Animation Artifacts &Commentary 13 May 2006 07:46 am
Theories
I have my own, odd thoughts about animators – great, master animators – these are the only ones I’m talking about.
I think there are two types of animator. Both types, I think, are brilliant but I have my preference. Basically it’s the same breakdown I have with live action actors: the difference between Laurence Oliver and Marlon Brando. Both are geniuses, but I’d go out of my way to see one of them more than the other.
One works from the outside in, and the other works from the inside out. It’s Royal Academy vs. Stanislavsky.
Animators:
– One is a brilliant mechanic of an artist who gets every pose every gesture just right. The movement of the character is perfectly flawless, the accents are always in the right place, the timing is perfect, and the weight captured is exact.
The character is developed but usually in a manipulated, studiously planned way. Usually, this animation, to me, is cold. Give the character a fake nose, and Laurence Olivier could be playing it.
(Art Babbitt, at the top of the triangle, is to me the model for this type of animator.)
(Natwick dwng from a Mountain Dew spot – click to enlarge.)
Then there is the emotional animator. The poses, gestures, actions of the character are emotionally executed by the animator as if this were the only way it could come out. The drawings are often violent and immediate – pencils ripping through paper and dark blotchy artwork.
This animator often puts emotion above mechanics, but (s)he digs to the depth of the part to find a real living thing. It isn’t always beautiful, but there’s a gem of a character on the screen. Like any living organism it’s unexpected and natural.
(Grim Natwick, to me, is the prime example of this type.)
No, I’m not saying if you draw dirty, rough, violent drawings you’ll be a great animator. I’m speaking somewhat metaphorically – although the two examples I gave actually did draw that way. I’m sure Art Babbitt did one or two rough, violent drawings in his life, but his animation feels tight, controlled, yet beautiful. Grim also did one or two clean drawings in his time – I have one, as a matter of fact, but his animation is controlled by his feelings, accumulated knowledge of craft, and emotions. It all feels immediate, spur-of-the moment. It’s alive!
I’ve only ever watched animated films with this guide going in the back of my head. Mind you, also, I have enormous respect for both of these types; it’s just that I prefer the emotional type. More than wanting my characters to think, I want them to feel.
My temptation, here, is to give the obvious list of animators and where they fall in my model, but I think for now I won’t. CGI also fits into this mold, but it’s not a great picture. I’m curious to hear what others think of this model.
on 13 May 2006 at 10:03 am 1.Gabriel said …
For a some time I’d been a praiser of technically amazing artists, but then I started to think more like you. I still don’t like artists who are “all soul and no technique”, but lately I’ve been thinking that technical proficiency is just part of the whole thing, and there is at least as much people who do technically good but lifeless art than there is the opposite kind. At this moment I’ll go with you, I pick Natwick.
on 13 May 2006 at 12:05 pm 2.Galen Fott said …
Great post, and a great acting/animating analogy. Do you think there are animators (and actors) who achieve a “balance” between these two camps, or is the fundamental approach so different that it’s pretty easy to classify them?
on 13 May 2006 at 12:25 pm 3.Michael said …
Absolutely, I think that there are the animators who cross over (though I usually think they have one foot more heavily placed in one of the two camps.)
Bill Tytla is a great example. A very emotional animator whose grace and delicacy exudes out of every frame and drawing he did. One of the true poets of animation. He was dedicated to the Stanislavsky method, yet he was the supreme master of technique.
on 13 May 2006 at 4:34 pm 4.Mark Mayerson said …
I agree with your basic premise, Mike. I prefer animation driven from the inside out. You can probably put animators like Norm Ferguson, Shamus Culhane, Bobe Cannon, Rod Scribner, Emery Hawkins and Jim Tyer in that category. I think Tissa belongs in that category too. She’s a fantastic draftsman, but her drawings are all about emotion.
In Art Babbitt’s defense, I do think that Gepetto is a great character with real warmth. Gepetto may be the exception in Babbitt’s work, but you’ve got to give him credit for it.
on 14 May 2006 at 12:02 am 5.Stephen Worth said …
I had the honor of knowing both Grim and Art, and I agree with your basic generalization. The funny thing is that they were both able to animate the other way around… look at Grim’s work on Snow White, and look at Art’s pencil test from Grizzly Golfer on the Archive blog, and Goofy from Moving Day. Interestingly enough, Art himself favored his more spontaneous scenes to his analyzed ones.
As for Tytla, I would put him in the analytical camp too. His strength was the solidity and dimensional quality of his drawing and his ability to convey weight and momentum. When it came to expressing emotion, his scenes tended to be all on the surface. There wasn’t a lot of the insight into the interior thought process of the characters, as in Natwick’s best animation. While Grim put across emotion through overlapping layers of expressions fliting across the face and beautifully designed body positions, Tytla scenes seem to put them across with forceful movement with lots of weight and perspective (in the case of Stromboli), and strong design, layout and color (Dumbo). He only seemed to express one emotion at a time. But then, that’s true of most Disney animation.
I agree with your preference though. Grim Natwick was probably the greatest animator who ever lived for a hundred different reasons.
See ya
Steve
on 14 May 2006 at 7:20 am 6.Michael said …
Sorry Stephen, I absolutely disagree about Tytla; I wholly believe that Tytla was one of the most emotional of animators – and a very subtle animation it was. There is no more Stanislavsky a scene in animation than Tytla’s work in Night On Bald Mountain, and any scene Tytla did in Dumbo is just absolutely heart wrenching – without ever going into “cute”. The scene of Dumbo playing in and around his mother’s legs is one of the most emotional scenes; it so completely captured the pure essence of a child. It has to be one of the greatest bits of animation ever done, in my opinion.
Funny, though I’ve seen Grizzly Golfer several times, I don’t remember any real emotion. I’ll have to look at it again.
on 24 May 2006 at 3:03 pm 7.Nouri said …
Hi Michael, I have been spending the last 8mos learning some 3d animation programs and I think this sort of breakdown applies here too. Since 3d programs simulate these physical relationships that a traditional animator bases his production on, it is very hard to have and intuitive/emotional relationship to your work when it is inside a computer. Intuitively knowing how a pencil’s weight on the paper will affect the “feeling” of a character’s eyebrow is far removed from “feeling” the difference between clicking decimal points in the “eyebrow plug-in.” With lots of practice, the 3d animator can indeed develop an emotional intuition towards the abstract computer interface but truely the process of building such a relationship is geared towards that 1st type of animator. A good example of “by-the-book” traditionally animated cgi production would “Tripping the Rift” that uses cgi as just fancy coloring. I think that there is a place for the 2nd type of animator in cgi too, but not behind the mouse clicking key-frames, or in the storyboard dept. either. I think that motion capture is a possible area where the 2nd type can truely utilize the stanislovsky approach by literally acting out the animations. So this will still take the animator one step further away from actual animation but at least it brings him closer to original commedia technique. This is something I’ve been trying to remind myself as I learn these cgi animation programs, that it’s just more of the same really, same old same old. cheers!
on 25 May 2006 at 8:48 am 8.Michael said …
The problem is that I haven’t been able to come to grips with calling “Motion Capture” – “animation”. What you have, basically, is an actor performing a piece and using cgi animators to dress it up to look like King Kong or Gollum or whatever. The heart of the animation is done by an actor, isn’t it?
on 23 Jun 2006 at 11:12 pm 9.Steve Stanchfield said …
I agree with Steve on some of these basics of Tytla’s work, but I think one of the best and most interesting things about his drawings as well as Natwick, Norm Ferguson, Emery Hawkins, Rod Scribner (and even sometimes Fred Moore) is the willingness to have the drawing favor emotion over ‘solid’ drawing. That isn’t to say these animators were not capable of great drawing- but there is a very different approach to a majority (and in some cases all) of their work.
A lot of great animation work is dismissed as inferior because ‘it doesn’t move like that great Disney stuff’. .. I have to wonder if Tytla had stayed at Disney if he eventually would have been stuck on shorts or given secondary stuff in the features too.
There is very raw acting in a lot of Tytla scenes- The cleanup folks must have had a rough time trying to tie down all those loose poses and weight shifting based on emotion instead of always solid drawing, especially in some of those stromboli scenes. The weight and solidity are there in Tytla’s animation- but it’s not used in the same way often- it’s almost a holdover (and refinement) of earlier techniques- an advancement based on the most basic approach to drawing- drawing what is FELT over what ‘looks’ correct…
There is, of course, solid drawing to be found in Tytla’s work- but more often than not it’s very much secondary to the action- a very different type of animation than that of Milt Kahl, Johnston, Thomas, Larson… Solidity of drawing in many ways became the king of their animation, and of course it has it’s beauty (and I love their animation)- though it’s never felt as honest to me, and often isn’t as much ‘fun’ as the great looseness and willingness to make the pose read above all else. Many people note the power of drawing quality of Tytla’s Bald Mountain animation- and it is very powerful- but it’s power is not in it’s fantastic drawing at all. it’s in the power of his animation beyond the drawings completely…
on 24 Jun 2006 at 7:48 am 10.Michael said …
You are absolutely right and reword the thesis that I started with. I prefer the work of Natwick, Norm Ferguson, Emery Hawkins, Rod Scribner and sometimes Fred Moore. Babbitt, himself, praised Tytla’s drawing ability to me, and I own a couple of Tytla drawings. They are beautiful and clean, fully rounded 3D characters on each. He could draw and chose to allow his animation dictate his drawing. The eomtion was everything to him.
on 11 Aug 2006 at 12:27 pm 11.David Martinez - Character Animator » Blog Archive » Kinds of Animators - Theories said …
[...] I’ve found an interesting article on “Splog ” Blog about kinds of animators. He talks (well, writes) about the different kinds of animators (good ones). Check it out HERE. [...]