Bill Tytla - Terrytoons - mouse slaps lion's face

CLICK HERE TO SEE CLIP! (9.38mb)

Developing a Character - Combining Proportions with Distinct Shapes

From Andre 7,000:

This character was already designed, but Joe Horn asked me to do some wacky versions of her for a music video.

A character is like a theme. You start with a general idea (which was already provided to us) and then you try variations.






This character was given to us by Joe Horn to do variations on.

Katie starts normal and cute to get used to the character.
I caricature her pose, by exagerrating the contrasts in her drawing. I also upped the wall-eyed Mary Blair effect.
Now Katie starts to break out and experiment with individual details and proportions.This drawing is chock full of distinct shapes and unusual- unusual means distinct by definition - proportions.


We use the term "Character design" pretty freely. The word design suggests that there are distinctions in the design even though much animation design is vague and indistinct. Animation has a tendency to be very conservative and to reuse shapes over and over again and in the same proportions.

This character came to us with the stock Preston Blair baby shapes and proportions-a big ball for a cranium and smaller pair of balls for cheeks and a pear for a body.

That left us with only the proportions and the details on the balls to play with.


Anyway when designing characters an artist who is truly a designer

1) searches for pleasing individual forms and shapes that look original and then

2) combines them in interesting proportions to try to make the design seem individual.


A designer should also be a caricaturist. A caricaturist looks for distinct shapes in real people and ditinct proportions and then makes them even more distinct than nature did.

You have to ignore your habits to be a good caricaturist. Instead of already knowing what things are supposed to look like, you open your eyes and really look, then put it down.

Marlo loves the myriad of individual shapes nature provides her with.http://marlomeekins.blogspot.com/



Katie Makes a Bumblebee Girl Shape:
And it inspires me to try some variations.




Adventurous types like to see how far they can go with distinctness, but of course this business is run by the vague-est most indistinct people on the planet and they always pull our stuff waaaaaay back until the characters are as vague and indistinct as the last 15 years worth of characters.

An interesting phemenon of all this is the concept of "Development Artist".
You know all those "Art Of" books the big companies put out? Filled with development sketches that the company never in a million years had any intention of actually using?

Why the heck do they spend so much money on developing interesting art to then throw it away and go back to the usual vagueness? That's a subject for another post, but lately they have figured out a use for it-to sell you the expensive books and make you wonder why the film didn't look like that.

FATTY TAMIKA:

Here's my "Fatty" version



Of course in a cartoon today, no one can actually be fat. They can only be slightly plump. If that!

Everything in cartoons today is just "slightly". Except for fur and hairs and pores.

Today's producers are real generous with gross surface details.

Bill Tytla - Terrytoons - cute animation, is it such a bad thing to have appeal?

I think this is Tytla but whoever it is animated a super cute Mighty Mouse.

CUTE:







Big eyes and big pupils is a quick formula for appeal.



A little round tummy for a cute drunkard.

Cute is hard to define, but you can see the contrast between Tytla's drawings and the animator who did the next scene in the same cartoon.

NOT CUTE:


CLICK HERE TO WATCH CLIP! (4.6mb)

BONUS RETARDED INBETWEEN:

WHAT IS CUTE?

How do you define cute and appealing in the first place? It's especially hard to now, because the whole concept has fallen out of style. Most artistic efforts are purposely unpleasant now, whether visual or audio.
BABY PROPORTIONS:

The most general and obvious traits that make us think "cute" are big heads and big eyes.

Babies, kids, kittens, puppies are all cute to us because we are wired to want to protect the helpless.

These babies are generic cute. They say only the obvious.

This Chuck Jones kitten has the obvious traits too, but also is a very specific design which makes it even more cute because it appears more real.

Bugs Bunny can be bland, cute, funny or ugly, or some combination of everything, depending on who is drawing him and when he drew him.
Friz tends to draw him non-descript.

Jones draws him many ways. Here he is not exactly cute, but handsome. Taller proportions, but well designed shapes and good balance.He's a bit cuter and more stylish here.

McKimson is not known for cute. He has a tendency to draw his characters with tiny craniums and big jowls. His cartoons are hilarious, but I think he sometimes gets a bad rep for drawing the characters too "adult".



McKimson drew Porky with a huge head here, but still it doesn't add up to cute. See how hard it is to define what actually makes something appealing?

This is REALLY supposed to be cute. I love McKimson even though he has a tough time with cuteness. He is the Man's cartoonist.


This McKimson title card is more appealing than many of his drawings. I think it's a Scribner pose and Scribner has a natural appeal and cuteness in all his drawings-even when he tries to draw ugly.
Jones has an appeal in his characters when he doesn't get too cutesy.
This character is supposed to be ugly but is drawn with much appeal.

Cute and Weird is good too
FUNNY WEIRD AND CUTEClampett strikes an amazing balance of all at the same time.
Big pupils adds to the big eye effect. Clampett drew the biggest eyes of any animator in the 40s.

McKimson drew a lot cuter when he drew for Clampett.

Scribner too. The combination of him and Clampett makes for the ultimate cute weirdness.


Some pure cuteness is too much for me (like Disney babies), but when you add in other spices, like weirdness and twists it makes for a cute but sick combination and that's what I like best.

Rex Hackelberg is a perfect combination of cute, weird and great imagination.

Rex is one of the last few men who still have an eye for visual appeal. The last efforts to keep cute alive seem to be coming mostly from a handful of girls. You know who they are.

Young guys love ugly today-in all things, cartoons, music, pants, unshaven faces, you name it. They think it's not "cool" to have taste and pleasure. Thank God that girls have more sensitivity to pleasure and the finer things in life. Maybe they can save us from ugly coolness.

CUTE/UGLY
You can even draw ugly with cuteness and appeal, as Basil Wolverton proved.


Appeal and cuteness comes partly from the baby traits, but there's more to it. A real designer has a way with shapes and balance and those attributes are much harder to explain. I'll work on it.

It's especially hard to explain today, since the last 40 years have largely abandoned the concept of visual appeal so no one even knows what it is. I wonder when ugly girls will come into style?



Will CG animation EVER achieve appeal?

I'm curious, which of these do you think of as cute or appealing?

Art Lozzi and A Lush Limited Palette

If you are really good, you can do a lot with just a handful of colors. (I should learn this lesson myself!)This ist episode of The Flintstones is a really handsome cartoon. It didn't cost a lot of money, but it was done very thoughtfully and tastefully.
The main colors are natural. No rainbows of pink purple and lime green.
The palette of "The Swimming Pool" is 2 main colors:
Subdued greens and
Gray.

The greys are used to separate 2 different tones of greens.

The rocks and house in the BG below are greys and blacks. They separate the two colors of the sky and grass, which themselves are related colors.

1) SKY: The greens in the sky are light olive greens
2)GRASS: The greens in the grass and plants are a mixture of greyed greens, middle greens and blue greens

The rest of the colors are subtley tinted and shaded variations of the main colors.

In small areas, brighter colors are used to accent and enrich the basic color schemes-flowers, trees, etc.

Art and Monte use great technique with brushes and sponges to make the simple color schemes look really deep, rich and natural.

Every area of sponge and brush storke is carefully designed. It's not a messy mish mash of unorganized detail.On this cave wall you can see where Art cut friskets in bold shapes that help emphasize the rounded shape of the house.

The shapes are cartoony and stylized but not random or wonky. They establish the forms of the larger areas they help describe.


The blue accents of the leaves are done with watered down color, so that the sky color blends with the blue to make it not jump out at you.


This harmonizes the colors and keeps them in a family.

This Mermaid image has no color thought at all. None of the colors are organic or related and nothing in the picture holds together. The girl looks like a bunch of disconnected pieces of flat shapes instead of a living creature.

The artist just poured the colors straight out of the tubes. That's not a process of choosing. Anybody can do that. That's what crayons are for.

This below is a lot more interesting and fun to look at. At least to me.

GRAYS CAN BE RICH
The depth of color in the walls comes from slight variations in value and hue in the shadows, textures and lines on the walls.


Note that there are less textured areas inbetween the more textured areas. This is all part of thoughtful composition and design. It's done artistically with good taste.

If the rendering was carelessly done it would look messy and make it hard for you to see anything in the picture.Note that there are less textured areas inbetween the more textured areas. This is all part of composition and design. It's done artistically with good taste. If it was carelessly done it would look messy.This scarecrow image has every possible amateuristic mistake all in one.


Here are the same thoughtful color theories that Art Lozzi uses applied to a more detailed image.You could have tons of details but bad choices of color and rendering and it wouldn't look so warm and natural and colorful as this.

Details and long hours by themselves do nothing for art. Intelligent, creative choices make art.

LEARN ART'S TECHNIQUES
By the way, Art Lozzi is personally teaching Kali some tricks of the trade:

http://kalikazoo.blogspot.com/2007/06/painting-tips.html

Disney Gets Almost Specific

It's so rare to see characters in Disney films that have expressions, that it really stands out when you finally do see something approaching specific expressions.

The scenes that introduce Captain Hook in Peter Pan stand out to me especially after so many long boring totally generic scenes of other characters.

Hook is a pretty standard Disney construction. He has the same construction as all the human characters, only with a pointy nose pasted on. The design is all in the body proportions and the costume. The way he is proportioned and the outfit he's wearing give him his instant iconic look. But the face is fairly standard Disney.

The construction and design is cleverly made to be functional-to make the features pliable and to leave enough room between each feature to move them so that they don't bump into each other when they do move.
It's a very solidly drawn 3 dimensional construction with difficult tall body proportions and like most Disney characters, very hard to control.

That's the Disney animators' greatest skill-controlling tight animation of difficult to draw characters so that it doesn't look like there are any mistakes or jerky actions. They almost always achieve this herculean feat (the original Walt Disney movies) and suitably impress the hell out of us-especially if we are animators. We know how hard it is to do.

The acting in Disney movies is usually a lot less impressive, but Hook is a step in the right direction.

This expression above is not really an expression, It's a stock Disney trick. Squash one eye and stretch the other, which makes the face look organic, rather than mechanic, and organic is what life is.

Squash and stretch and organic pliability are concepts we should understand if we are going to draw life, but they are just the first steps. They are simply tools we could use then to create a lot of unique expressions like humans have. But many animators are merely content with the tools, not the creative use of them.
Frank Thomas is breaking the mold here. He cautiously tries experimenting with Hook's mouth. He is trying out shapes that aren't totally symmetrical and that haven't been drawn before.

The eyes are standard. Nothing new. Squash one, stretch the other. The design of the eyes is the exact same design as all the other characters' eyes and they move exactly the same way as every other character. One at a time. For a take, stretch one up first, and the other follows but doesn't quite make it as high.
Standard eyes, interesting mouth.
For comparison, here is another Disney man. This design is exactly the same design and functional construction as Hook, except fat and with a slightly different nose bulb pasted on. But Smee's expressions are all stock Disney. They aren't expressions, they are merely stretch and squash.
Smee's specific personality trait doesn't happen in his face. He wiggles his fingers every time he gets excited and that's how you know he is a different character than the other pirates who all move the same as hundreds of previous Disney characters.

These mouth shapes Thomas is drawing for Hook are very subtle but original and look more human than the stock mouths we are used to seeing. That is such a radical departure for a Disney character that we start to think of Hook as a real character, by contrast with all the stock characters.

Stock eyes, interesting mouth.

Here's just a really nice angle and tilt of the head.

Same eyes, neat mouth...

I have to wonder, if an animator is capable of taking one part of the face and making original shapes with it, why not do that with the rest of the face? Eyes can be very expressive too. They don't merely squash and stretch.
What is it about Disney films that offer such promise but then never take off? Something or someone is holding everyone back and making them feel guilty if they stray too far from accepted formula. We can forgive a lot of the lack of adventurousness in the drawings and animation, because the draftsmanship and the motion is so awesome.

But for heaven's sake, why not let these animators go and do something?
This Hook stuff looks like Thomas is practicing and getting ready to really do something with the character.

Here are some cool drawings that you don't really see in real time. They are accents on the way to blander expressions. Why not make these keys instead so we can appreciate them?





Peter Pan, like so many Disney movies is a huge unfulfilled promise.

It has a few scenes where it seems like the animators have experimented with certain characters and are now ready to really let loose with them, but the damn story holds them back.

It's 90% filler.

Hook's introduction makes you think he's going to progress and get more and more specific and rich, but he never does. There is no chemistry between him and Pan. Their ancient rivalry is told to us in exposition, but it never comes to life on the screen. They don't seem to connect, even when they fight. They just perform what the story tells them to perform and get it over with.

The story people should have spent more time developing thier relationship and giving them meatier scenes to perform.

Tinker Belle is phenomenally animated and has a great design, but there's nothing for her to do in the story.

The Indian Chief has a very interesting set of dialogue mouth shapes, but once we see that, it never progresses.

It's like Disney teases you with what could be but is never fulfilled. Does anyone have an explanation for this? It's such a mystery!

Instead we get tons of bland boring scenes with generic personalityless characters:

The lost Boys
The snob family
A bunch of generic pirates.
A song about how wonderful Moms are.
(Moms are wonderful, but that's what greeting cards are for, not cartoons.)

Think what kind of a great movie could have been made if they had focused more on Hook, the crocodile, Tinkerbell, the Indians, the mermaids and Pan. These are all the characters that the kids love.

If you lined up an image of each of these characters you would think, "Wow! This is gonna really be fun!"



If you lined up the lost boys, Wendy and the parents and slapped them on a billboard, would anyone want to come see that movie?


That's what modern cartoon movies do, they make stars of the bland characters.


The biggest shame of this Disney blandification and filler is not the classic Disney movies themselves, but the terrible influence these movies have had on later, less skilled generations of animation producers.

Now we have only the blandness and stock acting, but none of the amazing animation or great drawing and none of the characters that at least show promise.

I agree with Milt Kahl about this kinda stuff:

Madison dance

Ever try combining cute with retarded?

Hubley Commercial: Salt and Hawkins? Scribner?

Part 1

Here is an unbelievably cool commercial for something nearly as important in our lives as cigarette foil. Salt!

This commercial has everything you could want in an animated spot.

Great design, funny and inventive animation and really creative special effects.

Part 2

I'm not 100% sure, but my guess is this is Scribner too. It could be Emery Hawkins as I think Michael Sporn has suggested. Amid says it's Scribner. Anyone know how to tell for sure?
An animator who really observes life in its unfettered reality has a way of making every character have a little bit of retardation in him. Even cute characters have some primitive animal needs and this is always reflected in good animation.
Look at the animal pleasure of this child as he gobbles up and contemplates the succulent flavor of his salt sandwich.

A bit of evil retardation is good too.
The timing of all this animation is great. Lots of contrasts.
Funny walk. Of course it's not as brilliant as Gerald's little hop, but I like it.





Look how great these poses are! The kid pops from pose to pose with one smeared inbetween each time.
Even the inbetweens have design and fun.
These drawings are an absolutely perfect blend of classic principles and modernist style.






The kids' pose to pose "limited" animation contrasts against the bird's really fluid full animation. I love the stuff when the bird bounces up and down on his head. Scroll through it in slow motion!

This is great stuff to copy if you are teaching yourself to animate....JoJo!





Get a load of these beautiful special effects! I'll take this over Disney's "realistic" water and rain any day. This could only happen in a cartoon.




OK, kids, everybody pour a whole carton of salt on your head!
How great is this?!

Genius.

Makes me want to roll up a spoonful of weather proof salt in cigarette foil and chew it to bits in a hurricane.

What do you think?

Kitty Kornered 2, Clampett's Magic

In this seemingly simple throwaway scene a huge quantity of skills, disciplines and planning are working together to make these crazy jokes clear and funny.

These are highly sophisticated thinkers and artists who made this stuff fly so brilliantly.

It's the kind of humor that couldn't be written and couldn't even be drawn by people who didn't already have a ton of knowledge and experience. And talent.
Design and Function:
The background is tilted, but not "wonky"

Everything is tilted in the same direction. It's done partly to look good, but the tilt is also designed to help the action.
Great Cutting:
This cut is really abrupt. It's a different angle of the door, more severe in its perspective than the last.

The extreme angle and scale makes the urgency of the little cat's need to escape even more dramatic.

All these creative decisions are not arbitrary. Yeah they look good as individual images, but they are also designed to make the sequence more dramatic and important.
Scale: The huge door and the immense space between the kitten and the doorknob help make the kitten look even smaller and cuter.

All that space also gives the cat more room to stretch his arm up and yank down the keyhole.

If it was less space, yet the same amount of frames for the action, the animation would appear slower and less urgent.
Cutness and Appeal: This cat is a caricature of cuteness. Girls, do you like him? Do you want to play with him and squeeze him?
Anticipation:
The kitten anticipates the action by moving away from it. That creates even more space for his reach.





Anticipation to yank hole:
The kitten's body slides up a bit on his rubber arm as if the tension in the stretch is pulling him up.

This creates more tension for him to yank the hole down.
and what a yank! So slippery
The drawings "slow out" creating a feeling of resistance by the hole at first, and then it lets go and slides down to accept the kitty willingly.

Beauty in every frame:

Half the decisions in every frame are functional: to tell the story, make the actions read, separate one action from the next, set up an action or a joke, etc.

The other half of the decisions are to make each of those functional drawings look great and fun and cartoony.

This is the greatest kind of design for me. Design that is functional and beautiful at the same time.

On top of those 2 elements of design, add cartooniness and wackiness and you get perfect cartoon animation.
Motion Design:
Run back the animation and watch how slippery that hole animation is as he yanks it down. It looks great in its motion, as well as in individual drawings.

This is a concept that UPA eliminated from cartoons. Motion design. The animation in UPA cartoons is mostly perfunctory and they