Jim Tyer Smear

Thad K. has posted a break down of some Jim Tyer animation done at Terrytoons. Many have held Tyers’ work in high esteem but I personally find a large majority of it annoying. What set Tyer apart from other animators was his variation on the ‘smear’: a technique used to bridge large distances in fast moving objects or appendages. The smear was used to simulate the blurring found in live action motion pictures caused by fast movement and slow film speeds. Tyer used it in almost a reversed fashion where a part of the body, say a nose, would stretch out in a direction before anything else. Then the rest would stretch to catch up with it. Tyer also had the habit of doing ‘shrink takes’ where the character would actually shrink in size and then pop back out again. He also blinked the pupil of an eye without blinking the lids over the eyeball, very strange stuff.

See Thad’s study of Tyer work slowed down for full effect here: http://classicanimation.blogspot.com/