Digital Acting By George Maestri 2001

Annotated Bibliography
 In this article, the author talks about creating characters that evoke empathy.  This means that an animator, no matter their medium, needs to be able to understand some of the principles of acting.  Creating empathy for a character can draw an audience in.  One principle that Maestri discussed was the idea of giving a character purpose for every movement.  The purpose can be focused on an object or an idea, but when character's lose focus that's when performances become muddy.

My Thoughts
Can this link back to the article on emotion and design?  Can you create empathy through a design concept?  It seems like some of these principles could sort of cross over.  Everything in an interaction should have a purpose and it's much better to be clear and have an objective for each element in a design.
This seems a bit cut and dry.  The example of the dog looking at the bowl or looking at the cat, seems too cartoonish.  The author says the dog would just be staring into space if he were at 50% focus on each, but it just seems cheap to have the character looking one way then the other.  I don't think people's focus is really always 100% on things and I think that can be played out on screen by a skilled actor or artist and it would make the performance more nuanced.