Jennifer Jensen June 4, 2010 Honors English 2 period 2 Mrs

Jennifer Jensen
June 4, 2010
Honors English 2
period 2
Mrs. Sbardella
In a way, one could say I was
half-raised by animation. My parents
were divorced by the time I was two or
three, and my father, who worked in
the Coast Guard, was away a lot; my
mother had severe depression that
caused her to spend most of her time
sleeping. My aunt and grandma
babysat me sometimes, but they
screenshot of Anastasia (citypaper.net)
couldn't do it all the time; therefore, there were a lot of times when I had little or no supervision at all.
The parts of my childhood I didn't spend wandering off or getting into the ice cream or otherwise
misbehaving, I spent plopped down in front of the TV, watching the same movies over and over. The
Lion King, my absolute favorite, I watched so many times that some of my family members can still
recite scenes from it at will. I switched things up every once in a while by watching
Anastasia, The Little Mermaid, Cats Don't Dance, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Mulan, Hercules, and Quest
for Camelot. Thanks to my brother, I also watched more boy-oriented things like Pokemon. Basically,
if it was animated and came out in the nineties, I saw it. Repeatedly. And I continue to watch it. I spent
much of my childhood both writing and drawing, but as I got older I began focusing on my writing. It
got to a point where I was so discouraged that I
almost stopped drawing entirely. Then I
stumbled on the webpage of a girl not much
older than me, whose drawings seemed, to me,
nothing short of amazing. I hadn't been aware
that animators were normal people and thought
animation was some sort of magic trick that
only minor deities could perform, but this girl was an animator and had even made a bunch of short
animatics. It completely flipped my mind. I watched all my Disney movies again and was just as
captivated as when I was little. I started drawing and dreaming about being an animator, and I haven't
stopped since.
With any innovation, it begins with the scientific equivalent of a pebble dropped on a snowy
hill, which then rolls down the hill slowly, rolling faster
and faster and snowballing bigger and bigger. For
animation, this pebble came in the form of a presentation
given to the Royal Society in 1824: Pete Mark Roget
explaining how we see movement. He described how
objects will appear to be moving if there is an
interruption between the display of each movement. Two
years later, John Ayrton Paris invented the
thaumatrope, a disc with separate paintings on each side
the thaumatrope (artlex.com)
suspended by a string, a bird on one side and a cage on the other; when the disc was spun, the bird
appeared to be inside the cage. In 1832, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau invented the
phenakitoscope, a large disc with a series of drawings around the circumference attached on a spindle
to another disc made of metal with slots in it; when both were made to spin, the image appeared to
move when viewed. Years later, in 1853, Franz von Uchatius developed a method of projecting
phenakistoscope images as a series of slides, the first form of projected animation, and Ludwig Dobler
bought the devise and demonstrated it throughout Europe. In 1868, John Barnes Linnett patented the
kineograph, known today as a flipbook. (animated-divots.com)
The first animated film in recorded history was called Un bon bock, "A Good Beer," in 1888,
when Emile Reynaud invented the theater optique, a device that projected images painted on long strips
of celluloid, which allowed for animated films long enough to have a story rather than just being the
demonstration of a moving image. Reynaud opened the theater optique in the Musee Grevin, running it
from 1892 to 1900 and showing such films as Le clown et ses chiens ("The Clown and His Dogs") and
Pauvre Pierrot ("Poor Pierrot"). Meanwhile, in the United States in 1891, the first prototype of the
kinetoscope, a film-viewing device contained inside a small cabinet, was demonstrated to a meeting of
the National Federation of Women's Clubs, and the first public kinetoscope parlor opened in New York,
New York in 1894. In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiere demonstrated a motion picture projector in
Paris, the first projection of a filmed image on a large screen. In the turn of the century, the pebble, so
to speak, began to snowball. More and more experimental animations were created. Techniques were
developed. Earl Hurd applied for a patent in 1915 for his technique of using transparent plastic sheets
for drawing moving objects in animation over a background, which was photographed to produce the
final image; the transparent sheets were later called cels because they're made of celluloid. (animateddivots.com)
Possibly the most important event in the history of animation was Walt Disney's decision to
leave the Kansas City Film Ad Company and found his first studio in 1920. In 1922, he produced his
first "full-length" short film, Little Red Riding Hood. A year later, he and his brother, Roy, founded the
Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood, California. In 1928, he produced his first Mickey
Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, which caused something of a tidal wave in animation; after Willie,
Disney dominated the field. (Crandol)
The Disney studio produced their first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven
Dwarves, in 1934. (Interesting fact: the prince originally had a larger part in the movie, but it was cut
down because the animators weren't very good at drawing men and were a little embarrassed by how
girly the prince looked.) A visionary, Disney steered cartoons away from the rubber hose style of the
silent era and encouraged artists to develop a realistic, naturalistic style. He was the moving force
behind their first animated films--Snow White, Pinnocchio in 1940, Lady and the Tramp in 1955, and
The Jungle Book in 1967. However, while Disney himself got all the credit for the work, there were a
number of talented animators, most of whom still remain unknown to the public. (Crandol)
Meanwhile, Warner Bros.--Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and co.--was getting prominent in the
public eye. Looney Tunes, which began in 1930, went against Disney's naturalist movement, defying
every law of physics for comedic effect. After a while, all the
other major studios began copying this style, even Disney, to
an extent. Warner Bros.'s star character, of course, was Bugs
Bunny, although it took over ten years and thirty films to get
him to the wascally wabbit we know today; by 1950, Warner
Bros. managed to establish who he was and how he looked so
that all of three animation units could make its own cartoons
and keep Bugs the same every time. (Crandol)
Animation began to suffer in the sixties when animated television shows became mainstream.
Back in the thirties, forties, and fifties, animation was being made by people who wanted to create
cinematic art, but the people in TV animation in the sixties all the way through the eighties only cared
about the money they made. Most every time the writing for animated television was shoddy, and the
animation was so limited it could hardly be considered animation.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbara were big culprits of this sell-out mentality. In 20 years at MGM,
they'd made nothing but Tom and Jerry cartoons, figuring if something worked, they should stick with
it, and applied the same to cartoons for television. When “Scooby Doo” was a success, they followed
up with “Speed Buggy,” “Jabber Jaw,” and “The Clue Club”; after “The Flintstones” came “The
Jetsons”; after “The Smurfs,” “The Snorks”. Other TV cartoon studios did just as poorly. The situation
only improved when Disney and Warner Bros entered the scene in the second half of the eighties with
“DuckTales” and “Tiny Toon Adventures,” respectively, but everything still looked terrible in
comparison with the earlier cartoons produced for movies. (Crandol)
Meanwhile, movies weren't doing so well either. Once everyone owned a television, no one
spent all day at the movies anymore; by the 1960s, most studios had closed down, and the few that
hadn't were producing films of poor quality on an irregular basis. Only Disney was consistently
producing films, and even then, they were growing rather stale. (Crandol)
However, in the late eighties and into the nineties, a large sum of animators spanning across
various studios seem to have simultaneously had epiphanies and started coming up with higher-quality
work, beginning a glorious animation renaissance. Disney had The Little Mermaid, Who Framed Roger
Rabbit?, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
Mulan, Tarzan, and Toy Story 1 and 2. Don Bluth and co., while not as impressive as Disney's,
produced An American Tale and Anastasia. On the television side of things, series produced included
The Simpsons, The Ren and Stimpy Show, Doug, Sailor Moon, Batman: the Animated Series, 2 Stupid
Dogs, Animaniacs, Beavis and Butthead, The Pink Panther, Rocko's Modern Life, The Magic School
Bus, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Freakazoid!, Pinky and the Brain, Dexter's Laboratory, Pokemon, The
Angry Beavers, Cow & Chicken, I Am Weasel, Daria, Johnny Bravo, South Park, CatDog, The
Powerpuff Girls, Ed, Edd, n Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Spongebob Squarepants.
Unfortunately, the new millenium saw another decline in quality. Initially, the quality was still
reasonably high, running from steam from the nineties. For movies, we had The Emperor's New
Groove and Lilo and Stitch from Disney, Shrek and The Road to El Dorado from Dreamworks, and
Spirited Away and The Cat Returns from Miyazaki; on the television front, we had shows such as
Catscratch, Chalkzone, Codename: Kids Next Door, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, The Grim
Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Invader Zim, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and Teen Titans. Around the
year 2004 or 2005, the quality took a sharp drop. Television producers are once again more concerned
with money than art; it doesn't matter how insipid the writing is if they think it'll sell. History has a
tendency to repeat itself, so with luck perhaps we'll have another renaissance soon instead of festering
in a dark age for another twenty years. One can find hope for the future of animation in new, upcoming
animators. The internet has aided many independent animators in gaining success, especially mong
teenagers and youngadults. Jason Steele's Charlie the Unicorn series, among other short films, has
gotten enormously famous in this manner. Robert Benfer, similarly but to a lesser extent, has had
success with his KlayWorld animations. Amy Winfrey's series, Making Fiends, became so popular that
it was picked up by Nickelodeon. Still more amateurs, talented and passionate, can be found in clusters
in various places around the web, learning and practicing their art. One such aspiring animator is
Cassandra Thomas, the artist mentioned in the introduction, now a friend of mine. I interviewed her
learn about animation straight from someone who
has a bit of experience with it. She can't remember
a time when she wasn't interested in animation,
saying, “It's always blown my mind that human
beings have the power to create moving images out
of nothing but a bunch of pencil drawings.” She
likes how animation makes her feel like Dr.
Frankenstein creating her own little person. She
doesn't plan on pursuing any formal education in
animation, other than art classes: “An artist doesn't
need a degree. A doctor does. Aha.” Her dream job
drawn by Cassandra Thomas
is to run her own independent animation studio where she is completely and fully in charge. To other
aspiring animators, she says, “Draw. Draw a lot. Draw a lot a lot. And never procrastinate because you
think you don't have enough technical skill; you learn by doing.” (Thomas)
It may be true that one learns by doing, but there's still value in reading what the experts have to
say. Mark Mayerson, who's worked in TV animation for 29 years, urges new animators to network
aggressively and take any animation-related job they can find. Pete Docter, the director of Pixar's UP,
has a whole list of advice to offer. “If you want to be an animator, my advice is to draw as much as you
can. Draw at school, draw at home, and draw on the bus. Draw wherever you are. I had a drawing
teacher at school who always used to say, 'You all have 20,000 lousy drawings in you before you get to
the good ones, so get going.' Practice makes perfect, so get drawing and practice away!” He suggests
taking art classes to learn the basics of art. He also says not to worry about expensive art materials and
use whatever you can find, and to experiment with different forms and styles of animation to find what
works. (mayersonanimation.blogspot.com; pbskids.org)
In 1973, famous Disney animator Ward Kimball dished out some advice in response to a letter
from a young aspiring animator. The first step, he urges, is to finish high school and pursue art training
(that is, at least three years in a reputable art school/college). “And to be ready for that jungle out there
you gotta be a jack of all trades. By this I mean, you gotta know all the insides and outs of film making.
With animation in mind this means basic drawing, life drawing, design, lettering, architecture, color
theory, materials and their use, painting, modeling, art history, world history, anatomy, humanities, film
editing, sound cutting, recording, story sketch—you name it, you gotta be with it. What I am trying to
say is that in becoming an animator is a growth process that involves basic curiosities for all things,
because man, animation is not just making things move, it is THINKING, THINKING, THINKING!
You can't know enough about everything. Curiosity is the key word. See everything! Do everything!
Find out what makes everything tick. … Learn from others, BUT DON'T COPY THEM! Try to retain
your individualism while learning the basic rules.” His final piece of advice is that reading books about
animation, even if you read all the books in the world, is no substitute for actual practice, just as it is
with any other skill. (lettersofnote.org)
The most famous animator of all time, of course, is Walt Disney, pioneer of animation as we
know it today. He founded Walt Disney Studios and ran it until his death in 1966, in addition to also
founding Disneyland Park, EPCOT, and the California Institute of the Arts. Working closely with
Disney were the core of talented animators known as his “Nine Old Men”: Les Clark, Mickey Mouse
animator; Marc Davis, Disney's “ladies' man,” who designed and animated Snow White, Cruella De
Vil, Maleficient, and Cinderella; Ollie Johnston, a character animator; Milt Kahl, the designer for
characters such as Peter Pan, Tramp of Lady and the Tramp, and Roger and Anita in 101 Dalmations
who supposedly “never made a bad drawing”; Ward Kimball, who animated the Crows in Dumbo,
Tweedledum, Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, Lucifer the
Cat from Cinderella, and Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio; John Lounsbury, who mastered the “squash
and stretch” technique and co-directed several Winnie the Pooh films; Wolfgang Reitherman, who
created action sequences for the films and directed every film from 1967 to 1977; Frank Thomas, a
character animator who animated characters such as Captain Hook and Jungle Book's King Louie; and
Eric Larson, who developed the Disney Talent Program to discover and train new animators.
Frederick “Tex” Avery worked as a director on Looney Tunes at Warner Bros and on pretty
much every cartoon that was not Tom and Jerry at MGM; he created Daffy Duck and coined Bugs
Bunny's iconic catch phrase “What's up, doc?”, as well as Bugs's personality in general. Another
Warner Bros animator, Chuck Jones, worked his way up to being a director and was the creator of
characters such as Pepe Le Pew, Wile E. Coyote, Roadrunner, and Marvin the Martian, as well as
adding to the development of characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
On the more modern end of things, Tim Burton got his start as a Disney inbetweener on projects
such as The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron before getting his big break as producer for
The Nightmare Before Christmas. Terry Gilliam is most famous for his animations featured in Monty
Python's Flying Circus, the cut-paper style of which inspired Trey Parker and Matt Stone's South Park.
The twelve principles of animation, as declared by
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in The Illusion of Life, are
squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, straight ahead and
pose to pose, follow-through and overlapping action, slow in
and slow out, arcs, secondary action, timing, exaggeration,
solid drawing, and appeal. The first principal, one of the most
important and fundamental principles, is squash and stretch: it
from dan-dare.org
gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as it moves. It's used in character animation,
from dialogue and facial expressions to the body weight of a character walking.
Anticipation is preparation for a major action a character is about to perform; for example, if
they try to jump, they'll move backward a little before they move forward. Going along with
anticipation is follow-through and overlapping action: follow-through means that when a character
suddenly stops, all their other parts continue moving for a moment, such as hair, clothing, or a tail.
Overlapping action is similar: when a character changes direction, aforementioned other parts continue
on in the old direction for a moment and then catch up.
Another principle is staging. All poses and actions are meant to “clearly communicate to the
audience the attitude, mood, reaction, or idea of the character as they relate to the story and continuity
of the storyline.” (animationtoolworks.com) There's only so much time in a film, so animators must use
their time and their sequences wisely, and avoid using too many actions, which will just confuse the
audience.
The fourth principle are the two techniques of planning animation: straight ahead, and pose-topose. Straight ahead uses no planning—it starts at the first drawing and works from drawing to drawing
until the end. Sometimes the characters start looking a bit off using this method, but it brings a little life
into the movements. Pose-to-pose is carefully planned and charted using key drawings at the most
integral parts of the action: the lead animator draws the keys and his assistant draws the inbetweens.
Four more principles are timing, slow-in and slow-outs, arcs, and secondary action. When fewer
drawings are used in an animation, the action is faster; when more are used, it's slower. Slow-ins and
slow-outs are used to make an action slower and more lifelike. Nearly all actions follow a vaguely
circular path, or arc, especially with humans and animals. Using arcs gives animations a natural flow.
Secondary action adds to the main action; for example, when the main action is a character walking,
secondary actions to supplement the main action would be arm and head movements.
The last three principles are solid drawing, exaggeration, and appeal. Basic principles of
drawing, such as form, weight, and the illusion of having three dimensions are as important in cartoons
as in any other form of drawing. Exaggeration is “a slight, not extreme caricature of facial features,
expressions, poses, attitudes, and actions.” Drawing something exactly the way it moves in real life is
accurate, but it looks stiff and boring. Using exaggeration helps create appeal. An appealing character is
one that captures the audience's interest: it has an easy-to-read design, clear drawing, and personality
development.
An aura of mystery surrounds the
making of animated films; people seem to
wonder how such lively characters can be
created from a bunch of drawings--magic,
perhaps. In reality, the process is fairly
straightforward. First, the film is
"storyboarded"--that is, the entire film is
illustrated in a series of very rough sketches
from cartoonsnap.com
and tacked, in order, to a wall. Then the director and all the animators gather to look at the storyboard
and discuss the film, laying out the story. Once the story is figured out, the dialogue is recorded. This is
done before animation so that the animators will know what the characters say and how they say it--in
fact, the voice actors are often filmed so that the animators can use them for reference. As a result,
characters often look like their voice actors, even if they're not human. (justdisney.com)
While and after the dialogue is recorded, the animators make rough sketches of the characters.
Model sheets are made of each character so they can keep the designs consistent even though many
different animators are drawing the same characters. They also run rough animation tests in pencil,
called pencil tests, to feel out how characters move before they begin the final animation. The best
animators draw the key frames, the most important frames in an animation (for example, the key
frames of a character jumping would be the character crouching down, the character's feet leaving the
ground, and the character landing back on the ground). The animators that are lower down on the totem
pole are the ones that fill in the "inbetweens"--the frames between each key frame that make the
movement run smoothly. It's very important that an inbetweener be good at keeping their drawings onmodel and consistent. An incompetent one can be easily replaced. (justdisney.com)
Once the film has been drawn on paper, it goes to the inking department. The inkers copy the
paper drawings onto clear celluloid. The cels then go to the painting department. The painters flip the
cell over and paint on the side opposite the lines, so as to keep the lineart visible and crisp. Lastly,
backgrounds must be added; they're separate from the cells, staying sedentary while the characters on
the painted cells move. The final step is photographing; a special type of camera, with a lens facing
down onto a tabletop, captures each frame of animation: first, the background is placed onto a special
mount, then the cel is placed over it and covered with a piece of glass, and then the photograph is
taken. After all the frames have been filmed, the dialogue is edited in, along with various other edits,
and the film is complete. (justdisney.com)
One can learn only so much from reading about animation; the best way is to attempt it oneself.
My original intention was to get some practice with some of the more basic exercises, such as the
animation of a bouncing ball or a walk cycle, but my attempts thus far indicate that to do so would take
more time than the assignment will allow. It's just as well, because as with any kind of art, one can
never know everything there is to know about the subject: there's always more to learn and more room
for improvement. The most important quality in an animator is the curiosity and fascination that drives
them to keep on learning about everything and anything they can.
Works Cited
"Advice for Aspiring Animators." PBS Kids. 12 Nov. 2009. Web. May 2010.
<http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/blog/2009/11/dvd-review-up-and-some-advice-for-aspiringanimators.html>.
Crandol, Michael. "The History of Animation." Digital Media FX. 1999. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
<http://
www.digitalmediafx.com/Features/animationhistory.html>.
Kimball, Ward. "To All Aspiring Animators." Letters of Note. Shaun Usher, 11 Nov. 2009. Web.
<http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/11/to-all-aspiring-animators.html>.
Lightfoot, Nataha. "Animation Toolworks' Library - 12 Principles." Animation Toolworks - Home of
the LunchBox DV, LunchBox Sync. Web. 28 Apr. 2010.
<http://www.animationtoolworks.com/library/article9.html>.
Llwellyn, Richard. "Chronology of Animation." Animated Divots. 4 Apr. 2010. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
<http://www.animated-divots.com/chronst.html>.
Mayerson, Mark. "Advice to Graduates." Mayerson on Animation. 25 Apr. 2010. Web. 10 May 2010.
<http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/advice-to-graduates.html>.
Thomas, Cassandra. E-mail interview. May 2010.
Thomas, Frank, and Ollie Johnston. Disney Animation: the Illusion of Life. New York: Abbeville, 1981.
Print.
TV Tropes. "Disney Animated Canon." TV Tropes. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisneyAnimatedCanon>.
Wikipedia. "List of Animated Television Shows from 2000s." Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animated_television_series_from_2000s>.