Wednesday November 10th 2010

[arif]

We are starting this thread early to give members a chance to upload any video or images they want critiqued in November 10th seminar. The best format for video clips is .MOV files (MPEG-4 Quicktime videos).
Throughout the week, Dave will try to incorporate as many images and video clips as possible into the live seminar.

The deadline for clips and images to be critiqued in the live seminar is Tuesday November 9th, 2010 @ 5:00 PM sharp AZ time.

Thanks


Here is the New Link to watch the live Seminar.
http://donbluthanimation.com/_Don_Bluth_Animation_live_seminar.html
You must be logged into your Don's Club account to see the stream.

Please post ALL questions in this thread.

[JoelMayer]

Hi Don and Dave

First a few questions:

1)

In Richard Williams' The Animators Survival Kit, he suggests first laying out the key poses, the extremes and the breakdowns and then using those as a guide and animating straight ahead over them. He also recommends animating in passes. For example when doing a walkcycle animating the feet first, then the body, the head, the arms etc. He also says, that was the way Milt Kahl animated. What do you think of this technique? Are there any disadvantages?

2)

Why do some animators draw with a blue pencil? Is it just to bring some color into their lifes or has it its origins in the xerox process?

3)

We've sure seen a lot of your drawings on this site. I've also enjoyed John Pomeroys Animation in your Films and Atlantis a lot. But i've never seen at least knowingly any of Gary Goldman's drawings or animation. Any chance that you could persuade him to post some on the forum :)


And last but not least, my very first try at animation:

http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=596

It's supposed to be a banana jumping and falling. I tried to concentrate on a few simple principles like anticipation and squash and stretch. I used a banana because it seemed like a simple character to start...

One of the problems i encountered was, that the shapes sometimes got bigger and smaller. Any tips on how to control the volumes of a character best over time?

Thanks a lot and all the best!

[AJartist]

http://www.donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=297&pictureid=1352

http://www.donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=297&pictureid=1353

http://www.donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=297&pictureid=1354

[Sung1]

Animation Exercise. Please critique. http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=598

Thanks Don and Dave.

[andrew sharp]

Hello Don and Dave
A couple of Questions
A few years back I watched a stage play about Muybridge, It was very cool to see the development of this art form and how he had a tough time to get the models to move naturaly when being photographed. Do you think this carries over to animation and we over think things too much or get self concius and bring about wooden acting?

Another question about Muybridge you said the masters of animation studied his works. I'm just curious about that process, would it be in the thumbnail format, or mabey one drawing with lots of actions drawn overtop of it,or animated and I'm just curious about the amount of detail that would go into the studies of his photographs?
If you have time could you show us how you would analize a Muybridge Thankyou?
<a href="http://s1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc396/andrew_sharp1/?action=view&current=muybridge_stairs.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc396/andrew_sharp1/muybridge_stairs.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[andrew sharp]

I entered a contest last week the theme was ghosts. Here is my piece. Its about a little girl whose cat is run over by a car the ghost brushes up against her leg. My wife looked at it and said I drew my daughter as the main character I quess that just happens unintentionally sometimes.I was wondering about your thoughts about the piece,what would make it stronger compositionally or capture that moment better.
<a href="http://s1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc396/andrew_sharp1/?action=view&current=azreil.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc396/andrew_sharp1/azreil.jpg" border="0" alt="ghost cat"></a>

Here is a little animation I did of my daughter one day she just ran past me with her arms behind her and she face planted on the couch turned around and ran away. It was so funny I had to attempt to animate it:)
http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=599

[AJartist]

a well known character designer was talking about how inverted curves are being abused in todays moden character designs for television.

what is an inverted curve and how can it be abused??

[DaveLav]

Hi Don!

I am trying to make the transition from Life Drawing into Cartooning and finding it hard to make my Characters look .....Catoonish. Is it possible for Cartoons to look too real? If so, how can it be corrected?

Dave

[AJartist]

I heard of an interesting way an art professor was teaching figure drawing. What he would do is pass out 20 photos of various figures. Then the students would draw 20 stick figures of these models. However, this professor is teaching how to draw comic books. If you were using this same methods to teach animators, would you instead have them draw the gestures of the models instead of the stick figures, because i'm still unsure whether stick figures have ever helped upand coming animators, have they ever helped you?

[Richard Willimot]

Hello Don and Dave, When designing a new character will you purposely add things that will give you overlap like tassles etc?

[OwenWelsh]

Don,

1. Many of us have been doing our own roughs, inbetweens and our own clean up drawings. However in a real production if we are just animators we would just be doing the roughs. In this case the timing charts are imperative because we are handing it off to the inbetweeners. When you say that an animator can animate 2 feet a day does that mean 32 rough drawings or do you mean 8 or 9 drawings that are extremes, that when inbetweened will equal 32 drawings after the inbetweener gets them.

2. Also when you are an animator doing rough animation do you typically animate on 8s and pass it off? Or do you ever go down to 4s if the motion is faster and more detailed?

[SpiralEFX]

Don good to see ya....I just bought master Effects animator Dorse Lanpher book " Flyin chunks and other things to duck" which you did the foreword too....looks like he started with Disney about same time on Sleeping Beauty & of course later left Disney with you to work on NIMH .... did you know Dorse during your first stint with Disney? what insight of Dorse knowing him over the years that you think has made him a master EFX animator?

[Gabriel-Carson]

hi Don I want to story board a 1 minute film based on a section of the egyptian book of the Dead. since it has a narrator & no dailog its all visual would i just storyboard this or script first?

If you stand only on the safety of the banks spearing fish, how can you know the depths of the river?
Can you fathom the darkness under a ledge of rock or understand the life of the fish writhing on your spear?
You mistake the teeth of the crocodile as the edge of the abyss, but the chasm is more terrible than teeth, and certain.

I fulfill the law and the law demands your blood.
I am Sobek the crocodile, the catastrophe, the devourer, the necessity.
Impaled on my teeth, you shall be blessed for you will glimpse truth.
I am only the secrets of your own dark heart, your lust, your greed, your anger, your flesh, to tear the darkness from your heart.
I am the living power of water, the cry that catches in the throat, the sob that shatters stone.

On my teeth you smell the stink of flesh.
To you I seem a living horror.
But I tell you in truth, I am your own soul and it is with great sorrow that I crush the life you have made.
I weep with the loss, but you do not believe.
Such destruction is madness you say.
You do not understand.
Is it madness to cut the wheat so that bread can be made?
When you were born into this bright land, did you not weep for the lost dark of the womb?
Whether or not you understand the law, you exist because of it.

When you've reached the lips of the great devourer, you are staring into the jaws of creation.

[JoelMayer]

It is a well known fact that a lot of european and smaller tv animation studios outsource their animation to india, asia etc. I also recently read, that Disney outsources more than half of their animation to Wang Film Productions in Taiwan. Is this true? Are we admiring the wrong guys?


Another question: For a lot of us european forum members it is hard to raise the financial resources to travel to Arizona for attending one of your master classes. I heard that you still travel to Dublin from time to time. Would it be possible to maybe someday arrange a master class in Ireland so the european guys here had a better chance of attending too?


Question 3: I often read, that an animator should avoid leaving an assistant "thirds". What does this mean and how do we avoid these?

[zanekohler]

Hi Don,
what types of drawing exercises if any do you do to warm up your hand? Or do you have any you could recommend?

[Richard Willimot]

Don continuing on the caricaturing of real life theme, I wonder if there is a point where an audience will except more suspension of disbelief? If the character looks more realistic we expect him to move as a real human would,but homer simpson doesnt have to move exactly as one would.

[AJartist]

some years ago you said that you'd love to do an adaption of Faust. In your version of Faust, would he be an animator instead of a writer? how else would your version of Faust be different from the original?

[OwenWelsh]

Don when you were at Disney directing the Small One did you cast any of the voices yourself? Or did someone else do that? I noticed that the voice of the boy in Small One is Sean Marshall, who also did the voice of Pete in Pete's Dragon.