Animation Acting: Disney Acting and the essential principles you can keep. + Slip Ups by competitors

The more older your get, the more you crave things that are in your ball park.

That's the mentality I've seen in generations that grow up. They crave things with more spice, more gusto, more..... well.... everything.

And that includes acting. 

But what about Cartoon Acting? 

Well the thing is, cartoon acting is more or less 75% generic acting.

I did a post back in February 2023 on my two cents on Cartoon Acting but that was truncated into a rambling about why I prefer live-action acting.

But hey, It's New Years 2024 so Let's do a post about cartoon acting based on a Company.

And today's topic is DISNEY ACTING.

This style of acting is more or less based on the fierce belief by animators and historians that you have to use all 12 principles of animation to make it into the realm of anything animated.

The reason for this style of acting being mandatory at Disney and some other studios is because of the age old belief held by both Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston saying that cartoon acting can't reach the subtleties and presence of live-action acting.

And really, I don't blame them. Cartoon Acting certainly can't reach the subtleties but you can make do with inspiration from Live-Action acting if you take the effort.

But where are my manners, Lets see what principles are used for this style of acting that seems to be favored by the industry for some reason.

1. SQUASH AND STRETCH

2. ANTICIPATION

3. STAGING

4. STRAIGHT AHEAD VS POSE TO POSE

5. FOLLOW THROUGH/OVERLAPPING ACTION

6. SLOW IN AND SLOW OUT

7. ARCS

8. SECONDARY ACTION

9. TIMING

10. EXAGERATION

11. SOLID DRAWING

12. APPEAL

12 Principles of animation my ass. I've read many stories about how certain animators would rather truncate the 12 principles into what they feel is essential but the way I see it, they truncate the 12 principles to fit whatever style they use for their animations. 

To me, I believe in this thing called Animation Principle Truncation where you cherry-pick which principles are the most essential to your art style.

I'll give you my results at the end some other time but to say that using all principles is a waste of your own time and talents can be both a kick to the nads and an understatement.

Back in 2009, Disney Animator Will Finn posted this article on his blog about truncating your essential principles. Here's the Link:

https://willfinn.blogspot.com/2009/03/finding-my-inner-pintoff.html

John Kricfalusi also read that article but he was sort of flabbergasted by Finn's remarks about some things he said about truncating principles that it he eventually decided to compare that sentiment to Roger Ramjet Cartoons.

While I can do away with Squash and Stretch, Follow Through, and Overlaps since those are too distracting for my own tastes, Will Finn should have retained inbetweens and antics.... though I'm mixed on both.

Antics in general are for the more cartoony aspects of your work but they way I see it, it's overused, even in CGI because we've come so far and most animators who kiss the feet of executives still think it's still got a chance to entice the folks.

Thing is, Antics are sort of downplayed by Disney and Dreamworks by this point. They still do it but not when you're aiming for psuedo-realism so that leaves Sony Pictures and Illumination as the only modern CGI studios that encourage more antics in their animations.

For me, I can't even grasp antics properly even though I somewhat do it. It's even used in my SHASTA RUN animation I've done in Lasalle College.

Now as for inbetweens, I'm more mixed on that. Inbetweens are nice if you want to smooth out the action but not every scene is going to be inbetweened.

And as far as I know, Most Anime don't touch it since they always lower down the frames for character actions that aren't a fight scene.

So for example, This scene from Dagashi Kashi has Hotaru cooling her spicy lips with her hands. The action of cooling your lips is already executed perfectly by just having Two up and down motions of the hands so Inbetweening the hands with more frames just won't cut it because not only would that look out of place for a comedic anime but it would cause the budget to overshoot.

Now don't get me wrong. Anime still does some inbetweening but that's mostly for fight scenes or if it's a big movie like AKIRA.

But where are my manners, I need to get back into topic about Disney Acting. And good thing too. Brer Rabbit's been gesturing to me that I need to talk about the hand mimes

To me, Disney Animator's obsessions with Hand Miming to the dialogue needs to simmer down. I've seen so many hand mimes in Disney Cartoons New and Old that it's distracting me from looking at the one important thing in cartoons: THE FACE.

To tell you the truth, Nowadays if I wanna see Hand Miming in the media, I can just look at THE 8-BIT GUY'S YouTube videos since it works so much better than in Cartoons.

The Hand Pantomime thing is an old stand by that has dated all the way back to when Cartoons were without Sound but for some reason, Disney still believed the hand pantomimes can still work in today's cartoons and that's why I've seen characters like Bernard, Lumiere, etc use this gesture so many times. 

It's since been downplayed in later parts of the Renaissance but it still creeps up. 

Animators like Ralph Bakshi, Mike Judge and Danny Antonucci also criticize the use of Disney Style Acting as not only overused but also archaic to the point they wonder why on earth our USA based animation houses still stick with this style of acting when most of the medium's intended audience are going to crave more.

Believe it or not, I was looking at this article on TV TROPES about this style of acting and I was surprised to discover that RUGRATS also discouraged this acting just because it's so unnatural for Babies to be acting like this.

Check out this JPG file. Especially since my Blog doesn't redirect photo examples to a new page.

I've also read that THE SIMPSONS also very hard to avoid this trope during the production of the Season 1 episode SOME ENCHANTED EVENING and it ended horribly for them when it was the first to be screen in 1989. No wonder James L Brooks said "THIS IS SHIT!!!!" and walked out.

The episode was promised it's retakes and aired on MAY 1990 as scheduled but it's not without it's slipups such as this Mrs. Botz Animation that looks a bit smooth and out of place in THE SIMPSONS and yet.... it looks more threatening.

So yeah, despite other animator's criticisms, they still always slip up.

I've seen my share of Ralph Bakshi flicks and despite him saying he dislikes Disney acting, he sometimes slips up. And this is more apparent from these screengrabs from WIZARDS' uber-famous THEY KILLED FRITZ scene.

Now as for whether or not this shows up in anime or not is up for debate but especially in Dramatic Anime like Cowboy Bebop, this is absolutely avoided due to emphasis on the drama and the realism that those anime demand. That and a lot of Japanese animators have gotten into loads of trouble with Otaku for trying to go all Disney or Warner Bros. on the acting.

So why am I making a post on Disney acting? Well I've been paying attention to Disney's performance in both the box office and critical reception and so far, it's not been good.

The critical reception is a mixed bag but the box office performance has overall abysmal to the point that the company is no longer in the Billion Dollar Club since all their films barely have reached the Billion dollar mark in the box office.

And no, WGA and SAG-AFTRA had nothing to do about it. It's just Bob Iger being.... well.... Bob Iger.

But on the other hand, at least he isn't as god-awful as Bob Chapek was so I could cut him some slack.

And Iger is still better than that asshole David Zaslav.....

(Somebody put an stick of ACME M80s in Zaslav's desk.... hehehehe..)

But back to topic. It's clear that the company had a real bad year for themselves that they hope to fix their wrongs in 2024 but only time will tell if they do that. I'm more concerned if Iger will keep up his promise to improve on the company because I read an article on Facebook that he's exhausted and I'm not going to lie, I'd too be exhausted if my company keeps up with flops to the point that I'd quit while I can.

Thing is though, I'm not an executive and I'm not a CEO of a company. But then again, considering my rage against executives and CEOS for not listening to viewers and artist, purging content, etc, I be glad to just be in the middle ground.

Anyhow, I hope the company bounces back in the New Year.