Overview

This unit advances students’ understanding of character animation through the study, and exploration of essential acting principles and performance techniques. Students will apply this knowledge to animation practice, and will discover how to combine acting and animation principles to convey the inner thoughts, motivations and emotions of animated characters.

Requisites

Prerequisites
ANI10006 Action Analysis and Locomotion

Rules

Pre-requisite
DAN10002 Action Analysis and Locomotion (Discontinued)
OR
ANI10006 Action Analysis and Locomotion

Equivalent
DDD20029 - Acting for Animation (Discontinued)

Teaching Periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
29-July-2024
27-October-2024
Last self-enrolment date
11-August-2024
Census date
31-August-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
13-September-2024
Results released date
03-December-2024

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Describe essential acting principles and performance techniques
  • Deconstruct scenes to identify objectives, obstacles and situations
  • Examine dialogue and audio to identify acting beats and performance possibilities
  • Combine knowledge of emotion, body language, acting and animation principles to enhance the believability of characters and their actions
  • Analyse the execution of acting and performance choices to evaluate the communication of thought, emotion and personality

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
On-campus
Class		3.00 12 weeks 36
Specified Activities
Various		4.00 12 weeks 48
Unspecified Activities
Various		5.50 12 weeks 66
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
Practical AssignmentIndividual 40% 4,5 
Practical AssignmentIndividual 40% 3,4,5 
Research AssignmentIndividual 20% 1,2,5 

Content

  • Acting for the stage vs. Acting for animation
  • Good acting and bad acting choices
  • Takes, and acting within a pose
  • Layering rhythm into actions and performances
  • Animating thoughts and emotion vs. Animating words
  • Communicating through natural poses and gestures
  • Physicality, exaggeration and movement styles
  • Dynamic facial posing, expression and dialogue
  • Laban Movement Analysis (LMA)
  • Graduate Attribute – Communication Skills: Verbal communication
  • Graduate Attribute – Digital Literacies: Technical literacy

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.