By: Shawn Kelly

Hello there!

Ok, I think for once, this article is ACTUALLY going to be shorter than my usual hundred pages of rambling.  No, really!  Honestly, this time it really will be.  Don't believe me?  Check this out:

*TIP # 20:  Mute Your Characters Until You're Truly Ready To Let Them Speak*

Did you see that?  Boom!  Right into the Tip!  Come on, quit pretending not to be impressed!  There was no preamble at ALL!  I know for a FACT that most of you are thinking at this very moment, "Oh thank God, he's actually talking about animation before paragraph 20 this month!"

I know, it's a miracle, right?  I haven't talked about Fried Chicken, Bacardi Anejo, or my Mom at ALL yet, and already we're talking about this month's tip!!  I didn't even mention that you can mail me at tipsandtricks(at)animationmentor.com!

Oh, wait...I guess technically we're mostly talking about how I'm talking about animation, but I'm not really saying anything about animation yet!  D'oh!  I'm doing it again!!!!  NOOOOOOO!

(Ok, quick - we gotta get back on track.  Pretend that I just blurted out the tip, and didn't say any of that stuff about Fried Chicken or Paragraph 20!)

Mute your characters?  What on Earth could that mean?

Well, I'm just going to throw this out there as bluntly and plainly as possible.  Below, I'm going to outline a typical demo reel that we see time and time again:

Shot 1:  A character stands in one spot and delivers funny dialogue from the animator's favorite movie.
Shot 2:  A medium shot (torso, arms, and head) of a character delivering dialogue from another favorite movie
Shot 3:  A floating, disconnected head doing facial animation to dialogue from another favorite movie.
Shot 4:  A shot of a character sitting behind a desk, doing dialogue from (yes, you guessed it) another favorite movie.
Shot 5:  Another disconnected floating head, usually with a white or black background, doing lip-sync
Shot 6:  A character tries to pick up a heavy box and fails
Shot 7:  A final medium shot of a character delivering dialogue from yet another favorite movie.

Ok, so...  on the surface, I think that a lot of animation students see this list, and truly think, "Yeah, that demo reel would rock.  Those studios would eat that up!"

Sadly, this couldn't be further from the truth.  The demo reel described above would have an incredibly hard time landing you an animation job at any medium-to-large studio working in any medium, be it games, features, or TV.

"But, why?" you might ask, and I'm glad you did.  I'll tell ya!

It's because that demo reel will tell the recruiter literally almost nothing about your animation skills, with the possible exception of one shot.

Huh?

Ok, here's the thing...acting is very important.  I've written ad-nauseum about the importance of studying acting, of creating memorable and moving performances, etc.  A believable and moving acting performance is, to my mind and probably to yours as well, the very pinnacle of the art of animation.

But it's just that - the *PINNACLE*.  In other words, it's the culminating point of our art.  It's the *TOP*.

If you were a mountain-climber, and your goal was to reach the pinnacle, then the end-goal of all of your mountaineering training would be to, someday, be skilled enough to climb Mt. Everest, right?  But would you START at Mt. Everest?  Heck, no!  Only if you were suicidal!  Tackling Everest as a beginner, and actually attempting to reach the peak, would almost certainly result in your death.

So obviously, you don't start with Everest, right?  Do you start with some smaller mountains?  Maybe.  Most likely, you start even more basic – at a short rock-climbing wall, or a hill outside of town!  You start SMALL, you learn the basics, and you work your way up, right?

Animation is no different.  I can't think of anything more detrimental to the progress of your animation education than to start doing dialogue shots before you've mastered the basic fundamental principles of body mechanics, physics, weight & balance, arcs, etc.

Anyway, I'm veering off-track.  We can come back to that stuff in a minute.  Let's get back to that demo reel, and I'll dissect it for you.

And you know what?  Let's pretend that the dialogue tests are good. 
Really good.  Let's pretend that the acting is really strong and emotional, ok?   Here we go:

First off, we saw a character standing in one spot delivering dialogue from a movie.

Since this is the very first shot, most likely the recruiters aren't going to judge it *too* harshly if the acting is at least solid. 
However, the key problem with this shot is that the character is standing in *ONE PLACE*.  His feet commonly look nailed to the ground, and if his performance is at all active, there's a fifty-fifty chance that his ankles look broken as well.

So you've got this great acting performance going on in the top half of the character.  Nice facial stuff, some cool hand gestures...but guess what?  The character isn't MOVING around at all.  He isn't using the space of the scene.  Unless it's key to his performance that he's stationary (he's devastated, hiding, or his feet have been dipped into cement blocks - which is what these shots often look like), you've just tossed away an excellent chance to show the recruiters that you know how to animate.

Yes, they want to see acting.  It's super important.  But, honestly? 
It's even MORE important that you show that you know how to make that character walk around during his performance.  To take steps that emphasize his emotions, or even just shifting the character's weight!

An acting shot where the feet don't move tells me one thing and one thing only, regardless of the strengths of the performance - it tells me that the animator doesn't know the basics of animation yet.

Next on the reel, we saw a medium shot of a character doing another performance.

This one is a little more forgivable, because at least it won't stand out so badly that the feet aren't moving, but once again, the recruiter has no idea of your true animation skills.

Next is the classic "floating head on a black background doing lip-sync."  I don't know how this started, but it is starting to become common on demo reels.  Maybe this is valuable to recruiters in other mediums, but for features and film work, I'd definitely recommend against including this sort of thing on your reel.  The recruiter is far more interested in seeing how you integrate the facial performance with the overall body performance and gestures than in the facial stuff itself.

Not to mention that the sight of a disembodied head is unsettling and disorienting anyway!

Then we come to the guy sitting behind a desk, delivering his dialogue. 
You see where I'm going with this, right?  He's sitting.

*SITTING.*

Well, I guess you've done a good job showing the recruiter that you know how to bend the legs into a sitting pose, but beyond that, you haven't really shown them anything.

If this character is swiveling around in his chair, or walking in and sitting down in the chair at the start of the scene, or getting up out of it, or jumping onto it excitedly mid-sentence – well, then that's another story!  THOSE are the shots that will show the recruiters that you not only have nice acting ideas, but that you know how to execute the strong physical dynamics that they're so desperately searching for.

If your character is sitting, and his emotional state is at all upbeat, you really NEED to find ways to bring him to life.  Move that chair around, for Pete's sake.  Remember, his butt isn't super-glued to the chair, it's going to move around a bit, and affect the chair as well! 
It's essential to show that you have these abilities, particularly when you're stuck doing a scene of someone sitting.  There are great opportunities, even in a seated shot, to show off your animation skills
- you just have to find and exploit them!

Then we had the second disconnected head, because once is just never enough...and then we came to the heavy box lift.

Now, cliché and overused or not, we've finally hit a bit of animation that is actually going to show the recruiter what you're capable of.  In my mind, this is the most valuable shot on this entire reel, with the possible exception of also getting to see some nice acting stuff in some of the other shots, which is nice if it's truly impressive, but not nearly as telling as this box lift.

Here is where we will finally see if the animator knows arcs, weight & balance, overlap, anticipation, line of action, reversals, force, and all the other goodies that we're hunting for in this demo reel.

Thank goodness the animator included this test on the reel, but it's too bad that it's the only one.  Most likely, this one lonely example of physical animation is not going to be enough to convince the recruiter that you're ready for his/her time.  Even if the acting is really great, there's still a good chance that the utter lack of physicality throughout the rest of the reel is going to scare them away, particularly if they are a game studio (EA, Lucasarts, Bungie, Page44) or a visual effects studio (ILM, Tippet, Sony, Weta).  Even most feature studios (Pixar, Blue Sky, Disney, PDI) are going to pass on this reel.

As focused as all of the above studios are on the importance of believable and communicative acting, they also all realize that a shot with great acting choices but poor body mechanics is going to be a failure.

Here's the straight scoop.  Check out this list of concepts below. 
These aren't all of them, but they're a good cross-section of the basics of animation.  If any one of these isn't very familiar to you, you should not be working with dialogue yet:

line of action
reversals
weight & balance
arcs
anticipation
overlap
secondary action (which is NOT the same thing!)
spacing
force
silhouette
pantomime
dynamic posing

There are more topics for sure, but these are just some off the top of my head that I would expect anyone doing dialogue to have already mastered, generally speaking.  If any of these are unfamiliar to you, put that acting shot aside, and start learning about it.  Find some books about the subject, find a mentor, read about it online, or hey -
join our school!  (Had to get a plug in there, right?!)   :)

Anyway, let's get back to Everest.

I understand completely why so many beginning animators jump right into dialogue tests.  They're fun!  They're funny!!  The allure of the dialogue test is almost irresistible to anyone who's learned how to save a keyframe.

I get it. I do.

The first dialogue tests I ever heard of were at a Siggraph presentation by Pixar back in 1996.  They did a full-day "making of" of Toy Story that blew my mind right out the door, and part of it included Woody tests where he was animated to clips of Tom Hanks dialogue that had been taken from other Tom Hanks movies.

I suppose this probably wasn't the first dialogue test, but it was the first we had heard of.  To me, this was the most radical and amazing and wonderful idea EVER, and it fired me up like nothing else.  I couldn't wait to get home and start choosing what Star Wars line I was going to animate to.  So, believe me - I do see the appeal, and personally do find dialogue shots to be a ton of fun.

Luckily, soon after that trip I met my mentor, Wayne Gilbert, who explained the importance of studying the fundamentals.  He straightened me out, and got me on the right track.  (Thanks, Wayne!)

If animation is our mountain range, and the dialogue shot is our Everest, my advice would be to take the time to tackle those rock-climbing walls and the hills outside of town before you try to ascend the highest peak in the art form.  Find a mentor, plug into an online animation community, learn whatever you can from anyone you can! 
Train yourself to observe life.  Study how the body works - what moves what, and more importantly, why?

Going straight for Everest is artistic suicide, and you'll be setting yourself up for failure.  Your results, no matter how good, will be far inferior to the acting tests you will be able to do once you have a solid understanding of body mechanics under your belt.

In that light, not only do subpar acting shots ruin countless demo reels, but they slow down your learning process tremendously.  You waste so much time working on these "acting shots" that will never be good enough to get you that dream job you are aiming for.  You're so much better off working on your physical skills, and THEN moving into the world of acting only after you are extremely comfortable with all of those basic animation concepts.

The worst part of all this is that if you don't have that all-important grasp of the fundamentals, then you simply don't have the skills yet to realize that the acting test isn't all that hot.  This is not a reflection of your talent or artistic sensibilities; it's simply the result of a lack of essential knowledge.  It'd be like me judging a space shuttle.  Pretty much any kind of space shuttle might look cool to me from the outside, but that doesn't mean it's actually going to fly. 
I simply don't know what it takes to make the shuttle actually work!  A shuttle I think looks great might have glaring problems to a seasoned shuttle designer, right?

Well, the recruiter is that shuttle designer, and you want to make sure that you know as much as they do about this animation stuff before you show them your space shuttle, ok?

Wow - this article has so many metaphors!  It's almost as if this article was a tree, and metaphors were nuts, and I was a squirrel, and....

oh jeez - never mind.

See you guys next time!  Thanks again for all the feedback and great suggestions!!  Keep those emails flowin' to 
Tipsandtricks(at)animationmentor.com   While it sometimes takes me a little while to find time to reply, I do read and reply to each one personally.

Oh man, and I also just realized that once again, I've written a freakin' BOOK instead of a short article.  I was SO SURE this was going to be the short one!  Did you see how fast I got down to business?  It was the second paragraph!  I can't get started any quicker than that!!  D'oh!

Oh well - thanks for reading anyway...  Keep animating!  And as always, have FUN!

-Shawn