Cours Toujours (made for fun!)

By Elise Garcette and Olivier Barré. The key thing is that they made it for fun! In a world where people strive to make art for money, sometimes they forget to make art for themselves and for fun. One of the awesome powers of an animation student is being able to make animation for fun rather than clients. (and I like the music)

The Deep - PES

Animation Drawing - Try a soft-B pencil

When we sat down around the studio table for our first animation class, our first ruff draw, I asked what do the new animators like to draw with?



As we draw I continue to talk. Animators go into the zone while drawing. That's an 'altered state of awareness', usually an alpha state. A place with no time, a place where cats spend most of their 9 lives.



I talk hoping that the animators are engrossed in their altered state and not consciously listening. So I can implant an idea in their brain - "Use a soft B pencil. 4B or 6B is good. Like Glen Keane." Work ruff and loose, tease your drawing out of the lines, the arcs of marks.

Animation drawing is a new way of "drawing" for many animation students. The best draftspeople, the people who 'can draw', seem to suffer the most. It's because animation is about observation and thinking, and then expression. Expressing movement and motion, energy and emotion through lines and paths. Animation drawing is about observing. Eventually the drawing gains energy and reality starts to look different the more you study animation.

6B or not 6B... or maybe 2B? That is the question.

The Art of Glen Keane Blog.

"Draw Clear Not Clean," Ollie Johnston

Addicted - The Old Man and the Sea - Bliss N Eso - Aleksandr Petrov

Painting over artwork. It intrigues me. Crumpling up a ruff pencil scribble used to coax a pose from a piece paper I can reconcile and understand the power in it for an animator. But for a painter working in oils or spray to obliterate their work in pursuit of an animated moment is mind boggling.

I have been over at Elle's blog. She has been researching and sharing her discoveries in true tertiary education style. We had a debate in class about how AfterEffects can be used to create many animated effects such as progressive graffiti style animation. As animators we should seek to understand and deconstruct the 'magic' that appears on screen to inform our own animation.

Elle posted this 'making of' clip:



Elle's research and Zade's debating fired up my curiosity. I hope you all got to see Aleksandr Petrov's Oscar winning film "The Old Man and the Sea" in you animation research classes?

The idea of painting over 'finished' work has a parallel between Bliss N Eso, Blu and Petrov's work. So taking some research energy from Elle's work I was able to find this clip to post of Petrov talking about his animation process (and hopefully proving to Zade the film was not made in AfterEffects ;) ).



All animation consists of creation and destruction of the same picture. A bit more information from Petrov (in Russian with English subtitles) about the process he uses, starting with storyboarding, with which animators will start their 2nd year of study in the course for 2011 (so it's worth watching).



Muto by Blu

The Illusionist - Sylvain Chomet

In November Brisbane animators were lucky enough to have Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist screen at the Brisbane International Film Festival. "A small, hand-crafted masterpiece." (Xan Brooks, The Guardian UK - click the link - Is 2D hand-drawn animation a dying art?)

A number of animators had been posting about the film with associated video clips (Michelle, Will). Cassie organised a sketchcrawl to the screening where Zade, Jack, Rachel, Cassie and I settled in to a wonderful animation film experience.

It was great to see animators, who I have met and by whom I had been tutored, named in the film credits.

(Gobelins Summer School 2009: Dripha, Liane-Cho and some big scary guy)

After the film, Rachel pointed me to Lian-Cho's blog where he posted some of his pencil tests (below). Thanks Rachel.

Mary & Max - parts animated by Jason Lynch

Jason was brilliant and shared some technical information support to the first year animators about compositing their films.

This is some of his work featured on Mary & Max. Don't forget to read Jason's comments under the film clip.