Emotional Contrast

Shifting emotions keep a performance engaging

Photo by Mollie Sivaram on Unsplash

Creating poses full of emotion is one of our strengths, as animators. Single emotions, no matter how well done, can become ponderous. To make performances that stand out, you need contrast.

Emotional contrast.

What gives animated characters the strongest sense of being alive are emotional changes. All the great acting coaches teach this, from Stanislavski to Uta Hagen.

Charlie Chaplin was a master of emotional contrast. Without words, he could have an audience laugh out loud, and a moment later, cry like a baby. The stronger the emotional contrast, the stronger the impact on the audience.

Emotional contrast feels complex, and human emotion, if you haven’t figured it out by now, can be extremely complicated, and even contradictory. We laugh through tears and bury fear beneath bravado. We hurt others to salve our own pain.

Let moments of vulnerability peak through the character’s pomposity. Mix hesitation in with confidence. Shifting emotions creates complexity and humanity.

Another thing that emotional contrast does is it makes a character feel unpredictable. In an industry that churns out a lot of predicable stories, whenever we can add a spot of the unpredictable, it can go a long way.