standing out

Recently watched the Carlos Baena webinar on Demo reel do's and don'ts. Most of it was the same 'ol same 'ol, but one thing he was talking about echoed something the spline doctors mentioned. And that's just that reviewers are tired of seeing the same thing over and over. School excercises with the same characters are just driving them crazy. Carlos even mentioned that on acting tests it's the same acting choices every time, medium close up with the character gesticulating closely with his hands. Anyway, it comes down to, make your character unique. If you're going to use a common rig individuate it somehow, a prop or a wig or something, and especially a unique personality. And try really really hard to find a unique thing to act on your demo reel. It's something I noticed while I was in AM, for the gear change excercise there were tons and tons of chef's tasting something and getting sick, and sad Stewie's looking for their Tailor's.

I was reading through my notes from AnimationMentor and ran across something from Chris DeRochie. First he gave a guote from Ed Parker "The man who knows how will always be the student. The man who knows why will continue to be the master." Chris was talking about the way to have unique acting choices is to have unique individual's. He said How a man picks a flower will always look stagey because you are self conscious of the audience. But if you know who the guy is and thereforewhy he's picking the flower, you'll act it out more authentically and it'll help you avoid cliche. If you think you are animating "a typical businessman" then you are animating a stereoptype and will end up with a typical stereoptypical scene. So if you know who the character is as an individual, their gender profession mood personality traits (bonus if some of those conflict) relevant past history (maybe that Jason Ryan WOFAIM) then you will have an understanding of what it means for this particular individual to be picking this flower and how their personality and passed will influence how the pick it.
Personality (born with) + Experience = behaviour.