Disney's Return to Hand-Drawn Animation

Getting closer (December '09) -

Milt Kahl Tribute - Videos online

(click image to see it larger)

In April the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences hosted a tribute to master animation Milt Kahl, which they called "Milt Kahl: Animation's Michelangelo" .

The Academy has now posted video excerpts from some of the panel speakers from that event, including John Musker, Ron Clements, Brad Bird, Andreas Deja, Floyd Norman, Richard Williams, John Pomeroy, and Alice Davis, among other notables.

Great memories of the master . Go watch the videos here, right now !  --- 

Milt Kahl Tribute Videos - Click HERE -

a little reminder of how amazing Milt's animation is: 

Myths of the Animation Industry

from The Illusionist directed by Sylvain Chomet

Excellent article from the folks at Animation Mentor that should be read by all students of animation:

Myths of the Animation Industry

By Mark Garabedian

The animation industry is the business of creating myth and magic. As such, it's not surprising that a myriad of meta-myths have arisen—easy-to-believe falsehoods about the industry itself. In preparing for their future careers, the next generation of animators and artists need not be waylaid by such rumors. Below are five common myths about the world of cartoons and the realities behind them.

Myth: 2D animation is a dying art -

Nothing could be further from the truth. While 3D animation is filling theaters across the globe, 2D art endures. Internationally, films such as Sony Picture's Persepolis ,Paprika , and The Secret of Kells continue to astound audiences with engrossing, hand-drawn cinema. In Scotland director/animator Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville) is nearing completion on his next hand-drawn animated feature , The Illusionist. In the U.S. , Walt Disney Animation is hard at work on its new 2D feature, The Princess and the Frog, while shows such as Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender and Cartoon Network's Chowder provide bright futures for the traditional style. Beyond television, the Internet has spawned numerous opportunities for vector animation (Flash and Toonboom) 2D projects as well.

Myth: It's essential to be adept at every facet of the animation process -

To quote G.I. Joe, "Knowing is half the battle." The other half is being good at what you do. Familiarity with the entire animation process can only help you, but you are being hired for a specific position. In the words of Knowledge Adventure 3D Artist Chris Marsh, "Fanning your effort and skills out to do everything the process demands only decreases your quality of work and increases production time, and that's never good." The animation process requires the efforts of many specialized individuals. Walt Disney didn't achieve his whimsical empire by being the greatest animator ever. He did so by assembling the greatest animation team ever. Discover what you do best and strive to do it better.

Myth: You want to work for a big studio -

Certainly there's no shame in working for a large studio. Who wouldn't want to have Mickey Mouse on their business card? But smaller studios have their share of perks too. A smaller company gives a great artist more opportunity to shine. Networking becomes easier, and there's more room to expand your personal style.

Myth: You should stick with a single studio for as long as possible -

Ladders: We all have the urge to climb them, especially corporate ones. But in the animation industry, sometimes it's important to spread your artistic wings. Surely no one wants an artist who never sticks around to finish a project, but by changing studios and production companies from time to time, you make yourself better known to the animation community as a whole, networking, and becoming associated with your body of work rather than your company's. "A good stint at a company is one to three years," says Big Bad Tomato digital storyboard artist Sylvia T. Leung, "it shows you are committed enough to stay, but ambitious enough to leave."

Myth: You don't need to know how to draw-

While drawing is not necessarily a key skill in today's world of texture mapping and wire framing, it's still a valuable technique in almost every step of the animation process. Putting pencil to paper, breaking down complex objects into simple shapes, and translating them into graphite blueprints will help artists of all fields better their craft. This ability will also make you more attractive to a wider number of prospective employers. Remember, even Rodin roughly sketched his figures before casting clay.

Just as 24 drawings a second creates the illusion of motion, assumptions and opinions give the illusion of industry facts. Fortunately, the truth is usually quite optimistic and should give any budding artist hope for their creative and professional future.

cover from "Drawn To Life" Vol. 1 , by Walt Stanchfield

Frank Thomas "Hook" pencil test

Animation by Frank Thomas.

This post has been updated. The original version of this pencil test that I uploaded had some of the drawings missing .

I've rescanned this from the xerox copies I had . I located the missing drawings and I think I've got the timing and lip-sync pretty close to the original. (although I'm still not 100% happy with the lip-sync ... it's off, although sometimes it looks right on , so I wonder if it's the Flash player showing it at differing frame rates, depending on bandwidth at the time ? I should try to post this as a Quicktime so it'd be more accurate. )

There were no peg holes or numbers on the xerox copies I have of these drawings so I had to do a lot of guess work and "nudging" to get the drawings to register correctly, but I finally got it to look pretty solid. The parts of the drawings to the right of the screen where the image gets lighter and drops out are artifacts from the photocopies I have. Unfortunately it will just have to stay that way for now because I don't have the time to go in to touch-up the lines which dropped out.

Abe Levitow Notes on Animating

Animation drawing by Abe Levitow :

Mark Mayerson has posted a set of Notes on Animating by the master Warner Bros. animator Abe Levitow.

Click through the link to read the notes:

Notes on Animating by Abe Levitow

The last paragraph of Levitow's notes resonates now more than ever given the current precarious position of hand-drawn animation:

"Even though the Disney animator Marc Davis has said:  'Animation is an anachronism; it is that rarity, a handmade product in a mechanized age', the satisfaction gained from doing it well is the kind of satisfaction that can only be gotten by creating something with your own hands that no one has ever done before.  It's a sublime feeling ... you'll see !!"

Abe Levitow animation drawing :

(these great drawings are from the Abe Levitow webpage. Go there to see more of Abe's drawings.)

More Animation Tutorials - Tony White's Desktop Academy

Seems like everywhere I look these days people are posting tutorials and training videos for classical hand-drawn animation .

The latest tutorial website to go up is Tony White's Desktop Academy of Traditional Animation.

He has the first free tutorial up on the subject of Keys, Extremes, and Inbetweening:

Desktop Academy Tutorial 01 - Inbetweening

For those of you who don't know about him, Tony is the author of the excellent books

"The Animator's Workbook",

"Animation from Pencils to Pixels ~ Classical Techniques for Digital Animators"


and the new book

"How to Make Animated Films" (to be released in June, 2009)

New "Princess & The Frog" trailer

First "official" trailer for Disney's new hand-drawn animated feature "The Princess & The Frog" ---




High Quality Quicktime .mov version of trailer

Looks beautiful. I'm looking forward to later this year :

August - Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea

December - The Princess & The Frog

Yay !

Drawing for Animation: Construction

James Baxter demonstrates how to construct a character for animation:

If you've not seen the sequence that James supervised for Kung Fu Panda go watch it here:

Kung Fu Panda Opening Dream Sequence

Also, as I mentioned a few posts below , Don Bluth has been posting some animation tutorials on YouTube to promote his longer Animation Tutorial DVD's . These clips are excerpts from the longer videos, but contain some good information on how to construct a cartoon character for animation:






And here's an interesting demonstration by Glen Keane on how he approaches animating a scene. Glen's initial approach is to get the feeling , to capture the "forces" that are animating the character from the inside.



Each of these artists has their own approach to drawing, but all have in common their use of the principle of constructing the character from basic forms in a rough drawing before going over top of those forms to draw the details of the character in outline. (it's like drawing from the "inside out") One thing I've noticed is that a lot of students are still trying to draw too "clean" , drawing in outline , but without any structure underneath the outlines of the drawings.

New Sub-section of blog: Animation Equipment

In the sidebar notice there is now a link to a new sub-section of this blog:   Hand-Drawn Animation Equipment which has sources and suggestions for setting up an animation workspace.

Most of the sources are the same ones listed to the right in the sidebar under the Links to "Animation Supplies"  and "Animation Software" ,  but I thought it would be useful to have a page with photos of the various kinds of animation desks, discs, etc. that are available.  I've also included some Do-It-Yourself instructions for those you who would prefer to build your own desk.

(photo by Dan Caylor)                                                                  

Ponyo watch

Posted below is a new "Ponyo On A Cliff by the Sea" trailer, from the French-language release.

This is all hand-drawn, from director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Those who have seen it describe it as “very similar to 'My Neighbor Totoro' in tone, with a simpler plot that focuses more on the emotions of the young protagonists than anything else, and the animation is gorgeous.”



As usual, Daniel Thomas MacInnes' "The Ghibli Blog: Conversations on Ghibli" provides the best coverage leading up to the U.S. release of the film (by Disney) on August 14, 2009 :

Ponyo stills, clips , and other coverage on The Ghibli Blog

The U.S. release is supervised and produced by Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Hayao Miyazaki, John Lasseter, Steve Alpert .

Don Bluth Animation Tips

I like to use this blog to post links to inspirational material or practical resources wherever they may be found. You can never read enough or practice enough when it comes to animation, so I see this blog as a supplement to what we're teaching you in your online classes.

I recently became aware that Don Bluth has been making a series of Animation Tutorials on DVD.

Don has generously posted some sample videos for free on his web site DonBluthAnimation.com .

Obviously the sample videos are to whet your appetite to purchase the full-length tutorials on DVD, but even the samples have some great "nuts & bolts" basic info. on animation. I suggest you check them out , especially if you are new to hand-drawn animation:


Basic Tutorial on Doing a Character Turn-around, Pegging, and Labeling drawings

Animating a Walk Cycle

Animating a small Bird in Flight

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Frank Thomas Pencil Test - Lady and Tramp kiss

I have posted this pencil test on my blog previously , but thought that I'd repost it to bring your attention to some of the drawings from this sequence posted recently on Michael Sporn's excellent blog . Click on the link to Michael's blog to see the drawings.

L & T drawings

Here's the pencil test:

Classic Milt Kahl pencil test

I could watch these pencil tests for hours .  (I wish Disney would release special pencil test editions on the "extras" sections of the DVD's .)  

Mowgli trying to climb the tree , animated by Milt Kahl.

From Disney's "The Jungle Book". 

(found via Alan Cook, via Victor Ens)

An old one , but a good one : The Training of a Golden Age Animator

Looking through some notes today I found a link to a couple of old posts on other people's blogs that are worth reading for any of you animation students (and worth reading for those of us who have been around the business for a while) .

The first is an article on the ASIFA Animation Archive called "The Training of a Golden Age Animator" , which came about when the director of the ASIFA Animation Archive, Steve Worth, was asking himself the question: "What sort of education did golden age animators have? "

Steve posts some examples from the life of master animator Carlo Vinci.

The essay , "The Training of a Golden Age Animator" should be read and taken to heart by all of us who would be students of the art of animation.

The second bit of wisdom I have for you was posted by Will Finn : A Letter From Ward Kimball.   

When he was in High School the young Mr. Finn wrote to Disney animator Ward Kimball for advice about getting into the animation field. Kimball's letter, written in typical iconoclastic Kimball style, is a very sage piece of advice and despite the breezy style conveys that Kimball respected and cared for young animators or wannabe animators like Will Finn (who in fact went on to become one of our finest contemporary animators) .

Here is the reply that Ward Kimball sent to Will Finn:

Kimball letter to Finn

Good reading.

SHOP TALK: Cintiq tablets and Paperless Animation

The latest issue of Steve Moore's online animation magazine FLIP! has a survey of animator's who are using Cintiq tablets for their professional and personal animation work.

Many of our students at Academy of Art University Online are animating paperlessly using Cintiqs and/or Intous tablets in our "traditional" (i.e. hand-drawn) animation classes . So this round up of professional opinions of how the workflow is changing (for better or worse) using tablet-based paperless animation is on interest.

Check out the discussion:

SHOP TALK: How Do You Like Your Cintiq ?

It's always interesting to listen to animators discussing their favorite tools (it used to be that animators would get in to long, often passionate discussions about what was the "best" pencil .)

I think my friend Rusty Mills has the most detailed answers about what it means to be a traditional animator working on a Cintiq .  Rusty emphasizes that it's not the Cintiq (or other tablets) that make something difficult to draw or to achieve a good line quality: it's the software being used and the computer that the tablet is attached to.

Rusty debunks several myths about using a Cintiq, such as:

"The Cintiq has terrible line quality."

Again it it entirely dependent on the software. Often the user doesn't know enough about a software package to alter the look of the line. I have even seen particular studios mandate bad line quality because the people in charge don't know how to use the software correctly.

If you find using a Cintiq alters your drawing style for the worse try changing some of the setting both in your software and in the tablet driver itself.

Following up on some of what Rusty talks about in that article on the "FLIP!" site here are things that I have found help to make animating with a tablet a much more enjoyable experience:

1.) Adjust the Digital Drawing Tools to your own preferences:

Also, an important point often missed by beginners to tablet based drawing is that the individual animator needs to make adjustments to the pre-set brushes and pencil tools that come with the software , be it TVPaint , Toonboom, or Flash, etc. The digital drawing tools in these programs can and should be tweaked to fit your own preferences , exactly as some animators prefer a certain type of pencil over another. (Blackwing 602 or Blaisdell Layout Pencil? Tombow or Col-Erase Tuscan Red ? ) Don't simply use the default settings on the drawing tools as they come with the software off the shelf . Play. Experiment . Try adjusting the tools until you get a "pencil" or a "pen" line that feels comfortable to draw with.

In addition to adjusting the drawing tools to fit your own preferences also be aware that some of the better animation programs such as TVP Animation (highly recommended) have custom "papers" which can be turned on in the background. The paper will give a more textured, toothy feel to the drawing , simulating the feel of drawing on a slightly rough surfaced paper.

For example here is a rough character sketch I did in TVP Animation with my own custom pencil tools . Most people looking at this sketch would have no idea that it wasn't drawn on paper:

(click image to see it larger)



2.) Project Resolution Size:

Another thing that many people overlook is that screen resolution of the project does matter : if your original file is low-res. like 640 x 480 you will not have nearly the same amount of control and subtly of line as working at full 2K Film Resolution 2048 x 1556 . Many people like to work at HD "wide-screen" resolution 1920 x 1080. Trying to get subtle line quality at 640 x 480 is like drawing on the back of a napkin or on a Post-It note compared to working on a large canvas or a large piece of high-grade bond paper. Sometimes I will work at lower resolutions if I'm just blocking in rough sketches that I know are not going to be any larger, the same as I will sometimes do a rough storyboard using Post-It notes , but if the line quality counts then use a larger resolution .

Then when you export your finished animation for uploading to a website you can reduce the size (say 2048 x 1556 output to 640 x 480 ) so the file sizes aren't unmanageable , but the original resolution should be as high as your computer can reasonably handle (this can become an issue if you don't have enough memory or your CPU is not fast enough ; as always a faster computer with more memory will run better. If your animation software runs sluggishly at high resolutions then it's time to upgrade ) .

3.) Wacom Pen Nibs:

Finally, be aware of the different types of stylus nibs that Wacom makes . The standard hard plastic nib that comes with the pen stylus can tend to be a bit slippery and hard to control as it skates across the surface of the tablet. Some people solve this by putting a thin piece of tracing paper vellum or a frosted (matte surface) piece of acetate over the tablet's surface to give the surface of the the tablet a bit of "grain" so the pen tip isn't quite so slippery. But another option that I prefer (especially for sketching rough animation drawings) is to use the Wacom "Felt Tip" nibs. These fiberous nibs feel more like drawing with a real pencil and are not as slippery as the standard plastic nib. For digital clean-up or "inking" I will sometimes use the Wacom "Stroke Nibs" which are like the standard plastic tip nibs, but they have a little spring in them which gives them a more flexible, springy feeling when laying down a line.

Here's another example of a "traditional" looking drawing done with a Cintiq tablet using the TVP Animation software:

(click image to view larger)


This is by Academy of Art Online instructor Mark Chong. Here's a screen capture time lapse movie of Mark drawing this in TVP:



Here's another video I found on YouTube showing the process of animating a traditional style animation scene (this time using Flash) in a paperless environment on the Cintiq tablet.

"Song of the Sea" - Tomm Moore

Tomm Moore, the director of the recently released animated feature film "The Secret of Kells" , is at work on a new film called ""Song of the Sea" .

On his production blog Tomm Moore mentioned that they are using TVP Animation to animate the film paperlessly.

Here's the first teaser trailer:

"Elemental Magic" hand-drawn effects by Joseph Gilland

See ? I said in my previous post that we're experiencing an embarrassment of riches in the amount of quality animation material being published these days : yet another great, must have book coming soon .

Elemental Magic: The Classical Art of Hand-Drawn Special Effects Animation by Joe Gilland

Michel Gagné (himself one of the top special effects animators in the world) gives the book a glowing review on his website:

Michel Gagné review of Joe Gilland's "Elemental Magic"

Create stunning animated effects such as fiery blazes, rippling water, and magical transformations either hand-drawn or digitally. Animation veteran Joseph Gilland breaks down the world of special effects animation with clear step-by-step diagrams and explanations on how to create the amazing and compelling images you see on the big screen. The author covers the tradtional hand-drawn technique while showing you how to apply the philosophy, theory, and techniques to your digital animation projects as well.


(image from Elemental Magic , Copyright © by Joseph Gilland)

Apply the theory behind effects animation to your traditional and digital animation projects.
Written by animated effects guru, Joseph Gilland, who has worked on such feature films as Lilo & Stitch,
Brother Bear, Pochahontas, Tarzan, and Mulan.

Publication Date: March 06, 2009


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By the way, this is a good time to mention again that The Academy of Art Online offers a fantastic course in traditional special effects animation, ANM 261 Introduction to Effects Animation, written and taught by Kathleen Quaife who is also one of the top traditional effects animators in the industry. (and I have it on good authority that Kathleen is also putting the finishing touches on her own book about Special Effects Animation ! The more the better ; in character animation we have both the Richard Williams book and Eric Goldberg's book , along with Frank & Ollie's "bible" The Illusion of Life, Tony White's books, and of course good old Preston Blair ... now after many years the effects animators are filling a much needed niche )

"Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes" by Walt Stanchfield

It seems there is a plethora of animation riches being published these days.

Another set of books to add to your MUST HAVE list is "Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes" Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Walt Stanchfield , edited by Don Hahn.

Go to Don Hahn's website to see a "trailer" for the book where Don speaks about the material contained in these two volumes:

http://www.donhahn.com/

These weekly handouts from Walt Stanchfield are something that those of us who worked at Disney in the 80's and 90's treasure. Now they are being shared with the whole world . (actually they've been "shared" quite a bit by being copied, scanned , and passed around from hand to hand or from website to website , but this is the first time that ALL of Walt's notes have been formally compiled into two handy volumes . 800 pages of material ! )

The press release from Don Hahn says:

"I am so pleased to announce that for the first time ever, we have assembled all of Walt Stanchfield’s amazing handout notes and lectures into a two volume collection titled, DRAWN TO LIFE - 20 GOLDEN YEARS OF DISNEY MASTER CLASSES. Walt was an animator, trainer, mentor and coach for decades at Disney and helped breathe life into the new golden age of animation with his teachings. He influenced such talented artists as Tim Burton, Brad Bird, John Musker, Glen Keane, Andreas Deja and John Lasseter.

To me, DRAWN TO LIFE is one the strongest primers on animation ever written. The material spares no detail on the craft of animation, but also digs deep into the artistic roots of animation. It is a publication that has been anticipated for many years by every artist and student that Walt ever came in contact with. It has been a labor of love for me and I am so proud that Walt’s teachings will live on in these two volumes."

Pre-orders are being taken now. Official publishing date is March 27.



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