My Personal Animation History
Like many people I became seriously interested in animation when I discovered "The Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. I was sixteen and found the book in my school library. It was either that, or "The Art of Walt Disney", which I read a year earlier. Somehow one of these books inspired in me a singular dream; to revive Disney's pre-Mickey Mouse character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I bought a pad of notepaper and started working on a flip book. My version of Oswald took one and a half steps, tripped over something and flew off into space.
I had discovered the first rule of animation; animating walk cycles is really boring.
My next flip book experiment came about four years later, at RISD, in Yvonne Andersen's class called "Animation for Illustrators". It featured a cartoon tyrannosaurus rex who took one and a half steps and then fell (very slowly) into a hole which had suddenly opened up under his feet.
Back then we didn't have video or computer systems for pencil testing; we sent our film away to the lab to get it processed. It was a week before I actually got to see my critter take his first (and last) step. The feeling was indescribable. I wanted to watch those couple of seconds over and over again.
That was when I learned my second lesson; no matter how tedious animation might get, there was nothing else I really wanted to do with my life.
The following year, while working as a T.A. in the computer animation class taught by David Fain, I did a bit of sketching on the Amiga computer using a white brush on a black background. The result looked like an expressionist woodcut, so I decided to try and see if I could animate using this technique. My original plan involved doing an entire circus performance, but in the end I wound up with a two minute film called "The Magician", my first (and so far only) complete project. It was the first computer animated film made at RISD, I think. Eventually it played at the Ottawa Animation Festival, where my 200 by 300 pixel image, shot off of a blurry computer screen, was projected at about fifty times life-size. Each pixel was probably bigger than my head.
After "The Magician" I spent several years working on a film of the Orpheus myth in the same style, but before I was halfway through technology caught up with and overtook me, and then my Amiga died, taking with it my entire film.
In the meantime I found work as a character layout artist at the Simpsons and learned a third lesson; animation isn't as much fun when you work in a studio. I think the most disappointing moment of my career was the time I was watching an episode I had worked on and failed to recognize my own scene when it came. It had nothing of me in it.
In contrast, my best moment was the time I was idly flipping channels and happened across a short scene I did for my first job out of RISD; it was an animation of a juice box peeling back to show how it was composed of three layers and therefore bad for the environment. I also animated some "stink lines" rising from a land fill.
This, in fact, remained my highest achievement until recently, when I completed a short film called "Surely You Joust" for the Cartoon Network.
These days I am steadily working on a new film, done in Flash, about a character called Bobbie Binks. It's a black-and-white, silent, playfully erotic comedy in which I hope to recreate something of the spirit of early animation. It's not too polished so far and I'm learning a lot as I go (I still haven't got walk cycles down perfectly, but at least my characters are no longer flying off into space or falling into deep pits after the first step).
The most important lesson I've learned though, is this: animation is a lot more fun when you get to animate a naked woman.
I had discovered the first rule of animation; animating walk cycles is really boring.
My next flip book experiment came about four years later, at RISD, in Yvonne Andersen's class called "Animation for Illustrators". It featured a cartoon tyrannosaurus rex who took one and a half steps and then fell (very slowly) into a hole which had suddenly opened up under his feet.
Back then we didn't have video or computer systems for pencil testing; we sent our film away to the lab to get it processed. It was a week before I actually got to see my critter take his first (and last) step. The feeling was indescribable. I wanted to watch those couple of seconds over and over again.
That was when I learned my second lesson; no matter how tedious animation might get, there was nothing else I really wanted to do with my life.
The following year, while working as a T.A. in the computer animation class taught by David Fain, I did a bit of sketching on the Amiga computer using a white brush on a black background. The result looked like an expressionist woodcut, so I decided to try and see if I could animate using this technique. My original plan involved doing an entire circus performance, but in the end I wound up with a two minute film called "The Magician", my first (and so far only) complete project. It was the first computer animated film made at RISD, I think. Eventually it played at the Ottawa Animation Festival, where my 200 by 300 pixel image, shot off of a blurry computer screen, was projected at about fifty times life-size. Each pixel was probably bigger than my head.
After "The Magician" I spent several years working on a film of the Orpheus myth in the same style, but before I was halfway through technology caught up with and overtook me, and then my Amiga died, taking with it my entire film.
In the meantime I found work as a character layout artist at the Simpsons and learned a third lesson; animation isn't as much fun when you work in a studio. I think the most disappointing moment of my career was the time I was watching an episode I had worked on and failed to recognize my own scene when it came. It had nothing of me in it.
In contrast, my best moment was the time I was idly flipping channels and happened across a short scene I did for my first job out of RISD; it was an animation of a juice box peeling back to show how it was composed of three layers and therefore bad for the environment. I also animated some "stink lines" rising from a land fill.
This, in fact, remained my highest achievement until recently, when I completed a short film called "Surely You Joust" for the Cartoon Network.
These days I am steadily working on a new film, done in Flash, about a character called Bobbie Binks. It's a black-and-white, silent, playfully erotic comedy in which I hope to recreate something of the spirit of early animation. It's not too polished so far and I'm learning a lot as I go (I still haven't got walk cycles down perfectly, but at least my characters are no longer flying off into space or falling into deep pits after the first step).
The most important lesson I've learned though, is this: animation is a lot more fun when you get to animate a naked woman.
posted by Mark Borok at
5:31 PM
2 Comments:
I wish to see this "animated naked woman" of which you speak.
I'd either forgotten or never knew that you were acquainted with my friend David Fain!
By
Mark Tapio Kines, at 14/12/05 9:35 PM
Hey, I forgot that David also went to Cal Arts! Although now I recall that D.F. actually taught me computer animation in my junior year and I was a T.A. for Steve Subotnick who taught the class senior year. Like anyone cares.
By
Mark Borok, at 15/12/05 3:28 PM
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home