Squash and Stretch More Than Bouncing A Ball (Part One)

The first full episode of my YouTube series is now live!
If you enjoy it, please subscribe and leave a comment on my YouTube channel.
I'm now editing the next video, and as I plan on maintaining a weekly schedule, it will be posted on my channel Saturday, October 28.

Old School Field Guide Area & Basic Scanner

Old School 12Field Guide scanned on basic home scanner

As part of my mission to keep old school animation alive, I want to point out inexpensive ways to create it.

One of the biggest expenses in creating animation electronically is buying a Cintiq or some such tablet. The mistake is to think that having the latest equipment will make your art better.

Getting the largest Cintiq to draw on doesn't mean you'll be able to draw better, it just means you'll have the ability to draw more complex designs. But since most modern day animation is being watched on small devices like iPhone, iPads and computer screens, I suggest character designs should be simple in order for facial expressions to be legible.

And if you want to draw those simple characters on paper, you can use 8.5 x 11 inch paper, scan it on a basic home scanner/printer, and import those JPEG files into a basic animation/coloring program.

Let me point out to you that all those classic Warner Brothers, Disney, Max Fleischer, MGM, and Terrytoons theatrical short cartoons were drawn on a maximum 12 field area...and projected onto screens at least 15 feet  high and 45 feet wide.

My 16-year-old Epson scanner

One of my rough poses scanned on my old scanner

The following three Popeye animation poses appear to be drawn on 8.5 x 11 inch paper.

Here's a scan of some Batman and The Joker animation poses I drew on 8.5 x 11 inch paper for that series of Zeller's Batman TV commercials run in Canada back in 1988.

I want to encourage you to think simple...you can get great results with basic tools!

My Disney Letter And The Road It Set Me On

I had finished my summer school animation night class at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and decided to apply to Disney. For my portfolio, I sent in my one-minute-long silent pencil test I'd completed as my class assignment...which was the very first (and only) animation I'd ever done. This is the response I received.

Below is the one surviving animation drawing from my very first piece of animation (a rabbit character boxing with his own shadow), which is the film the above letter refers to.

 
Six months after I received the Disney letter of rejection, I was hired in 1975 at New York Institute of Technology as an inbetweener to work on "Tubby the Tuba"...where I met and worked under the master Popeye and TerryToon animators Johnny Gentilella and Marty Taras. During the 14 months I worked on that feature, I developed into a Cleanup Assistant Animator...which led me to getting hired in 1976 for "Raggedy Ann & Andy", directed by Richard Williams...which led me to getting hired by Friz Freleng as an animator in 1977.

But when I tried to reapply to Disney in that summer of 1977 (less than three years from my initial submission), I was told that I'd had TOO much experience and they preferred to start with younger art school students...they were clean slates that could be "molded to the house style."

The influences of working daily on those rare non-Disney features for almost two years led me on a path that enabled me to develop my own style of animation. I have NO regrets!