Acting analysis part 2

Trying out another analysis

Like last time this is totally my own analysis. I have not spoken to the animator, nor do I own any of the material. This is purely done for learning purposes.

This is one of my favorite shots from Tangled.
The animation in there is just packed with great poses, interesting timing and fantastic sense of weight.

I chose this shot, because it works particularly well.
It’s simplicity is amazing, but what is does for the film really valuable.

Shot_Animated

It portrays Mother Gothel, as the beautiful, dangerous and sinister person she is. I think it really captured the essence of the character.
People always tell you to find a pose that works, and act “within” it, and I think they did so really well in this shot. I tried to take the shot and break it into beats, and I found three major poses.
That is all it takes. Three, really strong, good poses. Obviously a lot of stuff happens within those three, but they are the foundation. And particularly, because she is such a sinister and calculative person, keeping her still and reduces her pose-changes to the minimum, suits her very well.

Shot_Beats

The concept of “occupying screen space” is very much at play here. The idea is, that you find you major story telling poses (golden poses). They should be as few as possible, and it is important they are very different, both in silhouette and the screen space they occupy.
If we take a look at the beats from this shot, we see this is very much true here.

He is a version with all the major beats and keys. Though we see, that these keys are well enough to define the beats of the body, it isn’t quite enough to explain the acting in general. Mainly because most of it, happens under just one body pose.

Shot_Keys

So here I’ve tried to spot out all the keys I’d say was enough to move into breakdowns.
From here on, it should be a matter of figuring out spacing, and how to move in and out of keys.
Which isn’t really my focus with this bit of exercise. 

Shot_All_Keys

I am really in awe of how skilled these animators are. The readability and seeming simplicity of the acting is fantastic. I find the concept of golden poses, the minimal amount of poses possible, very interesting. I tend to always want to gesture with the arms and hit every accent. But as we can see here, it is not necessary at all, and we must thrive to find the simple, clear way of acting out the shot.
 

The simpler acting, the better it tends to read.

There is a good chance, you might not agree at all with my "analysis" and that is perfectly fine. It might be totally off :D But it makes good sense to me, and I'm learning a lot by doing these posts.

Hopefully it was a bit interesting

Cheers