These are my notes from an Ed Hooks “Acting for Animators” class taught in San Francisco in 1999.

Ed’s teaching connects acting craft to animation craft in a way that immediately improves your scene work: intention, moment-to-moment thinking, and performance choices that feel grounded instead of “played for results.”

These notes are not a substitute for Ed’s course. They’re a personal study reference I’m sharing because the ideas are useful and easy to revisit. If you have a chance to take one of his seminars, do it.

About Ed Hooks
Ed Hooks is a professional actor and acting teacher, and the author of Acting for Animators and Acting in Animation: A Look at 12 Films. He has taught at animation schools and studios worldwide.

Learn more: Ed Hooks’ website

Introduction

Core idea: Emotion and movement come from thought.
Walt Disney said it best: the mind is the pilot.

Actors vs. animators (the helpful tension):

• Actors work from internals (intention → action → result)

• Animators build externals (movement, facial change, rhythm), but those externals land best when they are driven by an internal action

Rule of acting:
Play an action until something happens that makes you play a different action.

Expectancy:
Stay in the present moment. Don’t “announce” what’s coming next.

Scenes are negotiations:
A scene is stronger when something is being pushed, blocked, avoided, demanded, denied, or protected.

Empathy

Empathy is the engine of performance. We connect to emotion, not information.

Practical notes:

• A villain works best as a normal person with a fatal flaw

• Let the audience see a “window” into the character’s humanity

• Small, honest “tells” often beat big reactions

• Stifled emotion can hit harder than full display

• Keep dignity in embarrassing moments; it’s funnier and more relatable

Improv, Power Centers, and Status

Improv principle: Support your scene partner. It improves the work and lowers pressure.

Power centers: Shifting the body’s “engine” changes the whole character.

• Hips: swagger / runway

• Chin: regal / official

• Chest: heroic / combative

• Forehead: intellectual

• Belly: heavy / grounded

• Knees: street strut

Status reads in body language:

• High status: stillness, direct gaze, ease

• Low status: looking down, face-touching, tension

Laban Movement Analysis

Laban offers a fast way to design character movement with clarity.

Four factors:

• Space (direct / indirect)

• Time (fast / slow)

• Weight (heavy / light)

• Flow (bound / free)

Eight effort actions (examples):

• Press, Wring, Glide, Float, Thrust, Slash, Dab, Flick

Use these as a starting point for character exploration, then refine into something specific.

Character Analysis

Think “iceberg.” You don’t show everything at once, but you build depth underneath the scene.

Consider:

• background, culture, profession, health

• habits, fears, ambition, flaws

• trauma, joys, taste, addiction

• what they protect, what they avoid, what they need

Acting Notes for Animators

A few reminders worth repeating:

• Strong scenes come from need, not just want

• Eye contact is selective; intense eye contact is usually intimacy, conflict, or threat

• Use the moment before your shot to anchor the performance

• Make yelling a late option; control is often quieter

• Don’t animate “results” first—build intention, then let emotion show up as the result

• Subtlety plays. The audience reads more than we think.

Questions / Ed Hooks

Email: edhooks@best.com
Website: edhooks.com

Ready to Go Beyond Presentation?

Shot hygiene makes your work look professional.

Acting makes it unforgettable.

If you want to learn how to:

• Build performances from nothing

• Think in beats, not poses

• Design shots like a director

• Make strong choices without copying reference

Then it’s time to study performance and acting for animation at a deeper level.