Must Have Guidebooks

In case your wallets aren't crying from buying all your textbooks this semester, there are a couple of not-quite-textbooks that I definitely recommend checking out if you can get your hands on them.  If you're at all interested in the work and techniques of hand-drawn animation, these are must-haves.  The first one in question is The Nine Old Men by Andreas Deja - an animator who has contributed work to a wide variety of the Disney films' villains - which chronicles the stories of the nine biggest Disney animators and what work they contributed to what films.  Don't worry, there are plenty of pictures; this book features loads of storyboard artwork and sketches of keyframes from some of their iconic animation sequences.   Quite an interesting read for people looking for inspiration of what to draw and how to make their drawings come to life.

The second book to add to your shopping list is The Animator's Survival Kit, written by Richard Williams, the director of animation for the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  This entry goes more in depth on the tutorials for the fundamentals of hand-drawn animation; it includes the essential stuff like bouncing balls, walk cycles and body physics, but it also includes do's and don'ts of how to animate dialogue, the methods of visualizing the the sequence of anticipation-action-reaction, and a general workflow of this style of animation.  There's also some great examples of how to animate four-legged animals realistically, tips on directing a project, and other cool sequences that can make for some fun drawing exercises.  Not to mention all the text looks like it was hand-written (it probably was, it's the source of this book's charm).

So if you're ever looking to make the next Disney or Warner Bros. animation film, grab a lot of paper and pencils, an animation lightbox from PPECS, and these two books and you'll be well on your way.

Cartoons in the Real World

I’ve been trying to determine my feelings toward the trailer for the new Spongebob Squarepants movie. This movie will follow our favorite under the sea characters onto dry land, combining live-action with 3D animation. I think there’s something about bringing cartoon characters into a live-action setting that makes some part of my brain a little uncomfortable. I think this is especially true when a 2D cartoon becomes 3D—it takes a second to get used to, and even after that second it takes a minute. Despite this, whenever animation interacts with live action, I am impressed, and the Spongebob trailer is no exception.

Of course, Spongebob isn’t the first 2D character to become 3D in the real world and definitely not the first to bring cartoon characters to live action. We can’t forget about classics like the live action Scooby Doo franchise or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. What I find interesting is that Who Framed Roger Rabbit doesn’t feel as unnatural and brain-itching as Spongebob or Scooby Doo does, despite its decidedly darker themes. I feel like the juxtaposition of 2D in a 3D world doesn’t feel as wrong because of how obviously the 2D doesn’t fit. Because it makes no attempt to fit in, it doesn’t feel as unnatural as it is. In 3D animation, the characters are designed to masquerade as something that could be apart of the real world by attempting to match the structures of a real life 3D world. Even though the quality of the animation is, I think, really impressive in the Spongebob movie, the characters are still the characters they’ve always been--they’re still brightly colored, they’re still exaggerated. Their cartoon-y characteristics are still very present, but structured and designed to move about in a world that isn’t natural to them.

Richard William's Masterpiece

When I say the name Richard Williams, what come to your mind the most? Well, if you usually pay attention to the credits, it turns out he was the animation director for the famous live action & animation film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But in addition to handling the animation direction for that film, he is also well known The Thief and the Cobbler a film that he worked for nearly two decades on before he lost control of it. This film was to be William's magnum opus displaying his prowess of animation abilities and what could be done with animation on the wide screen.

Unfortunately due to fact that this film took so long to create, William's eventually lost the distribution deal he had with Warner Brothers. The film was eventually picked up by Miramax, who remade the film to resemble more of Disney's Aladdin film that was released in 1992. Ironically the creators of the Aladdin film were inspired by some of the elements of The Thief and the Cobbler and implement it into  their film. William's film also wen though a variety of of different title changes such as Princess & The Cobbler, Arabian Knight before finally being settled on the aforementioned title.

I recall finding the movie in a local video store being taken in by the cover by the cover. When I watched it, I while I watched the film I felt the visuals were very good but overall movie was very Disneyesque. Several years later I stumbled upon a review of this film by comedian/internet reviewer named Doug Walker aka The Nostalgia Critic, whom at the time was known for reviewing nostalgic movies of the 80s and 90s.  Having seen some of his previous comedic takes on other films, I figured it would simply be another film he would simply make jokes about. (WARNING CONTAINS MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF SWEARING)

Quite to my surprise this was one of the few reviews I found at the time to be one of the most educational, for immense backstory involved in the making of this film. Also in that review I actually learned who Richard Williams was and discovering his body of work. This would eventually lead me to discovering that there was a version of the film that was closer to the original vision of Williams, lead by Garrett Gilchrist known as The Recobbled Cut. This version is a combination of the various bits of footage that were cut out of Williams 90min work print and various sketches that never made it to the theatrically released versions.

Both version of the Miramax Cut and the Recobbled version are available on youtube along with the other animated works of Richard Williams.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one movie that I'll always be impressed by. It was the very first movie I saw where animation was mixed in with live action and interacting with the actors and being such a big part story line. As they say in the youtube video below, "Interaction is key". If they didn't any different, I think that it wouldn't have worked, it wouldn't have been a success. The live action actors grab the cartoon animations, talk to them, rely on them. And the cartoons push objects around and use things just like any other person would and eye contact is extremely important. The youtube clip below gives a lot of insight to the making of the movie and all of the concerns they had and I love how they approached this complicated movie just like any other movie they've filmed. There are four parts to this "Behind the Scenes" for Who Framed Roger Rabbit but I will only be putting up part 1.