Ballantine 2

Here are some more Ballantine illustrations with thoughts as to how his style relates to animation.Animation beginners tend to think of design mostly in terms of individual character designs. A really studied designer thinks of the whole canvas.
These characters look superficially a lot like UPA characters or even modern flattish characters.
The characters are good, but to me the design is in how they fit into the larger picture scheme. It's not so much in the individual elements that make up the picture. Simple-looking by itself is not inherently stylish. What makes style and design is the organization of all the elements into a whole visual statement.


All these pictures are carefully arranged so as to be readable and not cluttered, to get the point of the illustration across and then on top of all that to be artistically pleasing.
Some of the pictures evoke the graphic style of the cultures being illustrated.
Obviously, Ballantine understands real drawing, perspective, composition and traditional artistic skills, but he chooses to thoughtfully use some and bend the rules of others.
He is not applying the exact same style to each of his images. He experiments with levels of stylization and different influences.
It's interesting to me that a bunch of animators in the 1950s used their animation drawing backgrounds to aim at a graphic style that had already come about in more traditional ways and more naturally by illustrators.

I think the illustrators were way ahead of the animators, because they had been doing it longer, and in general had higher drawing standards to live up to. There were also many more illustrators than animators. The field was much broader. Let's face it, in general illustrators draw better than animators. At least 50 years ago.

Cartoons developed their more limited graphic tools functionally- simple forms that turn in space easily, lines of action etc. all with the purpose to save time drawing so that they could more easily move the drawings.

Gerald McBoingBoing's characters always fit into the whole graphic image (at least for the first 2 cartoons) but many of the "flat" cartoons that followed didn't see that aspect of the design.

When they came to do the more graphic, illustrative styles they didn't have the strong artistic backgrounds and traditions of the illustrators. Nor the huge talent pool and higher artistic standards.

In some cases, this led to some really great stuff anyway - like the Hubley commercials which combined bold graphics with inventive and appropriate animation movements. In many cases it just amounted to a superficial awkward imitation of magazine illustration, without the good animation to make up for it.

The illustrators started with more detailed, more realistic and more traditional drawing tools and gradually moved towards more simple, more graphic statements that kept intact the broader stronger fundamental underlying artistic sense of order.
http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/01/media-gustaf-tenggrens-small-fry-and.html

http://www.animationarchive.org/2005/11/media-gustaf-tenggrens-little-trapper.html

If you want to see some of the principles and skills Ballantine is applying to his compositions, click some of the labels below.

Ballantine- Principles, Design Sense, Assorted Influences

I found this book at a sale the other day and it is illustrated by someone named Ballantine. I don't know anything about the artist but I really like him (her?) and can deduce a few things from his cartoons.
Strong Principles: His cartoons show that he has had solid training. His compositions are organized and handsome. His poses are natural, yet exaggerated. He uses negative space to draw attention to the positive images. His drawings are organic, use line of action, clear silhouettes, perspective. His shapes are varied, imaginative, appealing and fun. He is impressively skilled.
Design Sense: He has a strong and personal sense of design, although it's obvious he has influences. He tries different styles in different illustrations.

Varied Influences: He is influenced by many artists and life itself.
There are certain artists who have developed powerfully recognizable styles that have followers who do their utmost to imitate their heroes' styles.

Jamie Hewlett
Al Hirschfeld
Mort Drucker
Ronald Searle
Frank Frazetta
Disney
etc.

Each of these artists has a huge assortment of their own inspirations and heroes, but many of their followers struggle to merely imitate the surface details of these complex creators-and it's always obvious when you see it.

"Oh, that's someone copying Mort Drucker", or "Let's See, how does Hirschfeld draw arms again?" or "We're doing this cartoon in the "Spumco style." etc.

Jack Kirby was probably influenced by Milton Caniff, but nobody would accuse him of being a Caniff imitator. Kirby invented tons of things and was in turn imitated by an army of followers- some who are just imitators, others who were inspired and developed their own styles. Barry Smith, for instance started by emulating many Kirby techniques but soon developed a really amazing and original style of his own.

There is a big difference between being inspired and influenced by a lot of artists, and just copying the superficial aspects of one or 2 heroes.

Superficial style imitation second-guesses how someone else would draw something and severely restricts the range of ideas and images you can create. It's self-censorship.
When I look at Ballantine, I see possible influences from Searle, Hirschfeld and others. But Ballantine still has his own style(s) and still takes in tons of information from the world around him and mixes it all together with his own opinion and personality-his "style".

Look at this very designy forced perspective. Beautiful!

In order to be able to truly express yourself and have a personality and style in your work, you need to:

1) Know how to draw- principles (principles aren't style!)
2) Have a wide variety of influences and interests- don't just imitate a "style" you like
3) Keep your eyes open-look at the world, people, animals, things - let the world be your style, don't filter what you see through how you think cartoons are supposed to look

I'm trying my best to help anyone who would like to have strong controls over their pencils. I hope it benefits someone out there. Maybe even I'll be able to take advantage of it someday and make cartoons with other like-minded artists who would want a director to encourage them to put their personalities into the scenes - as long as you have functional principles first!




****Blammo sent us this audio interview with Bill Ballantine:

http://wiredforbooks.org/billballantine/index.htm