We have acting coaches come in. Whether you are animating a horse, or a buffalo, or a human being, you still have the same considerations with timing, expression, pose, silhouette, lines of movement, choreography. If a school only teaches people how to operate a computer and they don't teach fundamental principles, meaning fundamental art principles as well as fundamental acting principles, then they are doing a disservice to their students who want to be animators. I'm not talking about students who want to work on the technical side of things or students who want to light scenes, construct or render environments, composite images, etc. Whatever their specialty in animation, whether traditional or cg, artists must have a well developed knowledge of design and composition.

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It's generally much easier to train a traditional character animator to use a computer than it is to train somebody who uses a computer to understand what it is about animation that makes something alive and makes people think that this character is real. The computer is not a magic box. It's as good as the soul of the person working it.

In terms of acting, what we look for are teachers who understand what animators need. Our teachers have been pretty eclectic in their approach, and they often tailor their workshops for the project at hand. If you are an animation student, I suggest going to the theater department and taking Acting 101 and 102. If possible, try to get on stage and do a play.

Randy Nelson
Dean, Pixar University (PU)

Animators don't want to become actors. They want to know what an actor knows and how an actor prepares. But being able to do it as a real-time performance skill is not as important to them as knowing the kinds of things that an actor would do in approaching a role and building a character. In general we concentrate on schemes of physical movement, and techniques and mechanisms at the literacy level. What everyone should know and the mastery kinds of things come out of the internal teachers. We tend not to go outside because we are so rich internally.

One of the things that we think is very powerful here in the studio is the way that we do dailies. The approach here is that everybody from the least experienced animator, the greenest kid, to the most experienced director -- everybody -- every day gets together in the same room and sits and looks at the material together. Unlike the model in traditional animation where a single animator will be responsible for every bit of a particular character throughout a show, we are looking to find the best match between the character and the performer/animator per scene. The animator is responsible for a particular scene in which he or she animates all of the action in that scene, all of the various characters, and when they finish that scene they get another scene. It brings a fresh eye to the material but it's difficult keeping continuity and that's just what the dailies process gives us -- the best of both worlds, continuity and the fresh eye.

Pixar is made up of a diverse group of people but the one thing that ties them together is that everyone is a life-long learner.

Glenn McQueen
Supervising Animator, Pixar Animation Studios

It's interesting that you are even asking about acting and performance because as far as I'm concerned that is pretty much all there is. All we are trying to do is come up with believable performances for the characters. For me, as an animator, some of the most important things that you have to know in order to come up with a believable performance is knowing the story inside and out, where the character is coming from, and where the character is going. You have to know whether to hold back a little bit because ten minutes later, or five minutes later, in the film the character has to take it up a notch. It may just be emotional notes.

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We have to be far more analytical than an actor. An actor is in the moment, whereas we have to be in the moment sometimes weeks at a time. The important thing is to have some sort of record of what your initial inspiration was for the shot because a week from now you will just be buried in minutiae. It's easy to lose sight of the original kernel for your shot and be worrying about things that aren't necessarily making the performance more entertaining and more real.

I think acting classes are valuable. Anything that stretches your imagination can be helpful. However, for me, most great animators' work is already so strong that they are able to intuit what is right for a character. Finding acting classes that address the particular needs of animators is difficult. You are listening to a line over and over again trying to develop a performance that fits inside a fairly rigid framework that fits with the surrounding shots. I act things out unconsciously and then become conscious of what it is I am doing -- what are my arms doing, what are my wrists doing relative to my arms, how my weight is shifting from one leg to the other, what my hips are doing while I am delivering that line. You want to start off doing a performance that feels natural and right for the character and then move to an analytical mode where you decompose the performance into its primary elements. I videotape myself in a room with mirrors on all four sides. Thumb nailing is also a valuable tool as well.