Flip the Frog: run

Need a simple run for an animation excercise? Flip will give you the basics



FLIP THE FROG - RUN (3.5mb)

This one is 5 frames for each step.10 drawings for each complete cycle. Shot on 1's. The music is on a 10 frame beat.

Ignore the repeat frames. That's from the video transfer from film. They add a frame after every 4th one to turn 24x per second into 30x per second.



Here's a Flip walk, also on a 10 frame beat with a breakdown of how to do it yourself.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/10/10-x-beats-flip-frog-double-bounce-walk.html


Oh and thanks to these students who pressed the magic button!

Brett Thompson

Adam Juricev-Mikulin

Lynsey Schaschke

First Steps For Ross - Basic Construction

This blog is getting so big now and so full of every level of cartooning concepts that it might be hard for students to find some of the basic lessons.

Here are what I think are the most important first tools of cartoon drawing. Constructing the body and the head. Without understanding these, almost every other artistic concept will be vague and mysterious. You can't really understand any of this stuff just by reading it. You have to actually do it, and do it a lot. Practice and self-criticism will help ram the understanding into your head for good.


Whether you want to do animation, inbetweening, story, storyboards, layout or almost any other aspect of cartooning for animation, the key to all those concepts starts right here:

animation-school-lesson-1-construction

top-cat-turnaround-toy-construction


toy-construction-2-advanced


animation-school-lesson-2-squash-and stretching The Head



animation-school-lesson-3-how-to-check your copies

animation-lesson-4-2-legged-characters

animation-school-lesson-
5 hands


http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/10/heckling-hare-step-by-step-construction.html

Oh and thanks to all who have contributed!

Takin' a little break...and Thanks!

Hi folks,

I hope you don't mind if I take a couple days off. I kinda wore myself out on the last few posts. Looking in detail at some of that Clampett punctuation really got me thinking about some new theories and ideas. I wanna let 'em gestate while I study some more stuff.

In the meantime, I'd like to thank some of the latest contributors to the site.

Hector Martinez

Patrick Sevc ***! a modern Medici!

Lisa Riggins

Leo Brodie

Allan Turner

Chris Baranowski

Jeff LaMarche

Laura Olsen

Amir Avni (Who's gonna clobber everyone, because he does the lessons and applies them to his work)

Daniel Chambers

Maybe you guys can let me know which posts you found most useful. And if you've done any lessons, post a link in the comments.

Did I miss anyone?

Coming up:

Curley Howard's custom visual language and punctuation inventions

The marvelous color stylings of a Cal Arts grad

Jack Benny's brilliant ads

More Ken Duncan

Tex Avery's clarity

Can cartoons ever be as funny as live action?

Practice Your Principles:

By the way, you don't have to wait for me to make new lessons to further your own progress. Just take some old cartoons and still frame them and apply what you are learning while copying the poses in the cartoons. The more you do this, the more you will understand how the principles work and the more you will build up a variety of poses, acting and other skills.
All these cartoons use the same basic fundamentals. If you don't have a good freeze frame on your dvd player, or don't have many old cartoons, this blog (and others) are full of great poses for you to copy.
Start with the line of action.
Build the basic forms around the LOA. (Check the negative shapes and don't eat 'em up!)
Break the basic forms into the next smaller level of forms.
Add the details and make them flow around the forms.
Check your copy against the original.
Critique it and find mistakes.
Redraw it and correct the mistakes.
Apply what you learn to your own drawings.
Work for me.