Dear Client and Agency People...

I’ve wanted to tell you this for years. You are doing yourselves a big disservice every time you single frame through your animation. I understand you probably want to get your moneys worth and are checking to see how much movement you’re getting but each time you panic and say on frames 100 through 103 the character is ‘off model’ or only the whites of the characters eyes are showing on frame 30 and want fixes, you weaken your animation. Please play the scene at speed and see how it feels. Many times those distortions are intentional and as knowledgeable as using terms like ‘off model’ sound there are other terms like ‘squash and stretch’ and ‘smear’ which are real phenomenon observed from the study of organic life. Smear is really a technique simulating the blur caused by a fast moving object caught on slow speed film but it’s a great method for snappy actions. These are tools the animator uses to impart life and by removing them you instill a plastic rigidity into your characters that makes them that much more lifeless. Many times you react to your changes even more negatively and want to restage the action because now it’s not working for you. Trust me, try watching your dailies at speed and stop the habit of single framing through the animation. If there is a real problem it will leap out at you. Remember people will not be watching this one frame at a time and believe that the animators love their media and want it to look as good as possible for you and for them selves.


A few stills showing the 'smear', from Disney and Warner Bros.

Crew Jacket

I've had some great opportunities and Cartoon Brew did a posting that made me dig out a piece of my past. Brew mentioned "Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension", one of the first stereoscopic theme park attractions done in the early days of computer animation. I've included the trailer that sparked the CB posting below.

I did some character rigging and animated the 'Instant Martians' and some of the dog K9 and Marvin. From that came an amazing crew jacket that is a real flight jacket with cool embroidered patches. Sorry about the poor photos but these patches are on the arms, front and the big patch of K9 and Marvin fill almost the entire back of the jacket. The label with Bugs shows its a limited edition and was made for the Warner Bros. Movie World attraction which opened in 1996 at Bottrop Germany.

I love this jacket but am too embarrassed to wear it.









UPDATE: Someone has posted the entire show on YouTube. It's not in 3D and I don't know how long it will stay up before taken down, but it's all there.

El Tabador

Here's a couple of commercials I helped animated using the character El Tabador. The work was done at Bent Image Lab and was a lot of fun. I've also included a fight scene I did for the interactive web site they have as part of the campaign. El Tabador is a cool little guy and I hope they do more with him, (and I'll get to work on it).

Pan

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I've been neglecting the blog so here's a new post.

This one was hard to dial in the colors and they still aren't right. He's an original design based on old school ideas that I grew up with and find pleasant. I personally am getting tired of the angular character designs in so much modern animation today. To me they are kind of stiff and hard to get good poses without a lot of cheating the volumes around that make up the character. They also appear ridged in animation.

Old Design/New Presentation

Here's an old design I kind of liked so I did a repackaging on it.

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Brer Rabbit

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A new character design for a film I'm planning based on Uncle Remus. I just want to do the animal stories without the problems Disney faced with "The Song of the South".

Thinking Christmas

I just finished this years card for the Hippo-lot-ofus, a club for hippo lovers. They bought my bathing beauty hippo sculpture so I always try and remember them.

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The End of Little Foxes

This is the end design choice.

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More Little Foxes

I'm throwing everything at this for the moment.

Fleet Foxes

These little foxes won't steal your grapes. I'm playing with different constructions.

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Happy Day After Halloween Re-post, "The Mad Doctor"

This had been removed from YouTube but it's back up again for our enjoyment.

A Mickey from 1933 when he was at the heights of stardom, this cartoon does what animation is supposed to. Beautifully done in every way, it’s just as entertaining today as it was back then. A perfect cartoon.

Pencil Test Depot

Wow, I found a new favorite blog called "Pencil Test Depot" with some crazy good, guess what?... Yes, pencil tests, from all over the place. It's very inspirational and shows that magic quality not found in other styles of animation. For me the moving drawing is still amazingly effective and much more satisfying than stop-motion or computer animation. The draftsmanship and acting are sometimes more worthy than the script but you can see how dedicated these animators are to capture something entertaining.

Here's just a taste of the wonders to be found! Click the title above to go here.

Thief from bj crawford on Vimeo.

Ruby Rocket Again...

I found some old files while cleaning my computer. Here are some scenes from Sam Niemanns' "Ruby Rocket" adventures.

The slates at the beginning show I did the inbetweening and clean-up on a scene animated by Sam and one by B. Larsen. We were using Flash and drawing everything, animating on fours. Later we did tonal passes for highlights and shadows.

The finished look was quite impressive and nothing like what you would expect from Flash as you can see from the still image of Ruby.

Hopefully Aniboom will show all the episodes someday. Click on the title to go to Sam's blog all about the making of Ruby.

Mounties

Here are some expression studies I did for Hive FX pitch material for their tv series proposal called, "Mounties".

Although I didn't design the characters, I was asked to do facial studies and turn-arounds for all the cast. It was pretty fun and the style is kind of like what I do anyway.

I also built and animated the lead characters in Flash for a trailer that you can watch by clicking on the title or going here and clicking on the trailer: http://www.mounties.tv/




All art work is property of Hive FX

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Character Designs

Thought I would post some of my design work for a few personal projects. More to come.



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Maria Gurevich

Animator/Puppeteer Zack Buchman and Producer/Doll-maker Maria Gurevich have teamed up to create Furry Puppet Studio and you can learn more about them here: http://www.furrypuppet.com/

I've posted some of Maria's delightful dolls to show how charming they are. A little Marc Chagall, kind of Heinz Edelmann, these designs would be beautiful animated.

See more of Maria's work by clicking her name in the title of this post.

3D Shower

A continuation on my free view style stereoscopic paintings. Click on the image to enlarge then cross your eyes and focus on the image formed in the middle to view in 3D.

First Animated Christmas Special Book

I just got my copy of animation director Darrell Van Citters' book, "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special", and it's terrific.

I knew Darrell from working on the first season of Cartoon Networks "The Mr. Men Show", and when I heard he shared a love for and was writing a book on the Magoo Christmas special, I was thrilled because now I might find out more about one of my favorite cartoons.

Magoo's Christmas Carol was something I tried never to miss. Not only is it a faithful retelling of the Dickens' story, it's also true to the character of Mr. Magoo. There are beautiful songs and moments of comedy and heart touching poignancy.

Let me tell you this is a great book full of beautiful production art and well researched information on who and how this classic show was made. After just reading the introduction I learned Walt Disney was so deeply moved by the show after its first airing that he made a personal call to the producer to congratulate him. It's chuck full of stuff like that!

Click the title above and go to Darrell's website where you can learn more about this wonderful Christmas Special and order a copy of this well written and glorious book.

Bath Time in Pepperland

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Heinz Edelmann, who developed the psychedelic look of the Beatles’ animated 1960s film Yellow Submarine, died on Tuesday, aged 75.

I didn't intend this as a tribute to him but this 3D free view painting of mine clearly shows his influence.

To free view this image you must cross your eyes and focus on the image formed in the middle.

Fourteen Indians

Occasionally I've mentioned my mother and her influence on my paintings. Recently she had me scan some of her Indian paintings. The originals had been sold and all she had were pretty bad photos. Even so the handling of her brush strokes and the expression in the faces re impressed me as to how good she was in her prime.

Mom has rheumatoid arthritis and is battling the slow loss of her hands. I'm grateful to have a few of her many paintings saved digitally and glad the originals are hanging in someones homes.

The Indians were only a favorite subject for my mother and her paintings ranged from portraiture to landscapes, fantasy to still-life. She worked not only in oils but did water-colors, pastels, charcoals, and sculptures too.

It would be fantastic to get a collection of her work together but I have no idea who owns what. Maybe mom has an address book of past clients.














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3D Rumpus

It wasn't used because apparently you need to be invited but here's my free view stereoscopic offering to Terrible Yellow Eyes, Cory Godbey's blog that celebrates Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" Click the title to check out more artwork by various artists.

Clicking the picture will take you to my Flickr page where the double image lives. There you will be able to free view in 3D.

If you are unfamiliar with 3D free viewing, you must cross your eyes and focus on the image that forms in the middle. It's a great headache inducer!

Walt's Vision...

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http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1917

This is one page of an eight page letter from Walt Disney to Don Graham about Disney's idea of night classes for his animators.

Clicking the title or pasting the link above will take you to Michael Sporn's posting of the entire letter and a little history on how these classes later evolved into Cal Arts.

What leaps out to me is Walt's understanding of the needs to be communicated in animation and how best to teach these ideas. He shows an understanding of how motion is influenced not only by physicality but also motivated by emotion.

Walt doesn't shoot out some ambiguous letter full of generalities on improving the product and building moral. This letter is a well thought out strategy suggesting the needs and how to meet the needs to push his studio beyond what everyone else thought animation could be.

The success of Disney animation clearly came from Walt's willingness to equip his artists with a full training in draftsmanship and motion analysis and his practical suggestions on how to go about achieving that.

Enchanted Dolls

Doll maker Marina Bychkova has a site displaying her beautiful articulated porcelain dolls. They are intricately fashioned with graceful hands and expressive faces and are anatomically correct.

Bychkova has a real design sense and some of the figures wear elegant tattoos and exotic head ware.

These beauties are extremely pose-able and a section of the site has demos of their versatility and ability to hold a pose. The figures immediately suggested stop motion puppets to me and would probably lend themselves very well to it.

I believe these lithe ladies would be great aids for artists and more useful than those ugly wooden manikins.

Click on the title or paste this link to see more: http://www.enchanteddoll.com/galleries/costumed.html

Style vs Style

I ran across the cool promotional video for Kevin Dart's art book,“Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7,” on Cartoon Brew.

Although the design is lovely I feel it suffers from the curse digital animation seems to promote and that is a tendency toward robotic hinged movement. It's understandable because the method is to literally cut the artwork up into pieces and assemble it like paper cut-outs. The limbs rotate from fixed pivot points and everything is flat flat flat.

The argument is an aesthetic one where the artist has deliberately chosen that look. This may be true, it certainly is becoming wide spread.

I love high styled designs in animation but I think I would have done some hand drawn animation on top for hair and clothing to ease some of the stiffness.

Stylistically the design could have been the same and treated in a more graceful way emulating traditional drawn animation. Take a look at one example of high styled limited animation from the opening of "I Dream of Jeanie" and try and imagine the World of Yuki trailer retaining the graphic style but moving like that.

Now before you get all upset let me clarify that I understand this trailer was done on a very short schedule and I think they did a brilliant job but I would love to see the same graphic style in a more lush manner.

"A Kiss From Tokyo" Theatrical trailer from Stephane coedel on Vimeo.

Oxberry Camera

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1652

Clicking the title or pasting the link above will take you to an article posted by Michael Sporn about John Oxberry, the maker of animation cameras.

It brought back fond memories of my first job in animation. It was at a commercial house in Ft. Wayne Indiana that used an Oxberry with aerial image projection for rotoscoping, effects and combining live-action with animation.

I recall the hum of the motors that ran the camera up and down it's double rostrums was loud enough to drown all ambient sounds from the room. This was a good thing and helped focus your attention on the mound of artwork, the correct camera settings and following the exposure sheets.

The N/S, E/W pegs were all hand cranked, (there may have been servo motors too that you could program), and the exposure sheets had all the computations for every frame marked out in the camera column.

Fortunately for me it was not my job, although I did shoot some less complex scenes on it, because it involved consulting big expensive books full of mathematical equations to figure compound moves with fairings to ease in and out.

Our brainy cameraman Chris Dusendschön later went to Robert Abel Associates and got involved with effects and early computer graphics.

My second experience with Oxberry was at Will Vinton's Claymation Studios. There was a derelict camera that sat dejected for years until another brainiac Animator/Director Hal Hickle restored it single handed. It was used for titles and Animator/Director Mike Wellins did a short film using paper cutouts on it.

Incidentally Hal also owned one the the cameras Ray Harryhausen used to shoot "Mighty Joe Young".

I am excited by the digital revolution and the autonomy it allows. But I'm also glad to have experienced the early method of cartoon making and kind of miss the big toys.

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Disney Picture

I haven't read this book but I love the cover. It's great that Walt was photographed from the same angle and posture. I love the intensity of his early picture and the contrast of the later well groomed Walt.

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