(I’m writing this a little later than I should be but being a dimwit I’ve left my USB pen at work so I’ll just update this and after my Q&A I’ll decide if I can (be bothered to) make the journey back to work to get it so I can work on my Week 2 blocking).
Here we are then! New class, new mentor, new assignment! Pantomime! The art of acting without dialogue! Being given dialogue can often be a nice safety cushion to fall back on; it already has a lot of the beats/phrases and timing “pre-programmed” into it based on the way the dialogue has been read. None of that namby-pamby hand-holding here, oh no!
For this assignment we must create a scenario where Stewie goes from one emotional state to another. Ideally you want to pick two very contrasting emotions so you can really sell the difference when the time comes! I did have a few other ideas, but the premise I came up with is:
“Sneaky Stewie has seen a delicious apple and going to steal it. He sneaks up and checks around to see that no one is looking. He grabs the apple and is very pleased with his acquisition.
Of course, once he takes a closer look he sees that the apple is currently inhabited by a worm. It turns out Stewie is incredibly squeamish. In abject horror, Stewie jumps, dropping the apple on the ground and has a comedic, squeamish reaction to what he nearly ate!”
Now, what do I mean by “comedic, squeamish reaction”? Well, I was imagining something like this:
Yes. Indeed! Although I was reasonably pleased with my acting choices, I (and a number of people posting comments on my video) felt that it could use a bit more refinement and some better timing so begrudgingly I went back to shoot a little bit more reference and came away with something a lot better:
So there’s a tip for you! If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! Even though Michelle wanted us to do one good take with no cutting or splicing of footage, I’ve still kept a few alternate takes and clips from the previous session as they had elements that I liked a lot (take a look at the reaching pose when I go for the apple in the final two takes – the pose is so much stronger!).
I was also pretty torn over whether to have Stewie appear from behind the tree or whether to get him on-screen a whole lot fast and use a bendy, cartoony slide in from screen-right as well. For now, I’m going with the slide in. One of the things I want to explore this term is a cartoony animation style (something I haven’t really done before) so I want to really push my poses where possible!
Here are my planning sketches:
So despite what I just said I know these poses can be pushed a lot further, I’m just not very good at drawing OK? Michelle’s main criticism for this week was that the hips are very neutral throughout the poses and she’s right. I really need to exaggerate the poses and exaggerate the hip rotations to show the weight properly.
If you’ve got any crits, comments or questions I’d love to hear them! Otherwise, it’s onto Week 2 and blocking out the shot!!
