Ideas about what makes a character act a certain way in order to come up with a personality.

Recently I was looking through the web analyzing people and their expressions while searching for news to post here. There was no news to be found, but - there is something I realized looking at pictures of people interacting with each other that relates to animation.

If your an animator and your working on a scene between two characters, it is much more different then just animating a character by him or herself. Why is this? Because when two characters come together in a scene, they each hope to appear a certain way around the other character.

I find it really interesting that real people do this, and adding this kind of complexity to a set of puppets interacting would really add a lot.

One type of fake persona I hate is the witty dry humorous act. That above everyone else attitude. Usually this type of person can't face reality and likes power. Sometimes they are smart, but a lot of times they aren't.

A lot of villains have this persona, and you recognize it instantly if you can read people or really studied any of the classic Disney films. Only villains have a knack of becoming this persona even when alone in a deranged way. While more normal characters have a way of imitating this for a bit. Usually in defiance.

Another persona is the "cool" persona. Usually a character will try his or her best to have a "poker" face and use as few words as possible. They let their presence speak for them with steely eyed glares. This kind of person tries to take whatever punishment "self inflicted or otherwise" and brush it aside by controlling all of the emotions that normal people express. Usually the crooked cops, mobsters, thugs...these kinds of characters have this type of persona in films.

Then there is the flaky persona. Did you know a lot of people will act dumb if they think it is appropriate to be that way around others? Hollywood has a trend of making the "guys" of a household with a flaky persona with the wife being the cool one. Just look at the show "Friends" that was on TV for example. Males are made Dumb for humor.

Timid characters tend to get walked all over by others. They like to observe and keep out of the way. The class nerd would have these traits - but they usually don't use personas and acts to impress. But rely instead on not being seen at all.

Last but not least is the know-it-all persona. People who are not usually good actors go with this one. They try to put their brains forward by knowing everything, and like to hang certifiacates on their walls. Just walk in a room with one of these characters and they will explain the intricacies of globular life living in swamps in great detail. On close examination a lot of this fluffy knowledge never really adds up in the end.

So when coming up with ideas for characters you can see that in real life it's easy to get ideas. Just watch people in different situations. Then pick which persona works best for that character in the situations you want in your films. Usually the persona you pick is one where a character uses a trait "humor, brains or no brains, their title" to impress and get along with others.