Acting for Computer Animators: A Sense of Empathy Is More Useful Than Ever

Walt Disney knew. Animated characters don't just move, they move for areason. "The mind is the pilot," he explained in a famous memo to artteacher Don Graham. "We think of things before the body does them." And so,in 1932, Graham began to instruct the small band of Disney animators in thedynamics of movement and character motivation. His twice-a-week classesbecame part of Disney lore, and, in the opinion of many historians, were amajor contributor to the studio's early feature-length successes. UnderGraham's guidance, the animators refined an approach that would becomeknown as the "Illusion of Life." Disney's animated characters would befunny-but they would also have heart.

Today's animator is more likely to arrive at the employment office tappingon a keyboard than carrying a sketch pad. He may not need to actually drawcharacters very often, but he must be able to manipulate them on thescreen. One shouldn't put too fine a point on it, but it is accurate to saythat the computer animator flexes a different set of muscles than thetraditional animator. Pixar Animation Studios lists "acting ability" as thenumber two talent the company values in its animators, behind "storytellingability." Ability to draw is, for Pixar at least, number five on the list,while it was number one on Walt Disney's 1932 list of preferences.

Animators need to know a lot about acting, but they don't need to knoweverything about it. They don't need to know, for example, how to makethemselves cry on cue, which is something that actors must do from time totime. If an animator starts crying at his desk, he won't be able to see toanimate. He needs to learn some basics about acting, among them: (1) Actingis doing. (2) "Anticipation," in acting terms, is a bad thing. (3) Emotionis the result of thinking, as is movement. He needs to learn that a sceneis in fact a negotiation, and that there is an arc to every emotion andmovement. He should be familiar with status transactions. (Read KeithJohnstone's book Impro). But he does not need to do the kind of classroomemotional work that actors do, searching for emotional triggers, sensememories and the like.

Animators are routinely encouraged by their instructors, directors andproducers to read books on acting and to enroll in acting classes. That'sfine advice, except that professional-level acting classes are generallyoriented to actors, not animators. That means that an animator who strollsinto such a class must decipher for himself which part of the training isappropriate and necessary. If the teacher isn't sensitive to the particularneeds of animators, the learning experience may be frustrating for allparties concerned.

Acting classes are actually a recent development in history, dating backonly to Constantin Stanislavski's workshops at the Moscow Art Theatre inRussia. It was Stanislavski, under the influence of Freud and Pavlov, whofathered naturalistic, psychologically-based acting techniques. Beforethat, the craft of acting was learned mainly through a process ofapprenticeship. An aspiring actor would present himself at the theater doorand ask for the opportunity to learn by doing. He would pull curtains, moveprops, carry spears in crowd scenes, paint flats and generally sit at themaster's knee, soaking up accumulated theatrical wisdom. When formal actingclasses later took hold in the U.S. and England, the teachers weredependent on this same initiative on the part of the student actor.

I was hired in 1996 to teach acting to the character animators at PacificData Images in Palo Alto, California, a company that was in pre-productionfor its first full-length animated feature, Ants. I had taught acting toprofessional actors for 25 years but never to animators, and so the workpresented me with a steep learning curve of my own. I quickly discoveredthat not all animators liked to get up and act in scenes or doimprovisations. To be sure, there were a few in that group who displayed agenuine flair for performing and could probably carve out a second careeron stage if they ever get the itch, but it was readily apparent that if Iwas to involve everyone in the class, I would have to find new approaches.One could not teach computeranimators the way one teaches professionalactors. To the credit of the PDI creative team, I was invited to experiment.

The work at PDI gradually evolved into a combination of group-participationimprovisations, lectures on acting and analysis of live-action films.Keeping in mind that the search for empathy is the most important thing toactors, we studied Charlie Chaplin's work just as if The Gold Rush andModern Times had been produced last year instead of 70 years ago. Wediscussed acting principles in depth and at length, exploring what ArtoninArtaud meant when he said that "actors are warriors of the heart." And wetalked a lot about comedy.

In one memorable session, we screened a clip from the movie The MiracleWorker in which Annie Sullivan (Ann Bancroft) teaches a young Helen Keller(Patty Duke) to eat her food with a utensil and not with her fingers.Helen, blind and deaf since birth, resists the effort to the point of pain,and Annie keeps returning to first base, forcing the spoon back intoAnnie's hand. Food is thrown all over the room, chairs are toppled, skin isbruised and torn as the characters do battle worthy of Greek titans.Finally, after seven full minutes (!) of non-stop action, Helen Kellertakes her first bite of food with a spoon. It is an intensely satisfyingcinematic moment, one any audience can empathize with, and it presentedsome terrific object lessons for the PDI animators. First, it demonstratedhow an audience's attention can be held by physical action alone. Second,it confirmed the connection between thought and action. The intentions ofthe characters in the scene are clear and are expressed physically.

To properly train the growing ranks of computer animators, acting teacherswill have to do things differently from how they did in the old days.Acting for computer animators will have to be a sort of plug-inapplication. The focus and purpose of the training needs to shift fromdrawing skills to acting skills, and the animators must be engaged on anempathetic level. The teacher must show the animators what good actinglooks like and then make sure they understand how the impulses are beingplayed out by the professional actors themselves. It's a spin on the oldshow biz adage: "Tell them what they're going to see; show it to them; thentell them what they saw." In the case of animators, we must "tell them whatthey are going to feel; let them feel it; tell them what they felt." Waltand Don would understand.

Ed Hooks is an acting teacher who has taught acting to the animators atPacific Data Images in Palo Alto, California. His e-mail address isedhooks@best.com. His URL is: www.best.com/~edhooks.