 Welcome back to the acing analysis and tips for animators and today I'm going to take a spoiler-free look at the Matrix 4. I'm going to cover things like character introduction, pantomime, eye contact, lots of prop usage, there's a lot to unpack, so let's go. And yes, this is going to be spoiler-free. I'm only covering maybe the first 40 minutes or so. I'm going to keep the rest out. You should watch it on your own. Before I start, hi my name is JD and I do acing analysis tips like these. I do animation analysis tips. I do rip reviews, product reviews, I do animation lectures. I do a bunch of stuff. This is the page at the beginning. Check out the channel. If you like it, subscribe. If not, maybe you'll do it later. I don't know, but it helps my channel grow. So that's why I'm going to pitch it. But that's it. Let's get into the sequences. The first one is going to be about props and it's going to be how you hold props. And if you watch my channel, you know I love props. So this guy at this point, again, I'm going to keep it spoiler-free, but he kind of talks about how spoiler, something he did influenced him and he kind of takes the role of the critic. And the reason why I'm showing it is because of the way he holds this. It's not as apparent here, but especially here. It's kind of like the pinky out, super snobby critic who tells him what he thinks about what he created in a way. But it comes down to if you have a character holding a prop, think about even this. Is the hand pose going to be this or that? Because it's going to be a sign in terms of what this character is. All those little poses that we have as animators, we have to think about where are the fingers? Is this pinky in like this? Is the pinky out? All of that will change the attitude, even the way his shoulders are or the lean or everything. So as you are posing something out with the character, again, this is for animators who are doing this. If you have a prop, don't just think about, well, I got to take this, constrain it to that. Think about the hierarchy, if I move my arm and so on. It's still about, well, what is the pose of the hand and the fingers? Is it going to be like this or more something like this? And what is that telling us or what is the audience going to think about this character as we see this? Next one within the same sequence is eye contact. So he wants to introduce him to her and look at his eyes. So as he talks to her, he has, he doesn't, he's not really interested in her. So he's very confident and he's looking and looking and looking up. No eye blank at all. And then she just has a conversation with him, you know, just a blank, but nothing crazy. But he is very nervous. He doesn't really want to talk to her again. I'm going to go too much into why now look at him. He doesn't acknowledge her just yet. He's too shy, looks away and he tells me, come on, come on, this is my friend. And he still doesn't look at her. And then finally after all of this, you can see the blinks and looking down. He looks at her, has to look back down. And she just looks at him blinks here and there for fairly confidence. You can see this and it's still very jittery and looking around. So looks at her, but then still is very eager to look away. So the reason I'm showing this is because of contrast. There's always a good opportunity for contrast when you have multiple people. What are their personalities? Like for him, eye contact, no problem. For him, not really. So again, this goes really down to the integrity of being an animator. You have to decide, well, is my character going to look down? Yes or no? And if they are looking over, how long do they keep eye contact? Do they blink or not? Are they trying to look away quickly? All of that will tell us something about again, the personality, the confidence and how they interact in their relationship. And if you watch a movie, there's a lot of this where he looks away and he has a lot of really interesting reactions to what people are saying. Again, I'm not going to say too much, but just watch him for maybe like the first hour of the movie. Well, obviously you should watch him for the rest as well. And if you fast forward to this, he's actually the opposite. And what we watched before, he didn't want to talk to her and now he does. And he actually makes an introduction where he is talking to her first and look at that. Look at the confident look. No darts, no blinks. She's a bit surprised. Like, oh, oh, and you can see looking down lots of darts. Look at how focused he is. And not spoiling, but interesting foreshadowing of pots. That's all I'm going to say. And if you're watching this, you might go, yeah, whatever, or just generally, but as an animator, you really have to think about this. If you are talking to someone, are you going to animate the character looking like this all the time or over or like that, or the whole conversation talking like this for some reason or straight on all of those things. Once you go past the body mechanics of worrying about space, you can timing and weight and all that good stuff, you really have to think about, okay, well, if I'm talking, am I talking like this? Like, always away from the conversation, but kind of paying attention or like this brought maybe more confrontational. Every single posture and pose, how long do we look? How long do we blink? All that is super important. So again, as an animator, if you're starting out in terms of acting performance, really think about how we as an audience are going to perceive the character if you suddenly do change the posture to look the blinks and so on. And clearly staying within this environment, it's about this character's introduction. As he comes in, look at this, he doesn't look at Keanu Reeves here and he immediately grabs what she had. This could have been for her, this could have been for the kids. He doesn't ask, he just grabs it. Finally looks at him kind of like, hey, whatever. He's not really interested for a good reason. And he doesn't like him at all. I love this. I love that face. He just tells her, come on, let's go in and they have to go. And the reason I'm showing this is because of character introduction. So if you have someone come in and immediately does not acknowledge another person through looking at them saying hi, I know he does it later on. But still, that's the first thing you're going to do, not acknowledge and then just take this without asking. Again, usage of prop, which I love. That's an interesting character introduction. We immediately form an opinion about this character in terms of liking, not liking. And if you have multiple characters, you can do something where they don't have to say anything. He doesn't have to have some audio in your clip that he chose, but he can still do this through facial expressions, body language and so on. So for me, this again goes into how is the character using props? How is the character interacting with other people? I contact yes or no. And all of that is going to tell us something about the character. And you can emphasize that on top of that with something like this. Because in audience, you might go, I don't like this guy. And then having a character in your shot have that expression that you're feeling at this point. It's going to reinforce the whole thing and you can add humor to this. Again, this is to me a great example of, do you decide to look yes or no? And if you have a prop, how are you using this? Because it's not just having a prop because, well, you got to have a prop in constraints, but no, no, no. Is the prop going to tell us something about the character? In this case, it does. And is he looking into the camera? Anyway, well, that's it. This is more about pantomime. You might also say something about an entrance. Like how does a character enter? Is it confident? Is it meek and feeble? Do they look away? That's a whole other discussion. But the reason I'm going to show you this here, he says a line and the line reminds us of this line. And as he turns around and says, you wrote this, again, I'm going to say too much. He just says the line. You wrote this line. And then the answer is, yes, I did. That kind of thing. Also, love this. And the reason why I'm showing you this is because it's what I mentioned a lot of times in my previous clips. So imagine you have your lip sync and that's your shot. And after the lip sync is done, you can always do whatever you want. This might be tricky in terms of what the line is. But if you choose a line, like in this case where it's a question, let's say one character asks something and in your actual full shot, a second character, right? One, two, second character actually answers. What if you delete this? You keep some sort of audio so it doesn't feel like a harsh cut. So we suddenly have silence. We have some room tone or some ambient sound that matches, you know, both clips. But imagine you don't use this and you just use blah, blah, blah question. And now you do your pantomime. So this would be the opportunity for you to do this. And this could be a humble or an arrogant look or whatever it is. But to me, this is great because you can then practice as an animator, right? You can practice lip sync and everything you got to do in terms of, I can see here, head accents is a nice little early rise of the eyebrows with that. And then you can practice how is the character going to reply to this body in terms of body language and pantomime and not audio. So to me, this is a great example of kind of taking control of your lip sync and doing something else. And again, it's also a lot of fun within this movie. He does a lot of answering in terms of body language or looks or head tilt. He's a man of few words in this movie sticking with these two characters. He later on discussion, he grabs a cigarette, lights it and so on and so on. Also just a great example of posing, the contrast of posing of he's not super nervous, but not super comfortable versus he's very comfortable. That's the way he sits. He just goes into body contrast. But the reason why I'm showing you this is this moment here that this is because he lit a cigarette and throughout the conversation, I cut some stuff out here to talking bunches of this stuff falling as if you smoke their stuff falling down. So he uses the prop here to clean himself. It's almost kind of like I'm talking to you, but yeah, I'm also focused on something else. It's not a huge thing in this shot during the sequence, but I want to emphasize this as an anime to where again, you use a prop. Wow. And why? It's not just because you want to have a prop, but it could be, well, now I'm actually more interested in what I'm holding, what I'm drinking, what I'm using instead of what you're telling me. Again, this is to me is more like if you take this idea and push it further, where you can really show I, that's this character, I am not interested in you. And this could be something for instance with a phone, like most people, everybody almost pretty much has his cell phone. So imagine you have a conversation and the lip sync is they are, they're actually talking. And even maybe in the, the lines and everything, it sounds like they're having a discussion where they do focus on each other. But then you change it and add a phone where you might talk to the person A is you are the lens that you're talking. And I'm saying, yeah, that sounds really interesting. I'm totally interested in what you want to do. Let's do something later tonight. And if you do all this while you're looking at the phone and doing something, it's really, I'm not really interested. Now the tone of voice, of course, in what I, how I'm saying is going to potentially change this. But to me, again, it's the usage of a prop. It's not just because you want to hold it, but I'm going to use this because I'm not really interested in you. I'm going to use this because I'm more interested in this. So that's basically the simple thing. But this is why I like it. Again, it's usage of props so that I can show how the character really feels. And it's also secondary action. So you don't have to do, you know, the character sitting in a scene or standing, you don't know what to do with their arms. They're doing something, they're using things. So it's a more natural delivery of a line while you use a prop or something. But again, that prop usage is there to showcase how the character really is and what the character really thinks. This is later on. This is again, another example of lip sync ending and doing whatever you want. She tells him, I hope to see you again later. And he wants to say something. He's, there's so much for him to think about. And he does a lot of these where he just thinks and looks and has slight tilts in the head. It's really interesting for subtle stuff or if you're animating. But again, as he goes out, that's when he goes, I really wanted to say something. So again, this is to me, another example of you have your lip sync. And maybe this is all you have. But then you can continue the shot and add something like this, where it could be comedy, it could be sad, it could be melancholy, it could be all kinds of stuff. But it's just something I really like where you as an animator, you have more control of the scene, right? You're sticking to the lip sync. You got to do this, the rhythm, the lip sync. But you want to do more. But now you can take control of the shot by adding something like that at the end. Always a big fan of that. And I guess the whole theme is props. Because again, I'm going back into this scene where I don't want to say too much. It's a very special event. And for him, he goes, oh, okay, turn the page. And let's write this. To me, this is more a symbolic event of, oh, this is an important event. This is a page turn. This is a new page in your life. Let's take some notes here. And again, I might read way too much into this, but this is why I like props. It could be something where we get to know the character a bit more. It could be some symbolic thing of, oh, this is a new page in your life. I'm actually going to externalize and then do this with my actual prop. There's just so much you can do with props. And to me, it's just, as I always say, and if you're watching this and you've seen this before, then you might go boring. But as the semester is ending, we are now close to Christmas. All the semesters are kind of done. As I'm looking at all these student assignments, it's always once you're past the mechanics, like to me, it's always you're going to deal with spacing and mechanics and weight and all that stuff. And that's like the first half. And once you're a bit more confident with the weight and the spacing, the actual technical aspect of animation, then you're headed into performance, pantomime, lip sync, acting, all that good stuff. And then it comes really into original ideas. And are you the character when you shoot reference or are you just going through the motion? It's a really, it's a big job in terms of mechanics to performance. And a lot of times it's tricky to come up with ideas. And this is why I like the idea of props, of using props and sets and sitting in a chair. Because if you just have a character standing, again, you're kind of limited to the usual kind of pantomime cliches of Ws or one arm fans, all like that. But the moment you put someone in the chair, like in the previous scene, that was a comfy solid chair. I'm in a rotating chair. So maybe this could be something where you talk to someone and you go like, yeah, you know what, I'm kind of done with you. And then you use the prop of kind of like funny potential exit of I'm done with you, and I'm going to do a funny turn with my chair, then maybe get out of the chair and get out of the scene. But it's the chair, the fact that the chair can swim like this, that will give you the performance idea and the possibility to do this. So if you have this, you have a mic, you have like I said before, the phone, these are extra opportunities for you to create a new idea, something more original, something that people haven't seen before. Because as you evolve as an animator, it's really tough because every shot, you got to do something more creative, more original, and kind of you can lean on cliches for a shorthand. So people recognize something quickly. But even if you are using a cliche, you might want to add a little twist idea towards the end. So it's not just kind of the same old table that we see all the time. And this is why I'm a big fan of props and sets. And this is why I will always talk about props and sets. And speaking of talking, you feel like everything I just said seems helpful, potentially, and you want me to help you with your shots. You know what this is, it's the picture of my workshop. So I have workshops and you can sign up at any time, link in the description. It's very flexible. So let me know, email me, contact me where you want to do, I want to help you with your shots. And I can fill your brain with lots of ideas like these. And speaking of filling the brain, so segue. If your brain is already full and you can't watch anymore, you're in luck because we are done. This is the end of the clip. Thanks for watching. As always, thank you for watching till the very end. I appreciate your patience. And if you like this, maybe now you want to subscribe, I don't know, helps my channel grow. Then it's being seen by other people and hopefully it can help more people. So that's my self-serving picture at the end. Like and subscribe to usual. And that is that from me. Thank you for watching. And that's it. Hopefully I'll see you in my next clip.