This is an exciting time to be in the animation industry because it's possible to glimpse the new thing that's coming and it's a doosey. Thank heaven! I thought I'd burst if I had to sit through another CGI feature of a bunch of wacky misfits who are forced to seek a new home or another 2-D TV show featuring nerds and smart-alec kids in suburbia. And screw anime! It's just not good enough!
In my opinion what's coming is embodied in these thumbnail copies of Milt Gross poses that I drew at ASIFA. Much credit to Steve Worth and Mark Kausler for making them available. If they don't excite you that's because you dismiss them as being old-fashioned print-media drawings that could never animate...but they do animate. In fact there's plenty of precedent for it, which I'll discuss in future posts.
This is an exciting time to be in the animation industry because it's possible to glimpse the new thing that's coming and it's a doosey. Thank heaven! I thought I'd burst if I had to sit through another CGI feature of a bunch of wacky misfits who are forced to seek a new home or another 2-D TV show featuring nerds and smart-alec kids in suburbia. And screw anime! It's just not good enough!
In my opinion what's coming is embodied in these thumbnail copies of Milt Gross poses that I drew at ASIFA. Much credit to Steve Worth and Mark Kausler for making them available. If they don't excite you that's because you dismiss them as being old-fashioned print-media drawings that could never animate...but they do animate. In fact there's plenty of precedent for it, which I'll discuss in future posts.
29 comments:
I hear you on that Eddie! Hopefully we'll be a part of it.
I am still waiting for people to realize that cartoons aren't just funny stuff for kids. Richard Williams said it best when he mused that if Rembrandt were still alive he would probably be trying to make his drawings move. Animation should recognized for its powerful storytelling possibilities. The comic book seems to be finally coming into its own as a legititimate medium for serious communication, when will animation get its turn?
I can't wait to see what's in store!
i know what i want to happen. but is it gonna happen?
The future of animation is...
LEGAL PADS!
Kick it old skool, Eddie! :-)
Milt Gross got to design and supervise a couple of shorts at MGM in the late 1930's which the young career climbers Hanna and Barbera were quick to diss in favor of what became their 17 year formula. But those Gross shorts remain unique glimpses into a fertile graphic mind.
I was always a little puzzled by the proliferation of TV cartoon shows that take place mostly in the characters' school; a bunch of talking, high-pitched voices standing immobile in a hallway of lockers.
When I was a kid, I HATED school. Why in the world would I want to watch more of it on TV?
I would love to see those animated. I wanted to mention to you that I think I saw some Delsarte acting in the cartoon "Walky Talky Hawky." Poppa Hawk is using Delsarte gestures when he is telling Henery Hawk "Your mother and I, are outcasts!" Check it out here: http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/search/hawky/video/xa7ug_walky-talky-hawky
Ah, I like where this is going! More Milt Gross studies and analysis please.....
I'd like to second that THANK YOU to Mark Kausler and Steve Worth, too, for making these Sunday comics available!
AWESOME drawings/studies!
I think people just don't know about old cartoons, so they don't know how good cartoons can be. they just know he-man and billy and mandy or something. all the rare Terrytoons from John and Steve, are a great example. I've never even seen them and when i finally saw them i was blown away
haha, you're asking to be stoned, those anime fans (animaniacs?) are so touchy!
Eddie
I definitely agree with you about the possibilities Milt Gross offers to animators/cartoonists. I've been studying 'He Done Her Wrong' lately, and was astonished at how much Gross does with each page. The compositions, pacing, poses and timing could energize any artist - and indeed, I noticed one instance right away: Carl Barks. Barks' 'Back to the Klondike' sequence where Scrooge busts up Glittering Goldie's honky-tonk comes right out of the opening pages of HDHW, right down to some of the characters' expressions.
I think there might even be a kind of 'New York school' of cartooning which has all kinds of possibilities for artists now, who've been using a flat anime inflected style for some time. I'd include Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland and his other less well-known comics; the 'Hey Look!' comics of Kurzman from the 40s plus his 50s MAD stuff; plus the Fleischers in their New York period and Terrytoons (i.e. Tyer and Vinci). Outside of animation/cartoons, we could add the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Mae West, Eddie Cantor...
Anyway, I look forward to your ideas about Gross!
- Stephen
Tell us mooore!
Anything that has anything to do with Milt Gross catches MY attention!
I'm SIIIICK of CG!!! People can argue what they want about it, but it bores me to tears. I like old stuff!
I forgot to say this earlier, but isn't it a shame when you walk into the 'art' section of a Barnes & Noble or Borders, and all of the 'cartoon' instruction books are anime? Don't get me wrong, I find SOME anime fun and appealing (original Astro-Boy, Neon Genesis, Daft Punk's Interstella 5555), but these piss-poor 'how to draw the greatest anime poses and hottest chicks ever' aren't helping the art form.
I never see the Preston Blair book at my local store, but instead see a dozen anime books. That needs to change.
Oh yeah, I hate anime too!
For some reason most people who like anime think that there's some unwritten rule that says you can't ever like anything good.
I did a book signing at Border Books and the only comic fans interested were old fat men with beards who grew up reading MAD. Probably because they were the only one's with good taste.
One young comic geek began heading over to take a look at my book, and as soon as he saw the style of the artwork (American), a look of fear came over his face and he ran the other direction toward the anime comics section...The back of his shirt said "I Love Anime".
I laughed.
Hey Eddie, perfect timing for this post. I left a little present for you at the animation archive.It will make you doubt your faith in something good coming out in the near future.
Is this connected to your life-altering experience with those Terrytoons?
Hi Eddie
I'm still trying to be apart of the animation industry. I have been creating cartoon characters since I was a kid. I'm 20 years old and I'm trying to make my first cartoon film with my computer but I still need to find an animation board table or animation disk or what ever it's called. I wanna make my cartoons the way John K and SPUMCO made the Spike TV Ren & Stimpy cartoons. I said to my self that if I ever made my first cartoon film I would send a copy of it to the Spike & Mike Sick & Twisted Festival Of Animation.
Jesse
P.S.
Do you have some advice for the soon to be cartoonist?
Jesse: Advice? Yes! 1)Take all the advice on John's site, and 2) practice funny, constructed animation even if you don't have a way to shoot it yet. Funny animators will be in demand in the future even if they're not now!
Drew: I amit that there's some good anime. Gabe Swarr showed me highlights of "FLCL, Episode 5" and it blew me away. Even so, I'm wedded to the idea of funny cartoon drawings that move in a funny way and anime has so far been deficient in that department.
I still liked your argument and I'll try to look up "Grave of the Fireflies."
This had better be the next new thing, Eddie. For all our sakes. It had better NOT be this . >:(
I just hate supposed animated films whose main goal seems to be the copying of live action.
Animation can achieve things that live actors could never ever do. Guys, like Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Chuck Jones understood that better than anyone. We need more of that and less of this Waking Life bullshit. Eddie's project is definitely a step in the right direction.
Since we're all loving on Milt Gross, has anyone bought (or read for free and then went home) a recent "Sunday funnies" collection called Art Out Of Time? The subtitle is Unknown Comics Visionaries, and the list of artists includes Milt Gross. Unknown? Wha?
Anyway, it's a wonderful, wonderful collection. At first the subtitle worried me ("Say, maybe they're unknown for a reason..."), since I've been burned before. Haven't we all? But the cover art was so beautiful that I knew the book could not suck. I don't mean it was beautiful the way people think commemorative World Trade Center cake plates from the Franklin Mint are beautiful. It was my kind of beautiful. Can't judge a book by its cover? The hell you can't.
The art is great and the writing is mostly hilarious and a lot more interesting to read than I might have expected. So these are "unknowns", huh? They did all this work and all of it was terrific, and they were all extremely talented and dedicated, and then cruel fate smote them. Who do you have to tar and feather?
At least Milt got out.
Btw, thanks, David Germain, for supplying the title of that "happy ram" cartoon I asked about! :-D
Oh, yeah: anime bites.
Actually I wasn't advocating that we imitate Milt Gross, at least not slavishly. Gross directed cartoons for a while and even he found it difficult to translate some of his print-style characters into animation. I just meant that there's a lot to be learned from his style that can be applied to other things.
It's my own fault that there was a misunderstanding. I meant to do a couple of follow-up posts analysing Gross's style and suggesting how things like that could be animated but I got some freelance work so I had to put that aside for another day.
Hey Eddie two things :
I anm tired of alot of the lifeless CGI movies as well, except for pixar. I am also tired of the the recycled plots. The Ant Bully,Over the Hegde, and Open Season basically have the same freaken plot.
As for anime,I think you would like one called Lupin III,it's about a theif and his partners stealing stuff and constantly being persued by a obssesive detective.Lupin III is actually a very cartoony series, more western then eastern.
Since someone metioned anime, I think it is successful for a couple of seemingly opposite reasons, which may not have to do with its 'quality'.
It is ubiquitous. It is familiar. It is the main animated entertainment many have grown up with, whether from imports, overseas animated US productions or video games.
Yet It is still novel. Despite its cookie cutter quality, it still presents the views of a different culture. It is weird enough not to be boring, and its cliches, are not the worn out cliches of um.. someone putting together the Care Bears or something.
There is a -technical- challenge I think animation is going to have to meet (regardless of cultural origin) And it has to do with HDTV. Will those of the hand drawn tradition use larger fields to animate upon? Will animation have to return to more detailed drawings for a more detailed screen? Will Clean Up theory have to change? Will the production mind set set up for NTSC have to start thinking more cinematically to produce for a screen with four times or more detail?
Has HDTV been discussed amongst animation pros much (those that produce for TV), or is it something that they have failed to give much notice?
There is a -technical- challenge I think animation is going to have to meet (regardless of cultural origin) And it has to do with HDTV. Will those of the hand drawn tradition use larger fields to animate upon?
That's already been done back in 1956 when Widescreen was first introduced. Check out the Tom & Jerry cartoons The Flying Sorceress and Blue Cat Blues.
The film that blew me away most recently was The Triplets of Belleville! Awesome cartooniness, almost no dialogue, and characters that really conveyed emotion and personality without resorting to live action shortcuts. Amazing work of art!
David, True enough,(and there has been iMAX animation as well) but what I meant by 'technical challenge' of HD is... So many of the production habits of the past 30 years has been geared towards the technical limitations of a TV, that I don't think many are thinking BIG, as a matter habit, as much as they might otherwise. I mean, it even seems storyboarding has gone shrinky dink, with post-it notes (as convenient as they are), and Thumbnail working drawings becoming the finished product.
It is a bit like when Jack Kirby was given smaller paper to draw on, to save money for Marvel, he still drew at the same size, he kept his old drawing habits in a new format.
There are habits in place in animation production, that work fine for NTSC TV, that are not going to age so well for HD... I haven't heard of a single TV animation production house give the idea of HD content any lipservice at all, even though with Vector based computer aided production, things scale fairly well, but I feel that loads of 2-d work is not gearing up properly for the new HD format.
For the same reasons, some stuff made for TV ten years ago shows considerable blemish merely in the quality nudge of moving to DVD.
Sorry for soapboxing.
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