Acting for animation

During the process of preparing the actual story of the short animation I decided to read something relevant to improve it and make it more interesting and found some great concepts which helped me understand a lot.

The book is called "Acting for animators" by Ed Hooks and it's really focusing on how animators can improve their work by understanding the acting. It is talking about how every story must have a conflict or an obstacle to overcome in order to be interesting, as well the character must have an objective. So the character should play an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle.

There are also some interesting and simple principles which animators must follow and keep in mind while planning a story. First thing to remember is that thinking leads to conclusions and emotions lead to actions and every emotion is an automatic value response, and animators must show that process in the character.
Empathy was a concept that I didn't know how to define before, always thinking that is sympathy. However, empathy is "feeling into" and sympathy is "feeling for".

It also talks about the theatrical reality which is only showing the parts where there is a story or a conflict. This is making the scene begin from the middle, not from the beginning.

The character should play an action until something happens to make him/her play a different action. This is also related to the concept of acting is reacting so if the character is changing action is because of the reaction. In the end a scene is basically a negotiation.