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Wonderful wonderful
Since I've been home from Burning Man, I've spent most of my time resting and cleaning my studio/lab which was in bad disrepair after the months of projects. It took 3 days of almost constant work but it's finally clean...ish...
Anyhow... During all that time, I've been watching a lot of cartoons. Looney Tunes and Popeye mostly. Augh! How can anyone watch Popeye and NOT be driven into a frenzy to animate something? Popeye continues to be simply one of the most beautiful and amazing animated shows ever made. He's almost consistently fantastic to watch.
So last night I yielded to temptation and did a couple of little fiddly animations. Just playing around at the moment. It's been a long time since I've done any real animation so I'm just doing exercises. Surprisingly, I'm finding that for the most part, animation skills don't appear to rust as quickly as other skills. Or maybe I've just gotten so much better at observing and drawing that my animation has improved by osmosis. Or possibly, because I'm not heavily invested in the projects I'm working on right now, I'm stressing about them less and that makes them move easier. Whatever the case, while I still have a LONG ways to go, I'm not too disappointed with where I'm at right this moment. (Did I almost say something positive about myself? Yikes!)
Tonight I'm in for an extra special treat! Felix the Cat from the 20s compliments of Archive.org. Woot! The real Felix of Otto Messmer, not Oriolo's watered-down 'for children' version. Okay, I admit that I like the 50's Felix too but the 20's Felix is just simply amazing. Don't get me wrong. Disney did some beautiful stuff and Warner's animation is slick and expressive, but honestly, there's just something about the stuff that came from the Sullivan and Fleischer studios that just hits something for me. They're weird, surreal, strange, exotic, and completely unrestrained. They were animation for adults. They were made for the cities and the slums and the working class people. They're what I've always thought of as 'REAL' animation. They don't need to try to imitate realistic motion, they have their own life. I suppose sometimes it makes me kind of sad to see that more and more animation is moving towards being 'realistic' Particularly with 3D computer animation it's all about making something that's 'real'. Felix isn't. He doesn't need to be and I love him for it. He's the sort of animation I want to make.
Anyhow... During all that time, I've been watching a lot of cartoons. Looney Tunes and Popeye mostly. Augh! How can anyone watch Popeye and NOT be driven into a frenzy to animate something? Popeye continues to be simply one of the most beautiful and amazing animated shows ever made. He's almost consistently fantastic to watch.
So last night I yielded to temptation and did a couple of little fiddly animations. Just playing around at the moment. It's been a long time since I've done any real animation so I'm just doing exercises. Surprisingly, I'm finding that for the most part, animation skills don't appear to rust as quickly as other skills. Or maybe I've just gotten so much better at observing and drawing that my animation has improved by osmosis. Or possibly, because I'm not heavily invested in the projects I'm working on right now, I'm stressing about them less and that makes them move easier. Whatever the case, while I still have a LONG ways to go, I'm not too disappointed with where I'm at right this moment. (Did I almost say something positive about myself? Yikes!)
Tonight I'm in for an extra special treat! Felix the Cat from the 20s compliments of Archive.org. Woot! The real Felix of Otto Messmer, not Oriolo's watered-down 'for children' version. Okay, I admit that I like the 50's Felix too but the 20's Felix is just simply amazing. Don't get me wrong. Disney did some beautiful stuff and Warner's animation is slick and expressive, but honestly, there's just something about the stuff that came from the Sullivan and Fleischer studios that just hits something for me. They're weird, surreal, strange, exotic, and completely unrestrained. They were animation for adults. They were made for the cities and the slums and the working class people. They're what I've always thought of as 'REAL' animation. They don't need to try to imitate realistic motion, they have their own life. I suppose sometimes it makes me kind of sad to see that more and more animation is moving towards being 'realistic' Particularly with 3D computer animation it's all about making something that's 'real'. Felix isn't. He doesn't need to be and I love him for it. He's the sort of animation I want to make.
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OTOH, I may wander off and go hiking instead. I have some brownies to hide. :)
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In most of the WB shorts, the whole thing would be roughly timed out by the director on 'bar sheets' - simplified, empty staves, where they'd note tempo changes and give a general idea of what kind of musical mood they wanted, or the specific tune for the gag. Then they handed that off to Stalling, who would piece together a score. Sometimes he'd wait for specific scenes to be done so he could sync the music up to really erratic timing; usually they'd just animate it to synch with the same beat he'd be using.
Almost nobody in the industry times their stuff out like this any more - even aside from the insane luxury of having a house orchestra to record original scores instead of chopping together library music, animators just aren't taught how to do this kind of stuff.
Working on a Fleischer-style music video, where everything was timed to synch up to the pre-existing track, was a great experience.
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