Animated Performance: Bringing Imaginary Animal, Human and Fantasy Characters to Life(Required Reading Range)

"Animated Performance" guides you through the fascinating process of bringing animated characters to life. Throughout the book, Nancy Beiman demonstrates how animated characters need not be constrained by the limitations that restrict human actors and shows how species, weight and design affect character actions. You will also discover the many ways in which a character's movements will vary according to the emotional or narrative context of their situation. The many tips, examples and exercises will help you harness the flexibility of animation to portray an almost unlimited variety of characters and ensure that no two performances are ever alike. In addition, more than 200 illustrations show how animal and fantasy characters can live and move without losing their non-human qualities and interviews with Disney animators Art Babbitt, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ellen Woodbury make this a unique insight into bringing a whole world of characters to life.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Lynn Johnston. Preface: We're not in live action any more. Design for living: An introduction to thumbnails; Good actors: Designs that animate; An introduction to dialogue animation. Setting the stage: Character and story context: Don't just do something...; Within you, without you: Analysing the character; Character volume, size and movement. Is sex necessary?: Masculine and feminine character acting; The ages of man (and woman). Animal actors: Four legs good, two legs better? Creating animal characters; Flights of information: Animating winged characters; Portraying animal qualities in human characters; 'Look Ma, no hands!' Animating snakes, worms, and other crawlers. Fantastic performance!: Natural inspirations for the supernatural; Dual natures: Human/animal combinations; Floating worlds: The weightless actor. The performer as object: Moving the furniture: Bringing inanimate objects to life; Material girl: Fabric and cloth characters. Double timing: Animating character interactions: Staging and composition; Changing leads in multiple-character scenes; Potemkin villages: Crowd scenes and how to fake them. Character development over time: Character and story arcs. Inspiration and reference. Index. Acknowledgements.

About the Author :
Nancy Beiman is a professor at the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Oakville, Canada. She has produced, directed, designed, storyboarded and animated for television commercials, specials, features, and new media projects. Her employers have included The Walt Disney Company, Warner Brothers Animation and Bill Melendez Productions. Nancy has been teaching at college level since 2000, and her first book, PREPARE TO BOARD! Creating Story and Characters for Animated Features and Shorts, has been adopted as a standard text by animation schools worldwide.

Review :
"This book feels like a seriously helpful companion for animators be they student or professional. As an animator I am a visual thinker so this book immediately catches my eye for its simple clear design. It is well referenced throughout with strong examples of work from across the animation sector; I particularly like the historical illustrations of T.S. Sullivant, A.B. Frost etc, showing the art of caricature and emotion...I would strongly recommend this book to our students and to anyone interested in animation." - Professor Peter Parr, Reader in Animation, The Arts University College at Bournemouth. "Animated Performance (AVA Publishing) by Nancy Beiman is an instant classic...Beiman's new book concentrates solely on character animation and she knocks it out of the park. It is a thorough, step by step examination of the art, aimed at the advanced student or professional animator who already knows the basics. The principles she discusses can apply to any technique (CG, Flash, stop motion, etc.) and she has packed the book with ample examples of her own animation, as well as classic comic strips, commercial art and movie stills to illustrate her points. She's also peppered the book with inspiring quotes...What's most important is the book is a joy to read - even a non-animator such as myself can get a lot out of it. It's 232 oversized pages, loaded with solid information based on a lifetime of professional experience. I highly recommend this book to anyone doing, or attempting to do, character animation on any level." - Jerry Beck, Cartoon Brew. "[Nancy Beiman's] imagination-based exercises are where this book really shines. They're great. Every five or 10 pages, Nancy adds a clear, concise, well-planned and thoughtful exercise that directly relates to the preceding text. They are the kind of exercises that appear to have been developed by an excellent teacher after years of hands-on knowledge in the classroom. I'd love to try them all." - Fran Krause, Animation World Network, October 2010.