We had very interesting performance workshops in UAL in 2022 and in 2023.

We had theatre classes in 2022 mainly concentrated in Laban and Stanislavsky. They look at reasons for actions, scales of intensity, etc. Stanilavsky’s 7 questions were also discussed at the Character Design workshop.

It was very interesting seeing and practising techniques to improve performance and relating them to emotions and instensity. Anything that helps in better performances in the LAVs obviously will help in better animation of characters.

It was really tiring and exciting, however also a good way to do some light exercise. And so much fun. Acting in LAVs certainly helps me animate. Also it help you keep and increase the level of playfulness in animation work, that is essential for good animations in my opinion. Creativity many times comes from your inner child.

I don’t understand how most students can’t see the importance and fun of these classes. Some of them probably think they can get away without having to do any proper video reference themselves to animate, or even trying to act some movements of the character. I’m not really extrovert, although I learned that caring too much about other people’s opinions is a prison. I don’t care if people think I’m odd performing a monkey reaction. Some kids are sent to theatre classes to become less shy and have fun, and some adults are too shy to enjoy them. Nonsense.

Yesterday we had a different performance workshop, though. There wasn’t much acting and we had much less physical activity, but still had fun and looked in techniques of storytelling, and character construction of an emotional point of view and using some of the classical archetypes of stories. Also looked at character construction techniques as a way to generate story ideas.

It was challenging to shorten a story without losing the details that work as its “colour” or “shine”. But it helps keep an eye of the essence and get rid of unnecessary parts that would be just extra work to animate. The character construction techniques may be useful too to help with audience impact, generating new stories and character development.