Animation X-Sheet

here are some animation dope sheets you can download:


Download US Legal
Preview:

Download US Letter
Preview:

Aang Pencil Test

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Avatar: The Last Airbender is Korean?

Okay. Lets talk a little about outsourcing. Did you used to watch Rugrats? How about anyone watching The Simpsons? Are you a fan of Futurama? How about Ed Edd n Eddy, or SpongeBob SquarePants, or The Powerpuff Girls? Well, that animation is more than likely Korean. Actually, the shows I just list are Korean.

Hold up. These are American shows. Their creators are American, as well as the voice actors, writers... whats up!?

Well it started long ago with a well known animation studio that has received a bad reputation for "ruining" cartoons. You see, animation was a theater only thing. They were short and the cost to make an animated film was incredibly high. When the first animations spilled into theaters, they were primitive and cheap and usually double billed with another film. Thus a tradition of seeing a cartoon before a movie began. A tradition that is no longer practiced. Soon cartoons started becoming more sophisticated with better techniques and technology. One of the sole contributors to this advancement in the field was Walt Disney. He kept pushing his animations to become better and better. He pushed so much, that they also became too expensive. Their was little business left in the area of the short subject cartoon. So the leap to feature length animation occurred. More profit was made by this decision, and soon Disney practically stopped making short subjects. The studio who still benefited from the short animation was Warner Brothers with their Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies series. These cartoons still made money because they were a bit more crude and it brought costs down. They survived until the 1960's. More demand for cartoons came, but the issue was they were providing less and less money to produce them. So, one studio decided to make a jump from the silver screen to the tube. The biggest problem that prevented animation studios from taking the leap to television was the amount to produce animation grossly overshot the any possible profit. Until Hannah-Barbera. They cut costs by making huge changes in the way they produced their animation. They would have still characters with only one small portion of them moving, use the camera to fake a movement rather than animate it moving, write scripts that relied a lot on verbal comedy almost like a radio drama, and finally... they OUTSOURCED! Ever since then animation, for television especially, has been outsourced to a Malasia, Korea, China, and India. It's the price you pay to put cartoons on T.V.

Well, is outsourcing bad? No. Not really. It's actually quite good since it has made it possible for many of our favorite cartoons to be produced. The current burst in the industry is because we can make it so cheaply.

I don't like it. Here, lets take a look at what exactly gets outsourced. What part is American made and what part is not.

Most often the setup is this:

-AMERICA-
\\Someone thinks up the show idea.
\\Story is written
\\Character Models and Object Models are drawn
\\Storyboards are drawn
\\Speech it recorded
\\Extremes are drawn from the storyboard
\\Timing is placed on the Extremes

-KOREA-
\\Backgrounds are drawn
\\Extremes are in-betweened
\\Animation is cleaned up
\\Animation is colored
\\Effects are added
\\Animation is filmed

-AMERICA-
\\Review animation for any need changes
\\Add sound FX & music

Basically the studio here in the US does all the planning and ships it out for others to do the grunt work. Everything has already been planned out for the Asian studio to just follow the directions to put everything together. That's not too horrible, except it takes some of the love in hard work out of the job. Some things can also get lost in translation of not only language but culture.

Now lets go back to Avatar: The Last Airbender. What's interesting about this is the amount of responsibility that was given to their Korean studio.

-AMERICA-
\\Someone thinks up the show idea.
\\Story is written
\\Character Models and Object Models are drawn
\\Storyboards are drawn
\\Speech it recorded


-KOREA-
\\Extremes are drawn from the storyboard
\\Timing is placed on the Extremes
\\Backgrounds are drawn
\\Extremes are in-betweened
\\Animation is cleaned up
\\Animation is colored
\\Effects are added
\\Animation is filmed

-AMERICA-
\\Review animation for any need changes
\\Add sound FX & music

Only two things are moved into the workflow of the Korean studio, but if you look at the content of them, you realize it is a lot.

Animators make drawn pictures move. They look at the storyboards, fill in key movements between one storyboard frame and the next, time it out, and then once it is in-betweened you'll have animation. For Avatar, no one in America touched the animation. Storyboards laid out what the shot would be and a guidline for what the animators should do, but the actions, motions, everything that moves was planned, timed and executed by Korean animators!

An article in the NY Times reported how the storyboards sent to the Korean studio only had a man fainting, but since the Koreans were in charge of connecting point A to point B, they produced a man who excitingly foams at the mouth before fainting. The piece was completely created within the Korean studio with no American making the decision to do it. Now I actually found that scene absolutely hilarious. I am also not saying that all this is a bad thing. Avatar is a great series! What I am trying to get across is that this isn't American animation. I guess you could argue that no animation that is outsourced is truly American, but at least the movements are planned out by American animators, and the other studio just follows the instructions.

It's like this:
An engineer is commissioned to design a business building, the big wigs tell him what they want. He makes the blueprint that instructs a construction crew exactly how to assemble the building. Someone else also furnishes the building.

Well the Engineer and his employer is like the American Studio, while the construction crew and furnishers are the outsourced studio.

For Avatar, the Engineer is apart on the outsourced group.

Now, this example is not exact. There are many other things that go on besides what I've mentioned. But the basic gist is there. Avatar was thought up by two Americans, but they went to Koreans to animate it for them.
Why does this bug me? Well where does the animation industry's future lie if animation studios are starting to shift more responsibility to outsourced studios? Will I have to move to Korea to land a job!? I don't think anything that drastic is going to happen. At least not anytime soon. But it does make one wonder. I want to animate. I want to make things move! I think I'll live with someone else filling in my blanks so long as I can plan out their job. But the job I want to do, was not done by Americans in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Animation Resource HUNT

okay. So I've been scouring the internet looking for some good animation resources to use as independent study tools, and I've been finding some pretty interesting stuff! It took some time to find where this kind of stuff would be stashed, but I found a lot of very useful material in the blogs of working animators! I first tried looking at college and teacher websites, hoping that materials would be posted for students, but nada. Instead I somehow stumbled upon on animators blog, which had links to many other blogs. So I found a wealth of animation information! I'll post some of the blogs here so anyone can track down these findings.

I found some interesting hand poses and model sheets at this blog:
Animopus
I also found a great pdf on the Animopus blog of Walt Stanchfield's Gesture Drawing for Animators!

here is an animator who was working on Coraline and some other Disney projects, AND is an instructor at Cal-Arts:
Hand Drawn Nomad
Check the archives of this blog, there are some great technique tutorials for animation

This next blog, don't let the front page fool you. Check out the different categories and you'll find some interesting animation stuff:
Lost in the Plot
Also check out his links of friend, I found more interesting animation blogs through that!

This blog's name explains it all. It has some great concept art, character designs and storyboard art for many different animation projects:
Character Design
I especially liked seeing the storyboards to the first few scenes of UP

This next blog is one for working animators:
TAG Blog

This blog only has some simple tutorials, but it is interesting:
Angry Animator

Here is a site that is posted notes from SIGGRAPH 94 class with John Lasseter on Animation Tricks

This is a link to a forum with a list of helpful links that led me to find some of these interesting blogs.

This is also an interesting blog with old Disney artwork and probably more, but I have yet to dive into it deeper:
The Blackwing Diaries

Here's a great site with animation tips & tricks. It is hosted by animationmentor.com's founders and provides some interesting information:
Animation Tips & Tricks

Also, even though AnimationMentor.com is predominantly computer animation, there are some great reference materials on their site. Look for their free downloadable Tips & Tricks PDF, both vol. 1 & vol. 2.

Well there's a start! I hope anyone who stops by that is interested in animation will check these places out. They're worth the time!

Disney/Pixar's UP

When I first saw previews for Pixar's newest film "UP" I was not all that excited to go see it. The idea of a house being carried by thousands of helium balloons is pretty far-fetched. And yes, I know it's a cartoon they can get away with it, but it turned me off. The previews did not show much of the character's personalities besides a grumpy old man and a small boy scout type boy.

Well today was my wife's birthday and she wanted to go see a movie. She chose UP and I didn't have any problem with that. I was surprisingly interested to see what it was really about. Pixar has been cranking out films that have all been big hits and I've been waiting for a flop. This definitely wasn't it.

UP is excellent. It is not Pixar's most polished film. Wall-E was a visual feast for the eyes in the beginning of the film with its realism and a design wonderland on the Axiom later. UP is a different kind of beautiful. First, everything begins with a great story. Pixar has emphasized the importance of story and it is what keeps their films on the top. The visual beauty is just icing on the cake. UP's story begins with Carl Fredricksen as a boy. His childhood imagination latches onto a specific adventurer who searches for an elusive monster in the wilderness of South America. He becomes friends with a young girl his age, Ellie, you shares his adventuring hobby. They make a pact to one day go to South America. In a heart-wrenching montage, the lives of Carl and Ellie pass before our eyes. They become old and without ever completing their dream. Ellie becomes ill and passes away, leaving Carl alone. The true movie is between Carl and the memory of Ellie in his heart. Even though he travels in his house, lifted by balloons, the movie is mostly internal.

The visuals of the film take a step back from Wall-E's realism and look a lot like character's from the Incredible's universe. But the imagery is still beautiful. The shots of the house flying in the clouds are complemented by a wonderful score by Michael Giacchino.

I really enjoyed this film. "It's the boring things that you remember most."
Take a look at the trailers:

Teaser Trailer
Trailer

Go here to view special UP-isodes.

At CNet, there is an article about how Pixar animated thousands of balloons.
CNN has an article talking about the secret to Pixar's success: Their people.

This film is a mish mash of many things. There are some ridiculous events that are funny, but in no way plausible, like getting to South America in a night or even the house lifted by balloons! But these things are easily overlooked when you become emotionally attached with the characters. The talking dogs piloting small fighter planes was also a stretch bu funny. My screenwriting teacher would question many of the motivations in this movie, saying that their motivation was not strong enough to cause them to do what they did. I say they were. If they weren't we wouldn't have a film. A hilarious addition to the cast is Dug the dog. He is funny because he is so true to how we see dogs. My wife really enjoyed the quote: "I hid under the porch because I love you."

I won't say too much more, but I urge anyone to go see this film. It is excellent. Pixar is still going strong. Be prepared to laugh and cry. If you are married, this film is a real tearjerker.

9

Okay, so I am really stoked about the new film 9 by Shane Acker. I remember seeing his short film "9" that sparked the feature film. I think I saw it when I attended the 3rd Animation Show in Detroit. Anyways, after seeing two trailers I've become very interested in the film.

Please view them for yourself:

Trailer 1
Trailer 2

The trailers are very good. I love the music in them and the imagery shown is very graphic, showing some of the characters being drained of their life. I love it. It's going to be hard waiting until September to see this movie, but I will definitely be going to see it in the theater.

Check out production drawings, storyboards and an interview with director Shane Acker here: Interview

Also check out Shane Acker's site.

The original short has become very hard to find and I am hoping that when the feature 9 is released on DVD the short will be included.

Independent Animators in History

Suzan Pitt was a painter that fell into animation. Her painterly skills are shown throughout this film:
ASPARAGUS


Joanna Priestly - her website
VOICES


Bill Plympton is one of the most known independent animators. His work was frequently played on MTV and he continues to create a large library of work. Plymptoons website
LEARN TO KISS


25 WAYS TO QUIT SMOKING

25 Ways To Quit Smoking - More free videos are here

Don Hertzfeldt has become one of the most popular contemporary independent animators. His style is very simple but he puts a large amount of work into creating the specific look and timing that is in his work. He works with no digital equipment and shoots his films analogue. HE also is a big stickler for viewing the films in the highest quality possible and really hates that people watch them online. So HERE YOU GO!
BILLY'S BALLOON


REJECTED CARTOONS


William Kentridge is a fine artist and his work is considered so. Doing his animations in charcoal and editing the same picture over and over, a ghost image remains from the path of moving objects. It is very hard to view his work outside of a museum or art gallery since this is the only way he chooses them to be seen and experienced. You can catch some clips of his work on YouTube if you like.


Yuri Norstein is a Russian animator who does beautiful work with cut out animation. He is currently having trouble finding someone to finance his films since the fall of the Soviet Union.
TALES OF TALES