I love the simpsons and think it's the greatest show ever made, i make no secret of this. On the DVD commentary of the box sets are animatic commentary videos where the animators and other personnel draw on the screen while episodes or animatic storyboards play. They're really great because the animators dissect the show but from their thought processes, they discuss the composition and lines of motion and character models and animation mistakes and all sorts of exciting things like that. Also it's great to watch the commentaries on seasons 1 and 2 compared with that on the most recent seasons because of how much the process has changed and subsequently the results have changed.
a great post from a terrible website
http://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/9-beautiful-hand-drawn-animations-from-disney-films#.ae41Vayjq
nobody gets fluid movement like disney
John lasseter moment
Brave little toaster, the first feature length animation he worked on and one of my favourite animated movies. combines traditional and cgi, one of first to use backgrounds
subsequently everything he touched turned to gold, mostly pixar
coincidentally ex-pixar colleague joe ranft also worked on brave little toaster
i have a theory about joe ranft, that he was a most integral part of pixar.
he died in a car crash in 2004
pixars releases pre 2004 are the ones I consider to be the best, classic and untouchable, toy story, bugs life, monsters inc, finding nemo, the incredibles
then came cars, which I consider to be the turning point in pixar quality, as from here it went steadily downhill with movies that are still excellent but not the same as the pre-cars films, eg. ratatouille, cars 2, brave, monsters university, wall-e (up is the exception)
joe ranft died during the prediction of cars which is the point where I personally see a dramatic change in the output of pixar, a cut off point
thus I think Joe Ranft was pivotally important to the 'pixar magic' of the first releases
this is of course speculation based on little to no facts but it's just a thought
I've spent quite a lot of hours watching golden age cartoons on youtube, mostly silly symphonies and other disney shorts, looney tunes, betty boo, flip the frog and other such old timey stuff
it's nice to watch and know there were none of the digital shortcuts available that we use to draw and animate now and the whole process was different giving it completely different aesthetics, also watching for the shortcuts they could take like reusing frames and movements and repeating backgrounds and camera movements.
South parks pilot episode was made entirely from cut out paper. The process proved too time consuming and for the other episodes various programmes were devised to emulate the cut out paper aesthetic but I think the craft behind the show is often ignored in favour of its controversial subject matter. I'd like to try the cut out paper method, it lends itself more to graphic shapes though so I would have to change my way of drawing
Terry gilliam, using drawn elements combined with found imagery, condenses workload? unites visual opposites with garish colours, humour through movement, movements are silly and simple because they are made of one of un-manipulatable cut outs. Must also try this, collage animation
Levni Yilmaz has hundreds of these videos, using a marker to draw onto the tracing paper canvas. it's all drawn from the back so he has learnt the skill of drawing and writing backward for this process. effective result from minimal animation and embellishment, commentary glazes over images and animation is all the image being drawn, simple but engaging
Spongebob I think is a modern animation classic, if there is such a term, started as cell animation but moved to digital ink and paint early on. Kept the previous aesthetic and has clear links to ren and stimpy, close ups mostly. Great example of absurdity and modern humour and writing combined with classic animation principles and movements.
massive impact of sound effects in time with visual stimulus. When first episodes came back from animators John K was horribly dissatisfied with the animation quality so the sound effects were exaggerated greatly to compensate for this.
Ren and stimpy is horrifying and sordid without actually doing anything wrong. Just the grotesqueness of the characters and the outlandish overstretched movements, combined with the campy innocent 50's themes makes something captivatingly playful and sinister
the splotched backgrounds were said to represent the holes in reality or the vision of a person in a deep state of dementia
also the pioneers of the grotesque cartoon closeup, made famous more recently by spongebob
and its the first and perhaps only cartoon show to have fake adverts made to be part of the show, most notably log and sugar frosted milk
nightmare before christmas - Stop motion, balance of macabre and charm and child appropriate
Naive, charming, high production value, possible by large team of creatives, Jesse Monynihan, Ghost Shrimp etc. power of imagined worlds and invented logic
Half way through every episode a chasm opens and everything goes to hell. Hense the name regular show. They use textured watercolour backgrounds layered with the animated elements. Hand made touch humanises sleek digital animation
The visual quality of rick and morty seems to constantly flit between crude and simplistic and intensley comlex and beautiful.
Adam Elliot - Mary and Max, Harvey Krumpet. claymation, studies into a the life of characters, stories based entirely around character design, infinitely charming and moving.
beautiful, hand drawn, investment of labour, pastel faded colour schemes, mythology and legend and rich cultural history gives stories and visuals depth. totally impeccable
made with toys, stop motion, using existing toys as puppets, manipulated slightly with cut out mouths and such, shows the process of animation doesn't require the lengthy drawing process, can be used as a medium to produce an idea, not just an extension of drawing. show is made up of multiple shorts put together. means less effort than planning storyboarding and animating full episode length sequences, instead fast fired jokes and snappy erratic puppet animation
There's an endless amount of other cartoons I could prattle on about but it's definitely bedtime now
Still not sure what level of relevance this post even has
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