Tricks of Our Trade

Here is another wonderful Disneyland program about animation. I hope you enjoy it.

Lots of new characters

Here's a frame from "Carmen", my newest Animan video. It's still far from finished--there is a lot of work to do yet, and as you can see, there are lots of characters. If it takes 5 minutes to draw one character, then it is only logical that it would take 10 minutes to draw two, 20 minutes to draw four, and so on. The technique is to create the illusion of a large crowd of people with a minimum of animation. That's not always easy to do!

The Toreador

Here's Escamillo walking into the bullring.  The big challenge here was animating the cape convincingly. The cloth has to flow, but I also wanted to hint at the body under the cape, so that I could bring attention to Escamillo's best ASSets!

Another New Background

The setting for the story of Carmen is 1820, but the story was written in 1845. And then it became an opera in 1875. The last scene in the opera takes place outside the bullring in Seville, Spain.  I decided to  try to show the building as it must have looked back then.

First, I checked Google maps to see how it looks today. 

Then there was this picture of the stage set for the Metropolitan Opera in 1915. Even though they had no computers in those days, it looks as if they used Photoshop to stretch the building out to mammoth dimensions! I like the buildings on the right-hand side--they look like skyscrapers from Munchkinland!

Luckily, I found this old painting by a Spanish painter, Manuel Cabral Aguado-Bejarano, entitled "The Death of Carmen" (1890). The painter was born in Seville, so he must have seen the bullring many times. His version looks similar to the current building, with some small differences. For the most part, the building is the same one.

I love this painting, because the composition is so interesting. The angle of the sun shows that it is either early in the morning or late in the afternoon, which adds to the drama. This is the look I wanted for my version of Carmen, so I drew the background as similarly as I could to the 1890 painting.

Another Great Letter!

I found this nice message in my e-mail today:
I just discovered your site and all I can say is "AWESOME!" Growing up with a natural talent for art, and an afficionado of animation since I was a child, I always wanted to work in the animation field. I had almost every book on Disney animation there was, and I used to make short cartoons when I was in Junior High School, but by the time I was ready for college, my parents insisted that I focus on something more practical "in order to make a living." Well, I did, and now (coming on age 45) I find myself making a living in a career that I do find satisfying, but ever more questioning "what might have been." Thank you for inspiring me to pick up the pencils and once again try my hand at animation. Things have really changed with the advent of computers but with a little perseverence I think I am up to the challenge. Thanks for the tutorials and best of luck in your productions. I truly admire your work. It is obvious that it is a labor of love! KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!! I LOVE your BLOG and I am Looking forward to more of your cartoons! 
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Isn't that great?! 


Today's video is from the old Disneyland show from the 1950's. The title is in black and white, but the show is in color. Walt Disney talks about different aspects of animation. I think you'll enjoy it!

Coming in August!

Ever since the release of "Junior College Men's Camp" way back in March, the friends of Animan have been asking, "What's next?" Today I am officially announcing that the next video will be "Carmen". 

In many languages, the name Carmen is both male and female, and so that's where the idea started. Animan always loves exotic locales, and nineteenth-century Spain is the perfect place for colorful costumes, distinctive architecture, and drama!  

Way back in one of my April posts, "Animan's Schedule April~August", I posted my first completed background for Carmen. In the original story of the opera, Carmen works in the cigarette factory in Seville, Spain... and there are some soldiers guarding the area. That building actually exists, and it is still standing, but has been transformed into the University of Seville.

A fan of Animan videos contacted me about this picture. He knew immediately what story this was from, because he's Spanish and was born in Seville! He has offered to help with doing the voices for this video--not only the old-world type of Spanish language, but even the Spanish dialect used by the gypsies! This will give the video an authentic sound, against a backdrop of the famous music from the opera Carmen.

Is that lucky or what??!

I asked my Spanish friend: "Do the classrooms in this university smell like cigars?"  "Not any more", he told me. "There are orange trees on the grounds now, so the air is fragrant with blossoms and oranges."  He knows about this, because his sister attended the University of Seville.  If you look in the picture above, you'll see an orange tree next to the little guard's shack.

Animan's Carmen is still under production, and I'm hoping to have it finished by the 20th of August. If I can finish it before that, then so much the better! As you can see, the characters are drawn with colored lines, so I have to keep changing the colors as I trace the animation, and it takes more time. Some of the costumes like Don José's uniform have more detail, so that means more drawing time. 

This will be the biggest animation project I've ever undertaken, but I think it'll be worth the wait. There will be more news about the video in upcoming blog posts. ¡Olé! 

Today's Animation Tip #3

FOLLOW THROUGH
"Follow Through" is a natural law, applying to loose appendages, such as body parts or clothing.

When the character is moving, these loose parts follow the path of action. When the character stops, these appendages continue moving and then return to the resting position.

Today's Animation Tip #2

SQUASH AND STRETCH
In real life, many actions happen so quickly that we don't have time to see them as they really are. But when we use a slow-motion camera, we can see that forms tend to become squashed or stretched during action.  The animation artist has to exaggerate these actions in his drawings.

No matter how stretched or squashed a shape is, the volume must remain the same. This type of animation gives a feeling of looseness and weight!