Animation Studio Setup

This is my animation work area. It's a combination of traditional animation board and computers for scanning my pencil art and importing into Toon Boom Studio. It's not glamorous, but it gets the job done.

Seen below is my animation drafting with my old Filmation disc. This can handle both 12 field and 16 field paper.

I've had this Acme Peg registration punch since 1987. I use it to punch cheap paper for my rough animation. I save the pre-punched Ingram Bond for my clean-ups.

Here are my 3 Computers: Moe, Larry, and Curly! Moe (on the left) is a Mac G3 I've had since 2001 (along with an Epson Scanner); Larry is a Mac Quadcore Tower (on the right) I've had since 2008; and Curly (in the center) is my iMac I bought in 2009.

My 15 year-old Epson Scanner...I call it Shemp (for those of you who know the Three Stooges and understand the inside gag)

 

Nelvana Seminar Notes (circa 1981): Part Three

These are the third and final set of notes from my Nelvana seminar. Please remember that I was asked to explain my personal method of animating (and the Frank and Ollie tomb "Illusion of Life" had not yet been published). We were all youngsters, experimenting on our own and trying to learn from each other.

The third seminar session consisted of answering questions that were handed in by animators a week after the first two sessions. I believe that the material covered in this series is as relevant today as it was 30+ years ago.
 

The following is how I rough out my full-size poses after working out my thumbnails.

Above is my first rough pass at a Quadhole key pose.

Above is my second rough pass at a Quadhole key pose...I mold the character's form over the forces I laid out on the first pass, making subtle changes as I feel the body reacts to those forces. This pose would be cleaned up on a third sheet of paper.

The next three sheets show how I filled out the basic posing and interpreted the timing of the previous examples shown in sessions one and two. Please refer to the exposure sheets in session one to see how I described the action with particularity. I find that writing it out in this manner forces me to analyze the movement in terms of "anticipation, action, and reaction".

If you have a mind to, you can cut out the poses (registering them by their leg placement and shifting of weight), then film them in sequence as a rough pose test, using the exposure sheet for timing.

Nelvana Seminar Notes (circa 1981): Part One

It's been a very long time since I last posted. I always promised myself that I wouldn't write just anything just for the sake of posting something on my blog. Now I have a topic that I believe will be of interest to those visiting here.

Recently in a communication with Ken Duncan (Owner/Executive Producer of Duncan Studio), Ken said "John, when I was in Paris in the 80's I thought I saw some 'how to' notes that you'd done during Rock 'n Rule.....
1- Am I delusional?
2- If not, are they available to see?"

Well, Ken is not delusional...and after searching through my files I found the original typed notes that were xeroxed and handed out at Nelvana during the production of Rock & Rule. Basically, it was an explanation of my approach and work-flow method, going from initial thumbnails through to tie-down drawings.

Originally, there were 20+ pages in my handout for the three session seminar, which took place over three afternoons, using poses of my character Quadhole the Policeman to illustrate my approach. Because of the amount of material covered, I've decided to post them all here as a series. I have also supplemented the examples with Cindy Schlepper development material I created months after this seminar was given.

(Note: At that time, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston's bible "The Illusion of Life" had not yet been published. Young animators such as ourselves were basically learning from our own experiments...studying the silent results on the studio's Lyon Lamb Video Animation System...not seeing if it worked with the dialog until it was shot on 35mm film and synced up on the flatbed.)

The following are my original typed notes from the first session. I'm including the exposure sheets and samples of my thumbnail analysis of a couple of Cindy Schlepper scenes.

 

These above poses were my very first exploratory sketches of Cindy Schlepper.

 

 

 

Above are my thumbnail analysis of the first time we see Cindy.

Cindy has arrived at Club 666 and is excited. "Oh, Boy! Mutants in the foyer!"

The following exposure sheets are for a Quadhole scene---the poses of which were originally handed out as a packet including the typed notes. I'll be posting those drawings in the next installment...and you can then cross-reference them with these sheets.

For those who are not familiar with the process, there's a lot to digest on these pages.
Hope you find it informative and useful.

The Animator's Team

Historically, the best way of producing animation in terms of both creativity and hitting production quotas was to set up animation units, whereby the various members of a unit could concentrate on certain aspects of bringing a scene to life. This was how the Disney studio set up its animation teams. At its most successful, it made for a great sense of pride and security amongst the team members that they could count on one another to get the job done.

It was also a great way of having an apprenticeship program by which everyone had the opportunity of being trained to go up to the next level; or it became apparent that a person could not handle the next stage and he/she'd gone as far as ability would let them. (The fact there was studio politics that stood in the way of deserving talent does not diminish the validity of this team concept.)

Before there were animation schools, on-the-job training was the only way to learn more than just the basics (which you can teach yourself). Even today, an apprenticeship program would be the best way of developing animation talent. But that would mean a commitment by the studio to keeping its artists employed from production to production.


The following is a basic Old School Unit the way I remember it on the feature Raggedy Ann & Andy:
1) Animator
2) Rough Inbetweener
3) Assistant Animator
4) Breakdown Assistant
5) Clean Inbetweener

Work flow:
The Animator draws the rough keys and eccentric partials. These are shot for a pose test. When the pose test is okayed by the director, the scene goes to the Rough Inbetweener who rough inbetweens the entire scene for the first action pencil test.

Once the director okays the rough pencil test, the Animator may go back in and add the important lip sync (if he hasn't already included it in his rough pass). The Assistant Animator then cleans up the keys, making adjustments so that the character is on model, and checks the exposure sheets to make sure that any leveling of the figures, overlays, etc. are correct.


The Breakdown Assistant then cleans up and completes any eccentric partials and crucial inbetweens, leaving the Clean Inbetweener to finish off the rest of the drawings.

But let's not come away with the mistaken idea that working this way was a bed of roses. The pressure on the artist to produce has always been enormous. The following is a 1976 cartoon by Eric Goldberg showing a bit of foxhole humor during my last few days on Raggedy Ann and Andy. I was leaving to start my first gig as an animator at Nelvana...and there was the assumption that I would be introducing Hollywood animation production methods to that studio in the Great White North.

X-Sheets, Exposure Sheets, Dope Sheets

X-Sheets, Exposure Sheets, Dope Sheets...these are various ways I have heard them referred to over the years. However you call them in your country, these are of extreme importance.

Here are the X-sheets for the Hank the Spider Monkey scene I've posted in the past. This is how a director can tie together all the elements of a scene.

The elements are:
Music (as represented by the "Beat" notation in the "Action" column every 16 frames;
Action (as described in the "Action" column);
Voice (as indicated in the Dial[ogue] column);
The animation drawings (in whole and on separate levels);
Camera moves (as indicated in the "Camera Instructions" column)


The far left hand column with the heading "FR" is for the exact frame count in the entire sequence this scene appears in. This starts with number 881. The red numbers that I wrote on the right hand side of the "Action" column indicates the number of frames of this particular scene. I might redesign this X-sheet, replacing the next column heading "SB" (short for "Storyboard") with "ScFR" (short for "Scene Frame").


Using this method to plan out an entire animated film is no different than a composer writing down all the notes of a symphony to be played by a 50 piece orchestra, and giving indications as to how each note is to be played by the musicians.


In planning out my animation, I describe all the particulars of the action, coordinating it with the beat. For example: I call for hitting a specific pose on the beat (Fr 935) 6 frames ahead of the word "Africa" that starts on frame 941. I then have a four frame "Magic Fingers" cycle that works within the 16 frame Beat.


It's being this specific that saves a lot of reworking of the animation after the first pencil test.

Some may ask, "What do you leave up to the animator?" My answer: "Depends. How good is the animator?"


But no matter how talented the Animator, the exposure sheets are still the Director's plans for the entire picture, tying everything together for all departments to see and coordinate with each other.

To illustrate the results of my use of X-sheets (and even bar sheets for the "West Side Story" sequence), here's a link to my first directorial assignment at Nelvana (August 1979). This is the middle section of "Easter Fever" one of the TV Specials that Nelvana produced and were aired during the late 1970s. Perhaps in a later post, I'll describe the backstage efforts it took to do this TV Special. Or if you have specific questions about the piece, I'll incorporate my answers as part of my post.


My Sequence begins at 0:29 of this clip and goes to the end of it.