Smile for the camera: video referencing.

Video recording was a practical exercise I was anxious to participate in. Although I did not want to do it as I was uncomfortable in front of a camera and tended to overanalyse footage, I knew it was necessary to improve my animation. I, therefore, had to find a way to overcome these obstacles.

While trying to solve this predicament, my lecturer, Matthew Gravelle, demonstrated how he acts out a movement and breaks it down to apply it to his animation. Showing his process proved highly informative as I am a visual learner. Once I knew what I had to do concerning identifying key frames, I decided to focus on the practical observation exercise. As an animator, improving my ability to observe and apply my findings to my animation was more critical. I could use others, whether friends or family, to perform instead, practising my observational skills, removing the daunting feeling of personally performing, and, with direction, gaining an authentic performance.

I asked a friend to act out a shot from my film in which a character swings another character around on a loop. I gave her a bag filled with clothes for additional weight whilst swinging to add believability. We recorded various attempts until I had the best performance. Later, I imported the footage into video editing software and sketched thumbnails of important moments concerning keys and breakdown poses.

As time progressed, I became increasingly confident in my ability to analyse video reference footage and apply it to my animation. However, I still needed to solve my predicament concerning acting out in front of the camera. While reviewing my previous footage, I noticed how natural the performance was compared to my attempt, which was far more exaggerated to incorporate some of the twelve principles of animation, specifically exaggeration and staging. I realised that in previous attempts, I was in the mind frame of an animator and not an actor, trying to consider various animation principles that, although deemed necessary, hindered my ability to perform naturally and authentically. Once I removed that added pressure, I was able to focus on the following points when acting:

· What is my character supposed to be doing?

· Why is my character doing it?

· How does my character feel?

As time progressed, I focused more on acting more naturally. Through practice, I discovered I could apply exaggerated movement and poses where appropriate after identifying the keyframes.

Video reference example:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/18b9e9_1534db47ff1f4f8a821c5edac2184596/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This process has taught me that although it appeared my previous animation was a good standard at the time, It wasn’t until I used video footage that I began to appreciate and understand its necessity and how it can enhance an animated performance. Observation and acting movement enabled me as an animator to explore better approaches to animating a character. There was a significant improvement in my animation concerning timing, more accurate movement and adding additional nuances and subtleties, which made the performances more believable.