:: it's my birthday and i'll try if i want to ::

OK!

I'm not getting any younger, but I'm getting more pissed off that I'm so effing lazy and wasting too much time doing trivial BS.

so on this blog I've pledged a lot of "i'll get this done in such and such" sort of things and haven't done jack. Or I've attempted overly ambitious learning things like "the megabrain" that fell apart.

I have a new idea. But this time I'm going to need help getting it together.

It's a little looser and not as totally stringent as far as education goes and it works in a few steps.

This was the goal of "The Megabrain" but i never made it far enough, and I kept it a secret. Now I don't freaking care so I'm putting it out there.

Thanks to a lot of animation gurus out there we have tons of animation resources. one of my favorite blogs out there is Kevin Langley's Model Sheet Blog. This is an insane resource of magical goodness! And a while back Kevin was awesome enough to send me some extra Avery model sheets.

Here's what I think we should do if we want to learn [because I'm totally burnt out with doing clunky flash animation and not learning anything about how things should ideally be done...i've spent more time lately figuring out how to repair a gramophone than trying to find work...]

I'm going to look into a meeting space for this to happen. And we can come up with a schedule that won't screw with work and real life outside of cartoons too much.

Step 1) Get people together who are sick of this $#&% we are doing all day for work and want to get better at real animation. [I've got quite a library of people from all the other times i've said this, so i'll get on getting in touch!]

Step 2) Find model sheets [preferably more than one] of an awesome well constructed, preferably avery character or 2, using resources like kevin's site: Model Sheet Blog

Step 3) Learn those damn model sheets without injecting your "personal style" into them. Compare notes and get super aggro crit from your peers. but super posi reinforcement too!

Step 4) Animate a walk or 8 with that character you now know how to draw "on model". crit again you slob* [* talking in the third person here]!

Step 5) Settle on a general setting, bookend story and framing/field with the crew. [the actual animation of the bookend can come later/last]

Step 6) Come up with ideas for blackout gags. Scribble and loosely board. Compare notes with your totally brutal cohorts. Make sure there's no crossover, make them funnier. Just make sure that they're staged similarly and that they are in the setting allowed by the bookend.

Step 7) Settle on a general tempo for all the blackout gags. That's right i went there TEMPO. If you change tempo within your chunk then change it back by the end. I'll go though this when we get there.

Step 8) Layout ya jerk!

Step 9) CHART THAT $#!% OUT! I don't care if it's 2009, use charts and stop whining* [again third person]. "but i can just go into flash and set keys why do i need an exposure sheet?" first of all...are you really going to make your director go into every flash file and set keys? are you that lonely? you need his personal touch? Put it on an X-sheet, you've got the tempo, so you know it will sync with the music track if one is added. use that as a guide for your major actions, feel free to deviate but listen to a metronome and see how it flows. impacts that fall off the musical beat will be more surprising than those that fall on. it'll help create a subconscious flow. once it's charted, you can get someone to help you inbetween, or at least have a handy reference guide in case flash explodes [or preferably the paper you're working on spontaneously combusts]

Step 10) 9 and 10 go together, but key it up!

Step 11) now that you've actually planned you can get inbetween help...you know what...go do that! buddy system! let's trade amongst ourselves and inbetween other people's scenes. don't leave more than 3 drawings for the inbetweener. Karma is a bitch.

Step 12) Let's put these suckers together!

Step 13) Let's figure out a way to bookend our retarded gags. Setup ASAP then gag it up! Then resolve in the most absurd way possible. Iris out.

Step 14) Apply the same things we've learned in making our blackout gags in a larger scale. The setup will probably have more character and more going on, let's work together to board it, time it out, key it, inbetween it, etc.

Step 15) We know our animation will fit with the tempo we picked, none of that matching up to a waveform bs, let's make music [we can actually have this happen simultaneously if we board to our timing and STICK TO IT which is one of the points of this exercise.]

Step 16) Clean it up if we gotta! I suck at cleanup which probably means we should!

Step 17) watch our film because we just made one and it's totally hilarious!


There it is, my...apparently 17 step plan to make a short film about nothing in particular with my friends. it's an exercise that's meant to keep each other going, have fun, make something that's animated well and actually funny. This is mostly a rant because I'm mad about getting older, but I want to do this. I think we can, possibly on paper, God forbid.

I think every few months I make an angry post, hopefully they get less general as time goes on. This one is pretty specific.

I just want to make a Blackout gag cartoon. If you don't know what that is. get out of my house.

:: who's yehudi? ::

greetings gates! let's operate!

so yes, i've done far too many posts as of late. but hey! when it rains it pours. and let me tell you it's no fun catching a terrier in the eye!

today i got to thinking of one of my favorite radio personalities....

[flashback]

when i got the last golden collection, i was watching the tash disk and in the plane daffy cartoon daffy turns around and all the sudden has bug eyes and says "ahh! something new has been added!" in a crazy voice:

Plane Daffy 1
Uploaded by thadk

then later looks into the fridge and makes another crazy comment. sometimes you'll see a guy talk with that voice with an incredible mustache. it's obviously a caricature. so of course my first thought was...

WHO THE HECK IS THIS GUY!!!!

well...it's JERRY COLONNA!


[my drawing signified end of flashback]

and he's hilarious.

early on he was in a string of b movies playing in a nightclub band and a general character [he was called the professor], then met up with bob hope and basically operated as his sidekick on his radio show 'till about '48 when he was replaced by doris day to apparently keep the show "fresh". although he was still on every USO tour with hope...



and..

oddly enough, there's a lot of references to colonna in that plane daffy cartoon and tashlin went on to direct the bob hope features...and guess who popped up in em from time to time?

he was also the voice of the march hare in alice and wonderland!

this website can give you the rundown far better than i, and i'd rather not step on their toes:

ol' bug eyes

plus you can hear one of his albums "music for SCREAMNIG!" because yes...he also played trombone. amazing. and you know in cartoons when characters hold the first note of a song seemingly forever before they start? yup that's his deal too!

a lot of the jokes in looney tunes came from radio. we think a lot of the humor today is "fast paced" but a lot of the humor of the thirties and 40's was based around fast talking and general confusion...i mean ever see groucho marx in action?!

for kicks here's another good show [also including colonna] that might enlighten you to a couple other jabs the warners took at pop icons:

the bob hope show: april 8th 1947

i just subscribed to this podcast [the link will open itunes and subscribe you]:

old time radio comedy podcast

it's all comedy radio shows from the 30's and 40's including the bob hope show [with colonna], you bet your life [groucho], red skelton, and abbot and costello.

i grew up on the movies these guys made and i still think it's far funnier than anything else out there! check it out, and listen for colonna! he's totally awesome!



it's funny to me how the pop culture of a bygone era was able to become characterized in cartoons so vividly. and today the best we have to work with is referencing things. back then there were so many strong character actors that they made amazing caricatures, if not in likeness in action! the only ones i can really think of more recently are personalities like "pee wee herman," "mr. t,"or "mr. bean." television doesn't have strong characters as far as i can tell and sketch comedy is incredibly weak right now. know of any other good characters that might be worth caricaturing today?

someone strong enough that their bits or mannerisms could be understood without simply the likeness, like daffy using colonna's voice saying "something new has been added." it's tough!

:: building a bitter blogger ::

i really appreciate the sudden surge of disgruntled animators. although it's making me far more idealistic than i was two years ago even. but i know my goals now. i don't want to JUST work in animation.

i want to be a skilled cartoon animator.

that sounds stupid. "i'm serious about making funny cartoons." i feel i could make something now, with what i know now. or i could challenge, push myself to learn more AND make something. college didn't push me to learn. it asked me to work within my knowledge base. i got poor grades when i challenged myself, but i was happier and i learned more.

who else out there [i've talked to a few of you] wants to improve yourself? who wants to make "art for art's sake?" who wants to make real cartoon animation?

there's a lot of great resources out there, but if there's one thing i know we need as animators, that's organization, discipline and a schedule. i'm willing to suck it up and make one if people out there are willing to try. leave a comment *and email me* if you'd be interested in a team learning/progress/lesson blog.

*IMPORTANT! - to get into this please email me here: tomsmo@gmail.com, some blogger profiles are disabled and i can't get in touch with you!

:: upa ::

sorry for all the non drawing posts lately, i've been doing more reading than drawing.

united productions of america, was a studio and a reactionary animation movement at the same time. there's so much artwork out there people are calling upa inspired today, but it doesn't move! so without further adieu, here's some upa so you can see what i mean!

Hubley:



this is a john hubley cartoon, whose name has come up a lot recently. hubley was really big on design, and full animation. he has the most designerly of the upa cartoons, rooty toot toot above being his pinnacle, and last short. the characters are very graphic yet they stretch, morph, and change color based on emotion and personality. they express by the way they move and contort. and screen depth becomes very important. Hubley worked to go against his background of Disney cartoons, and worked away from cute design and story.

Cannon:



bobe cannon, was the other primary figure at UPA, he directed gerald mc boing boing above. egos [apparently mostly Hubley's] and sensibilities caused the two to split into two units, with animators and designers jumping between the two. Cannon came from Warners [and did work at disney and mgm for a stint]. An animator for Clampett early on [think porky in wacky land "hello bobo!"] and later Jones. Cannon's directorial style was reactionary as well. Working against stories of violence and over the top gags, which was his background at WB. he directed in a similar fashion to Jones, giving his animators drawings to work from, although they were more actual animation drawings than layouts. his designs also tend to be strong, and he used mis en scen and the backgrounds to direct attention to the characters. he definitely has leanings more in a cute direction, which is definitely less warners. in boing boing [a story by ted giesel...dr. suess!] you can really see cannon's directorial style solidify. more muted action, emotion not delivered by expression or movement, but by setting, graphic but pliable character design. he wanted to make known that the cartoon was made up of drawings that were animated, not just characters that were.

today i think people confuse upa with flat design heavy cartoons. yet neither of these cartoons are still. in the credits of both you'll see very impressive names! art babbit, grim natwick, bill melendez; all sorts of competent animators' names appear in UPA cartoons. they're anything BUT flat and motionless.

designerly cartoons can be beautiful! but take away animation and they quickly lose their appeal. even cannon's more muted cute cartoons move fluidly when they do move, often in ways that most today would consider "off model," by stretching arms without elbows and bending in unusual ways. and hubley's more stylistic designs become even less flat when they move all around the screen and show off their depth. nothing in these cartoons flips from one 3/4 view to another, everything rotates, everything animates.

upa was animation by and for artists who were tired of the norms established in the golden age that, all it's creators came from [therefore they were all rooted in classic animation principle before they experimented]. today we have this trickle down of skewed upa principles mixed with programs like flash to get a highly watered down version of graphic animation, that is flat and lifeless. a lot of that comes from people not having studied actual animation design and principle. some people out there get it though, like my bud dagan moriarty for one; check out his stuff and you'll see life in every drawing, and design principle that the likes of bobe cannon would definitely support! http://daganm.blogspot.com/. upa means design, but it definitely doesn't mean flat! don't let anyone try and convince you otherwise!

again sorry i'm so preachy lately! i'm going to try and start putting some of this theory into practice soon! ...promise!

:: lichty ::

more to come on this but:



I'm reading Michael Barrier's "Hollywood Cartoons," book, and although there's a lot of opinion injected that i disagree with, there a ton of useful tidbits too!

Apparently [according to Barrier via interviews with Clampett] Rod Scribner was pretty influenced by George Lichtenstein, above. Mainly his "Grin and Bear it," comics. He looked to stylistically duplicate the looseness of Lichty's comics in his animation in the 40's. After discussing this with Clampett, he'd get the go ahead to "Lichty it up," and do his really loose animtion. At times he'd use a brush, or ink, etc.

Scribner's a big influence for me so when I find out about where he pulled from I get excited.

:: time for beany ::

HOLY CRAP!!! i just dropped a decent coin on amazon to pick up the beany and cecil special edition dvd...but geez...it's friggin awesome! all the excerpts of clampett michael barrier uses on the golden collection dvds come from this beany and cecil dvd. it's insane. people like al pardo, mike carlo, and bob rutan better get in touch with me about checking it out!!!

also for those who haven't seen, check out this interesting article by milt gray [conductor of aforementioned interviews] on clampett and jones:

milt gray on clampett

[i'm gonna post some drawings soon too...]

:: what a TOOL ::

hey i've been posting a lot! it makes me feel like i'm getting crap done! this morning i thumbnailed the first 2 scenes of my picture [i like sayin picture, it sounds less pretentious than film...and more old timey]. i'll clean up some panels and put em up!

and it's called paper al, i think the egyptians invented it recently? i can't remember. i got a newer tablet but i still feel like i can deal with paper better!

i'd been using this ticonderoga blue pencil you can get at staples for sketching, but when i got to the light table, the lead was way too hard and i couldn't see the drawings underneath [maybe i should buy real animation paper, but i won't be able to fit that in a bulk scanner for testing...] i switched back to col erase and now i'm working with a plain old graphite 2HB because i can draw faster with the softer lead it seems. is that something you guys find useful too? i found these bob camp animation notes on goober sleave's blog [kevin langley] and it looks like he uses a really soft lead in the sketches. it's a lot of the preston blair stuff condensed, with a couple other concepts. here's a link to kevin's post with the notes:

bob camp animation notes

i think team katbot had mentioned having some similar notes passed on to them from destefano? my envy for team katbot still knows no bounds!

:: presto ::

preston blair's book animation is the best animation book ever written. richard williams' the animator's survival kit is a good companion. and i reccomend keeping an eye out for nancy beiman's storyboarding book too [which will include things like directing a character and color theory].

but mostly so i personally can find this link no matter where i am...ASIFA hollywood [why can't asifa east rock like them?!] has been kind enough to post the ORIGINAL 1947 preston blair mgm/tex avery character design pages from his book. they were taken out of the later editions...basically anything we've ever seen...and had slightly watered down versions of similar characters. it totally changes the entire experience, the mgm characters are very well designed and were always some of my favorites. i highly reccomend checking them out!

:: preston blair's animation, 1947 ::