 Welcome back to another acting analysis and tips for animators, and today we're going to take a look at the movie The Launch. I have four sequences I want to talk about but before I do, if you're new to this channel, hi, my name is JD and I do acting analysis clips like these. I do animation analysis clips, I do general animation lectures, rib reviews, animation news, I post feedback, I do all kinds of things, so feel free to browse around my channel and if there's anything that you like, feel free to subscribe and hit that bell button so you don't miss any of those uploads. Now, let's go straight into those sequences. Let's start with this one where the dad comes out and looks at his kids that are coming up and his almost soon XY spoilers. I don't want to say too much here, but this is all about character interaction and I love this where you have that. She is still young. He has still the strength to pick her up. So that's one greeting you can hold her. That's a good way to Simon right there. It gives you also a nice asymmetry with the way back there. Then you got the more awkward teenager. Look at the hug. It's not quite a full hug. A little bit here. They don't really quite connect with the heads. It's a bit cooler and it's embraced there. And then he tells them, listen, there's some money. Go buy some sweets or something and you can see his reaction too. Oh, okay. It's going to be one of these ones. So then they go down, the mom checks and she says, yeah, yeah, yeah. So many things that you can't eat or buy. And then it's about this one. He wants to say hi. Watch out. And let me help you with this. No, it's so good. And it's not just a, hey, let me help you. And then she looks down and looks here and contemplates. And maybe, maybe it's just a stare, stare, stare. And oh, that's a blink. Maybe she looked down at the hand, but it's just a whatever. Let me check on the kids, whatever. And then she goes in. So as you have multiple characters, think about how you can interact and how you can contrast things. This is definitely a totally different welcome and interaction compared to this and a massively different one compared to this. So think about, if you already have a gesture, a lot of people want to put in gestures in their animation shots. Well, if you have something and that's a gesture of I want to help you with this. And by her denying this, now we understand more about their relationship. And then to me, that gesture served as a point to kind of explore the dynamic between the two characters. So the gesture has a bit more of a meaning and helps us to understand what's going on in the scene. This one is short and sweet, but I thought as a composition and as a staging element, this could be interesting for your shot where you have two characters and you can play this with or without headphones. This could also be an interesting moment where the character is coming oblivious to the sound that's going on, but I don't know more about that later. But you have this here, you have a background action and then you have a foreground action. And this could be something where maybe they're slip syncing, they talk, maybe he talks to him. He can't hear on purpose because he's a teenager that shields himself off from the world with headphones. But maybe that could be the thing. So he's oblivious and there's a reaction. She looks over there to react to him. There's all kinds of things you can do with a triangle of back and forth. It could also be something where someone is pulling out something really heavy or puts in something really heavy and is struggling and they're kind of giggling. They don't want to help. And there's all kinds of things you can do where it's comedic, it's dramatic. But I thought that could be an interesting setup where you have two foreground characters. You can really play up the facial animation because they're not full body. And in the back, and maybe you can make this a bit lower. I don't know how ever the car is. You can make this character, they're a bit more full body. That's not really full body. Half body, but more mechanics driven and potentially less slip syncing. But you can pack this all in one shot. Next one is this one that if you watch my channel, you know I love props and I love sets. So it's snowy and potentially icy. The way she's going to walk down, she has to look down to check the steps if there's ice, if she can step on it. That's already something that can, like this environment can give you a bit more acting tips. Potentially just in terms of how they're looking, how to behave versus if this was, you know, super rainy or super hot, whatever it is. But I already like this and it gives you some mechanics of walking down. You can see with that step here and boom, you can show some weight. It's not full body. You don't see the feet down there. But I think this could already be a bit more interesting than just a flat surface or a character standing there. But anyway, the main thing is this. She's looking for her dog and then she puts the bull down and you can see this moment here. This is what I love about this. It's not just I'm animating. I got to take this potentially, whatever, FK, IK hands, bring it down, turn off the constraint, take my hand off and then get back up. It's not just that where you think about the mechanics of I got to do all this from a body mechanics and technical point of view. This to me is she puts it down and she knows that with the wind, this being on a slope, this food thing can fall down and then the food can come out. The winds can blow it over. The food can come out. She wants her dog to have the food. So she puts this down and then presses it in to make sure it stays there. And that to me, again, is something where it tells me that she cares about the dog. Now you can play this in many different ways where she doesn't care about the dog. It's just this could be someone taking care of someone else's dog and he or she doesn't care about it. But if you have a prop, think about, well, if I already have a prop, why do I have a prop? And what can I do with it to, again, show us more about the character? What is there something? Is there something that I can do with this prop that tells us more about how, in this case, she feels about whatever is out there. And that's why I like this when you have certain elements like that because it just gives you more to do. If there was no set, no prop. Yes, you could do something in terms of the look and kind of pretend, pantomime how she cares about the dog. But this can be it's almost like a throwaway thing. That's just there even though we're focusing. We don't see the head. I mean, it's really a focus of that moment there. But I think for you, just adds an extra cool layer to your animation that again tells us more than what you can do with the body with the face. Just an extra cool little detail. And last one, he comes into a discussion and she was kind of caught hiding something. And this is just something basic here where they talk. And then it cuts to this where it shows that she is hiding this behind, you know, the sweaters within her pants. There and then he doesn't know about it. And she has that secret now. And the reason why I'm putting this in here is that again, if you have a prop, don't just add a prop because you want to add a prop. In this case, I mean, you can make it all kinds of things. It's this could be a flower. This is my flower that she wants to hide because she wants to later surprise him with the flower. This could be food because she likes to eat and maybe maybe this is a kid. This is a kid. And there is a chocolate cake and the mom is up here going, wait, it's time for bed. Okay, yes. But she still wants to eat or he, I mean, I would do that. I used to eat a ton of chocolate cake. So it could be something where to me it's the act of I'm having a prop but I'm hiding it. And that tells us that I don't want the other person to know that I have it and which again tells us something about their relationship and the dynamic between the two characters. So to me, it's always do you have a set? Yes or no. Do you have a prop? Yes or no. But those are used to expand the scene into something more than just people standing or sitting and talking and gesturing. They are there to tell us more about the character. How do they feel towards each other? Is it something you want to hide? Something you want to show? Is this a surprise? Is this like a dirty secret? Is that like some drama things that a murder weapon? There's all kinds of things you can do. So the reason why I'm always mentioning this is because it will expand at least to me subjectively. I feel like it's going to expand your character. It's going to be more than just the character there that you do some body mechanics and do some lip sync. It gives us a bit more interest. It has the character to interact with the world. They sit and live in that world. There's just so much more you can do. And as I'm having so many classes right now, the lot of students email me and ask, hey, I just don't know what to do. I don't have an idea. What can I do? And then that always points to this or just the idea of think about your character. Where are they? Are they there for the first time? Is this a familiar environment or not? What can the environment do for you in terms of acting choices? How do they react to the environment, even if it's weather? And then the same thing with props. All that is hopefully a springboard for new ideas so that you can do something new, something a bit more original, something more creative with your shot so that you can have a good shot at the end and put that on your reel. Speaking of a good shot on your reel, if this is of interest to you, if you're like, that's cool. I like those ideas. And I want to put that into my shots and create a good reel. You can partner with me. I have workshops and they're open all the time. You can sign up at any time. Link in the description with all information as always. So feel free to sign up and we can work together. Speaking of together, we are still somewhat together. If you're still watching and if you're still watching, thank you for your patience. Thank you for watching until the very end. I really appreciate this. And if you like the type of clips that I upload in general, feel free to subscribe and hit that bell button so you don't miss any of my uploads. I upload every day except weekends, except sometimes on weekends. I don't know. Right now the schedule is a bit more sporadic and at this point I'm just rambling. So I'm going to stop this here. Thank you for watching and I will see you tomorrow and maybe next week.