Think before you animate

Kung Fu Panda 2 In the studio youtube
I love watching voice actors in the recording studio, behind the scenes. Watching them looking for the right way to bring a sentence, at the right tone and pace, with the right attitude. It's excellent reference and it shows just how much work they put into portraying their character. But with voice, it's very easy to start again; if you didn't like it the first time around you'll just re-do it. Saying a sentence only takes a few seconds. When creating animations you have to put a lot of thought into it up front and be convinced of your choices, because we don't get a lot of second chances.

I've seen starting animators make the mistake of not preparing enough before starting to animate the final shot. Now I don't have an awful lot of experience with this myself, so that's why I decided to make a plan/checklist for the preparation of a shot.
Disclaimer: This is just the way I like to work, it's not the standard by any means.


Preparation for a character animation shot
Plan / Checklist

1. Write everything down from the moment you start with the preparation
From the moment you hear the audio, see the story board or imagine a new shot, you start forming ideas. Many of these ideas will be lost if you don't write (/type) them down.


2. Knowing your character
Before you start, familiarize yourself with the character you're portraying. Know their point in the story curve, their goals, their personality.
Look up reference. For example if your character is a pirate, watch Pirates of the Caribbean. Another example is if you want to base your character on a person, like an actor, look up some material of them on Youtube. It's good to do this early on so as to make sure you don't copy anything, you want this shot to be completely your own. If you see anything you like and want to use, like an eyeroll or twitching corner of the mouth, write it down, it will come in handy later.


3. If there is audio (with or without dialogue) listen and interpret
Make sure you know every little intricacy of the dialogue. Make notes!

Questions that might be worth asking at this point are:
What is the main purpose of the line of dialogue and the shot?
What is the emotion/state of mind of the character?
Is there a change of emotion?
What are important beats / accents in the audio that needs to resonate in the animation?
Who are they saying it to? (Saying it to a hated teacher or a close friend is a huge difference for the character's attitude.)

If there is no dialogue, you'll have to choreograph the rhythm yourself. I suggest reading this:
http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2009/04/how-do-you-approach-shot-which-has-no.html


4. Flesh out ideas (in steadily more detail as you progress)
During every second of the shot, the character will portray something, whether it's nerves, calmness, anger, sadness. Every second it needs to be readable what the character is like and what their state of mind is. This is the time to pour out more ideas than you need so that later you can make the decisions of what is best.

Imagining the character in the shot could work for you, but trying to act the shot out will give you more ideas. Try to be the character and feel the emotions.
It's very important to try to really be aware of your body as you act it out. For example, if your character is thinking of a painful memory, an exercise you could do is do the same and be aware of your body. Try it! I did and I just noticed that I turn my eyes toward the lower right corner and gently press my lips together as if wanting to avoid bad food from entering my mouth and my brows furrowed slightly because I was getting tense. I did this without a mirror by the way, but you could also try it using a mirror, whatever works for you. Animating little things like this, body language mostly, will help convey the thoughts of your character.

Questions that might be worth asking at this point are:
What is the character's reaction to their situation, to their own thoughts even?
What will a certain thought do to their posture/ body language?
What could make their intention clearer?
What should be the focal points in the shot, where should the viewer be looking? (People's eyes are drawn to movement, so if you want them to focus on a booger in the nose of your character, don't make them wave violently with their arms and hands.)


5. Decision making
Speaks for itself. This is the point where you take into account everything you thought of up to this point. By now you must have some idea of the motions and emotions you want to capture. Do this in any way you want to; you could start by acting it out in front of the camera (or without camera) or by circling ideas on your list that you think are best.


6. Create reference
Reference will help you a lot when creating an animation, so I would strongly advice capturing your own reference.
If you decide to work with someone else, make sure they read your list of observations and decisions, but don't expect them to do exactly what you want. Be prepared to make this a collaboration. Others bring different ideas to the table, so be open to this.


7. Back to the drawing board (figuratively)
Evaluate the choices made, be sensitive to what you do and don't like and why. What could you do to improve it? Be prepared to kill your darlings.

Questions that might be worth asking at this point are:
Are the acting choices true to the character?
Do the acting choices make sense with regards to the dialogue?
Is it evident what you're trying to convey? What can you do to improve clarity?
Is there too much movement?
Is the shot and are the movements appealing?
Does the energy of the movement match the energy of the dialogue?


8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you are satisfied
It's always helpful to keep your old reference on file for when your shot isn't working, then you won't have to go back to shooting reference.

9. Time to start animating!