 Adding character, that's right. I mean, it is character animation. And it's one of the easiest things for me to say in class and such a hard thing to do for the students. So today's topic is going to be how to add character. All right, so in your journey as an animator, your title is character animators. So ultimately, after you've gone through all the principles, you want to go from technically looking awesome to we're not going to concentrate on performance and adding a personality, adding a character to my character. So yes, super easy for me to say. I look at an assignment, I go, yeah, that's pretty cool. Your animation is good, but now you just need to add character. Again, very easy to say, super hard to do. And as you go through movies, there are some massively iconic characters on screen. You have different versions of the Joker. Very memorable, very funny, very iconic, sometimes not so successful. I mean, it's always subjective, right? But, you know, every actor has their own stamp that go through their own process to create their own unique character. So I'm going to go through a list that can hopefully help as a springboard and kind of a checklist of did I do this, did I do that? Again, it's not that easy, but hopefully this is of help. So let's get to it. First, you need to decide what's it going to be? Is it going to be a human? Is it going to be an animal or an object or whatever it is? Obviously, you got to decide on what is the rig I'm going to use and what is the type of character. Because if it's a human, it's going to behave one way. If it's an animal, you can start using animal traits and human traits, you can make certain things. And if it's an object, it's going to be a whole different story. Once you've decided on the rig, let's go, let's say with humans, you should probably start changing the outfit. So those are more external features, but you don't want to use your default rig, the default colors, the default outfit. Start thinking about wigs and hats and moustaches and long hair and skirts and just whatever clothing you can find, something that will help define your character. But again, that is just external, so you have to look at the internal type of character. Is your character happy throughout the whole scene? Is the character scared or maybe nervous or arrogant or confident or kind of a coward? Those are all the things that will change your acting choices and will give us an idea of who that character is. And you could use both of these, the internal and external as a contrast. Maybe the character has crazy outfits, huge wigs and a cape and all kinds of things and you think, wow, that's a loud appearance, that person must be really, really confident. But then the way you animate it is that it's more of a timid, not very confident and maybe that character tries to maybe overcompensate, maybe to hide insecurities through an outfit. The next point that's really important is your default pose. One of the classic things that students do is that they have their rig and their T-pose, whatever the pose they have, and then they keep it. They keep it like that. So it's a straight character standing, whatever, you might bring your arms down and then the acting choices come in and they kind of look around and blah, blah, blah. Fine, right? But you've got to think about, okay, what is the default pose of the character? What is the pose that can go through the whole scene? It's kind of the thing of, let's look at Big Lebowski, always has kind of that relaxed, easygoing pose and that's kind of the thing that goes through the whole movie. Same thing with the actor that's in Walking Dead or in Rampage, as I just saw. There's always a certain lean to it. There's always kind of a, I'm looking like this and it's a drop throughout the whole movie. There's always kind of the specific lean. Again, that's not a massively huge character trait in terms of decision-making, is that empathetic character or is it kind of a villainous type of thing, but it's still something that can give it a certain flavor. Foxcatcher is also really cool. Right away, it establishes characters in just how they walk and how they sit, how they stand, how is their back curved, how are their arms, how are they slow moving or is the head always kind of higher. It's just something that you should go beyond your default rig pose and look at your character and say, okay, well, throughout this whole thing, my character's always nervous or confident or scared, like I said, but so there's always a certain character trait. It's almost like the pose that is the through line through your shot. You can always go, oh yeah, if you see this pose, that's this character, but there's a difference between the body and the face. So character-wise, you can almost say that the face is what you want other people to see. It's kind of like the pretend thing. Like people look at faces first before they look at the bodies. So let's say you are super nervous, you can still have the face going, yeah. I think this is all super cool. I'm very confident in this environment. I got no problems. While the body is more what you actually feel. So throughout the whole thing, you could have kind of a nervous thing with the fingers or just an overall more not so comfortable pose body-wise. So the face is what you want people to see, but the body is more what you really feel. So after you've established that, you got the outfit, you got kind of the pose, you got kind of like your inner feelings of your character, the character has to have something to do in the shot. So what is the objective? What is the goal of the character? It can be just something where that character needs to go from A to B. Very like a simple travel type of thing. Or that character needs to go through this door because something is crashing behind them and it's kind of a life or death situation. Or they wanna do really well in a test and they gotta be able to do this and pass this test. Could be a driving test, which actually could be really fun to animate. There's a driving test and it's like, yeah, I'm okay driving. Every time they look away from the tester, they're kind of like, so there's a lot of stuff you can do, for instance, with that. But it doesn't matter if it's simple or more complex. So you have to have your character with an objective. So I wanna lift something heavy or I wanna give this person a present or the baby is crying, I need to get up and I wanna make sure that the person is fed or not crying or not scared after a nightmare. And so on and so on, you have to have something and that way your character has an objective, they have something to do and it's not just movement where a character just does like a walk cycle or something. But once your character has an objective, has a goal or a want or whatever you wanna call it, it is also interesting to actually put a conflict between the thing that the character wants. So whatever conflict or problem or obstacle, whatever you wanna call it, is going to force the character to do something about it. And if we're staying with the whole car thing, what if your character is in a car and gets cut off? Someone just drives in front of them. That's a sudden obstacle, the character wants to get there and now this person comes in and takes a spot and maybe slows the character down. How is that going to affect the character? Some obstacles and problems are going to reveal choices and that is going to reveal character. So are you gonna go, we'll just go drive in, it's fine. Or how dare you cut me off? So you're gonna reveal if the character is happy about it or not happy. It will expose the character traits and those don't have to be positive, they can be flaws. Your character can be a villain. There's this gift that a student showed me a while back which is so awesome where that woman, she wins something, I don't know what she was winning, but I love how she celebrates and then taps the back of the guy. Now that could be something where it's, oh, I'm so happy and that's just something that she did, that maybe she was just super happy. But you can also do this in a more mean way. We're like, yeah, I won, yeah. Then put this guy over, like snaps him over the head. You know what I mean? Like there's so many things you can do where you show that the character attains, maybe it's even afterward. So you had an obstacle, the character made it through, you saw some choices there and then they reached the goal. And now you can also show, well, what happened now that they have reached the goal and their prize or whatever it is, are they grateful? Are they arrogant about it? Are they mean about it? And so on and so on. So goals and obstacles and how you combine them, all of that gives you so much opportunity to show character, character flaws, character traits, character choices, all those moments where you can bring your acting ideas and your skill set as an actor to the table. And the obstacle or conflict, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be physical, right? Like I talked about guy cutting it off, but it can also be psychological. So what if your character is afraid of heights? Maybe it's a kid at a pool. I remember first time I had to jump off, I could 10 meter thing into a pool. It was really high and it took me a while to take that step out. So maybe that's your character. Your character is afraid of heights or afraid of whatever. And it's that moment of what should I do? How can I overcome this? And then you can show how the character does it and then the effects of it. Maybe they're super happy or they're even more scared about it. Like who knows? Maybe someone is afraid of flying and you can show that, like, yeah, yeah, I'm okay. I have a drink, that's fine. And then the moment the plane starts to shake, they go, and then it's just how do they overcome the fear of flying? There's so many things you can do and it's such a good opportunity for you to just present awesome animation. The tricky thing, of course, and I constantly fall into the trap is then to keep the animation short. So there's a very tricky line between the both. I wanna show all this. I wanna show the goals and obstacles and characters, but now my shot is a minute long. I totally understand that's a very, very hard thing to juggle, so you gotta pick some things, keep it short and just present specific character traits. But again, I say this and then my shots are always super long. But all those things are going to be of help and it's something that you should think about as you start prepping for your scene, right? As you do your camera placement or maybe the character sitting at a table. So whatever you set up for your reference, as you shoot reference, or as you draw a thumbnail. So whatever you do in terms of preparation for your shot, don't just think about, well, the character is outside in the garden or they're in an office. Well, think about how does this office feel to them? Is that something they don't like? They're nervous doing interviews. Maybe the objective is I need to have an interview, I need to pass this because I want this job, but I'm just so, so afraid of talking to other people and having people ask me things. Some people are really afraid of calling someone, even like calling a pizza. Maybe that's something where they're just really, really nervous picking up the phone and talking to someone, maybe they wanna make any mistakes. Whatever it is, but explore these and explore these in your acting choices. So when you shoot reference, don't just shoot one take, shoot a couple takes, explore your character, try different things, but most of all, don't stay in the default mode of your character. And again, by default, I mean the default rigged pose, the default outfit, the default colors. Change the outfits, change the colors, give them something. Then think about their overall state of mind. Again, are they arrogant or just confident or very nervous? So that's gonna be a change in your overall pose of the character. Then give the character something to do, give them a goal, they wanna get there, they want something and again, this can be physical, this can be psychological, the same thing with the obstacle. Could be something that's physically in the person's way or just mentally in their way and a barrier to achieving whatever goal they wanna achieve. And as I explained in previous clips, the environment can help you with this. It doesn't have to be a character in an empty room. So what can you do? Again, it could be in an office, could be for an interview, could be in a classroom. Maybe, I hate it going to the front on the blackboard during my Latin classes and trying to figure out what my teacher was telling me and asking me to do because I had no idea because that was a horrible student. So instead of an empty room, maybe the obstacle is that, is that environment in a class environment and you're embarrassed in front of your classmates and the teacher's really hard on you. So think about how would your character move through all this? They're always kinda slob, maybe they don't wanna be seen by the teacher. That was certainly my thing. So I tried to be in a corner and it was more like this. I wouldn't really sit like that in a classroom. I don't wanna get the teacher's attention. So I'd be really quiet, I'd be really curled over. So maybe that's my overall pose. Maybe another obstacle would be that I am recording this and someone comes into my room. I thought it was the dog, but it was someone else. Yes. Although that was totally my fault. I have this thing where I have this remote with all my lights, right? I can turn this on, I can turn this on. I can turn all kinds of things on. I can turn everything off. And I have the top one that's a red light outside of the office that tells people that I am recording just because sometimes my kid comes in here like, hey. And then sometimes it's not the best, but sometimes it's also really funny how those interruptions happen anyway. But again, that could be a conflict. Maybe your character is filming something, filming a lecture, filming something. And then something happens in the back. Actually like the journalist where the family entered behind him and did all the crazy shenanigans. So to recap, having character be different in terms of appearances, right? So that's your external stuff. But think about the internal character traits and then have something that the character wants. So it's not just movement. So there's something where there's an objective and we can follow the character and it's interesting as an audience to see what the character wants to do and to add more interest at a problem, add an obstacle. Then you go as an audience, how is this character going to get there because there's this problem in their way? And then you can show how the character reacts if they reach the goal or if they don't reach the goal. So all those things will bring out character traits. And again, they can be flawed. They don't have to be all positive. It's okay to animate villains. And that was just all for humans. So you can take all of this and think about in terms of creatures. You can take all of this and then add creature elements, creature traits, creature behavior. Your creature might act like the human but every now and then there's some creature behaviors coming through. Maybe when they're really stressed or at the end when they're happy, there's something where the animal in them comes out. But that's it. So adding character as always super easy for me to say and one of the hardest things to do for students and for anybody, it's really hard for me to come up with something that's original, that's a brand new character. That's not just something that people have seen before. And of course, there are many other ways to add character to think about this. So if you know of anything, let me know in the comments. What is your process? How do you create interesting characters? Or if you have examples of awesome characters which there are a ton, movies and TV shows and whatnot in games. There's just a lot of cool characters that you can use for reference. And hopefully this was helpful. And if you like this, give this a like. 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