A Forum for Classical Hand-Drawn Animation

Animator Chris Doyle has started a new forum for the discussion of classical hand-drawn animation:

Classical Hand-Drawn Animation

Check it out.  Jump in and participate in the discussion. 

In one discussion related to the post down below about  "A Day for Hand-Drawn Animation" celebration in Turkey,  animator Tahsin Özgür makes a very good distinction about the place of hand-drawn animation:

"Today is Nov. 21st, three days already since the Hand Drawn Animation Day held at Maltepe University in Istanbul.

We called it,  in our quaint Oriental tongue,  Çizgi Film Bayrami, which clumsily translates as "Line-Film Holiday" or something ... "Line-Film" being what we call this kind of film. English lacks a direct equivalent, and the more generic term "animation" might have even facilitated the CG takeover ("it's all animation, isn't it?") 

Think of our concept of "line film" as closer to the French "dessin animé" ("animated drawing") -  it's French, language of culture, so it probably has more weight in the argument. Which argument?  Why, that hand drawn animation is a distinct art form, and not simply a step on the way towards something else. "

That is a good distinction and I wish the English language had such a term as "Line-Film"  or  "le dessin anime" to denote animated drawings.

I usually try to make the distinction by using the terms "traditional animation" or "classical animation" , or "hand-drawn animation". The one term I do not care for as much , but seems ubiquitous now is "2D Animation" . Animation can be completely CG , but also be 2D (such as vector-based animation in Flash or ToonBoom) .   For better or worse the Academy of Art University has designated our department as the "2D Animation Dept." , so that's the term I have to work with for now.  (hence, I am the Online Coordinator of 2D Animation at AAU ).

But what we're really talking about here is animation that is expressed through drawing.  That's not at all to disparage CG animation or Stop Motion puppet animation, etc.   However,  the ascendancy of CG animation has unfortunately led to the widely held  perception that Tash mentions:   that hand drawn animation is "simply a step on the way towards something else" rather than being a distinct art form in and of itself. 

Milt Kahl scene -- where does it come from ?

A small mystery :

I found this Milt Kahl scene from "The Rescuer's" posted on YouTube.  My question in the title -- "where does it come from?" -- doesn't refer to the film ; I know it's from "The Rescuer's".

But as far as I can see this shot is not in the final version of the film, but it feels to me like I remember seeing it  (in color) in the original theatrical release of the film.  But this scene is NOT in the DVD release of the film.  Was it cut out for some reason or is my memory playing a trick on me and this shot was never actually in the theatrical version of the film ? 

Does anyone know when or why this scene was cut out of  "The Rescuer's"  ? 

(there's no sound in the clip posted on YouTube. What are they saying ? Anyone know ? )

Here is another very similar set up , from the work-print of the sequence included on the extras of the Frank & Ollie documentary. This scene is in the final film .

A Day For Hand Drawn Animation

*UPDATE:  Jeff Treves dropped by and left this comment below:

 "The festival was great! We are trying to make it even bigger for the next year. Here are some photos for those who are interested. " --

A Day For Hand-Drawn Animation Festival Photos

-----

I enjoyed seeing the photos.  Jeff and some others may enjoy seeing this photo of Tahsin Özgür taken at Sheridan College in 1982 .  (not that long ago , right , Tash ?) 

(click the photo to see it larger)

--------

"As in previous years we at Anadolu University and Maltepe University are observing Nov. 18th, anniversary of the release of Steamboat Willie, as a day to celebrate traditional hand-drawn animation.  

This year our special theme will be Frank and Ollie, since Ollie Johnston passed away since our last celebration. Please join us in our celebration."

-Tahsin ("Tash") and Lale Özgür

My friend Tashin Özgür has reminded me that he and his wife Lale have started a tradition at Anadolu University and Maltepe University to observe November 18th (anniversary of the release of Steamboat Willie) as a day to specifically celebrate traditional hand-drawn animation. An excellent idea and one that I heartily endorse . Hopefully this will become an international movement among all who cherish the art of hand-drawn animation.

If you can't sit down to re-read "The Illusion of Life" this week, at least put in the DVD of the movie "Frank & Ollie" .
(but if you haven't read "The Illusion of Life" lately, make a point to pick it up again. I guarantee you that you'll find something new and exciting that you missed before ... at least that's how I have found it each time I've returned to this foundational tome).

(click on the image to see it larger)

Ollie Johnston - Glen Keane : On Teamwork , Collaborating

If you haven't heard this little snippet of Glen Keane's remembrance of Ollie Johnston at the Ollie Tribute , then you should really drop everything you're doing and listen to this now: 

Glen on Ollie 

And take a look at this too: 

Inspiration - Fred Moore's dwarf scenes

Pedro Daniel Garcia has kindly posted a reel of most of Fred Moore's animation of the Seven Dwarfs from Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".

Sometimes you will read things about Fred Moore that are written in a slightly condescending tone, like "oh, yeah, poor old Freddy, he was good for his time ... a little rough around the edges,  not sophisticated enough to "keep up" with the better animators at Disney "   etc.    





As though Moore's animation was kind of simple but charming work that doesn't really hold up compared to what came later .
But really now ... look at this reel of animation and tell me if you've seen much contemporary animation that comes anywhere close to the level of work that Fred Moore is doing here ? (this was done in 1936 folks , and is the stuff we're doing today better than this for the most part ? )  How much Disney animation of the later years resonates like this ?   I don't know ... maybe I'm just simple and unsophisticated, but I find that I respond on a gut level to these Fred Moore scenes a lot more than I do to some of the so-called "sophisticated" animation that came later.

Check out Jenny Lerew's blog "The Blackwing Diaries" for some great Fred Moore artwork. 

Animator's Demo Reels - Jen Hager

One of the things I like about YouTube is finding great animator's demo reels.  An animator whose work is new to me is Jen Hager. 

This is her demo reel of hand-drawn animation done as a student at Cal Arts. This is really good stuff ! 

I would say that if you're an animation student and you want to know what level you should be aspiring to this is it.   This is the kind of reel a review board at a studio looks at and says : "Give that person a job !" 

Remember this is student work.   Wow.

Jen Hager is now working at Disney Animation Studios.

The Pumpkin of Nyefar - beautiful animated short !

Wow !

Watch this great animated short posted on Cartoon Brew TV:

The Pumpkin of Nyefar

The Pumpkin of Nyefar (2004) is a short directed by Tod Polson (El Tigre, Another Froggy Evening, Poochini). The story was co-written by Maurice Noble (1911-2001), who began his animation career at Disney in the 1930s, and eventually designed many of Chuck Jones’s classic Warner Bros. cartoons including Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century and What’s Opera, Doc?. The film is narrated by June Foray (the voice of Rocky in Rocky and Bullwinkle). Below is a some background information about the film from its director Tod Polson. Tod will also participating in the comments section and looks forward to your comments and questions.

“In 1994, Maurice Noble began training a group of young designers at Chuck Jones Film Productions. A lot of us were working on our own personal short projects, several of them based on ethnic folktales. Maurice thought it would be a great idea if the group of us could develop a series of shorts inspired by stories from around the world. We called this series “Noble Tales,” and we, his trainees, became known as the “Noble Boys” (which also included a few girls). Many of us traveled around the world and developed and together designed several dozen idea. “The Pumpkin Of Nyefar” was one short idea Maurice and I wrote while visiting Turkey. Our first morning in Istanbul we came downstairs to the dining room and around the table were twenty belly dancers and a lot of pumpkin dishes. All the girls of course were smitten by Mr. Nobles charm. Ha ha… I can still see him grinning from ear to ear.

 Afterwords we talked things over, and decided to write a story about a prince who could marry any beauty in his kingdom, but instead chooses to wait for true love. As fate would have it, the prince finds true love in the form of a pumpkin. While I was supervising a TV show in Thailand, James Wang (Wang Film) invited Maurice and I to use his Thai studio to make our short. Maurice underwent surgery so that he could make the flight to Bangkok. Unfortunately he died a few weeks later. I came to Thailand a few months later to work on the short myself. But my friends didn’t leave me to do the film alone. Soon after, my pal Mark Oftedal, came to town for a visit. His short vacation, turned into a several year working holiday, He became so involved with the project, that I just made him the co-director of “Pumpkin:. Other friends from America helped out too. June Foray donated her voice to the film. Ben Jones, and Lawrence Marvit both did short stints in Bangkok to help get things going. Sue Kroyer did a lot of inspirational character design as did Roman Laney. Jules Engel looked over a lot of the early design and color. Aaron Sorenson, Dave Marshall, Dave Thomas, and Mike Polvani all donated time to the project.

It was really a great collaboration of friends, just the way Maurice had dreamed about: doing a short film together, everything donated, just because they wanted to do it.”

Now that's the spirit ! 

Sherm Cohen's Sponge Bob drawing tips

Hey , Kids !  What time is it ? 

Time to talk about more fundamentals.   (never get tired of those , because we all need to remember this stuff and use it in our work) .

Ace storyboard artist Sherm Cohen has posted some good stuff about Line-Of-Action,  Contrasting Shapes, Silhouette, and all that jazz on his blog Cartoon Snap : 

Sherm Cohen's Animation Drawing Tips

Take a look .   Good examples of these foundational principles.

(click image to view it larger. More images on Sherm's blog.)

Eric Goldberg's 'Character Animation Crash Course'

Master animator Eric Goldberg's long-awaited book has finally been released.  



Character Animation Crash Course  is now available at your local bookstores (check Barnes & Noble or Borders , or online at Amazon.com) 

I have treasured my xeroxed copies of Eric's lecture notes from animation lectures he gave us at Disney several years back and now I am so glad to have all of this material , plus some new material that Eric has added to expand his notes, all bound together in neat little package , including a CD which has Quicktime movies of many of the animation examples he shows in the book. 

Eric is one of the best animators working today . This book will perfectly compliment the Richard Williams book . Some of the material will overlap , but Eric's approach to the material has a different flavor than Richard Williams' approach , so you'll get something new from Eric's book , even if you have the Williams book .

At Academy of Art we're not yet using this as a Required Textbook for any of our animation classes since it was just published over the summer,  but I can say without any hesitation to all of my students: This is a must-have book for any animator, student or pro.

The website Animated News and Views has a recent interview with Eric where he discusses the book:

Interview with Eric Goldberg on "Character Animation Crash Course"

Michael Sporn DVD's Marzipan Pig and Abel's Island

Check out Michael Sporn's always interesting blog where he notes that several of his animated shorts are receiving new DVD releases.  These are delightful films so definitely worth picking up:

Michael Sporn's  "The Marzipan Pig" and "Abel's Island" . 

I hope Michael doesn't mind me lifting a few images from his blog to peak your interest here.  Click on the link to Michael's Blog to read more about it.

(click images to view them larger)

Here’s a character from The Marzipan Pig. Tissa David animated the entire film, herself, and did a caricature of herself with this woman whose purse is stolen by an owl.

This shows Tissa's rough and the final drawing as it was hand-colored and mounted on a cel. 

Stephan MacQuignon colored the drawing and Robert Marianetti added shading. Christine O’Neill did the cut and paste on the drawing to cel operation.

Kung Fu Panda - 2D Sequences

UPDATE: High-Res. HD Quicktime videos of the opening Dream sequence and the End Credit sequence of KFP have been posted here: The Art of the Title: Kung Fu Panda



-------

Amazing 2D animated sequences which bookend the CG feature "Kung Fu Panda" .

The opening dream sequence was animated by James Baxter Animation. It's been posted as a special preview clip at MSN Movies :

Kung Fu Panda Opening Dream Sequence



Dream Sequence Production -

Storyboard and Direction by Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Animation Director - James Baxter
Asst. Animation Director- Chris Sonnenburg

Producer - Hameed Shaukat
General Manager - Kendra Baxter

Key Clean-Up Artist - Helen Michael
Rough In-Betweener/Asst. Clean-Up - Raymond Flores Fabular

Compositors - Jason Brubaker , Erik Tillmans
Color Models - Claire Williams
Ink & Paint - Tina Staples
Line Art Scanner - Marisa Ledina

Accounting- Lauren Matthews-Hill

Enjoy the clip, but if you haven't seen this in the theater you should really go see it : the artwork is very rich and detailed and can best be appreciated on a big screen.

Then in a reprise of the 2D opening sequence the end-credits were designed by Shine Studios , in collaboration with James Baxter Animation and Dreamworks Animation. The character animation in the end-credits was done in-house by Dreamworks animators -

Panda: Gabriele Pennacchioli
Shifu: William Salazar
Tigress: Rodolphe Guenoden
Tai Lung: Philippe Le Brun
Mantis: Ken Morrissey
Viper: Rodolphe Guenoden
Crane: Simon Otto
Oogway: Ken Morrissey
Dad (Duck): Alessandro Carloni
Messenger Goose and Rhino: Pierre Perifel
Monkey: Gabe Hordos

Animation drawing by Gabriele Pennacchioli -




View the end-credit sequence here:

Kung Fu Panda End Credits

HOKUSAI - Animated Sketchbook

A marvelous film based on the drawings of the master Hokusai , written/directed by Tony White.

Tony writes:

"The film itself was inspired by the wonderful sketchbooks of Hokusai. When I saw them I realized that this artist was indeed a true animator at heart... he just didn't have the knowledge or the technology to be one in his lifetime. I therefore sought to bring his drawings to life for him, as homage to his genius."

Also, check out Tony's other films posted on YouTube, in particular "Endangered Species" a love letter to hand-drawn animation and an impassioned vision for how hand-drawn can continue to exist in the "digital age" .

Here is Tony's introduction to "Endangered Species" telling how and why he came to make the film :



Very important observation about the apprenticeship system and how traditional animation skills were "traditioned" (which literally means: "passing down to") from one animator to another :

Milt Kahl - Jungle Book roughs

[click on image to see it larger]


Michael Sporn has uploaded a series of rough drawings of King Louis by Milt "King" Kahl on his blog :

Kahl's Jungle Book Roughs

Check out the whole series of roughs on the link above (click on each image to see it larger) .


Here's a video of these key poses strung together with the timing based on the drawing numbers. Keep in mind that these are widely spaced Key drawings, so a lot of the drawings from this scene are missing :


The final version of the scene is here:

A visit with Animator Patrick Smith

A visit to the studio of traditional animator Pat Smith ---

Animation Backgrounds Inspiration

Here is another blog site which ought to be in your bookmarks:

ANIMATION BACKGROUNDS - Discovering the Art Behind the Art

This site by Rob Richards takes up and continues the work that Hans Bacher was doing with his Animation Treasures background art blogs before Hans decided to stop blogging and pulled his sites off the internet . 

The backgrounds are digitally recreated from multiple screen grabs , digitally removing the character animation on top , so that a facsimile of the original Background painting is reproduced. 

Go take a look at  Animation Backgrounds 

Mike Nguyen

Jerry Beck at CartoonBrew.com reminds me that I should post a link to Mike Nguyen's blog , Rainplace .

If you don't know who Mike Nguyen is you really should .

His company July Films , is making an independent animated feature "My Little World" . I first met Mike back on The Little Mermaid .
He has gone on to be a supervising animator on such modern classics as "The Iron Giant" . For the past 5 or 6 years he's been working on his personal feature film "My Little World" , while taking on contract work from other studios to pay the bills .

You will definitely find some things worth reading and watching on either of Mike's two websites, the blog Rainplace or the My Little World site.


[click on image to see it larger]



(images copyright Mike Nguyen and July Films © 2008)

Maximal minimalism

A good example about how character animation is all about timing , not fancy graphics or camera moves. This gets a lot of mileage from pure charm and keen observation of real life , with a very simple art style.

James Baxter !

If you haven't heard the interviews with master animator James Baxter on The Animation Podcast , then get yourself over there to the Animation Podcast website right NOW and listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of the James Baxter Interview. Both interviews bear repeated listening. (and lots of other good stuff there on The Animation Podcast: interviews with Nik Ranieri, Dale Baer, Andreas Deja, and others ) .


Also of interest, Kevin Koch (one of James Baxter's assistants at Dreamworks) has posted several pencil tests that James did for the movie "Sinbad" .

James Baxter Animation Tests - CLICK HERE !

Animation For Valentine's Day

Seemed appropriate for the day. An old favorite, Frank Thomas's great animation from Lady & The Tramp.

Rough Animation Example

One of the things you'll hear me emphasize over and over (except in ILL2D 346 Animation Assisting !) is to loosen up and draw rough in your first pass animation . Here's an excellent example of a real production scene animated very rough , but very expressively . This is Glen Keane's animation of Fagin and Oliver (the cat) from "Oliver & Co."


And here is the finished version of this scene , which is actually split into two scenes in the movie , with a cutaway inserted to show Fagin's point-of-view looking back over his shoulder at Jenny and Georgette .



It takes a lot of confidence to successfully pull-off a scene this loosely.
You'll find that working rough like this will help you to nail your performance a lot faster and you can tell sooner whether or not your staging and acting are working .

However, this sort of rough scene needs a very talented Assistant Animator to do the follow up work , or else the animator should do a second pass to tie down the shapes and details before passing it along to the clean up dept. You'll find that the challenge with a rough scene like this is to keep the expressiveness but at the same time refine it down to workable clean up shapes that are consistent in volume and detail .