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For me this is one of the most interesting and engaging aspects of animating. Creating a pose that communicates what your character is feeling and what the energy in that character is doing is when the actor within us gets to come out and play. Its when we get to tap into our inner child a make believe. Communicating energy and emotion with your character has so much more to do with physical pose than the facial expression you put on your character.

When making decisions about a characters pose we are exploring deeply ingrained instinct from the human mind, scientists say that we get 55% of our impression of someone from their body language, 38% from the tone, speed and inflection of the voice and only 7% from what is actually said. When creating drama the poses you choose are the most powerful tool at your disposal, when they are used well the result is simply magical.

LINKS:

Larry's Toon Institute with a very basic overview of posing.

Keith Lango's BRILLIANT video tutorials on posing. A must see for any learning character animator. Part1. Part2.

My illustrated notes on posing characters for animation.

Shape of Action.

Cameron Fielding on the power of Pyramids.

Shawn Kelly on Twinning.

Keith Lango on posing with power centers

Victor Navone looks at some live action reference on posing.

Thoughts on making your character poses mean something.

Posing hands. Part1. Part2

Carlos Baena on posing characters and laying out a shot to show their status in a scene.

From a site called IK boost, a great article on character posing.

A post from friend of the ARC Alonso with some great tips on understanding how the body moves.

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Shawn Kelly's 21 principles of lipsync animation.

Keith Lango's notes on Lip Syncing.

Notes on dialogue from Eric Larson.

Notes on Lip Sync.

This video tutorial on animating with dialogue from the Animation Tips Blog is a beauty, practical and easy to follow.

The Mayerson on animation blog with some interesting thoughts on lip sync.

3D world magazine has made some tutorials from Kyle Balda on animating with dialogue available. Adding to the Character - Dialogue section.

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Shawn Kelly on acting.

Notes on acting from Doron A. Meir.

Victor Navone on exaggeration.

Ed Hook's notes on acting for animation from the blog of Carlos Baena.

Shawn Kelly on operative words.

Notes from Eric Larson.

Carlos Baena discusses how to play on an audiences expectations with your acting.

Carlos Baena examines some expressions.

Victor Navone demonstrates how to animate a facial take.

Carlos Baena on internal and external dialogue.

Carlos Baena analyses a scene from the Mupet show.

Victor Navone has a great new post on animating eyebrows up, I particularly likes the list of common eyebrow behaviours.

See how many different animators tackle the same piece of dialogue in the internets biggest animation contest.

Some notes and an example from me about the advantages of Acting A Scene Out.

This one from Tomas Jech is about giving your character subtext, what I would call gestures with meaning.

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You may be surprised by just how far I have Walks and Runs down the list of things to study. It is a common misconception that walks and runs are a good beginners exercise. They are much harder to execute than you might think. Why? Well because to get a walk right you need to correctly execute almost every single animation principle there is. Bringing everything together in harmony in one short scene. Because of this I believe that walks in particular are better for doing near the end of your studies, when you have drilled yourself on all the basic principles and are ready to take it to the next level.

So before reading on maybe you need to ask yourself if your ready to be here yet. If you haven't already done so you may be better off doing a short and well executed action scene like a jump, kick or weight lift. If you can do those sorts of scenes well then I think you will be able to get much more out of these exercises and tutorials.

LINKS:

A comprehensive breakdown on animating a walk with examples from Dermot O'Conner

Notes on walking with lots of animated examples.

Notes on animating a convincing walk.

In this article Shawn Kelly talks about positioning the characters weight during a walk.

Cameron Fielding talks about the importance of pushing off with the back foot during a walk.

Jason Ryan's Video tutorial on animating a sneek. (If asked for a password type: JRA)

Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff have some great advice on animating walks on the Thinking Animation web site and the Thinking Animation blog.

Dermot from Idleworm talks us through how he animates a walk cycle in Flash.

The Bio Motion Labs Walker lets you study the motion of different walks of different sex, attitude and weight from different angles, they have a Runner too

Jason is a Dreamworks animator and in this post you can watch a timelaps screen capture of him animating a walk cycle.

A nice simple, concise and clear walk tutorial from Mike Brown.