Session 6 - Good Examples of Body Acting

Body acting plays a vital role in effectively communicating with viewers. Body postures can help show/exaggerate a certain type of emotion/feeling without having to verbally speak their action(s).

As shown in the GIF above, we can see Scrat (the name of the character) displaying at least 4 identifiable poses from when he is sniffing the ground to when he slams the acorn into the ground. From each of these poses we can tell what Scrat is thinking and what he plans to do next.

STAGE 1: From this pose, we can tell that he is curious. He has his acorn tucked in away from what’s ahead. This action suggest he is trying to protect his acorn from what he is looking head. This is also exaggerated by his nose which is similar to the actions of what a dog would be doing by sniffing/smelling what is ahead of him, in order to gain a better understanding of what it is.

STAGE 2: From this pose, we can tell that after he realised it was safe for him to bring out his acorn (which he does do in this pose), the shows a face of excitement by opening his mouth and opening his eyes wide open. 
 

 

STAGE 3: From this pose, we can now clearly see that his body language is very expressive. It’s also clear to see what his next action is just by his current pose. This consists of 2 elements. The first being his body posture, his body is elongated upwards, stretched out and his arms are up high. From this, we can tell that he is ‘charging up’ for something. The second elements is told by his eyes. His eyes show us what he is planning to do with all this energy that he has built up. And from this alone, we can safely conclude that Scrat is planning to use the acorn and smash it into the ground.

STAGE 4: Finally, we can see that his last action is that he slams him acorn into the ground, as concluded from stage 3. We can tell by his facial expression that he is happy and pleased by the result of his actions from stage 1. On a side note, we can see that exaggeration is greatly applied here. If we look at his lower body, we can see that he is significantly high of the ground and by using what we know from stage 3, it goes to show how much power Scrat had in that initial build up.