Recently I promised a teacher friend to repost what I'd put up about Ed Hooks (mistakenly referred to as "Hook" above) and the Laban theory of movement that he teaches. Well here are the sketches, pizza stains and all. I wonder if I made another mistake when I drew effort number one? My sketch looks like pinching rather than flicking. I don't have the book now, so I can't check it.
I'm sorry to say that I'm not a fan of Laban's theories. I think animators would better off spending the time learning how to draw. I have to admit though, that there's a germ of an interesting idea here. Seeing the ideas laid out like this does make me wonder if some type of just-for-fun, cartoonist Kata (a martial arts term) might be possible.
Here's (above) all eight of the Laban gestures performed by acting students. The teacher shouts out the names of different gestures, and they have to adapt the gesture to their acting of the lines. I don't think Shakespeare's very well served here, but it's just an exercise.
This video (above) on stage movement looks like a kind of yoga for actors and cartoonists. There's some nice moves here.
