WHAT ANIMATION CAN LEARN FROM BALLET

I hesitated to put this up because a lot of people don't like ballet, probably because they've only seen it on TV. It's a medium that has to be seen live. The thump on the floorboards, the sweat, the commitment and almost super-human determination of the dancers to do impossible things; none of this translates to the screen. In almost every case the people who don't like ballet are the ones who've never seen a good one.





Anyway, there are a lot of parallels between ballet and animation. The examples I'll use here come from the collaboration between Balanchine and his star ballerina, Suzanne Farrell. Balanchine fell in love with 16yr.-old Farrell who was forty years younger. They both new it couldn't work in the long run but they were determined to translate the intensity of what they were feeling into art. It was a case of two first-rate people giving everything they had to an ephemeral medium.

Here (below) is an excerpt from Joan Acocella's "Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints." Farrell eventually became a teacher and here's what Acocella says went on in her class. Click to enlarge the page.

Holy Cow! I never heard of developpe' before and now I'm dying to try it in animation. Not an animated ballet, I mean something funny that requires a long, nuanced unravelling in a single scene! And what's this thing about gathering space to make a turn? Maybe I could use that if only I could see an example of what Farrell was talking about!




Wow! True enough! An animator has to be in the moment too, in a sense. A really good and unique performer is wasted by a director with a too specific view of how an action should be done (this doesn't apply to John).


This (above) is why I don't believe in animatics. Even the wrong choices a first-rate artist/filmmaker makes give a feeling of live performance and spontaneity to a piece. Choices, good or bad, reflect the character of a filmmaker. Getting too precious in a quest for perfection is a big mistake.


BTW, I do believe in careful editing, I just don't believe in animatics, which are a tool of the devil.




Unbelievable genius! Balanchine (above) was right! You can't change artists, all you can do is develop what they already have. Clampett was great at this. He didn't try for a homogenized unit. He pushed Scribner and others to take what they were already good at and make it even better.

Much wisdom here (above)! This is one of the many reasons why animation scripts should never, ever be written by writers. Writers don't know what individual artists in the unit are good at. Only another artist could appreciate that. A good story has to be tailor-made to fit the strengths of the artists who will work on the show.

PUNISHMENT!

Soooo...you guys didn't like the Yiddish Theater post! Gee, that's too bad. I thought entertainment people would be interested in reading about where modern entertainment comes from. I guess I was mistaken.

And you didn't like the vaudeville posters I put up! You didn't even like this one (above)!Amazing! I guess you prefer the wonderful technique in modern posters.

Maybe the vaudeville posters would have meant more if people knew something about the characters they were about. The McFadden's Flats poster I put up referred to the section of town that the Yellow Kid's Hogan's Alley was located in. If you're not familiar with Hogan's Alley click to enlarge the newspaper page above.

The Happy Hooligan poster I put up referred to the character in this comic strip (above, click to enlarge).

And you didn't like the story analysis! Really? Nothing special, huh? You know, it didn't come from a book. It took me hours of thinking to figure that one out. I'd hoped it would be useful to readers who might want to write something funny someday. But...I was mistaken.

Grrrr! What a bunch of meatheads! Why do I waste my time doing stuff for people who don't appreciate it?

I'm taking off for a couple of days to brood! I'll be back (maybe) Saturday, Sept. 8th!

THE AMERICAN YIDDISH THEATER

A lot of people don't know it but there were two vaudevilles in America in the early 20th century. One was the vaudeville everybody knows about, exemplified in the posters above and below, and which may have (I'm guessing) arisen from the old minstrel shows in the 19th century. The other was the now almost forgotten Yiddish Theater which came over on the boat with east European Jewish immigrants .





The two vaudevilles co-existed for a while and each had their separate audiences, but eventually the native vaudeville won out. It could pay more and had a bigger talent pool to draw from. Yiddish Theater people used to ridicule the vaudevillians, who they considered low class and vulgar, but even the Yiddish Theater eventually turned to sex gags and Yiddish performers were more and more moonlighting in regularvaudeville.

What I've said about the Yiddish Theater probably sounds sad but it was immensely influential in American comedy and drama. My guess is that part of that influence comes from East European Jewish culture. That culture is innately funny. Anglo culture isn't.

Let's say you're an anglo writer and you want to write a story about a gentile boy who's attracted to a gentile girl, and wants to ask her out. If you're like me you're asking yourself, "Hmmm, what obstacle is there? Is the boy shy? Is there another boy the girl likes better?" You have a lot of thinking to do before you arrive at a plot.

Now let's say you're a Jewish writer writing about a Jewish boy who wants to ask a Jewish girl out. East European culture requires a mediator or a go-between for things like this, usually a friend. The friend has to overcome the guy's reluctance to act and talk him into asking the girl out. The girl has a friend who has to talk her into accepting. Everything has to be argued about.

But that's not all. The girl's mother, who's a real character, thinks the boy is a loser. The boy's mother thinks the girl is a gold-digger. Maybe the two mediating friends are starting to fall for each other. And what happens if the two sets of parents meet each other? See what I mean? You haven't even thought about the plot yet and your story is half written. It's easy to write for Jewish characters. Their culture is interesting all by itself, even without a plot!

Everybody benefited from the War of the Vaudevilles. Gentiles learned how to write better comedy and Jews learned how to write James Bond films.

NEAPOLITAN HAND GESTURES

I was thinking about trying an animation program that a friend turned me on to, and I needed an idea for something to animate. After thinking about it for a while I settled on hand insults. you gotta' admit they're funny.

Suprisingly there's not a whole lot written on this subject. The best book was written by a neapolitan priest named deJorio in 1832. He didn't work with a very good artist and he declined to write about anything he thought was dirty, which probably leaves out a lot. Most frustrating of all, he left out explanations of things that he thought were so common as not to need description, and now those expressions are gone forever.

I'm dying to go to Naples and see what's left of the hand and body insult. Dejorio says they developed because people there had to communicate between balconies over the noise of the streets.

I wonder how slapping games developed? Dejorio said Neapolitans were always slapping each other on any excuse. Even educated aristocrats would play slapping games where a designated slapper would stand behind the slapee and give him a good whack on the back of the head. It had to be hard enough to make the guy mad. The guy would turn around and the grinning slapper would present both hands. The slap receiver would have to guess which hand he was slapped with. A wrong guess meant more slaps. If he guessed right he got to trade places with the slapper. I'll bet there were a lot of fights.

Everybody's favorite hand symbol is that of the evil eye. It has to do with imitating the horns of the devil. Neapolitans were obsessed with horn references. The gesture on the right (above)could mean evil eye but it could also mean a host of other horn-related things. Here's a partial list (below):


Nifty stuff, huh? I think we should bring back hand insults, though I could do without the slapping games.

GONE FOR THE HOLIDAY! BE BACK TUESDAY, SEPT. 4TH!

I was going to go to the beach but I think I'll work instead! 'Hope you have a great holiday!


(Thanks to Rogelio for the Price picture!)

ARE GIRLS HUMAN??

I'm going to stick my neck out and say yes, they are. Even so, there are some puzzling things about that sex.

Why do girls like kitten-in-the-basket posters?

And what's this thing they have about fetus toys?

And why glass unicorns? A few vile men will buy pewter Gandolfs but you never see a guy with a glass unicorn.

Maybe all these girly tastes have their genesis in the girly bedroom. I don't know of any real estate on Earth where a guy is more uncomfortable and itchy than in these pink and lavender infernos.

Maybe that's where girls learn to cultivate cute.

Or maybe they get it from books like this (above). I deliberately printed the picture small lest readers feel their eyes have been pierced by icepicks.

Girls feel they're on a mission to evangelize the the animal world and convert it to cute.

Someone shoot this poor dog and put it out of its misery.

Some women executives make girly otherness work for them. They tinker together ultra-fem offices, with pink, fuzzy carpeting and magical rainbow posters. When a business guy comes in they seat him in a rickety wicker chair next to a rickety wicker shelf, and the shelf is packed to the gills with glass unicorns. Of course the glassware is on the very edge of the shelves.

If he's lucky the poor guy will bump against the shelf and break just one of the unicorns. If he's not lucky the whole shelf will keel over. Either way he's screwed and will agree to any terms just to get out of the office.

Well that's all we have time for now. I know some of the girls reading this were probably salivating over the My Little Pony pictures. Here's (above) one last look at the beloved horse fetus and his pink friends.

HOME DECORATING FOR CARTOONISTS

You can't over-estimate the importance of home decoration. If you're a cartoonist then it's especially important because you need a stimulating environment.

Since I'm an artist myself the first thing that comes to mind when I think of decorating is what to hang on the walls. It's customary to fill the largest wall with an over-sized oil painting and for that I recommend something tasteful, something like this one (above) by Cliff Sterrett. It's restful in it's way but it's also stimulating and manly.

It's also customary to have a small accent painting nearby. How about something something quiet and understated like this (above)?

Males like to have a picture of an undraped woman on the wall (above) and male cartoonists are no exception. It adds a touch of class to a room, reminding us of the great pictures of the old masters.

A sculpture or two wouldn't be out of place. This one (above) is by Brancusi.

Whatever you do, never buy Laura Ashley-type furniture. It's fine for non-cartoonists but it's lethal for people of our breed.

This (above) is more like it. A cartoonist can't think without a certain amount of leather and wood around. And don't forget the stuffed animal heads. I'm an animal lover so I'd substitute fake heads. They get more realistic every year.

Of course cartoonists naturally want a little color and design in their lives. For those who prefer soft, mushy furniture why not use colorful coverings like the kind in Cliff Sterrett comics (above)?

For additional spot paintings I recommend the kind you see on the walls in the backgrounds of Smokey Stover panels (above). Be sure the hanging wire and nail are visible.

Last but not least, I think a framed portrait of some inspirational hero is in order. Something that'll get your juices going when you pass it in the hallway. For me that would be Bob Clampett or Percy Dovetonsils. Ah, giants walked the Earth in those days!