Look at the pictures small. If there is an obvious shape to the overall page, and you can still see what the composition is focusing on, then you probably have good staging.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
How to tell if your staging and composition is clear
Look at the pictures small. If there is an obvious shape to the overall page, and you can still see what the composition is focusing on, then you probably have good staging.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sardonic Appeal VS Cloying Cuteness
When Disney animators and fans think of "appeal" they tend to think about this kind of stuff, cuteseypie sissypants smooth tasteless stuff that's aimed at infants, moms, Cal Arts animators and adults who choose alternative lifestyles.
Disney Cute
Cal Arts Cute
This is the modern descendent of Disney "appeal". It's not at all based on any true human feelings or experiences. It's merely the autopilot way of designing characters that follow what animators think is the way cartoons are supposed to look - animators who love Disney and let hardly any other influences into the medium without painting over them with big round wet sad drippy eyes.
For some reason, no matter how hard they try, they can't seem to make any human characters cute or appealing at all. It's a mystery to me.
By the way, I'm not against this kind of cute. It's great for 5 year olds. But we could sure use some variety in mainstream animation. This isn't the only kind of "appeal".Alternative Lifestyle Animation Fan Cute
Disney would roll in his grave if he knew who his most ardent fans were and what his style inevitably led to:
Now just who do they aim these modern Disney characters at?
http://morgenfiles.blogspot.com/2008/02/thursday-13-disney-heroes.html
Anyway, there are many more ways to achieve "appeal" in cartoons without resorting to infantile or effeminate cuteness.
Sardonic Man Appeal
I like a lot of cartoon styles that have a more observant and honest outlook of humanity.
These cartoons by Virgil "VIP" Partch really portray humanity in its rawest and funniest forms.
VIP especially understands men in all their appealing hairy, brutish ugliness.
It's ironic that VIP started at Disney's as a storyboard artist. I can't imagine what they were thinking hiring someone whose whole outlook was the complete opposite of Disney's.
http://www.animationarchive.org/2005/12/media-virgil-vip-partch.htmlActual men in real life must have some appeal, even though most of us are nothing like what Disney cartoons consider appealing. We manage to get girls without looking like Bambi or Disney bland male leads. I think VIP captures exactly what it is about men that is appealing. I don't know why animated cartoons are so afraid to caricature life and true emotions and motivations. Instead they continue to slavishly copy one bizzare man's strange naive outlook of life - even decades after his death.
http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/01/media-virgil-vip-partch-man-beast.html
George Lichty is another great cartoonist whose outlook of life is more honest and observant than the general run of animated cartoons.
http://www.animationarchive.org/2007/07/comics-george-lichty-grin-and-bear-it.html
Don Martin also fits this cartoon outlook, as does Brant Parker. I wish I could find good examples of Parker's early Wizard Of Id Sunday pages to show you.
These kinds of cartoons appeal to more sophisticated and adventurous tastes than do Disney cartoons and their descendants.
When you are a little kid, you tend to like white bread and American cheese - anything without texture, contrast or strong individual flavors, but as you get older your taste buds get bored and crave spicier, more interesting and varied flavors. You start to like European salamis, pickles, sharp cheese, mushrooms and even crustaceans.
This stuff has more texture and may look rude, but it sure tastes better than baby food.
It's very odd to me that animated cartoons have stayed in the tasteless white bread stage for so long. Don't our retinas crave some more spicy varieties of visual flavors?
Like George Baker:
We have enough of a rich history of other types of cartoons to be inspired by - and lots of foods too.
Critique For Kelly Toon
Kelly has bravely asked for a critique of a drawing. She is starting to use some classic principles which is good. Here are some tips to get them to work together.
from Kelly: Here are a couple of concept drawings I did to bid for a children's book illustration job. Take a Look. I tried very hard to keep my negative spaces interesting, asymmetrical, and to use balance in my designs, and make it all very appealing. I am proud of the results, though I can see where they need adjusting. A certain redheaded bombshell gave me some excellent feedback and that helped a lot! I am sharing these images, just to say thank you again for this wealth of easily-digestible information you provide every week. Hopefully these do not make you want to shoot yourself, if you decide to take a look. Of course I'd be delighted to get any critique.
I hope that is a bit helpful. My sketches are a bit generic just to make the points clear.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Can Angular Styles Be Staged and Composed Well?
Flat designs that are extra stylized can pose a problem for layout artists. If they get too flat or wonky, then all the individual design elements tend to veer off into their own planes and directions. This makes it hard to get an organic hierarchical warm composition.
When I was around 8 or so, Hawley Pratt and Al White's Hanna Barbera Golden Books were my favorites. I loved the design of the HB characters and Al White's bright happy colors and crisp rendering made the books look extra fun.
As a kid, I didn't think at all about composition - to me design just meant superficial stylistic tricks - like squarish heads and backwards hands.
Then one day I discovered a whole new approach to the Hanna Barbera style:
http://goldengems.blogspot.com/2008/02/pebbles-flintstone.html
This cover immediately caught my eye when I saw it on the bottom shelf of The Davis Agency Store in Billings Bridge Plaza in 1965. I grabbed it and stared at it in shock.There was something really unique and brash and challenging about this style. Superficially the painting style looked messy because of the loose dry brush shading and textures. But it had something else that was different and appealing too. Each individual shape was designy and quirky, yet it fit easily and neatly onto the bigger forms. It had a great combination of contrasting curves and straights and everything just fit together so perfectly.
Biggest Forms of the composition make an overall interesting pleasing design. Every level of sub forms down to the smallest are interesting and fun.
The eyes have interesting angles and are asymmetrical. But they still fit on the head in the right place. They don't go in a different direction than the angle of the whole head.I flipped through the book in awe. Mel Crawford instantly became my favorite Golden Book artist. I didn't know at the time just how sophisticated his art was; I just knew it was different, somehow wrong and right at the same time.
This is not merely stylish and angular on a superficial level; it's great drawing, great composition and balance of filled areas against negative spaces. It has beautiful balance - much like the Bambi book, but in a more "modern" style. Balance is the key to good design. That's what's missing from so much of today's cartooning. Everyone thinks he's an instant designer just by drawing flat and wonky, or putting Anime eyes on a Bruce Timm drawing.
Of course, I also loved that Mel painted everybody the wrong colors. What a bonus!
By comparison with this stuff, the Hawley Pratt books look rushed and uninspired. I get the feeling that it was just easy money for him and he wanted to pump out as many books as he could. I know he has great layout talent because you can see it in the backgrounds of many 50s Friz cartoons. But the books look as if he just started drawing on the left side of the page and kept going till he made it to the right side of the page without worrying about having any compositional balance, or even good construction and balance in the individual characters.http://goldengems.blogspot.com/2008/02/flintstones.html
I don't know if every Golden Book artist got paid the same page rate, but these Crawford paintings look like he spent some time planning each layout before he actually drew it. All the elements and shapes, big small and inbetween are related to each other in hierarchical order.
Mel is balancing a pile of skills and principles all together at the same time - a very difficult thing to do.
http://goldengems.blogspot.com/2008/10/hanna-barberras-cave-kids.html
This is the kind of stuff that gets easily misinterpreted as "wonky". It's anything but.
Every layout is a complete design whole. It's not just a bunch of unconnected sharp cornered shapes randomly thrown together.
The negative shapes are as interesting and appealing as the positive shapes. And they serve functional purposes too.
Mel Crawford - genius!
Staging - Bambi Hierarchy Broken Down - staging becomes art
There were a lot of good comments yesterday. Nate Bear especially made the points that I was focusing on.
The main difference to me between that Flintstone staging and the Bambi staging is that one is merely functional and the other is planned artistically. In the Bambi picture, the whole layout is not only clear and easy to read, but the staging tself has been turned into part of the visual pleasure. It's so well thought out and artistically managed. It's logical and creative at the same time. The artist worked from the outside in to make an overall compositional statement where every level of sub forms and details agree with the big picture and follow its plan and physics..
Bambi and Thumper are each clearly framed by the BG elements, and those elements flow around the whole composition. The sub forms in the background are being pulled along and held together by opposing forces. The whole layout design is one force. Gravity is pulling the trees and snow down. The structure of the tree branches holds together the radiating pine needles and the clumps of snow.
Each clump of needles or snow all are following the same basic forces.
When you finally get down to the tiniest details, they too follow the physics of the larger forms. You could take any part of this image and break it down. You'll find the same logic everywhere.
This artist (the book credits Mel Shaw) is a real thinker and takes his work seriously.
The Flintstone picture on the other hand, while it's still very appealing looks like there was no thought put into it at all, except to cram all the elements into it and line them up next to each other where they at least don't bump into each other.
The appeal in the picture comes mainly from 2 places - the original Ed Benedict character designs - that even if drawn a bit sloppy, still look fun, and from the clean painting by Al White. The layout itself does nothing to add any artistic statement of its own. It looks like Pratt drew Fred first and then just filled the remaining space with the other characters.
If you look at all the details in the painting, they don't follow any overall statement. Each brushtroke is deft and clean, but the individual elements just go every which way at random without following any internal logic or form. They just fill up space.
Knowing this doesn't make it an easier to draw good compositions. I envy the people who have the knack for it - Jim Smith, Frazetta, a lot of the Disney layout artists. I don't seem to have this talent. I admire it though and wish it came naturally to me. I'm always looking for layout artists that can make this kind of picture magic.
I love how Shaw takes no detail for granted. Even the smallest elements -like the blades of grass above are each actually drawn with the brush, not just scribbled in. They are drawn and follow a larger form. The whole picture is a beautiful design, not merely an illustration of an event.
I always tell my artists to draw everything - even the smallest details. Never just sketch some scribbly lines in. Make each detail have a direction and shape and follow the physics of the larger form it is subject to.
The main difference to me between that Flintstone staging and the Bambi staging is that one is merely functional and the other is planned artistically. In the Bambi picture, the whole layout is not only clear and easy to read, but the staging tself has been turned into part of the visual pleasure. It's so well thought out and artistically managed. It's logical and creative at the same time. The artist worked from the outside in to make an overall compositional statement where every level of sub forms and details agree with the big picture and follow its plan and physics..
Bambi and Thumper are each clearly framed by the BG elements, and those elements flow around the whole composition. The sub forms in the background are being pulled along and held together by opposing forces. The whole layout design is one force. Gravity is pulling the trees and snow down. The structure of the tree branches holds together the radiating pine needles and the clumps of snow.
Each clump of needles or snow all are following the same basic forces.
When you finally get down to the tiniest details, they too follow the physics of the larger forms. You could take any part of this image and break it down. You'll find the same logic everywhere.This artist (the book credits Mel Shaw) is a real thinker and takes his work seriously.
The Flintstone picture on the other hand, while it's still very appealing looks like there was no thought put into it at all, except to cram all the elements into it and line them up next to each other where they at least don't bump into each other.
The appeal in the picture comes mainly from 2 places - the original Ed Benedict character designs - that even if drawn a bit sloppy, still look fun, and from the clean painting by Al White. The layout itself does nothing to add any artistic statement of its own. It looks like Pratt drew Fred first and then just filled the remaining space with the other characters.
If you look at all the details in the painting, they don't follow any overall statement. Each brushtroke is deft and clean, but the individual elements just go every which way at random without following any internal logic or form. They just fill up space.
Knowing this doesn't make it an easier to draw good compositions. I envy the people who have the knack for it - Jim Smith, Frazetta, a lot of the Disney layout artists. I don't seem to have this talent. I admire it though and wish it came naturally to me. I'm always looking for layout artists that can make this kind of picture magic.
I love how Shaw takes no detail for granted. Even the smallest elements -like the blades of grass above are each actually drawn with the brush, not just scribbled in. They are drawn and follow a larger form. The whole picture is a beautiful design, not merely an illustration of an event.I always tell my artists to draw everything - even the smallest details. Never just sketch some scribbly lines in. Make each detail have a direction and shape and follow the physics of the larger form it is subject to.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Market Research- Would You Buy These Toys
Let's say you saw a grab-bag full of these Little babies hanging from a peg in your local drug store or 7-Eleven and it cost 2 or 3 bucks of lousy US dollars.
I know David is gonna want this one. It's his favorite expression.
Would you buy 'em?
If you have Little brothers, sisters or kids, show them to them and ask the same question.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Disney Principles - Staging -1 - Clarity
This establishing shot of Mickey lets us know what is happening in the whole scene. All the elements of the scene are carefully arranged so we can see each important point in one shot.Main point: They are playing pin the tail on the donkey (Pluto).
2nd point: Mickey is blindbolding a clone. This is the focus of the scene. Everything else is framed around this acton.
3rd point: More clones are watching. They are grouped together and set away from Mickey and clone 1. That space between them makes it easy for us to see what Mickey is doing and helps to frame the action.
The pin the tail on Pluto poster is big and not hidden by the action so we can see it easily.
Composing the elements to focus on the main point:
The shadow of the tree helps to frame Mickey and make it even clearer that what he is doing is the focus of the idea in the shot.
Having this many things to set up in one shot could easily be mishandled. The extra Mickey clones could all be in separate poses, to close to the focus and the image would be cluttered and hard to see what is going on.
Like this mess of clutter:
Obvious clear staging show exactly what Daisy is doing and is artistic and appealing at the same time.
Staging the Scene Itself - Purpose:
To make things clear and understandable to the audience
To make things clear and understandable to the audience
The Story Point Most Important
Carl Barks was a story board artist/writer at Disney's. Storyboarding is the first step in staging the cartoons. You figure out how to present each idea of the story in sequence and decide how best to present it to the audience. You are telling the story first logically, by choosing the framing and angle of each idea so that the audience can easily follow along. You can get artistic with it too, but clarity is the most important function of telling a story.Geting more artistic with the staging is usually the layout artist's job. The basic clarity of the storytelling and gags is the storyboard artist's, but these duties can overlap.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/04/language-of-cartoons.html
This idea of staging things logically had disappeared from the animation world when I started working. Each studio in the had storyboard and layout manuals that told you to stage things at random, for no reason.
They would tell you crazy things like: Vary the shots to keep things interesting. Mix long shots in with close ups and medium shots.
They would tell you to start shows on a down shot to establish the room and let the audience know where every lamp, pen holder, desk blotter and bald patch on the top of someone's head were in the room in relation to each other. I wish I could find a Dic Storyboard Manual. Anyone have one?
More on staging to come...
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Merry Christmas
Here's hoping all you curmudgeons have a wonderful Christmas!
If you're lucky, maybe you'll get a nice doll in your stocking like this.
Thanks to Frank for the lovely photos.
We open on a stage with the curtains closed. "PONTIAC PLAYHOUSE" is printed on the curtains:
Narrator: "AND NOW, FROM HOLLYWOOD..."
Warmth From The Pontiac Cast
This’ll be a sincere thank you to the George Liquor audience and a wish for happiness in the coming year for everyone who believes in the American Way and 32 miles to the gallon.
Narrator: "IT'S THE MAN OF THE HOUR, GEORGE LIQUOR HIMSELF!"
The audience applauds wildly.
George: LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE PONTIAC PLAYERS!
The curtains open to reveal...
Characters in front of curtain
George, Jimmy, Sody, Slab ‘N’ Ernie, Mabel’s Butt, Donald Bastard and Cigarettes the Cat are standing in front of the curtains on the stage.
They are wearing Christmas stuff.
The Pontiac Vibe is on a tall pedestal in the background. It is bedecked with Christmas ornamentation. Santa is tied to it.
The sponsor stands there with the gang - in a suit, wearing gold rings and smoking a huge cigar. His thumbs are under his lapels and he is beaming with pride.
George: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ON BEHALF OF EVERYONE AT PONTIAC, WE'D LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR WATCHING OUR SHOW ON THE INTERNETS EVERY WEEK.
There is a Christmas Tree
Let’s have a week of peace
George is sweating from putting on such an energetic show.
George does a preamble:
“Listen up here, will ya? I got sumpin' important to say.
This is the season of peace for all mankind. Peace, love and mutual understanding. Let’s all set aside our Goddamn differences and put down our guns for a week. Deal?"
Cut to a cave. Inside are a moose squirrel, raccoon, duck and cockroach watching Pontiac Playhouse on a big computer monitor.
They all breathe a sigh of relief.
George: "Next week we can all go back to killing each other….and I got a list!”
George wishes Audience a Merry Xmas
“So on behalf of our wunerfull sponsor, Pontiac’ Vibe, we’d all like to wish you a Merry Christmas!”
Lawyer Ruins Christmas - Donald Bastard to the rescue
A corporate Lawyer slithers in and whispers to George....
Lawyer: “You can’t say that any more! You have to say ‘Happy Holidays’ so we don’t offend non-Christians!”
George is Outraged, starts screaming at the lawyer
George: "Whattaya mean we can't say Goddamn Merry Christmas anymore? What country do ya think we're in???"
Donald Bastard bites the lawyer on the butt and tears off a piece of fabric.
The cigar chomping sponsor spits out a chunk of cigar and comes between George and the lawyer. He calms them down and suggests a compromise.
Sponsor: "Tell you what, as long as you cover everyone's holidays you can say Merry Christmas."
We pan down the group of characters as each one wishes a happy holiday to a different ethnic group.
Sody: Merry Kwanza!
Donald Bastard: Happy Cinco De Mayo!
Ernie: Jolly Bullies week!
Jimmy : Hug a retard!
Slab: Joyous Suicide Bombers!
The lawyer: Happy Devil Worshippers, folks!
we fade out on ridiculous greetings as we pan up and over to the Pontiac Vibe gleaming with holiday spirit.
Or if you're even luckier...
Thanks to Frank for the lovely photos.
HOW CHRISTMAS COULD HAVE BEEN
Ep09-Good Cheer From Pontiac
We open on a stage with the curtains closed. "PONTIAC PLAYHOUSE" is printed on the curtains:Narrator: "AND NOW, FROM HOLLYWOOD..."
Warmth From The Pontiac Cast
This’ll be a sincere thank you to the George Liquor audience and a wish for happiness in the coming year for everyone who believes in the American Way and 32 miles to the gallon.
Narrator: "IT'S THE MAN OF THE HOUR, GEORGE LIQUOR HIMSELF!"
The audience applauds wildly.
George: LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE PONTIAC PLAYERS!The curtains open to reveal...
Characters in front of curtain
George, Jimmy, Sody, Slab ‘N’ Ernie, Mabel’s Butt, Donald Bastard and Cigarettes the Cat are standing in front of the curtains on the stage.
They are wearing Christmas stuff.
The Pontiac Vibe is on a tall pedestal in the background. It is bedecked with Christmas ornamentation. Santa is tied to it.
The sponsor stands there with the gang - in a suit, wearing gold rings and smoking a huge cigar. His thumbs are under his lapels and he is beaming with pride.
George: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ON BEHALF OF EVERYONE AT PONTIAC, WE'D LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR WATCHING OUR SHOW ON THE INTERNETS EVERY WEEK.
There is a Christmas Tree
Let’s have a week of peace
George is sweating from putting on such an energetic show.
George does a preamble:
“Listen up here, will ya? I got sumpin' important to say.
This is the season of peace for all mankind. Peace, love and mutual understanding. Let’s all set aside our Goddamn differences and put down our guns for a week. Deal?"
Cut to a cave. Inside are a moose squirrel, raccoon, duck and cockroach watching Pontiac Playhouse on a big computer monitor.
They all breathe a sigh of relief.George: "Next week we can all go back to killing each other….and I got a list!”
George wishes Audience a Merry Xmas
“So on behalf of our wunerfull sponsor, Pontiac’ Vibe, we’d all like to wish you a Merry Christmas!”
Lawyer Ruins Christmas - Donald Bastard to the rescue
A corporate Lawyer slithers in and whispers to George....
Lawyer: “You can’t say that any more! You have to say ‘Happy Holidays’ so we don’t offend non-Christians!”
George is Outraged, starts screaming at the lawyer
George: "Whattaya mean we can't say Goddamn Merry Christmas anymore? What country do ya think we're in???"
Donald Bastard bites the lawyer on the butt and tears off a piece of fabric.
The cigar chomping sponsor spits out a chunk of cigar and comes between George and the lawyer. He calms them down and suggests a compromise.
Sponsor: "Tell you what, as long as you cover everyone's holidays you can say Merry Christmas."
We pan down the group of characters as each one wishes a happy holiday to a different ethnic group.
Sody: Merry Kwanza!
Donald Bastard: Happy Cinco De Mayo!
Ernie: Jolly Bullies week!
Jimmy : Hug a retard!
Slab: Joyous Suicide Bombers!
The lawyer: Happy Devil Worshippers, folks!
we fade out on ridiculous greetings as we pan up and over to the Pontiac Vibe gleaming with holiday spirit.
Merry Christmas to the troops!
2 Types of Cartoonists - Origin of styles
There are 2 basic types of cartoonists, each exemplified by the illustrations above.
The one on the left is by T.S. Sullivant, the one on the right by Milt Gross.
Almost every cartoonist since the early days has a style based on a variation of one of these, or some combination of the 2.
CARICATURE or CONSERVATIVE CARTOONS
T.S. Sullivant represents the kind of cartooning that is based on interpreting real life. His style is caricature. He keenly observes what things really look like and then changes their proportions to create a funny version of life. His animals have anatomy. His scenes follow the rules of perspective.This I would call the conservative cartoon approach, because he is not creating anything from scratch and has strict rules and disciplines based on actual observations in nature that he adheres to.
I love and envy highly skilled conservative art.
http://duck-walk.blogspot.com/2006/04/ts-sullivant.html
http://images.google.com/images?q=t.s.%20sullivant&hl=en&hs=9fW&lr=&client=opera&rls=en&sa=N&tab=wi
Animation cartoonists that lean towards the conservative representational style are Chuck Jones, Milt Kahl and Ken Anderson.
CARTOONY or RADICAL CARTOONS
Milt Gross is the opposite of conservative. He is radically creative. His drawings are made by design and invention and don't represent what things actually look like. He defies anatomy and perspective and just arranges all his elements purely upon what is pleasing to the eye. He is a master creator and designer.http://www.bugpowder.com/andy/e.gross.html
http://inspiration-grab-bag.blogspot.com/2006/02/milt-gross-newspaper-comics-1928-32.html
Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Jim Tyre and the Fleischers are animators that lean towards the more cartoony and wacky style.
EARLY COMIC STRIPS
Most early cartoon art followed the conservative approach, but somewhere near the end of the 19th century pure cartoons were invented, or maybe they evolved from caricature. I need a comic strip historian to help me here.
Some early comic strips, like the Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt and Jeff are pure cartoons, in that the characters are made of balls and tubes and simple, non-anatomical shapes.
http://www.bugpowder.com/andy/e.sterrett-all.htmlHere's a nice page from Cliff Sterret who falls mostly in the cartoony/designy school of cartoonists.
Look how cool the cat is!
Note how it looks nothing like an actual cat. This is an important point!
I'll talk a lot about that in more articles.
http://www.coconino-world.com/modules/sterret/polly_tm/cvpolly.htm
Other comic strips like The Yellow Kid or Little Nemo are more representational like Sullivant's work.
Some strips, like The Kin-Der-Kids by Lionel Feininger are a combination of the two, in his case leaning towards the representational style, but with elements of cartoon-abstract design.
To see more classic comic stips go to Andy's Early Comics Page:http://www.bugpowder.com/andy/earlycomics.html
This post is the first in a continuing series about the history, forms and traditions of cartoon styles.
Animated cartoons grew directly out of the rules and styles of comic strips and then developed some new ideas of their own and became what I think of as the most creative art form in history.
Keep abreast of these articles if you want to be able to better grasp why you draw like you do.
Links:
Shane Glines at Cartoon Retro has the most amazing collection of Milt Gross' comic books.
http://www.cartoonretro.com/
Milt Gross' style really evolved over the years.
He's mostly known as a comic strip artist, but in my opinion his best work is in comic books which he did in his later years.
It's really rare for an artist to get better as he ages, but Milt kept improving right up to the end of his life.
Go sign up at Cartoon Retro now to see some of the greatest cartoon art ever!
Here's some interesting Milt Gross, stuff that's earlier and not as designy or wacky as the comic books but still pretty fun.
http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/04/media-milt-gross-cartoon-tour-of-new.html
Thanks to Clarke Snyde for some great links!
Especially this one:
http://inspiration-grab-bag.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Appeal in Ugliness - Basil Wolverton
Do you think this is ugly? I'm sure Frank and Ollie would. I don't. I think it's immensely appealing.
Don't look at the itchy details. Look at the shapes that make up the whole image. I broke them down into their construction up here.
Although there are many itchy artists who preceded and followed Basil Wolverton, many artists can get lost in the details that obscure what's more important - the overall instant impression of the drawing.
Basil Wolverton has traits that I find appealing:
FUNNY: The Illusion Of Life's 12 principles of animation left out the most important one - that cartoon drawings should be funny.
DESIGN: Basil has a great design sense. Each shape he draws is fun and interesting and he arranges them altogether with great skill and with the final purpose of making us laugh.
What the Disney animators consider "appealing" is not really invented design. Instead, they evolved a community style that at its best balanced a few cute approved shapes in a non-offensive manner. Bambi is the epitome of the style at its most appealing. You can see their designs evolving away from the rubber hose style of Donald, Mickey and Pluto towards Bambi from the mid 30s to the early 40s. Once they got their appealing balance of shapes and squirrel mask down, they kept it going for the next decade; Lady and The Tramp are exactly the same designs as all the Bambi characters. They just take their appealing squirrel masks and wrap them around slightly different forms - and all the forms themselves are basically the same - even the humans.
Disney resorted to a "safe balance" of shapes, rather than inventing new designs from scratch on a regular balance. As far as I can figure, they didn't actually have a designer - they just let the animators work with the characters on each movie until they naturally evolved into a functional evenly proportioned design that was non-offensive.
Basil Wolverton is a superior cartoon designer of the top-tier because of his great imagination and his control of shapes and hierarchy of sub-shapes and details.
The difference between these cartoons and some of the itchy ones I posted before is that these are not really ugly. They are cute and upbeat. Each of these characters seems to be unaware of his or her own ugliness - they seem to all be delighted to be ugly.
I know when a lot of young cartoonists try to imitate my style, they tend to focus on the scenes that were supposed to be ugly. There is a way to do pretend-ugly that is still appealing.
Here is a guy who is definitely blissfully happy to be ugly.
How does Basil make his superficially itchy detailed stuff look so unique and appealing?
He uses some of the same tools of design that animation designers use.
How does Basil make his superficially itchy detailed stuff look so unique and appealing?
He uses some of the same tools of design that animation designers use.
SILHOUETTES: His characters have a totally clear silhouette. That makes it easy to read, and it shows a command off design clarity. His designs commit to the idea. They aren't timid vague non-descriptive shapes.
FILLED SPACE VS NEGATIVE SPACE
NEGATIVE SPACE IS NOT JUST A TOOL THAT YOU APPLY TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE CHARACTER. IT SHOULD BE USED WITHIN THE CHARACTER'S SILHOUETTE AS WELL.
FILLED SPACE VS NEGATIVE SPACE
NEGATIVE SPACE IS NOT JUST A TOOL THAT YOU APPLY TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE CHARACTER. IT SHOULD BE USED WITHIN THE CHARACTER'S SILHOUETTE AS WELL.This guy's face is well forward of his head. We can see his face clearly because of the space behind it - between the face and the ear.
COMMITMENT TO OVERALL STATEMENT
This woman's head is bullet shaped. Nothing vague about it.
The bullet shape is the major form of the design. The next level of the forms do not distract from the bullet. They are smaller and move horizontally, rather than vertically like the bullet.
HIERARCHY: The 2nd level of forms also have clear overall shapes - the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and the ring of curly hair at the bottom. The details - the individual hairs, the warts etc. are then wrapped around the forms in the same directions that the forms themselves have.
This Russian guy has an overall boxy form. That's clear and non-ambiguous. Basil doesn't let the rest of the sub-shapes distract from this.
Within the overall form, the next level of forms has a lot of contrasts - in size, in direction, in shape. The image isn't cluttered. There is lots of space between the funny parts. Space is a designer's friend.
Speaking of which, there is a space on everyone's head that a lot of amateurish cartoonists ignore or are not aware of - that's the space between your face and the back of your head. The face is at the front of the head, it should never fill up the whole head. I have had to explain this to so many of my own artists, that I go into a trance whenever I have to explain it again.
THE "ITCHY" DETAILS
The bullet shape is the major form of the design. The next level of the forms do not distract from the bullet. They are smaller and move horizontally, rather than vertically like the bullet.
HIERARCHY: The 2nd level of forms also have clear overall shapes - the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and the ring of curly hair at the bottom. The details - the individual hairs, the warts etc. are then wrapped around the forms in the same directions that the forms themselves have.
This Russian guy has an overall boxy form. That's clear and non-ambiguous. Basil doesn't let the rest of the sub-shapes distract from this.
Within the overall form, the next level of forms has a lot of contrasts - in size, in direction, in shape. The image isn't cluttered. There is lots of space between the funny parts. Space is a designer's friend.
Speaking of which, there is a space on everyone's head that a lot of amateurish cartoonists ignore or are not aware of - that's the space between your face and the back of your head. The face is at the front of the head, it should never fill up the whole head. I have had to explain this to so many of my own artists, that I go into a trance whenever I have to explain it again.
THE "ITCHY" DETAILS
I love Basil's cross-hatching. It doesn't fill up all the space in his designs. It helps define the forms. It isn't random noodling. And on top of all that it's funny. The sheer idea that characters who are so ugly deserve all this extra work refining them kills me. This is the inspiration for the close up detailed paintings in Ren and Stimpy. The best of them aren't actually ugly. They are very beautifully painted, with much love by the likes of Bill Wray and Scott Wills. I have seen this idea copied since (even in the Games Ren and Stimpy's) and perverted by actually being ugly, either by a cluttered mean looking drawing, or by later cartoons with just plain sloppy painting technique.
This style is not itchy at all to me. By "itchy" I mean useless floating cross-hatching that doesn't help describe clear entertaining forms. David has some thoughts on this too:
david gemmill said...
richard willaims. the dude tortures himself. who the #$%^* would want to animate that &*#%@? at least Anime has some sort of redeeming quality, like maybe the robot sequences and action scenes end up looking cool or entertaining..but all of richard william's $&%@# is always just painful to watch...and not entertaining. Only hardcore animation fans *%&^ off to the technical expertise that was involved to make it (not creative expertise though).I feel sorry for the people that had to inbetween. And he had the audacity to animate on ONES. on ONES.
This style is not itchy at all to me. By "itchy" I mean useless floating cross-hatching that doesn't help describe clear entertaining forms. David has some thoughts on this too:david gemmill said...
richard willaims. the dude tortures himself. who the #$%^* would want to animate that &*#%@? at least Anime has some sort of redeeming quality, like maybe the robot sequences and action scenes end up looking cool or entertaining..but all of richard william's $&%@# is always just painful to watch...and not entertaining. Only hardcore animation fans *%&^ off to the technical expertise that was involved to make it (not creative expertise though).I feel sorry for the people that had to inbetween. And he had the audacity to animate on ONES. on ONES.
Animate this *^&%$* design on ONES.You can look at scribner, and freddie moore and see pictures of them smiling, or you can look at pictures of Dick williams who looks very depressed and methodical.Animating cartoons is supposed to be fun, work, but fun. not torture.
Jonathan Harris said...
I will admit that I was inspired big-time by Robert Crumb at a certain point in my life, and that I do still admire his stuff. However, I do find myself wondering how much this is just a product of my being born in this generation, and thus having grown up being made to like ugly things (I've been considering this point lately and it's making sense of a few things).I do also find Raggedy Ann and Andy themselves quite appealing (in the faces, at least), but the rest of it does look a bit too much like animation #%$^&*@$#& (I still feel I should check the film out again, though).Also WOW I thought that link said "Michael's Porn Animation" at first! It made sense given the context, too!
There are many sides to the concept of "appeal" and I have barely scratched the surface. There is also "spicy appeal", a kind of appeal that grows on you. It's not instantly cute and might even make you mad at first but is much more human and honest than simple Bambi cute. Virgil Partch, Don Martin and many other artists fit that category.
I will admit that I was inspired big-time by Robert Crumb at a certain point in my life, and that I do still admire his stuff. However, I do find myself wondering how much this is just a product of my being born in this generation, and thus having grown up being made to like ugly things (I've been considering this point lately and it's making sense of a few things).I do also find Raggedy Ann and Andy themselves quite appealing (in the faces, at least), but the rest of it does look a bit too much like animation #%$^&*@$#& (I still feel I should check the film out again, though).Also WOW I thought that link said "Michael's Porn Animation" at first! It made sense given the context, too!
There are many sides to the concept of "appeal" and I have barely scratched the surface. There is also "spicy appeal", a kind of appeal that grows on you. It's not instantly cute and might even make you mad at first but is much more human and honest than simple Bambi cute. Virgil Partch, Don Martin and many other artists fit that category.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Odd Leftovers
sorry about not posting everyone's comments till today
I was flying home last night and then I came back and discovered no internet at the house
there were 2 comments I didn't post because they are full of obscenities. I'll blank out the nasty parts and post them when my internet is working again.
By the way, I may do a post on Basil Wolverton - who may have inspired a lot of the itchiness of the 60s - and who I love
I'll explain the difference between what he does and what the bland itchers do
and maybe a post on the opposite of "appeal", which I wouldn't say is "ugly", but rather "depressing".
You can be appealing and fake ugly at the same time without being just plain down and out depressing, although depressing cartoons are more likely to win fancy awards and high critical praise
I was flying home last night and then I came back and discovered no internet at the house
there were 2 comments I didn't post because they are full of obscenities. I'll blank out the nasty parts and post them when my internet is working again.
By the way, I may do a post on Basil Wolverton - who may have inspired a lot of the itchiness of the 60s - and who I love
I'll explain the difference between what he does and what the bland itchers do
and maybe a post on the opposite of "appeal", which I wouldn't say is "ugly", but rather "depressing".
You can be appealing and fake ugly at the same time without being just plain down and out depressing, although depressing cartoons are more likely to win fancy awards and high critical praise
Professor Mole
Professor Mole is He Hog's arch enemy. He is a genius. Moles grow on him all the time, in front of our very eyes.
Old ones drop off him from time to time. They follow him everywhere he goes and help him commit unspeakable horrors upon humanity.
Professor Mole is actually a pretty nice guy for someone who causes suffering on such a monumental scale.
He's so ugly that people run from him without even knowing anything about him. They make hasty generalizations about him, which is the worst crime any human can commit. They call him a "hard working blue collar white man", "articulate" "nappy headed" and say he's "lost his bearings". This forces him to retaliate in the most horrific ways, all in the name of protecting our God-Given rights to be offended by words that newscasters waste days of TV time reporting on.
Professor Mole creates a doomsday machine with the intent of destroying all categorizations everywhere. Anyone who says "mammals give milk" is a dead man. It's up to He Hog to stop him and restore humanity and observation to the world.
If He Hog wins, that'll be the end of 24 hour news channels.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Lumpy and Itchy Animation Designs
Lumpy Out Of Ignorance
In the 40s ,every studio tried to do the Disney/WB construction style of animation drawing. Not everyone understood it though. If you can't already draw well and you see a construction model from the 40s, you will assume that a cartoon character is made up of sausage like forms, but you won't see how they properly connect to each other - as in these models from Dave Hand's Animaland series. Dave Hand came from Disney - he directed Bambi and many other cute well drawn Disney cartoons and then went to England to supervise production on some imitation Disney cartoons.http://www.dhprod.com/film1.html
These cartoons have a lot going for them - great background design and color, beautiful motion and timing, but a lot of the designs are these lumpy looking misunderstandings of the "Preston Blair" style.
These drawings are extremely awkward and therefore unappealing and amateurish looking. The lion's jaw and muzzle are formless shapes that don't attach to the cranium. The lip is confused with the chin (as in Tiny Toons and Animaniacs)
It's amazing that such expensive fluid animation can have such sloppy drawings, but that was common in American cartoons at the time too at the B and C studios.
You could even find sloppy misunderstandings of constructed drawings in Disney cartoons here and there.
MGM made great cartoons with excellent design and drawing, yet they couldn't find cartoonists to do their posters who could draw a pear and a sphere that didn't look like it was melting all over the place.
I'm sure these toys are not supposed to be formless, but they are. By the 1970s formlessness in all walks of life became mainstream. Just 5 years earlier you could still find very appealing toys of Hanna Barbera characters or any other studios'. In the quickest decline in skill and culture probably in history you saw everything go to Hell within 5 years. Cartoons joined music, TV, movies and all other forms of popular culture in overnight decay. Pleasuring the senses disappeared from the face of the earth.
These blobs are just blobs and unappealing out of straight ignorance - just plain bad design by amateurs.
Itchy
As a kid I never liked scratchy looking non-cartoony drawings - especially when they were pretending to be "wacky". There were some Mad artists that were instantly appealing and cartoony -like Don Martin, Bob Clarke, Harvey Kurtzman and more and they were the first articles and comics I would "read" when I picked up the latest Mad Magazine.
Here's George Woodbridge who not only refused to draw appealing big-eyes, he refused to draw eyes at all!
The more realistic itchy artists like George Woodbridge, John Severin and Will Elder seemed to me to be throwbacks to cartoons from the 1800s that were meant to be funny by being uglier than actual life. The little unsure broken crosshatching crawling all over bland shapes with tiny eyes just baffled me as a kid. I guess this style inspired the underground artists of the 60s who took itchiness to whole new levels of unappealingness.
People always ask me if I'm influenced by underground comics and I'm astounded. It's the exact opposite of what I try to do.
As a kid I never liked scratchy looking non-cartoony drawings - especially when they were pretending to be "wacky". There were some Mad artists that were instantly appealing and cartoony -like Don Martin, Bob Clarke, Harvey Kurtzman and more and they were the first articles and comics I would "read" when I picked up the latest Mad Magazine.
Here's George Woodbridge who not only refused to draw appealing big-eyes, he refused to draw eyes at all!
The more realistic itchy artists like George Woodbridge, John Severin and Will Elder seemed to me to be throwbacks to cartoons from the 1800s that were meant to be funny by being uglier than actual life. The little unsure broken crosshatching crawling all over bland shapes with tiny eyes just baffled me as a kid. I guess this style inspired the underground artists of the 60s who took itchiness to whole new levels of unappealingness.
To me cartoons are supposed to be skillful and fun to look at, not eye gouging torture.
Adding Itchiness to Lumps On Purpose
Here's a style made up out of the 2 things I hated most as a kid - lumpiness and itchiness.
I can't find any appeal in drawings like this. You can barely even tell what you are looking at except that it's probably made by really serious responsible people who think fun is bad for you. The odd thing is that as an artist, I can tell that some of these are actually good drawings on some technical level and much of the animation was done by actual cartoony artists from the 40s and 50s.
It really and honestly is "ugly on purpose". I can't imagine for a second that anyone working on this could have thought it would appeal to kids - not after they had been weaned on Bugs Bunny, Donald and Goofy, The Flintstones, Mighty Mouse and a slew of cartoons that were purposely designed to give instant pleasure to young eyes.
What the heck are we even looking at here?
This sequence is astounding. The artist can actually draw well, but purposely is abandoning classic Disney principles all over the place. Including just plain logical "readability"! Every pose has no silhouette-the arms are glued to the body with no space inbetween, every pose is perfectly "twinned". Whatever construction exists is buried under wobbly itchy lumps. It looks like she is covered in some medieval disease.
It's as if this stuff is designed just to be hard to do and to rebel against classic principles and just plain fun. But why? What strange goals for people who work so hard.
The same animators who once did simple fun character designs and entertained millions of people around the world are now working ten times as hard surely knowing that no one is going to enjoy it or even be able to tell what they are looking at.
Here, Corny Cole gets a bit of appeal into at least the eyes of the main characters...
But then is corrected by Richard Williams who knows appeal is selling out to the man.
http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1179
Here's a style made up out of the 2 things I hated most as a kid - lumpiness and itchiness.
I can't find any appeal in drawings like this. You can barely even tell what you are looking at except that it's probably made by really serious responsible people who think fun is bad for you. The odd thing is that as an artist, I can tell that some of these are actually good drawings on some technical level and much of the animation was done by actual cartoony artists from the 40s and 50s.
It really and honestly is "ugly on purpose". I can't imagine for a second that anyone working on this could have thought it would appeal to kids - not after they had been weaned on Bugs Bunny, Donald and Goofy, The Flintstones, Mighty Mouse and a slew of cartoons that were purposely designed to give instant pleasure to young eyes.
What the heck are we even looking at here?
This sequence is astounding. The artist can actually draw well, but purposely is abandoning classic Disney principles all over the place. Including just plain logical "readability"! Every pose has no silhouette-the arms are glued to the body with no space inbetween, every pose is perfectly "twinned". Whatever construction exists is buried under wobbly itchy lumps. It looks like she is covered in some medieval disease.It's as if this stuff is designed just to be hard to do and to rebel against classic principles and just plain fun. But why? What strange goals for people who work so hard.
The same animators who once did simple fun character designs and entertained millions of people around the world are now working ten times as hard surely knowing that no one is going to enjoy it or even be able to tell what they are looking at.
Here, Corny Cole gets a bit of appeal into at least the eyes of the main characters...But then is corrected by Richard Williams who knows appeal is selling out to the man.
http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1179Kahl Rabbit Fox
I'm guessing this is Kahl, but am not 100% sure. The drawings are very solid (like McKimson) but have more elaborate design details than WB characters. The drawings aim at doing all the acting while remaining appealing - cute that is. Having to remain cute at all times can be somewhat of a handicap when it comes to acting.
The motion and control in these scenes is amazing. Ultra smooth. Lots of squash and stretch, overlap, secondary actions - a million things happening at once while at the same time having to keep the audience focused on the story.
I think the pure Herculean task of keeping all these elements under control is what impresses so many animators and cartoonists - including myself. It's very humbling.
Look at those great hands! They are 40s cartoony style, while at the same time suggesting some knuckles and anatomy underneath the cartoon-skin.
Brer Fox is a very handsome design and extra hard to draw from different angles because of his long snout, snarly lips and lots of teeth - yet he moves very easily and never loses form, no matter what angle we see him from.You really have to understand construction and hierarchy of forms and details to control all that information without having the character melting all over the place.
As I said in another post, the stories in Song of The South are told better than most Disney features, mainly because Peet tells the stories straight and succinctly. He doesn't add a lot of non-essential Disney filler.
So, in my opinion the story is staged and cut very well. And the pantomime animation is genius. In an earlier scene when we see Brer Fox coming in to greet Brer Rabbit stuck in the tar, his cocksure shuffling walk is extremely clever and cool. I'll put it up in another post.
To me, the cartoons have one flaw that cause a big disconnect between the story and the animation. The voices. The voices are so obnoxious and unintelligible that it gives the animators a big disadvantage.
When the characters talk, the animators have to come up with animation and business that matches the timing of the acting-even though the acting is bad. I think that's the origin of Disney's flailing arms and jittery acting. Walt's ear for voices wasn't always tasteful and he would stick his animators with voices that are grating or just plain weak and without character, forcing the animators to make up a bunch of arbitrary business just to try to keep the scenes alive.
Lots of twins by the way in Rabbit's posing!
Great drawings!
This bit of the rabbit stammering is very uncomfortable for me to watch. It goes on too long and seems completely inane. I think what makes me like Warners animation so much more than Disney's is it's much more character-oriented. I can identify with the characters in WB cartoons. They have motivations and personalities that I recognize. It didn't hurt that they had Mel Blanc doing the voices - a keen observer and satirist of human types. All the voice talent at WB was better suited to cartoons than the Disney voices, and that gave WB another advantage over Disney in creating convincing characters that seem to really exist.
Disney himself must have had a really naive ignorant understanding of human nature because his voices just tend to be silly and juvenile. His animators had to evolve a style of acting that wasn't very natural because they didn't have anything to hang any natural animation on. The voices and written characterizations just aren't very intelligent. It's like trying to wrap sophisticated animation around baby-talk.
Maybe another problem facing the Disney animators is their low weekly output. While McKimson was pumping out 25-50 feet of animation every week, Disney animators were expected to do 5. Working that slowly on each scene had to tempt them to keep going back and adding layers of needless secondary actions, more overlapping fur and ears and stuff that doesn't contribute to making the point.http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Dis/46SongOfTheSouth/00000001KahlFoxRabbittshort.mov
When I watch a Disney cartoon, I always feel like there are 3 stories happening at the same time. One that the storyboard artist wrote. Another one that the voice actors are reading from, and then another one that the animators are telling. The animation is fascinating, but it feels like there are people talking in the other room trying to distract me from watching the flowing movements. They don't connect except technically in the timing.
This kind of stuff is perfect for little kids and adult animators. It misses the mark for regular folks. That's who WB, Fleischer and Avery are for.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
foghorn smacks dog - big antics for big pain
Here's something that's just plain funny and universal.
Solid drawings, great staging, appealing (in a manly way) and speaks to real humanity.
To make big hits stronger, you gotta use really big antics and leave them on long enough to build up power before the actual contact which barely registers onscreen.
This is so well thought out and aims solely to give the audience the biggest entertainment possible. It uses the same principles as Disney, but doesn't overdo it to the point where the action distracts from the acting or the gag. When he uses secondary actions he focuses the action on the main action. A lot of late 30s animation used too many secondary actions happening all over the character and made it hard to see hat the main actions of the characters were. Some Disney animators continued this practice to the end. Pete offered an example of this kind of thing from the Aristocats a couple of posts ago in the comments.
Bob McKimson completely directs his animation and staging to make the entertainment point come across clearly -which makes him a great director.
He doesn't confuse your eye with a lot of extra superfluous overlapping action, or too much squash and stretch and general animator show off stuff. He knows how to communicate with the audience and does it with extreme precision.
I think maybe why McKimson tried to constrain Scribner so much in his cartoons was because he felt Rod would have too much going on in his actions that distracted from the main point. It kind of backfired though, because Scribner in McKimson's cartoons had his characters move around and twitch within McKimson's prescribed "legal area" as if they were trying to wriggle out of a straight jacket. - I have clips of that stuff too. Maybe I'll show that in a later post. It's funny and sad at the same time.
I don't know who animated this, but it's very direct, powerful, to the point and most of all funny as heck.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/TheFoghornLeghorn/foghornsmackssmall.mov
Solid drawings, great staging, appealing (in a manly way) and speaks to real humanity.
To make big hits stronger, you gotta use really big antics and leave them on long enough to build up power before the actual contact which barely registers onscreen.
This is so well thought out and aims solely to give the audience the biggest entertainment possible. It uses the same principles as Disney, but doesn't overdo it to the point where the action distracts from the acting or the gag. When he uses secondary actions he focuses the action on the main action. A lot of late 30s animation used too many secondary actions happening all over the character and made it hard to see hat the main actions of the characters were. Some Disney animators continued this practice to the end. Pete offered an example of this kind of thing from the Aristocats a couple of posts ago in the comments.
Bob McKimson completely directs his animation and staging to make the entertainment point come across clearly -which makes him a great director.
He doesn't confuse your eye with a lot of extra superfluous overlapping action, or too much squash and stretch and general animator show off stuff. He knows how to communicate with the audience and does it with extreme precision.
I think maybe why McKimson tried to constrain Scribner so much in his cartoons was because he felt Rod would have too much going on in his actions that distracted from the main point. It kind of backfired though, because Scribner in McKimson's cartoons had his characters move around and twitch within McKimson's prescribed "legal area" as if they were trying to wriggle out of a straight jacket. - I have clips of that stuff too. Maybe I'll show that in a later post. It's funny and sad at the same time.I don't know who animated this, but it's very direct, powerful, to the point and most of all funny as heck.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/TheFoghornLeghorn/foghornsmackssmall.mov
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Appealing or Unappealing?
Thanks everyone for the meaty comments! Some things I expected and a few surprises. I wrote my own theories below each style for you to argue with.
Here's your reward for participating in the subjectivity quiz.
1 Kookie
I think this is very appealing. Instantly caught my eye.
It's great drawing on every level.
It's designed and stylish all the way from the composition down to the details.
It has the kind of proportions that usually look bad in cartoons, yet the artist makes it work.
2 Jackson Heads
This is beyond retarded and to this day I can't believe that anyone in charge of a TV network, or a studio could approve any of it. How did the Jacksons approve it? They actually have considerable talent themselves.
Badly drawn vague "realistic" bland heads that are too big on tiny badly drawn bodies.
Wonky background adds to the unplanned accidental look of it.
This is beyond me too. Neither character has a distinct overall form. They are just shapeless blobs. Then the overall blobs are broken down into lesser indistinct blobs. The proportions are Godawfully unbalanced.
The little messy faced guy's features are too small, indistinct and too crowded together which makes it hard to see what you are looking at, and makes it hard for the animator to make expressions.
These remind me of Sheridan college student designs from the 1970s. Back when young animators had just discovered construction models from the 1940s and assumed from them that cartoon designs had to made up of lumps piled up on top of each other.
I have always hated that lumpy brow theory. The 2 poo shaped blobs above the eyes that appeared in so many Nelvana cartoons from the 70s and 80s.
4 Beautiful
Do I need to say anything?
5 Tyer
I have mixed feelings about Jim Tyer. I actually have this comic and I used this particular story as model sheets for the Bakshi Mighty Mouse Show in 1987.
When I first discovered his work I thought it was sloppy, but it grew on me. It's based on 40s general animation style, but is full of his own personal funny quirks. It's definitely funny, which is the number 1 most important visual element of a cartoon.
Tyer obviously has strong drawing ability but is full of impulsive wanderings from what he knows to be the "correct" way to do things. It's light hearted rebellion.
It reminds me of foods that take some getting used to, like pickles, mushrooms, spicy salami and the like. It isn't white bread and American cheese like Disney and other merely appealing styles.
http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/mighty-mouse-the-adventures-of-pearl-pureheart-jim-tyer/
6 Messmer
Instantly appealing and the essence of cartooning. Big eyes, frivolously fun happy style. Very clear staging. All the shapes are fun to look at -even the background shapes.
http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/felix-the-cat-dupes-jupiter-winter-annual-2-1954-otto-messmer/
7 American Anime
This is a style I don't comprehend. It's less obviously ugly than 80s human proportioned shows like HeMan or Thundercrap. It takes those unanimateable proportions and simplifies the details, while glueing big Bambi cartoon eyes onto them - I guess to try to get some instant appeal. Putting big sparkly eyes on male characters makes them look pretty gay, and I don't understand the appeal of that.
The girl's forehead is too short - she should be a Fox News anchor.
The arbitrary pointy lumps all over the characters are irritating and distracting.
None of the faces show a shred of individuality. They are all the same bland human with cow eyes.
8 McBoing Boing
This is appealing to other designers. Big eyes, all the shapes are distinct; lots of contrasts in the sizes and shapes, good composition, happy looking. In theory this is very professional and appealing, but I can't see it appealing to kids, because it looks too simple and it's not entertaining. A kid might think "Heck, I can draw that good." and the designs don't indicate that the characters have any personality-they are well designed graphic symbols.
They should have had Dr. Seuss design the cartoon, instead of just write it.
9 Bambi
I'm surprised at all the negative reaction in the comments to this cute picture of Bambi and his friends.
The actual animators' drawings of the characters are more perfectly balanced as designs and that's Disney's goal in design - perfect cute balance of shapes. They don't always achieve it, but came as close as possible in the original Bambi and Song of the South.
The artist of this coloring book cover got some of the shapes and sizes a bit out of balance - which actually makes it seem more fun to me than the animation. A little imbalance is a lot more natural and "human" in designs.
10 Jones Cute
The drawings on this Jones model sheet are technically amazing. Solid construction, good balance of empty space VS filled spaces.
It's a cynical caricature of sappy cuteness. Everything about Jones -even at his best - comes off as cynical to me, like he doesn't have any love or respect of life or humanity. He is super skilled, but needs to be surrounded by other more light hearted cartoonists to influence him to be less cynical.
11 Live Action Cartoons
Holy flying crap. How can this even exist? A big human head with tiny human hands and a ball shaped body. To me there is nothing uglier than real humans trying to be cartoons. These movies are like freak shows. I can't understand why Hollywood pumps so much of this stuff out. Why not just do a real Dr. Seuss or Flintstone movie?
12 Furries
I don't know if modern-day furries even realize it, but this whole movement grew out of Disney fan art from the 1970s. Nerdy kids who loved Lady and the Tramp and Bambi and wished they could draw as well as Disney animators. They took the squirrel-mask face style, drew it poorly and stuck it on top of human proportioned bodies and then had nasty things happen.
Who ever thought this would grow into a full blown cult?
In the last 15 years or so, furry style has in turn influenced mainstream "decent" animation.
This looks like it was drawn by an 80s Saturday Morning cartoon artist with a gun to his head. Superficially trying to look like classic cartoons, it confuses 30s rubber-hose style with 40s pear and sphere style and gets every aspect of both styles wrong.
No clear distinct shapes in the design or poses. Everything is cluttered. The clothes don't follow the forms underneath - they bulge out in awkward wrong directions. It's not visually funny or well designed or remotely human. It's completely contrived, awkward and insincere. It screams "lie".
I'll discuss this style in its own post.
Here's your reward for participating in the subjectivity quiz.
1 Kookie
I think this is very appealing. Instantly caught my eye.
It's great drawing on every level.
It's designed and stylish all the way from the composition down to the details.
It has the kind of proportions that usually look bad in cartoons, yet the artist makes it work.
This is beyond retarded and to this day I can't believe that anyone in charge of a TV network, or a studio could approve any of it. How did the Jacksons approve it? They actually have considerable talent themselves.Badly drawn vague "realistic" bland heads that are too big on tiny badly drawn bodies.
Wonky background adds to the unplanned accidental look of it.
3 Fur Blobs
This is beyond me too. Neither character has a distinct overall form. They are just shapeless blobs. Then the overall blobs are broken down into lesser indistinct blobs. The proportions are Godawfully unbalanced.
The little messy faced guy's features are too small, indistinct and too crowded together which makes it hard to see what you are looking at, and makes it hard for the animator to make expressions.
These remind me of Sheridan college student designs from the 1970s. Back when young animators had just discovered construction models from the 1940s and assumed from them that cartoon designs had to made up of lumps piled up on top of each other.
I have always hated that lumpy brow theory. The 2 poo shaped blobs above the eyes that appeared in so many Nelvana cartoons from the 70s and 80s.
4 Beautiful
Do I need to say anything?
I have mixed feelings about Jim Tyer. I actually have this comic and I used this particular story as model sheets for the Bakshi Mighty Mouse Show in 1987.
When I first discovered his work I thought it was sloppy, but it grew on me. It's based on 40s general animation style, but is full of his own personal funny quirks. It's definitely funny, which is the number 1 most important visual element of a cartoon.
Tyer obviously has strong drawing ability but is full of impulsive wanderings from what he knows to be the "correct" way to do things. It's light hearted rebellion.
It reminds me of foods that take some getting used to, like pickles, mushrooms, spicy salami and the like. It isn't white bread and American cheese like Disney and other merely appealing styles.
6 Messmer
Instantly appealing and the essence of cartooning. Big eyes, frivolously fun happy style. Very clear staging. All the shapes are fun to look at -even the background shapes.
http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/felix-the-cat-dupes-jupiter-winter-annual-2-1954-otto-messmer/
7 American Anime
This is a style I don't comprehend. It's less obviously ugly than 80s human proportioned shows like HeMan or Thundercrap. It takes those unanimateable proportions and simplifies the details, while glueing big Bambi cartoon eyes onto them - I guess to try to get some instant appeal. Putting big sparkly eyes on male characters makes them look pretty gay, and I don't understand the appeal of that.
The girl's forehead is too short - she should be a Fox News anchor.
The arbitrary pointy lumps all over the characters are irritating and distracting.
None of the faces show a shred of individuality. They are all the same bland human with cow eyes.
This is appealing to other designers. Big eyes, all the shapes are distinct; lots of contrasts in the sizes and shapes, good composition, happy looking. In theory this is very professional and appealing, but I can't see it appealing to kids, because it looks too simple and it's not entertaining. A kid might think "Heck, I can draw that good." and the designs don't indicate that the characters have any personality-they are well designed graphic symbols.
They should have had Dr. Seuss design the cartoon, instead of just write it.
I'm surprised at all the negative reaction in the comments to this cute picture of Bambi and his friends.
The actual animators' drawings of the characters are more perfectly balanced as designs and that's Disney's goal in design - perfect cute balance of shapes. They don't always achieve it, but came as close as possible in the original Bambi and Song of the South.
The artist of this coloring book cover got some of the shapes and sizes a bit out of balance - which actually makes it seem more fun to me than the animation. A little imbalance is a lot more natural and "human" in designs.
10 Jones Cute
The drawings on this Jones model sheet are technically amazing. Solid construction, good balance of empty space VS filled spaces.
It's a cynical caricature of sappy cuteness. Everything about Jones -even at his best - comes off as cynical to me, like he doesn't have any love or respect of life or humanity. He is super skilled, but needs to be surrounded by other more light hearted cartoonists to influence him to be less cynical.
11 Live Action Cartoons
Holy flying crap. How can this even exist? A big human head with tiny human hands and a ball shaped body. To me there is nothing uglier than real humans trying to be cartoons. These movies are like freak shows. I can't understand why Hollywood pumps so much of this stuff out. Why not just do a real Dr. Seuss or Flintstone movie?
12 Furries
I don't know if modern-day furries even realize it, but this whole movement grew out of Disney fan art from the 1970s. Nerdy kids who loved Lady and the Tramp and Bambi and wished they could draw as well as Disney animators. They took the squirrel-mask face style, drew it poorly and stuck it on top of human proportioned bodies and then had nasty things happen.Who ever thought this would grow into a full blown cult?
In the last 15 years or so, furry style has in turn influenced mainstream "decent" animation.
14 Pretend Cartoons
This looks like it was drawn by an 80s Saturday Morning cartoon artist with a gun to his head. Superficially trying to look like classic cartoons, it confuses 30s rubber-hose style with 40s pear and sphere style and gets every aspect of both styles wrong.No clear distinct shapes in the design or poses. Everything is cluttered. The clothes don't follow the forms underneath - they bulge out in awkward wrong directions. It's not visually funny or well designed or remotely human. It's completely contrived, awkward and insincere. It screams "lie".
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Here's a whole design category of its own:
I'll discuss this style in its own post.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Eyes and how versatile they can be (if you let them)
There are different cliques of animators and cartoonists, each of who have learned a handful of eye shapes and expressions. There are Disney eyes, Cal Arts eyes, Prime Time eyes, Anime eyes, Deviant-Art eyes etc. There are imitation-Spumco eyes.
Thanks to Paul B for this Disney eye-sheet!Each of these sets of eye expressions is extremely limiting. They don't allow for spontaneous invention. Artists memorize their handful of expressions from the style they like and for the rest of their careers can only express symbols of the simplest emotions - using the same symbols and flat emotions that have been beaten to death for years. What fun or creativity is there in that?
As Frank and Ollie say, cartoon acting can't compete on the same level as live action acting:
this last sentence seems like a big contradiction to me. "we must concentrate on acting" - after admitting that cartoons lacks "the subtle shadow patterns...."
Disney took 30 years or so to create a few approved Disney expressions, always weighing them against whether they are appealing (their type of appealing) or not. This severely restricted the range of their acting - in my opinion.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/04/acting-1-expressions-cartoon-vs-live.html
While I agree with Frank and Ollie that we can't compete directly with realistic subtle live action acting, we can more than make up for it with cartoon license if we think liberally.
Having to do limited animation for most of my career, while really wanting to do lush full animation, has made me make practical choices in what to focus on.In this series of layout poses from "Stimpy's First Fart", a lot of the body poses are held so I could concentrate on the facial expressions. If I was stuck with a handful of eye expressions off a model sheet to work from, I would be completely handicapped in trying to get any specific subtle emotions out of my characters. Because I admire lots of different drawing styles and I absorb techniques and shapes from many different schools of thought, I can draw from a larger pallette of expressions than you will find in most cartoons. I am not afraid to make up shapes on the spot as needed - and then never use them again.
I don't actually memorize a thousand expressions and then summon them up for the appropriate emotions taking place in the stories. I don't think about what eye and mouth shapes to use at all - for the most part. Instead, I act out the scene as I go and draw what I'm feeling. The shapes of the eyes change and bend almost without my conscious control. Somehow my pencil just knows the shapes that will convey the emotions I'm feeling. It isn't random weirdness just to be weird - it's all in context of the story.The eyes and pupils will grow, shrink, change shape - whatever it takes to tell the ever changing emotions of the characters. The poses that come easiest are the ones generally with the most appeal. Now and then there is a particularly hard subtle emotion to capture, and I have to analyze what my own facial muscles are doing - and those poses tend to come out less appealing - even ugly. I would rather they all be appealing but worry more about the whole scene in its continuity.
Ren is actually a lot cuter in these scenes than Stimpy. Stimpy is experiencing ugly emotions and he is not used to them. He is usually happy. On the few occasions that he doesn't feel blissfully and idiotically happy, he has a hard time releasing his new unfamiliar emotions. They hurt him and I feel him struggling them to contain themselves, but they burst through against his will.
In general I want the overall effect of a scene - even if it is intense and theoretically ugly - to be cute - to be making fun of ugliness. This is different than just being ugly for the sake of it. There are many actually unappealing drawings in Ren and Stimpy and I cringe whenever I see them - but it's never my intention. To me, even gross can be appealing - as in Basil Wolverton's drawings.
Some of Stimpy's uglier expressions on these sheets appear in countless cartoons on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and have become stock expressions just like the ones I rebel against that come from other house styles.
The important thing to me is not to memorize stock shapes and expressions, but to be able to summon up any shape imaginable that suits the emotional idea I need to convey. This means I have to be a fan of many many styles and many other mediums, so that I am not bound by a small handful of animation shortcuts and visual cliches.
The other trick is to able to wrap unfamiliar shapes around your characters' constructions so that the expressions don't just float on a 2 dimensional plane in front of the head shape. Not always easy! That's why "solid Drawing" is the most important fundamental tool we have.
http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/ren-stimpy-acting-reference-stimpys-first-fart-john-kricfalusi/
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Appealing Character Design Goes A Long Way
Not every artist or cartoonist has natural appeal. Some , like Freddie Moore and Rod Scribner have naturally appealing styles and can take other people's designs or even generic designs and draw them with great appeal.
Since there are so few of these artists who can make almost anything look good, animation developed the concept of having specialists in appeal that we call character designers.
A good character designer, unlike a stylist actually thinks about his appeal. It's partly a science of balancing shapes and contrasts in order to make an assortment of characters who vary from each other in design. You can see in Ed Benedict's baseball players above that he is consciously experimenting with arranging different shapes together. They aren't good merely because they look simple or flat or designy - there is a lot of careful thought in them. Ed has natural appeal in his drawings and strong principles in general, and top of those 2 rare abilities he is visually creative - which is different than being able to draw well. The 9 Old Men are all very strong in principles, but rarely show much imagination in their designs. They recycled the same designs over and over again for decades, with very slight variation.
There is a modern mindset that every artist is a potential designer, which I find absurd. In 80s and 90s Disney feature films, it looks as if they let each animator design his own character and most of them are pretty bland, awkward and uninspired. Plus they don't work with each other in the same films.
Then there is the Hip TV Executive mindset that thinks that as long as you have not been tainted with experience in the animation business, then you have a revolutionary new design style. The executives of course can't tell what is actually new or not, because they are ignorant of cartoon history, and worse than that, they can't even tell a good drawing from a bad one. And they view actually appealing professional drawings as being "too old school".
Now to me, no matter what the budget of your cartoon is - whether it is a $400,000,000 fully animated feature, or a low budget TV cartoon, there is no excuse for any cartoon to have bad design.
I imagine the thinking behind cartoons that are supposed to be educational is that they have to taste bad - like stewed cabbage or boiled broccoli, because if they actually looked pleasing they'd be bad for you like ice cream is. Is there another explanation for how cartoons can look this unappealing?
Here are some really expensive nasty designs. Unbelievable. I feel like I live in an alternate universe where nothing makes sense.
A good designer is rare, but nowhere near as expensive as all the other animation costs.
If you start with good appealing design, and then you have good animators or even somewhat mediocre animators, then at least your cartoons will have some kind of instant appeal. I'm just using Ed here as one example of appealing design. There are many other design styles possible but the same principle applies.
Mel Crawford is one of those artists (who is not so much a designer) who has a very appealing unique personal style. When you take an appealing artist and give him appealing character designs you get the best of both worlds.
But even lesser artists still can make appealing work with good designs. Hanna Barbera made their reputation on their look more than anything else.
These artists are not at the level of Crawford, but they are good enough to allow Ed's design appeal to still come through.
The animation in HB cartoons was limited, but Ed's design style was so strong and appealing that it carried them for a decade before they threw away their reputation and switched to ugly design and worse animation.
As a kid I watched as HB went from appealing cartoony designs to copying Filmation's ugly semi-realistic characters with flesh colored eyes. I was shocked. To this day, I can't understand how big studios can have so many people in charge that can "yes" to having their expensive cartoons look ugly or bland. Just hire a real designer. There are a handful left in the business.
Since there are so few of these artists who can make almost anything look good, animation developed the concept of having specialists in appeal that we call character designers.
A good character designer, unlike a stylist actually thinks about his appeal. It's partly a science of balancing shapes and contrasts in order to make an assortment of characters who vary from each other in design. You can see in Ed Benedict's baseball players above that he is consciously experimenting with arranging different shapes together. They aren't good merely because they look simple or flat or designy - there is a lot of careful thought in them. Ed has natural appeal in his drawings and strong principles in general, and top of those 2 rare abilities he is visually creative - which is different than being able to draw well. The 9 Old Men are all very strong in principles, but rarely show much imagination in their designs. They recycled the same designs over and over again for decades, with very slight variation.There is a modern mindset that every artist is a potential designer, which I find absurd. In 80s and 90s Disney feature films, it looks as if they let each animator design his own character and most of them are pretty bland, awkward and uninspired. Plus they don't work with each other in the same films.
Then there is the Hip TV Executive mindset that thinks that as long as you have not been tainted with experience in the animation business, then you have a revolutionary new design style. The executives of course can't tell what is actually new or not, because they are ignorant of cartoon history, and worse than that, they can't even tell a good drawing from a bad one. And they view actually appealing professional drawings as being "too old school".
Now to me, no matter what the budget of your cartoon is - whether it is a $400,000,000 fully animated feature, or a low budget TV cartoon, there is no excuse for any cartoon to have bad design.
I imagine the thinking behind cartoons that are supposed to be educational is that they have to taste bad - like stewed cabbage or boiled broccoli, because if they actually looked pleasing they'd be bad for you like ice cream is. Is there another explanation for how cartoons can look this unappealing?
Here are some really expensive nasty designs. Unbelievable. I feel like I live in an alternate universe where nothing makes sense.
A good designer is rare, but nowhere near as expensive as all the other animation costs.
If you start with good appealing design, and then you have good animators or even somewhat mediocre animators, then at least your cartoons will have some kind of instant appeal. I'm just using Ed here as one example of appealing design. There are many other design styles possible but the same principle applies.
Mel Crawford is one of those artists (who is not so much a designer) who has a very appealing unique personal style. When you take an appealing artist and give him appealing character designs you get the best of both worlds.
But even lesser artists still can make appealing work with good designs. Hanna Barbera made their reputation on their look more than anything else.
These artists are not at the level of Crawford, but they are good enough to allow Ed's design appeal to still come through.
The animation in HB cartoons was limited, but Ed's design style was so strong and appealing that it carried them for a decade before they threw away their reputation and switched to ugly design and worse animation.
As a kid I watched as HB went from appealing cartoony designs to copying Filmation's ugly semi-realistic characters with flesh colored eyes. I was shocked. To this day, I can't understand how big studios can have so many people in charge that can "yes" to having their expensive cartoons look ugly or bland. Just hire a real designer. There are a handful left in the business.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Appeal - 2 - Big Eyes
We like kids, baby animals and pretty girls because they have big eyes and big heads.
The first really appealing cartoons - that really looked like our modern conceptions of cartoons had very big eyes.
This made them instantly more appealing than the previous 500 years worth of cartoons, which were really just itchy looking ugly caricatures of reality.
I can admire this kind of drawing for its technical skill but it doesn't attract my eye as quickly as an unrealistic simple, well designed big-eyed, big headed cartoon character. This cartoon from the 1800s is a slight distortion of reality, instead of a complete stylization intended for visual fun and appeal.
Big eyes and big heads are not the only elements that make a cartoon appealing of course, but they are probably the most important elements.
Compare Coal Black above to the Friz Freleng version of the same character. Which one has more instant appeal?
Tiny eyes are a sign of the conservative cartoonist; someone who thinks being too cartoony is not responsible or sensible.
Big heads, big eyes = cute
Small eyes, smaller heads = blah...
BIG PUPILS HELP TOO
Big eyes with big pupils tend to be even cuter. Remember Chuck Jones' "big soulful eyes routine"?
Just like your own big dog when he wants attention and love.
Big Expressive Eyes - Even better!
One thing that drew me to Clampett's cartoons so quickly was how appealing they looked. He drew not only bigger eyes than the other directors, but the huge eyes were much more expressive. They suck you in to the characters' feelings more and invite your empathy.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/10/specific-acting-scribner-clampett.html
Here's a Clampett Bugs drawn by Bob McKimson. His drawings for Clampett are more appealing than his drawings in his own cartoons.Small craniums, small eyes not appealing
You'd swear that McKimson actually rebelled on purpose against the accepted visual symbols of appeal.He drew tiny eyes and really tiny craniums, with big jowls - as if he was predicting Fox News Anchors 50 years before their time.
Low hairlines add to the natural unappeal of small eyes and tiny craniums.
Tiny Pupils Lack Appeal and The Ability To Express EmotionThere is more than 1 school of animation design that fights character emotions by drawing tiny pinpoint eyes. These pinpoints just float around the vacant eye shapes as if they are not actually part of them. They can't bend around the eyes, can't dilate and certainly can't use cartoon license to enhance the appeal and expressibility of the characters.
Cal-Arts animators had a period where they used pin-point pupils. To me this made the characters very cold and unappealing. The animators relied on a handful of Disney eye expressions from the late 70s, but simplified them to the point of - I don't know...coldness. It makes it very hard to get into the characters. You can see it came from Disney, but eliminated what made Disney appealing in the first place. It's Disney without solid drawing or cuteness.
Cal-Arts animators had a period where they used pin-point pupils. To me this made the characters very cold and unappealing. The animators relied on a handful of Disney eye expressions from the late 70s, but simplified them to the point of - I don't know...coldness. It makes it very hard to get into the characters. You can see it came from Disney, but eliminated what made Disney appealing in the first place. It's Disney without solid drawing or cuteness.Prime Time Cartoons
Of course, big eyes and big heads won't guarantee your drawings will be appealing. They still have to be well-drawn in every other way, but these are 2 obvious traits that help make your characters fun to look at and they help grab people's attention and draw them into the characters' adventures and emotions (if they have any).
And it's not just the SIZE of the eyes that matters. The shape is important too, but I thought I would keep this post on one basic point.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Bugs' Death 2 - Solid Drawing - adding perspective
Solid drawings are made up partly of construction. Perspective and foreshortening help make the drawings even more convincing - and harder to do. They also afford you more creative choices to tell your stories with.
Note how Bugs' feet are in the same perspective (the same angle) as the grave pit.Many characters in today's cartoons will be drawn in 3/4 angle, yet their feet are placed on a horizontal line that completely ignores the perspective or angle of the rest of the characters. It hurts my eyes to see that so much. It makes it look like the leg that is farther away from is is longer than the one that is close to us.
We are also looking down on Bugs so his head is much bigger than his feet and his body is foreshortened.
I love the hills and valleys in Bugs' ears. Very subtle and adds even more form.
The way Bugs drags Elmer floating through the air and into the grave is cheated. Even McKimson couldn't figure out how to make that look natural. I bet he was cursing Clampett for this scene. It's full of technical problems to solve - yet the result makes the cartoon even funnier. It's amazingly directed - as someone pointed out in the comments the other day, Elmer is crying to the music. As always, Clampett's actions and gags flow along melodic music like a cartoon ballet.
I can't imagine how they choreographed all these ideas and made them work together so smoothly - and funny. They must have been supermen in the 1940s.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/45OldGrayHare/bugsdeath2shorter.mov
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Disney Principles - "Pliable" or "Organic"
Even though these posts are titled "Disney principles" doesn't mean they invented them. Many were already known by artists in other mediums and animators in every studio were discovering the animation specific principles on their own by trial and error.
I'm just titling them this way because I'm using the text from "The Illusion of Life".
Here is an explanation of what they mean by "pliable" and what I term "organic". It isn't listed as a separate principle in the book, but it's sitting there on a page about squash and stretch. The book wasn't layed out too sensibly, but here it is:
I'm surprised there wasn't more interest in my first post on "appeal". It's a difficult subject and I see that there was some misunderstanding in the comments. I'll have to try to articulate some of the ingredients of "appeal" more clearly in further posts. The Dick Williams images are examples of drawings without appeal. Odd stiff proportions, too much detail; very anti-Disney. Designs that fight being animated. Difficult and clumsy for the sake of making it hard to move.
Also by "appeal" I don't simply mean character design. I thought I explained that in the post, but maybe not well enough.
You can have a bland character design like Tom and Jerry or Elmer Fudd, but an artist with natural appeal can apply style and appeal on top of the generic design. More on all this later, if anyone is interested.
I'm just titling them this way because I'm using the text from "The Illusion of Life".
Here is an explanation of what they mean by "pliable" and what I term "organic". It isn't listed as a separate principle in the book, but it's sitting there on a page about squash and stretch. The book wasn't layed out too sensibly, but here it is:
I'm surprised there wasn't more interest in my first post on "appeal". It's a difficult subject and I see that there was some misunderstanding in the comments. I'll have to try to articulate some of the ingredients of "appeal" more clearly in further posts. The Dick Williams images are examples of drawings without appeal. Odd stiff proportions, too much detail; very anti-Disney. Designs that fight being animated. Difficult and clumsy for the sake of making it hard to move.
Also by "appeal" I don't simply mean character design. I thought I explained that in the post, but maybe not well enough.
You can have a bland character design like Tom and Jerry or Elmer Fudd, but an artist with natural appeal can apply style and appeal on top of the generic design. More on all this later, if anyone is interested.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Disney Principles - Appeal 1 -
I agree with almost everything Frank and Ollie say about appeal - in theory. Appeal is really important to all art. The combination of skill and attractiveness or pleasure to the senses is what makes art. For cartoons, that's the combination of "solid drawing" and what F and O are calling "appeal". Solid drawing is very easy to judge, because it is objective. It's either right or wrong. That doesn't make it easy to do, of course, but without it, you lack control over anything else, including "appeal".
It's much harder to define "appeal" than to define "Solid Drawing" because it is subjective; in Disney's case, "appeal" is judged very narrowly - very very narrowly. I find a much wider array of cartoon art styles appealing than the Disney animators do and find much of what they do unappealing-including the very generic Italian characters above, both of whom are the exact same stock design, varying only in their girth. These designs have been recycled endlessly throughout Disney's films - they even use the same designs for the animal characters. I think the very fact that Disney has such a limited repetitive amount of character designs is evidence of how hard it is to achieve appeal in the first place. Disney discovered a few stock traits that Walt found appealing and they just kept using them, for fear of trying something new that might be deemed "ugly".
By "ugly" Frank and Ollie mean just about anything that doesn't look like 40s Disney style. I agree that overly detailed characters or overly graphic characters are hard to turn into enduring animated characters, but it's not that simple.
"a drawing that is complicated or hard to read lacks appeal"
Many of Warner Bros. characters aren't as "cute" or appealing in design as the best Disney characters, yet as characters they have have endured. Bob McKimson's personal style is generally regarded as unappealing, even though it's obvious he has great solid drawings. Clampett was able to get him to do very appealing stuff in a few cartoons - Coal Black, Falling Hare, An Itch In Time, What's Cookin' Doc - and on the famous 1943 Bugs Bunny Model sheet.
The sad truths about "appeal" is very few people have it in the first place and the whole concept of it seems to be lost.
If you grew up in the 70s or afterwards, you've probably come to accept ugliness and lack of sensory pleasure in all the arts: music without melodies, sloppy illustration, icky fine art, ugly cartoons both on TV and in feature films. A small handful of today's cartoonists look back to the 1930s to the 50s and see that obviously everything was more appealing to the senses back then, but most people today just accept ugliness in art matter-of-factly. Anything obviously appealing, like an old time melody is automatically written off as corny and unhip.
At one time, the "look" of a cartoon was its main factor. It drew you in to find out what it was about just by being so much fun to look at. Now watching cartoons is an acquired taste. It has to be learned (like eating broccoli) because cartoons aren't attractive anymore. They actually hurt your eyes and you have to train from youth to ignore the physical pain before you can accept cartoons for some other reason than that they are cartoons.
There are more executives in charge of animation today at each studio than there ever were, and they equate "appeal" with "too cartoony". They all want to be taken seriously as filmmakers, so to them the uglier, blander, more detailed and less fun to look at their characters are, the more "realistic" they are. "Realistic" equals "quality" to the sensory deprived.
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CAN APPEAL BE DISSECTED AND LEARNED?
I'm not sure, but I will try to analyze it, starting with how Disney found appeal in their style. It'll take a few more posts though.
Here are some "ingredients" of appeal, but knowing them doesn't guarantee that you can capture the subtleties and balance them to just the right degree to make your drawings look fun.
Pleasing construction:
Disney Appeal: Based on infant, baby animal and feminine traits.
Big heads, big eyes, soft flesh - but wrapped around good construction and perspective.
Proportions: cartoonists magnify the things we find interesting and shrink the things we find ugly or boring.
Big heads, small bodies, big hands sometimes etc.
A good cartoonist draws emotions rather than precise accuracy or realism.
Personal style: Some artists just have naturally appealing styles. Rod Scribner and Chuck Jones can take Bob McKimson's basic structures and make them prettier. Fred Moore can take a character designed from generic circles and draw him with flair and appeal.
Animators who draw well but don't have strong appealing individual styles benefit from having good designs to work from. Design and appeal are not 100% the exact same concepts but they overlap.
Rhythm:
Freddie Moore is the basic Disney master of appeal, and lots of people have copied him superficially yet still find appeal an elusive concept.
Cal Arts animators love the flow and rhythm in his loose sketches (I do too) and figure that if they draw loose with flowing lines and never commit to a finished drawing, then they will be as appealing as Moore himself.
Moore can draw solid finished drawings as well, but that's harder to copy.
There is a lot more to Moore than just flowing lines. He understands construction, anatomy, balance and just happens to put it all together in a very unique and pleasing way that invites hordes of copycats who draw vague flowing blobs.
http://fredmoore.blogspot.com/
Control of variety of shapes: This is what good designers do. It's slightly less intuitive than personal style because you have to to intellectually create new shapes and combinations, rather than just rely on a gifted hand that makes every character look good.
You can be too intellectual though and have clever combinations of odd shapes that are intellectually stimulating but not very fun to look at.
Surface details: Disney has more surface details on their characters than Warner's.
THE SQUIRREL MASK TRICK:
Disney designers deduced that the fur pattern of a squirrel's face is the most pleasing of all and designed a squirrel face mask that they stretched over countless characters to make them automatically cute.
Disney imitators for decades have thought this was the secret and they stretched their squirrel-masks over their badly constructed characters and we ended up with "All Dogs Go To Heaven", "Balto" and many other unappealing Disney copies.
Hmmm, the squirrel mask trick didn't work this time.
Balance of shapes: The spaces between your design elements have to be just right in order to have a pleasing balance. The Disney animators pursued this goal to an almost mathematical perfection. Bambi evolved from earlier Disney deer that had less pleasing proportions, balance and surface details. Once they nailed that balance, they used it on scores of characters for the next decade and feared trying anything new, until UPA and Ward Kimball purposely broke this mold and did ugly on purpose just to teach Frank and Ollie a lesson.
Even though this is supposed to be cold and uninviting, it still retains many Disney design principles: balance, construction (2d construction), clear staging, variety of shapes and more.
Here are some "ingredients" of appeal, but knowing them doesn't guarantee that you can capture the subtleties and balance them to just the right degree to make your drawings look fun.
Pleasing construction:
Disney Appeal: Based on infant, baby animal and feminine traits.
Big heads, big eyes, soft flesh - but wrapped around good construction and perspective.Proportions: cartoonists magnify the things we find interesting and shrink the things we find ugly or boring.
Big heads, small bodies, big hands sometimes etc.
A good cartoonist draws emotions rather than precise accuracy or realism.
Personal style: Some artists just have naturally appealing styles. Rod Scribner and Chuck Jones can take Bob McKimson's basic structures and make them prettier. Fred Moore can take a character designed from generic circles and draw him with flair and appeal.
Animators who draw well but don't have strong appealing individual styles benefit from having good designs to work from. Design and appeal are not 100% the exact same concepts but they overlap.
Rhythm:
Freddie Moore is the basic Disney master of appeal, and lots of people have copied him superficially yet still find appeal an elusive concept.
Cal Arts animators love the flow and rhythm in his loose sketches (I do too) and figure that if they draw loose with flowing lines and never commit to a finished drawing, then they will be as appealing as Moore himself.Moore can draw solid finished drawings as well, but that's harder to copy.
There is a lot more to Moore than just flowing lines. He understands construction, anatomy, balance and just happens to put it all together in a very unique and pleasing way that invites hordes of copycats who draw vague flowing blobs.http://fredmoore.blogspot.com/
Control of variety of shapes: This is what good designers do. It's slightly less intuitive than personal style because you have to to intellectually create new shapes and combinations, rather than just rely on a gifted hand that makes every character look good.
You can be too intellectual though and have clever combinations of odd shapes that are intellectually stimulating but not very fun to look at.
Surface details: Disney has more surface details on their characters than Warner's.
THE SQUIRREL MASK TRICK:
Disney designers deduced that the fur pattern of a squirrel's face is the most pleasing of all and designed a squirrel face mask that they stretched over countless characters to make them automatically cute.
Disney imitators for decades have thought this was the secret and they stretched their squirrel-masks over their badly constructed characters and we ended up with "All Dogs Go To Heaven", "Balto" and many other unappealing Disney copies.
Hmmm, the squirrel mask trick didn't work this time.Balance of shapes: The spaces between your design elements have to be just right in order to have a pleasing balance. The Disney animators pursued this goal to an almost mathematical perfection. Bambi evolved from earlier Disney deer that had less pleasing proportions, balance and surface details. Once they nailed that balance, they used it on scores of characters for the next decade and feared trying anything new, until UPA and Ward Kimball purposely broke this mold and did ugly on purpose just to teach Frank and Ollie a lesson.
Even though this is supposed to be cold and uninviting, it still retains many Disney design principles: balance, construction (2d construction), clear staging, variety of shapes and more.Make Someone Deliriously Happy This Christmas!
GEORGE LIQUOR T SHIRTS BRING YULETIDE SPIRIT
LOST SPUMCO TOYS FROM THE FUTURE!
http://rfxtoys.com/
These toys were made in the far future and transported back to our secret warehouse in Texas, where real Americans reside.
These are big and squeezable and will bring love to your whole household.
Know a lonely guy? This is the perfect toy to attract girls.
Jimmy of the Future comes complete with suckable anti gravity rubber nipple moon boots. Who else is gonna give you that?
WAIT THERE'RE MORE TOYS!
King-elect of America Vinyl Figure
Your loved ones will want to celebrate the order by having the new ruler of the free world under the tree.
SECRETARY OF STATE
Each and every one of these Hillary dolls have been personally flocked by communist atheists who want you to have the most wonderful Christmas ever.
SECRETARY OF ASS-KICKING
If you know someone who doesn't believe in turning the other cheek at Christmas, then this guy is for him! Her?
Everything will be all right now.
Buy them here!
Monday, December 08, 2008
Bugs Dies 1 - McKimson - Disney Principles - solid drawing
Here is more solid drawing and direct animation, with no reliance on tricks by Bob McKimson.
Note how all the wrinkles wrap around the characters' forms, and in perspective when they tilt their heads.
McKimson animated the best death scenes. All very subtle, carefully drawn and animated stuff.
McKimson always said that the WB artists took their lead from Disney, but except for the good drawing, this is nothing like Disney. McKimson had his own way of animating that was just very direct and to the point.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/45OldGrayHare/bugsdeath1short.movhttp://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/45OldGrayHare/bugsdeath1short.mov
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Thanks To Contributors!
Song of The South is probably my favorite Disney movie storywise.
It's the only movie where the stories aren't stuffed with filler (unless you count the live action sequences)
Disney didn't write the stories of course, but Bill Peet staged and cut them together very cleverly in his storyboards and gave the animators a strong structure to work in.
Most Disney movies are derived from 4 or 5 page fairy tale stories, and then filled up with 65 more pages worth of junk that has nothing to do with the stories: naked flying babies, animals that wipe dishes clean with their butts, long sneezing sequences, big chunks of insufferable pathos and more.
The Uncle Remus stories are told straight. They're good stories for kids and they look beautiful. I'm not sure if these first few frame grabs are Kahl; they look a little different than the close ups, so someone help me out here...
The backgrounds are beautiful, the compositions clear and handsome and the animation is really fun to look at.
Brer Fox here has a lot more detail and a more complex construction than Elmer Fudd (who is generic) and this would make him harder to control. Only really top animators could turn this guy around and tilt his head in every angle. If you are trying to teach yourself construction, this is the wrong thing to study, because there is too much to control. Start with Elmer and Porky or Tom and Jerry who are more basic.
Also Disney characters move so much and flail their arms all over the place that you get distracted from the drawings and mesmerized by the flailing. It's easier to copy the flailing animation than the really tough solid drawings.
These drawings can be figured out logically in the same way Elmer can, by starting with the basic shapes. I'll do that in another post.
In the meantime,
Thanks to all you kind folks who support my rantings! I hope you get some progress out of it!
Friday, December 05, 2008
Constructing ELMER
Here's a god exercise if you wana teach yourself cartoon construction and get your own drawings more solid.
trace the frame grabs in photoshop using construction
1) draw your line of action through the figure
2) Draw your major forms around the line of action
-torso
-head
-legs
-hat
3) draw center lines through the middle of the forms first vertically, then horizontally - following the perspective of the forms
you use these to aim the details - like eyes, nose, mouth, collar, hat details etc...
I screwe mine up by drawing my construction on the same layer as the frame grab.You should draw them on a separate layer (or layers) so you can turn off the frame grab layer and look at the construction by itself
then you can try to finish the details yourself by eye, by placing them along and beside the construction lines.
That's all I got for today. This will teach you a lot. Do lots and ots of poses and you will start to understand how to move your characters in space
when you add details like clothes wrinkles and bulges, don't bulge them too much or you will break up the forms and line of action and silhouette
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Solid Elmer - McKimson - Head Rotations
Here's a scene animated by Bob McKimson that shows the value of solid drawings. I purposely picked a scene that didn't have a lot of Clampett's direction in it. It looks like Clampett just told him what was was hapening in the scene and let him do it, so it's very basic McKimson.
Elmer tilts his head in all kinds of difficult subtle angles and he is animating slowly where you can't cheat anything.
Elmer's body is compact and solid, yet has enough give to feel like it's flesh wrapped in cloth - note that the wrinkles in the clothes don't stick way out! The bulge just enough to feel like clothes, but bulge following the form of his body.
This would be a very hard scene for an animator to do. McKimson's animation relies mostly on the drawings being solid and in perspective and moving cleanly from one pose to the next without losing volume and without have the features crawl around the face.
Titling the head into all these angles is hard enough, but that huge tall hat ads another degree of difficulty to control.
McKimson doesn't use an overload of overlapping action (except when Bob Clampett makes him) or squash and stretch or even drag - except in fast motions. His animation is very direct and to the point. It's all in the drawing.
It doesn't always get the best inking.
The fingers are wrapped solidly around Elmer's face. His other hand around his elbow. Feet in perspective.
Antic into...
Accent.
Look at those great feet!
Here's a real tricky pose to pull off. Elmer is all twisted around, laying on the ground and turned away from us. No problem for McKimson.This scene, and WB animation is a very different approach to Disney animation, even though it uses the same fundamentals...just in a different ratio. More solidness, less accessories to distract from the main point.
Bob McKimson is the foundation of Warner Bros. animation. Most of the main animators follow McKimson's lead and that's why I think WB animation is a lot more humanized and manly than Disney's. It doesn't use a lot of animation flourishes like floppy arms and non-stop stretch and squash and overlap on everything for its own sake.
Other WB animators had their own styles, and some outright rebelled against McKimson's style, but they did it while standing on his foundation, and the most successful WB cartoons are the ones that don't get overly fancy and effeminate (Disney-esque), the ones that humans can relate to. That is a key ingredient that made WB's cartoons outlast Disney's in popularity. They still seem fresh today.
Rod Scribner in the same cartoon - a much looser approach, more cartoony and appealing, but just a personal variation of McKimson. Scribner, like McKimson and the best WB animators (unlike Disney) didn't compete with the story and voice track for attention - they were more direct in communicating with and entertaining the audience
ANIMATION SHOULD EMPHASIZE THE VOICE TRACK
A good animator will use the voicetrack as the springboard for his animation. McKimson is very literal in this approach. When the voice goes up, Elmer's head tilts up. When there is a big accented syllable, Elmer visually accents it with his head or his hands or both. His expressions match the emotion in the voice track. Watch the clip a couple times and see this in action. Close your eyes and listen to the track and listen where the accents and pauses are for emphasis, then go back and watch McKimson help draw your attention to what's already there in the soundtrack.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/45OldGrayHare/Elmershorter2.movThe amazing thing to me is that no one followed up on this more populist approach to animation. Most animators want to emulate Disney in all its floppiness - only without the solid foundations and principles.
back later to explain more and to show some great Kahl animation...
Here's a strong accented gesture - some nice "twins" for you. Richard Williams would approve.
These would look even more solid if not for the DVNR and line thinning of the video transfer.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Disney Principles - "Twins" - a bad thing
In the "Solid Drawings" chapter of "The Illusion Of Life", Thomas warns us about using "twins" in our poses. It's a good point, but I'm not sure what it has to do with solid drawing. That's why I didn't include it in yesterday's post. It's more about keeping our characters from looking monotonous, wooden or dead.
Avoiding "twins" is merely one aspect of asymmetry which I have covered in other posts. I recommend for all aspects of your drawings: the design, the pose, the proportions - to not be exact mirror images of their opposite sides. You won't find anything in life to be perfectly symmetrical - except maybe for robots. Symmetry looks unnatural and dead.
This drawing from the "twins" model sheet has a very symmetric robotic face. The page warns against "twinning" in the pose, but not in the design or expression.
Compare to this looser more natural Freddy Moore face. Nothing on the left side of his face matches exactly the shape and size of its counterpart on the right. ***ALSO**** and this is very important - nothing on TOP of a shape is the same as the BOTTOM of the shape. The eyes are not only different from each other...each eye itself is a different shape on the left and right ...AND on the top and bottom. They are asymmetrical in every dimension - just like your own face and mine. The heads in the drawings from "Illusion of Life" that warn us against "twins" in the posing of Micky, don't follow the same theory on the design. Mickey's head is a perfect circle and his eyes are perfect ovals.
Here is a pose that is asymmetric and each part of the design is asymmetrical - very natural without being "realistic". It's still a cartoon mouse, but one that seems alive.
It's important to note that even with all this natural unevenness, all the features still wrap around the bigger shapes in the right dimensions - organic and constructed mixed together.
It's hard to avoid "twins" in your poses every time. Even Freddie Moore does it sometimes. But you don't notice it, because every part of the design itself is fluid, uneven and natural ..."Organic".
These Moore models from "The Little Whirlwind" show just about every fundamental Disney principle working at the same time - all in balance. To balance so many different skills all at the same time is not easy. To Moore, it came naturally. He was lucky - gifted from the 12,000 Gods above (choose the ones you believe in) .http://fredmoore.blogspot.com/
For most of us, we have to learn each principle one at a time and then put them together slowly as we start to understand them. Eventually, they all become instinctive and we stop thinking about them. At that point, our drawings finally stop looking stiff and come to life. It's a lot of study and work - and PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE.
Once you have "solid drawing" working for you, you can start on "appeal" and "organic", but without the solid drawings, everything will be uncontrolled and mushy.
All these poses were not created to be a model sheet. The models were made after the fact, from Moore's animation in the cartoon. They are key poses: the poses that tell the story in continuity.Creating model sheets out of your head with no story context or continuity to draw from is a futile and stodgy exercise. The best models are done like this.
When you have a story to work from and are drawing poses straight ahead with a purpose to them, the poses are much more natural. Because each one has a real meaning, rather than an abstracted pose made up by an official model-sheet designer who may or may not even be an animator.
I know from direct experience that the poses I draw when I am storyboarding, drawing layouts or animating are much more natural and lively than when I just try to design a character and make up a random pose for him (or her).
http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1357Twins and symmetry were avoided like the plague in the best cartoons of the Golden Age of cartoons.
Not to worry though, you can still find twins and perfect symmetry however in the more sophisticated prime time cartoons at night.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Disney Principles - Solid Drawing 1
Milt Kahl?
I'm surprised that "solid drawing" is so far down the list of principles in "The Illusion Of Life". It's #11 of 12 principles. To me, it's by far the most important tool of any artist, including animators. Without good strong drawings to move what do you have? Squash and stretch, overlapping action, secondary actions are all accessories; not the main course. They are animation tricks that help move your poses from one drawing to the next. If these main drawings are weak, who cares if they move smoothly? If all you care about is smooth motion, why do character animation? You might as well just do abstract animation. Become the next Oskar Fischinger.
The better you are able to draw, the more control you will have and the more creative choices open up to you. Frank Thomas says it very well in this too short article:
The better you are able to draw, the more control you will have and the more creative choices open up to you. Frank Thomas says it very well in this too short article:
Solid doesn't mean "realistic", but a cartoonist who understands form, perspective and balance has a huge advantage over unskilled cartoonists who have to rely on copying superficial aspects of other artists' work. Artists who are in turn copying superficial aspects of an earlier decadent artist.
http://www.animationarchive.org/2007/11/exhibit-grim-natwick-golden-age.html
Grim In His Own Words
Harvey EisenbergORGANIC, YET SOLID
By solid, Thomas doesn't mean stiff like granite...the characters have to look alive.
The hunt to find an animatable style that had form and pliability led to the idea of construction.
The animators of the 1930s developed it and let it evolve for a decade and half - then it decayed and fell out of fashion -which led to amateurish animation for the next half-century and here we are today left with primitive animation and even more primitive drawings - left with broken fingers and all our creative choices wiped out.
Animation is left to the mercy of trends that get progressively more decadent with each generation of unthinking trendy copycats, blind to the world outside their cliques.
There is a lot more I want to say about solid drawing and many examples to show, but it takes time to gather them together.
I want to compare and contrast 2 masters of solid drawing and animation next time: Milt Kahl and Bob McKimson.
Of course, solid isn't everything you need, but it will make your other goals much easier to reach. Without it, you are basically crippled.
Jetsons 1985 - Mixing Curves and Angles
I almost didn't get a job on the Jetsons because Bob Singer (head of the model department) thought I drew too angular and flat. He was right, but the models they were doing themselves at HB were beyond primitive. I wish I had saved some to show you. We used to pin them up on the walls in Taipei and everyone would laugh hysterically when the new ones came in. We'd have contests with the Nelvana directors to see who would be sent the ugliest models.
I'm embarrassed to show these now, but at the time they were fun to do and were considered pretty radical.
The perspective and construction is off in a few places.
This model is too cluttered in the face and too pointy in general.
Lynne Naylor's models had a nicer overall feel to them. She too used angles, but softened the corners and made them flow into the curves. This made the characters seem more organic and real.
All model designs tend to be stiff when created out of thin air. The best models come from the layouts, after you have taken your designs and moved them around and made them do things in context of the story. All these same characters came to life in the actual stories.
It was lucky for me that Bob Singer didn't hire me to just do model sheets. Instead Bill and Joe sent me to Taipei to do layouts - and as a bonus, told me to throw out the HB models and do my own.
Having to draw layouts from my own designs was the best thing to happen to me. When you draw character designs in the abstract you are just drawing pictures of characters that exist floating on a page - like a sketchbook doodle. Even if I'm thinking about the character's personality (which I always do) I can't be sure if the design will actually work for animation. It might not be functional.
When you take these same drawings and all of a sudden have to move them around, bend, grab things, walk, talk and come to life you start to see problems in the design - which we did while doing Jetsons layouts.
Luckily, we had the freedom to take liberties with the designs as we posed the cartoons and we could improve the functionality as we went. This liberty doesn't exist at most studios that demand you never veer of-model - even to correct mistakes or eliminate stiffness.
You can't be a good designer if you have never inbetweened, animated or done layouts. You will just be pasting on your own drawing problems to the next department - who in most studios is not allowed to interpret your designs to make them work.
A cartoon designer needs some basic talents:
1) an instinctive design sense-
He/she needs to have what all designers in any craft have - a natural sense of balance, organization and appeal.
Not all cartoonists and animators have this ability (as you could see from my post yesterday)
Designers need this natural gift. It can't be learned; it has to be innate. But it's still not enough.
2) Experience in animation, assisting, layout
This should come first before you ever design anything. You should have a good idea of what makes things work functionally. When you have these skills, then you can apply them to your designs.
Ed Benedict, Tom Oreb, Tom McKimson, Chuck Jones, all the admired designers of the past had learned their craft from the ground floor up. They started as assistants, animated for awhile or did layout and then began designing their own characters.
We haven't had this logical production system in decades. When I started, each department existed by itself in the abstract and didn't communicate with the other departments. Bob Singer at HB would hire students from his model design classes and plop them cold into the model department with no experience ever doing production work first. I'm not picking on Bob; this happened at every studio. There was also a crazy theory that you should be able to design in any style. Cartoonists should also be able to do superhero shows. This is utterly crackpot thinking. There is the odd person like Jim Smith who can do both, but he is rare indeed.
Lots of great classic designers couldn't transition from 40s style to 50s style, but tried anyhow. Designers are individuals with their own specialties and tastes and should be cast according to the tone of the shows they work on. What they all should have in common is experience doing the real work of animation first.
I know Alex Toth has a huge fan base and his model sheets for HB's superhero shows are very handsome indeed. But look at the shows!
![[nostalgia-animados-shazzan2.jpg]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JalUMBmMBJE/RdpIYWxg3uI/AAAAAAAAAF4/uDR-OFffAGA/s1600/nostalgia-animados-shazzan2.jpg)
No one could animate those designs. They didn't work for animation and the whole 70s decade is considered the dregs of animation history because of it.
And there were other "realistic" designers that didn't have Toth's talent. Those shows are even worse.
This Saturday Morning cartoon design style has since even seeped into feature animation:
Why would anyone spend a couple hundred million dollars on something that looks like a low-budget Saturday Morning cartoon? Anyone have an answer for that? Will?
Is it possible that drawings like this are in features with Disney's name on them?
I've heard that Disney 2d films let the animators design their own characters (I could be wrong) which might sound sensible on the surface - but not all animators have a sense of design. Plus the executives get in and monkey with everything to make sure there is no appeal sneaking into the designs. They like everything to be "realistic" which doesn't mean looking like real people; it means having small heads, long legs and tiny features. Sometimes the more rebellious animators fight the execs and demand that they at least get to paste Bambi eyes at the top of their Filmation/ Saturday Morning TV character designs.
...as long as the animators promise to fill their scenes with visual metaphors aimed at the family audience
...as long as the animators promise to fill their scenes with visual metaphors aimed at the family audience
Many of the modern features are filled with characters that don't go together; they look like they are from different design schools and this makes your involvement in the stories suffer when it is so obvious.
Today's TV execs hire kids out of college who can't draw at all, let alone have any design sense and absolutely don't have any experience - and they not only let them design shows, sometimes they even let them create shows and boss around artists with actual experience! This has to be the most illogical inefficient period of animation history yet.
The Jetsons wasn't any great achievement, but it opened the door to a short period of cartoons returning to some measure of common sense.
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