 Welcome back to this Thursday and that means acting analysis for animators and today we're going to talk about episode three of Chernobyl on HBO. This time it's a series of very very subtle acting examples for lip-sync or pantomime or reactions. It's more of the smaller things, the cool little details that you can put in without making your shot flashy in terms of big gestures. So if you're into quieter moments and more subtle looks and smiles, this is the one for you. Let's start with this discussion here. This is the sequence I'm going to scrub through and that is all. This is all about small looks, small gestures. He is asking him a bit of a favor and what I like here is that this is all about lip-sync where you do things before the actual lip-sync starts. So before he tells this little joke here, you can see the other reaction. Look at that face from here to here. So good. What a small thing that you can do before the line starts. It's almost like he is already laughing internally and then externally at his own joke. So when you do have a lip-sync, it doesn't have to be here when everything is happening in the audio. You can start something like that and it's just a subtle thing and you can see in terms of doing subtle facial stuff how the forehead goes up and because of that, it's that whole muscle that goes back. It pulls the hair back, little things here, just the cheeks, the fleshiness, all that good stuff that happens when you do this. But even this here, when he goes and actually says the line, he has a little bit of a move backwards. If you look, if you scrub, you can see it. If you just watch it, it's there, but it's not massive. Same thing when he goes forward. He has that little anticipation there and he goes a bit forward with the body as well at the same time, but there's that bare moment through here, mostly with one eyebrow. Instead of lean forward, a bit of a sideways tilt and a very clear stare there. Not too many blinks. The same thing here. He's done with this little moment there, a tiny bit of a smile. And then he kind of ends the conversation and he has one more thing to say. And again, before he does start the line, I need her. He's asking for a partner. You can see that beginning that he realizes, okay, he's leaving now. So you start with the eyes and it's a little bit of a... And then the tension comes in here and you see all of this. First you got pressing of the lips, a bit of a tongue thing. And then he says, and either a very, very extreme jaw forward move. But if you look at this in terms of the body, this little handheld stuff that kind of adds some of it to it in terms of bigger movement. But if you look at his body, it's basically a little bit of a shift over their weight shift and then a head tilt over there. If you watch this again, need her. Just that, still that little impatient look, that maybe a bit of a challenging thing. But it's tiny, right? You go from here to here, a little bit of a move in there and you anticipate the whole the anger here with those little shapes. So another example of you can start something facially in pantomime acting or whatever you want to do here. The audio line actually happens. And if you've been watching my channel, you know I'm a big fan of not just containing your animation too. Well, lip sync starts here and lip sync starts there or ends there. You want to add things before and after. Even after he says this, turns around and tells him, well, you'll be responsible for her. And he has that little moment of, you know, oh, well, now it's on. I mean, it's going to be my responsibility. He's got that little swallow. And then he says, yes, I mean, doesn't even say yes. He just nods, but I like that as well. And you know, I have mentioned this a couple of times now on my channel that I'm a big fan of moments, very specific moments when you do add a swallow. And it's tricky because I don't know how many rigs actually have a swallow shape. So again, as he turns, challenges him swallow. And then, and then here it's done then. You all, you all said it's done then. And the thing is, I mean, he has a tiny shift. I mean, it's a little bit in there. It's a human being way on there. But then it's just that tiny thing in why it's a slight wire rotation. It's not even anything in the eyebrows. It's so subtle. And again, you don't have to go big. It's a very, very confident. Well, OK, that's it. Yes, so much power. You can make it all happen just by a little bit of a, all right. So be it. So it's very, very subtle, small things. I'm a big, big fan of head accents. Now, speaking of head accents, here's another sequence. As he goes around here, he's got head turns, blinks. He shuffles around. He's holding a cigarette here. So there's a lot of movement and he's talking about the job, like what's going on here, what should we do? And then he asked how deep are we are we digging this whole thing? And he hears 12 meters and then he goes 12. Why? And he has that. I love that little wiggle there. Why? Just a little challenging. Like, really? Why? And it's it makes no sense to him, 12. They're all going to be exposed to radiation anyway. And you can see the difference here. So he starts moving around. He has that little move here. You can see the head looks very nervous. He shuffles his arms around and see all the blinks. He's just really not comfortable lying to him. And then the contrast here, it's that inquisitive puppy till. He's interested, also challenging him. And you can see the lack of blinks. Because he realizes, wait, well, there's no difference. But in 12, we are here above 12. The entrance is at six. This is you're just lying. So again, look at the contrast. So you have all that movement because he's caught. Now that he has to lie. He knows he has to lie. And he's really not comfortable with this. And here it's just that stare, little bit of movement in the head. Because again, even if there's not much to do, you have to realize that there is you have your lungs. There's air, there's energy coming out. So you can say the line is not just going to be lip-syncing, that's it with nothing moving. Even then you can have subtle moves in the head and in the body. So look at that, continuous stare all this time. Look at that, it's a little bit of a move, a little bit of a wiggle again when he smiles because he realizes, oh, okay, well, you're lying to me. This is really, this is no good. Still no blinking. And as he realized, hmm, you got caught. It's just that little look here. Also great. So I mean, you can imagine you have maybe a line. You might want to start the shot with where is he here? So as he says this, right? So this character, imagine you have this where maybe there's a wider shot with him is here, guy in the middle and the other guy standing. So you know we know there are three characters. But the thing is, again, you can have lip-sync where this character is talking and then you have this character talking, but you can still cut to your third character which I was at the beginning doing this. Because you have a pause. I'm a big fan of pauses between you and you have audio when you have one or two characters. Anytime there's a pause, you can make your own thing. You're not bound to a lip-sync anymore. So you could add just that look. It's a subtle look, but it adds sort of thing of, well, he caught you. What are you gonna say now? It's a great little moment. And it's, again, not much going on. You got a little bit in the body. You got just that look here. A little bit of a head move here. As he goes up, his eyebrow goes up almost giving us that triangle showing us up here. And then again, big fan, you got the swallow. He was caught. Now he's nervous. Even more nervous. Because no, no, it doesn't make any difference. And then now as he said that, look at that. It's that moment of, oh, I see. And he doesn't say it. It's just in the head turn up. Oh, okay. I get it. So then it tell him something else and then he says, no, I'm gonna do it my way. And once he does that, right? Once he's done, it's that long stare again. Now he makes that choice. No. And now he breaks eye contact and moves around and shuffles around. For him, it's a whole new chapter. Okay, I get it. You're all lying to me. We're all gonna potentially die. But I'm gonna do this and let's go. Come on. It's so good. Small but subtle and so good. I love stares. I love when there's confrontation between characters. And there's a long stare and the other character has to do something else, tries to evade the gaze and the challenging look. It's so good. And then going back again for a subtle look is that he tells him, hey, we're being followed. I mean, you can already point this out, that just that little look where he leads with the eyes and then does that, hey, look over there. Well, basically it's about him saying, hey, we're being followed. I don't wanna show you that we're being followed. And he tells them, hey, I've seen them before. And then look, look at this. Oh, it's so good. Again, it goes back to what I said before. Imagine, I mean, they talk beforehand, but this is the lip sync moment where I've seen them before. So imagine this is your assignment. Maybe you're showing, I don't know if that's your shot, but just pretend. Let's pretend the whole thing, right? Moves over, tells them to look over. Then we see the explanation of the look. Okay, this is what it is. And here's your lip sync assignment. He says, I've seen them before. And then you could end. Or you could end here. But you can also continue with that smile. I'm such a fan of adding something at the little button at the end of the shot. So it's not just about the lip sync because he tells them, hey, I've seen them before. And now he wants to know, well, what do you have to say about this? And he doesn't have to say much. It's just that all-knowing smile is like, yeah, I know, I've seen them before too. And I know what's going on. It's very subtle. And then the scene continues. So good. In this sequence, it's again about stairs and looks. They're very frustrated about things here. And this is something where he tells them where everything's okay, somewhat. And that's what he says here, right? It's okay, I'm paraphrasing. But it's this, look at that, that stare. I also like this when a character is not looking. He doesn't want to confront him. Maybe he's embarrassed. Maybe he's just frustrated. And it's that angry look. And you could stage this where your second character is not doing much and it's blurred out. You don't have to worry too much about facial details. It's just there for context. But it adds something to it. That stare wouldn't be the same if you would cut this off and you couldn't see the character. There's something to it where you can stage it like this. But I love that little, just that moment of, see, fine. And then that little frustrated. Then he does try to look at him. They're also frustrated. But then he continues. Well, actually, there are more bad news. And then as he reads this, as he continues, I don't know if they look too here. Like, yeah, I know what's going on here too. And then he tells them, well, what's going on? Well, the meltdown has happened. So he tells them right here, yeah, the meltdown is happening. And again, it's the same thing as before. I'm sure you have multiple examples. This is the line. The meltdown is happening, paraphrasing. And you could end it. You could end it here. But you can also continue just with that. And I love this. I love that as he turns around, you will potentially have a bigger look or he looks away or a blink or something or a bigger follow with his eyes. But it's very subtle, a bit of a dart because he does follow the face a bit. But the fact that he lingers and actually doesn't move, there's really nothing in the face. And it's that long look of, ah, you are right. And I hate it. We're all doomed. Now, I understand too that if you do something like this, right, in your demo reel, you wanna show off things. And you wanna show that I can do body mechanics and pantomime and weight and all those things. And I say all that stuff about being subtle and having a person look away and all you're doing is a look and do a tiny dart look down. It's a bit tricky to put that on your reel. I understand that because you wanna show things off. You wanna be loud and clear. I can animate. And maybe you're worried that something like this is too subtle. I kinda agree. I mean, it is tricky. It just depends where you send it. If the company's interested in performances, I think if you couch that in the middle, so you start big and you end big on your reel, you can put something like this in the middle. And it shows off that, hey, I don't have to do big things. I'd have to move things and have characters jumping around and doing crazy gestures. I can do something where a character just looks and stares and it has a little bit of an eye follow. To me, it's a great contrast in your reel. But again, it shows variety that you have the confidence to not move your character. Because it's tricky because you're tempted to move your character all the time. But you don't have to. It's also very difficult to not do anything and just have a dart or a look. It takes a lot of control and you don't want your character to freeze or have that floaty feel. It's not easy to do just because there's nothing happening. Doesn't mean that it's easy to do. But it's something that I would recommend that at least you try it. It's a cool exercise. Again, it doesn't take long in terms of crazy IK switches or arcs and everything. It's from a technical point of view, potentially much easier and maybe less time consuming. But it's interesting for me at least to try it where I don't do much and just have that little look. How effective is it? Can I do that? And even if you don't put it on your reel, at least it's good practice for you to do something that's a bit more subtle and just a bit smaller in scale. Now this last one is not super subtle. To me, this is just more the variety of hand movements. So basically, she is giving her grabbing money to see her husband at the hospital. And she said, no, I also like that little tiny framing in there. Now she takes the money. It doesn't look down. She just looks at the character, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. But I like this here at the beginning. You might, you know, if this is your assignment, you might just go, okay, I'm gonna grab this, put it down and then that's it. And she insists, hey, the money's there. But, and you might argue sometimes, you know, this is more, maybe you don't want it to be this complicated with all the finger detail here and how she holds this and does all that. But to me, at least it's worth looking at it and taking that as an inspiration that if I put the money down, it's a nice tool with the compression here that she doesn't just put it down. Maybe you want to add a slide like here or you want to make it a bit more complex, adding a little bit of a tap there. Let's watch this again, just that. To me, it's just a nice complexity. It's contrast too. It's not just a simple A to B, just a little bit more in there. Now again, it depends on your style. Is that something that's appropriate in your shop? It all depends on the clients, the direction, you know, if this is appropriate. But I like this too, that she waits. Well, she's not looking. She doesn't realize I put this there. A little bit of a look down. Like, wait, I have this here for you. And I love that it's a little look. It's not aggressive. It's not a slap down here on the money. It's not something where she goes, hey, I gave you the money. She's still slightly polite in this, right? Just a little polite little tap and then she looks. So just that section here to me is really interesting where I would look at all the complexities. You know, you might have, this is the level of complexities, but you don't wanna do all this. Maybe I just wanna go halfway or just a little bit. Or in terms of actions, maybe I just like that. She does this, that'll move forward. Or maybe I do like that is with a tap and then this. You can always pick and choose. You don't have to do the whole thing. But I think in terms of inspiration, in terms of, well, here is the full scale of complexity. Maybe I could put the whole thing in. But again, it depends on the style. It depends if it is appropriate for your shot. If you do reference, you look at reference. You shoot reference or you look at this reference. It doesn't mean that you have to put everything in. It really depends on the style. Sometimes you have all those little things and then it becomes busy. It almost becomes animation noise and it's too much. You don't, all the stuff you see in real life, in your life action reference, doesn't mean that it translates well into animation. Because you wanna make it clear. And sometimes making it clear means you gotta simplify it. It doesn't mean that it's simple, but simple can mean clear. So it doesn't have to be overly complex because, oh, I saw this, I wanna put it all in detail. But yes and no, again, it depends on the style. It depends if it's appropriate. And sometimes it makes it too confusing, too busy. Maybe the audience will look too much at the hand and it's all about the pleading stare of please take my money. So it just really depends on the context and the direction. But at least, to me at least, it's something to think about and worth investigating in your shot. And boom, that's it, episode three done. We have two more. And as always, if you watched this whole thing till the very end, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate all the minutes and dozens of minutes and maybe even hours you put into watching this channel and I can see the subscriber count goes up. I really appreciate that you do hit that subscribe button. And if you haven't, you could, if you wanted to, if you get notifications for all my uploads, hit that bell button. YouTube is kinda funny about all the notifications. And if you feel like this is something that you wanna apply to your shots, I do have workshops so you can sign up at any time. You can send me your shots, we can talk about things that can give you all those ideas or you can implement this and then get feedback from me. My workshops are always open. The link in the description gives you all the email and information about the workshop. And that is it. So I will say thank you again for watching and I will see you in my next clip.