Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
Project Angels
John Kricfalusi, Mike Van Eaton, Rita Street, Jorge Garrido, Andreas Deja, John Canemaker, Jerry Beck, Leonard Maltin, June Foray, Paul and John Vinci, B. Paul Husband, Nancy Cartwright, Mike Fontanelli, Tom & Jill Kenny, Will Finn, Ralph Bakshi, Sherm Cohen, Marc Deckter, Dan diPaola, Kara Vallow
Project Heroes
Janet Blatter, Keith Lango Animation, Thorsten Bruemmel, David Soto, Paul Dini, Rik Maki, Ray Pointer, James Tucker, Rogelio Toledo, Nicolas Martinez, Joyce Murray Sullivan, David Wilson, David Apatoff, San Jose State Shrunkenheadman Club, Matthew DeCoster, Dino's Pizza, Chappell Ellison, Brian Homan, Barbara Miller, Wes Archer, Kevin Dooley, Caroline Melinger
Project Volunteers
Gemma Ross, Milton Knight, Claudio Riba, Eric Graf, Michael Fallik, Gary Francis, Joseph Baptista, Kelsey Sorge-Toomey, Alexander Camarillo, Alex Vassilev, Ernest Kim, Danny Young, Glenn Han, Sarah Worth, Chris Paluszek, Michael Woodside, Giancarlo Cassia, Ross Kolde, Amy Rogers
We had a question from a Facebook follower… “What kind of relevance do the the motion and principles of cartoons like Popeye and Mickey Mouse hold to contemporary cartoons or cartoons with more realistic designs with anatomy and different styles of motion?”
That is an excellent question, and it goes to the heart of how we as human beings learn.
When you start out to master any difficult skill, you should learn it in a progression from simple to more complex. If you try to juggle too many complexities when you are just starting out, you end up making a high splat on the wall and you end up learning nothing.
The great jazz pianist Bill Evans discusses this idea in relation to musical improvisation in this video. Please watch this video before reading further. Don’t just skip by this video. It’s very important to what I am trying to explain here, and it gives an astoundingly clear demonstration of this particular principle in practice…
When you begin to play a musical instrument, you start with scales. You don’t start out playing Bach or Liszt. Animation is no different. Drawing volumetrically and solidly is difficult. Drawing a complex realistic human form volumetrically and solidly is extremely difficult. Animating a realistic human form volumetrically and solidly is completely impossible for someone just beginning to develop their animation skills.
The animators who created Snow White and Pinocchio all started animating in the rubber hose style. Using simple forms allowed them to focus on learning how to convey the spirit of a walk cycle or express personality through rhythms, gestures and expressions. The simplicity of the model allowed them to refine and perfect their basic principles… line of action, clear silhouettes, control of volumes in space, appealing proportions… without having to add the compounding difficulty of complex planes, anatomy, musculature and turning highly organic shapes in three dimensions.
When you have learned the principles one by one through experimentation and practice using simple forms, you can begin to add complexity a little at a time, and over a period of years, perhaps you will have the experience and understanding to attempt to animate a realistic human form. Milt Kahl and Mark Davis weren’t born with the experience and draftsmanship to be able to animate realistic human characters the way they animated them in Sleeping Beauty… They worked their way up to it by animating characters with more basic shapes and built their chops. They animated rubber hose characters. And the rubber hose animation in the early 30s Mickey Mouse and Popeye cartoons is drop dead brilliant. If you can’t see the genius in the Popeye walk cycles Nicholas has been posting, go back and look at them again and analyze them for the principles of motion, posing and staging they embody. I bet you’ll find that you were looking at the surface level- the model of the character- and not even considering the way it’s posed and animated.
Students are always impatient and they want everything now. That’s only natural But if you allow your impatience to prevent you from learning in a logical, orderly progression, your impatience can cripple you. Keep your eye on the ultimate goal, but keep putting just one foot in front of the other until you get there.
Back To School Days At Animation Resources
Fall is time to join Animation Resources as a student member. Annual dues for full time students and educators is discounted. It’s the biggest bargain in animation at only $70 a year. Animation School is great, but it doesn’t give you everything you need to become a professional animator. You need to invest in self-study to be successful in this highly competitive field. That’s exactly what Animation Resources can help you do if you become a member. Each day we’ll be highlighting more reasons why you should join Animation Resources. Bookmark us and check back every day.
There’s no better way to feed your creativity than to be a member of Animation Resources. Every month, we share a Reference Pack that is chock full of downloadable e-books and still framable videos designed to expand your horizons and blow your mind, as well as educational podcasts and seminars. It’s easy to join. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online.
For the past few months, I’ve been researching the roots of cartooning, tracing the history back long before Gertie the Dinosaur and the Yellow Kid appeared on the scene. I’ve discovered some wonderful things which will be appearing here in the blog soon. But one of the most exciting things I’ve discovered in cartooning’s “family tree” is the existence of “kissing cousins”… related art forms that developed along with cartooning in roughly the same time and place. Chief among these related arts is puppetry, and in particular, the tradition of Punch and Judy.
We all know Punch and Judy, but few of us today have actually seen a show performed. But the tradition isn’t dead. It’s being carried on by a small group of dedicated puppeteers around the world. They continue to perform in pretty much the same manner as it’s been performed for the past three centuries.
Cartooning and Punch and Judy share a common ancestor, George Cruikshank…
Cruikshank was a British cartoonist who illustrated one of the earliest documented Punch and Judy scripts in 1828, The Comical Tragedy or Tragic Comedy of Punch and Judy. Based on the performance by Piccini, the puppeteer who created a sensation with the puppet play in Britain in the early 1820s, this same basic story outline has continued to form the plot of just about every Punch and Judy show to this day.
The traditional show is usually performed by a “Professor”, the puppeteer inside the booth, and a “Bottler”, an assistant outside the booth who corrals the audience, introduces the puppets and plays musical accents and sound effects on a drum or guitar. The audience is encouraged to participate, calling out to the characters on the stage to warn them of danger or clue them into what’s going on behind their back.
The cast of characters has been passed down from Professor to Professor over the generations, with some falling away and some being added as time went by and tastes changed. This beautiful set of puppets was created for me by artist/puppeteer Christopher van der Craats in Melbourne, Australia.
In the early days, a live trained dog named Toby sat on the edge of the stage and helped with the show. Later, the live dog was replaced by a puppet, and eventually faded out of common use. But some Professors still occasionally use the Toby character in their act to this day.
The show begins with the audience calling out to wake Mr. Punch, a carefree “trickster” character with a buzzy voice created by means of a “swazzle” a kazoo like device hidden in the Professor’s mouth…
Next, Punch’s wife Judy is introduced. She is a bossy personality who orders Mr. Punch around. She instructs Mr. Punch to mind the baby while she goes to the kitchen to make sausages…
Punch begins to play with the baby, teaching him to walk. But the action turns rough and the baby starts crying. Punch begins to frantically fling the baby about trying to silence it, eventually tossing it out the window. Judy finds out and a fight breaks out between her and Punch. Judy is beaten to death by Punch’s slapstick.
Judy comes back as a ghost to frighten Mr. Punch, who is terrified and cowers in fear, unable to speak.
The Doctor arrives to treat the stricken Mr. Punch, but he is nothing but a quack. He asks where it hurts, then hits Mr. Punch to give him pain to help forget his fear. Punch quickly dispatches the Doctor with his slapstick.
As the bodies of the puppets Mr. Punch has killed pile up on the edge of the stage, Punch’s friend Joey the Clown shows up and enters into a game with Punch trying to confuse him as he counts the bodies. In some older versions, Joey helps Mr. Punch turn the bodies into sausages! Punch gets frustrated with Joey’s friendly taunting and hits him over the head with his slapstick. Joey plays dead.
Next, the law arrives… in the early days this character was represented by “The Beadle”. There weren’t civil governments at that time, so criminal disturbances were policed by the church. The Beadle was the officer of the church who acted as a policeman.
Later on, the character was replaced by the traditional British “Constable”, with his trademark lines, “‘Ello! ‘Ello! ‘Ello! What’s all this then?” The bumbling constable investigates the murders and Punch promptly makes him a victim as well. The body count rises by one more.
Jack Ketch, the hangman, whose name commemorates a real executioner from the early 19th century, arrives to punish Mr. Punch for being “very naughty”. Punch pretends not to know how to put his head through the noose, so the hangman demonstrates for him… Zip! The hangman is hung in his own noose, and Mr. Punch dances in triumph.
Mr. Punch next faces off with a Crocodile, who eats his sausages and slapstick, effectively disarming him. The Croc bites Mr. Punch on the nose.
The Devil himself arrives to escort Mr. Punch down to hell to pay for his misdeeds. But Punch outwits the Devil and he and Joey return to the stage to wave goodbye to the audience.
Other characters include Hector the Hobby Horse, Punch’s neighbor Mr. Scaramouch (who gets his head knocked off), Pretty Polly the Chambermaid, and the Servant/Blind Begger.
As you can see, the basic plot is pretty threadbare, and Professors regularly elaborate on some sections and cut other ones. The fun isn’t in the story, it’s how it’s performed. Each Professor has his own way of putting across the continuity of action. Like cartoons, Punch and Judy has come under attack by censors who claim that the superficial level of violence depicted isn’t appropriate for children. This criticism goes all the way back to the origin of the show. Here is a great quote from a great writer on this topic…
In my opinion street Punch is one of those extravagant reliefs from the realties of life which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral and instructive. I regard it as quite harmless in its influence, and as an outrageous joke which no one in existence would think of regarding as an incentive to any kind of action or as a model for any kind of conduct.
It is possible, I think, that one secret source of pleasure very generally derived from this performance… is the satisfaction the spectator feels in the circumstances that likenesses of men and women can be so knocked about without any pain or suffering. -Charles Dickens
That same defense could be applied to cartoon violence like Tom and Jerry and the Coyote and Roadrunner. That isn’t the only thing Punch and Judy have in common with animation. I asked a professional Punch and Judy Professor for advice for aspiring puppeteers to keep in mind when performing. He suggested the following…
Each movement should be clear and precise. Don’t move the puppet at random.
The movement should have a sense of weight.
If someone bumps the puppet, it must react.
Stop and hold a pose occasionally for dramatic effect.
Use the old rule of three. Repeat a gag twice to set up an expectation, then do something different and surprising on the third time.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that animation and puppetry are very closely related. At its most basic level, Punch and Judy is about a trickster outwitting authority figures out to get him. How different is that from Bugs Bunny popping out of his hole to find Elmer Fudd holding a shotgun up to his nose?
As you look at the following clip, analyze the action the way you would analyze an animated film. Look for rhythmic timing, strong expressive poses, clear silhouettes, well staged action and contrasts in pacing and mood. You’ll be amazed at how many parallels with animation you can find in puppetry.
I don’t know about you, but that clip above made my jaw hit the floor. Punch and Judy is pure, raw entertainment, stripped of all of the superfluous details we tend to heap upon it when we create animation. With Punch and Judy, the story isn’t important. It’s the same story that has been told for three hundred years. The design isn’t important. It’s the same design too. Snappy dialogue isn’t necessary. The puppets were speaking Italian in that clip and I bet you didn’t even notice. Fancy backgrounds, snappy jokes, flying camera moves, rapid fire cutting… none of that matters at all.
What does matter? Personality, rhythm, movement, fun situations, contrasts, and surprises. Punch and Judy is the distilled essence of entertainment. The same show could be performed for young or old, Eskimos or Aborigines and the delight and laughter would be the same. This form of entertainment goes straight to the core of what entertainment is. It probably goes even deeper than that- to the universal idea of what it is to be human.
Arguably, animation’s history can be viewed as a progression of complexity. We have added layer after layer of overlapping action and tons of inbetweens to make lots of fluid and smooth movement. We place the characters over elaborate backgrounds inspired by Monument Valley or epic scenes from Lawrence of Arabia. We spend millions of dollars on crews of Harvard educated writers coming up with reams of script pages. We assemble massive computing horsepower to simulate convincing water splashes and other kinds of particle effects. And we polish and refine timing over and over in passes until the characters move just like reality- and every character ends up moving the same.
…and none of that has anything to do with why people love to watch animated cartoons.
With the Pulcinella routine above, one man was able to take a lump of wood and some rags and bring them to life as a vivid character that moves, sounds and acts in a direct, grippingly expressive way. Not only that. He did it in real time with no retakes! We can learn a lot from puppetry. Instead of focusing on the surface details of entertainment, we should focus on the raw core of fun that lays at the heart of any great performance.
This posting is part of a series of articles comprising an online exhibit entitled Theory.
THIS IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG!
Animation Resources has been sharing treasures from the Animation Archive with its members for over a decade. Every other month, our members get access to a downloadable Reference Pack, full of information, inspiration and animation. The RefPacks consist of e-books jam packed with high resolution scans of great art, still framable animated films from around the world, documentaries, podcasts, seminars and MORE! The best part is that all of this material has been selected and curated by our Board of professionals to aid you in your self study. Our goal is to help you be a greater artist. Why wouldn’t you want to be a member of a group like that?
Membership comes in three levels. General Members get access to a bi-monthly Reference Pack as well as a Bonus RefPack from past offerings in the in-between months. We offer a discounted Student Membership for full time students and educators. And if you want to try out being a member, there is a Quarterly Membership that runs for three months.
Not Convinced Yet? Check out this SAMPLE REFERENCE PACK! It will give you a taste of what Animation Resources members get to download every other month! That’s 560 pages of great high resolution images and nearly an hour of rare animation available to everyone to download for FREE! https://animationresources.org/join-us-sample-reference-pack/
Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal.
I see a lot of people starting out in animation focusing on the business aspects… creating lots of “product”, pitching show ideas to studios, worrying about people who might ask them to work for free on a personal project, posting ads to groups like this to try to get viewers… I’ve seen people who do all these sorts of things for almost a decade, and still aren’t any further along to success as an animated filmmaker than the day they started.
You don’t become successful in animation by having the “right package”. You become successful because you have the “right stuff”. You can sit down and really animate, do layout, design backgrounds… you have skills in constructive drawing, compositional principles, perspective, anatomy and life drawing, color theory, painting techniques…
Specialization aimed at a specific job title is the absolute WORST thing you can do in school. I went to design school to study graphic design. They taught me type speccing, paste up, how to use a linotype machine… A couple of years later the Macintosh came out and everything I learned was obsolete. The only classes that I still use today are the basic ones… Design 101, Color 101, Drawing 101. Going to a trade school to learn art or filmmaking is a good way to be replaced by outsourcing.
If you want to be an artist, LEARN TO BE AN ARTIST FIRST. With a solid foundation in the fundamentals, you can learn any trade quickly on your own time or on the job. You don’t have to pay a school thousands of dollars to make you an unemployable specialist in a field that is now being done in India or China.
Instead of putting sweat equity into a business opportunity, it’s a lot better to put that effort into investing into yourself and your skills. But that takes hard work, humility, experimentation, and a solid plan for self education. Make personal films, but CHALLENGE YOURSELF. Don’t just fill time quotas. That’s the hard way to become successful for sure, but it’s a sure road for advancement. “Playing the game” and “doing business” can go in circles forever and get you nowhere.
For the past decade, Animation Resources has been serving artists working in the fields of animation, cartooning and illustration. Our volunteers and members have pulled together to raise the bar for our art form, and it’s time to celebrate… It’s Members Appreciation time again!
During the month of February, Animation Resources expresses our appreciation for to members with a very special Reference Pack, and we invite you to become a member too. For the next 30 days, we will be sharing reasons why you should join us. Our benefits of membership far exceed the cost of our annual dues.
This year, we are trying something new to encourage new memberships. You can join for a one week trial membership for only A DOLLAR! Yes, you get access to everything our annual members get for seven days for only a buck. (Click here for the details on our Dollar Days.) What are you waiting for?
You can find out what our members get at the Member Appreciation Page. It’s easy to join. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…
Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal.
Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
by 
