Top Secret

Can't go too much into this yet, but these are too good not to share.

Doug Compton's layout drawings for a film we're working on.

There will be a few of these short bits throughout the picture.

This particular shot will be about 7 seconds.

She's sitting by a vanity (mirror screen west).

These eight drawings are the starting point for the animation.  He'll probably do another 20 or so drawings and time and chart the remaining 60 odd drawings for inbetweeners.

Note that the detailed pattern is drawn in on all of these.  That will likely drop off from the extreme drawings and be left for assistants.

One thing he'll do (maybe we'll show when they're done), is a lot of partial drawing on the inbetweens -a blue line body with the head finished so the inbetweener doesn't have to make the face act, just follow the gesture of the body.

It's an efficient system which allows for a few important things: the most talented artist focusing on the most important parts,  less experienced animators working with a master to see how he does it, the division of labor helps hide the animator's hand allowing the illustration to retain it's original design (the several hands it passes through all refer back to the model)  and it makes production much more manageable by dividing labor into several stages instead of one "animation" chunk.