From the top of your head, suggest some movies (live action) that have good acting on drama (crying, arguing, getting angry, sad, etc.) for animation reference
Well I just watched The Fighter last night and that’s definitely a good pick for acting reference, but I’m a big movie buff myself and I’d have to go with The Dark Knight, Star Wars, The Godfather movies. Actually to be more specific it would really help to follow specific actors. Al Pacino, Natalie Portman, Matt Damon, Humphrey Bogart, Vivien Leigh, Dakota Fanning to name a few from various time periods and age ranges. When I find a good actor I like I lot I tend to check out all their other work and it’s really interesting to watch their career play out.
Geoffrey Rush is really great too in The King’s Speech. I really liked Zoe Saldana in Avatar. Her character Neytiri was animated obviously but her performance is very visible and I’m really interested in how animation can collaborate with actors to create a performance like that -Bill Nighy as Davy Jones for example is another great performance like that.
It’s such a broad area of study. Those are off the top of my head but it really helps to have a specific character or character motivation in mind and then you can really hone in some specific performances for reference. There’s a lot of different styles to it too. You could be playing a role and going for authenticity or way over-the-top and it takes a real knowledge of storytelling to not just act or animate a character but also to make sure that performance helps the overall story in the way that it needs to.
I think you were probably just looking for a list of movies, but this topic just gets me rambling. IMDB Top 250 is a great place to look. Most of the movies there will have great acting in them.
Yes, I’m afraid I’m not a movie buff so I don’t know exactly what to ask, but, please, I don’t mind the rambling at all.
That’s interesting, I know some artists base their character’s face on someone in real life but not so far as to copy the person’s acting style. Its a good jumping board for more ideas, thanks!
Yeah actors are easy to use as reference because they’re right their on film, but if you can study people in the real world that are similar to your character or just someone going through a similar type of ordeal or circumstance that can be even more useful. That’s where actors get their reference after all.
I can’t help you there.
I hate drama movies…more specifically romance films… I kind of think theyre cheesy (and yet I’m starting to find girls cute…Hhhhmmmmmmmmmmmm).