I started working online for CG Spectrum as a Mentor in 2D animation and meeting several other mentors of the program. Sylvain is French and lives in London where he is an independent animator/director specializing the 2D animation.
I was introduced to him as Sykosan during an online meeting and was a bit confused by him name. I looked over his animation reel and was very impressed by animation work so far. He has a collection of very short action scenes demonstrating his animation style and only recently, he animated and directed a music video for Katy Perry called "Cry about it later". I will warn you that this song might get stuck in your head for a few days.
I was able to interview Sykosan to find out more about him and his animation. I discovered that he prefers to animate using Photoshop, although he has used TV Paint as well as Toon Boom Harmony.
He also spends off time, working on short 5 to 10 seconds projects which he can add to his portfolio reel later. Please enjoy this recent interview with Sykosan...
I have always told my students that nobody animates in Photoshop, which is true most animation studios. But now, I have been proven wrong and I can show them someone who is quite good at it.
If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel to show your support! Thanks for Watching!
If you know anything about animation, you should know all about Winsor McCay. He was a very talented illustrator and cartoonist who experimented with animation by creating one of the first character animation characters known as "Gertie the Dinosaur".
I recently contacted Winsor McCay using the new Ouija Zoom app where I got to ask him a few questions about his work.
Well, that should be worth a few ad clicks to add to the blog's tip jar. If you enjoyed this at all, please click on the ads and it will let me know that you did.
Its Halloween again and below is this year's Animateducated Halloween episode with a few treats including an interview with Cartoonist and Animator, Winsor McCay (1869-1934) and only one card trick.
Thank you to all the subscribers and viewers of the Animateducated channel and have a happy and safe Halloween!
Every year, students have an opportunity to enter their film, either as in the drama, documentary, animation or experimental category. Winning this award, opens a lot of doors for the young filmmaker. Here are the winners of this year's Student Academy awards...
I'm working on a new Halloween episode, but I need your help. Please watch to video below for the details and send your replies to either the comments below or to the Facebook Animateducated page.
David Steinberg was a film student at Northwestern University in Chicago and worked for Don Bluth where he eventually became an assistant director and soon started moving up in the business. He became a successful animation producer for Disney and Nickelodeon. On the side, he became more interested in writing rhyming stories for kids which eventually lead to him becoming his alter ego, D. J. Steinberg, as an author of the "Here I Come" book series for children.
Please enjoy several readings of his children's books, including his latest Hanukkah and Christmas Holiday books.
Enter to Win an Autographed Bundle of books by D. J. Steinberg! Deadline Friday, October 15th, 2021 @ 12pm PST, Details below...
If you like this interview, visit D.J. Steinberg's webpage: www.djsteinberg.com please leave a comment below, subscribe and/or share with a friend or two or three.
When October would roll around, I would always announce or introduce students to the 24 Hour Animation Contest. Below is a video explaining how the contest all began by Aubry Mintz while teaching at CSULB. The contest survived Covid by continuing in 2020 and once again, the contest is here for October 2021.
As Faculty, I would only be their for moral support and make sure the students were given a dinner break as well as some sort of breakfast for the next day to keep them fed and watered. I felt it was a way to give the students experience in creating a :30 animated film based on a written prompt where they had 24 hours to produce it.
Since that time, many studios have donated prizes and support the contest. This year the registration deadline for teams is onWEDNESDAY Oct 13th 2021 at 11:59pm PST and the Competition Begins: October 15, 2021 3pm PST
Working on several new interviews on the Animateducated YouTube channel and wanted to let you know they are up and running.
The first is an interview with Alfredo Cassano, who animated Jesper in Klaus. Alfredo and I teach online at CG Spectrum and I reached out to interview him and find out more about his animation background.
The next upcoming interview is with David Steinberg aka D. J. Steinberg who has become a Children's book author with 25 books written and still going. David came from Animation production where he worked for Don Bluth, at Disney Animation and recent at Nickelodeon.
In this interview, he explains what its like to write Children's books, work with illustrators and reads some of his published works. Now if I can just get his dog Oscar back to him, everything will be fine.
Thank you to all the new people who have subscribed to Animateducated on YouTube; we just hit 578 subscribers! More interviews and animated things to come! Thanks again for watching and helping this blog/channel grow.
An actor will develop the way his character moves and walk. A walk tells a lot about a character, in fact if you observe people walking in a public place, sometimes you can learn a lot about them just by watching them walk.
Here are a collection of character walks from some classic animation characters.
Finding more interesting articles I have saved through the years and they now have found a home here. Here's one from Comic Scene #15 Oct 1989? about the Voice of George Jetson!
Click on the article page and view it at 500% for a good read.
I have become a 2D mentor for an online school called
CG Spectrum. The school is in Australia, but has been teaching animation online for
several years and has an international reputation. I am currently teaching 2D
animation to students internationally learning 2D animation and to become
better animators.
The classes are only 5 students at the most and there are no grades! Its
based on the individual to learn from weekly projects and build their own
portfolio and meet once a week for a Q/A meeting. I review work, give them
feedback and help out with any animation problems they might be having. And
nobody is asking, "Do I get an A on this?" Finally its about the work, not
the grades and I am happy seeing students learning animation and not doing
it for a grade.
Here's a portion of a recent article posted on Cartoon Brew.
The 2D Masters
2D Animator Jim Richardson–who worked on Scooby Doo, 101 Dalmatians, Beauty and the Beast
and The Little Mermaid–grew up on a steady diet of Warner Bros, Hanna Barbera and Disney
cartoons.
His first attempt at making his own animation was a clunky stop motion
short using a ball of kneaded dough. He then moved onto flip books, hand
drawn animation, claymation, and animated magazine cut-outs inspired by
Terry Gilliam and Mike Jittlov. He began the mastery of his craft with his
own evolution of animation techniques.
“I love showing students classics from Lotte Reiniger, Tex Avery cartoons,
MGM Tom and Jerrys, Chuck Jones and anything else they need to know about.
We have control now to study certain scenes frame by frame, learn how they
made the drawings move, how they used dry brush and other techniques.
There’s so much to learn from these films of the past.”
Jim sees a lot of anime influence in student work, and is amazed when he
sees an original style from a student. There are so many styles of animation
to draw from, the trick to originality is to master those styles and fuse
them to discover your own style. This takes time, practice, and patience,
but it is the road to true innovation.
If you are interested in getting into animation or brushing up your skills,
check out CG Spectrum to learn more about their 2D and 3D animation
courses.
After graduating college, my first job in animation was as a cel painter.I got to paint colors onto cels for Cap'n Crunch animated commercials in
Chicago. Cartoon Colour sadly no longer produces their brand of Cel Vinyl paints,
however another company now sells paints for animation cels called Toon
Tones.
Cel painting is a lost art and so I have bought some ink and paintand put together this episode about it. The process of inking and painting animation cels!
The first place I began to learn this craft was at a commercial studio in
Chicago called Sinnott and Associates, who at the time, produced all
the Cap'n Crunch commercials. Here's one I worked on, adding the shading on the Soggy characters.
The animation drawings were created in the studio on the first floor and
the ink and paint department was in an office space a few floors above.
There were several drafting tables and other tables pushed together with
small light boxes on top. Each painters worked at a light box which
illuminated the clear cels from below as the paint was applied on the
reversed cel drawing. Using the light table helped make sure your painting
wasn't too thin.
I use the word "applied" because you had to push the paint around on the
cel and avoid stroking it on. You also had to make sure the paint was not
too thick and not too watery. All the cel vinyl paint came from Cartoon
Colour in Culver City, CA were it was made at the time. The paint could be
mixed to create other colors, shades and tints.
Painters wore thin white cotton gloves to keep their finger prints off of
the cels that they painted. Wooden toothpicks or chop sticks were used the
push or remove an excess of paint over the inked lines or other areas of
color.
We worked as a team where several people were painting one color like Capn'
Crunch's coat color and hat, other artists painted the shaded coat color to
give a little 3D effect. Another would be adding the face flesh color and
when those were dry, another person could do the eye whites and the
pupils.
You needed a team of painters which had to several weeks to a month to
complete the painting before the final animation was shot. I remember there
were a few other background artists who would stop by and the head of the
painters would make sure that all the cels being painted with the correct
colors and even worked well with the finished background art.
A lot of student animated films could not afford the ink and paint process,
so many films had cleaned up versions as pencil test with no color. Other
animation studios choose a different look to add color to their animation.
Some would animate everything on paper, then do an inked drawing and either
add color marker or color pencil to it. Some would use color paper and
carefully cut out all the color parts of the drawing, glue down all the
color parts, draw over the clean black outline and then each colored paper
drawing would be glued to a clear animation cel.
All these processes looked great, but took a lot of time and people to
produce them to meet a deadline. And other factors popped up, that cel paint
needs time to dry, can help it a little bit with a hand held hair drier, but
not too much or the paint will begin to crack and you need more time to
correct it.
So when digital ink and paint came along, the animators were so happy since
you could click to add a color and you can change it throughout without much
trouble at all. No more paint brushes, or paint to slowly push around and
wait for it to dry until you could add more color to it.
I will say working with everyone in one room was the best thing of the job,
We all would talk a group as we worked and often listened to music, radio or
homemade cassette music we had put together. Then it would be 12 or 1pm and
everyone would break for lunch, either with food they had brought or would
run off to get something. Then it was back to the inking and painting.
There also were several artists with steady hands who were inking the cels
that we painters would be painting once they were done with the scene. That
was a whole other set of skills where you had to ink a solid and strong line
to the cel, most used a rapidograph pen with ink for acetate. Other studios
had artists who could ink lines on a cel with a brush, sometime with
different colored lines.
And while I was writing this post, I saw this job listing popped
up...
I applied for this job, however my history of applying for Disney jobs in
the past has never been very successful. But after all, Cel Ink and Painting
is a lost art. I let you know if I hear anything.
And then I got this...
Jim,
Thank you for your interest in The Walt Disney Company and for taking the time to apply to the position of Inker and Painter (826568BR).
Based on the information you provided, we are considering other candidates whose background and experience more closely align with the qualifications and requirements of this position.
Please note, this message only applies to the position of Inker and Painter(826568BR). If you have submitted applications for other postings, you may still be in consideration. You can confirm the current status of those applications on your candidate dashboard.
We encourage you to continue your search on disneycareers.com and to apply to any and all jobs that match your background and experience as new positions are frequently posted.
Thank you again for your interest in working with us.
I grew up watching and enjoying animated commercials and have recently transfer several pencil tests and animatics of these animated commercials to the Animateducated YouTube channel for all to enjoy and learn from.
Here is an early stop motion of the smiling and rather scary looking Jolly Green Giant from the 1950s.
Advertisers cleverly discovered that the spokesperson of their product needed to be appealing to kids as well as adults.
When I was a kid, I remembering hearing a familiar jiggle and seeing a commercial about canned vegetables. The older commercial showed a live action Green Giant standing in the distance proudly admiring the crops below. Over time, I learned that this was the Green Giant who lived in the valley of the Jolly Green Giant. Apparently he owned the land and his own company which was named after him.
Soon the Jolly Green Giant must have lost his appeal, because soon a younger spokesperson came along called "The Little Green Sprout." It might be years or centuries before he could retire, so the Sprout was introduced with his own origin commercial in the 1970s.
Then there were the Keebler Elves, who had a bakery in an old hallow tree where they made cookies at first and then branched out to crackers of all sorts. Below is a great example of a test spot or an animatic, a roughly animated storyboard followed by the final commercial. This was from the early 1990s, a year after Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. These are the Bill and Ted teen elves who are obsessed a new product called Pizzarias!
Ad agencies were hired to develop these animated pitchmen who could be human like or an animal with human traits which an audience could identify with instantly.
Here's a whole series of different stages of production for one Keebler commercial featuring a live action background, miniature props, pencil tests, color product images and final inked and painted animation.
Other commercials began combining live action and animation with the success of Roger Rabbit. Here is a fun Froot Loops spot with a live actor, a boat and giant fruit props that drop into a lake.
You can enjoy more pencil tests and making of commercials as well as other animated educational videos on YouTube at Animateducated. Subscribe to the channel to see more future videos!
I have posted this idea in the past, but I don't think anyone could understand what I was talking about. I would like to get a small group of animators together to do a Halloween them anijam. What is an Anijam? Here's one I did in the past with interested co workers when we were all working at Vinton Studios in the late 90s.
Every animator would be given an image to start and end with. All the different short films would be edited together to create a longer film. If you are interested in participating in this project, please sign the form below and we can go from there.
Summer is nearing to a close and again, it looks like nobody is interested it this project. (big sigh) Oh Well....
I have a box of old VHS tapes which I am currently exacting gold from the video recorded images into digital files. Most of these are pencil test which I collected from working on Animaniacs at StarToons back in the 90's.
And so, this is a test to see if I can post these tests for other animators to view and study. I am not selling these or claim to have invented the show or episodes, I only have a copy of these rare pencil tests which I would like to share with you and other interested folks.
Here's a pencil test from an episode I worked on called "And Justice for Slappy".
I don't know if I will be able to post more pencil tests, so this is just a test to see if I can post them under the title of Educational Purposes only. So, let me know if you liked what you saw and if you would like to see more, because I have quite a few.
Bob Gardiner and Will Vinton won their first Oscar for "Closed Mondays" in 1974 and worked on a few more projects before going their separate ways. I found these two rare interviews from an April 1978 issue of American Cinematographer about clay artist and animator Bob Gardiner.
20 Nights in Clay is an article about Gardiner producing a clay animated intro to the 10th anniversary of Rolling Stone Magazine TV special back in 1977.
This second article from the same magazine is more of an interview with Bob Gardiner about his work in plasticine and creative process. Its a pretty interesting look into his process of animating and creating characters in clay.
If you are interested in more about Claymation or Will Vinton, check out this blog post; Marq Evans ClayDream.
As a teenager, I discovered a Green Wizard who inspired me to learn more about
animation and filmmaking in general.
Mike Jittlov was a mathematic/language major at UCLA when he took an animation class to satisfy his art requirement. His first student films were two 2D shorts called "The Leap" and "Good Grief". His interested grew from there and soon he was making other short animated films, "Swing Shift", "The Interview," and "Animato".
Here's one of his early films called "Animato" which he made to show off his animation talents to future employers, the ploy worked and caught the attention of a producer at Disney (see way below).
"Swing Shift" was to follow below...
Here's an
article he wrote about making the film for American Cinematographer magazine, long, long ago... Note the price!
I wrote him a fan letter and got a chance to talk to my on the phone. He was very friendly on the phone and answered lots of my animation questions. Eventually, I met him at a science fiction convention in Florida when I was in high school. I had collected a few articles and post cards in very small detailed writing from him and will be glad to share it below if anyone is interested to learn more about this very creative person.
Disney was celebrating Mickey's 50th and hired Mike to come up with the following 3 shorts featuring Mickey Mouse. This is Mike Jittlov's Stop Motion Mickey Mouse which he animated and stars in. Disney was not going to give him screen credit, so he animated his credits in the big parade number at the end.
Jittlov then made his famous short film called "The Wizard of Speed and Time" which got a lot of attention and he would eventually make a feature film of the same name. Here's the short film that inspired me into animation...
Cleverly, he weaved a lot of segments from his past films into the story line. And the film will never win any acting awards. Jittlov was able to finish the film which wasn't under his complete control, but still contains some impressive special effects. Here's the feature below...
He would return to the big screen briefly as a dark spirit from the 1990's film "Ghost".
He's also pretty well known in the World of Origami. Here's a link to a dollar bill skull he designed if you are interested. https://youtu.be/y5wR8QgOoUw
I have been trying to get him to do an Animateducated interview, but he's a little shy about that these days. Maybe he'll change his mind? Happy Birthday Mike!
I first met Daniel Lopez Munoz while he was a student attending Columbia College in Chicago. Recently, I interviewed him after discovering he worked on Pixar's SOUL. Daniel designed the main character, Joe Gardner and other human characters in the film.
Here's a recent interview where he answered all my questions and even some I didn't ask. Enjoy the interview...
