Blue Blazes is so good.

Screen Space vs. Physics

It's always interesting when something works in animation that doesn't abide by the laws physics. Here's an example from Chuck Jones' "Dover Boys of Pimento University".

The boys are tiptoeing over from one place to another.
First Frame

Second Frame

Third

Fourth

The strange thing is that between drawings 2 and 3 the character actually moves up in screen space. But that shouldn't happen. His feet aren't touching the ground yet. There's nothing to propel his body upward, and gravity should still be pushing it down. But if his body kept moving down there would be too much of a spacing difference between drawing 3 and 4. So the animator decided he needed to defy the laws of gravity to make the walk work smoothly. And it does. Watching the cartoon, the walk is funny, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it.

Dean Cornwell Study

Value study of a painting by Dean Cornwell. The artists back in the Golden Age of Illustration were on another level.

Animation History

There's a lot of good blogs out there for animation history.

Jerry Beck has "Cartoon Research" :
http://cartoonresearch.com/

Michael Barrier has a lot of great articles on his site, as well as a number of long books:
http://www.michaelbarrier.com/

And the recently departed Michael Sporn kept a great blog with lots of animation knowledge over here:
http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/

Reading animation history is useful to deal with frustration of how time consuming and difficult doing animation is. People in the past were struggling with the same issues of how to plan their shots, properly pose their characters, time out actions, make lipsynch work, deal with administrative demands, and figure out how to hit deadlines. Many CG animators get frustrated when looking at the graph editor and realizing how analytical animation can be. But take one look at a traditional animation exposure sheet or the effort Chuck Jones spent timing actions to music, and you'll see that animation has always been about careful, meticulous planning with heavy doses of logical thinking. It has to be. The process is too labor intensive and expensive not to carefully plan out. The trick, I think, is finding out how to internalize the planning so it becomes an organic part of the creative process. But knowing this on a theoretical level isn't the same as putting it into practice. This is something I'll only gain over time.

All of the above listed blogs mostly deal with American and European animation, with a bit of attention paid to Miyazaki. For a much more in-depth look at contemporary and historical Japanese animation, Ben Ettinger has a great blog called Anipages:

http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php

Anipages is probably my favorite animation site because of how few sources exist in English on anime production. There's so many movies Ben talks about that I wish I could track down and watch, though most don't exist in digital form. And the forums are a great place to get feedback. Every so often someone like Peter Chung or Bahi JD will stop by with some amazing knowledge about a production or how to make better animation. Highly recommended.

Koike Studies

Studies of major poses in the running animation from "World Record" by Takeshi Koike. One of my favorite animated shorts from Japan, though all the Animatrix shorts are pretty excellent. They make that whole franchise worth it.

CGI Anime

A number of Japanese studios have been experimenting with cell-shaded 3D in the past decade. It's  useful, saving time and allowing more distinct animation frames to be created with less time spent on inbetweening and coloring each drawing. In my opinion there are two really standout studios doing this kind of work, Sanzigen and Kamikaze Douga.

An example of Sanzigen's work:

An example of Kamikaze Douga's work:

Looking at Kamikaze Douga's work in particular, they use CGI technology to add texture to their rigged models. And they use traditional FX animation to provide some visual variety. Sanzigen uses the great Pencil+ plugin for 3DS Max to be able to explore a range of styles with lines and shadows that stay visually consistent and appealing. It's light-years away from the toon shader in Maya. The team that programmed Pencil+ made sure that it attempts to capture good shape design in the shadows. It adds a sense of intention to the CGI "drawings" that computer animation usually lacks.

One thing I don't understand though is why the recent series "Knights of Sidonia" and "Ronia the Robber" are being done in CGI. Both have relatively simple character designs and would look much more appealing if they were drawn. And neither series is taking advantage of the Pencil+ plugin, so shadows sometimes get that jagged, unintentional look, making the jerkiness of the animation seem like a mistake. I wish the studio, Polygon Pictures, would at least get the Pencil+ plugin, but it won't fit in their pipeline unless they're using 3DS Max.


Here's an example of an ideal form of CGI/cell-shading. This Gobelins short uses texture combined with hard and soft shadows and great art direction for a distinctive look. Plus a really funny script.

Animation Bits

I mostly do CG but have been trying some hand-drawn stuff that has a minimal number of frames. Many of these are based on reference, though none of them are rotoscoped (if they were the forms would stay more consistent, lol).