Animating Gestures with Dialogue | What I Learned at DreamWorks

what I'm going to share with you today is one of the things I learned while I was at DreamWorks and acting and performance tips something that you can use in real life or you can just observe and improve your eye for seeing these things but you can use it in your animation too to make your characters more believable or to make them less believable if you want to have a character who's lying who's being deceitful and you want to be able to cue that without making it obvious this video is gonna help you out and just to reminder that I do go live on Twitch three days a week so a link below if you want to come hang out live ask questions we can do some demos and don't forget to hit that subscribe button down below and ring the bell that way when I post new video you don't miss it my name is Sir Wade let's talk about leading action and animation so if you have watched a peas interview on acting and subtext which I highly recommend and haven't seen it he does something interesting where he does kind of this demo about sitting down multiple times in different ways and where the characters attention is as he's sitting down which will lead you into two kind of trains of thought one is the characters thought process and another is choosing what from a mechanic's standpoint you are going to lead the characters actions with for example if I was in a turn and look at something behind me and I'm very interested in this conversation I'm gonna lead with my chest and then then I'm gonna look last what makes it feel like I want to continue this conversation but I have to look over here right because this is happening first leading the action and then this comes second versus if I'm not as interested in you know if I'm not as interested in the conversation you know you disengage mentally first and then that your head leads the act so that's leading the action you know leading the action with a specific body part but what I want to talk about today is related but different and this entire topic is stuff that I have learned and picked out from other people isn't it this is not my brilliant observations of the world is the stuff that was taught to me and I'm sharing it with you guys it's based on behavioral analysis reading body language and comparing that against the subtext of what's actually in the person's head of who's thinking while they're acting and living life so let's get to the point leading action in this context is going to be having an action happen at least a few frames before the actual dialogue comes into play or having that action happen several frames after here's what I mean if if you were to ask me a question sir Wade do you enjoy making YouTube videos yeah I do actually you really do notice how I started nodding before I started speaking that something that actually happens in real life and you can observe people doing that when you ask them a question if they start kind of motioning yes or no they're gesturing about something first of all it helps you as kind of the audience member or the other person in the conversation to understand what it is they're talking about it like I use my hands all the time but it's also a clue as to how prepared a statement is whether it's true false or practiced so the fact that I start nodding ahead of time is my brain giving a signal to my body to say yeah we believe this I just haven't figured out the words to actually have it come out yet so you're seeing it because I'm feeling it before I'm able to put it into words and say it so it tells you that yeah I'm nodding ahead of time that's true so now let's go the other way and make it seem like I don't really believe what I'm saying do you enjoy making YouTube videos I do I really do kind of feels different right it's kind of more comical it's a little bit more funny but it doesn't feel as genuine it feels off in some way so I'll try a different example so what do you think did you enjoy the meal yes it was delicious thank you so what'd you think did you enjoy the meal yes it was delicious thank you feel the difference and I'm trying very hard because it's like that's a natural thing you just do it's tougher hey now that's kind of a tough thing to do when you're like super aware of it this is something that just happens naturally so for me to think about it maybe it makes it feel a little bit more artificial and that's okay because I think you're so getting the point but I am trying to limit what I'm doing differently I'm trying to keep my inflection the same I'm trying to stay locked on to looking at you versus you know using my eyes to be like yeah delicious so let's talk about what happens if you go right in the middle what happens if you you gesture on the action and again this isn't something that like I have come up with this is actually in this documentary this is a show all about body language and so it could actually be very helpful in kind of informing how you're going to animate your characters so if you have stuff happen you know right on the beat it's gonna feel practiced in our hearse like you have these cues in your head of when things are supposed to happen so if you hear the questions again you enjoy Anita babies yes yes I do feels like I'm on stage and I'm trying to you know convince people like yes that's what I believe or the other question did you enjoy the meal yes it was delicious thank you feels like someone told me to say that doesn't feel like it's a true reaction it doesn't just have to be the head nods it can be any gesture so someone says what do you think of that movie you go didn't really like it this right away up front like it it's it's a it's a reaction that we would actually have as you're like trying to figure out what you want to say but your your brain already gets the feeling until your body is like showing more than you are saying but you already kind of get the gist and you know where I'm gonna go with the conversation so doing that ahead of time shows I don't know it's right there so you could see that like I was thinking there was thought process and there was an opinion and it comes out later and so you feel more personality from the person so if we try something else maybe we'll try a shrug and we'll say what do you think of that you go I don't know this happening beforehand before the dialogue was delivered shows like thinking that I can't put it into words I don't know versus if we flipped that again you go I don't know kind of feels like I might be holding information back and again like these are all different choices and you know what I think this looks like it feels like maybe differing from what you get from it but that's the point you know these are tools that you can use and you can use in different ways and you will you'll compare and contrast and see what you think feels right versus if we go right in the middle let's try that again we go what do you think of that I don't know it works but I don't think it's as strong a choice as I don't know I think that is more interesting at the very least and it allows you to hold for longer keep some silence do something with your character that's intentional before delivering a line versus just saying I don't know look over there what's this Wow you know when you when you have things you go did you see that over there oh my gosh you can texture your shot a little bit better with more true performance and believability and that's all this is meant for and if you want to make your character seem a little bit funnier or a little bit more deceitful I look fat in this dress no not at all and again if you want to talk about this live if you have questions or you want to see me try to implement this live in my animation head over to twitch and if you want to download the project files of everything I do on Twitch that's all available on patreon to link everything down below but I hope you enjoyed this video if you did hit this button let me know you think in the comments thanks again for watching to the end of the video you guys are the best and as always I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 38,010

Keywords: animation acting, animation lessons, animation scting shot, animating gestures, animation gestures, animation hand gestures, how to animate acting, animation subtext, animation personality, animating truth, animating lies, animating dialogue, animating a dialogue shot, animating an acting shot, animating pantomime, animation tips, animation advice, animation job advice, professional animation advice, animation performance, character animation, acting tips, animation

Id: bmR0VMiVxiI

Length: 6min 40sec (400 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019