Published between 1982 and 1995
JC: Yes, I am a great admirer of The Cat Who Hated People. I like King Sized Canary too. RW: That’s the best one! And Bad Luck Blackie, that’s the other good one. We had copies of all those as a reference for the movie. JC: These films from this fertile period of American animation, … Read more
Bob said, “Apart from getting the story right, and the movie right as a film, what this picture is going to stand or fall on is the relationship of the main character to the Rabbit.” Roger had to be a fully developed equivalent of Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig, or Mickey or Donald. Those characters … Read more
JC: What did the rough version say? RW: It just had the drawings with the backgrounds sketched in and the soundtrack. There were two drawings a second at least, sometimes three, click click click into the different positions. JC: And these drawings would say: we see him, and in fifteen seconds we learn that he’s … Read more
Bob Zemeckis thought of a split-screen device to remove a character from the screen. In the scene in the ‘Ink and Paint’ nightclub, Jessica (Roger Rabbit’s cartoon wife) walks up behind Stubby Kaye, grips his cheeks and shakes them. An actress was used in the live shoot. Bob, knowing what ILM can do, found a … Read more
Mill Kahl confirmed that. Disney was always trying to do different things. He said he never chewed his cabbage twice, he never did a sequel. But those were the guys he had to work with and they tended to draw that way, so the pictures came out that way. They were developing the medium from … Read more
Animation is very technical. The essence of it is like Vincent Van Gogh starting out, he goes to life class and draws a woman. His early drawings look as if they have been drawn with a hammer. You can say they look great, but they’re not great. He became great. He had to get the … Read more
1. All the cartoon action was storyboarded to link-in with the live-action. In this scene Roger is hiding in Hoskins’ kitchen sink. He pops up and spits out a mouth-full of water. 2. A metal pipe was rigged for the live action shoot to spray out water. 3. A photostat was made of … Read more
7. The animators also prepared a shadow matte to add shadows to Roger. This is painted with hard edges and softened in the optical printing by throwing it out of focus. 8. Shadow mattes were also used to add a shadow cast by Roger onto the front of Bob Hoskins. 9. An articulate … Read more
Benny the Toon taxi To create the live-action for the cartoon taxi in Who Framed Roger Rabbit a small off-road vehicle was used. The actor, Bob Hoskins, holds a dummy steering wheel while the real driver sits at the back dressed in black. The spare wheel at the back of the cartoon taxi is used … Read more
David Williams and Robin Allan have been reading a book which pays tribute to a neglected artist and animator of genius. Those familiar with John Canemaker’s editorship of Funnyworld and his beautifully researched documentary films on Otto Messmer and Winsor McCay, will need no more than that acquaintance to recommend this sumptuous book. Its large … Read more
McCay was fascinated by the theatre and by the circus in particular; his early professional work was to paint posters for a dime museum. This can best be described as an amusement arcade, variety hall, circus and fun fair all under one roof. There was, alas, no equivalent on this side of the Atlantic. It … Read more
By George Collin The trouble with ordinary perspective is that it assumes an image fixed on a flat sheet of glass between the viewer and the view, square on to the viewer and with the viewer staring at a single point (see figure 1A). Although this can take in a wide field of view (up … Read more
Chuck Jones reckons that Disney got the idea from Warner Brothers cartoons. I included a similar shot in a recent production, panning down a broken ladder to a figure at the base, figure 3. The point is that you don’t see the whole background at any one time, only part of it. It is all … Read more
So to construct drawings in cylindrical perspective we need what I would call sine curve graph paper. So far as I can establish such paper does not exist, though I am sure a computer could be persuaded to generate it. Figure 4 shows a series of sine curve segments which I plotted on ordinary graph … Read more
In Part Two Alan Kitching gives a detailed account of his own creation: Antics. In the last issue, I gave a general outline of the different types of computer graphics machines around today, and what relevance, if any, they might have for animators. The majority are “3-D” modelling systems, which aim to achieve a machine-made … Read more
Frame-grabbing is used to feed images direct into the machine with a video camera, scanner, or any similar gadget and there are facilities for retouching, tinting, colour balance, posterising, solarising, high-contrast, and enhancement. At present, this is used only for background images. Such backgrounds can also be full live-action, and perfectly matted to overlaying animation. … Read more
Camera FX are much the same as on a rostrum camera, but much more flexible, for example, drawings and cels can zoom independently of backgrounds and other drawings., so an “animated zoom” doesn’t need to be drawn, multi- plane effects are easy, and the zoom ratio can go to well over ten-thousand to one. Graphic … Read more
Cartoon production with Antics generally involves a blend of all these techniques. Some are extremely easy, others are quite difficult. Careful planning is essential, right from storyboard stage, to get the best balance of different techniques for the various different scenes. Basic decisions of style and story can make a great deal of difference to … Read more
In contrast, Antics began as a concept, a clear vision of an “ideal” animation machine, which grew out of my previous ten years experience in conventional animation, graphic design, and architecture. In effect, Antics has been a concept waiting for hardware to come along with sufficient power to handle it properly, and at an affordable … Read more
Animator. Summer 1988. Issue number 23. Front cover illustration: A picture from a demonstration film made on an Antics computer. (See Cartoons, Computers and Antics.) Printed in Animator Issue 23 (Summer 1988)
Our reviewers look at some of the recently published books by film historians. Preface to a Review by Ken Clark Animated film history is now 92 years long in the sprocket. As with an unsolved Victorian murder mystery, the leads have gone cold. Long before this day, someone should have noticed the gradual loss of … Read more
British Animated Films Review by Ken Clark Denis Gifford has spread his net wide to include not only entertainment model and cartoon films but also representative advertising shorts; instructionals, and diagrammatics; amateur and student productions, and others. Regrettably, in drawing the readers attention to the great scope of the medium he has made obvious the … Read more
Four of Signal Films animated model films out of a known total of twenty are included, but I am puzzled by the absence of their most celebrated production promoting Rolex watches entitled The Story of Time. The film attracted great acclaim, won prizes and was even nominated for a Hollywood award. The unit’s first short … Read more
Mickey Mouse celebrates his sixtieth birthday on 18th November. He grants a rare interview to Brian Sibley. He stands beside the pool, looking rather taller than I had imagined and casually dressed in slacks and a sports shirt with a Betty Boop motif. “Hi, there!” he calls in a sharp Brooklyn accent that takes me … Read more
His eyes sparkle, and I know that – for a moment – he’s back there, in front of the cameras and loving every moment of it. Then he sighs. “I used to think I was pretty well set up for life – especially when I won the Oscar in 1932 – but then along came … Read more
I mention a picture in the album showing Mickey with Dopey and Grumpy outside the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. “Oh, that must have been ‘thirty-seven, the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I gate-crashed! Walt and I were going through a rather rocky spell around then. Donald was making picture after … Read more
The 4th International Trickfilm Festival Stuttgart ‘88 has grown into an event worthy of our full recognition. David Jefferson went along as an official guest and reports on what he found. The Stuttgart Animation Festival, held between the 5th and 10th of February, is a relative newcommer to the international scene. It started in a … Read more
By putting aside the narrow borders of general expectations the animator would have unlimited possibilities. “The conditions of free artistic work offered by the medium itself are ideal,” said Meyer Hermann. “Unfortunately there is a great need for money and time, and art cannot be sold easily in the media field. Therefore many animated film … Read more
Rozwuzzanie by Leszek Komorowski, Poland. Using pencil animation it depicts a woman rolling up a ball of wool. The lines of the drawing become the wool strand and are wound until even the woman vanishes. March by Stoyan Dykov, Bulgaria. A sex show comes to town in a caravan. The men sneak out at night … Read more
Zénó és a Hirek by Ferene Cakó, Hungary. A superb plasticine animation in which a man reading a newspaper assumes the characters and events from the news stories. The images include football, with a hooligan knifing the ball, an air crash and characters from TV movies. L’Architekt by Atelier Granphoui, Belgium. Cel animated characters on … Read more
This article is based on a workshop lecture given by Bob Godfrey at the Stuttgart Animation Festival. The session opened with a showing of a film from the Rhubarb series. Rhubarb was drawn with magic markers on paper for economy and speed. We made about 30 in all. Today many, many more childrens’ films are … Read more
We would storyboard each piece as we went along. One of the problems was the writer of the lyrics didn’t like the musician so he asked to be taken off the film after writing a third of it. I had to do some writing myself and I brought in other writers, then I hit on … Read more
Graham Clutterbuck, founder and managing director of the FilmFair Group of companies, was responsible for bringing many popular animation series to our television screens, including Paddington, The Wombles, The Perishers, Parsley, The Herbs, Simon, Portland Bill, Moschops and The Blunders. This article is based on an interview conducted by David Jefferson. GRAHAM CLUTTERBUCK: I entered … Read more
The Magic Roundabout was a great success on British television and the BBC were looking for other series in a similar style. In 1966 Monica Simms, who was then the head of BBC Childrens’ Television, invited us to discuss a new venture. She introduced Michael Bond, who had become successful with a character called ‘Peppot’. … Read more
Czechoslovakian filmmaker Jiri Barta is at last finding wide recognition of his work outside his own country. Jeremy Clarke telephoned him in Prague. Jiri Barta’s feature length puppet film The Pied Piper is now being distributed in Britain by the BFI. The film illustrates the legend of ‘The Pied Piper’ with a cast including sixteen … Read more
JC: How interesting. I didn’t pick that up. I assumed they were drinking blood, which of course made them worse. JB: No, no, no. When it came to the banquet, it was really wine. Blood came only with the animals – it was really wine. But of course the analogy was intentional, and that is … Read more
JC: What made you decide on making things which were both two and three-dimensional? You mentioned cubism, which is one of the elements which comes to mind watching the film. What made you want to go for that kind of style and look? JB: For the stylization there are two sources of inspiration. One is … Read more
In Part Two George Collin looks at Movement in Perspective. With the coming of pocket calculators there is a danger that children will not learn how to do anything but the easiest calculations for themselves. In the same way, with developments in computer graphics, there is less incentive for animators to plot perspective. But I … Read more
The key to rotating objects in perspective is the ellipse. Figure 5A shows a circle drawn on a grid. Figure 5B shows the grid drawn in perspective (turn it on its side and you will see that it is similar to figures 1 and 2). Using the grid as a guide, it is possible to … Read more
There are many myths and mis-conceptions about what computer animation can and cannot do. Alan Kitching attempts to clarify things and answer the commonest questions. “Animation” is often synonymous with “cartoons” in many peoples’ minds: “Animation? – Oh, you mean like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny?” is a typical response, which can be frustrating for … Read more