Comments on: Conflicts

by: Stephen Perry

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:05:40 +0000

Don’t know how uninformed one can be when they take a BG straight from Lady & the Tramp (the three house) and lift it completely. And do a bad job of it in the process; if your going to copy something at least do a good job of it…..

by: Michael

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:29:33 +0000

I’m sorry if I didn’t get the structure of the book. Perhaps it is my fault. I never questioned your love and admiration of animation or 2D animation, nor did I mean to make that comment. I apologize if it comes across that way.

I also have no question about the commitment or dedication of any of the animation staff. They are all undoubtedly talented artists who show off their talents well. I just felt, as I thought I’d stated in my piece, that inspiration should come from the world, not cartoons. If you want to study art for inspiration, go to an appropriate artist of the period, such as Archibald Motley, rather than past features.

In the film, Tiana’s dream sequence comes out of Deco Art; it’s a brilliant example of how well this works. Beyond that, I start comparing bits to other Disney films from Lady and the Tramp to The Rescuers. My preference is to see something wholly original. There are bits in the film, but not enough.

by: Stephen Perry

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:33:55 +0000

To use Lady and the Tramp and then go and do a poor copy of the three houses is par for the course. I don’t know whether it’s to do with using digital paint programs that things have got bad, but a quick look at the three houses BG from The Art of Animation book and the house stick out and we know what we’re suppose to be looking at. Compare it to the Frog BG of the three house underneath and you don’t know what your suppose to be looking at.
Everything has the same intensity, the same with the interior of the river boat. It just looks a mess and when all those old guys at Disney left and died they took the secret with them. Those layouts look like a drawing for a Disneyland Attraction- wheres the character in the buildings that Ken Anderson would get in his drawings that carried through too final BG’s?

by: gabey

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:16:32 +0000

thanks for the tip, sir. i’ll make sure to do that once i get to see the Mr. Fox movie.

by: Michael

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:58:17 +0000

Gabey, Anything that inspires you to keep up with this difficult profession is great. It doesn’t matter what I say.

It looks like they’ve put a lot of detail in the Princess and the Frog. It just looks dated - to me - not old fashioned.

Watch Fantastic Mr. Fox as a movie first, as an animated film second. It’s hilarious and charming at the same time. You’ll find a lot of detail there.

by: gabey

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:13:40 +0000

Hi, i’m actually an animation student. Based on what sir Michael said; these recent art books — even if they were published more likely for self-promotion — has somehow still inspired us to work hard in our chosen field. I guess it depends on the tastes of each individual.

But then again, i haven’t seen the Art Book of Princess and the Frog. I actually worry about the entire outcome of that film because for me, their colors are a bit flat…especially on the backgrounds. It’s not as lush compared how i remember how the 9 Old Men did the older animated films. It’s somewhat…too “DVD-Blue-Ray-Clear” for me. But these are modern times and i really shouldnt complain as well.

Thanks for these posts. I’m learning a lot from your views on things animated…and i’m really really looking forward to seeing the Fantastic Mr. Fox after learning that it’s not CGI.

by: Tim Rauch

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:31:02 +0000

Recent Disney films, like a lot of big budget animation these days, feel like a big rehash of the last 50 years of animation art. It’s not a big surprise: I often hear artists who work on these films speak primarily about their love for the “Disney tradition”. As others have noted here, the Disney tradition was, once upon a time, to look at a diverse range of sources to create something new and beautiful.

A return to THAT would be terrific.

by: Tramp

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:06:02 +0000

Couldn’t agree with you more about most of the “art of” books.
Their general lack of focus result I think from the fact that they really ARE first & foremost meant to be promotional scrapbooks.

Some if not most are commissioned by the various studios, who(even if an independent publisher like Chronicle is used) hire a writer to basically do a couple of interviews and/or be steered by a publicity dept. person to write to order. A long, long way from Canemaker’s fantastic, intelligent and comprehensive “Raggedy Ann and Andy”! How did that ever get published-and in both HC and PB besides? Different times.

Nowadays the layout, choice of artwork and certainly the “focus” is serving an agenda or at least a slant that the studio wants to convey. As an example “Coraline” was a unique film with an amazing array of artists doing fantastic work for it-almost all of whom were totally left out of the “Art Of” book. Why? Politics? I have no idea, but comparing the various blogs of the left-out visdev artists who created much of the look of the film with the book was…sobering.

Overall while there may be a few volumes-in particular some of the Pixar ones-that make a sincere go of sharing the process and the contributions of the most crucial parts of that process-i.e. story, visdev, quoting the nobodies who actually had ideas for the films, most are press kits. And I think you know how off the mark a lot of those can be.

by: Jerry Beck

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:51:02 +0000

For the record, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG opens in one or two theatres today on in NY and LA. It opens in “two million theatres” on December 11th.

by: Eric Noble

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:08:52 +0000

The two illustrations by Mr. Finch don’t seem like New Orleans to me. It looks more like a New England port town.

I do hope that “Princess and the Frog” does well and I hope it is a good film. I will probably see it, along with “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”.