OUAN405 - Process & Production: Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies"

OUAN405 - Process & Production:

The "Silly Symphonies" short musical animations by Walt Disney began in 1929 with the introduction of the very popular "Skeleton Dance". Usually the characters used in the Silly Symphonies shorts were not recurring or used multiple times in other animations. Because of this, it made the animations more interesting as you expected to see a range of different characters with different purposes in each of his symphonies.

A grand total of 75 silly symphonies were created and began to emerge in Technicolour during the mid 1930s. Disney's sole purpose for creating these daft little musical jingles was not only to entertain but to experiment with different techniques, styles, characters, effects and so forth. By watching a few in chronological order, you can easily distinguish the difference between the animations. they definitely progress over time.

In my opinion, I am not a huge fan of anything Disney. I was more of a Warner Bros' "Looney Tunes" fan and never swayed towards Disney even when from a young age as I found his work a little too "cheesy". The same could be said for Looney Tunes' slapstick comedy and Americanised humour, but I found and still find Disney a little too cliche.

I learn to appreciate Disney's work however as he is certainly one of the best known animators in the Western world and his legacy still lives on despite the change in Disney as a company stylistically (more modern approach, less slapstick, change in character design, 3D approach etc.)

Walt Disney's "Skeleton Dance" - 1929

In terms of what I have learned from Walt Disney to use in my own animations, I definitely think I will take into account the way he creates appeal in his characters. Even in his Silly Symphonies where he hardly ever reuses his characters, you still feel they've been around for ages and you get a real feel for them! They are just full of charisma and I want to be able to achieve this with my own characters.

I think I will do this by making sure I give the characters I create animations and movements that match their personalities like Disney does. For instance, if I create a villain, sharp, creeping movements would be most appropriate. In terms of my own animation ideas for the Classical Elements, I have created a very laid back character to represent "God". I will give him soft, swaying movements to represent his "cool" attitude.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Apply: Fear of Death Final Animation

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Fear of Death

Recently in a humble attempt to finish my final animation for Animation Skills I created a short seven second animation to describe my feelings and ideas towards the theme of death. I wanted to convey a message of living life to the fullest and not worrying about what might happen during death as the pressure of stress and worrying about the afterlife (if there happens to be one!) may cause death itself, ironically!

I am rather happy with this animation as it conveys the message well, contains a hint of comedy and has an element of shock-factor at the end where my protagonist, Eve, eventually gets her head cut off by the ever-cliche Grim Reaper.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - 12 Principles of Animation

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

12 Principles of Animation

Earlier last week we had a rather long lecture regarding the 12 principles of animation. Although this isn't the standard amount of principles, some animators may recall there being 20 or 25, some maybe even more, it was good to note the basics and learn exactly what makes up a great animation.

I made many notes and went on afterwards to research some of the other principles that weren't mentioned in the lecture. However, here are the 12 main points that I noted:

1. Squash and Stretch - exaggeration is key to making an entertaining animation. A bouncy ball does not hit the contact point (floor) rigidly. It bounces and squashes as it hits the floor and stretches as it comes back up.

2. Anticipation - When we are about to commit to an action, say a large jump for instance, we do not just jump. We have many actions called anticipation that leads up to that big jump. This is our body getting ready for the jump. In animation, every little movement matters.

3. Staging (Mis En Scene) - This is all about telling the story. There's no need to overcompensate and we need to assume that the audience is completely unaware of what is going to happen so we need to communicate to the best of our ability. The protagonist shouldn't be upstaged by any other character - it takes our attention away from them.

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose - Straight ahead shows frame after frame of animation for more lively and fast-paced scenes. Pose to Pose is meticulously planned. Key poses are drawn and the inbetweens are filled in afterwards.

Here's the next part of our 12 principles in a nutshell...

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action: Follow through and overlapping depicts the way objects still move even after a character has stopped moving. Say for instance, a young lady in a flowing dress is running away from something and she suddenly comes to halt. Her flowing dress will not stop at the as time as her - this is called drag,

6. Slow In and Slow Out: More frames at the beginning of a sequence shows a slow in, more frames means a slower start/finish. More frames at the end means a slow out. This is all very simple really.

7. Arcs: All actions except maybe some mechanical or purposefully stiff actions create an arc. A human's arms move in a arc-like motion when walking. A pendulum also follows and arc path.

8. Secondary Action: We may understand that a character may be shocked at a particular event. However we notice that sometimes their facial expression or a secondary action gives this away. Their eyes may pop out of their head for instance. This gives the animation a more life-like feel.Secondary actions emphasise yet do not take the attention away from the character/primary action.


And finally, the last part of our 12 principles...

9. Timing: Because of our minimum of 24 frames per second that the human eye can see at without any flickering, animators work in twos. This means that to fill up 24 frames a second, which may seem tiresome, they duplicate two drawings. So rather, they are really drawing 12 frames a second!

10. Exaggeration: My personal favourite! Exaggerating may seem great for cartoon animation, but bigger and faster aren't always better and can seem very "in your face" at times. Subtle exaggeration like the movement of eyebrows to pragmatically indicate an emotion is a good example. If exaggeration is used all the time, it eventually blends in and cannot be classed as exaggeration.

11. Solid Drawing: Basic principles of weight, depth, poses, lighting and so forth all make up for good drawing skills. I often use references from other images and media when creating my own characters. Animators do exactly that so with practice, they can create life-like animation!

12. Appeal: Ever notice that even the evilest of super-villains seem appealing in some shape or form? Cruella Deville's long, slender physique (albeit horrid personality!) seems alluring in some way and good animators can even make an audience viewing the worst of characters conjure up some empathy for them!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Explore - Pose Perfect!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Below is a short pose to pose animation of a pendulum I made during our Animation Skills classes. I had great yet frustrating fun making this and had to redo many things several times to get it just right. However, albeit liking the overall of swing of things (no pun intended!) and the way the arc turned out, I must say that I could improve next time by understanding that the blue pencil does show when scanning in!

I should be a little more cautious and less frivolous when scanning! I need to think less about saving time by rushing certain steps and more about making sure every phase of making an animation is as important as the rest...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Explore: Frame by Frame

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Here is one example of my frame by frame animation. To see more on this, refer to my other blog posts on frame by frame for more information. I particularly like the way the ball bounces as it hits the floor as it gives it depth and adds to the happy, bouncy atmosphere that I'm trying to give off (hence the sun smiling). However, in comparison to the example below, I find that mine has a long way to go.

Although I may have posted this earlier in previous blog posts, I just want to point out that I could've definitely improved this. I understand that the background is a little childish in the sense that it doesn't look very professional. However, this was just an experiment to try out some skills and was not making this for professional purposes i.e. for a commission. I did it feel that it needed some colour to brighten it up overall though so I think that's why I added such a garishly bold background.