ABSTRACT
The difference between actors and animators: Actors do, while animators describe. Animators have to project their acting like a puppeteer would do but there is, other than stop motion, no physical puppet they act with but pencil drawings or digits, bits and bytes. So they need to visualize their feelings and emotions frame by frame, with their brain constantly focused on motion analysis. An animator should cooperate with the character, says Ed Hooks, not dictate to him. The best animators allow their figures to be independent. Then they will be surprised of what cartoon characters are able to do. Ed Hooks, who wrote one of the most important books about Acting for Animators, is no animator himself. He started out being an actor and offered acting classes. In all cases, animated characters are basically developed in preproduction and refined in the process of animation. An important part of the preproduction process is the writing.
