogs cranking.
Anyway, she talks about collecting references (firsthand when and where you can though, of course), and how you should "go outside to sketch life in motion [and to] study and analyze their successful features", which is exactly what I've done with my characters Mozza and Skunk. I've sketched Mozza in motion, using music videos of Morrissey dancing on stage, as well as collecting secondhand photographs for Skunk to create his character design by looking at various crust punks and animals - in particular a skunk - and drawing those out to get a feel of them firsthand (as first hand as I can get with secondhand sources, anyway), and then utilised those to better inform the character design itself. I've done this with most of my visual development until now, and will continue to do so after this assignment.
Morales also discusses looking at other artists' work "to see what has been done before, so you can learn and expand on it" which I've also made sure to include in my mood boards.
I need to pay a lot more attention to the first of the 12 principles of animation squash and stretch, in particular when working out the expressions. These are just thumbnails at this point, but I'll insert the sub-conscious media inspirations to get a better look at how they incorporate the principle in the characters' emotional expressions so I can relate it back in a way that suits my project.
I just had to play around with his face in Toon Boom. It's not really a proper test as oppose to just me messing around and doing a warm up before I did anything proper. He gave me a giggle though, so it achieved something!
Above is a bit of a combination of an expression sheet and a research based mood board. Here I was looking at other animated characters (plus The Swedish Chef from The Muppets - he absolutely still counts as he certainly went through strenuous visual development for his very stylised character design) that had popped into my head while making thumbnails of Mozza. I also cleaned up said thumbnail expressions and tried to exaggerate them a bit more. It also makes for a really fun opportunity to experiment with the squash and stretch principle of animation to really give his changes of expression that something extra, and to better communicate how he's feeling in a clearer and more obvious way.
A scene of animation is more or less a series of gesture drawings [...] do not attempt to copy the model, but rather capture and draw the gesture
- Stanchfield, W. Drawn to Life (20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes
I tried this out after the continuous motion studies while watching music videos by The Smiths. This animation test is technically of Morissey rather than my character Mozza, but this is the sort of thing that Mozza will be doing anyway. I'm glad I did it, as I was able to see what worked with it, as rough as it is.
In particular, I'm really loving how I captured one of the 12 principles of animation with this test; the arcs, and how they turned out, so I think it'll be really worth trying to amplify them. Especially with how the flowers in his pocket bounce around with him as he moves, as if they're dancing with him, and how both arms arc around in their own ways; it's actually really, really pleasant to look at. If I can avoid having to record myself dancing about with a bouquet in my pocket, that would be fantastic, but it's proving a little difficult getting full body shots and there's only so far you should make up your anatomy (which should be not at all, ideally, but I digress).
Here's another go I had with the continuous* motion studies, except this time I made sure to have Morrissey's full body in it:
It was from a live video recorded in 1986 that can be found here; it was incredibly difficult to see at times, but I just wanted to capture the general gesture anyway, and that's what I got.
From there, I decided to take it into Toon Boom and do a little test based on my continuous motion studies.
It's only supposed to be a rough at the moment, but I'm liking him so far. I added a couple of attributes for Mozza, such as his bouffant twirl hair, and his little tuft of untucked shirt which... has a spot of overlapping action going on which I've just noticed, so I'm going to try to keep that in because it actually looks really well. Happy accidents abound! Anyway, I just to need give his little bouffant twirl some bounce to add some follow through. In the concepts and particularly the expressions sheet, his hair had a bit of a mind of its own, where it would utilise the principle of secondary action to complement his overall emotional expressions. For example, if Mozza was shocked, his twirl would straighten out like a spike, or if he was angry, his twirl would squash into itself along with his face.
Skunk the Crust Punk
I keep thinking about a pothead sort of character who is just beyond laid back; they reek, and they're annoying, and they're maybe a wee bit noisy. I realised I started picturing someone a bit like this character:
But again, I'm not really fond of the idea of doing something that's been done a lot already. It's safe, but it gets a bit boring. That said, again, I need to make sure I understand I don't have time to be overly meticulous with the character design, so as long as there as a clear distinction between the two characters and that they are intended to be polarised.
Mind you, I was toying with the idea not so long ago there about Hedgehoge. I think I mentioned somewhere in one of the blog posts how I was entertaining the notion of her belonging to a mini-series, reminiscent of the old 2000s and late '90s web shorts. I don't know what I'd call it at this stage, but the basic premise is that the characters come from all different branches of punk, and also an animal. I had a few other characters crawl their way into my head, such as a skinhead called "Sphinx", but the most pungent one was a crust punk called "Skunk". Let's develop Skunk!
[Add colour swatches]
[Talk about "Limited Animation", and refer to The Illusion of Life to back it up. Skunk won't move much; take an anime approach to it where they tend to have very detailed illustrative designs, but the actual animation is incredibly limited. It adds to Skunk's delicate, fragile state as he mainly just sits there at the bus stop trying not to vomit, simply giving Mozza the evils]
[Clean this up and add more variety of expressions for Skunk]
[I was flicking through one of the new character design books I got, and saw mention of the Line of Action and how characters were sitting]
At the moment, Skunk has dot eyes. The dot eyes make it a little difficult to discern both his emotion and what he's looking at; in the final animation, I want him to be angrily glaring at an unwitting Mozza. So I may need to re-evaluate his eyes. The character Wullie from the Oor Wullie comics is a big albeit mostly sub-conscious inspiration for a lot of my drawing style, which is something I realised after drawing Skunk up here.
He doesn't quite have dot eyes; he has an incomplete outline for the rest of his eyes, so I might adopt that for Skunk so it's clearer and doesn't look as silly. Somewhat irrelevant, but I also love how they both have the same pose in their respective grumpy states (I realised this after I drew Skunk up, I swear! Talk about sub-conscious inspo again)
I want to give Skunk some boiling lines, especially because he will mostly be sitting stationary, so it will give his character the illusion of more movement even when he isn't doing a lot. That, plus it might look as though he's trembling and, given his post-drunken state, I think it will be a good touch. I'll see what I'm like for time though; this will be mainly a stylistic choice secondary to all the other main things.
The Animation Process
Acting is reacting. An actor is never doing nothing; they are always thinking about what to do next [quote this from Ed Hooks' book]
I'm using a limited animation approach for Skunk. He doesn't move much as he's a little delicate, or simply just wants to wait on the bus in peace. It's only Skunk's face that is animated as that's all the information we really need right now. He's reacting to Mozza who, on the other hand, is fully animated; dancing in full circles, much to Skunk's annoyance. We can tell he's becoming gradually more and more annoyed through his facial expressions. I've looped Mozza's dancing so I don't have to keep animating the same thing over and over again. It works well I think, and we can see Skunk clearly reacting to Mozza's actions. This is played well with the animation principle of staging too, with a lot of thanks given to the restrictive bus stop setting. We can clearly see Skunk glaring towards Mozza as the dancing continues.
I've taken the animation with Skunk even further. I'm still using a limited animation approach with him, but now there's a new element: he raises his arm, and a - I can't believe I'm writing this - stink cloud arm emerges. I think there should be a beat or so before he punches the air to give the motion more clarity. It gives us, as the audience, time to process what is happening, so the timing is a little off until I fix this aspect, in regards to Skunk's actions.
I need to fix the slow in/slow out with the stink-arm; I'm happy with the anticipation side of it, it's just the punch itself. I want it to be faster! Then I need to make sure the timing is perfect for it, so that it aligns just right with Mozza's jaw for a good, (un-)clean uppercut.
Also, I was just keeping it there as a placeholder but, the more I look at it, the more I kind of like Skunk's air-punch being instantaneous after his expression relaxes. A nice jolt to the audience to tell them to stop watching Mozza dancing, and to look at Skunk now. That said, I think there should be a bit of a time between Skunk's arm raise and the stink-arm coming out of his armpit.
Now the only bother.
The only bother I'm having here is that it's a bit long. I'll double-check with Sarah during the week about it, but it's going to end up longer than 10 seconds, especially if I want to maintain decent timing which, in turn, will significantly affect the anticipation principle for the entire animation as well. I'm not sure if the 5-8 or so seconds is more of a guide so as not to torture ourselves with a difficult or tedious task, but then... Mozza is dancing on a loop, and then Skunk's whole schtick is limited animation, so maybe it'll be okay.
Anyway. Regarding the fist. I've animated the rest of it on 3s, but it's turned out pretty nicely. I might change up the fist though and put him on 2s instead, to help with the timing, so it's faster.
I still like the anticipation of the fist before it goes through with the punch but, despite after animating the punch itself on 2s, it still seems a bit slow. It seems as though it's a bit heavy, as though it's a lead gauntlet. I need to play around more with ease in/ease out to help with the perceived weight of the object. That said, I also need to see what it looks like when it interacts with Mozza's jaw because, once it makes impact, it should slow down anyway, then gain back momentum when Mozza's head is forced backwards. As the book Timing for Animation states, "the movement of most everyday objects around us is caused by the effect of forces acting upon matter" in the Movement and Caricature chapter. It goes on to discuss exaggeration and utilising just the right amount to keep actions believable, but also obvious of what is going on in the scene for the audience to understand it. I need to make sure I'm keeping these in mind, so having the stink- hand huge and blatant and positioned where it is, is just one aspect of attaining that. But, also, when it lands its punch on Mozza reacting to this force, and I can achieve this by taking the animation principle of squash and stretch into account in his face when he does.
Now, there's something missing from this scene, and that would be Skunk's resolution to the conflict that is Mozza unwittingly annoying him. This scene needs the stink-arm uppercut punch (haha, wow)! I need a reference, but it will be difficult to pull off because punching people for real is frowned upon. Good thing I have this horrific dummy that hasn't seen the light of day since I left school over a decade ago:
I think by this point my dog was just about done wondering what on earth I was doing; you may or may not see him chilling out behind me.
"All objects in nature have their own weight, construction, and degree of flexibility, and therefore each behaves in its own individual way when a force acts upon it [...] a combination of position and timing, is the basis of animation."
-Whitaker, H., Halas, J., Timing for Animation (1981) 2nd Edition
It's a bit off but, for a rough animation test, I do like that the hand comes to a slight halt as it impacts the chin of the dummy as the chin acts as a force working against the fist in motion...but the fist wants to keep going, so it sends the head flying back! I think the punch itself is a little weak, but the recoiling adds a good sense of anticipation before the action of the punch itself which, in turn, sends the head flying back as a reaction. So I'm off to a decent start at least.
It's also annoying that I did a mirror image of it to how the animation itself has already been staged, but hey; it makes life a bit more interesting.
Final Animation:
Just like my 5 Second Club piece, facing few technical issues regarding software (on a much lesser extent than The Glitter Wizard, though!) and being sick for a week, I think I could have gotten a lot more of the animation done. It's still quite rough and Mozza's character needs a big clean up and the background needs tidied and tweaked (you may notice random bits of the bus stop disappears because I made things a bit more difficult for myself then didn't realise 'til later, basically), and the stink arm needs fixed in its second half to aid its secondary action.
I really wanted to add more drag to Mozza's bouffant when his head swings back and forth after being punch, but I think I left it at the bottom of the priorities list as I wanted to finish all the main parts of the animation, and I didn't want to start doing it as I went alongside the rest of it in case I confused myself and made it worse! It's certainly something I'll work on, as well as the stink cloud arm, after the official assignment hand in because I want to finish it properly in my own time.
Ed Hooks talked a lot about acting and reacting in his book Acting for Animators, which also works well with the animation principle of anticipation, as everything in the piece is a reaction to the last thing that happens. I also needed to make sure I paid particular close attention to the staging principle, especially for this assignment in acting for animation. It also goes, especially for this exercise, hand-in-hand with the aforementioned anticipation principle, however I may have included too much action in it. The piece was only really supposed to be around 8-10 seconds long, so I also had to be conscious of the timing as well, another principle that goes well with anticipation to the point where it's difficult to have one without the other, but I made sure I tried to convey it with how each character acts and reacts to each action that happens on screen. As the book Timing for Animation states in the Character Reactions and 'Takes' chapter, "a character becomes aware of a 'take' when he suddenly sees or becomes aware of something that makes him react in surprise" which backs up the acting and reacting aspect as well, and discusses character animation. In the next few paragraphs, it discusses how "[co-ordinating] the character's body movement with his facial expression [...] all must contribute to a reaction" which is spot on, but I think I could have demonstrated it a lot better with Mozza, for example, allowing him to swing his arms back to help exaggerate his pose more after he gets punched and thus communicating this reaction more clearly to the audience, but time constraints had me skipping it (for the time being), so that's another aspect I'd like to fix up and look into.
To Do List
"Skunk the Crust Punk" Character Development
[Insert skunk study you did on 01/02/2022] [ X ]
[Try to do 1-2 more skunk studies] [ NO!! ]
[Crust punk studies] [ X ]
[Colour scheme experiments] [ X ]
["Skunk the Crust Punk" thumbnails/doodles] [ X ]
[Concepts for Skunk] [ / ]
[Skunk turnarounds] [ Are they necessary? ]
>Might go for a limited animation approach with Skunk, to be honest. Keep all the animation in his expressions, and go all out with Mozza's gestures, hence I'm wondering the necessity for turnarounds for him
Skunk expression sheet [ / ]
Record reference footage of Skunk [ 2nd hand refs + 1st hand...hand]
Record reference footage of an uppercut [ X ]
Fish out the "Mini-Anne" to punch [ X ]
Mozza
"Mozza the Prancing Pompous Prince" Character Development
Mark movements of Morissey's in music videos by The Smiths [ X ]
Animation tests of Mozza/Morrissey dancing [ X ]
Draw up quick designs of Mozza based on Morissey [ X ]
Upload what you've drawn up already [ X ]
Mozza turnarounds [ / ]
Mozza expression sheet [ X ]
Acting Tips for Animators, AnimSchool via YouTube. 12th January 2021. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw0AHh2sVsM [Accessed: 28/03/2022];
Animating Gestures with Dialogue | What I Learned at DreamWorks, Sir Wade Neistadt via YouTube. 1st October 2019. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmR0VMiVxiI [Accessed: 28/03/2022];
References
Hooks, H. Acting for Animators: 4th Edition (2017); (Got it!)
Whitaker, H. Halas, J. Sito, T. (1981) Timing for Animation. 2nd edn. Oxford: Focal Press;
Williams, R. (2001) The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators. USA: Faber and Faber;
Thomas, F. and Johnston, O. (1997) The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. USA: Hyperion;
Blair, P. Cartoon Animation; (Get this book)
Stanislavski in 7 Steps: Better Understanding Stanisklavski's 7 Questions, 2nd December 2015. By [user] via New York Film Academy's Student Resources. Available at: https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/stanislavski-in-7-steps-better-understanding-stanisklavskis-7-questions/ [Accessed: 26/01/2022];
https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/7-acting-books-need-read/ [Accessed: 26/01/2022];
Colours, via Kettlewell Colours. Available at: https://www.kettlewellcolours.co.uk/colours [Accessed: 22/11/2021]
Color Wheel, via Color Adobe. Available at: https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel [Accessed: 22/11/2021];
Shape Language, Sauer's Virtual Art Room via YouTube. 8th December 2020. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6YI3F4pcMs [Accessed: 28/03/2022];
Talks about contrasting shapes which is perfect for this exercise.
Pro Tips: Reference, Character, and Acting in Animation, The Part-Time Professor via YouTube. 2nd April 2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTLkDnsmnQU [Accessed: 04/04/2022];
The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again - Live At Whistle Test 1986, RammsferSupernova via Youtube. 6th August 2009. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AitXDDv155A [Accessed: 07/04/2022];
Bishop, R. et al, 2020. Fundamentals of Character Design: How to Create Engaging Characters for Illustration, Animation & Visual Development, 3dtotal Publishing: United Kingdom;
The Smiths - What Difference Does It Make? (Official Music Video), The Smiths via YouTube. 6th February 2014. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbOx8TyvUmI [Accessed: 03/02/2022];
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