Pixar's technical development team recently unveiled a new set of tools to offer CG animation the potential of a more painterly look. The idea is to give art directors more stylistic options, so that they're not always stuck with the hard plastic look that tends to come by default in CG animation software.

The new process begins by having a stylist hand-paint a few keyframes. The tools then extend the style of those keyframes throughout the whole sequence, keeping the strokes and textures stable. One of the options is to extract outlines and give the output a hand-drawn look.


The initial demo that they showed gives the feeling that the painterly style is just stuck on the surface of smooth digital animation, and it's been criticized for that reason. But this is just an early test, and the full promise of the tools haven't been seen yet.

In order to make the style seem more organic, it might help to introduce some randomness into the timing and the arcs of the animation, or perhaps even to use a completely different technique for rigging and animation, perhaps with a waldo armature, like the DID (Digital Input Device) developed by Phil Tippett. 

I believe one thing we'll see in coming years are all sorts of unexpected combinations between handmade and digital techniques, such as the 3-D printing-enabled stop-motion of Laika's recent Paranorman.

From Cartoon Brew

Pluto's tussle with a piece of flypaper in the Disney short "Playful Pluto" was a breakthrough in the art of animation when it debuted in 1934.


What made the sequence so influential was not just the extreme action, but the pauses between, where Pluto seems to be thinking his way out of the problem. As a non-speaking character, his thought process had to be conveyed entirely physically. The flypaper scene defined Pluto's character and made him a star.


(Link to video) To watch just the flypaper sequence, skip ahead to 6:00 minutes in. It lasts a minute and a half.

Filmmaker Isao Takahata helped to create this delightful trailer for the film "Princess Kaguya" about the transformation of a tiny princess into a regular human baby. The watercolor-come-to-life style is different for Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation company best known for Hayao Miyazaki's films "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away." (Link to video).

A commentary by Adam Bellotto in Film School Rejects compares the new trailer to the CGI animation of the big American studios. Thanks, Bryn

Using a simple armature to demonstrate basic principles, stop motion animation master Sáenz Valiente (with Guillermo Galli?) of Argentina explains inertia, timing, acceleration, arcs, and momentum. (Video link) "Movement is not the same as animation," he explains.

The voiceover is in Spanish, but the main points should be intelligible even if you don't speak the language. There's also a version with English subtitles, and don't miss Part 2, where he gets into acting and interpretation.

Also, check out "Frame by Frame: The Art of Stop Motion" from PBS Offbook
One of you might want to try this technique for the Plein Air Persistence video contest.

(Video link) In this 1933 cartoon, Betty Boop and a host of animals challenge the ultimate sexual predator: The Old Man of the Mountain.

At 3:15, note the unhappy victim with the three bearded babies heading down the mountain as Betty goes up. The sexual suggestiveness of the film drew enough protests to force the Fleischer Studios to tone down the Betty Boop character. By the time the Hays Code came into full force, she morphed into a modest career girl. The music was by Cab Calloway's Orchestra. Calloway's dance routine influenced the choreography of the Old Man, using the new rotoscope process that the Fleischer studios pioneered.
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Wikipedia article about the film
Archive.org about the film
Minnie the Moocher, another Calloway/Fleischer collaboration

Above is a still from an early silent era stop-motion film made by the filmmaker Władysław Starewicz in 1912. Below is the film, called "The Cameraman's Revenge."

"The Old Mill" was a 1937 short animated film by Walt Disney studios (Direct link to YouTube). The film shows the effect of a storm on various animals who inhabit an abandoned windmill.

During this period, Disney was trying to push the art form of animation to new levels of mood and realism. The studio was pioneering the multiplane camera, sweeping camera moves, more naturalistic animal behavior, and effects animation for the wind and rain, all of which were used in Disney's first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

An exhibition of the art of Snow White opens at the Norman Rockwell museum on Saturday. The show continues through October 27.

Wikipedia:
multiplane camera,
The Old Mill
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Video: Walt Disney explains the multiplane camera

Life Drawing at The Book Club from Wriggles & Robins on Vimeo.
(Direct link to video) This video is made up of separate figure drawings made by a group of twelve artists arrayed in a circle. As the intervals speed up, the individual drawings merge into a three-dimensional sense of the figure as an animated form.
Thanks, Mary

Most of the original background paintings for the animated classic Bambi are lost. 

The Academy Award-nominated animated short "Adam and Dog" has been released in its full 15-minute run time on YouTube.


(Direct link to YouTube video) The director, Minkyu Lee says, "This is a short film that me and a group of my close friends made. It was put together by artists who work at various studios, including Disney Feature, Dreamworks and Pixar; The animation is done by myself, Jennifer Hager, James Baxter, Mario Furmanczyk, Austin Madison, and Matt Williames. Glen Keane also helped by being a consultant on the film, and also doing some visual development. It is a completely independent film without any major studio involvement. We are really excited for people to see it, and wanted to share.”