Craig Caldwell

I asked my tutor for advice on how to go about looking for animated clips for my presentation.

She suggested choosing two very different clips and then comparing the difference between actors and animators in terms of process. Are there any animators that talk about using psychological gestures?

I hadn't thought about seeing if there were any animators that spoke of using psychological gestures so I did an internet search and came across Craig Caldwell.

Craig is a USTAR professor at the University of Utah, he has presented at conferences such as SIGGRAPH. He has worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation in Burbank and has also worked at Electronic Arts.

He speaks about psychological gestures a lot when he gives lectures about the secrets of animation. I found a summary of his talk from MundosDigitales 2011 - an international festival of animation.

He says on psychological gestures: "Making you character come alive. Psychological gestures are the movements a character makes that reveals their attitude and what they are thinking. These are the little movements that reveal the character; sniffles, wiping your nose, scratching your head, putting your hand in front of your face when you yawn…"

And apparently he showed some clips from Over The Hedge, WALL-E and Casablanca at this point. I shall look through some clips from those animated films and try and spot what he might have used (there's no indication of what part he showed). Watch this space.

A couple of interesting links:
Questions for Craig Caldwell
Secret to Animation is the Basics