#although it's not an example of character acting I'd also like to shoutout OG Powerpuff Girls' intro

[galactic-glamour-girl-posts]

I'm bored...I'm gonna analyse a GIF.

This year marks Ed, Edd n Eddy's 25th anniversary. I may not talk about it much on this blog, but it's one of my all time favourite cartoons. I'd watch it constantly during my childhood and to this day "Big Picture Show" is my favourite series finale. So, given how much I enjoy the show, I was happy to see more tweets about it than usual on my Twitter (yes I'm still calling it that) timeline because of the anniversary.

The influx of tweets (yes I'm still calling them that) about the show led me to this tweet. There's a very good analysis of the moment here on Tumblr, but here's a screenshot from a reply under the tweet of what the user said.

It made me think of other similar moments of character acting in animation, and of course I started thinking of examples from Animaniacs.

There's many to be found across the original show and the reboot, but one example I really like is this moment here:

For context, all three Warners are making similar jokes about the size of a hunter's feet.

It's not the dialogue I wanna talk about, this moment is brief and ultimately not that important, but I just love how the Warners are animated here. It tells you a lot about them based only on the character acting and body language:

Yakko

Yakko is the first to come onscreen to make a comment, indicating that he's the leader. He calmy walks into frame holding one hand out conversationally, before standing with both arms behind his back. Compared to the other two's stances, this makes him look more reserved and professional. This not only indicates that he's older, but also suggests he's cool-headed and not as reliant on physical action as his sibs, hence why his arms are behind his back; he only really needs his voice. He gives a smug grin, so even without hearing what he's saying you know he's being snarky right now, which contrasts with his body language, showing he's purposefully maintaining a deceptively non-aggressive demeanour and is likely a smart aleck in general.

Wakko

Wakko is the only one who doesn't come in from the side, instead he enters frame from below, indicating that he's the most unconventional of the three. He flails his arms around rather than keeping them in one place like Yakko, which not only suggests that he's more wild and energetic, but (as I said earlier) is more reliant on physical action than Yakko. Wakko does a sort of "don't worry about it" motion with his left arm with a simple smile on his face, a smile that lacks any smugness. This suggests that he's a little friendlier in comparison. He sticks out his tongue like a dog and eventually settles on T-rex arms, indicating that he's more animalistic than his sibs.

Dot

Dot quickly hops into frame from the side, almost like a pounce, with a determined and somewhat aggressive facial expression, showing energy and spunk. She punches the air, which only emphasizes her feistiness. Her movements suggest she's more prone to being outwardly aggressive than her brothers. Her expression softens to more of a cute smile, showing that she's not all aggression and is quite cute and jovial too. She settles with her hands on her hips, a typical pose used to show that a character is sassy and/or confident, hence indicating that Dot is too.

Basically I just think the way animation can be used to establish characters without us having to hear a word out of them is really cool.