Ollie Johnson 1912-2008

I just found out that the last of the infamous Nine old Men from disney, Ollie Johnston, has just passed away at the age of 95. For those few who do may not know, he was one of 9 of the original animators who were around at the very beginning at disney working on some of disney's finest and memorable movies such as Snow White, Pinoccoio, Peter Pan, and many more during his time at disney. His passing is truly the end of an era where Disney animation was at it's finest and most rewarding and he will be truely missed.

For those who wish to know more, here is a link to numerous information and videos concerning his time at disney.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/ollie-johnston-1912-2008#comments

Naruto fighting Venom?

This is a rough animation I did a while back. Just wanted to post up something. It's more I wanted to do with it but ran out of time. I have other projects that I want to work on and post up here and then I'll get back to this one. Alot of people want to see this finish. Let me know what ya think!

My first Post, Sorry i'm slacking!

Hi all, Here is my first post I created the following 2 sec animation using 3DMax the program is pretty smooth and I really had no major problems with it. I edited the piece in Permiere and added audio there as well. Both the audio and the tutorials for the animation I got for free on the internet.
http://www.revver.com. The link is to get there, once there type in "3D animation tutorials" in the search box, you'll get tons more and for various platforms. My animation was short due to time deadlines and the fact that I only had 2 days to work on it. Well I hope to put up more than just this post in the near future. I have to give credit where credit is due, thnks Mainasha for keeping the torch burning this site is full of info I just hope people are taking advantage! If you have any questions hit me up!

April 5

I am done with this series of walk cycles. the whole post of this exersice is to show how by changing the middle extreme of a walk cycle you can get a big variety of different types of walk. On some of the passing positions I had to add a hold so you can register the change. I should have just inbetweened the poses so that I could get a smooth transition and really show how different it could be but I decided not to just for the sake of completing the exercises. Anyway you will see 5 different walk variations here.

More to come.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/4508walk.swf

another one of the point made in the richard williams book was the use of squash and stretch on the figure of a fat guy walking so I took what he had and exaggerated it giving him a floppy sloppy mound of belly fat. I played with what I have learned about anticipation as well. They say you should hold a pose to the very last second before adding a drastic change in order to get good snap and to help the audience really feel the action so I had the fat rise up and hang at the top of the movement and on the down position I it all falls down. I like it. I am starting to really feel the timing of things more naturaly so that makes me happy.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/40508fatwalk.swf

April 3 walk cycle

Here is todays walk cycle. this time with a squash in the passing position. here you can see that is takes the earlier walk cycle further in movement by accentuating the downward movement so that is snaps up into the new position. I could easily smooth these out by adding some inbetweens so that there is more fluid motion in the up and down but since these are only for the purpose of learning I am choosing not to and will just move onto the next cycle. It would probably even look cool if I added some anticipation to the head and shoulders as he rises into the upward position But oh well. Again these are coming from the Richard Williams book.

I find myself really watching people to see the different types of walks while I am on the way to work. I noticed men seem to have more of a side to side bobbing in the upper torso when they walk where as women, especially in heels, walk with a much smaller steps and less up and down. but it depends on the girl. the really girly uppity types take it much more to the extreme walking with there head high. The more relaxed chicks have a bit wider stance but still not nearly as long a stride as what men have. I also noticed some men really walk with a lot of pep in there step and have a great deal more up and down than side to side.

And then some people walk like they are just plain exhausted. But I know where they are coming from.


http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/4408walk.swf

april 2 walk cycle

Here is another one this time with a slight change. instead of going up higher in one of the frames he goes down and it causes a nice snaping motion as he rises into the passing position. It is kind of nice cause it gives him a little pep in hie step.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/4308walk.swf

New walk cycle

reading the richard williams book. read it more closely this time and it didn't take nearly as long to do this walk cycle. he was saying the walk cycle is one of the most difficult things in animation. I can belieave it. it is easy to get arms and legs confused. I notised in the art of disney book I have they pust arms and legs in 3 different colors when working on diffucult walks and movements so they can keep them from getting confused. Williams also talks about using different colors when you start out with the walks. so I went ahead and did this acording to the book. the first of many.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/33108walk.swf

Back to the hoop roughs

So I allowed myself to get so intimidated by the paper that I couldn't seem to draw this. The problem comes from me not having a whole lot of animation paper to start and not wanting to waste it on testing and testing to get this right.

Anyway, so I posted the old hula hoop animation on Drawingboard.org and someone over there said they took a long good look at it and decided to try drawing it out themselves to help me out. He did it in flash and published it out as a animated gif to if you want to take a look at what he/she did here it is.



That is when I got the bright idea to rough the movement out in flash and play with it till I get the timing and spacing right. I started out with way to many inbetweens but I figure hey I can always take some out tight. Here is the first test. This was done mainly to get the movement I wanted worked out.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hooprough.swf

This next test was done after removing some of the frames to speed up the motion and get the timing better under control. I was trying to put more emphasis on the main poses cause I thought those were important for the viewer to see.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hooprough2.swf

test 3 I added the hoop. it looks so bad. I need to go look at the video I have a lot more so I can see how the hoop is really supposed to look on the body. I am still tweeking this animation. I will try to finish it soon. after that I will move to paper. any feed back would be good. I was trying not to look at his version to much cause I didn't want it to influence me to much. I want to make sure I am using my own ideas and not taking from other peoples but at the same time it helps a lot to I may take a look at his drawings. see how many he has, and try to play with my timing some more until I get it right but I want to reference live action first.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hooprough3.swf

Anyway that is what I have for today.I know I haven't been posting a lot but that is cause I have been spending time looking at animation reading and well being intimidated. I also want to post up a walk cycle today. So I guess I will be back later.

UPA (United Productions of America)

These Guys revolutionized animation. Because of this group (company) animation was brought into a modern era, in the paraphrased words of Dan Haskett. I called him today to question him about the group and he gave me lots of information. it is funny cause it wasn't till I started digging for info on the animation industry that I found out about them and even then the info was sparse at best. These are the guys that are responsible for Mr. Magoo. And a today change in design and mood and feel of cartoons after Disney had his rain of terror on the industry and people were getting tired of talking fuzzy animals that sing and dance and follow women around.

Apparently UPA came along not to long after the very BIG Disney strike where a whole lot of Disney animators that were really unhappy with Disney Studios and the state of the industry stood up and started refusing to be mistreated and taken advantage of by business execs taking all the glory like they did most of the work.

It if funny how us artists just want to draw and not deal with to much of the politics of things only to realize that we are giving away our control. Anyway, Dan gave me a few things to look into. And he said if I had more question he would love to tell me more so that is really exciting to me. When I asked him about it to start he was curious to know why I was asking and then gave me lots of info on the history! He also suggested I look up UPA and a few artists that did work for them so I will post some of that here for those interested.

One of the Guys he told me to look into was Jack Schnerck. There are some demo reels on Youtube of his work in commercials. I remember some of these from when I was a child.







I also wasn't aware that UPA was still around but they are! so I found the website and started looking into how they view there history! so check it out!

http://www.upapix.com/pages/history.htm



SEMPE!


I am in love with a new artist. He is a french artist named Sempe and I wanted to post up some of his art so I can come back to it easily. I love french artists!! The Temple Of Seven Golden Camels is really excellent that is were I found info on the artist.

So if interested check it out! http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2008/01/second-look-at-semp-and-some-blake-and.html


The other cool thing they have is an article on drawing Cluter and designing it so it looks interesting and doesn't tired the eye and I loved that article as well!Anyway if you wanna learn something new go look at these things. They will brighten your animation world!

Temple of the seven golden camels

I found an amazing blog, basically it is everything you want to know about story boarding film making and animation. sO i PLAN TO SPEND MANY OURS STUDYING FROM IT SO i CAN START WORKING ON MY LAYOUTS FOR MY 2 SHORT FILMS. i KNOW THEY ARE PILING UP ON ME. THE OTHER DAY i WAS DRAWING DRAGONS AND WATCHING LOONEY TOONS AND i THOUGHT (Opps hit the cap lock.) How awesome would it be to draw hula hooping dragons and man my imagination just kinda took off from there. I am crazy. forgive me. anyway check it out if you wanna learn something new.


http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2007/02/tom-oreb-draws-ward-part-3.html

Candy Peters

I did a full body character study of candy. She has no hands and no feet cause I designed her that way. I like her final design I think she is funky but of course she won't be hula hooping in this when I start animating her. Actually I had several Ideas for her out fits.

Personality is a very intensely hyper happy girl. She is a day care instructer and she like to get her groove on at night. she has a passion for dance and is very good natured at most times just don't make her mad or try to steal her spot light.

I have a full story behind her. but I want to star by just practicing animating with her.

My hula... ok... not!

mainasha got me on this hula thing and I tried my hand at it. I didn't have enough time to really put some work into it but it something. You know it looks more like a dance... hmmmm...

Revival of the Blog!!!

Well it looks like the blog is finally up and running so I thought i'd put my little contribution. I ran accross this site awhile back called character designs which is basically a site that has alot of references for life drawing and a profile area on individual artists. It's pretty useful to research posing or to just look at others artwork. I plan to try to update more on the site so even if no one else sees it, it'll at least be something for me an arie to bounce off cool links from one another occasionally. Just for fun i'll put up some character design stuff i'm doing for a future animation. The design is pretty rough but it's basically how I want him to look. Still expirementing with it. I'll also throw in some darkstalkers art just for fun. It's not completely finished but it dosen't seem like i'll get back to finishing it anytime soon so why not.

Here's the link: http://www.characterdesigns.com/

Walk cycles

Walk cycles are a pain in my ass. I get the arms and the legs all confused and stuff. This will be the first of many. i think this took ma about an hour cause I get confused. Grrr... I am not even trying to maintain volume or anything. It is all about just doing it and working through them cause walk cycles are kinda laborious to me.


http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/walkcycle1.swf

Anyway, here is the first one. I think the goal will be to be able to do these with my eyes closed in the end.like they say 99 percent practice 1 percent theory.

I also wanted to post up some links to a few really cool blogs I found today. some of these people are act not animators but the work is undeniably amazing. So please visit them and enjoy the wonderful art.

I might do more of these tonight so I might add some to this post. Have a good day.

~Arie

http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/
http://canepabarbara.blogspot.com/
http://shojinstudios.blogspot.com/
http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/
http://gorblat.blogspot.com/

http://derickbrooks.blogspot.com/
http://john-nevarez.blogspot.com/
http://tropicaltoxic.blogspot.com/
http://joshuamiddleton.blogspot.com/
http://pacodesiato.blogspot.com/

http://ohranny.blogspot.com/http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
http://lambey.blogspot.com/

the last of this hula test

ok here is the last edit on the hula hoop from the rear veiw. I don't plan to work anymore on this animation cause I want to move on to other practice things.

enjoy!

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hulatest3.swf

the transformation

One of the story boards that I was working on thumbnailing had the flour sack transforms and grow arms and legs,and then eventually growing a head. so here is the arms and legs popping out of the body for ya. the sack gets bigger when it jumps in the air but that is cause it kinda changes size once it grows arms and legs.

Anyway it has problems but that is ok. It is practice. I do feel I am getting better. the studying I am doing has helped a lot cause I am finding myself thinking about things and trying to apply it. I love the Richard Williams book so much. It has been a great help. The illusion of life is also a great help cause they animators discuss having strong poses and what it was like when they first started animating. Once my character gets a head I will start my walk cycles and stuff. I will get back to animating on paper a little later. I get intimidated cause A. I don't have a whole lot of animation paper and B. it takes me a while to get things scanned so I can test it on the computer in flash. Flash frees me in a since cause I can test things immediately and tweak it. I think it will speed up the learning process a great deal.

anyway here it is

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/floorsacklegs.swf

Hula Hoop Obsession

So as you know I was working on drawing a big girl hula hooping! I am moving on from the other one. I just need to add a few things to the original and then I will start on this new one that I have almost all the poses for.

The other one I did one day after this idea of a Phat girl hula hooping against a skinny girl in a contest. I posted the mini thumbs of that earlier this week. So I did the first animation that you saw a while back and that was fun but it wasn't really there in terms of movement. So now I am trying to take it a step further. So what you will see on this post is the thumbnails and the pose planing that I have been working on for my girl. Oh and by the way her name is Candy Peters. I thought I would post these cause today I am working on hula hoop observation. You tube has a wealth of videos. I actually didn't use these for these poses though. These poses were done about a week ago in the bus on the way home. and not all at the same time. I even found a video of a phat girl that hoops and she gives very good instruction on how to move the hoop up and down the body and how you have to use a bit of foot work to really get the motion going. She is awesome. So enjoy. I will be back later.

Happy Feet

Yes I said happy feet. You know how you think a movie is just a repeat of many things you have seen over and over so you say I am not going to bother. Well I wanted to see some cg today and I sat down to officially watch this film and I have to say I was very surprised. The message in this movie is progressive and loving. Being the animal lover I am and my interest in animal rights. The film actually caught me off guard. As the movie progressed I found myself wanting more and more. It was like mumbles was the ghandi of the penguin world. It was a good film. I really enjoyed it and I was happy to see a film that offered more than a cheap laugh and a few dance steps. i know I am late on this one but as they say. better late than never. I think I will buy the dvd.

Anyway I owe you guys some animation. I should have some done today. I have spent the last few pays studying and doing character design stuff. I will upload later today. It is crazy cause my mind feels so open. So many things I didn't understand last year make so much since now since I have been studying on my own. Anyway if you are like me and you never gave happy feet a chance. I am here to tell you to give it a go. Even if you rent it. you may be pleasantly surprised and it has a great message for both children and adults which I love a story that has meaning and I hope you do too!

Thumbnails are important!!

Today I want to talk about the importance of thumbnails. As a comic artist thumbnails always came natural. you draw the lay out of how you want the page to look and once you get it right you can blow it up or redraw it at a larger size and start adding your details to the drawing. Then you tighten it up and whala finished pencils ready for the next step in the process. But in animation Thumbnails can serve both the same and a different purpose. You see in comics I never thought of doing thumbnails as that important cause they can change. Heck if you want and some people do, you can just work rough on your paper and skip the thumbnails all together.

I mean really there isn't a lot of details you can get in on a tiny page layout other than where you are going to put your boxes. But in animation it can be extremely important cause you are planning your actions and your timing all at once. You have to plan your acting out so that it fits the dialog and you have to know how the character will move so you don't waist to much time trying to fix things when you actually start the animation process. Heck I even read that it is important in 3d to other wise the process can take longer. Especially when working pose to pose.

Anyway I saw a wonderful video the other day where Andreas Deja is showing off some of Frank Thomas work. And the thumbnails he did for the scenes he worked on. all of the lined up neatly in a row with the dialog underneath the poses. Andreas goes on to talk about how Thomas often did multiple pages of thumbnails before settling on how he wanted to act out the scene.

If you check out a little website called Animation Meat

you can find a great little resource in the notes section that talks about some of this. Anyway I did some thumb nailing and planning of my own yesterday but I didn't get to post it last night cause I forgot it and left it at work. I planned out the action for my next flour sack animation which I talked about yesterday and I also planned a few story board ideas. anyway I hope you enjoy. I should have some finished animation to post tomorrow.









Just for fun here are some scenes from sward and the stone.

I draw on paper!

Yes I do yes I do. lol. It was an interesting day. I thumb nailed some actions out for my next sequences. I have to scan them. non the less I started planning ideas for a short film. It is the type of thing I would have done had I went back 3rd year to the kubert school only better cause I don't have the constraints of school to limit me.

I took one of my old ideas and decided to expand on it and do a short film. maybe up to 5 minutes or so. All the characters are designed for it but I have to redraw the story boards cause I am changing the BG and the location. The original idea was more for a e card idea I was doing cause I was determined to do it in flash. This time though I plan to do all hand drawn digital colored animation. I haven't decided on the final look yet though but I want it to be kinda rough and lively.

I also thumb nailed out the actions for the next part of my flour sack animation. So I have a lot of things to work on. they seem so small though.

I recently became obsessed with Richard Williams. I always saw animation as a way to play God cause you create and give life to things that exist only in your head. Then I found those movies about him and started to just fall in love. He really sees animation as a true art form and not a kids medium for advertising toys and games. I love how he described how much he loved art as a kid and he kinda abandoned it for a little while for Rembrandt and when he discovered animation he saw it as the ultimate art form like what if Michaelangelo or Donatello or Rembrandt were animators.

To me it really is the ultimate art form. I mean it requires the study of all life and movement and habits and then translating it into a believable medium that tells stories and even effects peoples lives on levels beyond what people may think. I mean think about it. Disney is a house hold name. we grow up with it and we share it with our kids. it can teach as well as torment society. And though 3d animation is beautiful there is no beauty as great as hand drawn crafted animation.

But i degress, I always liked his book, the Animators Survival Kit
I bought it last year and started reading and enjoying it. It is like reading a story it isn't so much a text book. It is like someone is speaking to you in clearly explaining there experiences in life and showing you what they have learned rather than the text book approach on straight ahead technique. it reminds me of the animation podcast on occasion cause he talks about his experience learning from great animators of the past that are now retired or have passed away.

Anyway i found nice article on what he is doing now that he has released his book ans started teaching. you should check it out. Enjoy!

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=1291&page=1