The POWER of Transitive Verbs

Hey People!

First of, click on the following links to download the lists
LIST 1
LIST 2
LIST 3

Acknowledgements:
I got this lists thanks to my mate Robert Barros and he got them from someone or somewhere in AM, but he said the original source came from Doug Dooley (AM Mentor, Pixar dude). So thanks to Doug Dooley and all the chain of people that led to Barros and ultimately to me.

hehe...anyways, after the Acknowledgement section, you might be wondering, how is this useful?

Well, you just gotta check the list and start thinking in your heads how your specific character could convey those words in single poses and there you have it.

More interesting, more meaningful poses, equals, more interesting, more meaningful acting performances.

Instead of having a character be happy and just throw in the 'happy face' you can try to convey that the character is ELATED, exhilarated, entertained, amused OR instead of the character being mad, he/she can be enraged, irritated, aggravated. There are a hundread million ways in which you can convey a certain emotion.

What I've done ever since I got this list is, I look for the phrases/beats in the animation and then I try to find an interesting "transitive verb" that could define that phrase/beat, I then start acting out ways of conveying those ideas within the context of the phrase and the overall shot and things like poses and acting choices start FLOWING!

Cool! I hope you find it useful!

Alex