 Welcome back to an act analysis and tips for animators. And today I'm going to talk about the HBO show, Mayor of East Town. And I'm going to talk about how your character's emotional state will drive movement, how your character should always be listening, how a physical injury or limitation can help you with contrast and much, much more in a packed act analysis and tips for animators. And before we dive into it, if you're new to this channel, hi, my name is JD and I do act analysis clips like these, I do animation analysis clips, I do animation lectures, I do rig reviews, I do feedback, product reviews, all kinds of stuff. Feel free to browse around the channel. If there's something that you like, feel free to like and subscribe. Of course, it helps my channel grow. But that is it with the pitch. Let's get straight to the sequences. And I'm going to start with this sequence here where I want to focus on her weight shifts, her posture, just the way she moves, even when she just knocks on the door. Yeah, how she just has that arm falling down and dangling. She's really not into this whole assignment. The character comes out says, oh, you're here. And you can see her reaction as well. It's kind of like, yeah, I'm here. Just the way she does it, the way she brings her arms up, holds, and then brings it back down. That'll flop on top of course, the expression and the way she says it, but she's really not into that. And just her emotional state and just her annoyance that she has to do this, you can see this with the exhale and sigh here. There, all of that will drive your movement. So when she is here, and this character tells her about all of her problems, she's not really mentally there. She wants to be somewhere else. She's just annoyed. She has every now and then some contact here, but you can see the difference here. She's always looking. She needs help from her. That eye contact is always there. She always checks, whereas she just kind of goes through the motion goes, yeah, yeah, whatever. And keeps talking because she knows that she forgot the phone number. This is part of the story. She doesn't know who to call. And you can see that. Well, why don't you use the phone number and she says here, I don't remember. And you can see this here too. After she says this, her reaction here, again, the look away, the sigh, it's not like she puts her hand on the shoulder to reassure her and say, you know, it's going to be okay. She's completely annoyed. So if your character is in that mental state or whatever headspace you have, right, could be happy sad, whatever it is, in her case, she's annoyed. Think about those moments she could be looking, looking away. How long does she look? She really wants to be somewhere else in her mind. She's not here. So maybe that constant looking away will emphasize that as she goes to the fridge here. And you can see again, she's not quite talking to her. But now she wants to start making a point about, okay, you got to get this phone number. So she's looking around, she's looking around. She finds it here on the fridge. And again, she is locked on her. She needs help. And now that she has the number, she goes, this is what's important. So so nicely done here with the silhouette here. But now I'm pointing at you. I'm also looking at you because this is important. Pay attention to this. Again, it's almost like to a child. She points and now she points at this. Again, there's another emphasis. This is important. And then she looks. Now she realizes, okay, I'm going to put this somewhere else. Again, she looks here. Again, the emphasis. This is important for you to remember because I don't want to come back here and look at this here. Bam. And this is one of the main reasons why I wanted to pick the sequence here is that imagine you have this and you have the character and you have a prop. And you of course have a constraints or whatever you have, you got to put it there. You are going to be worried about the movements and how this arm is going to affect the shoulder and that's going to take the chest with it. It's going to influence the head, all those body mechanics. But you have to remember that she is annoyed and that movement is going to emphasize that. And you can see this right here. Bam. That. Look at that. You got a slam and a point and then the stare and the look that came on. You're not going to forget this. This is really important. You don't forget this. So as always, as I tell my students and everybody else willing to listen to my clips here, when you have movement, it be it a pantomime or a lip sync piece, make sure that your character is not just moving. And I know it's a lot to keep track of in terms of what kind of, you know, arcs and pops and all that stuff. But every movement will communicate to the audience how your character feels. So it's going to be a gentle thing where she maybe there's a fold and she puts the fold back in and flattens this or like in this case, it's a slam against the fridge and that shows us she's frustrated. So every move you have, be it an eye blink and head turn, a gesture, a step, whatever you have, all of that communicates the headspace, the emotional state of your character. So be very mindful that it's not just movement, but it's intentional movement based on the character's personality, the environment, the situation, whatever is going on with your character and actually sticking with the sequence. Now the husband of the older lady comes in and you know, an older couple, they're bickering. So the moment they start talking, there is the argument and she really doesn't care. Also, they don't involve her in the argument because this is an old couple. So I like this in terms of what she is doing in terms of listening, but also the composition, the setups, if you have maybe a lip sync. As always, you don't have to animate the lip sync. I mean clearly they're a little bit of listening here, but you're going to have a little bit of lip sync that might be covered. It's actually very convenient if you do this animation here that we don't see the lips here. We don't see the lips here. But the main thing is that if you are having a lip sync, you can also just focus on this character. You can see it's out of focus here and the focus is visually there's a focus, but also you will focus on the character listening. You can see that she's just, okay, I'm getting out of here. And then she leaves. She doesn't really care. She just tells them, like, all right, I'm out. She's so great in the show. Technically, this show is so bleak, but she cracks me up. There's so many awesome moments. But anyway, you have multiple characters or maybe one or two, maybe one character listening to someone that's off-screen. It could be interesting to see how the other character is reacting to what's going on. Now, in this moment, she's using a new character and she holds the baby. She kisses the baby right off the bat. We see she cares about the baby. We would assume it's her baby. You never know. It could be babysitter, but at least it shows affection because, okay, there's a caring moment. And this serves as contrast when she opens the door here and opens this. This is the dad. Doesn't care about, I don't know how much he cares about the kid, but doesn't care about her at all. And you can see this with this attitude here, like, whatever. All right, also looking out. It's not like an eager look to the baby. Maybe some grimacing and some gestures to make the baby smile. It's like, I'm looking out because I'm really not invested here. My mind is somewhere else. And right off the bat, you can see this here. Come on, come on. Let's go. Let's go. And you can see her annoyance. I can see that long hold and then sigh. And so besides all of that, which is really cool, I am always a ginormous fan of sets. If you listen to my channel, you know, I love this props and sets and set pieces. Why? Why in this case? Because when she opens this here and inside, she goes, well, can you have these come in and shut the door? It's cold. Now watch what the guy does. Okay, let me fast forward here. He comes in, leaves it open, leaves this open. So he's just a turd. He's a turd. He doesn't care about what she says. He doesn't care that the baby might be cold. And all of this is not only communicated by his inaction, right? The physical thing. I'm not doing anything. But also by using that, right? The dialogue and the set piece will reinforce this. And that's why I'm such a ginormous fan of props and sets, because you have a way to pantomime things or move around. But the sets around can just reemphasize that can give you different ideas, it can make it even stronger or it could be a nonverbal, nonphysical communication by just showing that the door is open and he just doesn't move it. Again, technically not moving is a communication. But it's like the combination of him not moving around and then showing with the door that the stays open that he just doesn't care about her. So think about that as you put your character into an environment. What kind of environment is it? And what kind of set pieces or props you could use to reemphasize an emotional state, a conflict or whatever it is between two or more characters. In this sequence we have actually that is the mother of her. And then we go back into props. So again, she's just frustrated. She had a very long day. She's a police officer. She's a detective. So there was a lot of stuff happening. And you can see she, you know, not that you would drink. I mean, you can drink beer obviously out of the class, but she drinks out of the bottle. They make a joke at the expense of her. And you can see she's already annoyed about the whole situation. And then she makes the joke. And you can see this here, he makes the joke, right? I mean, they both kind of make fun of her. He says something funny and she is about to eat, stops, looks at him going really, you just said that and throws it. I mean, it hits him too, right? So she hits him. This is going to fall on the floor. It's going to be dirty. She doesn't care. It's like one more thing to reemphasize that emotional state of the slum. I told this, but you can use a prop, prop piece to show that and it continues to, I love her. She's great. How she just doesn't care. It's the way she takes this. There are so many ways you can take this cap off to use the cheese on here. So this is why I'm such a fan of props. This is one way to do it. She can just hold it here. She can delicately take it off with the fingers, whatever you want to use, but set some props. I always love it. They always help with a certain moment. And even this here, this could be reemphasized where maybe she's so frustrated that it's just this little piece or she just adds more and more and more and more on this and stuffs her face. That could also be help through this prop and then what comes out of it, right? It's like when you have a drink and you would think that there's a wine glass and you put just a little bit of wine in there. Well, when someone is frustrated at the tire, whatever it is, or just wants to have a good time, takes the glass and just fills the glass to the top of the wine. That tells us something. That communicates like, okay, this character is frustrated, wants to get drunk, or whatever it is, but again, it's the proper usage that will reemphasize a specific headspace. In this sequence, I want to talk about physical limitations or injuries. So as I said before, she's a detective and she jumped over a fence and she hurt her ankle. And there are a couple of things with this. A, it could be interesting just general contrast, just the way you have to move. There's a lean, there's asymmetry in the pose. That alone can be interesting. What I like about this is that she is looking for her daughter and it's kind of the combination of how the daughter goes in and out and how she has to follow. So you have that hobble over there and lean talks to her daughter, daughter comes out, you got this moment, she is fast and she has to hobble to continue the conversation. And this continues too. So this goes back into this moment. I love this too, how she exits this and she has that moment of and then hobble hobble. Take all of that, even like the physical limitation that she's not injured, just adds to the general feeling of frustration that first episode. This is the pilot, by the way. And again, this continues, continues one more time. Just again, this show is bleak, but there's so many moments that crack me up with this. I just like the general idea and you can make this just like this. This is your setup. And by the way, I like this. Actually, you might see a shot, how many thought about this, but I like this set up in terms of the composition and the contrast of a character being slow, one being fast and the fast one kind of driving where the slow character has to look and make the extra effort to follow. So you can have this setup, doors and a character going through fast could be tall, could be a kid. And just this person that constantly has to hobble left and right. I really like this. And I think I'm going to steal this for an upcoming shot that I might be doing. I don't even know what it is, but I want to use this because I like it. Same with this one. I do really like the composition of this. So they are at a function and this character that comes in here doesn't like this character. They all know each other. Well, this is a general conflict. A, I like that we have, there's a line and then the character that comes in goes in front of her. And you can tell she's just annoyed already. And after that, she told her to not talk to her because it's going to be a problem later on. So if you watch the show, this is just a general conflict already hanging in the air. But I like, there are two things I like about this whole sequence. So you have the composition where the focus changed between those three and you have a three character dialogue where you can go back and forth, but you always see their faces. And every now and then they can turn, but they don't have to really face each other. Because they also don't like each other. They don't want to face each other. So that's one part. And the other part is this. They have to come out as a celebration of all these characters and the contrast of how they walk out. They're happy. She's really happy. She's adjusting. She's looking where she goes and she's cleaning her teeth here. What is she doing? Yeah, like that. She wants to be nice and ready for all of that. And then we go back to this. Again, there's a focus on this character. And it's just, I love this because you have her the lip sync, but then you have the reaction, the listening, including her. She gets frustrated because she is talking to her. They're both frustrated. It's just so, I love this. Again, this is not a moment that I want to steal and use. I don't know. I don't have the dialogue, but I just like that setup. And you can see, again, the focus changes. She now turns and goes back. There's even like a point that don't do this, stop talking. She just keeps on insisting. And then the focus changes to her. And then she turns around. They love, I mean, there's so much going on in the sequence. And this continues again with how they walk out. And until the very ends, there's a, you know, somewhat bigger confrontation. Stop it. But again, she doesn't really look at her. I just love that whole setup. And at the very end, when she comes out, they all cheer and she has a really funny moment of, she does either kind of like it, or there's a slight sense of this is ridiculous right there. I love that moment. And again, because of her injury, she has a symmetry and the posing, which is great. And she got that moment here. I love this. All right. Either she's super frustrated going, guys, really, this is so ridiculous. Or a little bit like this used to be my glory time. Maybe, maybe I do like it. She's got the little tiny smirk and then the hobble over there. She's so good throughout that whole pilot. She just cracked me up against super bleak show so far. But there are so many moments in terms of the way it was cut and edited and the dialogue and her expressions. She's so great in it. I highly recommend you watch it if you got HBO Max. And if you've seen it, let me know in the comments because I'm curious what you think. And it's going to be a mini series. I'm very curious how it's, where it's headed, but very, very bleak. But if you don't want to have a kind of segue, if you don't want your animation to be bleak and you want me to help you to make it happier, I don't know. You can contact me. Let's talk. You can sign up for my workshop. This is why I'm making that pitch. And if you like that kind of stuff, I can help you make your shots kind of like this. Whatever you want to do. I am here. Let me know. Workshops are open. You can sign up at any time. And speaking of time, this has been Long Rich Clip. So thank you for watching till the very end. I appreciate that you watched this. And that's it from me. If you like it, hit the like button. If you want to subscribe and not miss anything, you can subscribe. Of course, you don't have to. But if you do hit that bell button, so you don't miss any of my notifications. And that is that. Thank you for watching. And I'll see you in my next upload.