The
Illusion of Life Disney Animation
Book
Summery
The Illusion of Life Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and
Ollie Johnston covers everything that one need to know about Animation. It
covers history, how the Disney animations are made, techniques and principles
that were used to create the actual animation, the animators of the Disney
Studio etc…
Although animation was born 25,000 years ago in cave
painting, it does not have the same meaning that we have for it today. The
animation that was done 25,000 years ago in cave paintings was a way of
communication in other words it was a language. But Walt Disney gave animation
a whole other meaning; Walt’s aim was to entertain. Walt introduced animation
with such powerful characters that made the viewer’s feel connected with the
characters within the animation. This was because the characters were given
emotion. Unlike the early cartoon animation where the charters lacked emotions
theses charters could smile, cry, laugh and all the other emotions that humans
feel.
As it already has been mentioned Walt’s aim was to
entertain that’s how the Disney Studio came to life many talented artists would
go there and animate but According to Frank and Ollie (1981) the artists at the
Disney Studio had the tendency to hide their work and not show it to anyone.
Walt tried everything in his power to break this tendency and by doing so the
works of the animator and improved because they would learn from each other’s
mistakes, not only that each generation of animators benefited from what the
previous animators learned. There is no doubt that the Disney Studios is a
perfect example of a learning organization.
At the Disney Studios the principals of animation were
discovered. Some of these principals were the squash and stretch which is known
to be one of the most important principals in animation. The squash and stretch
is used to give the face expression of the character weight and volume this
technique also gives more exaggerated movement to the object in motion. The Overlapping
is another principal discovered at the Disney Studio. This gave complexity and
fluidity to the scenes when actions don’t overlap the movements tends to look
robotic and mechanical. Although these techniques gave animation a more
realistic feel the animators at the Disney studio were still in search for
better methods for relating the drawings to each other and through these
searches principals such as Anticipation, Staging, Straight ahead action, pose
to pose, follow through, slow in slow out, arcs, secondary action timing
exaggeration, solid drawing and appel were discovered.
Although the animators at the Disney Studio were supervised
by Walt, Walt had very little understanding of the mechanics of animation. Especially when it came to animation techniques
Walt had no clue. On the other had Walt had a very good understanding on that
to do with the scenes and what the action should be like. But unfortunately
Walt could not sit at a desk and draw his ideas; he was always forced to rely
on others when it came to drawing. In fact Frank and Ollie (1981) states that
Ben Shapsteen claimed that “Animation was developed into what it is because of
the animators them self’s and not by Walt”.
But on the other hand Les Clark states that “animation developed because
of Walt’s insistence and supervision”.
According to Frank and Ollie (1981) by 1933
the animators at the Disney Studio had learned all the principals and the
basics of animation and were able to produce animated films. The animated film
was The Three Little Pigs and by that time Walt had already started to look
further into entertaining ideas. This was a new era for Disney animation and by
1936 things started to take a step forward in animation. Things started to
become possible and technical skills were advancing, in the meantime the new
camera was being built and this was very promising. “The Pencil Test” Frank and
Ollie (1981) states that the pencil test was a technique which gave the
animator the chance to study the actions drawn and make corrections this was
viewed by having the drawings filmed and obviously this was done before the scene
was sent to be inked and coloured. There was also a huge development when it
came to animate rain, clouds and thunder until subsequently and gradually the
improvement was significant. Even the colours that were used, the shads were
more vibrant and brought life to the scene.
Norman Ferguson, Hamelton Lusky, Fred Moore and Vladimir
Tytla were the four men chosen by Walt to supervise the animation of Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs. According to According to Frank and Ollie
(1981) these were also the four men that took Disney animation to a higher
level however According to Frank and Ollie (1981) states that according to Dave
Hand, Walt what have reached the same achievement with or without these great animators.
According to Frank and Ollie (1981) at the Disney studios
the storyman was the person who wrote the script but the ideas that the story
men wrote were most of the time changed into something completely different in
other words the ideas that were given out by the storymen were tossed around
and sometimes given a good beating. At the Disney studios it was preferred that
the story was presented visually rather than words, so sketches were pinned up
onto a wall to help visually communicate with the story better and that’s when
story boards stared to be used. The storyboards became the biases for the final
layouts which showed the animator where his scene fits into. The storyboard was
developed by Ken Anderson and Wilfred Jackson.
At the Disney Studios background painter were to experiment
too but in their case they were to experiment with different mediums. As for
the background painters it was important that they knew their medium very well,
and they had to know how to achieve the same style but in different mediums.
Although background painters share the same talents as the easel painters that
we know of they are not the same. Frank and Ollie (1981) states that background
painters should not only understand colour but being able to handle their
medium extremely well. At the Disney studios background painters were given
instructions to follow such as there shouldn’t be anything behind the character
as it will distract the viewer’s attention. Having too much details or too much
eye catching forms and colour will conflict with the figure and it will become
confusing and disturbing for the viewer.
According to Frank and Ollie (1981) before 1932 no one had
seen cartoons in full color besides the comics that were found in the
newspaper. When it came to colour Walt had a problem with the Technicolour as
they were not giving him the right colours. The colours were looking odd Frank.T
and Ollie.J The Illusion of Life Disney
Animation [e-book] kickasstorrents.
Available at :
https://kickass.so/disney-animation-the-illusion-of-life-pdf-t91626.html.
[Accessed 23 October 2014]. States that the “colours started to get lighter shades and bleached out quickly, white
eyes looked like headlights and soft foam on water looked like popcorn. But
this was until everyone at the studio realized that It was not the technicolour
it was the colour system in the film itself that was too crude to control to
such fine degree”
According to Frank.T
and Ollie.J The Illusion of Life Disney Animation [e-book] kickasstorrents. Available at :
https://kickass.so/disney-animation-the-illusion-of-life-pdf-t91626.html.
[Accessed 23 October 2014]. The first
type of camera that was used to create animation was connected to a wooden
frame and It was pointed down to the drawing table to capture the image. As
ideas expanded, filmmakers found the need to move the camera in other
directions so that they will come closer to the scene. When it came to cameras
Walt always wanted to improve to allow more flexibility. Then came the
rotoscope the mechanism that used for transferring live action film into animated
cartoon through tracing this process involved the projection of a single frames
of film onto a drawing surface for tracing. Re-photographing the sequence of
drawings results in very life like animation. The Rotoscoping technique was
also used with animating animals but when it came to animals wearing costumes, instead of animals they made use of
the human figures wearing the costume. By the 1960’s cameras had improved they
could almost do anything the animators could do. The question was whether it
was worth having the camera or to have the animators do the work?
After the Rotoscoping technique Disney animation continued
to develop especially in combining live action and cartoons, animated designs
and sound. During the world war two Disney also produced educational films for
the government agencies Frank and Ollie (1981) states that animation is
particularly well suited for teaching because of its ability to get into
people’s minds as well as inside any object or subject its conveying.
Frank.T and Ollie.J The Illusion of Life Disney Animation [e-book] kickasstorrents. Available at : https://kickass.so/disney-animation-the-illusion-of-life-pdf-t91626.html. [Accessed 23 October 2014].
