More "Making it Real"

AWN has just published the fourth installment of Ellen Besen's "Making it Real" series of articles. When I first started reading these I wasn't sure where she was headed, but I'm glad I stuck with it. This one is the cat's pizza! Here's a great excerpt...

Even a short list like this tells us that it (a character feeling real) is not so much a matter of the life quality of the MOVEMENT, as the life quality of the MOTIVATION which makes a character compelling — the audience compares the characters’ psyches to their own looking for a correspondence. This element is key and far less forgiving than animation quality — that can be mitigated but there is no substitute in performance for accurate emotional reality.

And another....

The recognizable emotional struggle is a primary factor — it gives the character an engine and if this happens to be a main character, it gives the story its engine, as well. This is the foundation, in other words, for that elusive but often sought after character driven storytelling.

Combine this with some of the notes I've been reading from Eric Larson lately and my brain is starting to go Uh-huh, oh yeah, that's right, preach it!
Anyhow, go read up. Good stuff.