Overview

This unit advances students’ understanding of character animation through the study, and exploration of essential acting principles and performance techniques. Students will apply this knowledge to animation practice, and will discover how to combine acting and animation principles to convey the inner thoughts, motivations and emotions of animated characters.

Requisites

Prerequisites
ANI10006 Action Analysis and Locomotion

OR

DAN10002 Action Analysis and Locomotion

Equivalent units

DDD20029 - Acting for Animation

Teaching periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
04-August-2025
02-November-2025
Last self-enrolment date
17-August-2025
Census date
31-August-2025
Last withdraw without fail date
19-September-2025
Results released date
09-December-2025

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Describe essential acting principles and performance techniques
  • Deconstruct scenes to identify objectives, obstacles and situations
  • Examine dialogue and audio to identify acting beats and performance possibilities
  • Combine knowledge of emotion, body language, acting and animation principles to enhance the believability of characters and their actions
  • Analyse the execution of acting and performance choices to evaluate the communication of thought, emotion and personality

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
On-campus
Class		 2.00  12 weeks  24

Live Online

Class

 1.00 12 weeks 12
Specified Activities
Various		 4.00  12 weeks  48
Unspecified Activities
Various		 5.50  12 weeks  66
TOTAL     150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
Practical AssignmentIndividual 40% 4,5 
Practical AssignmentIndividual 40% 3,4,5 
Research AssignmentIndividual 20% 1,2,5 

Content

  • Acting for the stage vs. Acting for animation
  • Good acting and bad acting choices
  • Takes, and acting within a pose
  • Layering rhythm into actions and performances
  • Animating thoughts and emotion vs. Animating words
  • Communicating through natural poses and gestures
  • Physicality, exaggeration and movement styles
  • Dynamic facial posing, expression and dialogue
  • Laban Movement Analysis (LMA)
  • Graduate Attribute – Communication Skills: Verbal communication
  • Graduate Attribute – Communication Skills: Communicating using different media
  • Graduate Attribute – Digital Literacies: Technical literacy

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.