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No. 111, When the Storyboard Artist Is Also the Animator...
When the storyboard artist happens also to be the animator, some things may be included in the storyboard that would not otherwise be.In my case, as an independent film maker, I am just about...
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No. 112, Richard Williams Teaches Me How to Draw Urinals
On my storyboard, I find myself still in the men's room--in the toilet. And faced with the challenge of drawing a long neat row of urinals in perspective, I soon turned to the renowned animator and...
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No. 113, Take Two
After my post about extra drawings in the storyboard (No. 111, When the Storyboard Artist Is Also the Animator) I found myself continuing to work in real time with those drawings, and I decided I...
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No. 114, The Character on the Cutting Room Floor
A frame of sequence 7 in Storyboard Pro.Having now created animatics of four of the sequences for my film Carry On, I am getting some idea of the length of the entire production. Right now, the screen...
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No. 115, The Face in the Animator's Mirror
This week I decided to discard a whole sequence of my film. It is a sequence that I had meticulously storyboarded, and that I liked a lot. I have even featured it in some posts for this blog (Nos. 111,...
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No. 116, Maquettes, Physical and Digital
My Need for a MaquetteSometimes as a 2D animator who imagines his characters in three dimensions, I have resorted to creating a maquette when confronted with difficult angles or points of view....
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No. 117, A Chuck Jones Wireframe from 1947--or is it?
No, it isn't what computer modelers call a wireframe, but it does employ the same idea of a grid of lines to define the contours of a shape.In Chuck Jones case, it is just some detail found on a model...
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No. 118, How I Got It Right--and How I Got It Wrong: Maquette, Part 2
Off and on I have slowly been working on my Sculpey maquette, which I began soon after publishing post no. 116 in which I declared that I needed to do that for one of the characters.First, let's review...
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No. 119, Maquette, Part 3
The Character Maquette RealizedFinally tore myself away from feverish storyboarding on Carry On to finish this maquette.Somewhat imperfect in its fine details, it is completely usable now for its...
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No. 120, Bring In the Crowds
If there is one thing that artists in hand-drawn animation do not like to attempt, it is probably the crowd. Doing a convincing representation of thirty or more people moving about is a nightmare, even...
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No. 121, More about Crowds
Thanks to Rafael Silva, who in a comment to Post No. 120 (Bring In the Crowds) directed me to the comments of Mark Kennedy on drawing crowd scenes in the blog Seven Camels. The link is repeated here:...
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No. 122. Maquettes, Part 4: When Is It Not a Good Idea?
Maquette: When Not to Make ItLet's talk about when it may not be a good idea to create a maquette.To review, for animators a maquette is a little model of a character for use as drawing reference. When...
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No. 123, The Empty Wall: Approaching an End to the Storyboard Phase
When the wall was busy. This is before I settled on a more formal 7 x 7 pattern.For months, my storyboard pinup wall has been covered with storyboard panels--not just one set of 40 or 50 drawings, but...
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No. 124, Storyboarding into Animation
Confronted now with the prospect of animating all the many scenes I have storyboarded, the question of priority presents itself. How do I do this? Do I pick my favorite scenes and do them first? Do I...
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No. 125, Storyboard into Animation, Part 2
I have mentioned before how the animator as storyboard artist might often put more into the storyboard than an artist who does not animate would do. But when it gets into actual animation, that...
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The Pencil TestLast time (post No. 125) I showed you key drawings from my animation of a scene of the Old Man, along with the storyboard panels upon which they were based.Now I have finished the pencil...
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No. 127, A Worthy 2D Kickstarter Project
Quentin Blake's "Clown: Thrown Away"There is a little 2D animated film that wants to be made which deserves support. Clown: Thrown Away, based upon a children's picture book by Sir Quentin Blake, is...
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No. 128, Animatic Private Viewiings
Preview AudiencePeople's reactions to my animatic are diverse.Some creative arts are commonly accomplished more-or-less alone. Painters, poets, novelists and composers, for example, often work by...
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No. 129, Working Hard at Animation!
I have been busy since my last post as I start to do animation from my A list: the scenes that are the most challenging and or the most important in my film. (See post no. 124 for a description of the...
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No. 130, Staying on Model
"Staying on model" is a subject that comes nowadays under the heading of THINGS-A-2D- ANIMATOR-STILL-HAS-TO-WORRY-ABOUT-BUT-WHICH-A-3D-ANIMATOR-NEVER-EVEN- HAS-TO-THINK-ABOUT.The cgi animator working...
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