Character Mentor: Chapter 1 - Drawing basic poses and expressions

Tom Brancroft highlights the following as the key principles for basic posing and expressions in Character Mentor:

- Twinning;
- Using perspective to create depth;
- Clothing: depth killers?;
- Using the core
- Line of action
- Drama is not vertical

Of these, although all relevant to animation, i am already aware of twinning and i feel the clothing section is relevant to drawn animation, as 3D (virtual or stop motion) is made on behalf of camera location. I feel the perspective to create depth is also possibly a staging issue but i think it is relevant as it ties into the last three points.

Looking back at artefact 8 i can see how these could have improved the staging and storytelling poses quite dramatically for enhanced performance. The following examples have been copied by myself from the book: 

For my next experiment these areas will be my point of focus. These design elements should improve the quality of the performance and will be the first step to answering the PGD question.

PGD Stage Plan

For the PGD stage of the MA i intend to answer the following Question, 'How can you design confusion?'. Having looked at audio and narrative structures in the PGC stage, i intend to focus more on the performance and aesthetic elements. My starting point for this was to take a brief overview of some 'how to' texts and highlight what they perceive as being essential for creating mainstream production animation. 

Ideas for the Animated Short by Alexander, Schumer and Sullivan contains chapters on the following topics: (I have highlighted the chapters i feel will be significant)

- Story background and theory
- Building better content
- Acting: Exploring the human condition
- Building Character and Location
- Building Story
- The purpose of dialogue
- Storyboarding
- Staging

Character Mentor by Tom Brancroft

- Now What? Drawing basics for posing and expression
- The face: Breaking down the elements of expression
- Posing your character: What are you trying to communicate?
- Acting: Characters acting and reacting the way you want them to
- Staging your scene: using the elements of your scene to create a composition
- Leading the eye: prioritizing by design
- Putting it in action: Create a character-driven illustration from start to finish

I have also purchased the first volume of Drawn to Life (many [100s] of small chapters) so i won't be listing them here and will probably be read through gradually due to the nature in length.

From these and the other texts i have, it is easy to see two elements that combine in producing animation. These are:
- Design of character and location aesthetically (see previous post), and
- Design of movement and action.

So my starting point will be to explore how confusion could be presented in each type, gradually forming synthesis in order to produce some findings about the relationship between them. 

I have come across Jason Ryan Animation who provides tutorials (for a fee) by animators such as Ken Fountain who has worked at major movie studios, the excerpt below looks like it could be a valuable asset. I shall purchase a little later on when I look into the design of movement and action. 

"Attitudes & Acting Beats" Sample Clip (10 min) from Ken Fountain on Vimeo.