newartofanimation

There are tons of great resources out there and animation pulls all those resources into it.

Every once in a while something really stands out and Russ Edmonds youtube channel is one of those.

Specifically this video:

And this isn’t just because of the theme’s direct content (which is outstanding) but the demonstration of storytelling with artwork. Quickly getting those ideas out in gestural sketches.

Keep up the great work Russ.

Go check it out and spread the word!

John Pomeroy has been posting some outstanding and very useful videos lately. While this whole video should be seen and enjoyed I want to highlight one area of the video as it contribtutes to a long observed and criticized process of animators reusing animation from previous films. In this section John not only fills in some important back story on shots often mentioned but also specifically details where he used the process and ratifies some previous thoughts on not just who the primary reuser of animation was in those days but reveals more of the process of traditional animation itself. (In short, artists use reference in many different ways).

It should be noted here that one reason animators of old were more likely to more closely follow reference from previous movies is that the audience weren’t going to be freeze framing and doing comparisons as we can so easily do today. It made very good sense to proceed as they did although unless specifically paying homage we’d almost always want to be more careful in how we use reference today. Use reference as the starting place but then really plus it up and make it your own. And yes, this applies to use of ai as well.

So once again it bears repeating: don’t be a newbie. Use reference.

Even better, use reference wisely.

Regarding John Pomeroy’s videos: Not only should you check this video out (in its entirety) but consider also joining his online community and workshops. Can’t afford to join or attend? Explore the near endless free resources John (and others) have posted online.

Links: https://www.youtube.com/@pomeroyartacademy

https://www.pomeroyartacademy.com/

Tell John that Rodney sent you. 🙂

My sister found this drawing I made some 40+ years ago in some of my Mom’s files.

It is drawing of a character created by Tom Sjoerdsma.

Tom was kind enough to show me around ‘Good Apple’ when I was in high school and contemplating a job in graphic arts. He revealed he had a cartoon character of his very own named Burt and shared some of his comic strips with me.

This was apparently one of several drawings I made shortly thereafter of Burt.

Many years ago (1988) when I was mostly drawing macho superheroes I would occassionally draw some girls in pretty dresses, etc. This seemed detrimental to where I wanted to go in comics or animation so I considered for some time using a pseudonym for that work. For that very brief time I signed the name ‘Kelly’ to anything of that sort. This is a modern day update to that first character I drew signed as ‘Kelly’ using AI assistants to bring the character up to date.

You’d be forgiven if you don’t quite recognize this shot of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Although any fan will instinctively know where in the film it belongs.

Perhaps the reason it feels slightly different from your memory of ‘Robin Hood’ is that I’m posting the sequence upside down.

And just how fitting is it that one of our favorite villains first appears in an inverted reflection with chaotic waves of distortion from the water ripples generated by our heroes repeatedly hammering away at his illustrious entrance.

Walt Disney’s ‘Robin Hood’ is a treasure trove of excellence and rather oddly this shot stood out when I was reviewing various shots from the film..

It’s a simple shot. The Sheriff just poking his head into the scene.

But it does beg the question: How did the team at Disney approach staging and execution of this shot?

Did they imagine it as upside down from early in development?

Did they animate it as seen here as a simple shot of the Sheriff entering the scene normally but then get the idea to get innovative and invert the shot?

I can almost imagine the animators (Milton Kahl / John Lounsbery) sitting on opposite sides of a table looking at the drawings and one of them saying, “Hey, that looks great even upside down.” That didn’t likely happen but someone was inspired to have it be an inverted reflection.

Regardless, it’s certainly a subtle yet fun way to introduce the Sheriff.

Here’s a doodle from back in the 1980’s featuring the never before revealed origin of Easter.

You see.. Ecliazekuloploppen Starbunny (E Starbunny for short) had to crash land on planet earth.

While sharing his space chocolates with the friendly neighborhood children, he hires some hippies who helpfully repair his spaceship (while adding some rather colorful painting to the exterior) and away E Starbunny goes back into space waving goodbye to his newfound friends.

All good so far. Happy Ending?

A slight miscalculation on the part of the artistic engineers fixing the ship causes the spaceship to explode and send the egg shaped parts of the ship into the timewarp. (Earthings haven’t mastered time travel at this point so how were they to know how to naviage interstellar travel?)

Now E Starbunny has to travel through time getting children of all ages to aid in the collection of the parts of his ship so he can get back home. Occassionally they collect real eggs by mistake of course and the parents… they read the whole exercise differently.

From the image I can see the reason E Starbunny crash landed was that someone was pursing him and shot him down. I had forgotten that part of the plot and how that raises the stakes by introducing someone… or something… that does not want those ‘eggs’ to be found.

I never quite resolved the pesky problem that suggests E’s home is to be found in an E star cluster. Suffice it to say, his name is ‘E Starbunny’ but he also is an E star bunny.

Well yeah. Because… Easter.

Back before computers… painting on the back of cels/plastic was a thing.

Just a reminder that the good stuff doesn’t always win the day.

Al B. Moore’s ‘Lair of the Lizardmin’ wasn’t just good… it was great stuff.

Al moved on to other fun projects: http://www.drawingitup.com/

Check them out!

Pressing toward some other things I thought I’d give SVG rotation using mouse/pen (and keyboard) a try.

Here’s a doodle from an exploration into creating a vector/raster hybrid drawing program that focuses on recording history of brush strokes. Added an option to output the sequence and this is a random doodle I was using to test fitting the output to canvas etc.

This is one of several drawings programs I’ve been creating to explore various aspects of raster and vector drawing and animation.

It has some nice potential for Undo/Redo/History stacking which is what I am playing back here but as a vector drawing program it also has some basic transform capabilty for moving, scaling, rotating selected strokes. I still need to press into Named Groups so that users can organize things and manipulate groupings. Another application that allows multiple files to be viewed at once is out there on the horizon. An ‘action’ file would then be nice to allow interpolation adjustments between these key frames of data

In the process of trying to improve SVG export I broke that functionality. Whoops!

The list of things that need to be added is long but the main purpose is to explore and learn.

I’ll be sharing what I learn as I go so I hope you’ll join me in the adventure.