Trying To Understand What Being An Animator Is Like - Part 2

This is Part 2.

What I love about animation is that it truly is "life". You can express yourself with your artistic talents to create something your mind can come up with. 

While continuing looking through the Disney Illusion Of Life book, I notice this small detail that I geniuely like alot. The close-ups mostly when two characters interact. This is a scene of Jiminy Cricket and The Blue Fairy, it's truly fascinating and such an image.

This quote kinda bugged me because it states that extreme close-ups tend to be lacking. I have no clue why, since it feels so influential and cinematic in sorta ways. Eh, maybe it was only this scene but I like it nonetheless.

Appeal is probably the biggest principle in art history. All of my characters I made, their first designs were completely different than what I'm used to drawing them nowadays. Szac used to have dot eyes, Mike The Dog was originally supposed to be a standing straight character and not a ordinary puppy and with my recent additions, Pixie Elf and James, these are what they originally looked like.

The first design for James was having human sized brown shoes and lighter skin tone. 

Pixie Elf's hairstyle looked more like a boy-band trend rather than the slim yet simple hairstyle he has today and for now on.

It's like accuracy, trying to resemble a more organic and real character. Disney, Warner Bros and Fleischer and heck even more modern animation studios, draw their first designs of the characters kinda strange and weirdly drawn. 

Imagine this being the final version of Wind Of The Willows. 

The designs we're used to are timeless for good reasons and for good merchandising and appeal. 

That's why I truly treasure the Little Golden Books and study the greats so I can get the knowledge to be inspired by all these classics that truly changed the world.

I love the simple, yet cute and amusingly original illustrations of these. I have the Santa's Toy Shop book but mine is more whiter.

This is probably exclusively Disney but what I'm learning so far about concept art and early production is that it's not only model sheets, voice acting etc, Mary Blair makes these wonderful and gorgeous pieces of art that helped the movies look more vibrant and memorable. 

These are really useful and worth studying just like storyboards. 

Next moving onto Preston Blair (again)

He's also one of the most influential artists for these publishing books alone.

Does this make you feel like you wanna start drawing?

This one too? This has more amount of animals and specific models.

This one stood out to me the most. The older versions of the Preston Blair tutorial books probably didn't have too much different styles. Mine has pages where the people look like UPA designs, it's honestly really interesting since I know people tend to like those cartoons. 

I seriously think movies like the old Disney princess movies need to come back. They were the most elegant and innocent movies I ever saw, true, not every single one of them left an impact on me, but I love the live-action, smooth, mature designs of Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. 

This is a sculpture I got at the Goodwill. I love stuff like this. I have two but I'm only going to show you this guy with the present. 

The reason why I'm showing you all of this it's because it's useful for me to get a better understanding on how to make animated characters especially humans.

More cinematic views.

Next is a more cartoony looking human being, Doc. Reasons to why I picked him is his trusty gem wagon. 

What I realized how model sheets work is that in some cases, they would use these things called "maquettes". I seen a video of an interview with someone talking to the real Preston Blair himself and it was really cool to see the amount of detail and passion each character looked into a real sculpture.

Part 3 might be next, but who knows maybe I'll go into something more different. Stay tuned though. 

Trying To Understand What Being An Animator Is Like + My Usual Drawings

 

This month has been extremely busy for me, trying to experiment what it's like to be an animator especially in the classic days. I'm obsessed with it. 

Animation to me has to be the best things to happen in the 20th century. There's alot to it than it being merely aimed at audiences and gaining merchandise. 

When it comes to Disney or heck even Looney Tunes you can recognize alot of the characters and their overall personalities and designs. But there's something about that impact they had that can't be beaten by any other cartoon franchise.

For one thing it's probably the rise of entertainment in general. These characters were mostly made in the 30s-50s before then, animation and especially films haven't reached their peak yet, they had limits like sound editing and not that much dialogue since everything back then was silent and rudimentary. But not to say it's bad by any means, but there was something so magical and impressive about the 30s-50s in particular. The rise of color, early technology and a better understanding of life.

While I was watching these films, they had so much action and nature to them. Back then, I was burnt because they felt too polished, but when watching them nowadays, it feels like these animators really had heart and passion to make all of this work, Fleischers and Looney Tunes couldn't beat Disney back then, because it meant more to the audience, the emotion, the sense of vibrant popping colors, the music even, it was peak cinema.

I need to research as to why Disney had an idea to make feature films. They had alot of potential and everyone loved them, well some of them bombed, but they are timeless even after almost 90 years.

I'm extremely drawn to realistic and moral characters nowadays. Animation is desperately a medium, so you can't rationally judge too harshly on these types of characters, they already have love and impact.

There's so much variety to classics like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella. If Cinderella, and Aurora were designed more cartoony and wacky, it wouldn't work as easily and would be forgotten and stale.

I just realized that in a page of the Illusion of Life book. One page mentions an early design of Dopey from Snow White. It looked really boring if you ask me heck Walt didn't like it either so what they decided to do was change the design to make him more playful and likeable and turns out it worked perfectly. He's definitely my favorite of the dwarfs and I dunno something about the roto-scoped characters reacting to more cartoonish and rubbery characters hits so differently it's almost out of the ordinary. 

It turns out if you make characters that have such a gratifying and imaginary design, it could have the potential to work. I'm doing it myself with a few sketches of my own princess, Flora The Forest Queen. 

This was really fun. Flora's hair has a ton of personality, she wants her hair to be shorter but it's too sensitive it stays long forever. 

Her parents fit into the category of extremely restrictive and stern. 

In my free time, it's basically the fun zone. 

I collect alot of illustration-based books like these old Disney's you see here.

 

These are a must buy if you love the classic films. There's some good drawings and story-telling. 

And yet everything seems to be perfectly fine in the toy section.

Laurel, Hardy and Fred Astaire must be having a good time being all in one group watching me draw and sleep.

I don't think I haven't showed you this picture yet below. It's one of my studies of Preston Blair character models. Still the best tutorial books I ever witnessed.

A magazine I've been enjoying alot of lately is Disney's 75th anniversary collectors showcase. I first got it at Random Treasures. This was a great find. And this page here had me thinking about how I could do my own version of my favorite musicians. 

This would be great if this was a real product.

Storyboards are key to making a coherent and well-told movie. My favorite moment in the movie Bambi, is the twitterpated scene. Faline licking Bambi is kinda inappropriate but it's so satisfying it almost doesn't matter. 

Also when Thumper is interacting with the female bunny, I love the close-up of her shiny blue eyes. Just gorgeous.  

Man, these storyboards are way more detailed than mine.

I mean obviously I have to know how to make my own storyboards more neater so people could understand, but these are just amazing. I love the final product of the bottom picture. 

Next post I'll be going through more of what I'm really invested in the world of animation and art. This is Part 1. Signing off.

Here's this amazing shot from Cinderella.