Pencil Test

I have burned my little pencil test to DVD and nearly finished writing a critical evaluation. Today is the last day before the hand in date tomorrow so I am just collecting my work together, tying loose ends and making it presentable for handing in! I am happy with what I have done overall but as always I wish I could have done more with the time I had. I think I have fulfilled the aims set by the module guide and also my own aims, however.

This is the last post, then. Bye!

Useful Site

Found a brilliant web page!: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?cat=3&paged=2

&

page 2

It has a lot of the original design sheets and storyboards (I think!) drawn by the directors. I will print some of these out and put them in my portfolio.

& a blog about 2D animation: http://www.darlingdimples.com/index.php?s=disney

List of Oscar Winners for Animated Short Film
1931/32 (5th)
Flowers and Trees — Walt Disney, Producer
1932/33 (6th)
The Three Little Pigs — Walt Disney, Producer
1934 (7th)
The Tortoise and the Hare — Walt Disney, Producer
1935 (8th)
Three Orphan Kittens — Walt Disney, Producer
1936 (9th)
The Country Cousin — Walt Disney, Producer
1937 (10th)
The Old Mill — Walt Disney, Producer
1938 (11th)
Ferdinand the Bull — Walt Disney, Producer
1939 (12th)
The Ugly Duckling — Walt Disney, Producer
1940 (13th)
The Milky Way — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
1941 (14th)
Lend a Paw — Walt Disney, Producer
1942 (15th)
Der Fuehrer’s Face — Walt Disney, Producer

& A site I want to check back later...

General Update

I should edit my blog to add that I am no longer going up to Scotland over the Easter break and am no longer working due to the death of a close family member. It has been a traumatic week and my project work has definitely suffered and will continue to be affected over the coming fortnight. However, I'm carrying on when I can and if things get too much I may ask for an extension. I have an exam close after the hand in date for this and the animation module though so an extension might be useless.
I am going back to Newcastle and into uni this week to photograph my work and see how it runs on Velocity. I also hope to complete my paintings on acetate before coming back to be with my family.
On a lighter note I am beginning to feel like I have researched well enough to go on and create my own hand-drawn cartoons from imagination. The project has definitely opened my eyes to this form of animation and given me the confidence to create my own. I will probably practice my own animated drawing over the summer break. I think that my final year program of work will definitely have benefited from this project.

Acetate

I have begun painting screen captures from Bambi onto acetate.
I chose three screen captures from different scenes that used layers in different ways. One is of Bambi and four birds, one is of two characters conversing and the other is of a character inside the scenery. I have studied them closely and have decided how I think Disney have layered the contents of the scene and then attempted to replicate the screen capture.
So far I am happy with what I've produced. It turns out gouache paint is tricky to use but does produce the brightest and most opaque result. The paint actually shrinks when it is painted onto acetate- some colours more so than others (eg red). I think this may be because the paints I bought were very cheap in comparison to what you normally pay for goache paints (too much for my student budget!). To get past this problem I have been mixing small quantities of acryllic paint into the guaoche paint to stop it from shrinking. Acryllic paint is often used on acetate in the industry but it is much less opaque and needs a lot of layers, which can be painstaking.

Pencil

I have been doing a lot of pencil test animation. I thought I'd write a little bit of a review on here for my evaluation.

I have found it quite hindering using the most basic form of light box which is a bit like drawing on an easel. I would have been able to do much better on a flat table-like light box and my line work would have been much better.

I have had to trace a lot of the drawings straight off the screen captures or put the screen captures first then the previous drawing on top and then the sheet I am drawing on over that.

Although this is a short cut, I have a good reason for doing it. I don't think I have the time to learn how to animate by drawing properly in time for the hand in date of 27th April. The hand in date is a whole month earlier than I had originally thought as the term ends 28th May, which is when I thought we'd be handing in our projects. I have still learnt a lot from animating in this way, especially about timing, movement and expression.

I have tried the method from the Disney video, Frogumentary. I have done two key frames and then put them on the light box and drawn the in between frame over the top of them.

It has all been a little tricky with the light box I have as it isn't quite bright enough to see through many frames. I have tried some thinner paper but it isn't as good quality and I think this will show up on camera when I make the frames into an animation.

I've decided not to use the same scene to do the acetate cells as I'd prefer to try out building the layers for the animation. I am thinking of choosing the next shot with Bambi, Thumper and Flower in it. Otherwise I may do the scene where Bambi tries to say "bird" and do each bird on a new layer.

Easter

I am currently preparing for work over the Easter holidays. I am going to be staying in my caravan and working full time at a seasonal job I have in Scotland. As I will be in a caravan I will have limited access to resources such as the internet and the library. In preparation for this I have downloaded ebooks that will allow me to travel light and still keep up my studies. I have managed to pack my light box to take to the caravan and worked out a place I can store it and the lamp without cramming the caravan! It would have been good to use a proper lightbox but the plastic hollow one with my lamp underneath is proving sufficient.

I will not be updating my blog over the Easter holidays due to lack of internet access. I will be carrying on taking notes from Disney: An Illusion of Life and animating scenes from Bambi. I will update all I have done when I am back.

My goal is to become confident enough with a pencil test to ink it onto acetate and colour it with Guache paint. If I'm really lucky I will also have time to paint a background for the scene, but I doubt I will have time due to my other two modules and it is slightly less relevant to the project.
Happy Easter!

Development

~ I have decided to animate the character of Thumper (from the film Bambi) in my tests. I find the character easier to draw than a lot of the other Disney characters I've practiced drawing. The animators also use the bounce and stretch principle of animation with that character a lot, which is interesting to study.
~ I have started the development part of the project. With the assistance of screen captures I have taken from Bambi, I have drawn up a succession of frames from the scene in which Bambi and Thumper skate on a frozen lake. It is a very short first test and has made me think about how many frames are needed to show actions and how to get from one key frame to the next. It has also given me my first chance to practice using a light box.
~ I have also typed up all written research notes into a printable form.

NEXT:
~ I am going to photograph the frames I have drawn and see how it plays through as an animation.
~ I am going to make more screen captures from Bambi and draw some more frames that will hopefully make a better animation than my first test.

Screen Captures

Downloaded the KMPlayer and used it to make screen captures of Bambi to see how the frames change. I will possibly use these screen captures to do tests. Learned that the old Disney animations used about 12 frames per second, 24 if there was a lot of action in the shot. Some animation can go up to around 60 frames per second, however.

A Frogumentary

Update on progress:
~ I've done a write-up of useful points from "A Frogumentary"- a series of video blogs interviewing important people who worked on The Princess and the Frog.
~ Printed out all typed-up work to date and put into a file which will eventually be handed in at the end of the project.
~ Sketched several Disney characters to learn how to draw them and decide which I'd like to animate in a few tests.
~ Gone through the blog to review my progress and what needs to be cleaned up or developed.

Disney By Hand, London

Disney By Hand is a currant exhibition in London

Just because you can do something doesn't automatically mean you should. The success of the CGI Toy Story virtually destroyed the hand-drawn animation industry. Even Disney shut down their "old-fashioned" animation department in 2004, despite having almost entirely built their empire on the technique. Rather ironically it was Toy Story's director John Lasseter, now head creative at Disney, who pointed out how wrong they were, so now Disney is back in the hand-drawn business with The Princess And The Frog. Alongside it, this season includes such undisputed classics – not just of animation but of cinema – as Dumbo, Pinocchio, Bambi, The Lion King and Fantasia. Seeing the artistry, grace and sheer hard work that went into them clearly visible on the big screen makes them seem more magical and alive than any of the computer-generated fare. Free tickets for under 15s are available with every ticket bought for Princess And The Frog.

Barbican Screen, EC2, Sat 6 to Feb 27

Phelim O'Neill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/feb/06/film-events-previews-the-guide

Animation Tests

~ Met with my tutor and discussed the next stages of my project and was given back a review of my work so far. It was indicated a 1st classification. I have noted from the critical feedback that I need to make more clear what I am researching and focus on it more. It is simply 'a better understanding of the 2D cel processes and Disney ethos as a whole' during the 'golden age' of animation.

~ I have taken home a light box so that I can start work on some Disney-style pencil tests as the development part of the project.

~ I have gotten out two books from the library which may help my pencil tests: Richard Williams 'The Animator's Survival Kit' and also 'Drawing for Animation' by Paul Wells.

~Next I intend to choose a Disney character to use when I am creating tests and do a few sketches and studies of them in preparation. I will probably download and print out some screen captures of them.

~Here is a link I found of some classic episodes of Mickey Mouse in great quality:
http://www2.disney.co.uk/DisneyOnline/mickey/

~Pencil test video reels!: http://www.penciltestdepot.com/

Tigger and Tests Reel from Rune Bennicke on Vimeo.

~ Animation Podcasts: http://animationpodcast.com/show-31-disney-talent-development-alumni-animation-mentor-exclusive/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+animationpodcast+(Animation+Podcast) Disney one

~ Some of the careers in the Disney Animation Studios and what they require:
http://www.disneyanimation.com/careers/animation_careers.html

To Do

I have made notes on the production of Disney animation from this book I got from Northumbria University Library. I will make further notes.
Soon I will be making screen captures of a small part of a Disney film and tracing them onto acetate, ready to paint and animate.

Lasseter Talks Princess and the Frog and 2D

The next hand-drawn animation the Disney Animation Studios will be creating will be Winnie The Pooh in the style of Walt Disney's original version.

Lasseter Talks Princess and the Frog and 2D
Source: http://www.awn.com/news/films/lasseter-talks-princess-and-frog-and-2d

"As we started working on this film and getting people to come back, it was so exciting because some of the artists left the studio that were working on hand-drawn animation because they didn't want to be re-trained for computer animation. Some of the artists were re-trained. So we brought both of those groups back together -- and never, ever in my career, have I worked with a group of artists that had more to prove to the world that this art form is spectacular…

"And I believe strongly that there are certain things you can do in 2D animation and still can't do in CG. I think, actually, when you look at PRINCESS AND THE FROG and the amazing animation of Louis the alligator, I'm not sure that would be quite the same way in computer animation. And I always say that if you look at SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, that the animation of the dwarfs themselves is something that's pretty much impossible to achieve in computer animation. That fluidity, that squash-and-stretch, that kind of stuff just works with hand-drawn animation. Also, the rich painted backgrounds, we took a look at the films that Walt Disney made because I asked them to aim high: I said, 'Let's make great art.' So we chose LADY AND THE TRAMP and BAMBI for the bayou scenes, the nature, the way that that was represented there, almost an Impressionistic point of view at times. And then with LADY AND THE TRAMP, the scenes of the humans and the architecture of the character design is just the pinnacle of what was Disney's personal style."

Princess and the Frog: Interview with the Makers

Source: http://www.awn.com/articles/2d/clements-musker-go-deeper-princess-and-frog

We wanted to recapture the feeling we had watching Disney films as a kid and what inspired us. And yet wanted to re-examine and reinvent it too for a new audience.

Well, that brings up a point about something we now do at Disney, where, like at Pixar, we screen the animation every day together with all the animators. It's a free forum where everyone critiques and we make decisions on what to do...

We tried going paperless on this movie, actually, and we did do paperless effects animation and that worked out. But with rough animation and cleanup there were problems and it didn't seem to be practical with this movie, so we went with hand-drawn on paper. But paperless could happen in the future... It's a very ambitious movie and was done very efficiently, which is good for the future of this medium given the economic environment that we're in.