Saturday, January 10, 2009

Willard Mullin - Animated Line-of-Action

Sherm Cohen has posted a series of links to various pieces by the great sports cartoonist Willard Mullin on his Cartoon Snap! blog.

This reminded me of  some scans I have of Mullin's work which have always seemed to me to indicate that had he wanted to Willard Mullin could have been a great animator.

These are excellent to study for cartooning in general, but animation in particular. This is what I'm always harping on when I tell my students to "push the pose , push the line-of-action"  in animation. 

(click on the images to see them larger)








5 comments:

Sherm said...

Hi David...I've never seen those top two Mullins pages...they are terrific! What book are they from?

David said...

Hi, Sherm,

The book is "The Complete Guide to Drawing, Illustration, Cartooning and Painting." by Gene Byrnes.

My grandmother Vera Nethery gave it to me. She also gave me the Famous Artist's course materials . She was a talented artist herself and had taken the Famous Artists's correspondence course.

David McBride said...

The drawings are amazing they feel like they are moving already its hard to explain.

Was the box animated in CG or stop motion?

Anonymous said...

One animator working in a style that seemed to owe a lot to Mullin's was Warners Rod Scribner. Scribner was known to draw fluid poses from the daily sports pages as a way of warming up daily, and sometimes actually animated with brush and India Ink. Of course, Scribner loved motion and it shows in his stuff. Mullin himself might have been a terrific animator, had he chosen that career path.

Vipin said...

wow!

These are awesome, really makes it clear about the process. Thank you so much!