In March 2011 Cartoon Saloon started co-production on a new animated feature film version of ‘Moon Man’. Based on the best selling book by Tomi Ungerer, the feature will be directed by Stephan Schesch. The group is also currently working on a pilot for Disney
‘Moon Man’ will be produced by Stefan Schesch, Le Pacte Film’s Jean Labadie (Himalaya) and Cartoon Saloon’s Ross Murray (Old Fangs) and Paul Young (The Secret of Kells). Irish animators who will work on the project are Cartoon Saloon’s Fabian Erlinghauser (The Secret of Kells), Sean McCarron (Song of the Sea) and Marie Thorhauge (Old Fangs).
Cartoon Saloon is also working on another new hand-drawn feature film "Song of the Sea" , directed by Tomm Moore (who directed "The Secret of Kells").
The iPad version of "The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore" has the content largely pulled from the animated short film of the same name by MoonBot Studios, which tells the story of a young man’s experience with a magical library. The app’s pages are brief movie scenes that pause to reveal interactive elements: books suddenly fly at the reader’s touch, for instance, and readers can play a piano or scribble in a blank book of their own.
The Fantastic Flying Books Of Morris Lessmore iPad App Teaser from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.
About Moonbot Studios:
More about Moonbot studios (with more making-of videos) -
"Scans of rough animation drawings, thumbnail sketches and character designs, mostly the work of Disney's Nine Old Men. The majority of this art has never been published.
I will write short comments and explain, what makes a particular piece unique.
Since I was lucky enough to hang out with Frank and Ollie, Mark, Milt, Eric and Kimball for many years, I will also tell you anecdotes andstories that they told me. Some of them are pretty hilarious ! These guys were all geniuses, but it's so interesting to discover their human side. Trials and errors, triumphs and failures, professional jealousy and even insecurities were all part of their lives.
Occasionally I will post the works of other artists who inspire me, such as Heinrich Kley, TS Sullivant, Wilhelm M Busch , and others.
You will also find some of my own stuff as well."
One of the treasures Andreas has shared from his collection:
And on the blog he's offering commentary which illuminates why scenes like these are so masterfully animated. If you're a serious student of animation then go there now , bookmark it , and visit often.
Here's a photo of Andreas when he started at Disney in 1980 , training under the great Eric Larson:
Go to Andreas's blog now to read some of his thoughts on Eric's animation , complete with rare animation drawings from his collection.
Saw this on CartoonBrew today: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/music-vid...wegian-tv.html
And also on the TVP Animation Community Forum , where they report that the animation and coloring was done with TVP Animation: http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4750
So the animation is actually hand-drawn, but paperless , drawn in TVP Animation using Wacom tablets. BG's were painted in Photoshop. (although they could have used TVP Animation to paint the fully-rendered BG's as well)
"...based on the songs of famed Norwegian singer/songwriter Alf Prøysen (1914 – 1970). The series is hand-drawn, made in-house by me and my five collegues. The episodes are short “music-videos” following Prøysens original recordings. We’re very passionate about our work, trying to master the medium of traditional 2D animation.”
Trailer for the television series:
Line test of a scene animated paperlessly in TVP Animation:
Making-of progression video showing line test to final color:
It's interesting that for publicity purposes in the making-of video (above) they have taken steps to disguise the digital origins of the drawings by adding some fake "flipping paper" effects to the animation.
I think I understand why this is done for the general public consumption: the minute you tell non-animation people "we used a digital program to do the animation" many people have this crazy idea stuck in their head : "ah-ha, the computer does it all" , as if the someone simply types in a command and pushes a button , then the computer program animates the scene. Whereas people still understand that if something is hand-drawn an artist is responsible for creating it.
It is difficult for many people to grasp the idea that there can be hand-drawn animation made on a computer , which is virtually the same process as hand-drawn animation on paper, except the lines are drawn directly into a program like TVP Animation using a wacom tablet, instead of drawn on paper and scanned/photographed.
Hand-drawn , in TVP Animation.
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Some additional comments from the director/lead animator, Hans Jorgen Sandes, were posted on the TVP Animation Community User Forum:
I'm so glad you're using this on the TVPaint page. Because, it's ALL sketched, animated and coloured in TVPaint. The backgrounds are PhotoShop, and the composite is in AppleMotion. We're working on the subject of painting the backgrounds in TVP as well. The composite is very minimal, and AppleMotion works great with FinalCut.
Since others are so interested in our process, I will make a post on how we're working. I'll also include how the animation is actually done in the TVP software. I'll post it on your forum and my blog.
Anyway, feel free to share this information : ) Looking forward to hear from you again!
All the best,
Hans
As promised the lead animator/ director of this piece, Hans J. Sandnes has provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse at their work process using TVP Animation at his studio Sandnes Media.
He writes:
"We're a small team: an animator, an inbetweener, a background-artist, a compositor , and a producer. Using TVPaint means we're still making hundreds of unique drawings. We're sketching, erasing and re-doing drawings. But we don't have to spend time on scanning the drawings, numbering them, line-testing them and archiving them. In a way, TVPaint helps us doing what we like. And takes away the unnecessary steps.
Students, you must watch this inspirational talk by Dreamworks director/producer/storyboard artist Steve Hickner, on how to break into animation and how to stay there once you break in (career longevity) . This is a great talk, full of very practical advice on having a career in animation :
Director/Producer Steve Hickner gives practical advice and hints on how to get into the animation industry and pitfalls to avoid once in it.
Always interesting to see the process. These behind-the-scenes movies from the Disney Studio in the late 1930's /early 1940's show the traditional animation process. Some of the process has been simplified or glossed over because these "documentaries" were produced for a mass audience , but there is still good information to be gained from these films and it's fascinating to see some famous animators like Fred Moore and Norm Ferguson at their animation desks.
Here's another one: "How Walt Disney Cartoons are Made (Burbank version)" made around the time of Snow White's release for the theater distributors who worked for RKO Pictures (the company that distributed Disney's films in the late 1930's /early 40's) . This footage shows both the late 30's Hyperion Blvd. studio as well as the "new" Disney studio in Burbank from the early 1940's -
A better quality version of this footage (without sound) is available here:
In particular the footage of Fred Moore working at his animation desk starts around the 1:55 mark in the above link (not embeddable, so you'll have to click through the link to see the footage) .
Some of this footage has been re-used in different "behind-the-scenes" documentaries about Disney.
A version of this was released to theaters for general audiences , titled "How Walt Disney Cartoons are Made" . Some , but not all of the footage is identical:
And here's a similar sort of newsreel report going behind-the-scenes at the Fleischer Studio in Miami, Florida, about 1939 -
"I decided to do a daily rough exercise in traditional animation, just to loosen the hand a bit and study the weights and motion.
Most of my career as an animator revolved around fast, efficient animations, mainly Flash cutouts.
Some time ago I got sick of the technicality of cutouts & decided to return to the basics of frame by frame drawn animation. To get my hand back in shape I started doing Dailymations - short, sketchy, rough & FUN animations, more about mass and movement and less about fine, clean animation.
Each exercises is done in about one - to - two hours of work (more or less).
Every now and then I'll post some of my other stuff, but this is mostly about Dailymations. "
Here is just one example . Check out the Dailymation blog and comb through the archives to watch what someone can do in an hour or two a day of animating just for the pure joy of it.
Walking Woman - animated by Yoni Goodman "Done in about an hour-and-a-half." writes Yoni.
A simple rule about animation (as with many other things): the only way to get good at it is to DO IT. (A LOT!) Practice, practice, practice .
A couple of more:
Old Age - animated by Yoni Goodman
"Old woman getting to a chair
Thought i'd try something with a little more weight.
Took about an hour and a half."
Swordfight - animate by Yoni Goodman "Didn't really plan how this fight would go, I let the characters lead the way. at some points I thought I'd let one guy win, then I countered the attack and let the other take the offensive, so in a way it was a bit like an actual swordfight (only m-u-c-h slower)
eventually no one won, I guess.
Done in about two hours"
Of course, these drawings could be refined more in a subsequent tie-down pass , but by working rough like this he gets his initial pass rough animated without investing a whole lot of time . Once you get something like this roughed-out you have something to work with , you can see it moving , and you can see where you need to tweak it. Then you're not just guessing about the timing. The sooner you can get your timing worked out rough in a "scribble pass" like this , then you can spend additional time refining the drawings and tweaking the timing as needed.
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).
