I'm a 2D Mentor

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. 

Disney Junior, 2D animation by Jim Richardson

DisneyDemo from Toondini on Vimeo.

Here's a Cartoon Brew article about teaching animation and I'm also mention here as well. https://www.cgspectrum.com/mentors/jim-richardson

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. 

How to Ink and Paint Cels

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 paint and 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.

Regards,
The Recruitment Team

Animated Commercials from the 1990s.

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!