Warmups

"Acting for Animation" Class Warmup from randolfd on Vimeo.

Before every acting class session, I begin each with physical warm up exercises. Doing this gets students in the right frame of mind as they are going to be involved in constant physical and mental activity. Doing these before each class eases the student into the idea of physical movement and for many students in animation, doing something physical in a classroom setting, definitely gets their attention as it rarely happens in school. To begin, I have everyone stand in a circle. I encourage them to relax and to follow along, to which I begin to do various exercises to warm their bodies up, like marching in place with the knees lifted to about waist height and a few easy stretches to stretch out the large muscle groups in the hips by doing simple hip rotations (hands on the waist). I also have them stretch out their quadriceps and hamstring muscles (for variety I have them partner up with one another and have each person lean on the other), then I have them do simple shoulder and neck stretches. Any kind of light stretching and warm-up is effective and it really depends on the background of the instructor. For this class, I utilized my background in Tai Chi and aerobics to get everyone moving, and for some of the energizers, used many of the group exercises I learned while being a youth counselor for “At Risk” youth.

After their bodies have had a chance to move, I have them stretch out the muscles in their face by making them pronounce exaggerated vowel sounds (a, e, i, o and u). I also incorporate a few centered breathing exercises to help them understand how to use their diaphragms for voice projection, staying relaxed and focused. The warm up session ends by having everyone “shake off” their hands, wrists and legs to release any excess tension in their bodies. This section could be elaborated more, it varies depending on each instructor’s background, but just remember that the point of the warm up is to encourage physical activity and to get used to physically moving around.