Goofy's Floppy Principles

Here's some animation from my favorite period of Disney. I love the character design and the way it moves.The late 30s is when they were discovering and polishing the basic animation principles that we still sort of base modern cartoons on only we don't remember exactly how they work or what to use them for.
The scene is interesting, because it has nothing to do with story or acting. It's just what they used to call "business". It exists purely to remind us about Goofy and to have some fun bouncy animation.

Warner Bros. cartoons used these same principles to tell more individual and original stories and to assert the artist's own world views, but it's interesting to see the principles here stripped of opinion and individuality- existing in wholesome purity.
Line of Action and Clear Silhouette


Overshoot past the keys for accents

Settle into the final pose after overshoot.

Everything is bouncy and timed to music.

Many of the actions move on arcs. One pose will squash down in the middle of the action to move into the next pose.
Always feature the ass.

And the groin is good too.


http://cartoonthrills.org/blog/Dis/magmick37/GOOFYPRINCIPLESPure.mov

Cartoons like this are all about the principles. They aren't very funny and nobody has specific personalities, especially not the director. These are strictly the basics drawn in a very appealing graphic style.

I kinda wish we could have a studio that would go back to these basics and from there move forward into individual styles and customization.

Today's full animation style is such a specific small collection of cliched actions that it is very hard to move forward from there.

I actually saw a movie the other day that didn't have all the stock acting and motions of most modern fully animated features.

It had a depressing drawing style to match the depressing subject matter and is not really my kind of thing but I was

impressed to see that the way it moved seemed more customized to what was happening in the story. It wasn't a collection of stock actions.

If only we could apply that kind of clear thinking to entertainment animation.

Jones BGs - Gribbroek - Multiplane Pan Simulation

FOREGROUND MOVES FASTER THANN BACKGROUND

I always liked the BG pans in the early Roadrunner cartoons. They achieved a sense of depth by painting the BG on separate planes or layers.
The road and cacti are painted on a separate layer from the mountains and the sky. Then they pan the foreground road faster than the background sky/mountain layer.
This creates the illusion of perspective and 3 dimensions.
I think it helps to keep the paintings and design somewhat stylized and cartoony because it is merely a flat illusion and not real depth. If it was really 3d, there would be an infinite amount of planes all moving at different speeds and that is of course impossible.
I think this effect works much better than many Disney multiplane effects. In the Disney fake depth camera moves, they paint the BGs too detailed and "realistic". The more detailed the layers are painted, the more obvious that the layers are flat-that they are paintings. When you truck in on Snow White's cottage and the foreground trees pan apart and go out of focus, it looks like you are watching paintings of trees separate.
Simple cartoony shapes allow you to suspend your disbelief.
I love Robert Gribbroek's BG layouts because they are well designed, but not overly stylized like Maurice Nobel's. Noble's BGs are so extremely designed that they jump forward ahead of the characters and distract from the "reality" of the story. For me anyway.
These are simplified and cartoony, yet inspired by the organic nature of the objects being caricatured.
It gives the cartoons a feeling of open spaces and nature. That makes the cartoon more unique and really makes me feel the coyote's plight better. In the more stylized Roadrunner's I feel like I'm just watching a generic template of Chuck Jones cartoon tricks, rather than a special treatment designed for the characters and situation.

Flintstone Random Fun

some stuff is just fun to stare at