From The Bolex Reporter magazine ,Vol. 18 , No. 1 (1968) , an in-depth look at the Bolex 155 Macrozoom Super-8 camera.
Also an article from The Bolex Reporter, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1969) on "Zoom or Macrozoom?" that discusses some of the distinctive features of the Paillard-Bolex Macrozoom lens (Bolex 155 and Bolex 160) , but more generally discusses the unfortunate tendency of many amateur filmmaker's to over-use the Zoom Lens while filming , too much in-and-out which gets repetitive and visually annoying, so it is a caution to avoid using the zoom function too much. (what was true in the 1960's is still true today!)
Online I notice a lot of confusion and imprecision of terminology when discussing traditional hand drawn animation , so I thought it would be useful to post a reference document with a glossary of commonly used terms .
Animation - ( *never “Animations”) - - The act, process, or result of imparting life, interest, spirit, motion, or activity. - The quality or condition of being alive, active, spirited, or vigorous. - The art or process of preparing animated cartoons. - An animated cartoon : A series of drawings that bring inanimate objects and characters to life.
*Animation is an “uncountable noun” , therefore it does not have an extra “s” added for “Animations”. Unlike countable nouns, uncountable nouns are substances, concepts, etc. that we cannot divide into separate elements. We cannot "count" them. For example, we cannot count "milk". We can count "bottles of milk" or "litres of milk", but we cannot count "milk" itself , so for example , we do not speak of “bottles of milks” . Or another example is "music" ... we don't speak of "musics" . Neither would we speak of "animations" , but rather animation.
For professional animators trained in the traditional animation discipline hearing the term "Animations" is like fingernails on a chalkboard.
My friend and colleague, storyboard artist and animator Eddie Pittman also addressed this on his Substack recently. Eddie wrote:
In the animation world—at least the one I grew up in, back when we carved our drawings on stone walls and ran around with flickering torches to watch them move—the word “animation” is a mass noun (or so says grammar experts). Like the words “furniture”, “software”, or “music.”
I mean, you wouldn’t say: “I listened to some musics today.” You would say: “I listened to music.”
In the same way, you don’t traditionally say: “I make animations.” You say: “I make animation.”
So when I hear someone say: “I love Pixar’s animations,” that’s nails-on-a-chalkboard wrong. Why does it bother me so much? Animation isn’t a product—like a collection of little wiggly things you can count like…wiggly things. It’s a discipline. A craft. A performance. It’s acting. It’s dance. Built one painstaking drawing at a time.
When I started in animation, back in the 90s—long before GIFs, social media, and those motion UI widgets that make websites (and the viewer) feel like they’re having mild seizures—animation meant more than interchangeable widgets that wiggle. It was, as Frank and Ollie told us, the illusion of life.
It is from a magazine called The Movie: Illustrated History of Cinema ,No. 33 ,1980.
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Master animator Eric Goldberg animating a commercial at the Richard Williams Animation Studio, circa 1980.
I used to own a copy of the British film magazine this image appeared in (it was an article about the Richard Williams studio) ,but I've lost it over the years or it's buried in one of my boxes of animation "schtuff" from days gone by. If anyone who sees this happens to have a copy of the magazine, please scan the article at high-res. and post it. I'd love to see it again. The entire article is now posted below, courtesy of Daniel Aguirre Hansell.
Animator Eric Goldberg at his animation desk Richard Williams Studio early 1980's
Click on the images to open in another tab to view larger.
Here is a rarity I ran across in the book "Film
and TV Graphics 2: An International Survey of the Art of Film
Animation" by Walter Herdeg (1976, Zurich : Graphis Press ; New York :
Distributed by Hastings House.)
This is concept art for a proposed animated version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" , by Geoff Dunbar and Oscar Grillo (Dragon Productions, London). This production obviously never came to fruition , but it's interesting to see something pre-Rankin & Bass, pre-Bakshi era in relation to animation of Tolkien's stories (and yes, I'm aware of the Gene Deitch version).
(click to view larger)
This is the cover of the book these pages appear in:
Before the mid-to -late 1990's I never heard anyone refer to hand drawn animation as "2D" . In fact , most of us were endeavoring to draw our characters with solid construction so the illusion of the character existing in 3-dimensional space was convincing.
In traditional hand drawn animation it's all about making the drawings
look dimensional , as if these characters exist in real space. They're
not "2D" characters existing on a flat plane. We draw characters with
3D shapes, not 2D shapes: Cubes , Spheres, Cones, Cylinders , not squares, circles, triangles, rectangles.
What is "2D" about this kind of thinking ? --
These drawings by Preston Blair reminded me of why we didn't ever think of our work as "2D". I still do not like the term "2D animation". I prefer the term hand drawn animation or traditional animation.
I'm reminded of Gene Deitch's video from 2009 where he discussed this at length.
The speech was called "Quo Vadis Animation?"
Gene Deitch:
“The core of my speech is a pitch for the survival and eventual
return to primary favor of “drawn animation.” (Don’t provoke me by
mentioning the term “2D” in my presence!)
“I am here to raise a cheer for what I prefer to call Drawn Animation. We who have been raised on the tradition of animated drawings, attempting create what Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston called, “The Illusion of Life,” have been more and more pushed aside and given the demeaning title of “2D” animators. I am quick to remind you that anything projected onto a flat movie screen is essentially 2D. It’s a meaningless term. I repeat that the entire world of graphic art, every drawn or painted style can be animated in any fanciful way, which in turn would lead to the widest range of storytelling and endless visual variety.”
The entire speech is on Cartoon Brew in written form:
Unfortunately the video of Gene delivering this talk is no longer available to view on Cartoon Brew. It's marked on Cartoon Brew as a "private video" . That's a shame , because it is worth revisiting , or watching for the first time if you've never seen it.
Fortunately some kind soul re-posted the video here:
