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Character Designs and Animation
Of the classes I'm taking right now, Tuesday night is generally the most fun. It's animation history of the 1930s and 1940s. Yesterday's class... I'd hoped for more in the lecture about the studios and animators because I expected to strongly dislike the films.
The subject was the lesser-known studios of the era. Columbia's animation dpt, Lantz, Terry, Iwerks, Pal, and Van Bueren. There was also a secondary focus on beginning to explore the racial stereotypes in films of the period, moving towards next week which is more explicitly about racial depictions.
So we saw: Soda Squirt, Chinaman's Chance, Pincushion Man, Little Black Sambo, Post War Inventions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva, Scrub Me Mamma with a Boogie Beat, Southseas Sweetheart, Hoola Boola, John Henry and the Inki Poo, a Jasper and Scarecrow cartoon (which wasn't on the syllabus), and The Magic Fluke.
I think the Ub Iwerks ones were the most offensive and it was also a bit surprising to see how much he slid around off model after leaving Disney. In addition to those cartoons being offensive, they just weren't very well drawn.
What most caught my attention for the evening though, was the George Pal Puppetoons stuff. It's a shame we didn't get to see more of the Jasper series and it's a shame that the characters are somewhat more stereotyped than is comfortable because the voice talent, character designs, and animation were really really excellent.
This spins off into stuff I've been thinking about with regard to my own work. The last several months of my sketchbook have been nothing but study of shape and character design and I still feel like I'm getting nowhere. I know what quality is. I can see it in other people's art and I can mimick the work of others, but when I try to invent without something else in front of me to reference.... I can build solid-looking characters and they have some flow and motion and energy to them, but most of my work is still lacking something. The forms are kind of generic and lackluster, they're minus some amount of graphic appeal. My work feels more like that of Iwerks or Van Bueren. It may be technically competent but it seems to be lacking something or perhaps it has an odd nervousness and hesitation to it. Something. I don't know. It just doesn't flow right and I can't seem to figure out how to change that.
I'll just keep beating on it, I suppose. Just hate being stuck at such an impasse.
The subject was the lesser-known studios of the era. Columbia's animation dpt, Lantz, Terry, Iwerks, Pal, and Van Bueren. There was also a secondary focus on beginning to explore the racial stereotypes in films of the period, moving towards next week which is more explicitly about racial depictions.
So we saw: Soda Squirt, Chinaman's Chance, Pincushion Man, Little Black Sambo, Post War Inventions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva, Scrub Me Mamma with a Boogie Beat, Southseas Sweetheart, Hoola Boola, John Henry and the Inki Poo, a Jasper and Scarecrow cartoon (which wasn't on the syllabus), and The Magic Fluke.
I think the Ub Iwerks ones were the most offensive and it was also a bit surprising to see how much he slid around off model after leaving Disney. In addition to those cartoons being offensive, they just weren't very well drawn.
What most caught my attention for the evening though, was the George Pal Puppetoons stuff. It's a shame we didn't get to see more of the Jasper series and it's a shame that the characters are somewhat more stereotyped than is comfortable because the voice talent, character designs, and animation were really really excellent.
This spins off into stuff I've been thinking about with regard to my own work. The last several months of my sketchbook have been nothing but study of shape and character design and I still feel like I'm getting nowhere. I know what quality is. I can see it in other people's art and I can mimick the work of others, but when I try to invent without something else in front of me to reference.... I can build solid-looking characters and they have some flow and motion and energy to them, but most of my work is still lacking something. The forms are kind of generic and lackluster, they're minus some amount of graphic appeal. My work feels more like that of Iwerks or Van Bueren. It may be technically competent but it seems to be lacking something or perhaps it has an odd nervousness and hesitation to it. Something. I don't know. It just doesn't flow right and I can't seem to figure out how to change that.
I'll just keep beating on it, I suppose. Just hate being stuck at such an impasse.