I just finished reading the book "Acting for Animators" by Ed Hooks.

This is a very different book on the Animation topic than any other books I read so far. My background being in illustration and comics, I have no trouble reading about drawing or animating and the technical aspects related to those skills but reading on the subject of "acting" is very new to me and so, there were many concepts that were new and were discoveries. So much so that I decided to reread the same book again in the next few days, this time with a yellow marker. Nevertheless, I decided to write a review of the book just to expose the general feeling I had while reading it.

Mr Hooks is well known in the animators community. He gives courses to animators around the world and is hired by studios like Dreamworks and Disney to train their animators in the subtleties of acting. The first thing he clears is that animators are not actors and cannot be actors. While an actor is trained to stay in the present moment and play the feeling that goes with it, the animators can never be in the present moment of the character they are animating. Another way to say that is that for an actor, it is considered bad acting to "expose" the feeling of the character they are playing while an animator cannot do otherwise but to expose the feeling of the characters they are animating. Mr Hooks goes at length at explaining why this is so and for me, that made me understand why persuing character realism in animation is futile because an impossibility. Mr Hooks wrote a small section discussing the difference between animating and motion captures that goes further in that ditrection BTW.

So the book is not about how to be a good actor but about a few tricks, concepts and exercises that actors use to find the heart and the present moment of their characters. In relation to that, the two concepts that I have retained after this first read are the concepts of "negociation" and "center of power". There are much more important acting related concepts in the book and that is why I need to reread it.

A lot of us have already heard that a scene needs conflict to be effective. Mr Hooks prefer to talk about negociation. And this opens a whole new dimension to the concept of conflict. At least, to me, it seemed much less restrictive and thus a much more open concept. One interesting result of reframing "conflict" into "negociation" is that it places the focus on the acting. What does the character needs or wants? What is he going to do to obtain what he needs? How is he going to do it? What does he needs to overcome? etc. That is one aspect I will try to think about for the next scene I have to animate.

The other concept I retained is the "Center of Power". The way I see it, the power center is an imaginary power source that drives us. It determines our attitude in what we do and how we deal with other peoples. The power center can be placed before us and pull us or behind us and push us. It can be placed at any level. Above the head, at the chest level, at the feet level, and any level in between. It can be moved around too according to mood change etc. I found this concept very interesting and usefull. I could easily visualize how it can be played with on an animated character and how it can drive the animation of that character. I also tried the exercise where this power center is shifted around as I walk and see how it affected my walking attitude. This is all imaginary but very usefull in its application.

Like I wrote, there are much more than that in this book but I don't recall all of them so I won't attempt to review any further concepts. But I will probably write another review after my second reading.

I liked the book too. I read that a while ago and I remember taking notes. Lots of good points. My reason to buy the book was because it was reccomended by Paul, Gaetan Brizzi. I liked their works. Yep, the center of power was great. I ended using that for myself instead. It worked. Geez, Yves are you devouring all of the animation books available on earth or what?

Yes

I'm a more technical reference man myself. I can't really get my head around these arty farty books. (Yes - I have them all)

One thing people should be strongly mindful of is that these are not 'How to' books. A lot of what they cover is not going to make sense straight away (or possibly ever)

Cheers

Very interesting, Yves. Thanks for the capsule descriptions and comments. This sounds like a valuable book.

In the sense of creating believable characters, animators must have some understanding of acting and how it relates to action/reaction, body language and the nuance of movement. The essence of acting is to communicate to the audience exactly what the actor is thinking at any given moment. If an animation can convince an audience that a character has an inner life, the animation succeeds. My favorite example of this is the magic carpet in Disney's Aladdin.

A lot of "make sense" comes from each reader's own interests, training and experiences. A technical reference manual will make sense to a mainly left-brain person while look like gibberish to a mainly right-brain person. But if the mainly right-brain person have a strong interest in mastering a technique that is explained in a technical reference manual because it is an absolute requirement, then the extrinsic incentive to learn the technique will greatly help make sense out of the manual. The other way around is not so easy though. Right-brain stuff is often times perceived as being too conceptual, too abstract, too "arty farty" and certainly not an absolute requirement by mainly left-brain persons and so is easily dismissed. There are no extrinsic incentive that could force someone to wrap his head around that artsy stuff. The very concept of "wrapping one's head around" is a very left-brain concept. The right-brain does not try to wrap around a concept. It just matches a geshtalt.

I, myself, have wondered about what is an "how-to" book. Some book, I would clearly not place in the "how-to" category. For instance "Animation from script to screen" and "Animation from pencil to pixels" are books that I would not place in the "how-to" category. They are full of very insightfull anecdotes and advices but they give very little techniques. Near the other end of the spectrum, "The animator's survival kit" is full of techniques and I would have no hesitation placing it in the "How-to" category. A book that teaches perspective like "How to use creative perspective" by Watson would fit, without a iota of a doubt, in the How-to category. This said, a person who could not wrap his head around the formal thinking that in involved with perspective drawing would certainly not make sense of any of that book.

I would not put "Acting for animators" in the "How-to" category. But I find the "Power Center" concept to be quite an "How-to" concept. Granted, it is a much abstract concept than the "vanishing point" concept used in perspective drawing but it feels almost the same sort of concept applied on the character motion domain. At least that is the way it felt to me. So this brings the following important point : When reading my book reviews, it might be worth taking into consideration that I try to not oppose left-brain stuff against right-brain stuff or favor one againt the other. Personally, I can read both technical stuff and arty stuff and I enjoy both of them equally and learn from both of them equally.

All this said, I think most important of all this discussion, and probably some of those points you are trying to bring, David, is that :

• Reading books does not make one an artist by any long shot, no matter how good the books may be.
• A book that stays on the shelf is just money spent for nothing. In other words, if you don't like to read books then don't buy them in the first place.
• A book is not a bible. I know of no book that can be qualified as "The definitive book on animation". There are no books that are absolutely good stuff from cover to cover and is 100% enlightening. All books have their strengths and weaknesses. It is by reading many books that one gets a more global picture of a domain. And it is by the repetition of concepts, explained in different ways by different authors from reading different books that concepts eventually "make sense" and concepts that are just mentioned by one single author just fade away as it should IMO.

Here is an anecdote: Like I mentioned I would, I've started re-reading "Acting for animator". Yesterday, I fell on the following passage:

This immediately brought a flashback: When I was working in the multimedia business as a product designer, I became very interested in the User Interface aspect. I was doing my master's degree at the university and I decided to take a course on User Interface. To my great surprise, I discovered that the User Interface was not about the user at all but was about the programmer. What the industry and the academics called the "User Interface" or the "Human Machine Interface" was in fact the set of tools that were offered to the programmers to build an application. The "Graphical User Interface" was just a more sphisticated set of tools offered to the programmer. The "End User" was just an abstract entity that would eventually use the application. The course teacher was an ardent defender of this point of view. I became quickly upset by this attitude. That was not the reason why I decided to take that course. My experience in the multimedia and my observation of how the end-users were fighting with the interface already had convinced me that this was very wrong. I had already done a lot of analysis and development on what is an end-user and how a end user approaches an interface. And the multimedia interfaces I ended up designing were quite succesfull. But this guy was not there. So I decided to fight a war. My end-of-semester work was going to be about "The other user interface".

So I read a lot of papers. I searched for papers that were intrinsically interested in the end-user. I had to sift through a ton of irrelevant papers but eventually I found two persons that fitted my way of thinking perfectly: Donald A. Norman and Brenda Laurel. The first one was an industrial psychologist and the second one did her thesis about immersive games from the point of view of theater performance. They both eventually got hired by Apple. Ms Laurel wrote a book titled "Computer as theater" where she presented the User Interface as if it was a theatrical play and the user had to suspend his disbelieve and forget that there was an interface so he could just live with the task at hand. A most enjoyable read. Anyway, those two authors had a very different view of what is a User Interface. They were really, really concerned about the "end-user" in this transaction. Their mantra was that the User Interface must represent a human to human communication channel and the purpose of this communication must be obvious.

I will stop there because there would be pages and pages to write about that. But see the similarity between the quote from Hooks and the previous point of view? In both cases it is a question of human to human communication through an interface. In one case we have the User Interface and in the other case we have the Animated frames.

This end-of semester work ended up a 100+ pages thesis titled "The Other User Interface". When I presented the structure of this work at mid semester, I had blank eyes all over the classroom. Then at about 3/4 semester, the teacher announced us that he got hired by CRIM (Montreal Informatics Research Center) in the User Interface Reasearch team. Then two weeks later, he was in a sort of culture shock because he had to work with Intrerface Ergonomists there. For the first time of his "User Interface Specialist" life, he had to really think about the end user. When I presented my full work at the end of the semester, he was bathing fully into that sort of considerations and I could tell that he listened to my presentation with a very different mind. I had an A+ for that course.

What can I say. I'm an eclectic reader and I like it.

Here's hoping you stay that way and keep sharing what you learn with us.
I've certainly enjoyed reading your reviews and followup.

Ed Hooks book was an enjoyable but tough read for me.
I still haven't read the book all the way through and haven't taken the time to understand why.
It may be this book, like many books that delve into abstract but technical areas, require a commentment I haven't been able to give yet.

There is a reason Ed Hooks expertise is highly sought after and this book provides keys to his valuable insight.
As such I can heartily recommend the book.
I'm not sure where an animator would get this insight outside of the book except through the actual experience of acting.
No this book won't make anyone an artist or animator but it will help us become better ones.

One theme Mr. Hooks returns to repeatedly is one that has become popular of late; shamanistic origins of storytelling.
Its not a new concept but has become popular of late. Internationally acknowledged master of storytelling Will Eisner used this theme quite effectively in his follow up to 'Comics and Sequential Art' titled 'Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative'. I recommend both of Will Eisner's books to the storyteller in you.

Its hard for me to recommend this book to everyone at all levels but if approached correctly it's a must have for all.
I think there may be two basic schools of thought on usage.
For those just starting in animation it may be hard to get a foothold in the book unless you just read it as is.
If you do this you'll set a foundation from which you can build your understanding in ways that others cannot by tacking it on later in their experience.
For the more experienced this book will give new insight into how animation (through acting) can work for you.

Ed Hooks has several web pages where he provides additional information related to acting and animators.

http://www.edhooks.com
http://www.actingforanimators.com

Here is the link to the archived newsletters:
http://www.edhooks.com/newsarchive.htm

Thank you Rodney for bringing this very wise and important reading advise.

Indeed, making total sense out of a book is not that important. What is more important is to read it and understand whatever can be understood in it even if this is little. And it will most probably be very little the first time one reads a book on a new topic. The only action of reading it, even if not fullly understood, sets a foundation. Sets knowledge anchors onto which later readings will build an edifice of knowledge and into which later discussions, assignments, experience will draw to help go further. When the first book is read on a new topic, it leaves large voids of understanding. And as further books are read on a topic, more and more of that void gets filled.

Unfortunately, in the case of "Acting for Animators" it is the only book on the subject, apart from the companion book : "Acting in Animation: A look at 12 films".

Also, reading a book is the only way to store in mind a map of where to get this information for later reference or use.

Finally, the best way to make sense out of any book is to try to apply the concepts. In the case of animation, that means actually doing animation. There are no better way to relate to a concept or a technique than after fighting with it for a while with mitigated success. Then, suddenly, what the author is talking about makes sense.

So read-on and animate-on.

Another one of your excellent book reviews, Yves. Much appreciated!
Thanks.

Like Yves I am re-reading 'Acting for Animators'.
There are so many good suggestions and tie ins with other themes and theories on animation.
Its a bit like digging for gold but then being distracted by the diamonds and gemstones.

In his book, Ed Hook's delves into the implied contract that exists between actors and their audiences.
This anchoring of action into film 'reality' is essential to our understanding of how we connect with our character and the worlds they live in.

Mr Hook says (in part),
The example used is that of a moth in flight.


This alludes to what Yves has highlighted about character conflict and resolution; the art of negotiation, and therefore storytelling.

To some this degree of engagement with our characters and the audience may seem to be more interference and manipulation of the process than necessary.
I can't help but see it as essential.

Hey Rodney,

I know it's probably just me, but I try to read lines like this and all that comes out of my brain is "arty farty, arty farty". I'll need to buy one of those little electronic translator gizmo's at some point.

Cheers

Same here!

I try to be as concise as possible while still conveying the message.
I fail often it seems. Interestingly enough, this little exchange illustrates the point quite well.

As a project manager I'd guess you see how benefit can be gained through management rather than manipulation and interference.
There is a subtle but important difference in these terms.
We need something more than management but less than manipulation and interference.
Perhaps the word 'engagement'?

So, my line put another way...

As storytellers we must engage our characters and the audience in ways that communicate the intended message.
As animators we must control that engagement at least until the message is delivered and understood.

Hope that's not as arty farty... and the message delivered... and understood.

Oh - don't get me started on management and 'Arty Fartiness'.........

I have a blown up cartoon pinned to my desk for all those 'managers' who visit me with their fancy buzz words....... Its a guy at his desk reading a management book surrounded by shelves and piles of books on every buzzword topic one might think of in management.... The one he is reading is simply titled "JDYFJ - Just do your fricking job" with the caption "Hmmmm.....this new management fad is crazy enough that it might just work"

Cheers

I recently read somewhere about that whole left brain/right brain idea being an outdated and discarded concept, just lingering on in our culture. So I thought I would look into and post some links for FYI...

http://williamcalvin.com/bk2/bk2ch10.htm
http://www.rense.com/general2/rb.htm

Thanks for the links William. But really, my scientific reference in this domain is my wife who happens to be a University researcher in neuropsychology. She agrees with the text that you pointed to and I also agree with all that. However, my use of the "left-brain" vs "right-brain" was more in a metaphoric sense. I thought using those terms would be more neutral than any other qualificatives I was thinking of when I wrote that. So just take it as a metaphore because I will not use any other more loaded qualificative to describe the two ways of relating to the world.

It is funny that I have no problems discussing about those issues with my wife using the same mataphore. She knows very well what I'm talking about even though, scientifically, the functioning of the brain is way much more complex than any model we can imagine. She used to have pasted a poster next to her lab door that says "If brain was so simple that we could understand it then we would be so simple that we couldn't understand it".

Here is what's left from re-reading "Acting for animators" ?

Ed Hooks approach to teaching acting for animator is based on the theory that it is an impossibility, for an animator, to be both an animator and an actor at the same time. When an actor do a scene, the acting comes from within. The actor is the subject of the acting. The actor just is in the present moment of the scene and lives the emotions of the scene at this moment and then the next moment is something else. The actor flows with each sequencial instants of the scene.

When an animator do a scene, the character is the object of the acting and this object is remotely manipulated by the animator. The animator is not the character and the character does not feel or have a mood or emote in any ways. It is only through manipulating the character through time that the animator gives the illusion that the character have an internal life. Animating a character takes time and is a successive refinement process. So not only the animator does not live in the instantaneity of each moments of the scene, but also, the animator may come back to visiting the same moments over and over until the animation feels right. While an animator could also be a good actor, it is impossible, for an actor to act and observe its own acting at the same time. The simple attempt at observing the acting while doing it makes the acting non natural anymore. For this reason, Mr Hooks believes that the ubiquitous mirror that every animator have on its desk should be replaced by a video camera.

Based on this theory, Mr Hooks eliminates a lot of traditional acting exercises when teaching acting to animators and instead concentrates on a few acting "rules" that are used by actors to place themselves into the appropriate mood when acting or when preparing for acting and also concentrates on providing conceptual tools that are teached to actors, that should guide and help in honing the sense of observation that every animator should develop. Observing real life peoples is something that every good actor learn to do. Actors observe people around them and memorize typical or particular behaviors they see so they can reuse them when needed eventually. Animators should do the same thing.

For example, one of the acting "rules" is that a character should always be doing something 100% of the time. Even when not on screen. The animator should always be thinking of the character as a living creature that, even though is not on screen at one particular moment, might be doing something of interest to him or required by him. This way, when a character is introduced in a scene or is shown in the first frames of a scene, he is not just standing there idle but was doing something and might be interrupted by the new situation introduced by the scene or he might have been thinking or planing or expecting something before he enters the scene. The way the character might react to this new situation is greatly influenced by what he was involved with before the scene started. Is he upset because he got interrupted? Is he disapointed because hes expectations were not met? etc. Given this, a scene can never start at a beginning but rather must start in the middle of something that was already happening. This is a concept I already knew concerning story writing but it is the first time I see it applied to acting as well. Good concept.

In the "Observing real life" category of advices, of course, Mr Hooks mentions observing people walking and moving for all sort of tasks but, more interesting, he discusses how people are driven by their internal thought processes, moods and emotions. Those internal processes are perceivable in their attitude, their body posture, their hand gestures, their facial expressions, even the way people are dressed and the environment they are in. When observing real life peoples, it is revealing to constantly look at the signs of mood changes and tought processes. And when animating, those internal thought processes and mood changes should also be shown and animated. Thoughts precede conclusions and emotions precede action. Thoughts and emotions are distinct and they can and should both be animated. A character should not act just because it is written in the script but because of a reaction to something that happened. A stimulus. And this stimulus can be visible in the scene or it can be implied from the life of the character and it can even be internal to the thoughts of the character. A character without emotions and actions is just a model. Add thoughts, emotions, motivations and corresponding actions and you start having a real character.

This touches on the aspect of empathy. Viewers will better relate with a character, be it a hero or a villain, if it can ampathize with the character. Concerning villain, Mr Hooks warns that villain characters should also induce empathy so thay don't just look too unidimensional. Empathy is a vast and complex subject and Mr Hooks gives numerous examples to make it understandable. But roughly, empathy is produced when the viewer can perceive some humanity in the character. For this, the character would show some human feelings, emotions and motivations. Some of the most appealing motivations are "primal" motivations. That is motivations related to survival: eating, protection from predators, sleeping, sex. According to Mr Hooks, just one single hint of those primal motivations in an entire movie is enough to win empathy from the audience toward a character. There are also some main events in the life of a character that Mr Hooks calls "Adrenaline Moments" which are strong events that anybody would remember for the rest of their life. Showing some of those "Adrenaline Moments" in the life of a character is another device to win empathy from the viewers. But the audience will more generally empathize with emotions. Any emotions that are truely felt by the character and a main objective of an animator should be to find the point of empathy with his character. Empathy is not the same as sympathy.

Mr Hooks also have a few views and opinions about what animation can and should be compared to real life and photorealism and I tend to agree with him. Personally, I think that animation should be styled and represent an artistic expression. I think that pursuing photorealism is a dead-end for animation. We all heard of the "uncany valley", this unconfortable feeling the viewer can experience when looking at "photoreal animation" where there is just this little bit off. Mr Hooks offers an interesting theatrical interpretation of this phenomenon where the viewer is placed in an impossible mind state trying to accept that this is real and at the same time trying to accept that this is a fabrication. I can't do justice to his development on this subject in just a couple lines but I found his analysis enlightening.

That's it for now. I've just re-read one half of the book.