The Illusion of Life Disney Animation Book Summery

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].