Written with reference mainly to traditional stop-motion animation vs. CG , but the points are equally valid for hand-drawn vs. CG.
In the constant push to learn new software there develops this illusion in many beginning student's minds that the software is what will really do it for them, that's what is really important. They lose sight of animation as an expressive art , that shows the hand of the artist.
(click the image to see image larger)
(*some might say that the high-standard set by animators like Milt Kahl, is "perfection" in animation , but it's a skillful illusion-of-perfection, the "illusion of life" , not a slavish reproduction of realism , because there is enough artistic license and graphic "cheats" in these drawings to keep them from looking too perfect, too realistic. The human hand of the artist is evident. There is a warmth and appeal to the drawings that we respond to as humans.)
This is in no way to denigrate the skill level it takes to do appealing, warm CG animation. If anything the CG animator has the greater task to avoid having the animation look "too perfect".
Here are some videos to inspire you as we go into the weekend and next week's Spring Break . I came across these inspirational videos and links on Dan Caylor's "ON ANIMATION" site recently. These are all too good not to share, so I'm reposting them here.
In this recent interview, Daisuke Tsutsumi interviews Frédéric Back about his life, passion, and contribution to SketchTravel. (see sketchtravel.com for more information)
During the making-of Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" several sequences were started and then abandoned due to story changes or pacing issues.
Walt made the difficult decision to cut sequences that had already been completely animated , for the good of the overall pacing of the film. Fortunately for us the Disney Studio preserved the original drawings and the pencil test footage so we can view these "lost" scenes :
The Soup Sequence - (Dwarfs animated mainly by Ward Kimball, with some scenes by Fred Spencer, Bill Tytla, Marvin Woodward, Dick Lundy and Bill Roberts. Snow White animated by Grim Natwick)
Here's the link to see the Bedroom Fight Scene between Grumpy and Doc (Dwarfs animated by Fred Moore , Snow White animated by Grim Natwick , with a couple of scenes of Snow White animated by Jack Campbell) . Embedding is disabled , so you'll have to click through to YouTube to watch it:
In this excerpt from the BBC series "The Secret of Drawing" (2006) director Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville and L'Illusionniste ) demonstrates his approach to drawing for animation. The work shown is an early test scene from "The Illusionist" (released 2010) .
Students: if you're not familiar with the work of Uli Meyer and his London animation studio "Uli Meyer Animation" you should definitely get to know his work.
In addition to his studio website , Uli has a couple of blogs where he posts his incredible pen & ink drawings :
A few samples of Uli's work below. Click on through to those links above to see more of his drawings.
An early show reel of Uli's work from approx. 1987 - 1993 . Commercials and feature films ("Who Framed Roger Rabbit" , "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West", "Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest") -
Amazing animation test done in the style of Ronald Searle, based on Searle's St. Trinian's girls :
Totally captured the Searle look in animation. Uli describes the process:
"On September 22nd I presented a 25sec animation test featuring a St. Trinian's schoolgirl to the creator of those classic British characters, Ronald Searle himself. Searle has had a few bad experiences when it comes to animation -his drawing style is extremely difficult to adapt and apart from a few short pieces of animation done by Ivor Woods in the 70s, he hasn't been impressed by any attempts. Nevertheless, I thought I'd give this a go and am delirious to report that he loved it! He even commented that it was the best he'd seen since Ivor: a truly wonderful compliment.
The original St. Trinian's cartoons are spot gags featuring the terrible killer schoolgirls and their teachers at the notorious, albeit fictional, boarding school. They commit murder, blackmail and extraordinary naughtiness against the backdrop of a supposedly more innocent era - 1945 to 1952.
There isn't a story. Searle's anarchic humor works as a single image -- not obviously lending itself to animation. Therefore, I picked one of the cartoons and added a little lead-up story.
Matt Jones and I boarded a sequence which was originally longer than 25 seconds and involved a massive crowd scene in the St. Trinian's dormitory. But I decided to keep it simple - it was meant to be a test after all. Based on the boards, I drew the layouts and posed the shots on 8s and 12s. The wonderful animation is by Sandro Cleuzo, who animated the first shot and Boris Hiestand, who animated the rest.
My job was to keep the whole project in the Searle universe. I drew the BGs onto frosted cel, each one five times to give the environments a slight boil. I then drew the character animation onto frosted cel with a mapping nib and black ink, trying to keep it as loose as possible whilst putting the characters on 'Searle' model. The animation is mostly on ones and I managed to get through 40-50 drawings per day. Helene Leroux, a very talented young French artist, traced the last shot. Loose lines further produced the 'boil' effect, which goes well with the Searle style.
The drawings were then scanned and composited by Michael Schlingmann in After Effects. Michael figured out a complex system of mixes to keep the multiple background drawings alive and in style with the lively lines of the animation drawings. We added a mix of existing music to the edit, hoping the composers won't mind since this is not a commercial project. The little film was great fun to put together - a welcome opportunity to remember those dusty 2D animation skills."
A recent film supervised by Alexander Petrov , "One More Time" . (all of these images are hand-painted with oil paint on glass, one frame at a time.)
Roughly translated (by Google) from a Russian language page I found with information about the film:
"The film "One more time!" - is a moving memory of the finest part of every person - a carefree childhood. The action takes place in Yaroslavl, 1930. The authors managed with great precision to convey the atmosphere of that time.
The film "One more time!" is the graduate work of young animators. Its authors - Alina Yahyaev, Ekaterina Ovchinnikova, Tatiana Okruzhnova - in one -and-a-half years have created a film under the guidance and in co-creation with the teacher, Alexander Petrov.
Alexander K. Petrov - a famous animator, film director and artist. Member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, member of the International Association of animators ASIFA, a member of the American Academy, an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts. Winner of two national awards (1990, 1995). He was awarded an Academy Award in 2000 for his film "The Old Man and the Sea." Alexander Petrov, creates its own unique films in the technique of oil painting on glass."
Here are some photos showing pre-production sketches and storyboards:
For my Academy of Art animation students I've been remiss in not officially noting that my friend and colleague Diana Coco-Russell has joined the Academy of Art University as the on-campus Associate Director of 2D Animation. In addition to her work on-campus at AAU , Diana also teaches for 2D Animation Online (ANM 610.OL Figurative Concepts and ANM 611.OL Visual Elements of Story ) .
Diana Coco-Russell Associate Director 2D ANM (onsite) , Online Faculty 2D Animation, Drawing for Animation, Character Design
Currently teaches online: ANM 610.OL Figurative Concepts, ANM 611.OL Visual Elements of Story (also teaches ANM 364 Character Design & Drawing for Animation, and Drawing for Animation Workshop on campus )
Biography
Diana Coco-Russell has spent most of her artistic career in animation, with her longest run at Walt Disney Feature Animation as a clean-up animator. Beginning with Beauty and the Beast in 1992 and ending with Home on the Range in 2003 her credits appear on most films from that decade.
Known as Diana Coco in the industry, she began her career doing layout/story boards for Filmation on the Lone Ranger/Tarzan TV series, later moving into clean-up animation working on He-Man and Bravestarr. Having graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena as an Illustration major, she found she preferred the camaraderie of the studio atmosphere to the life of a freelance illustrator. After Filmation folded she went back to UCLA and received a Master’s in Education. Teaching Biology and running the Yearbook class could not match the call of creativity found in feature animation and she returned to the entertainment industry by starting up with Disney Feature Animation in Burbank.
While at Disney she met Walt Stanchfield, who was conducting bi-monthly Gesture Drawing classes for the entire studio. Walt made a huge impact on Diana with his challenge to create and craft powerful drawings with life and simplicity. The call to draw the figure in poses so clear that they ‘spoke to the balcony’ was irresistible. She took Walt’s drawing philosophy ‘on the road’ teaching figure and gesture drawing classes at a variety of institutions including the local Hollywood animation union, Santa Monica City College and Laguna College of Art & Design. Diana continues to ‘coach’ drawing and animation in a variety of venues while pursuing her other interests - plein air painting, animal drawing and riding horses with her husband and friends.
You may view our other current online "2D"/Traditional Animation faculty at this link:
I'm grateful to C. Siemens on the Don Bluth Animation Forum for directing my attention to this remarkable collection of pencil tests by animator Tahsin Özgür.
Here's a sampling:
"For a while my wife, Lale, had a company through which I did some of the best of my animation work. This "animated logo" was meant for that company, but by the time I was finished with the cleanup, she had already closed it down! The model is Lale, of course!"
Here is a short film prepared as part of an exhibition of animation at the Apel Gallery in Istanbul. The format is a "silent movie". Starting around the 00:35 mark it has an amusing "day in the life of an animator" sequence , in which you get a glimpse into Tahsin Özgür's animation work process (continuing my recent theme of posting videos of Master Animator's At Work) , with bits of his animation interspersed with scenes of him drawing at his animation table -
This was prepared for an exhibition at the Apel gallery in Istanbul in 2001.
Last year I made several posts about Sylvain Chomet's new animated feature , The Illlusionist ("L'Illusionniste") . Time to mention it again.
Now that the film has received an Academy Award nomination as "Best Animated Feature Film" and is in a somewhat wider release pattern I wanted to post the release schedule from Sony Classics. Here is where the film is currently playing or will be opening soon:
If the film is playing in your city or close-by I highly recommend you see this sumptuously animated film. Especially if classical hand-drawn animation is something you are passionate about then you owe it to yourself to see and support this beautiful, poignant film on the big screen.
Here is the North American Trailer -
(I suggest that you switch the video settings to HD , watch full-screen).
These have been shared on a lot of blogs , but for completeness sake in this series I'm re-posting them here.
A great lecture (in three parts) by Glen Keane on his approach to animating a scene. You can learn so much by just "looking over the shoulder" of these great animators as they animate.
*NOTE: Sorry, I can't embed the video here. You'll have to go to the AAU Videos web page and scroll down through the list of videos to find "Eric Goldberg". Click on Eric's name to launch the video.
Steve Hulett, who is the Business Agent of The Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839), is conducting a series of interviews which makes for some fascinating listening. Download these interviews to your iPod and enjoy listening to this vibrant oral history project with some of the best animators in the biz:
So far they have about a dozen interviews posted online, with more promised . Interviewees include Mark Kausler , Dan Haskett , Tom Sito, Kathy Zielinski, Bruce Smith, Mark Kirkland, Brian McEntee , Tim Walker , Robert Alvarez , Ed Gombert , and Rubin Aquino. If you're from my generation in animation you recognize all of these names immediately (I've worked with over half of these folks) . Some of you younger people may not immediately recognize all of these names , but just go search for them on IMDB.com and you'll read a very impressive credit list.
I'm looking forward to hearing more in this series of interviews.
This animation is by a high-school student, Kyler Spears. He's applied to Cal-Arts and I would expect he'll get accepted there. Very nice to see someone so young turning out such polished work.
This looks interesting. From France comes this new animated feature film "Une Vie de Chat" (currently in release in French cinemas) , directed by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol.
Un chat mène une double vie secrète : il passe ses journées avec Zoé, la fille d'un commissaire, mais la nuit il accompagne un voleur sur les toits de Paris. Alors que la mère de Zoé enquête sur les cambriolages nocturnes, un autre truand kidnappe la fillette...
Acatleadsasecret double life:he spendshis days withZoe,thedaughterof a police commissioner,butat nighthe accompaniesathiefonthe rooftopsofParis.WhileZoe's motherinvestigatesthe burglariesat night,anothercriminalkidnapsthegirl...
And just in time for Christmas comes this handsome image posted on the film's Facebook page:
This Christmas greeting for CBS Television (from 1966) was designed by R.O. Blechman , animated by Willis Pyle.
(I have always loved the elegant minimalism and great sensitivity of this piece ... I had it on Super-8mm from Blackhawk Films in the late 70's . I've been glad to notice that since I posted it to YouTube on Dec. 24, 2006 that it has received over 281,350views to date. So a few other people appreciate it too I guess.)
More Blechman:
This is from Blechman's Christmas special for PBS, "Simple Gifts" ... opening sequence designed by Maurice Sendak , animated by Ed Smith.
I wish this beautiful Christmas special were available on DVD . I don't know why PBS doesn't air it annually . '
The bits of it available on YouTube are not the best presentations , but unfortunately all that is available at the moment .
Christmas 1914 -
No Room at the Inn -
Here's Richard Williams wonderful (though much too short ) animated version of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" ---
This is another film that should be available in a restored version on DVD , but is only available on the internet.
A cel from "A Christmas Carol" that I own. This was animated by Abe Levitow. Director Richard Williams graciously autographed it for me last time I saw him at the Disney Studio when he was there giving a lecture about animation.
