CLICK HERE TO SEE CLIP! (9.38mb)
Friday, June 29, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
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 CUTE
Clampett 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?
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 CUTE
Clampett 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?
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
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
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
Monday, June 25, 2007
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:
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:
Friday, June 22, 2007
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?
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?
Thursday, June 21, 2007
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 are even proud of it.
Look how beautiful and rude that drawing is!
Jeepers....
Original animation ideas:
Look at the funny way this cat flaps his feet-another great throwaway gag that adds color and personality to the sequence.
All the Classic Animation Principles:
Clampett uses all the strong principles of animation - as did most animators in the 1940s.
Many other cartoons of the time were content to just have smooth motion, squash and stretch, construction and the rest and they used these tools to basically get the characters from here to there without jerky motions and to tell the story or put over the gags. That was enough.
Animation Principles Are Your Creative Tools
Clampett used the principles as not only tools, but as brush tips to paint art with. His antics are funny, his inbetweens are funny, his lines of action are designs themselves.
Every tool was a potential artistic element.
Clear Gag Setup Using Timing and Staging:
The cat pauses right in front of the keyhole for just a few frames-just long enough to make you think he's gonna jump right through it, but not long enough for you to figure out that there's another joke coming.
Great Cut and Accent:
right in the middle of the action Clampett changes the background to the more extreme angle of the door.
This gives the crash way more impact than if he had done the logical thing and used the same background.
Wrinkles and Lumps: Clampett knows the vocabulary of cartooning: teeth, tongues, veins, wrinkles and lumps.
Clampett is a man who loves ideas and originality and excitement. He stuffs his cartoons with as many ideas and great drawings, jokes, acting and anything he can, all with the strict purpose of wowing us.
Some people think we need a "higher purpose" than making people feel good:
"Emotional value". For who, robots? Not in a million years did I ever expect someone to describe UPA cartoons as "emotional".
Unlike some entertainers, Clampett doesn't need an excuse or justification to entertain. He is a natural born ham. A highly gifted ham. A ham of the most original, unique quality and most extravagant proportions.
When this rare type of person is put on our earth for too few decades, we should be truly thankful and supportive of his ability to show off his genius and make us laugh and excite us.
The last thing we should do is to write rules for him and restrict his natural gifts, even after the fact. We should not hold him to the arbitrary limiting standards and restrictions of less adventurous folk. Yet so many do. This is the world's greatest mystery to me.
Nothing in Clampett cartoons is just a plot device to get you from this idea to the next. He doesn't hold a clever expression forever to make sure you notice how clever he is. He doesn't leave a striking design on the screen forever with nothing happening in the frame. Every frame of film is potential entertainment and a canvas to slap entertainment on.
He's there to impress and wow the audience. He is totally confident in his charisma as an entertainer and doesn't need to hold your hand and make you stare at each individual idea to cherish it.
I've met a few cartoon critics and historians who admit under their breaths to me that they like Clampett's cartoons more than any of the other great directors but aren't sure why and even feel guilty about it! Maybe it's because they don't have a vocabulary to describe truly creative ideas. Artistic instances cannot easily be described in words. Describe a color on a Frazetta painting. You can't. You can only look and say "Wow!"
Since most people who write about classic cartoons aren't animators, cartoonists or even artists, they try to write about them in terms that relate to other, more familiar mediums-like live action, plot, acting, etc. These are all terms that people are familiar with even though they don't have clear and distinct meanings.
I've even seen some cartoonists paraphrase limiting cartoon philosophies and legends spread by non-cartoonists who write about cartoons. That's quite extraordinary too. If it's in a book, it must be true! Never mind watching the films to see for yourself!
Terms like "plot structure" "depth of character" denote something serious, something important and something you can respectfully write about, even if you yourself are not an actor or director or anyone who can physically do anything obviously amazing or recognize it when it actually happens.
They like to write about mundane things like the message of the cartoon, or the plot structure. Here look:
"In contrast to the work of his contemporary, colleague, and sometimes “adversary”, Chuck Jones, Clampett was often less successful in integrating the “classical” requirements of narrative and style into his work."
What the heck are "the classical requirements of narrative style"? He doesn't bother to define it. Just take his word for it that Clampett somehow is missing something important. The Jones cartoons that people usually use to qualify his whole style when they tout him as refined and superior really are only about 5 or 6 cartoons out of hundreds. Does the Roadrunner or Pepe Le Pew have these classical requirements?
I know tons of novels and short stories that don't that are none the less considered "classics". Jones is great, but for artistic reasons, not reasons of plot structure or "narrative".
That mystifying statement came from someone who actually likes Clampett's work but can't bring himself to just come out and say it. He has to qualify it by comparing it to some mundane vague concepts that have nothing to do with superhuman entertainment skill and ability.
Some abilities and talents are just plain amazing and entertaining in of themselves. Everything in life does not have to have a mathematical plot structure and be judged by it.
When my friends and I go to lunch and we start sketching on napkins, everyone comes running over to see the drawings and to ask us for them-without even knowing who we are. A professional cartoon drawing is an obviously amazing thing and not very many people on the planet can do them. And normal people are suitably impressed. Just as they would be by somebody who can sing on key.
I've never yet seen people in public run up to a cartoon writer and ask them to write something funny for them. "Excuse me sir, could you write a funny description of my kids?"
So it's always been strange to me, that so few cartoon historians-folks who obviously love old cartoons, can't just come out and write about the obvious joys of the cartoons-the entertaining parts. Entertainment and phenomenal performance ability is too low brow to write about I guess.
Many animation critics need to find some kind of justification for cartoon entertainment before they can write something positive about a cartoon.
Just being awe-inspiring isn't enough.
Having made many cartoons, I know all the elements that go into them and am even more impressed by how many ways there are to entertain. I have an actual experience of what makes something work and sometimes what doesn't. I've tried things and then witnessed the result with audiences. Things I thought were rotten sometimes became very popular and the other way around.
That's why I like so many different styles and why I can find useful things in all kinds of art, entertainment and cartoons that may go unnoticed by folks who usually write about cartoons.
I find many useful and fun things in Terrytoons, Van Beuren and even in UPA or Disney once in a while... If I hunt hard enough.
Obviously Tex Avery and Chuck Jones have much more consistently successful cartoons than some others so you don't have to hunt very far to find great stuff in their films.
In Clampett's cartoons I don't have to hunt at all. They are packed solid with great drawings, animation, music, ideas, stories and more. I can watch the same cartoon fifty times and still find stuff I missed before.
This one scene that took me two posts to show you is packed with skill and craft and entertainment. It doesn't further the plot any more than just having them run out the door would have. Should Clampett have thrown out the scene?
The development of cartoons.
1) There are comic strips and still cartoons. That was a great invention.
2) Animated cartoons added to that invention by making cartoon drawings move. That process opened up whole new ways to draw and tell stories that could not have been done in still cartoons. 2 dimensions became 3 dimensions.
Just one example-it forced animators to draw mouths in the shapes that mouths make in order to speak. Still cartoons hardly ever even open their mouths to speak, let alone form specific vowel shapes.
3) Then there is the Clampett cartoon. This caricature of cartoons did to animated cartoons what animation did to still cartoons. Clampett's vision and unafraid personality brought cartoons into another dimension of ultra reality. The 4th dimension.
Why we have abandoned all these limitless opportunities for invention that Clampett opened the door to?
We don't have to imitate his style to be inspired to be creative and fun all the time.
Appendix: from Amid's swell book, Cartoon Modern
Cartoon Modern is a great book that I highly recommend, and I wish someone would make a similar book praising the values of cartoony cartoons some day.
By the way, that hop cycle they are talking about was done in an early Clampett cartoon. A bunch of baby ducks are following their mother to water and they have fully animated double bounce walk cycles but every 4th step, one of them hops in the air.
The difference between this animation 10 years earlier and the Gerald McBoingBoing animation is that in the Clampett cartoon, it's funny. But that's low brow so not worthy of serious discussion!
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 are even proud of it.
Look how beautiful and rude that drawing is!
Jeepers....
Original animation ideas:Look at the funny way this cat flaps his feet-another great throwaway gag that adds color and personality to the sequence.
All the Classic Animation Principles:Clampett uses all the strong principles of animation - as did most animators in the 1940s.
Many other cartoons of the time were content to just have smooth motion, squash and stretch, construction and the rest and they used these tools to basically get the characters from here to there without jerky motions and to tell the story or put over the gags. That was enough.
Animation Principles Are Your Creative Tools
Clampett used the principles as not only tools, but as brush tips to paint art with. His antics are funny, his inbetweens are funny, his lines of action are designs themselves.
Every tool was a potential artistic element.
Clear Gag Setup Using Timing and Staging:The cat pauses right in front of the keyhole for just a few frames-just long enough to make you think he's gonna jump right through it, but not long enough for you to figure out that there's another joke coming.
Great Cut and Accent:right in the middle of the action Clampett changes the background to the more extreme angle of the door.
This gives the crash way more impact than if he had done the logical thing and used the same background.
Wrinkles and Lumps: Clampett knows the vocabulary of cartooning: teeth, tongues, veins, wrinkles and lumps.
All this thought, planning, skill and work just for a throwaway gag
Clampett is a man who loves ideas and originality and excitement. He stuffs his cartoons with as many ideas and great drawings, jokes, acting and anything he can, all with the strict purpose of wowing us.
Some people think we need a "higher purpose" than making people feel good:
"Emotional value". For who, robots? Not in a million years did I ever expect someone to describe UPA cartoons as "emotional".Unlike some entertainers, Clampett doesn't need an excuse or justification to entertain. He is a natural born ham. A highly gifted ham. A ham of the most original, unique quality and most extravagant proportions.
When this rare type of person is put on our earth for too few decades, we should be truly thankful and supportive of his ability to show off his genius and make us laugh and excite us.
The last thing we should do is to write rules for him and restrict his natural gifts, even after the fact. We should not hold him to the arbitrary limiting standards and restrictions of less adventurous folk. Yet so many do. This is the world's greatest mystery to me.
Nothing in Clampett cartoons is just a plot device to get you from this idea to the next. He doesn't hold a clever expression forever to make sure you notice how clever he is. He doesn't leave a striking design on the screen forever with nothing happening in the frame. Every frame of film is potential entertainment and a canvas to slap entertainment on.
He's there to impress and wow the audience. He is totally confident in his charisma as an entertainer and doesn't need to hold your hand and make you stare at each individual idea to cherish it.
I've met a few cartoon critics and historians who admit under their breaths to me that they like Clampett's cartoons more than any of the other great directors but aren't sure why and even feel guilty about it! Maybe it's because they don't have a vocabulary to describe truly creative ideas. Artistic instances cannot easily be described in words. Describe a color on a Frazetta painting. You can't. You can only look and say "Wow!"
Since most people who write about classic cartoons aren't animators, cartoonists or even artists, they try to write about them in terms that relate to other, more familiar mediums-like live action, plot, acting, etc. These are all terms that people are familiar with even though they don't have clear and distinct meanings.
I've even seen some cartoonists paraphrase limiting cartoon philosophies and legends spread by non-cartoonists who write about cartoons. That's quite extraordinary too. If it's in a book, it must be true! Never mind watching the films to see for yourself!
Terms like "plot structure" "depth of character" denote something serious, something important and something you can respectfully write about, even if you yourself are not an actor or director or anyone who can physically do anything obviously amazing or recognize it when it actually happens.
They like to write about mundane things like the message of the cartoon, or the plot structure. Here look:
"In contrast to the work of his contemporary, colleague, and sometimes “adversary”, Chuck Jones, Clampett was often less successful in integrating the “classical” requirements of narrative and style into his work."
What the heck are "the classical requirements of narrative style"? He doesn't bother to define it. Just take his word for it that Clampett somehow is missing something important. The Jones cartoons that people usually use to qualify his whole style when they tout him as refined and superior really are only about 5 or 6 cartoons out of hundreds. Does the Roadrunner or Pepe Le Pew have these classical requirements?
I know tons of novels and short stories that don't that are none the less considered "classics". Jones is great, but for artistic reasons, not reasons of plot structure or "narrative".
That mystifying statement came from someone who actually likes Clampett's work but can't bring himself to just come out and say it. He has to qualify it by comparing it to some mundane vague concepts that have nothing to do with superhuman entertainment skill and ability.
Some abilities and talents are just plain amazing and entertaining in of themselves. Everything in life does not have to have a mathematical plot structure and be judged by it.
When my friends and I go to lunch and we start sketching on napkins, everyone comes running over to see the drawings and to ask us for them-without even knowing who we are. A professional cartoon drawing is an obviously amazing thing and not very many people on the planet can do them. And normal people are suitably impressed. Just as they would be by somebody who can sing on key.
I've never yet seen people in public run up to a cartoon writer and ask them to write something funny for them. "Excuse me sir, could you write a funny description of my kids?"
So it's always been strange to me, that so few cartoon historians-folks who obviously love old cartoons, can't just come out and write about the obvious joys of the cartoons-the entertaining parts. Entertainment and phenomenal performance ability is too low brow to write about I guess.
Many animation critics need to find some kind of justification for cartoon entertainment before they can write something positive about a cartoon.
Just being awe-inspiring isn't enough.
Having made many cartoons, I know all the elements that go into them and am even more impressed by how many ways there are to entertain. I have an actual experience of what makes something work and sometimes what doesn't. I've tried things and then witnessed the result with audiences. Things I thought were rotten sometimes became very popular and the other way around.
That's why I like so many different styles and why I can find useful things in all kinds of art, entertainment and cartoons that may go unnoticed by folks who usually write about cartoons.
I find many useful and fun things in Terrytoons, Van Beuren and even in UPA or Disney once in a while... If I hunt hard enough.
Obviously Tex Avery and Chuck Jones have much more consistently successful cartoons than some others so you don't have to hunt very far to find great stuff in their films.
In Clampett's cartoons I don't have to hunt at all. They are packed solid with great drawings, animation, music, ideas, stories and more. I can watch the same cartoon fifty times and still find stuff I missed before.
This one scene that took me two posts to show you is packed with skill and craft and entertainment. It doesn't further the plot any more than just having them run out the door would have. Should Clampett have thrown out the scene?
Clampett is not a stingy entertainer. Ideas that might seem big for other cartoons or studios are thrown away all the time in Clampett's cartoons.
What a powerful personality he must have had to resist the Disney wave of influence that swept over the whole cartoon business in the 1930s. Everyone else was suppressing their natural tendencies to draw cartoon magic in favor of cutesy pie, sentimental Republican blandness - just because that was Walt's taste. Clampett stuck to his instincts and carried on the imaginative ways of the early cartoons but he took advantage of the great skills that were being developed in the 30s and then added his own great sense of personality, character and weirdness.
What a powerful personality he must have had to resist the Disney wave of influence that swept over the whole cartoon business in the 1930s. Everyone else was suppressing their natural tendencies to draw cartoon magic in favor of cutesy pie, sentimental Republican blandness - just because that was Walt's taste. Clampett stuck to his instincts and carried on the imaginative ways of the early cartoons but he took advantage of the great skills that were being developed in the 30s and then added his own great sense of personality, character and weirdness.
The development of cartoons.
1) There are comic strips and still cartoons. That was a great invention.
2) Animated cartoons added to that invention by making cartoon drawings move. That process opened up whole new ways to draw and tell stories that could not have been done in still cartoons. 2 dimensions became 3 dimensions.
Just one example-it forced animators to draw mouths in the shapes that mouths make in order to speak. Still cartoons hardly ever even open their mouths to speak, let alone form specific vowel shapes.
3) Then there is the Clampett cartoon. This caricature of cartoons did to animated cartoons what animation did to still cartoons. Clampett's vision and unafraid personality brought cartoons into another dimension of ultra reality. The 4th dimension.
Why we have abandoned all these limitless opportunities for invention that Clampett opened the door to?
We don't have to imitate his style to be inspired to be creative and fun all the time.
Appendix: from Amid's swell book, Cartoon Modern
Cartoon Modern is a great book that I highly recommend, and I wish someone would make a similar book praising the values of cartoony cartoons some day.By the way, that hop cycle they are talking about was done in an early Clampett cartoon. A bunch of baby ducks are following their mother to water and they have fully animated double bounce walk cycles but every 4th step, one of them hops in the air.
The difference between this animation 10 years earlier and the Gerald McBoingBoing animation is that in the Clampett cartoon, it's funny. But that's low brow so not worthy of serious discussion!
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Gene Hazelton - Reynolds Wrap, the perfect cigarette foil
Here's Gene Hazelton. He was a cartoon designer/ Layout artist for Clampett, then Avery and probably many others.
It seems he might have also designed animated commercials, like this one.
Girl In Reynolds Wrap Foil Land
Those were the days! When a cute little girl can take time out from play to sell you cigarette tin foil!
Gene is a great draftsman and is especially known for his very appealing cute style.
Let's bring back cuteness and appeal to cartoons, sometime, huh?
Looks like some Hank Ketcham influence too.
Mmm, don't you just want to eat that foil? It melts in your fillings.
Ed Benedict liked Gene and his work a lot and always talked fondly of him to me. Gene designed many of the cute kid characters in Hanna Barbera cartoons. Pebbles, The Cave Kids, Magilla's little bitch and many more.
He also drew many of the Hanna Barbera comic strips in the 1960s. I used to collect and save them all and copy the drawings.
Gene did the layouts for Tex Avery's "Farm Of Tomorrow".
He did layouts on the UPA Dick Tracy show. His episodes really stand out for their great design and appeal.
I don't know a heck of a lot about him and what else he did, but I always like his stuff when I discover it.
Anyone else have any info on this wonderful cartoonist?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Bob Clampett and One Throwaway Genius Scene
KEYHOLE
Think about what this scene would read like in a script, or even an outline:
Design: This is a great looking shot. The perspective is exagerrated to give a sense of weirdness to the scene before anything even happens. It's not "wonky". It's planned to compose well with the characters.
Great Animation Exaggeration: The drawings in the animation are super exaggerated when you still frame them, but move smooth as silk when you watch it in real time.
Accents: Clampett's accents are stronger than anyone else's in history. Accents are punctuation. They draw attention to what you want the audience to notice.
Clampett's accents are not merely functional. They are also part of the entertainment. Watch this stuff in real time and see just how much fun the movements are.
In a Freleng cartoon, the accents are just barely readable. Accents are like the rhythms in music. The punctuation in music is what gives it its excitement.
Some folks got rhythm. Others don't. Clampett gots rhythm.
This is the keyframe that "reads". The ones before and after give it the powerful accent.
"Design" in almost every frame. While there are whole articles and books about the "design elements" in the odd scene in the odd UPA cartoon and everyone gets all excited about them (including me), I'm sitting watching Clampett cartoons and finding great shapes and forms and compositions on every frame.
This wide door is a functional inbetween that just happens to also look really cool. It looks cool still and in motion. That's ultra design.
This antic pose is a beautiful design. Everything flows along the line of action and the pose composes well with the background shapes.
Flow!
Weirdness:
Weirdness is one of the most important elements of a cartoon and Clampett gives you more than anybody.
How gorgeously rude is the drawing of the cat stuck in the wall membrane?
Toppers:
You'd think the cat stuck in the wall skin was the end of the gag, but nope, Clampett thinks up a topper.
Now the pussy is vacuu-formed by the door and on top of that, the tail is...you know.
The animators love those muzzle-bulbs as Chloe calls them.
Ye Gods, is that a great drawing of weirdness!
This cell setup should be hanging in The Louvre. On the ceiling.
Muzzlebulbs to the extreme.
Schloopf!
Quivering Animated Orifices:
I can't believe the love the animator put into the drawings of the quivering hole! Look how great that shape is!
Pure cartoon-design genius.
Run the clip again and watch how the hole moves. You can really feel that sucker.
Ouch. Where else would a Clampett cat step first?
Clarity/Directing Each Story Point:
Every important part of the continuity is punctuated with animation tools and accents.
When a cartoon is moving this fast and so many things are happening, clarity and punctuation is super important.
Clampett can cram more ideas and action into a few seconds than anyone. Being able to coordinate and control them so that you don't miss them takes immense skill and control.
Clampett is the ultra director. He uses his tools more than anyone, and has a larger toolbox to boot.
Part 2 tomorrow...
Think about what this scene would read like in a script, or even an outline:
Sylvester runs out the door and leaves it open.
The retarded lumpy cat follows.
He's too stupid to know the order of opening and closing a door, so he closes it first then runs into the wall instead.
The wall envelops him in rude rubbery wall skin.
Sylvester, from outside, opens the door again and motions to the other pussycats" C'mon fellas, hurry up!"
When he opens the door it slams over the retarded cat who is stuck in the wall.
The door is rubber too and forms around the lumpy dumb cat and leaves his tail balled up in a nasty place.
Sylvester slams the door open.
The other side of the door now has the dumb cat stuck to it.
The door flesh spits the retard out and he bounces onto the floor.
A small Sylvester cat runs into the scene over the retard and jumps off his butt and through the keyhole.
The hole quivers invitingly and attracts the notice of the 'tard.
The retard decides he will try jumping through the hole. He anticipates.
Out of nowhere, a baby cat runs into the scene grabs the keyhole and stretches it down to his level.
he jumps through the quivering hole.
The 'tard cat dives towards where the hole used to be and hits the door hard and falls down.
The end.
The retarded lumpy cat follows.
He's too stupid to know the order of opening and closing a door, so he closes it first then runs into the wall instead.
The wall envelops him in rude rubbery wall skin.
Sylvester, from outside, opens the door again and motions to the other pussycats" C'mon fellas, hurry up!"
When he opens the door it slams over the retarded cat who is stuck in the wall.
The door is rubber too and forms around the lumpy dumb cat and leaves his tail balled up in a nasty place.
Sylvester slams the door open.
The other side of the door now has the dumb cat stuck to it.
The door flesh spits the retard out and he bounces onto the floor.
A small Sylvester cat runs into the scene over the retard and jumps off his butt and through the keyhole.
The hole quivers invitingly and attracts the notice of the 'tard.
The retard decides he will try jumping through the hole. He anticipates.
Out of nowhere, a baby cat runs into the scene grabs the keyhole and stretches it down to his level.
he jumps through the quivering hole.
The 'tard cat dives towards where the hole used to be and hits the door hard and falls down.
The end.
Does that sound like anything that would pass executive (or cartoon critic) scrutiny?
Is the scene necessary to the plot or character development of the cartoon? Does it further the arcs? Does it sound funny in words?
Why is it so great then? Let's look closely at the bits that make it up.
Is the scene necessary to the plot or character development of the cartoon? Does it further the arcs? Does it sound funny in words?
Why is it so great then? Let's look closely at the bits that make it up.
Design: This is a great looking shot. The perspective is exagerrated to give a sense of weirdness to the scene before anything even happens. It's not "wonky". It's planned to compose well with the characters.
Great Animation Exaggeration: The drawings in the animation are super exaggerated when you still frame them, but move smooth as silk when you watch it in real time.
Accents: Clampett's accents are stronger than anyone else's in history. Accents are punctuation. They draw attention to what you want the audience to notice.Clampett's accents are not merely functional. They are also part of the entertainment. Watch this stuff in real time and see just how much fun the movements are.
In a Freleng cartoon, the accents are just barely readable. Accents are like the rhythms in music. The punctuation in music is what gives it its excitement.
Some folks got rhythm. Others don't. Clampett gots rhythm.
This is the keyframe that "reads". The ones before and after give it the powerful accent.
"Design" in almost every frame. While there are whole articles and books about the "design elements" in the odd scene in the odd UPA cartoon and everyone gets all excited about them (including me), I'm sitting watching Clampett cartoons and finding great shapes and forms and compositions on every frame.
This wide door is a functional inbetween that just happens to also look really cool. It looks cool still and in motion. That's ultra design.
This antic pose is a beautiful design. Everything flows along the line of action and the pose composes well with the background shapes.
Flow!
Weirdness:Weirdness is one of the most important elements of a cartoon and Clampett gives you more than anybody.
How gorgeously rude is the drawing of the cat stuck in the wall membrane?
Toppers:
You'd think the cat stuck in the wall skin was the end of the gag, but nope, Clampett thinks up a topper.
Now the pussy is vacuu-formed by the door and on top of that, the tail is...you know.
The animators love those muzzle-bulbs as Chloe calls them.
Ye Gods, is that a great drawing of weirdness!
This cell setup should be hanging in The Louvre. On the ceiling.
Muzzlebulbs to the extreme.
Schloopf!
Quivering Animated Orifices:I can't believe the love the animator put into the drawings of the quivering hole! Look how great that shape is!
Pure cartoon-design genius.
Run the clip again and watch how the hole moves. You can really feel that sucker.
Ouch. Where else would a Clampett cat step first?
Clarity/Directing Each Story Point:Every important part of the continuity is punctuated with animation tools and accents.
When a cartoon is moving this fast and so many things are happening, clarity and punctuation is super important.
Clampett can cram more ideas and action into a few seconds than anyone. Being able to coordinate and control them so that you don't miss them takes immense skill and control.
Clampett is the ultra director. He uses his tools more than anyone, and has a larger toolbox to boot.
Part 2 tomorrow...
Oswald: Going To Blazes, Firehouse Fun Part 2
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!
YOUNG ANIMATORS PAY ATTENTION
This is a great scene to copy if you are trying to teach yourself to animate. It's full of fundamental principles of motion. Figure 8 arcs esp...
Watch The Firehouse 'Mo Do A Little Dance
Kitty Kornered is coming, still workin' on it...
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Big Post About Clampett and Holes Preview
What goes together better than knobs, holes, fur and muzzle balls?
Clampett's animation of them!
Hopefully by tomorrow I will tell you all about why Clampett's cartoons are on a higher plane than other cartoons.
Clampett's animation of them!
Hopefully by tomorrow I will tell you all about why Clampett's cartoons are on a higher plane than other cartoons.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Gary Owens- Roger Ramjet - Lance Crossfire, Ms. Lottalove -
Gary Owens made a career of being a funny straight man. His voice is straight, yet with a great natural timing and a kindly sarcasm. And an amazing tone and warmth.
It's such a unique character!
I talked to Gary the other day and he is going to do a voice on a commercial I'm animating right now. We're also going to hang out in the next couple weeks and he asked if I'd mind if he brought Jonathan Winters along! Holy crap. How cool is that?
When I was a kid, I had all of Jonathan's records and I'd memorize them and act them out for my Italian bully friends...after they finished crushing my cartilaginous bones and stomping me with their pointy shoes.
Gary is one of the greats and I think he knew everyone cool from the 60s. He's from the generation when fantastic skill and professionalism was taken for granted.
Whoever did the sfx for Ramjet was funny too. What a killer team-the Monty Python of cartoon troupes.CRASH effects:
Funny cutting of course.
The close-ups:
Gary told me who did Lance Crossfire's voice and now I forget who the actor is (Jim Thurman?)...It's an impression of Burt Lancaster, though, and a great one!
Here's a funny animation idea.
side-of-the-mouth lips synch:
Gary was the easiest actor I ever worked with, He instantly got every joke and added some of his own. (The letter 'M'...the Three Stooges gag and more...)Here he is as Powdered Toastman. By the way, anyone know what famous actor played the President?
Movie Clip:
Friday, June 15, 2007
Hubley Commercial: Dog- More fun from Scribner
Dog.
I like how each dog not only looks different but has its own unique walk.
This is total custom made animation.
If only we could get rid of the modern cookie cutter mentality of stock animation, stock character designs and stock everything and go back to when animation was creative and fun!
I like how each dog not only looks different but has its own unique walk.
This is total custom made animation.
If only we could get rid of the modern cookie cutter mentality of stock animation, stock character designs and stock everything and go back to when animation was creative and fun!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Digital Restoration = Digital Ruination - Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom (1953)
How many ways are there to destroy old films? I'm losing count.
Here's one that drives me crazy: THEY CHANGE THE COLORS
This opening to Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom used to be beautiful.
It was a pan where the color families changed gradually as the owl ran down a branch to the schoolhouse.
Originally all the colors were grayed down and had many subtle tints and hue variations in it. I used to get my BG artists to study it and apply the ideas to my cartoons. I must have watched the cartoon a hundred times.
It was gorgeous.
WAS...
Then they did this to it.
Now it's all primary and secondary colors turned up to the brightest vulgarest saturation and all the fun is gone.
The BG colors are so over saturated and glowing that they bleed into the character.
Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom was a grand experimental film by Ward Kimball, Tom Oreb, Eyvind Earle and other mighty Disney talents.
It has been turned into a modern gaudy looking Saturday morning cartoon.
The backgrounds in the classroom scenes were originally all subtle greyed colors too, and now they have been arbitrarily changed into purples, oranges, blues and other neon colors.
You can barely make out the characters against the backgrounds anymore because every color is equally bright and right in the middle of the hue.
These are the latest video transfers that are on those silver box sets-"Treasures" or whatever they are called.
Well the treasures have been destroyed.
Here are some other strange digital "restoration" tricks that they use to take the fun out of the cartoons.
This means that dark colors turn black and you lose lots of detail in the BGs.
Now they try to smooth away all the grain and while the grain gets polished off, so does the painting details in the backgrounds.
Sometimes you can make out the film grain in the background, but none in the characters and that creates a really strange fakish effect.
The BGs have turned black. The lines are all jagged and too skinny and everything strobes.
It sounds really digital and whispery.
Well it's all very depressing. My guess is that within another 10 years, these films will be completely unrecognizable as they keep coming up with new digital toys to help engineers change the art that the original artists made. Soon they will invent :"on-modelization" and they will go in and change all the character designs in the cartoons to make them match the current licensing guides. Bambi will wear a backwards baseball cap and all the forest creatures will rap the story.
Is there a site somewhere where someone documents all this destruction and tampering?
Is there anything we can do to stop it?
The best video transfers I have seen in the last 10 years are the ones done by cheap fast houses, who basically just telecine the films and don't tamper with anything, but that's all becoming ancient lost history now.
Better save all your video tapes and laser disks from the 80s and early 90s. Those are as close to the original films as you will ever see.
Or get over to the Asifa Archive and see the best possible available existing prints of rare films.
Here's one that drives me crazy: THEY CHANGE THE COLORS
This opening to Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom used to be beautiful.It was a pan where the color families changed gradually as the owl ran down a branch to the schoolhouse.
Originally all the colors were grayed down and had many subtle tints and hue variations in it. I used to get my BG artists to study it and apply the ideas to my cartoons. I must have watched the cartoon a hundred times.
It was gorgeous.
WAS...
Then they did this to it.
Now it's all primary and secondary colors turned up to the brightest vulgarest saturation and all the fun is gone.
The BG colors are so over saturated and glowing that they bleed into the character.
Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom was a grand experimental film by Ward Kimball, Tom Oreb, Eyvind Earle and other mighty Disney talents.
It has been turned into a modern gaudy looking Saturday morning cartoon.
The backgrounds in the classroom scenes were originally all subtle greyed colors too, and now they have been arbitrarily changed into purples, oranges, blues and other neon colors.
You can barely make out the characters against the backgrounds anymore because every color is equally bright and right in the middle of the hue.
These are the latest video transfers that are on those silver box sets-"Treasures" or whatever they are called.
Well the treasures have been destroyed.
Here are some other strange digital "restoration" tricks that they use to take the fun out of the cartoons.
LINE SHARPENING
They take the lines in the cartoons and thin them out. To the point where they are so skinny, that you can see the video scan lines cut through them. Now the once beautifully inked lines have ragged edges. The BG colors bleeds over them on one side, and the interior character colors bleed into them.PULSATING VIBRATING COLORS
I don't know exactly what they do here or why, but the colors vibrate in intensity-even when you still frame them. The Looney Tunes box sets do this too. It makes it really hard to follow the characters when they are pulsating, strobing and the ragged edges shimmer and shake up and down the outlines.MOIRE (MO-RAY) PATTERNS
Inside the flat cell colors, you see all kinds of electrical patterns dancing around. They look like when you put a dot tone on top of another and you get weird otherworldly patterns.DVNR
Many of the cartoons on the treasures are DVNR-ed. That Moose cartoon is particularly bad.UPPING THE CONTRAST
We met with someone who actually worked on these transfers and she told us they purposely changed all kinds of things in the old films. One of the things they do automatically is to up the contrast.This means that dark colors turn black and you lose lots of detail in the BGs.
GRAIN SMOOTHING
You ever see when all of a sudden the film grain freezes in an old film?Now they try to smooth away all the grain and while the grain gets polished off, so does the painting details in the backgrounds.
Sometimes you can make out the film grain in the background, but none in the characters and that creates a really strange fakish effect.
STROBING
Everything strobes now in modern film transfers of old cartoons. Especially during pans. Bambi jitters and shakes all over the place. That movie was once noted for its smooth naturalness and flowing animation. Now it looks like a modern made for TV video.The BGs have turned black. The lines are all jagged and too skinny and everything strobes.
CHANGING THE SOUND MIX
They remix the sound so that everything happens way in the distance. All the original careful balances and rich choreography of sound is gone. You have to really strain your ears to hear what's going on. Everything sounds like a modern MTV video mix now. The voices have lost their contrasts in volume and color and so have the sound effects and music.It sounds really digital and whispery.
Well it's all very depressing. My guess is that within another 10 years, these films will be completely unrecognizable as they keep coming up with new digital toys to help engineers change the art that the original artists made. Soon they will invent :"on-modelization" and they will go in and change all the character designs in the cartoons to make them match the current licensing guides. Bambi will wear a backwards baseball cap and all the forest creatures will rap the story.
Is there a site somewhere where someone documents all this destruction and tampering?
Is there anything we can do to stop it?
The best video transfers I have seen in the last 10 years are the ones done by cheap fast houses, who basically just telecine the films and don't tamper with anything, but that's all becoming ancient lost history now.
Better save all your video tapes and laser disks from the 80s and early 90s. Those are as close to the original films as you will ever see.
Or get over to the Asifa Archive and see the best possible available existing prints of rare films.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Hubley Commercial: Bird
Bird.
The design in this is not too thrilling, but the animation is great!
Hey, wanna see Scribner where he really belongs? With Clampett?
Go to the most thoughtful blog in the world and see Eddie's most sensitive raw and naked post yet!
EDDIE JOINS THE 21ST CENTURY
ROD SCRIBNER - THE MAN WHO DIDN'T NEED INBETWEENS
The design in this is not too thrilling, but the animation is great!
Hey, wanna see Scribner where he really belongs? With Clampett?
Go to the most thoughtful blog in the world and see Eddie's most sensitive raw and naked post yet!EDDIE JOINS THE 21ST CENTURY
ROD SCRIBNER - THE MAN WHO DIDN'T NEED INBETWEENS
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Hubley Commercial: Peas
Peas.
Here is some more funny Scribner stylized animation.
He figured out how to turn this guy's head around and see it from the back-hard to do with such stylized shapes...
he has really funny lip synch too.
Scribner likes to do accents that kind of jitter. You can see this in a lot of the McKimson cartoons he animated.
Funny, unique walks and runs as always.
Scribner was a guy who tried to have fun when he animated. He never seemed to just take a job or style for granted.
Here is some more funny Scribner stylized animation.
He figured out how to turn this guy's head around and see it from the back-hard to do with such stylized shapes...
he has really funny lip synch too.
Scribner likes to do accents that kind of jitter. You can see this in a lot of the McKimson cartoons he animated.
Funny, unique walks and runs as always.
Scribner was a guy who tried to have fun when he animated. He never seemed to just take a job or style for granted.
Hubley Commercial: Baby - Rod Scribner animation
Hey, everybody. Kali Fontecchio has done a lot of work making these clips and uploading all the pics for you, so go over to her blog and check out her own fun filled drawings and paintings!
http://kalikazoo.blogspot.com/
Here is a Hubley commercial animated by Rod Scribner.
Baby.
For me, animation is more than just smooth movement. It's not enough to learn a bunch of stock Cal Artsy moves and gestures and then move formula designed characters from one stock pose to another.
Animation is movement of interesting and inventive drawings. The drawings that make up the animation are as important as the movements themselves. Maybe more so.
It's even better when the drawings are not preinvented on model sheets or in decades of stock expressions.
Here's a great combination of John Hubley's designs and Rod Scribner's animation.
Hubley probably did a couple of the main drawings and the composition. A minor animator would have taken those poses and then just animated stock lip synch and moved the heads and arms to the accents in the soundtrack.
An inventive animator like Scribner does a lot more than that. He adds to the "design" of the scene by designing original custom made expressions and poses that fit the soundtrack.
Scribner also makes up his own mouth shapes, rather than rely on stock mouth shapes like you see so often.
This is the kind of animation that made me want to be an animator.
Custom made animation that isn't a formula. That shows what an individual cartoon animator made up just for that scene. ...That looks like a living breathing observant human did it, rather than a machine.
Scribner must be the most creative animator ever. He's able to do all kinds of styles. When a lot of the Warner's animators couldn't make the switch to 50s graphic styles, he just jumped at it and created ways to move the characters that matched the graphic styles. His movements are as stylish (actually more) than the design themselves. He doesn't merely "squash and stretch" or "antic and overshoot".
These 50s commercials commercials are among the best use of the UPA style that I have seen. They are lively and better paced than the entertainment shorts-maybe because they have to get the message across in 30 seconds to a minute rather than drag it out to 6 minutes or more.
I can't figure out why UPA didn't use Scribner in their feature shorts. He understood how to move these designs better than anybody. The shorts are barely even animated. They are evenly inbetweened key poses.
You can freeze frame animation like this and find a ton of great drawings and original graphic thoughts. Isn't that why we animate? To create new pictures? I can't understand today's urge to repeat actions that someone else invented 50 years ago and that have already been copied over and over again ever since.
This animation is fun. and that's what it's all about isn't it?
Well I can't think up enough words to describe each picture, so I'll just let you enjoy them.
Cute and specific at the same time!
Amid On Scribner Commercials
http://kalikazoo.blogspot.com/
Here is a Hubley commercial animated by Rod Scribner.
Baby.
For me, animation is more than just smooth movement. It's not enough to learn a bunch of stock Cal Artsy moves and gestures and then move formula designed characters from one stock pose to another.
Animation is movement of interesting and inventive drawings. The drawings that make up the animation are as important as the movements themselves. Maybe more so.
It's even better when the drawings are not preinvented on model sheets or in decades of stock expressions.
Here's a great combination of John Hubley's designs and Rod Scribner's animation.
Hubley probably did a couple of the main drawings and the composition. A minor animator would have taken those poses and then just animated stock lip synch and moved the heads and arms to the accents in the soundtrack.
An inventive animator like Scribner does a lot more than that. He adds to the "design" of the scene by designing original custom made expressions and poses that fit the soundtrack.
Scribner also makes up his own mouth shapes, rather than rely on stock mouth shapes like you see so often.
This is the kind of animation that made me want to be an animator.
Custom made animation that isn't a formula. That shows what an individual cartoon animator made up just for that scene. ...That looks like a living breathing observant human did it, rather than a machine.
Scribner must be the most creative animator ever. He's able to do all kinds of styles. When a lot of the Warner's animators couldn't make the switch to 50s graphic styles, he just jumped at it and created ways to move the characters that matched the graphic styles. His movements are as stylish (actually more) than the design themselves. He doesn't merely "squash and stretch" or "antic and overshoot".
These 50s commercials commercials are among the best use of the UPA style that I have seen. They are lively and better paced than the entertainment shorts-maybe because they have to get the message across in 30 seconds to a minute rather than drag it out to 6 minutes or more.
I can't figure out why UPA didn't use Scribner in their feature shorts. He understood how to move these designs better than anybody. The shorts are barely even animated. They are evenly inbetweened key poses.
You can freeze frame animation like this and find a ton of great drawings and original graphic thoughts. Isn't that why we animate? To create new pictures? I can't understand today's urge to repeat actions that someone else invented 50 years ago and that have already been copied over and over again ever since.
This animation is fun. and that's what it's all about isn't it?
Well I can't think up enough words to describe each picture, so I'll just let you enjoy them.
Cute and specific at the same time!
Amid On Scribner Commercials
Friday, June 08, 2007
BGs and Style 11 more BG layouts to reference and be inspired
Boy, people sure could draw 70 years ago. In lots of different styles, and all with the same principles.Look at the clarity and great organizing of all the design elements.
If you go back to the first few posts on BG Layouts and the composition posts too and read about the principles of good composition and layout, then
WATCH THIS FILM.
http://www.archive.org/details/Destinat1956
Interestingly, some of the scenes are cluttered and others are brilliantly organized. Look at the street scenes and neighborhoods. Great! Maybe it's 2 different layout artists.
But, this this isn't good because it is "flat" or "UPA" style. It's good because the scenes are really well organized...or composed. These artists are thinking artists who plan their scenes to make everything that is important stand out. They don't clutter the scenes with arbitrary details and visual noise.
This image is well organized. The characters make a circle shape and each character fits well within the shape.
Here are the same organizing principles applied on a much more complex level. A picture with this much detail in it could easily be a mess of clutter if attempted by a less thoughtful artist. It would be extremely hard to put all this complexity together and still make it clear and striking-and still compose to focus on the character! Amazing.Unlike this.
This scene is not organized. All the design elements are cluttered and just thrown in haphazardly. (I know Hunsucker or someone will jump in and say "It's purposely cluttered! That's the point of the scene!" Is it purposely ugly too?Here's more clutter. Some composition and thought could have made the individual shapes read better. Of course the shapes themselves aren't that thrilling. Isn't there a point when things just get too primitive?
Here's a real Jim Dandy.
You can have good compositions and design in any style. Bambi has it, Chuck Jones cartoons have it. Tex Avery, Clampett, John Hubley, they all have good organization of visual elements in their films. Even many Terrytoons do. Some don't.
Clear compositions in more traditional styles. Organized to make what's important in the scene to be emphasized.
Yeah the surface styles are different, but style is the last step good artists apply to the product. In all the important artistic principles they are all in agreement. The first step in any work of art or cartoon entertainment is spending years learning to draw correctly and logically so that you can have control over your creations.
Go see all these principles working on an extreme superhuman level:
Tenggren is even better than UPA at composition and design
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Trip To Carlo Vinci's House
Steve Worth, Amir Avni and I went to visit Carlo Vinci's family last weekend. That's Carlo's wife Margaret above and her son Ron and grandson John. Amir is smiling to left of her.
There's Ron, his lovely wife Scarlett and son John.
We got to see lots of great artwork and Margaret showed us her love letters from Carlo from the late 1930s. On Terrytoons stationery!
That's a self portrait of Carlo above. I'll tell you more in a bit...
Steve is going to post a bunch of Carlo's love letters - with drawings of Terrytoons characters at the archive soon. So keep your eyes peeled.
http://www.animationarchive.org/
http://www.animationarchive.org/2007/06/terry-toons-carlo-vinci-notes.html
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Suspicious Ralph. LEVELS OF ACTING SPECIFICITY
You can have different levels of specificity.
1) General emotions common to all beasts: Humans have certain basic expressions that are common to all animals
and then certain emotions, interests and traits that are unique to us as a species.
3) Gender Specific
Specific to women or men-all women have certain basic emotions and expressions in common, that are different to men.
6) Individual Character Specific
Each individual woman for example, on top of her basic shared woman expressions has her own personal specific expressions and mannerisms. And this is what separates real people from animation people. Specific versus generic.
A good actor takes what's common to all and then adds what's unique to the individual.
Alice is a "sassy girl" but a very specific individual one.
Jackie Gleason covers every level of general man and beast traits to a very specific unique version of a loud mouthed asshole.
Ralph acts like he's not suspicious of Alice...
These are not expressions or poses you would ever see on a cartoon model chart.
And he has a million more in his repertoire. This is just one scene!
Norton's reaction expressions are very specific and entertaining too.
1) General emotions common to all beasts: Humans have certain basic expressions that are common to all animals
Happy
Pain
Hungry
Boss
Fear
Lust
Mad
Kill
Pain
Hungry
Boss
Fear
Lust
Mad
Kill
2) Specific to Humans
and then certain emotions, interests and traits that are unique to us as a species.
Indignation
Sarcasm
Laughter
Music
Art
Dance
Laughter
Music
Art
Dance
3) Gender Specific
Specific to women or men-all women have certain basic emotions and expressions in common, that are different to men.
This is where animation separates from live action. Animated characters barely get past the gender specific level. Once in a while maybe, but hardly ever do animated characters come off as individual characters.
5) General Character Types
Types are a level more specific than male or female, but belonging to a type is still not individually specific.
Looney Tunes is as close as we ever got to personality, and even they only slightly got past specific types:
Wiseguys,
bullies,
Jerks,
buffoons,
etc.
In a cartoon, you can have an asshole blowhard character-like PegLeg Pete, Stromboli and a million others.
Warner Bros. had some more specific variations of this type-like Foghorn Leghorn or Nasty Canasta.
In live action, the variations of any type are much more specific-Archie Bunker and Ralph Kramden share some broad general characteristics but come off as totally different characters with their own packages of expressions, gestures, voices, "character designs" and quirks.
Live action actors, start with huge advantages over animators:
1) Human actors actually are individuals. Every person is different. in real life.
2) They don't have to spend a lifetime learning to draw. They can spend their time learning to act.
3) They have a medium that is based on individuality. The star system. You like certain actors because they look unique, have charisma and or have very unique mannerisms, expressions and voices.
4) Animators have to draw every single frame to fake life. They have to learn a ton of physical things that actors don't:
Weight
Mechanics of motion.
Squash and stretch
Live actors do all this naturally and in real time. They don't have to figure out how to walk convincingly.
By the time animators get to the problem of acting, they usually rely on expressions, mannerisms, gestures that they have seen in other animated cartoons.
5) All real people look different. Most cartoon characters are repetitions of designs already created.
6) It's really hard to draw real specific expressions and then wrap them around cartoon construction. An actor doesn't have to think about what muscles to move to make an expression. He just makes one.
How then can animators break away from formula animation acting and enter the realm of fully realized individual characters?
A TYPICAL ANIMATION SASSY GIRL-SMARTER AND BETTER THAN ALL MEN
If an animator has time left over from learning to draw and animate to learn how to act, or even care about it, he has to ignore most animated formula acting and study real people and great actors who all have interesting and specific expressions and mannerisms.
5) General Character Types
Types are a level more specific than male or female, but belonging to a type is still not individually specific.
Looney Tunes is as close as we ever got to personality, and even they only slightly got past specific types:
Wiseguys,
bullies,
Jerks,
buffoons,
etc.
In a cartoon, you can have an asshole blowhard character-like PegLeg Pete, Stromboli and a million others.
Warner Bros. had some more specific variations of this type-like Foghorn Leghorn or Nasty Canasta.
In live action, the variations of any type are much more specific-Archie Bunker and Ralph Kramden share some broad general characteristics but come off as totally different characters with their own packages of expressions, gestures, voices, "character designs" and quirks.
Live action actors, start with huge advantages over animators:
1) Human actors actually are individuals. Every person is different. in real life.
2) They don't have to spend a lifetime learning to draw. They can spend their time learning to act.
3) They have a medium that is based on individuality. The star system. You like certain actors because they look unique, have charisma and or have very unique mannerisms, expressions and voices.
4) Animators have to draw every single frame to fake life. They have to learn a ton of physical things that actors don't:
Weight
Mechanics of motion.
Squash and stretch
Live actors do all this naturally and in real time. They don't have to figure out how to walk convincingly.
By the time animators get to the problem of acting, they usually rely on expressions, mannerisms, gestures that they have seen in other animated cartoons.
5) All real people look different. Most cartoon characters are repetitions of designs already created.
6) It's really hard to draw real specific expressions and then wrap them around cartoon construction. An actor doesn't have to think about what muscles to move to make an expression. He just makes one.
How then can animators break away from formula animation acting and enter the realm of fully realized individual characters?
A TYPICAL ANIMATION SASSY GIRL-SMARTER AND BETTER THAN ALL MEN
6) Individual Character Specific
Each individual woman for example, on top of her basic shared woman expressions has her own personal specific expressions and mannerisms. And this is what separates real people from animation people. Specific versus generic.
A good actor takes what's common to all and then adds what's unique to the individual.
Alice is a "sassy girl" but a very specific individual one.
Alice's sarcastic reply to Ralph about her dress...
Jackie Gleason covers every level of general man and beast traits to a very specific unique version of a loud mouthed asshole.
Ralph acts like he's not suspicious of Alice...
These are not expressions or poses you would ever see on a cartoon model chart.
And he has a million more in his repertoire. This is just one scene!
Norton's reaction expressions are very specific and entertaining too.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
ACCENTS Foghorn Leghorn - McKimson - Henery bites dog
Here's a big difference between old cartoons and new ones.
"Walky Talky Hawky" (1946)
Old cartoons had strong accents. The more the animator wanted you to feel something, the bigger he would draw the accent.
Classic animators were direct and to the point. They knew what was important in a scene and used accents to draw your attention to them.
This great big open mouth accent happens just a frame before he bites down. You hardly see it, but you feel it.
The pain is stronger with a good accent and we all know how important pain is in entertainment.
Today's drawn story points are much softer by comparison.
CLICK HERE TO SEE A CHICKEN BITE A DOG!
Old cartoons had strong accents. The more the animator wanted you to feel something, the bigger he would draw the accent.
Classic animators were direct and to the point. They knew what was important in a scene and used accents to draw your attention to them.This great big open mouth accent happens just a frame before he bites down. You hardly see it, but you feel it.
The pain is stronger with a good accent and we all know how important pain is in entertainment.Today's drawn story points are much softer by comparison.
CLICK HERE TO SEE A CHICKEN BITE A DOG!
Monday, June 04, 2007
Clampett- Porky's Snooze Reel- MAN animation
I would never recommend animating even semi-realistic men in cartoons, because it's so damn hard to do and it seldom amounts to anything entertaining.
Here is a scene from a Clampett cartoon that has a "realistic" man in it and for some reason I find it hilarious.
Just because it's such a wrong thing to do and Clampett did it anyway and made the animator move the head in every impossible angle.
Human heads just do not look very appealing from every angle, but they sure are funny.
This scene really demonstrates the difference between the Warner Bros. cartoon entertainment philosophy and Disney's.
The characters in Disney cartoons are very idealized- realistic man type characters are either good or evil, "comedy characters" are grumpy or they have drippy noses or they are stylized fruitcakes.
The men in Disney cartoons are not anybody you can relate to and they don't act at all like actual men.
This guy is like an actual guy. He looks like someone you can sit down and have a smoke with, watch Ultimate Fighting and tell dirty jokes.
He is a regular guy with sleaze written all over him, like all us guys. It's not hard to imagine a guy like this being a Dad. Foghorn Leghorn would be a good Dad too. He'll slip you a small glass of beer when Mom's not looking.
LOOK AT MAN.
Here's a typical Disney man to compare with.
He's made up of animation principles instead of flesh, blood and guts.
Warner Bros. cartoons are street-wise. They look at life with a realistic point of view. They take the same animation principles and use them to make fun of the real world.
For Disney, it seems just having the principles is enough. The cartoons don't reflect any acute observations of humanity.
Who do you think would be more laughs to hang out with, this guy or the Clampett man?
Look at thing.
Here is a scene from a Clampett cartoon that has a "realistic" man in it and for some reason I find it hilarious.
Just because it's such a wrong thing to do and Clampett did it anyway and made the animator move the head in every impossible angle.
Human heads just do not look very appealing from every angle, but they sure are funny.
This scene really demonstrates the difference between the Warner Bros. cartoon entertainment philosophy and Disney's.
The characters in Disney cartoons are very idealized- realistic man type characters are either good or evil, "comedy characters" are grumpy or they have drippy noses or they are stylized fruitcakes.
The men in Disney cartoons are not anybody you can relate to and they don't act at all like actual men.
This guy is like an actual guy. He looks like someone you can sit down and have a smoke with, watch Ultimate Fighting and tell dirty jokes.He is a regular guy with sleaze written all over him, like all us guys. It's not hard to imagine a guy like this being a Dad. Foghorn Leghorn would be a good Dad too. He'll slip you a small glass of beer when Mom's not looking.
LOOK AT MAN.
Here's a typical Disney man to compare with.
He's made up of animation principles instead of flesh, blood and guts.
Warner Bros. cartoons are street-wise. They look at life with a realistic point of view. They take the same animation principles and use them to make fun of the real world.
For Disney, it seems just having the principles is enough. The cartoons don't reflect any acute observations of humanity.
Who do you think would be more laughs to hang out with, this guy or the Clampett man?Look at thing.
2 ways to animate acting and lip synch
While you are making comparisons, look at the 2 different approaches to drawing lip-synch. The Disney animation seems to completely ignore the dialogue track and rely on formula squash and stretch.Some cartoon men that probably wouldn't be much fun to hang around with
Saturday, June 02, 2007
More Stylized Spumco 1990/91 and today
Design by Rex, drawing by me, inks by Brian Romero
All through the 80s I had a flat stylized kinda style-inspired by Ed Benedict and the 50s commercials. I didn't find UPA cartoons themselves entertaining, but I loved the idea of striking flattish designs.
Everyone else in the studios hated it! No one would let me do it.
I met Mike Giamo once while looking for artists to work on ...I think it was Mighty Mouse and I realized that he and a few other artists also liked that sort of thing. But they liked it in adifferent way.
Mike is probably most responsible for steering the Cal Arts students in that direction-they combine the flat shapes of UPA with Disney-style (Frank Thomas) eyes and expressions and that's basically the Cal-Arts style. Cruella DeVille's face on Gerald McBoingBoing's head.
George Lucas hired a bunch of Cal Arts guys and made a paper cut out movie (I forget the name-help me out!) that Amid and many Cal Arts fans folks love. It's extreme Cal-Arts.
I thought that Mike and all these artists were very talented, but I took the flat designy stuff in a different direction.
To me, the style is just a tool-not an end in itself. It has functions.
It's great for commercials. It doesn't lend itself well to "personality cartoons". Super stylized characters are more like general symbols, rather than detailed layered living characters.
That's why I like Ed Benedict so much. He took a graphic style but made his characters look like characters, not just symbolic representations of generic people types.
I grew up watching early Hanna Barbera cartoons, that are a somewhat watered down version of graphic character design, but they are real characters-they seem alive and they interact with other characters and with us in the audience.
The only problem I have with UPA and it's descendants is that it philosophically leaves out the audience. It's intended for artists, not for regular humans. I, like other artists can find a lot of good in it, but I wanted to use the ideas to entertain a wide audience.
LOG (character stolen from Marky Maypo)
When we did the fake commercials in Ren and Stimpy, the artists and I attempted to go with a real 50s retro look to contrast with the design of Ren and Stimpy in the story cartoons.These commercials were not meant to be stories or personality explorations. They are bookends to the stories.
Prizes in the cereal. Window dressing.
Here's one that Bob Camp did the storyboard for. He himself is not a stylized designy cartoonist, but he is a great all around illustrator and good at picking up styles fast. LOG was the first fake commercial we did, so we just stole the design from Marky Maypo. Basically to get used to drawing in a retro style.
MY LITTLE BROTHER DOLL -designed by Dave Sheldon
I had met a really good natural retro designer named Dave Sheldon before we did Ren and Stimpy and it dawned on me that he would be good to design some of the commercials.
I had to "sell" the idea to Nickelodeon. They didn't understand why some parts of the cartoon would look different than the other parts, so I argued and they reluctantly gave in. Once they saw the cartoons they loved them and wanted more more more.
I had Dave design the first Powdered Toast commercial and he did hilarious 50s style versions of Ren and Stimpy, but Nickelodeon flatly refused to let me do it. They thought it would confuse the kids, so sorry folks you didn't get to see that. It was a real treat!
LOG FOR GIRLS - Dave Sheldon
An unintended consequence of including "UPA-style shorts in Ren and Stimpy is that, more than any other part of the show...that's what everyone copied and still copies 15 years later. They took these throwaway candy bits and decided to make whole shows with cardboard characters.I should have known better. That's what happened with the real UPA. Everyone copied the wrong parts-the cold, sterile blandness and the seemingly simplistic looking designs. History repeats itself I guess.
I'm making a commercial now in Rex's style.
The king of Hollywood Flash Animators, the towering Pringle is helping me animate the thing.
Steve and Eddie have told me of a great controversy stirring over me analyzing UPA cartoons and discussing its historical impact.
They said some people are actually mad that I don't just say every part of everything everybody ever did was great. I just would like to point out, that I am one of the style's biggest proponents and am in awe of Hubley, Cannon and Scribner. I'll even bet a large % of the (younger) folks who are outraged at the idea of discussion and analysis would not even have heard of UPA had I not battled against the whole industry to revive an interest in it!
Soon, I will show you what I think is best about the UPA cartoons. Here to start....
1) It's not the individual character designs themselves-or any of the little details. It's the stage design-how the characters all fit and compose with the backgrounds and the colors.
COMPOSITION
The characters themselves are not usually impressive, they are basically stick figures and only work in the context of the scene staging. And this is the part that no one copies. Anyone can draw stick figures today, but I don't see very many people who can make a composition and that's a huge difference.
Here are cluttered non-compositions from a UPA cartoon and others. Superficial imitations of the good stuff.
CLUTTER
I'll show you more of what I mean soon...Soon, I will show you what I think is best about the UPA cartoons. Here to start....
1) It's not the individual character designs themselves-or any of the little details. It's the stage design-how the characters all fit and compose with the backgrounds and the colors.
COMPOSITION
Here are cluttered non-compositions from a UPA cartoon and others. Superficial imitations of the good stuff.
CLUTTER
Friday, June 01, 2007
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