Body Acting

I've been working as a teaching assistant for animation (and other) classes. One of those classes was about body acting, so I've been really immersed in this thing for a while now and I need to write about it!

Making a believable character without any speech, it takes a different kind of acting. Body acting becomes principle acting instead of being in a more supportive role.

Lately I've been really inspired by the student work that has been posted on the AnimSchool Vimeo, so that's why I included two videos from a body acting animation class! But it's not just about humanoid characters.
I read a post about animating Toothless (link here!!), and of course he can't use speech to show what he wants and what he's thinking, so obviously body acting is of major importance. In the post they also describe how they had to work with limitations, like how it was very easy to take him off model. Go read it!!

So for the class I've been helping out with, the students had to create video reference for themselves. That obviously has some perks for the students, but all of the students stuck very closely to their reference. So I had to post these two examples that very clearly don't stick too close to the reference. Enjoy :)






Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with AnimSchool or Animation Mentor :P They just post interesting stuff worth sharing!