Animation Notes 12/7/89 - Everything You Do Must Be Believable

Here are notes from Tissa David's lecture of 12/7/89.

Page one discusses rotoscoping.

Most of the lecture is on weight (and on page one it's relation to rotoscoping) and timing.

Every 5 rotoscope drawings
Trace movement action

Live action constantly moving so you can not have poses.

Click images to enlarge.

6 frames is hesitation.  8 frames - 12 frames (hold).

Don't add extra unnecessary actions that have nothing to do with your purpose of telling your story.  Subtleties and sensitivities that add to your purpose are fine.

Anything for 2 frames is invisible unless you hold it for 6 frames.

Everything you do must be believable.

Black Hole

Here's the latest of our pieces with Steve Brodner for PBS' "Need To Know".

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

This one was pretty simple in concept and execution -except for Steve's hand never clearing frame! -We need clear frames in order to present the illusion of seamlessness. To make up for it, we used a lot of cross-dissolves.

Typically, I don't like to cut with dissolves but for these pieces it's a necessity.

The conceit behind the single camera, single point of view shoot is that you're in real time conversation with the subject. Since we're constantly speeding up and slowing down actions through time remaps and animation it's necessary to preserve a visual seamlessness. That's the number one editorial priority.

In any event, this was a pretty simple concept. Steve and Gail got an approval on the concept Monday after a couple days of quick research. We shot it on Tuesday. Loaded in the footage from the P2 cards and had an audio cut by early evening. Wednesday we fixed up the picture and we delivered Thursday at noon.

The broadcast version, again, is much superior because of the soundtrack. PBS has carte blanche to use any music royalty free for broadcast and we take advantage of that. That right doesn't extend to the web so we deliver a music free version. Another day and another few grand in the budget we could do a royalty free stock online delivery -but that's the news business. No time, no money.

Sounds like all production these days.

In any event, click through to the PBS site: HERE and leave them a comment.

Rocket Man

Here are frame grabs from the first of three Banco Popular commercials that were produced at The Ink Tank in 1997.

A few days back, we posted the agency storyboards.

The agency's four panel plus logo thumbnail board was transformed into an epic :30 space journey by illustrator Carlos Aponte and animator Doug Compton.

I think the final film is a little busy. There are something like 15 shots, some very dynamic in the 27 seconds you get before the logo.

This could be an example of pushing it too far. But the film works because of the cool design and, believe it or not -the Elton John soundtrack.

The impact in frame 9 here is literally 2 frames on the film.  It's easy to miss, and if you miss it the stuff that follows doesn't make sense.

An action like that needs to be telegraphed.  At the very least it should be in close up so we see it happening.

Sure, the idea is that the guy is in the middle of Nowheresville, Milky Way and that it's a lonely crash.  But what does that matter if we don't know he's crashed because we can't see it.

Doug also did some strong dynamic animation.  These characters are difficult to move because they're so stylishly rigid.

All the major camera moves are animated.

Airbrush on cel.  Most likely Tom Hachtman's handiwork.

The shapeship morphs into the card for the final frame.

Here's the video:

Troubles Models

Anezka Sebek called the other day to let me know I had some binders in her office.

I thought they were just photocopies of readings, but it turns out one was a model book we sent to the Poland animation facility for the second season of Troubles the Cat for Sesame Workshop (then The Children's Television Workshop).

The book contains turnarounds for all the characters and painted color models for all the characters and props.

This was painted on cel and the Chromacolour numbers are indicated. We used Chromacolour because it's cheaper in Europe.

For those who haven't had the "pleasure" of working on cel.  This (above) is what the back looks like.

Inking is done on the front, color on the back.  Dark colors are painted first so they don't show through lighter tones.

This (above) is three 8 1/2 x 11 pages combined.

Note the lack of "anatomy" in the right most drawing.  After the dailies for first episode of season one, CTW pointed out a little black dot just below the tail.  We had animated the cat a little too realistically.

This was corrected with the first use of After Effects in any production we worked on.  Mike Turoff framed through the transferred video and removed the bit of biology.

In designing characters, pose drawings are more important than turnarounds.  Sure, animators will ultimately want to see the character from every angle but it's more important to see how the character moves.

These are idiosyncratic designs.  The poses demonstrate how the line contributes to the character -it's expressive and loose.

The cat was then used as a unit of scaling to all the other characters.

You can do that with a grid, in this instance we didn't want to be so rigid.

These characters were designed by Santiago Cohen. The color styling was Elli Albrecht.

Strand Price: $3.50

Here's a little gem of a book from 1984.

Susan Rubin, Animation: The Art and the Industry

The book is similar to Kit Laybourne's "Animation Book" from around the same time.  It walks through techniques and process in a cursory manner.

Two things set it apart.

First, it's illustrated by the great Joey Ahlbum who must have still been at SVA.

Second, the last chapters are devoted to interviews with animation artists and producers.  Some were up and comers -"assistant animator/former in-betweer" J. J. Sedelmaier, "animator" Candy Kugel, "airbrush artist/illustrator" Mark Kaplan.  Others were veterans whose names are seldom mentioned today -producer Harold Friedman, director Stan Smith, cameraman John Rowholt.

New York Stuff

There are some weeks in New York when you can fill your social calendar with animation events.

The first of a few good ones was last night at SVA.  Frank Mouris presented some of his films under the auspices of ASIFA-East and Women in Animation.

Also this week, Tale at Galapagos in DUMBO on Thursday.  I haven't been to Galapagos (in any incarnation) since they were assholes to us on the shoot for Dr. Worm around 1999 but if you don't hold grudges over unwarranted professional hassles you should attend what looks to be an interesting show.

Then Friday, Patrick Smith is showing his new film at the 93rd Street Y in Tribeca.

Frank Mouris' talk reminded us how animated film, at one time, was closely connected to experimental film.  A short could have festival success, community acclaim and an appeal to the avant garde.

Agency Boards

Sometimes advertising work boils down to executing the agency's ideas.  Those are usually the crummy jobs.  Creatively crummy, that is.

The best advertising work happens when everyone involved understands and respects everyone else's expertise.

Here's an example of how some great advertising work began.

In this board the agency laid out the basic idea.  We'll post the final film in a few days.  You'll see that the idea remains consistent but it becomes a well designed film.

Again, you get the plot points but not a shot breakdown.

The agency uses these boards to sell an idea to their client.  Hopefully, they've managed their clients expectations so they know these are rough ideas and the final film will look much different (and hopefully much better).

This will be the most dramatic transformation of the three.

In all of these the illustrator Carlos Aponte was instrumental in creating a cinematic dynamic.  In this third he and Tissa David reworked it so that it became a :15 second drama.