Small tips...

Some key points to remember in acting:
1. to know your objectives
2. What do you want
3. Think about your tactics and try to convince other people
and the most important of all....
4. Imagine...imagine what you see is real.

Pretend what you see is real...

While Stanislavski method of acting is to act naturalistically and not to affect audience at all. You have to feel and believe your environment, what you see is real and happens in real life.
On the other hand Antonin Artaud presents the other way around. Acting should affect the audience as much as possible. You don't have to feel and believe what you see is real, you pretend it's real. Artaud's method involves more physical expression and gestures, therefore the act doesn't look naturalistic. How to make your act easier to read and understand by the audience? to let them involve in the story? More body gestures will help the audience understand the story.

Since I come from animation background, the way I understand is that Artaud's method is to add exagerration into your act but don't misunderstand it with Melodrama (Shakespeare like, over the top act :), not showing off). I am guessing this method is injected to most of animation, should be maybe. It's much easier to understand what's going on on the stage compared to Stanislavski's method. A performance is much easier to read using Artaud's method compared to Stanislavski. I think this is more appealing if you want to apply this method in your animation.

Let's take an example: I want to go to sleep.
Stanislavski: You are probably very tired, after coming back from work, you don't want to eat dinner that's already prepared by your wife/husband, you go to living room straight away, sit on a couch, rest your head, look at the ceilings and say "I want to go to sleep"

Artaud: The same context as above, a person tired, coming back from work, sit on a couch, you looked at your wife/ husband and say "I want to go to sleep" while putting your head on your hands (making gestures that you want to sleep on a bed)

I hope I make myself clear. If not, you can discuss with me or google it :), it's quite hard to put it in words. All right then, I too want to go to sleep...

Thanks
:)

To show off or not to show off

Which means, since I have got my computer fixed, I can start working on my animation and hopefully no more technical issues. Damn you, machines! can't really rely on them.
Now what's in my mind...right! let's talk about applying acting in animation. I have been taking an acting class for the last couple of months and there are two types of acting.
1. un-natural acting, showing off performance, like poem reading perhaps? Imagine shakespeare's films. I think this is probably the thing we've been doing so far and probably most of us doing that especially in demo reel...
Exagerrated expressions and cartooney style which is fine for entertainment.

2. The natural acting technique which is used by most actors, is developed by Konstantin Stanislavski. Now, this is very difficult. You have to believe your character, how to be in the moment, what is the motivation of a character, what's the character's background, how is the character's feeling at that time, objectives, obstacles, etc. They key is to "Believe your character and be in the moment" I also learn that characterization is very important, without this actor will struggle to act OR they will simply make things up. In animation, if you get the character's personality, etc it's sooooooo much simpler to animate!

Imagine the number 1 is Shakespeare's films and the number 2 is Godfather. In video games, I think the number 1 is the cartooney animation and the second one is the mocap animation. So, how do you animate? Which one is more interesting? Cartooney or realistic? Do you animate to entertain or to tell story? or does it really matter all this?

:)

Marching march

Erm...this is my first blog and today is Wednesday 3rd of March, the weather is getting warmer.
I don't know what to say yet, that's because I am at work at the moment and I'm hungry. Will try this blogger later on.