Archive for the ‘theory’ Category

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

Theory: Objectively Breaking Down Reference

Objective Analysis

Many animation students love anime and 90s animated features because they grew up with these films and know them like the backs of their hands. But in order to advance the medium, you have to go beyond what you personally like. Is it possible to learn important techniques from films, you don’t really like? The answer is YES, but you need to learn to objectively break down your reference and mine it for techniques you can use.

Captain January

When Animation Resources’ Board Member JoJo Baptista was in his final year at Woodbury University working on his senior film project, he was animating a rhythmic walk for a child character. He asked me if I had any suggestions for reference to study. I immediately thought of Shirley Temple. I think as you read this, you’ll get a pretty good idea of how I feel about Shirley Temple’s films. However, for an animator there is a lot to learn from them. JoJo and I broke down one sequence and analyzed it to help him animate his senior project. I’m going to give you a peek at the discussions that went on at the Archive regarding this film… Captain January.

Captain January

When Shirley Temple made this film in 1936, she was in the first grade. If you take a moment to view the clip below, I think you’ll agree that even at that young age, she was already a talented and skilled performer. She acts, sings, and especially dances on a level that rivals or surpasses the skills of most current pop divas, even ones with a couple of decades of experience under their belts. If you tried to think of a current seven year old who compares to her, you would have to think pretty hard.

Captain January

That said, I have to admit that I don’t personally care for Shirley Temple movies. They follow a rigid formula- a lonely curmudgeon adopts an adorable orphan who melts his heart. The moppet and the old fart are separated, which creates oceans of tears, only to be joyfully reunited at the end… Although they are cute, her films really have very little to say about anything real. Perhaps some people might enjoy them as an escape, but they aren’t to my taste.

Captain January

There is another aspect to these films that makes me uncomfortable. Graham Greene, writing in the magazine Night and Day wrote of Shirley Temple, "Her admirers – middle-aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire." I don’t think I need to add anything to that quote.

Captain January

Maybe I’m a crusty old curmudgeon myself, but these films just don’t do it for me… Have I made it clear that I don’t care for this particular movie yet? All right.

JoJo and I sat down with this DVD to analyze Temple’s performance to see if there were characteristics of performance that he could use in his film. We chose a clip where Shirley dances and sings "At The Codfish Ball" with Buddy Ebsen. Here is a video clip of the sequence…

Captain January

"At The Codfish Ball" from Captain January
Shirley Temple and Buddy Ebsen (Fox/1936)
(Quicktime 7 / 32.5 megs)

Here is the storyboard of the scene cuts for your reference…

Captain JanuaryCaptain January
Captain JanuaryCaptain January
Captain JanuaryCaptain January
Captain JanuaryCaptain January
Captain JanuaryCaptain January
Captain JanuaryCaptain January

Watch the video a couple of times and refer to the scenes as you read our notes below…

OBSERVATIONS

STAGING: Ebsen and Temple are surrounded in the sequence by incidental characters. Temple begins her song in a close up that isolates her from the group. As the sequence progresses, the incidental characters recede into the background, placing the focus on the dance routine. The crowd is dressed in dark colors, while Temple wears white, making her stand out. Ebsen wears a dark shirt with light pants, directing the attention to his legs, which makes sense since he is dancing. One scene at 4:02 uses Ebson’s legs to frame Temple as they dance on the wooden cask.

CUTTING: The four minute sequence is broken into 11 cuts, many of which are quite long. Temple is able to sustain long takes with high energy and accuracy in her performance. The sequence is bookended by an entrance and exit through a doorway. The first half of the sequence moves from left to right. After a 180 degree jump cut at 2:16 (which works perfectly in this context) the action moves from right to left. The cuts are dictated by the staging of the dance routine, never to cut around errors in performance. Only one scene at 4:02 seems to have been performed out of continuity and inserted. The reason for this is to allow Temple to push her performance over the top for the big finish.

ACTING: Temple’s ability to put across the lyrics to the song through her movements and expressions is remarkable. The scene that begins at 0:19 is packed with contrasting expressions reflecting her attitude clearly. Her gestures are always specific to the meaning of the lyrics ("from the herring to the whale") and her facial expressions never seem to be "pose to pose". If you still frame through them, they evolve through dozens of different attitudes in the space of a few short seconds.

Temple’s pantomime is clear and expressive. At 2:33, she throws the lead to Ebsen, studies his dance steps skeptically, does a small take of disgust and petulantly cheats by scraping her foot on the shingled wall behind her. She is always aware of the camera, and keeps her face in view, even when she is walking away from the camera (2:08) or being whisked around and around (3:41). Temple’s hair is a perfect of example of "follow through" and her dancing exhibits other principles like "secondary action" and "overlapping action" as well.

There are a couple of portions of the routine where Temple’s guard falls for a few frames, or we can see her preparing for a difficult move. At 2:08 she misses her lipsync as she navigates dancing down stairs. At 3:17, she scowls and looks down to Ebsen’s feet to coordinate with him as he scoops her up and trots her up the gangplank. At 3:36, she takes a beat to recover and gain her footing after a few spins. But on the next main beat, she is right back in the groove again with a glowing smile. She never falters more than an instant. Most audiences would never even notice it.

DANCING: The rhythm and synchronization between Temple and Ebsen is amazing. At 0:42, Temple struts back and forth setting her heel down on the main beat, and her toes on the back beat. She performs several different types of dance steps, including a cakewalk, a shuffle, a can-can and a truck.

Right before the scene cut at 1:29, Ebsen hitches his pants up in the background, anticipating his entrance. Even though the two dance in perfect sync, their steps are subtly different. At 1:43, Ebsen dances only below the knee. Since Temple’s legs were so much shorter than his, he had to govern his movement precisely to maintain a consistent distance between them.

Ebsen’s gestures throughout the routine are very original and funny, particularly in spots like "to the bottom of the sea" where they flash their fingers and mimic a dive (1:42) and as they exit the scene at 4:12, where his arms flail like rubber. Ebsen is probably one of the most remarkable and under-appreciated dancers of his time. Today, most people think of him as Jed Clampett, and don’t even realize the spectacular talent he posessed.

SUMMATION

JoJo found a lot to think about and study in this film. It exhibits a level of skill and craftsmanship that today’s movies just can’t touch. Do I say that because of my personal taste? No. I don’t even like this movie. I say that because I took the time to define the criteria I judge films by and sat down and analyzed what I was looking at.

There are two ways to look at a movie or cartoon… one can look at it as a member of the audience… or as a filmmaker. One of the sacrifices one makes when one chooses a career as an artist is to lose the ability to passively "experience" art. Once your mindset shifts to the analytical way a filmmaker thinks about his medium, you can never go back to the innocence of just sitting in the dark and "experiencing" a film the way ordinary people do.

Oscar Wilde once wrote, "Bad artists always admire each other’s work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected."

The moral to this story is… The worst thing you can do is to tell old fashioned, hackneyed stories using the reduced skill levels and slack techniques of today. It’s much better to use the powerful techniques of the past to recapture a classic level of skill, and use that skill to tell honest stories that are relevant to modern audiences.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

TheoryTheory

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.


JOIN TODAY!
https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

FREE SAMPLES!

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/

Sample RefPack

PayPalAnimationAnimation 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.


FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Wednesday, March 13th, 2024

Theory: Retro Cartoons Are A Dead End

Retro cartoons are a dead end

Last night at our Animation Resources screening, some of the students from Laguna College of Art and Design asked me what I thought of “retro cartoons”. Everyone assumes that because I know a lot about old cartoons, I must think that old fashioned cartoons are the way to go today. I surprised them by saying that I think retro cartoons are a complete dead end.

Irish cops, candlestick telephones and hobos with all their belongings wrapped in a hankerchief on a stick may have been relevant to audiences sometime in the distant past, but today, they are just empty archetypes- symbols that have no real world connection any more. I love Fleischer’s “Minnie the Moocher” and “Snow White”, but that music has absolutely no relevance to contemporary young people, and the primary reason these cartoons are so much fun today is because the passage of time has obliterated the topical contexts of the gags and just left behind puzzling, surreal non-sequiturs. The Queen’s face turns into frying pans and skeletons sing about 20 dollar gold pieces on their watch chains… These things seem weird and otherworldly to us because people today don’t say phrases like “She was so mad her eyes looked like fried eggs” and we don’t know that if your dead body has a 20 dollar gold piece on the watch chain it means you didn’t leave behind any debts for your heirs. What’s the point of doing a WWII A card gas rationing gag today, or using character designs based on caricatures of celebrities that died half a century ago? References like that just serve to distance the audience from the characters and draw them out of the story being told.

Making retro cartoons is like dressing up in your grandfather’s suit and pretending to be him. You may superficially resemble him, but your grandmother isn’t going to be fooled. But the biggest obstacle by far is competing with golden age artists on a quality level- that is VERY hard, and competing with them on their own playing field is absolutely impossible. The best you can hope to achieve through imitation is “almost as good as the original”.

Characters like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse were fantastic in their day. Audiences connected with them and the artists creating them were expressing aspects of their own personalities. But “reboots” of NEW Bugs Bunny and NEW Mickey Mouse cartoons don’t connect with contemporary audiences the same way, and the artists making them struggle to psychically channel a character that represented their great-grandfather’s time, not their own. I produced a retro cartoon myself, and I am proud of it, but the things I admire most about it are the NEW ideas the director brought to the classic characters. The elements we were able to recreate from the original cartoons are the least successful things about the cartoons. In retrospect, I think we would have been better off doing an original story using new characters.

Nostalgia for the past isn’t just a problem for fans of classic cartoons from the 30s and 40s. Many students at animation schools think like fans, not like film makers. If you ask a fan what kind of cartoon he or she would make if they could make any film they want, they describe styles that they have seen before… 90s Disney, Anime, the “wacky” TV cartoons they grew up with… But if you ask a film maker what kind of cartoon he or she would like to make, they speak in terms of ideas. Nostalgia is a very strong pull on young artists. The cartoons they grew up with were probably the inspiration for wanting to become an animator in the first place, but the first thing they must do to become a film maker is to leave those things in the past and move forward serving their own creative muse.

Too many animation students come out of college unable to make the leap from thinking like a fan to thinking like an artist. They cling to nostalgia for their childhood favorites and are unable to function in a workplace that isn’t working in that style any more. Racking up $100,000 in student loans to gain an education in how to draw Sonic the Hedgehog or Animaniacs, or to design characters in the style of Fox & the Hound is a good way to go straight from cap and gown to Starbucks apron. Sadly the vast majority of animation school graduates never realize this until they are out of school and discover that they are unemployable. Schools are producing scores of professional animation fans, and very few professional animators. The fault for this lies not just with the schools, but also with the students who won’t let go of style and study fundamentals.

There is a LOT to be learned from old cartoons, but all of the value embedded in old cartoons to today’s animators lies in the TECHNIQUE, not the content. Whenever someone does a retro cartoon, they always end up getting that totally backwards. They emulate gags, situations and characters from the old cartoons and animate them using the same cheap current animation shortcuts. Instead, they should be using totally new and relevant gags, situations and characters and animating them using the techniques and fundamentals of classic animation. If someone finally figures that out and makes a cartoon using that theory, they stand a chance of creating a film that is BETTER than classic cartoons, not just “almost as good”.

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.


JOIN TODAY!
https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

FREE SAMPLES!

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/

Sample RefPack

PayPalAnimationAnimation 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.


FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

Curation and Creativity: Work In Progress

I’m going to chat for a minute about some of our work in progress at Animation Resources…

Curation

The other day, I was talking with a friend about what was important about what we do at the Animation Archive, and he said that the collection was the most important thing. We’ve amassed a huge archive of digitized films and scanned artwork. But I disagreed. Google search has a massive collection too, as does archive.org. The thing that sets us apart is CURATION.

You can have all the treasures in the world, but if you aren’t putting them into context, they’re just specimens in jars of formaldehyde sitting on a dusty shelf. Great objects exist all over. Museums and warehouses are full of them. The trick is to put them to use for a purpose. That takes a deeper understanding. With every Reference Pack and article we share with our followers, Animation Resources is encouraging and supporting our members to engage in that sort of self study and application of principles.

Creative Process

The job of Animation Resources is to bring “the good stuff” to working artists, so they can analyze it, process it, and apply the fundamentals they uncover to their own work. Learning to be creative is a process like any other constructive process, but a lot of artists have never stopped to think of how they go about it. I was chatting with a great artist about this once, and he swore up and down that creativity couldn’t be learned, either you have it or you don’t. I started listing off the ways that you foster and develop creativity. As I listed them, he replied, “I do that.” “I do that.” “I do that.” He thought he had been born creative, but he was actually born doing the things that make a person creative. He was working to become more creative without even knowing it.

Curation is a similar process. Part of it is straightforward research. That’s the easy part. There are lots of librarians and historians who can catalog and document. It’s easy to look at the surface and say, “Disney made ‘Brave Little Tailor’ in 1938.” but that is just a statement of fact, not real understanding. The more difficult and intuitive part of research is discerning the connections between things that reveal the universal truth beneath. Yeah, I know… that sounds “hippy-dippy” and I apologize for that. But it’s the easiest way to describe it. The products of human creativity have cultural differences, and technique is dependent on technology. This makes them all look different. However once you dig beneath the surface, you start to see the invisible connections that make up the way humanity thinks, feels and creates. There are patterns that we all follow. If you want to be an artist, you may express those patterns and choices without even knowing it.

Tenggren and Dulac
Tenggren and Dulac
Connections: Tenggren, Dulac and Japanese Woodcut

Lately, with COVID rapidly shrinking in the distance behind us, I’ve dived into several projects that are all linked, but the connections weren’t initially obvious. I’ve got a long list of projects on my “to-do list” that I haven’t gotten around to developing yet. One of those was investigating international animation. I read the Bendazzi book from cover to cover and it excited me about these films, but I had no way of accessing them. When a batch of Russian DVDs turned up on the greatest archive known to man— eBay— I jumped on it. It was a collection of over 75 DVDs of rare Russian animation. I started digitizing them and I was blown away at the diversity and quality of the work. Their approach to the art form is unique and pure. There’s so much to learn from these films! I’ve begun sharing the riches of the Eastern block in the Reference Packs.

Russian Animation

Russian animation led me to thinking about the other great culture for animation— anime. I’m familiar with the usual suspects… “Akira”, “Kimba the White Lion”, the feature films by Miyazaki and others. But I never felt that Animation Resources needed to focus on that. It’s all readily available, and most animation students today know all about those films. But Animation Resources’ treasurer, JoJo Baptista showed me that there’s a lot more to Japanese animation than just the films we all know. Together, we started researching early Japanese animation. I discovered that before animation became standardized and institutionalized in Japan, there was a wide range of styles and ideas. I traced the history of animated features in Japan from the WWII propaganda film, “Momotaro’s Sea Eagles” through the 1960s, while JoJo focused on early television animation. He discovered some rarely seen series that are models of expressive economy. These TV programs addressed and solved the problem of how to keep limited animation lively- the same problem that independent internet animators face. We’ll be sharing that in upcoming Reference Packs as well.

Early Anime

My research into the early history of Japanese animation led me down a rabbit hole similar to one I explored early on in the Animation Archive Project. Back in the mid 2000s I started tracing the lineage of Western cartooning backwards step by step, from the golden age cartoon films to newspaper comics to the earliest sequential cartoons to caricature magazines to British printmakers to woodblock carvers and ultimately all the way back to Leonardo daVinci’s grotesque caricatures. I learned that animation was just a part of the story. The history of Western cartooning is a continuum that extends back far beyond Winsor McCay. I discovered that on the other side of the globe, in near complete isolation, the same thing was happening in Japan. I’m now in the process of tracing anime back to manga to ukiyo-e and perhaps its earliest origins in Chinese painting. That research is just getting started.

Hans Holbein Dance of Death

Those who have read my article on “Dances of Death” (included in the ebooks in our sample reference pack: https://animationresources.org/join-us-sample-reference-pack/) know the similarities I’ve found between late 15th century woodblock artists like Holbein and Durer and modern commercial cartooning. The EXACT same aspects are shared by Japanese woodcuts known as ukiyo-e or “The Floating World”. And the Japanese woodcuts led to manga, just as woodcuts led to comics. And you already know where comics and manga led!

This has been a very long post, and perhaps only a few have read this far. But Animation Resources has never been aimed at the typical followers of social media. 99% of the people who see and share our posts are just reacting to a pretty picture. That’s fine, but that isn’t why Animation Resources exists. Our real target audience is the small specialized number of creative artists who are actively analyzing and making the connections in their head to develop and hone their own creativity. If that describes you, I want to let you know that I’ll be sharing more about these projects in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled and your mind open. Come along on the journey with us.

JOIN ANIMATION RESOURCES

If you aren’t a member of Animation Resources yet…

JOIN Animation Resources TODAY!
https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

Members Appreciation

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.

Dollar Days

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…


JOIN TODAY!
https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

Members Appreciation Month

PayPalAnimationAnimation 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.


FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather