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No. 71, Me vs Toon Boom StoryBoard Pro, Part Three
The Moving Storyboard Now we get to the point where StoryBoard Pro is not just a storyboard platform but also a tool for creating an animatic. Like the storyboard itself, the animatic is a planning...
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No. 72, Rare Animation Books: The Art of Walt Disney, by Feild
The Art of Walt Disney, by Robert D. Feild, 290 pages, pub. 1942 by Macmillan and Co.First, you should understand that there are two completely different books called The Art of Walt Disney. The...
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No. 73, Rare Animation Books: The Art of Animation
The Art of Animation, by Bob Thomas, 187 pages. Pub. 1958 by Simon and Schuster. This colorful book was conceived around the Disney studio's production of Sleeping Beauty (1959) and showcases its art...
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No. 74, Rare Animation Books: The Animated Film
The Animated Film, by Roger Manvell, pub. 1954 by Sylvan Press. 63 pages. This book, subtitled "with pictures from the film 'Animal Farm' by Halas and Barchelor", was remarkable in its day for not...
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No. 75, Me vs Toonboom StoryBoard Pro, Part Four
A Note to My Readers:The internet is littered with the corpses of abandoned blogs, their authors having lost interest, become burnt-out or otherwise permanently diverted. This is not one of them. I...
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No. 76, Animated Short Subjects Oscar Contenders 2015
Today I got a chance to go and see all 5 nominees that made the final cut for Oscar contention in the Animated Short Subject category, plus 4 runners-up. Let's take a look at what we have here.The...
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No. 77, Blurring the Pencil Lines: 2D Animation in Today's Independent Films
As digital animation technology matures and disseminates down even to one-person studios like my own, the distinction between 2D and 3D animation becomes less clear--less easy to sort into just two...
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No. 78, Drawing Problem 2: Breakdown Challenge--"Pulling the Switch"
Breakdown Challenge No. 2Some of you may recall that we did this once before, in posts 36 and 37. Recently, in the course of my work on a new casino video game, I encountered another problem where the...
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No. 79, Drawing Problem 2: Breakdown Challenge—“Pulling the Switch”, Part 2
Last time I presented a drawing problem as another exercise in finding a meaningful breakdown drawing between two extreme drawings where the solution was not immediately obvious.Here again are the...
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No. 80, Why I Sometimes Don't Post Regularly
Writer's BlogWhenever I fail to post to this blog over a period of weeks or months, you can be sure there is a good reason for it. It will not be because I am bored with it, or that I am burnt out or...
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No. 81, Book Review: The Nine Old Men, by Andreas Deja.
By the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt's second term as President in 1937, he had begun to call the U.S. Supreme Court justices of the time "the nine old men" for their obstructive attitude toward his...
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No. 82, Adventures in Character Design, Part 1: Looking for My Character
What to Do when an Idea Isn't WorkingRecently I came to a place in the planning of my new personal film where I felt blocked. The concept was of two characters having a confrontation in an airport,...
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No. 83, Locked Out of Linked In Groups
LINKED OUTUpdate: as of the new year, 2016, this issue has been resolved (or my period of exile ran out) and I am now able to post to my groups once again.When you run a blog like this one, you want as...
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No. 84, Adventures in Character Design, Part 2: Promotion from Within
In my last post on this subject (No. 82) I speculated that I might find the character I needed among the existing incidental characters in my storyboard of the original concept.As I looked the drawings...
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No. 85, An Exercise in Character Design, Part 3: Within a Single Sheet of Paper
Undo or EraseAs I work on all the phases of animation production, I like to think about what goes on in the animator's head while working--in this case, my own head. As I have discovered over the past...
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No. 86, The Value of the Second Draft
There was a time when I was writing novels instead of working at animation. In that time I was seldom ever 'blocked' in the sense of being unable to move forward. Early on, I perceived that in the...
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No. 87, Storyboarding Tips: The Paper Storyboard
StoryboardingIf you are storyboarding your film or video before animating (and you should be!), how are you doing it? There are some sensible things you might do to make the process go faster and...
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No. 88, Storyboarding Tips: Thumbnails
Think Small Before Thinking BigI just re-learned something I have really known for a very long time: that working out your thinking in thumbnail-size images is a smart way to go, whether you are...
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No. 89, "Easy Way to Draw"
My first real interest in 2D cartoon animation was inspired by a 1950's TV show, Woody Woodpecker. Each half-hour show was comprised of four theatrical cartoon shorts produced by the Walter Lantz...
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Last time, in post No. 89 ("Easy Way to Draw"), I talked about some early inspiration in my life as an animator, which has left me with a lifelong fondness for Walter Lantz and his star character,...
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