Animation School 13: Classic Animation Principles and Hierarchy Applied To Stylized Drawing

Is this a rebellion against Disney from within? I don't think so.I think it reeks of Disney to the core. This may look like a simple easy-to-do flat hip drawing like you see in modern cartoons, but it's nothing of the kind.

This is the result of a decade and a half of honing Disney principles, inbetweening and animating on classic rounded Disney characters. It's a Tom Oreb layout and he uses all the tools he learned doing the uncool way of animation drawing. Thanks to Amid for this Oreb composition of an early version of the fairies from Sleeping Beauty-they should have looked this good in the movie!

He came to this style the hard way. Toot WP&B uses almost all the 40s cartoon principles, with a couple of them toned down - which makes it look rebellious or cool.

This style is actually dependent upon MORE RIGID rules than the more organic 3 dimensional typical 40s cartoon characters. It is the extreme conservatism that controls the style and makes it so wooden and soulless. It's like an artistic math problem, existing solely for the challenge of its own problems.

When most people today draw flat, they are starting from no foundation of knowledge or experience at all. They see cartoons like Toot Whistle Clunk and Boom and say "I wanna be cool and rebellious too. Only I wanna skip the hard work and study and just go right to the top and be a designer." Then they draw from the details out with no master plan of organizing the designs. They start by drawing an eye, then a nose, then draw a head around it and eventually get to a finished chaotic picture of geometric shapes all in cluttered opposition and contradiction to each other.

Oreb is instead designing from the big shapes down to the small shapes and fitting all the smaller shapes within the plan of the larger shapes. Starting with the overall composition.
The image is made of two major shapes - the group of cavemen and the girl. These 2 shapes are separated with negative space - a big hunk of it. The cavemen shape is then split into 2 groups of 2 cavemen each-separated again by a negative shape - this one smaller than the larger one between the girl and the men.
Within each group of 2, the men are carefully, thoughtfully balanced against each other using lines of action, negative shapes, overlapping shapes, organic curves....

On the organicness. Here's the main key to the style. These aren't mathematical shapes. They aren't perfect circles, ovals, there are no straight or parallel lines as in today's flat cartoons. These are very organic but on a flattened 3dimensional plane - somewhere in between a 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional space.

The negative shapes exist both in spaces between the characters or in their arm poses, but they also exist within the characters. The negative areas are contrasted against the filled busy areas to provide readabilty and to make you focus on certain areas. If everything was filled up with detail equally, it would be a cluttered mess.

There are lots of contrasts of different types of shapes. Just compare each of their noses to start.

There are contrasts in texture - large flat colored areas against hairy busy areas.
All the characters fit into the larger shapes of the composition, but within each one all the features follow the construction or hierarchy of the overall structure of the individual character.

Next, I'll break down their head constructions and you'll see how they are well thought out and make sense. They aren't chaotic or random breakings of established rules. The eyes fit on the same plane of the head position;they relate to each other, they have direction.

When I first saw this cartoon (and the other handful of chapters of the Cal Arts Bible - Pigs is Pigs, Mars and Beyond and Paul Bunyan) I too wanted to be instantly cool. When I tried to draw in this style and make the characters look like they fit together and were doing something I quickly realized how hard it was to do. Now I know why.

I also realized the effort isn't worth it in terms of the ultimate entertainment value. I'll explain that later too.


This cartoon uses the same principles and more, but is far less restrictive creatively than the stylized Disney stuff.

Was this worth anything to you or did you already understand the style?

Preston Blair Lessons

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-1-construction.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-2-squash-and.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-3-how-to-check.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-lesson-4-2-legged-characters.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-5-line-of.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-lesson-hands.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-lesson-6-construction.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-7-when-generic-is.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-8-proportions-affect.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/01/animation-school-lesson-9-_116873606139658339.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/01/animation-school-lesson-9a-tom-and.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/03/animation-school-lesson-10-copy-old.html

3 Days Worth Of Study By Davi

Here's my latest discovery. He has just what I'm looking for in a cartoonist: his own style, yet the ability to learn basic principles and apply them. He is also doing it fast. This is only 3 days practice.You can see him building up step by step these great Scribner poses of Hook.
Are they exact copies? Not quite. But they show that he understands the methods of good cartoon drawings and that's the important thing.


My only critiques are very small:

1) He has squashed the craniums slightly - causing the eyes and facial features to be a bit cramped. The character needs a bit more space around his eyes. This is a common problem with cartoonists and I find myself explaining it over and over again to the same artists.

2) The finish is a bit "itchy". I think maybe because of the rough corrugated paper Davi is using or maybe the pencil is too grainy.

3) The money stacks are a bit too vague and have different shapes than on the frame grabs.

Here Davi applies the exact same principles of 40s animation drawing to a more complicated and detailed drawing from Asterix. He doesn't get lost in the details of clothing and cross-hatching; he wraps those details around the pose and construction.


Great life and flow! While not losing the solidity of the forms.
Here, Davi got something that some artists are missing. He not only copied this composition by looking at the 2 dimensional shapes. He made the individual elements look solid. The trees-even without detail hold together as solid objects. He also constructed the smoke trail in perspective and didn't flatten it out the with 2 dimensional details of the dust puffs.

Here's his stuff from just 2 days earlier and you can see how much he has improved.
These forms are a little vague and wobbly - unsure of themselves - probably because he is not used to drawing such simple forms.



The finish is also vague - too many lines, faces not clear.

But his latest stuff at the top is a big advancement, just by his dedicated practice.

He will be joining the private school if he wants.

His advantage is that he can already draw well, now he is learning to draw simpler designs - but that still are good drawings, not just flatness.
These show that he is a thoughtful artist: he combines observation with knowledge of how things work.

He combines what his eye tells him with what his brain explains to him about why things look the way they do.

Dennis Sunday Pages

I've probably posted this Sunday page before in a post on another topic with other people's art, but it's worth its own post.

I love these early Dennis The Menace Sunday pages. They are masterpieces of design and layout.
Ist of all the whole page is layed out well, each panel fits and contrasts well with all the other panels.1st of all Ketham has a very "modern" style. In other words, it's graphic, has some angles; it's not made of generic 40s spheres and pears. But that knowledge and foundation is behind his variations on it.

He started out as an animator and designed this character for some navy cartoons in the 40s.You can see him starting to break away from the purely generic Preston Blair style here. It's half pears and spheres style, and half "modern" style.

here's the generic 40s design style to compare to

Have you ever seen the Clampett cartoon starring Ketcham's Hook character! Wow! It gives you a sense of how Clampett would have handled more stylized animation, had he stayed on at Warners into the 50s.

Ketcham doesn't think in terms of designing each little piece. Instead, he crafts the whole composition as a design, and then goes and fills it in with details that conform to rather than detract from the overall graphic statement. His use of negative shapes is phenomenal. Each neg space is a design in itself.

I like how that desk is in silhouette while the characters are full color. There is so much information in the shapes that make up the desk, that there's no question what it is - and note how small the details are in comparison with the overall shape of the desk. Small details don't break up a large image. Big details compete with the objects they are part of. This should be taught in every cartoon school today!

Even the curling lamp neck makes a really beautiful negative shape that then in turn relates to all the other shapes, both positive and negative around it.
His poses are always strong, definite and customized to the story and the characters.
Pure silhouettes were a standard technique in old comic strips. Ketcham was an expert. I noticed that the lines of action of the adult characters in silhouette are less extreme than the lines of action in the younger characters. Makes perfect sense to me
Someone told me that Ketcham didn't do all the Sunday pages himself, but whoever did was following his style very closely.

To me, this kind of work is real design - it's not just abstract stylized shapes for the sake of them.

Everything is tightly controlled and thought out, has a purpose and reads very clearly. There is no wonkiness about it.

Check out Ger's site for lots of great Ketcham art.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search/label/Hank%20Ketcham

The Essential Principals VS The Extras - Will Finn

Fancy-ass full-Disney-quality-animator Will Finn just wrote an illuminating article about what animation really boils down to as its basics and illustrated it with a fun clip himself.


..."
I fully intended to inbetween it, but I was surprised to find it didn't look all that awful on its own. I think the color had a lot to do with it, which says a lot for how much color can validate a drawing. I decided to push on forward and see how much I could do without:

No Inbetweens

No Squash & Stretch

No Anticipations

No Follow thru

No Overlap etc...

These are the things that are considered essential,especially in "full animation" obviously. These are the things that took me long hard years to learn. But I kind of realized as I stripped them away, that I had confused them with what "makes" animation, when they are really just things that enhance animation. Maybe all these years I have been confusing the forest with the trees"... - Finn


http://willfinn.blogspot.com/2009/03/finding-my-inner-pintoff.html

______________________________________________

my 2 cents to add:

With the "enhancements" Will left out, that leaves us with these principles:

...which for some reason Frank and Ollie put at the end of their list of principles. I have been posting all of Frank and Ollie's principles and agree with them in theory, but I changed the order to put what I think are the most important ones at the beginning.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/11/disneys-principles-of-animation.html

I agree with Will and believe that this is the problem with most animated feature films. Every one who gets the chance to make one says that "Story" is the most important element in a cartoon (which is not on Frank and Ollie's principles list), but then spends hundreds of millions of dollars on layering tons of "enhancements" to distract you away from the fact that nothing interesting, original or clever is happening.

When it comes to "solid drawing", "appeal" and exaggeration, you don't see much of that anymore either. Even timing has been turned into a system of formulaic rules. Hey Will, maybe you could tell us some modern timing tricks that have become commonplace in features.

You should be able to judge the pure entertainment value from a good animatic that has none of the enhancements but has the essentials.

I would add "Funny" to the essential principles. Maybe even "Clever ideas" or "Imagination". How about "Interesting or entertaining characters"?

I think you can find the best examples of what Will is talking about in Fred Crippen's Roger Ramjet cartoons. But maybe Will will disagree, I don't know. Maybe I am completely misinterpreting him. I'm sure he'll tell us and correct me at Lamplighter.

Appeal:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/07/great-character-design.html


Timing:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/04/rramjet-ko-corral-come-on-rimpot.html

Exaggeration:

Funny:
Appealing fun specific characters :

Clever:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=roger+ramjet&sourceid=mozilla2&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv&ei=sEXFSdqXG5LQsAOP5YXhBg&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-revision&cd=2#

Roger Ramjet cartoons deals in only the essentials - which are much cheaper than the fancy expensive polishing process that goes on in the big studios. In fact Eddie and I often cleanse ourselves with Roger Ramjet cartoons right after watching a spectacular well polished, pore- filled blockbuster. Usually about a group of unlikely companions who get thrust out of their familiar environment (their womb-arena) and into a new harsher one. Through their arbitrary trials and solitary pathos scenes they learn to get along and become sweet friends and kindly democrats, thus teaching us that love, togetherness and character arcs are much more important than the blind corporate greed and abuse that creates these pictures.



Many of the movie clips on my Roger Ramjet posts have vanished into the ether, but there are lots of funny drawings in them. Perhaps world famous duck-scientist Marc Deckter knows the secret of where the clips are. I owe him a pizza so I'll ask him if they exist and will repost the buggers myself if they do.

But you can just go ahead and buy the cartoons if you and your family like to laugh and don't wanna be preached to by moguls who don't believe in their own lessons.

Disney Principles 8 -Straight Ahead VS Pose to Pose - Disney Principles

1) STRAIGHT AHEADhttp://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/Bjork/BjorkStraightAhead.mov

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/Cuff/beefightsmall.mov


2) POSE TO POSE

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Dis/magmick37/mickDonsml.mov

HTTP://WWW.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/43ItchInTime/ItchElmerScratchsmall.mov
Check the end of this clip were Elmer scratches himself to see really exaggerated pose to pose animation.





3) COMBINING THE 2 APPROACHES

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/lantz/47SolidIvory/scramble.mov



http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/Cuff/spiderlady01small.mov










Because I mostly do TV and limited animation, my work is by its nature pose to pose.

Now and then I will animate something straight ahead, like the Bjork scene at the top of the page.

Some of the other clips on the post are a combination of the 2.