After getting pretty excited last year by teaser images of the new Highlands-based fantasy feature from Pixar, Brave, I've found the footage released so far to be disappointing. Narrative-wise it doesn't appear to stray from paths already walked by films like How To Train Your Dragon and Mulan, while the Scottishness is the clichéd arse-flashing boorish nonsense that too often acts as lazy shorthand for a Scottish character. Watching a complete 2 minute sequence from the film didn't help much - while technically it's astonishingly good (the detail on the hair! the archery!) it felt like Mulan by way of Disney's Robin Hood. Boo.
Huzzah, then, for living in an age where you can see what trailers are being used for other countries, because the Japanese trailer for Brave knocks the stuffing out of the English-language version (and it's got subtitles too!). Like the Japanese poster (see right) there's a much greater focus on the woodland fantasy that was so initially enticing - perhaps the whopping domestic success of Studio Ghibli's masterful Princess Mononoke had something to do with that. Also - and this may just be because I recently spent a huge amount of time playing it - this felt far more reminiscent of woodland levels in The Legend of Zelda than anything else presented before, the forests more primal, shadowy and ancient than the fairytale woodland of Tangled. There's hope yet.
Last night we got round to watching Une Vie de Chat (A Cat in Paris). A French animated film released in 2010, as far as I can tell this never had a UK release (London Film Fest aside) - though this might change with an Oscar nomication this year. It's available on DVD, but sans English subtitles - that said, with a basic knowledge of French you'll get by, especially if you have the French subtitles on, and the plot isn't particularly complex.
It's just over an hour long and is basically about a cat with a double life - by day, pet cat to a policewoman's daughter, by night accomplice to a burgular (with a heart of gold, naturally). But there's also a real baddie, a gangster who widowed that policewoman and whose path is bound to cross all the above.
For an animated feature it's very, verybande-dessinée, in that it's got a very strong graphic style with no attempt to mimic photo-realism - less Pixar, more Picasso - making the most of the looseness and fluidity of hand-drawn animation, but also in terms of plot. It's not Reservoir Dogs (though there is a amusing reference to said film that I still managed to pick up on through the language barrier) but at the same time there's more threat, more menace than such a cat/child-centred film would be expected to have from an American or British studio. The cat, I hasten to add, doesn't speak.
The story is pretty predictable, though not boring, with much delight to be had from the visual inventiveness on show that a more 'classical' animation would've shirked from in an effort to ape reality (dig the power cut sequence, or the perfume swirling above the Parisian rooftops). And while it wasn't quite as violent as perhaps it could've been in terms of letting the cat let loose at the villains, there's still enough claw-slashing to keep me happy. It doesn't overdo the location either - sure, the Eiffel Tower makes the obligatory appearance, but the depiction of Parisian architecture, the changing colours of the city through night and day, are a real treat.
It's a rare example of an animated film that feels like art, handmade, the work of individuals rather than by committee, unafraid to play with the medium, yet not so much that it looks cheap or amateurish. While I think its Oscar nomination is more reflective of this being a weak year for animated features than recognition of a classic piece of cinema (it's good, sure, but it's not that good) it definitely deserves to be seen by more people, and is a welcome example of the strengths of hand-drawn animation let loose.
I'm not normally one for posting film trailers, especially teaser minute-long ones for films not out for another year - but when a) it's Pixar, b) it's set in the Scottish Highlands and c) it looks ruddy gorgeous, well...
Definitelyone to be watched in HD, and there's images of characters from the film up at Cartoon Brew. It'll be interesting to see where they got the visual cues for Brave - there's a clear Celtic and Pictish influence on the stones. There's plenty of stone circles around Scotland, but it'd be nice if it turned out the stones shown in the trailer were inspired by the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, where I was sketching in 2006 (whilst being mercilessly devoured by tiny flying bastards, who really should be the lead villain in this film).
Of course, American films based around Scottish history and culture can often stray into shortbread box cliché, but this teaser hints at a more fantastical setting, more Lord of the Rings than Braveheart. While I quite liked how The Illusionist captured the landscape up north (one of the few things I enjoyed about said film) I've never seen the colour, the lushness captured quite like this clip. Having been smitten with the Highlands since I first went there in 2005, it's a treat to imagine what the artistic masters of Pixar will make of them with this film. Will the finished film live up to such hopes? We'll find out next June.
Another example of animating directly onto Pencil Test Pro using a tiddly graphics tablet. As with the javelin throw, it's all about the motion and feel rather than tidy drawings - good thing too, because this is just as rough. I'm not quite as satisfied with this as I was with the javelin - while I think it starts pretty well and you get a sense of stretching and straining, I don't think the moment of lifting quite conveys the weight, the heaviness that it should. I'll probably come back to this in the next few months to try and nail that bit down, but I think it's time to switch to something else now and return to this with fresh eyes.
It's been a bit quiet on the animation front around here hasn't it? I had such good intentions for completing the monthly 11 Second Club challenges, but even that seemed too much for my feckless brain. 2D animation turned out to be too much of a faff - the animating itself, drawing onto paper, was fine, but the constant reshooting of entire sequences after changing just a frame or two got rather discouraging, with the webcam always loosened .
Thank goodness for seeing the work of Yoni Goodman, whose Dailymation blog features short little animations made in a few hours by Mr Goodman (animation director on Waltz With Bashir) making "short, sketchy, rough & FUN animations, more about mass and movement and less about fine, clean animation. each one about an hour's work." By Jove! That's just the ticket!
So that's what I'm aiming to do, a whole bunch of what I'm thinking of as animated sketches - really roughly drawn animations with the focus on getting the action right rather than spend hours and days getting things all polished - by drawing directly into Toon Boom Pencil Check Pro using an itsy bitsy teeny weeny graphics tablet. I've started with a javelin throw, though not a full-on run-and-throw. It's very much tentative baby steps, animation-wise, and very very very rough - but it's such a pleasure to work so quickly, so roughly, and still manage to capture the energy and motion I'm aiming for.
Hence the idea of an animated sketchbook: a collection of rough animations, like rough sketches from a sketchbook, animations that take hours, not days, some of which could eventually lead to more finished pieces, others going no further. And all without a sheet of paper or pencil shaving in sight!
For me, 2010's been pretty good on the creativity front, though in retrospect I could have done an awful lot more in the time given. Let's start with the naked people and take it from there...
The year started with me going back to the life drawing sessions at Leith School of Art for the first time since November 2008. Although I often got frustrated, sometimes at the other artists, mainly at myself, I kept going throughout the year, albeit missing a few to sickness and busy-ness. I soon realised that I had to keep myself challenged in these sessions, rather than just churn out the same kind of drawings week after month after year. I started trying to apply lessons learned from the Force: Life Drawing for Animators book (see the DrawingForce website for more) which initially led to some pretty awful drawings but eventually started to click into place. Similarly, reading Walt Stanchfield's Drawn To Life Vol.1 reminded me to stop over-thinking drawing and the importance of clarity and confidence, leading to greater use of blind contour drawing. Sensing I was getting into a bit of a monochrome rut by the second half of the year, digging out the old oil paints in October really livened things up. Again, some of the initial work was downright awful, and it took time to remember, appreciate and apply the strengths of painting and avoid the weaknesses (such as the tight detail that's so easy to produce with a sharp pencil but not a splodgy brush) but by December I was producing full-colour paintings I was really happy with, even with relatively short poses. There'll be plenty more of this next year, though I've yet to decide whether to commit for the LSA sessions, go to drop-in sessions at Whitespace and/or give the National Gallery classes a look.
During the summer months I also kept my observational drawing skills going by getting annual membership to Edinburgh Zoo and popping over with my sketchbook for a few hours every week or so. Given the fact that animals aren't all that inclined to follow requests to hold that pose for another half hour, I had to work quickly, initially in pencil but then more successfully with Chinagraphs. The aforementioned Force: Life Drawing for Animators book turned out to be useful in capturing the essence of an animal's pose quickly, as was the essential-for-anyone-considering-this-sort-of-thing The Art of Animal Drawing by Ken Hultgren. It was good fun, especially once I learned to focus on a few key species (sea lions, chimps, penguins) rather than bounce around the whole zoo trying to catch 'em all. More of this in 2011, especially once I work out a further purpose for such drawing beyond the sheer joy of it (though that's good enough) - it'd be nice to come up with some finished paintings based on live sketches. We'll see.
There wasn't a whole lot of digital artwork to speak of. When the year started I was still playing about with sketching on my iPod Touch using Brushes and Sketchbook Mobile. However, I then went and lost said iPod and have yet to get a replacement (I have great expectations for the next version of the iPad, though it's still months away). It was a fun way to work and one way or another I expect to find myself scribbling away furiously with my finger by this time next year. I didn't really do any other artwork on the computer, aside from my entry for Illustration Friday: Muddy which continues to amuse me more than it should. Talking of IF...
Inspired by the prodigious output of illustrator extraordinaire and good egg Robert Dunn, I've spent much of the year intending to take part in Illustration Friday, but only really got into the swing of it in the final few weeks. While I'm not skilled enough to produce work on a par with the pro's, it's a good artistic discipline to get used to working on a new piece of imaginative illustration on a weekly basis and one I intend to keep going in 2011. I've already been pleasantly surprised at how much I look forward to the next theme being announced on a Friday - even now I'm waiting for the weekly email to hit the inbox and start the ideas bubbling. (Just arrived, and it's resolutions. Hmmm...)
And, last but certainly not least, there's the animation. Earlier this year, I changed my work hours so I have a three day weekend (my workdays are slightly longer, but not exhaustingly so) with the target of cranking up my creativity and getting back into hand-drawn animation for the first time in a decade. I started off with a few classic animation tests - bouncing ball, seen side on and in perspective, followed by a couple of walks. As far as this blog is concerned, I've not done anything since, because I've not bothered to write about it until there was something finished to show, but anyone checking my YouTube channel will have seen this rough animatic that I produced for the 11 Second Club challenge. Along similar lines to Illustration Friday, it's a monthly challenge to produce animation based around a piece of dialogue that's around 11 seconds long. Which didn't sound like such a problem a few months ago when I started reading about it, but it turns out I have a hard time producing just 11 seconds of animation within a month even with an extended weekend. Over the last few months I've tried, getting as far as working out what to animate, storyboarding the scene and breaking down the dialogue, but not got any further. If I'm to have any kind of new year resolution, it's to complete an 11SC challenge. I've other, bigger plans for animating, but I need to get the discipline required to make them happen they'll never be anything more than plans.
...and then there was this silly little bit of animation that never led anywhere because breaking the soundtrack down into beats was too much of a nightmare, even after spending a few days on it. But what the hell...
Back to the line tests after a few weeks off - I started this last Monday but it wasn't really in a presentable state until I continued with it yesterday. If you don't recognise the walk-looping character, it's supposed to be Ponyo, she of the increasingly-classic film (honestly, it improves every time I see it, definitely in the Ghibli top 5). It's a walk cycle, only 12 drawings in total, but by criminy it's hard work to get right. While there's elements in the animation above that I think are okay, it's still quite flawed - the dress is too horizontally-wavy and not up-down enough, the head/hair are a bit all over the place and while there's a feeling of up-down with the head, shoulders and legs, the body itself doesn't seem to follow. Still, after two sessions I wanted to have something to show for it, so voila, and I wanted the challenge of animating a proper character rather than a stick man cipher. A revised, corrected version will be done come clean-up day when I whittle those masses of blue lines into single clean lines - well, that's the idea.
Next? I feel as though the line tests I've done so far have been pretty technical and it'd be nice to do some animating that's a bit of fun rather than an exercise. Quite what, I'm not sure, but there's five days to decide.
There we go, a more satisfying version of the side view walk from last week - I toned down the up/down motion of the body (especially the head) during the steps and tried to get a bit more sense out of the arms. Even so they seem a bit wobbly, but when an animation is so deliberately lacking in character it's difficult to figure out what to do with such things which are secondary to the main action. The steps may be a little too heavy as well for a walk so quick, but as a starting point to move onto more developed animations it'll suffice for now at least.
The next step (no pun intended) will be to do some walks that actually have some life, some character to them - how different does a stomping walk from a heavy character look to the tip-toes of a scrawny git, a regimental march to a drunk stagger, that sort of thing. The possibilities are almost endless, which makes it tricky for an indecisive plum like me to pick a few to try out, so that's what the rest of this afternoon will involve - acting out some of those walks and figure out what would be the most fun to animate, and hopefully to watch. After all, a slow dejected walk would be perfectly challenging to get right, but pretty damn dull to look at. Likewise, it also depends on what characters I choose to animate, partly determined by what model sheets I've got to hand - for example, a true-to-character walk from the bouncing dippyness of Goofy is going to look pretty different to that of the hulking menace of Stromboli. Tune in next week to see who's going to take the first step...
Well, I'm intending to share my work on these animation Mondays even when it's not complete, and this sure as hell ain't. It's a side view of a walk and while the very basic mechanics of it are correct - figure moving across screen through biped locomotion - it's lacking the fluidity, the natural flow and motion that makes good animation what it is, and is so bloody hard to get right. Still, if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and the satisfaction of ultimately getting it right will make it all worthwhile. Bloody better do anyway. Any comments on the above would be most welcome, otherwise tune in next week to hopefully see an improved, complete version.
Well, I did do it on Monday, it's just taken me this bloody long to actually write a post on it. Anyways, having now purchased the full version of Toon Boom's Pencil Check Pro (and a splendid piece of software it is too) I'm now able to line-test away free from watermarks and incorporate sound on top of the animation. That little test above you is a continuation of the same principles of the bouncing ball side view (a sound-enabled version of which is included below) but using perspective to suggest distance, not so easy when you're using no background. I think it works generally, though a tad uncertain about whether the squash/stretch is overdone, but the drawings need cleaning up and I'd like to add a shadow on the ground above where the ball is. Plan now is to spend a few more weeks animating exercises roughly, then have a clean-up day and reshoot everything thus far. As for tomorrow, it's time to move onto some humanoid motion, so a nice simple walk is in order - if there is such a thing...
