Paperless or Draw and Scan?

[CartoonMonkey]

Looking good! Remember, it's not often about framerate, but finding some combination that works for you. (look at Bill Plympton, and his three or six frames a second)
This shot looks good! My eyes want to see some shadow underneath those feet on the ground though.
C

[artfx]

Looking good! Remember, it's not often about framerate, but finding some combination that works for you. (look at Bill Plympton, and his three or six frames a second)
This shot looks good! My eyes want to see some shadow underneath those feet on the ground though.
C

Yeah. I couldn't believe this quote from Bill Plympton: "SANTA, THE FASCIST YEARS was done in a week (the animation was completed over the Thanksgiving long holiday weekend), HORN DOG was done in two weeks. MEXICAN STANDOFF took 3 weeks.”
“I do 3 key poses on the dog and put slobber in between them. Disney films use 20, 24 drawings per second. I don’t have the time, the money, or the patience, to do this so I cheat. I use pans, zooms, and only a few drawings, sometimes animating on 4’s. The audience doesn’t care; they only want to see the humour. I do garage-band animation.”

But you know what? He's getting up every morning doing what he really wants to do and answering to no one. I find it funny he said that he thought Hair High which has a far more mainstream look than his other stuff, and has big actors for voices, was a total failure and didn't make the money he thought it would, so he said he was just going to make something for himself, all in pencil and the result, Idiots and Angels, was apparently a big success for him.

He also makes a lot of money from shorts, which most people seem to think is impossible. I believe him. My first short is still probably the most independent money I have made.

[slowtiger]

Yes, Bill is really amazing ... shows what a single person could do as long as he knows what to do. But he also works out the storyboard completely before he does a single single frame of animation.

Back in the 80's I used to work in a similar fashion: having the idea, doing the animation on one weekend (for about 2 minutes of film) and the sound on another, then rushing the film out to a festival. Now I have the feeling that I wasted lots of years with so profane things as getting money for the rent ...

Hm, I really should dust off some of the old stuff and maybe digitize it.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Putting out work with great speed is usually appreciated only by clients with tiny budgets and little appreciation for true art. It means you are struggling to bring bread onto the table and where's the satisfaction from living like that? But if you are creating works with no client involved, what personal satisfaction do you receive from producing with such speed?

[artfx]

Here is another rough test in my quest to further develop my style.

http://www.studioartfx.com/video/test002.mov
H.264 Quicktime Mov

I can kind of see where Plympton is coming from on speed. From what I read, he does very little client work. It seems he found a way, early on to make what he wants to make and has a good lineup of buyers, worldwide, who will pick up his stuff. I think for him it is a matter of patience. I feel that sometimes too. If I spend too long on something, the energy starts to fade.

I think I would love to work in the fashion of a novelist. Novels are too long to be features. They also rarely follow "the formula". They aren't designed to be TV series with cliffhangers and commercial breaks in the right spots. They are chapter based. Depending on the author, those can be quick and short chapters like Dan Brown or long drawn out chapters like Stephen King.

[slowtiger]

Hej, I like the style in this test, more like the clean one in the previous file. The loose line made from multiple strokes reminds me of some artist who's name I just don't remember.

[Peter Wassink]

hey! i also like this loose stuff very much.
(its the PF school of animating)

suggestion, try and remove the first (and possibly second) "water out of mouth" frame for a better dynamic. it feels like slow motion now.
(also maybe a little hold, after the spoon is in mouth, right before the bad taste registers.)

[slowtiger]

A bit of googling and I know again what I'm talking about: "The day i quit smoking" by Nedeljko Dragiç was the film I had in mind. (I had a nice ressourceful book full with images from numerous shorts, unfortunately somebody stole it from me.) Haven't found it online, though, and only one example of his work at YT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYTeE41RGBM

[Paul Fierlinger]

Multiple, over layered lines are good for sketch books but when used in animation limit the animator only to fast actions. Once you find yourself in a situation where slow motion is required you are in trouble.

That little piece kept its frenetic pace and there is no coincidence that it was short and never slowed down -- and yes, when a few details were slow within a larger wild paced imagery, the line became carefully singular and separated itself too glaringly from the rest.

Then comes the issue of coloring and again, there was no coincidence that colors were mostly absent in the little film. Not a good drawing style for anything longer than a couple of minutes, in my opinion.

[slowtiger]

As a continuation of the overall springtime cleaning I've put all the folders and boxes together which hold my first decade of animation. All those drawings fit nicely on the kitchen table:

m100428_07kl.jpg (84.36 KiB) Viewed 22728 times

There's 12 complete films in there! Allow me for some nostalghia. Starting with the oldest, "Raucher", bottom center, which consists of 135 drawings in A8 size. Right next to it my first prize winning film "Die Machthaber und die Rechthaber" where I was lazy with a mere 60 drawings. Bottom left are some cutout parts in the size of some 5 x 5 mm, impossible to place properly - well, nobody told me then. I worked in these small sizes (usually A6 paper) for a very long time, sometimes in a café.

The ENDE on the left belongs to "Zeichenfischfilm", still in distribution, and a proper 372 drawings done within a week. The EMF in the center and that lower saxony map are two spots about EMAF, the European Media Art Festival, done with pencil in a very rough fashion and both a bit more than 500 drawings, drawn in a week again.

Today sometimes I have the feeling that I spend too much time with planning and especially with worrying about how to make the characters appealing to an audience. Is it really necessary to draw that much detail? But then again, gleefully draw my way through a pile of paper may work for a 2 min short, but not for a feature.

m100428_09kl.jpg (71.43 KiB) Viewed 22728 times

The closeup shows a pile of 523 sheets for one of the EMAF spots.

[artfx]

Today sometimes I have the feeling that I spend too much time with planning and especially with worrying about how to make the characters appealing to an audience. Is it really necessary to draw that much detail? But then again, gleefully draw my way through a pile of paper may work for a 2 min short, but not for a feature.

I have to wonder, where do we get these ideas? It is true, I have heard it said, that if one wants the audience to stick with them for 90 minutes, they have to have wonderful characters, but how do we know what will really be appealing to an audience? It seems that the industry so far has kept to a pretty narrow road. There is very little, feature wise, that could really be seen as a drastic departure from Disney.

I have done very little over the years for these very same reasons. "I spend too much time with planning and especially with worrying about how to make the characters appealing to an audience." But look at the result. Had I made anything over these years, would it not be better than having nothing?

[Gochris1]

Terrence:

In the end, you can't worry about what the audience wants. Just do your thing, and they will either like it or not.

Here's another way to put it: just draw your ass off and the rest will take care of itself.

One of the reasons why Plympton is a success is because he makes a film every year, no exceptions. Maybe they are not all great films, but he became a brand name in the animation film world because he just keeps putting work out.

I say this to you because I should be doing the exact same thing.

Chris

[Peter Wassink]

There is very little, feature wise, that could really be seen as a drastic departure from Disney.

indeed !
and heres a clue why.....
check out this list showing the educational background of big studio feature film directors of the last decade:
(found yesterday on cartoonbrew)

[D.T. Nethery]

That list is somewhat misleading (for what it leaves out ) and in some cases just plain wrong.

For example: "Bolt" co-director Chris Williams attended the Classical Animation Program at Sheridan College (not Cal Arts as listed) . Chris Williams's fellow director on "Bolt" was Byron Howard who attended Ringling School of Art and Design.

"Brother Bear" co-director Aaron Blaise is listed as having attended Cal Arts, but Aaron is another Ringling grad and his co-director on Brother Bear was Bob Walker who went to Sheridan College.

"Mulan" lists only one director , Tony Bancroft, who did in fact attend Cal Arts, but co-director Barry Cook (who initiated the project) is a graduate of Columbia College.

"Lilo & Stitch" only lists one of the directors, Chris Sanders (Cal Arts) , but fellow director/co-writer of Lilo & Stitch was Dean Deblois , another Sheridan College grad.


I could go on ...


Most of the films listed had two directors (or in the case of "Prince of Egypt" there were THREE directors, two of whom , Steve Hickner and Simon Wells, did not attend Cal Arts) . The second director in most cases was not a Cal Arts grad. (nothing against Cal Arts, but whoever made this list did sloppy research and did not properly credit the other directors and the schools they attended.)

[Elodie]

Thanks for enlightening us, David