technique – Page 7

Reminiscences of an animator

5 December 2009 by Animator

The eight houses in the city square were made of cast-off computer-paper boxes and the “city wall’ was built around a framework of rubbish from the computer tape library with modrock, plaster, and as nasty a paint-job as I could manage. Every single item of scenery could be removed so as to allow the sort of camera angle which could have been achieved by my puppets (mostly less than 15 cm tall) but would otherwise have been impossible for me using a camera (on their scale) about ten feet long with a front element more than a yard across.

Squaring the Circle

5 December 2009 by Animator

Squaring the Circle

Neil Carstairs tells us about his latest cartoon which won one of Australia’s “Ten Best on Eight” awards.

I finished Nightmare in November 1981, just in time for the U.K. competition season. I was thinking about changing from 2 pin to ACME registration because parts of Nightmare, particularly in the bedroom scene, were unsteady. This feeling was confirmed when one of the judges in the Scottish 8, a professional animator, made the same comment.

Squaring the Circle

5 December 2009 by Animator

My storyboard now had a title “The Circle & The Square” and three designs with the story connecting them: Square draws flower… Circle draws deer… Deer eats flower… Square gets angry… Square draws big flower… Flower eats deer… Circle draws??? I went back to experimenting with a compass.

Beginner’s View of Inking and Painting Cels

5 December 2009 by Animator

Beginner’s View
Inking and painting.

Morris Lakin continues his journey of discovery.
Part Two – First go at Painting Cels.

I have just finished painting the cels for the first scene of my first cel animation. Owing to the fact that my spare time has been limited it has taken me about nine months to produce 218 cels, which will fill about 15 seconds of screen time. That is work¬ing on them for about 2½ hours a week most of the time.

Beginner’s View of Inking and Painting Cels

5 December 2009 by Animator

There was no problem when the figures were walking forward (fig. 3), but when the figures turned to walk across the screen the problems started. (Fig. 4) Obviously I could not just paint up to the line and over it because there would be no demarcation between the front leg and the back leg.

Drawing a Cartoon Face

2 December 2009 by Animator

Illustrations for Drawing Cartoons.

Drawing a Cartoon Face

2 December 2009 by Animator

Drawing Cartoons
Part One – By David Jefferson

CAN YOU DRAW CARTOONS? IF YOU ANSWER ‘NO’ OR ‘NOT VERY WELL’ THEN THIS ARTICLE IS FOR YOU. BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER GET YOURSELF A SHEET OP PAPER AND A PENCIL.

Cut-out Animation with UFOs

2 December 2009 by Animator

Cut-out Animation
By Fred Wells

If, like me, you believe that you can’t draw, but would love to do animation, don’t despair, the answer lies in using cut outs to form your characters.

Cut-out Animation with UFOs

2 December 2009 by Animator

During this first film I encountered quite a few problems which flooded to be overcome, and a lot of time was spent in experimenting. Initially this is to be expected, until experience is gained, but of course no expensive cels or animation aids are needed, only a few pieces of card. In fact these experiments are fun, and become at times hilarious, with results far removed from what you intended, although I would always advise making your experiments, if possible, separate to the actual film shooting, if only to avoid splices.

Beginners’ View of Animation

2 December 2009 by Animator

Beginners’ View of Animation

MORRIS LAKIN TELLS US ABOUT HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS AT CARTOON ANIMATION.

I began animating a short while ago. Short, that is, in terms of the amount of animation I have found time for. Straight away I came upon some of the problems of animation drawing.