Sunday, April 20, 2008

Sunday Dox


For the weekend, I thought I would share these two amazing documentaries I found about the two men who are probably most responsible for the modern ideals of what makes a cartoon or defines animiation in a lot of peoples' minds.


In truth, when you look back at both of these docs, you'll notice that there was kind of a 'Good Angel / Bad Angel' type of thing going on. Tex was good, Walt was evil. Or a better way to compare it is that Tex was the good kind of crazy, Walt the bad.

In this first documentary by John Needham, produced in 1988, we learn about this surprisingly shy man from many of his esteemed compatriots: Heck Allen, Mike Lah, Ed Love, Chuck Jones, Joe Adamson, Mark Kausler, and the legendary voice actress June Foray.

ENJOY!







So, did you know before this documentary that Tex loved cartoons so much that he suffered personal injury? Animators' horseplay lost him his eye, and attention to detail made him forget to pee!



There's a lot of good things to be said about Walt Disney the man, but the truth is, they've all been said a million times before, and even been exaggerated to some extent.

So if you like Walt as much as you like leaving nasty comments, I strongly urge you not to watch this documentary which has many people who worked with him vouching about the fact that he was:

A taskmaster

Racist

Chauvinistic

An extremely poor draftstman who after success only drew for the camera

And when the animators' strike went on during the production of DUMBO, he told members of the FBI that he suspected some of them of being communists and named names causing several good animators to get blacklisted.

And then there's that great story about the animation of Minnie and Mickey fucking. But I've said too much already. See for yourself:








See. SEE??? I've been saying it for years, Disney is EVIL!!!

And if you buy the argument that the man and the empire are seperate entites and that any Disney movie shouldn't be avoided by your children just because the man at the heart of it all was an uncertified wack job who was the Hitler of Hearts and Flowers, well then I guess I can't knock you.

After all, I don't try to fuck little boys but I have been known to enjoy a Michael Jackson tune here and there.

Anyway, I hope you've learned something this weekend. Because I sure did, Boy Howdy!

- trevor.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Ollie Johnston R.I.P.



LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Ollie Johnston, the last of the "Nine Old Men" who animated "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Fantasia," "Bambi" and other classic Walt Disney films, died Monday. He was 95.

In addition to being a legendary animator, Ollie Johnston was an avid train hobbyiist.

Johnston died of natural causes at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard Green said Tuesday.

"Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today," Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and director emeritus of the Walt Disney Co., said in a statement.

Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his "Nine Old Men," borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of the U.S. Supreme Court's members, who had angered the president by quashing many of his Depression-era New Deal programs.

Although most of Disney's men were in their 20s at the time, the name stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. The pair, who met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s, were hired by Disney for $17 a week at a time when he was expanding the studio to produce full-length feature films. Both worked on the first of those features, 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Johnston and Thomas and their families became neighbors in the Los Angeles suburb of Flintridge, and during their 45-minute drive to the Disney Studios each day, they would devise fresh ideas for work.

Johnston worked as an assistant animator on "Snow White" and became an animation supervisor on "Fantasia" and "Bambi" and animator on "Pinocchio."

He was especially proud of his work on "Bambi" and its classic scenes, including one depicting the heartbreaking death of Bambi's mother at the hands of a hunter. That scene has brought tears to the eyes of generations of young and old viewers.

"The mother's death showed how convincing we could be at presenting really strong emotion," he remarked in 1999.

Johnston's other credits included "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "Sleeping Beauty," "101 Dalmatians," "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book," "The Aristocats," "Robin Hood" and "The Rescuers."

"[People] know his work. They know his characters. They've seen him act without realizing it," film historian Leonard Maltin said. "He was one of the pillars, one of the key contributors to the golden age of Disney animation."

After Johnston and Thomas retired in 1978, they lectured at schools and film festivals in the United States and Europe. They also co-authored the books "Bambi: The Story and the Film," "Too Funny for Words," "The Disney Villains" and the epic "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life." They were the subjects of the 1995 documentary "Frank and Ollie," produced by Thomas' son Ted.

The pair's guide to animation is considered "the bible" among animators, said John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios and Johnston's longtime friend.

Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. was born October 31, 1912, in Palo Alto, California, where his father was a professor at Stanford. He once noted that he and Thomas "were bound to be thrown together" at the university, as they were two of only six students in its art department at the time. When not in class, they painted landscapes and sold them at a local speakeasy for meal money.

Johnston had planned on becoming a magazine illustrator but fell in love with animation.

"I wanted to paint pictures full of emotion that would make people want to read the stories," he once said. "But I found that [in animation] was something that was full of life and movement and action, and it showed all those feelings."

Johnston was honored with a Disney Legends Award in 1989, and in 2005, he was the first animator honored with the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.

He was also a major train enthusiast. The backyard of his Flintridge home boasted a hand-built miniature railroad, and Johnston restored and ran a full-size antique locomotive at a former vacation home in Julian, California.

Johnston's wife of 63 years, Marie Worthey, died in 2005. Johnston is survived by sons Ken and Rick and daughters-in-law Carolyn Johnston and Teya Priest Johnston. The Walt Disney Studios is planning a life celebration for Johnston. Funeral services will be private.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS

Monday, April 14, 2008

Matthew says READ THIS!!!

NOTE: This article is now being displayed for reference. We now know this problem to be solved, and aritistic integrity and copyright is no longer an issue. This is being displayed purely for posterity and historic purposes.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS: Trevor Thompson, Matthew and Janine Nunnery.




This article was brought to my attention at the Database, check it out, Seriously!!!



April 10, 2008
By Mark Simon

As you know, I usually handle the subjects in my articles with a sense of humor. That is not the case this month. I find nothing funny about the new Orphan Works legislation that is before Congress.


In fact, it PISSES ME OFF!

As an artist, you have to read this article or you could lose everything you've ever created!

An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission.



If you don't like to read long articles, you will miss incredibly important information that will affect the rest of your career as an artist. You should at least skip to the end to find the link for a fantastic interview with the Illustrators' Partnership about how you are about to lose ownership of your own artwork.



Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value.



What makes me so MAD about this new legislation is that it legalizes THEFT! The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies who will run the new private copyright registries.



These registries are companies that you would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work.



It is currently against international law to coerce people to register their work for copyright because there are so many inherent problems with it. But because big business can push through laws in the United States, our country is about to break with the rest of the world, again, and take your rights away.



With the tens of millions of photos and pieces of artwork created each year, the bounty for forcing everyone to pay a registration fee would be enormous. We lose our rights and our creations, and someone else makes money at our expense.



This includes every sketch, painting, photo, sculpture, drawing, video, song and every other type of creative endeavor.

All of it is at risk!

If the Orphan Works legislation passes, you and I and all creatives will lose virtually all the rights to not only our future work but to everything we've created over the past 34 years, unless we register it with the new, untested and privately run (by the friends and cronies of the U.S. government) registries. Even then, there is no guarantee that someone wishing to steal your personal creations won't successfully call your work an orphan work, and then legally use it for free.




That means writing letters to our congressmen and representatives. That means voicing your opinion about how we need copyright protection, as we've had since 1976, that protects everything we create from the moment we create it. This is the case around the world.



However, an Orphan Works bill is also in the works in Europe. I was speaking recently with Roger Dean, the famed artist of the Yes album covers, and he is greatly concerned with what will happen if Orphan Works bills become law.



"This will devastate the livelihood of artists, photographers and designers in a number of ways," Dean says. "That at the behest of a few hugely rich corporations who got rich by selling art that they played no part in the making of, the U.S. and U.K. governments are changing the copyright laws to protect the infringer instead of the creator. This is unjust, culturally destructive and commercial lunacy. This will not just hurt millions of artists around the world.



"On the other side of the coin, what argument will a U.S. court have with a Chinese company that insists it did its research in China and found nothing? If the cost of this is onerous for a U.S.

-based artist, what will it be like for artists and small businesses in emergent economies?"

If an artist whose work is as famous as Roger Dean's is concerned with this legislation, it should be of great concern for all of us.



The people, associations and companies behind the Orphan Works bill state that orphaned works have no value. If that were true, no one would want them. However, these same companies DO WANT your work, they just don't want to pay for it. If someone wants something, IT HAS VALUE. It's pretty simple.



Some major art and photography associations, or I should say, the managers of the associations, support this bill. The reason they support it is that they will operate some of the registries and stand to make a lot of money. Some have already been given millions of dollars by the Library of Congress. Follow the money and you will see why some groups support this bill of legalized theft of everything you have ever created.




Two proponents of this new legislation are Corbis and Getty Images. They are large stock photo and stock art companies. They sell art and photos inexpensively and are trying to build giant royalty-free databases.

Do you see how they could benefit from considering most works of art in the world orphans?
Do you know who owns Corbis? Bill Gates. He doesn't do anything unless it can make a huge amount of money. Helping you lose the copyright to your art is big business for Gates.



For years we've heard of Hollywood fighting with China to protect copyrights and stop the pirating of DVDs. Our government has worked with the studios to protect their investment.



Our government is NOW WORKING AGAINST US by allowing our own fellow citizens TO STEAL OUR CREATIVE WORKS.



It will be easy for them to get away with it unless we make ourselves heard.



Your calls and letters do work. I've seen many instances in which a single letter made a difference in public policy. Tens of thousands of calls and letters help even more.



This is not empty talk. I have written letters to my congressmen and I will do so again. I do what I can to let every creator know about terrible legislation like this... thus you are reading articles like this one and you can listen to interviews I've posted online.



CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATOR:
Go to http://www. usa. gov/Contact/Elected. shtml to quickly find the phone number, address and e-mail of every U.S. senator, U.S. representative, governor and state legislator.



Forward this article to every creator you know and urge them to take a moment to protect their very livelihood. I am giving everyone the right to reprint this article in any form to help spread the word to protect our creative rights.



Instead of sitting around watching TV tonight, TiVo that show, write a letter and make yourself heard.



Letters to our government officials don't have to be long, but they should be heartfelt. A good story helps. Tell them who you are, how this legislation negatively affects you and that you want them to vote against the Orphan Works legislation.

It's that easy!

If you don't, you will have only yourself to blame when you see other people making money from your art and you don't see a dime.



Spider-Man comic artist Alex Saviuk is also concerned about the loss of copyright protection. "When I found out all the negative aspects of the new legislation, it would almost behoove us to want to do something else for a living," says Saviuk. "If we would have to register with all the different companies, we would never be able to make a living.

"

"It would be impossible for me to register all my art," continues Saviuk. "It would put me out of business.

"

You can listen to my complete interview with Alex online.

Think this doesn't apply to you? Maybe you don't license your artwork? How about this?

Photos on the internet could be orphaned. With tens of millions of photos shared online with services like Flickr, Shutterfly and Snapfish, there is a huge opportunity for unauthorized use of your photos... legally.



You could see photos you take of your family and kids, or of a family vacation, used in a magazine or newspaper without your permission or payment to you. You would have to pay to register your photos, all of them, in every new registry in order to protect them. Say the average person takes 300 photos per year (I take a lot more than that). If a registry only charges $5 per image, that is a whopping $1,500 to protect your photos that are protected automatically under the current laws. If there are three registries, protecting your images could cost an amazing $4,500. Not to mention the time it would take to register every photo you take. Plus, you will also have to place your copyright sign on every photo.



That's not including all your art, sketches, paintings, 3D models, animations, etc. Do you really have all that extra time and money? Plus, even if you do register, the people stealing your work can still claim it was orphaned and, unless you fight them, they win. Even if you win, you may not make back your legal fees.



It gets even better. Anyone can submit images, including your images. They would then be excused from any liability for infringement (also known as THEFT) unless the legitimate rights owner (you) responds within a certain period of time to grant or deny permission to use your work.



That means you will also have to look through every image in every registry all the time to make sure someone is not stealing and registering your art. You could actually end up illegally using your own artwork if someone else registers it.

DOES ANYONE SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS?

Do you think the U.S. Copyright Office is here to protect you from this legislation? Think again.



Brad Holland of the Illustrators' Partnership shares his notes from a recent meeting with David O.

Carson, general counsel of the Copyright Office

Brad Holland: If a user can't find a registered work at the Copyright Office, hasn't the Copyright Office facilitated the creation of an orphaned work?
David O. Carson: Copyright owners will have to register their images with private registries.



BH: But what if I exercise my exclusive right of copyright and choose not to register?

DOC: If you want to go ahead and create an orphan work, be my guest!

This cavalier and disrespectful dialogue should have you seeing red.

Who the hell does he think he is? Carson should be fired and RUN OUT OF WASHINGTON!

None of this could happen with our current laws. Our current laws work and they protect us and our creations.



The only people who will benefit from the copyright law change are those who can't create work on their own or companies who stand to make a lot of money from using our works of art. They make contributions to congressmen, which is why they get what they want. We need to stand up and be heard. Every one of you need to write your senators and representatives. We have to protect our livelihoods. It's that serious.



Plus, the technologies being developed for locating visual art don't work well enough.

On March 13, 2008, PicScout, the creators of one of the software applications used in the registries, stated to the House IP subcommittee:

"Our technology can match images, or partial information of an image, with 99% success.

"

A 1% margin of error is huge when you consider the millions of searches performed for art every day. That means for every million searches, 10,000 images could be orphaned.



Plus, this only takes into account images registered on their system. If you have registered all your work on another system, they won't be searched here and, even though you may have spent thousands of dollars registering your creations, a new or unused directory could orphan everything you've ever created.



This is just one of the many reasons why INTERNATIONAL LAW FORBIDS COERCED REGISTRATION as a condition of protecting your copyright. The United States is about to break international law by making us register our works. The people behind the bill say it's not forced registration, but you won't have any rights unless you register.

THIS IS SEMANTICS! Of course, this is forced registration and we can't stand for it!

There are many, many other problems with the Orphan Works legislation. As a creator, YOU MUST understand what is going on.



For additional information on Orphan Works developments, go to the IPA Orphan Works Resource Page for Artists.



This is not something that is going to go away easily.

We need to be vocal NOW!

This legislation has been beaten or delayed for the past two years and they will keep trying until it passes. This is no time to be quiet and see what happens. What will happen depends on you. Send e-mails and call your congressmen. Ownership of your own creations depends on it.



Roger Dean sums this up well.

"Where are the colleges and universities in all this? Has the whole world gone to sleep?"

GET ON ORPHAN WORKS E-MAIL LIST
To be notified of the latest information on the Orphan Works bill and when to contact your legislators, send an e-mail and ask to be added to the Orphan Works list.



AUDIO INTERVIEW LINK
I have recorded a fantastic interview with Brad Holland of the Illustrators' Partnership regarding this bill and what it means to us as artists. Please listen and learn more about how you may lose ownership of all your art and photos. This article and the recorded interview are available for anyone to use in print or online. Please forward this information to every person and group you know so that we can work together and protect our creations and livelihoods.



Mark Simon is an award-winning animation producer/director and speaker. He speaks around the world on subjects about art, animation and TV production.
His copyrighted companies may be found online at www. SellYourTvConceptNow. com and www. Storyboards-East. com.
He may be reached at marksimonbooks@yahoo.com


Get on that Orphan Works List and find your legislator and start emailing them now or whenever you are given info from the Orphan works list that says to do so, I say fuck it and bug them at least once a day, send them peanuts, I don't give a shit, just do something!

- M.G.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Thief Part 3: Ken and Dick Convo part 2

When THE THIEF had been in production for a few years Richard Williams hired Art Babbit and Ken Harris, two amazing animators from Disney and Warner Bros. to not only work on the film but to also instruct Williams and his animators on how to do it right.



Below is part two of a recorded interview between Ken Harris and Richard, circa 1975. To read part one, click here.

PART TWO:

DICK: Since we don’t have a real assistant system going here, the guys just don't get trained…

KEN: I don't know how you get animators without them being assistants first. The average animator is an assistant for 4 to 5 years - unless he's an unusually adaptable guy. I was an assistant from June 20th 1935 to September 1st 1936: I was an assistant in-betweener and then the Assistant Animator, but, I worked nights, and animated. I probably did about 400 or 500 feet of animation in that year and a half. I got filmed tests of it; Some of it they used and some they didn't. But I was no kid you know; I was married, and had to make a living. I couldn’t horse around like the young guys did. They’d just go into it and say "Well, I'm working here in this studio, and some day I’ll be an animator." They didn't care about how quick, and they didn't seem to worry much about it.


DICK: I'm the only one I know of in this country who did systematic tests like you did on the wolves' run. They would do a test of the entire scene and if the scene worked, they’d leave it. But no one ever took a run and shot it six different ways, with six different drawings. I did empirical tests, with slates on the front telling you which test was which - to see what would work. I always did that, because in the beginning hardly any of my stuff worked.

KEN: That's right. You've got to do that; I still do that; After 35 years of experience, making all kinds of swaggering walks and strolling walks, and fairy walks and sneak walks and everything else - if I have a guy that is just on a little walk cycle that is going to mean something in a scene - maybe the body is on a cycle while he's walking, and his head’s got to move around while he's talking - now that walk has got to be right or I’ve wasted all of my time. I may use 16, 18 or 20 drawings, or whatever number of drawings it takes to get that walk cycle; I'd get that walk cycle right before I go ahead and put heads and dialogue on top of it. Even now.

DICK: Few here do that…

KEN: You've got to do that. Now I have worked at studios where you never had pencil tests at all. At Ray Patten, we never did a pencil test - it just had to work or else! They didn't have a test camera, and he didn't like to spend.

DICK: But you can't learn, you can't see your mistakes…

KEN: No, you can't. But the men Patten hired were all pretty experienced. I'd been animating for 18 years before I went there for six months, and I knew pretty much how it was. We seldom did re-takes. You know what your director wants. For instance, working for Chuck Jones, I know what Chuck wants, and I do it the way he wants it, and usually it is all right. But it pays to get tests. I don't know how these young fellows can do it without getting tests.


DICK: I found that they have about four formula walks, and they keep to that for safety.

KEN: Yes. Now, like Pat with that bird flapping - I told him, "Why don't you just do a 4-drawing test? We had a camera just for shooting tests, and we could develop the test in 20 minutes. I would draw maybe 4 or 5 different wing flaps on just one sheet of paper, and I'd shoot them all together. When they came on t'he screen you'd see them all flapping together at once, and you'd be able to pick the one you wanted - or the one that worked best. The way Pat is doing it now should work, and if you do it 3 or 4 other ways it will all work, but if he's not sure it's going to work, he should get a test or show it to someone who would know.

DICK: And save 3 weeks’ effort which in the end doesn't work!

KEN: Yes, because if you go ahead and shoot it, flying the bird into the scene around the tree and back out again - maybe you're using 100 drawings there, and if the basic flap isn't right, you'd have to do them all over again.

DICK: How would you start to teach someone?

KEN: There is a system of teaching anything; The best way to teach is to have him do it.

DICK: I like tracing off other people's work; When I traced off your work, I learned an enormous amount.

KEN: I learned a lot of stuff from Disney and from live-action. Chuck used to get us live-action dance film and we would pick out the 'extreme' positions and just outline them. Disney traced a lot from live action; Snow White herself was all rotoscoped: They had the girl act it out, filmed it, and traced it off. I don't like to work that way, and most animators don't. The best of them put the live-action on the moviola and turn it over frame by frame and study it. I did a dance with Gene Kelly - matching him dancing with a little mouse; I did another one of Bugs Bunny matching Jack Carson, one time.



DICK: Since dancing is one of your specialties, do you dance it yourself?

KEN: I can animate anything I can do or see somebody do. Mike Maltese used to do these dances; He could do any type of jig step, and he would do it slow, kick this toe here and move it out, and down and out, and then add them up, and you could do it. One of the girls in the studio was a dancer - she danced in the Salome picture. We could get her, and she would dance, do it, and show me the steps and everything. But the quickest way is to go over to a morgue and get a film; We'd get something that Warners had in stock, with real live people, and get the guy jumping up into the air, and see how fast he turns; They're looking at you like this - and they turn their heads right back again, zoop-zoop-zoop, and they do these spins, and all that stuff and the timing. You don't know how to do it unless you see somebody that does know how to do it, do it. Of course, you exaggerate it a lot in animation.

DICK: Did you ever get much out of that Muybridge book? You know, with the still life photos of people in stages of movement?

KEN: We used it quite a bit for runs, to get an accurate run on animals especially. I never used it for humans at all. I didn't even buy the human book. The animals I did in action were an elephant walk and run, and a giraffe run, and things that you don't see very often. It showed that a horse run is very different than lots of people imagine; They used to run horses like a dog, you know; Horses in the first old rubbery Mickey Mouse run like dogs, but it doesn't look right. Horses run just about the opposite to a dog; With horses, all four feet are right together here when they are off the ground, and the dog's is pretty much out like this. The horse almost always has one foot on the ground. There's just a little space in there where it isn't. Muybridge proved that. That was one reason he got his book out. He bet that the horses' foot did leave the ground and some people said they didn't; So, he took these photographs and they gave him the idea to do all these things for a book. He did that about 100 years ago, and it turned out it is a good book to use right up to today on animal action.

DICK: No one has ever done it since.

KEN: Nobody could do it any better. You couldn't do it any better.

DICK: Except using real movie film.

KEN: Yes, you could take film, but what I mean is a book with all the necessary stages of movement on one page to do something. It is actually clearer than the book that Preston Blair, the MGM man, did. You know, everybody's got it.


DICK: But a lot of it doesn't work. I mean, if you trace it, it doesn't work.

KEN: No.

DICK: Yet, everybody uses it, even professional guys because people believe anything that is in black and white.

KEN: I only used one thing out of it and it didn't work - a little girl skipping. She just floated through the air and [missing]. But the general idea is there for kids to pick up.

DICK: This is the only book though.

KEN: Yes, somebody ought to make a book, and if he [missing] , it ought to work, you know. Maybe have lots of drawings on the side, so you could flip it; You could do it that way. Muybridge had something pretty good though - he had these little squares behind [missing], so that you know how much up and down it goes. I [missing] from a lot of Disney model sheets that the guys gave me off [missing] certain takes and speed runs and things.


DICK: Did they put them on the model sheets?

KEN: Yes. They put a guy in one - just one drawing on h [missing]; One drawing tells you a whole story. That's the reason [missing] pretty good animation; He does the drawing, but it’s got a [missing] n in it. It's got a feeling of just about what he wants. He's [missing] at that. You could take that one drawing and say, Gee, I can [missing],e wants here; He wants this guy to run with his knees up to [missing] ust churning away. You can feel what he wants just by [missing] that drawing. Sometimes, he'll have a guy rearing way ba [missing] g like this, and you'll know he wants that kind of feeling to [missing]

DICK: Is there any advice you can give to anybody?

KEN: The only advice I know is to think it all out in your mind and then visualize it the best you can; Then, draw it out the best you can, and then test it and see if it's right; Unless you have somebody here who can say, “Oh, throw this drawing out,” and “You need to speed it up here, and put in a couple of in-betweens to slow it down here.”

Timing is just something you can't tell a guy how to do. He's gotta feel that himself. It's obvious that when you hit something from here in anticipation and all you want is some kind of a path over to the hit. I don't know - the only thing I can tell a guy to do is just to animate. What's this author, he says, “If you're gonna learn to write, write.” That's the only way to write - he says, “I can't tell you how to write - you just gotta write.”


To animate, you take a sheet, and then you write down what you want to do and so forth and so on, which is a good way to do it. You just get a stop-watch and time the action and yourself. Act it out, and time it and put it down here and then draw it so it fits those marks, so it fits those things.


But that comes after experience. The first thing to do for anybody, to learn to animate, is to practice making walks. Do walks of all kinds, 'cause that's about the most important and hardest thing to do. All this hand action and personality and dialogue and expressions, that's from learning to act, watching guys like Barrymore, or any good actor.

It’s funny that nobody's done a good book, though.

BUY DICK'S BOOK 'THE ANIMATOR'S SURVIVAL KIT' ON AMAZON!

To learn more about Ken, visit this website, devoted entirely to him: Ken Harris, Master Animator.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS

COMING NEXT: JANINE, TREVOR AND MATTHEW WATCH AND PROVIDE COMMENTARY FOR THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER.