PENCIL LINES: ANIMATION THERAPY!

PENCIL LINES

Journeys from the desktop of a traditional animator in the digital age!

"The ANIMATOR'S NOTEBOOK" TUTORIALS!

Click below to download my latest interactive digital tutorials! Just pick the tutorial link of your choice and load it onto your desktop instantly! Each tutorial contains about 20-30 pages of my personal hand-written notes, with embedded illustrations and related animation clips. A unique and valuable resource for all animators. For beginner to industry professional/2D to 3D/Cut-out to Stop-frame & Claymation! $9.95 each.
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February 2012

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Tony White
Tony White is a British Academy Award-winning animation director, animator, author, educator and consultant. At the beginning of his career, he studied advanced animation techniques with some of the finest masters of the art-form. Specifically: Ken Harris (original lead animator of "Bugs Bunny," "Roadrunner," etc.), Art Babbit (original lead animator on "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," etc.) and Richard Williams (3 times Oscar winner and author of "The Animator's Survival Kit"). Tony is currently animation program director and instructor at the inspirational non-profit, AIE-Seattle (www.theaie.us), where he is developing a 2-year program that will enable students to enter the industry without the extreme student loan challenges that are common at other animation schools in the USA. Tony is founder of "Drawassic Age" (www.drawassic.com), a ground-breaking animation studio that seeks to preserve, teach and evolve the art-form of traditional animation in this digital age. Tony's ultimate dream is to establish a unique atelier-style studio/academy of advanced animation - where his most talented student graduates can gain industry experience through an MFA-level style apprenticeship with master professional animators, on unique, ground-breaking animated films. To help realize this dream, Drawassic Age is currently producing a short 2D animated teaser for its first intended movie production "Bad Penguin". (www.badpenguinmovie.com) Tony's current best-selling books include: "The Animator's Workbook"; "Animation from Pencils to Pixels ~ Classical Techniques for Digital Animators"; "How To Make Animated Films" and "Jumping Through Hoops: The Animation Job Coach". His latest (and Tony believes, his best) animation book, "Animator's Notebook", is to be published in October 2011 by Focal Press.
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ANIMATION THERAPY!

While finally recovering from a few days of poor health I decided to animate another of my random 'eccentric walks'.

I haven't animated for a while now and was beginning to get somewhat gloomy from having to deal with other things in life. So, I decided it was time to get back into the animation saddle again and become positive about things once more. The walk I chose to animate had to show the kind of indomitable determination I'm feeling now. I have to say doing so has been like a tonic to my soul!

Anyway, I thought I'd share it with anyone who was feeling that same sense of flagging spirits that I was feeling. It took about an hour to animate on 2's, then a couple more hours to inbetween it on 1's.

This walk (as well as other animation I will be creating from time to time) will be featured in my forthcoming online, interactive tutorials that will be published under the name of "The Animator's Notebook" series by Focal Press. I'll let you know more details when they're available online.

POSTSCRIPT: A follower on one of my YouTube sites has asked for me to add the 'Charts' to this action, so they can better understand the timing I used. In all honesty I invariably use very simple charts to achieve my actions and here are the ones I used on this particular occasion...

Note that I only chart-out the action on two's and animate that way. Then, when I have tested and adjusted the two's animation, I go back an put the one's in (i.e. even numbered drawings) and then re-shoot everything on one's. (And the one's inbetweens are not always a precise inbetween of the two's action - especially when the action is broad and/or fast moving!) I rarely bother to go back and add the one's to the charting afterwards, hence the charts above appearing as they are.

Note also that although charting is extremely important, the most important thing in any animation are the POSES (or 'gestures' as they are often termed). If you don't tell your story in the poses, no amount of timing, or inbetweening, or clean-up, or coloring will make your animation work. Therefore concentrate ALWAYS on the poses first and worry about timing as you get further into it.

(Nice to be asked animation-related questions by the way! It does at least show me that there are people out there who still want to learn the traditional knowledge. My animation is [sadly] reserved for recreational purposes only these days as no-one seems keen in making traditionally animated movies anymore. [Shame on them... we're still missing HUGE opportunities here folks!] But at least my 'passing down the pencil' like this keeps me connected to an audience somehow.)