Are Animators Invisible To The World?

“Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just as Love in the artist is simply that sense of Beauty that reveals to the world its body and its soul” 

 – Oscar Wilde, quoted in Care of the Soul

As an aspiring animator, I often question whether or not I am doomed to hide behind my art. Similar questions include, will I be fully valued for my artistic creations? Is art a form of self-expression or will I be rendered invisible during the process? These types of questions frequently keep me up late at night. In an attempt to find some answers to these troubling thoughts, I turn to the infinitely wise and talented Glen Keane.

At first sight, Keane exemplifies the very worries I have about entering into the industry. The characters he has created and the scenes he has animated for Disney are legendary. But although Keane's work is known all over the world, only a select few would recognize his name, let alone connect it to his characters. Largely unknown to the general public, he is "one of the most famous Hollywood actors you never heard of," as described by magazine editor and writer Terry Whalin.

If one of the greatest animators of all time is anonymous to the world at large – what does this mean for those of us who hope to enter the animation industry? It seems that you could work to become one of the best artists there ever was, and yet it won’t register in the eyes of the world. On the contrary, the better you do your job, the more invisible you become on the big screen.

I recently found an interview with Keane on the AWN Professional Spotlight website that illustrates his views on the role of the "invisible" animator. 

In the interview, Keane tells a story that highlights the juxtaposition between wanting recognition and accepting your place in the world as an animator.

He explains how becoming invisible is most likely an inherent part of being an artist and creating something that takes on a life of its own. As part of the art making process, an artist steps aside to let the art speak for itself. As he demonstrates, this invisibility is sometimes the powerful quality needed to make art believable.

Still, Keane alludes in other interviews to the fact that there is a connection between an artist and her or his art, regardless of whether or not the audience perceives it.

These interviews have all inspired me to relate the idea of an invisible animator to the notion that an artist is never truly invisible. Work in the animation industry is a balancing act between embracing your own invisibility and remembering how incredibly connected you will always be to your art, no matter how much the world at large might dismiss your value. 

In the AWN interview in which Keane talks about his own “invisibility,” he shares a story about a trip to Disneyland. The story shows his own struggle of coming to terms with everyone knowing his characters and only very few people knowing him. I have typed out the interview below and shared the video. Keane starts the tale at 4.20. As it goes:

Looking back on your career, what has given you the most personal sense of satisfaction?

“You know, it’s a kind of funny thing, the personal satisfaction you get out of being invisible. When I’m around animation people, they know who I am and all of that. But among “normal” people… [Laughs] They don’t know who the heck I am. And I remember learning about that, except I learned about it in a hard way – the value of being invisible.

I was trying to get into Disneyland with some friends who were visiting. And I was going to impress – I could go up to the front line with my Silverpass and everything. And I was like, “Oh man I’ve forgotten my Silverpass. Oh shoot. Okay well anyway I’ll talk my way in.” I went up to the front of the line and said, “Hey, look, uh, I don’t have my Silverpass. Here’s my Disney ID, though. I work in animation. Um, can… we… come in?” And he said, “No no. No. I can’t do that.” “So well… You got a computer there.  You know, you can check, I’ve got a Silverpass and everything.” And he said “Nah, I… you can’t do that.” [Sighs].

Then I’m thinking, don’t do this, but I had to do it and I said, “Look, did you see The Little Mermaid? Did you see the Beast and Aladdin? I-I did those.” The guy said,  “I don’t care who you are. You’re gonna get back in line like everybody else.” And I was like [sighs]. I was… I was embarrassed in front of my friends. I was trying to impress them but I’d gotten back in line, waited all the way up to the front to get the ticket.

By the time I get in there, I’m just like [growls]. And they went on some ride and I just, I sat down on a park bench, just [sighs], just trying to cool off. And here comes the Beast, walking over (gesticulates grunting of Beast), and sits down on the bench next to me. I thought, well isn’t this ironic. And I look over and I said, “hi – hi beast.” [Grunts in response]. And we’re just sitting there [laughs]. And then this little girl comes running over and… She runs over and she jumps up and hugs the Beast and kisses him. She’s kissing his tusk [laughs]. And I’m just remembering when I was designing that, thinking oh no one’s going to believe that Belle could love this guy, I mean he’s too ugly, this movie’s not gonna work. And I needed to learn a lesson of that movie, too, beauty being only skin deep, and here’s this little girl completely embracing him, believing in this character.

And I never felt so invisible and so wonderfully invisible as that moment. I realized, this is what it’s about. The Beast is himself, you know. I got to be part of it, but for that little girl, the Beast needs to be completely real and it’s not about me at all. That’s kind of this wonderful thing that happens for creating something, you know, Ariel or Beast, is that, they leave and they go on and they’re themselves and that’s how it’s supposed to be. And you want to get that right because if you don’t get it right, then you can be frustrated that you don’t get in to a line and whatever you expect. Those things, that’s not what life’s about. That’s the legacy, right there.”

______________________________

I find it much easier to grasp the implications of the career I have chosen after listening to this story. I love how Keane openly discusses the downsides to animation and then offers his view on how to deal with it. Rather than become bitter that he wasn’t recognized neither by the people working in Disneyland nor by the little girl, Keane responds by accepting his own invisibility. He knows this way of life is what he signed up for when he entered the industry. As veteran animator Floyd Norman says in one of his posts on his blog, Mr. Fun’s Journal, “If we truly wanted fame, money and celebrity - we damn sure wouldn’t be in the cartoon business.” It’s a fact of the industry that the people working behind the scenes are invisible in the final product.

Keane has taken the disadvantage of being obscured by his own characters and made it his greatest artistic satisfaction.

Even so, I still had a nagging feeling after watching the interview that there are implications to simply accepting that we are invisible as artists and animators. If artists in animation were unseen, working as mediators of a character that already exists beyond ourselves, then wouldn’t we be interchangeable?

The interview got me thinking about the value that individual animators do bring to the table. There must be a certain quality, a certain essence, to each animator’s performance – something that elevates the act from emulating a preexisting character. After all, Keane has contributed his take on multiple Disney characters throughout his career. Unbeknownst to the naked eye, he has fused little moments from his own life into that of the characters.

For instance, there is the moment when Tarzan meets Jane. As described by Keane, Tarzan taking Jane’s hand and looking into her eyes is Keane’s memory of looking at his daughter for the first time when she was born. Similarly, the transformation of the Beast was inspired by Keane’s own beliefs of spiritual transformation. 

Skip to 4:59 to hear Glen Keane talk about expressing himself in Tarzan

If Keane’s role as an animator had truly been to act as an invisible, indistinguishable force, these key animated scenes would not have played out as they did. As Chelsea Robson, co-host of The Animation Addicts Podcast on the website The Rotoscopers says in one of her interviews: “there is no way you can create something like [animation] without having so much of your being in it.” For animated characters to appear to have a life of their own, they must be infused with the very life of the animator.

One of Disney’s Nine Old men, animator Eric Larson explains this connection between an animated character and the animator in a lecture from 1981. As he said, “Great actors have always "PUT" themselves, physically and emotionally, into their roles. They were the characters. The best animators have done the same… They gave a sincerity and life, drama and humor to linear drawings, as they moved on the screen. They, the animators, were, in their own minds, deeply involved with the characters they animated and their animation and the story it told were emotional outlets and experiences for them.” 

When Keane talks about animation, his passion for connecting to his art is evident. As historian Didier Ghez quotes him in an interview from 1997, “With the guy who animates from the heart, it's him up there. It's not a puppet; it's him. He's up on the screen, and he's alive and it sparks.” 

Thus, it can be argued that an animator is never invisible. Physically, we may not be represented on the screen. But many of the characteristics that make us who we are will be.

We see this view that an artist is never truly invisible reflected in many artists and their art. For instance, according to playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, art reflects its creator’s view of life. For him, an artist can’t help but put something of her/himself into the art. In his book Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore similarly explains his view on this relationship between art and the artist. As he writes, “Children paint every day and love to show their works on walls and refrigerator doors. But as we become adults, we abandon this important task of childhood. We assume, I suppose, that children are just learning motor coordination and alphabets. But maybe they are doing something more fundamental: finding forms that reflect what is going on in their souls” (302). In Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let me Go, the author also comments on this idea of art being an expression of the soul. In the book [*spoiler*], the characters have to make art not only to show their soul but also to prove they have a soul at all. In this way, art reflects the very soul of the artist.

Famous art lecturer Walt Stanchfield takes this idea one step further and suggests that successful art is an expression not only of what goes on inside of the artist but also the extent to which the artist is cognizant of this very impact she or he has on the final art piece.

According to Stanchfield, it is extremely important for artists to consider how we move through life because this quest for self-discovery directly affects whether or not an audience will relate to our art in a genuine way. As Stanchfield writes in Drawn to Life Vol. 2, “The fastest way to learn to draw is to learn about yourself… It’s our job as the interpreter of experience to not only take in the experience, but to become conscious of it, to know it and to trust our interpretation of it… A line is a way to express meaning, the meaning of our experience in a humble way on a piece of paper – the meaning of life the way we each see it, each one of us as individual observers of the universe.”

In this sense, putting yourself into your art is crucial in drawing unique, believable characters that no one else but you could have drawn. Only then will a powerful connection have been created between the art, the artist, and the audience.

Simply knowing that my individual voice in the animation industry matters has helped me in overcoming my feelings of insignificance. As artists, we aren’t doomed to hide behind our art. Though we may appear to be, we are never truly invisible. Regardless of whether we realize it, our art will reveal our innermost connection to ourselves. For better or for worse, it’s the truest expression of our observations about life and our own role within it.

“We live through the characters we animate. I’m an actor with a pencil, but it’s more than being an actor. It’s really putting yourself in your work” – Glen Keane 

TEACH YOURSELF | How To Lead The Eye

Recently, I made about 1800 thumbnail studies from How to Train Your Dragon. Every time there was a cut or a camera move, I would hit pause and draw the shot. I got the idea to do so from a CalArts classmate, who in turn got the idea from a post by Emma Coats. While I did the sketches, I paid close attention to the composition of each frame. As Coats instructed in her post, I asked myself a series of questions about the shots, such as, where are the characters positioned? Why was there a cut? How is the frame divided? How are the angles and lines positioned in the shot? What do they lead the eye to? Where is the camera positioned?

I did this exercise to study what makes up a ‘good’ composition. I had come to accept that to learn about composition from movies, it is not enough to simply watch a lot of movies. In fact, when a composition is well made in a movie, it is often difficult for the audience to notice it – it flows into the storyline so well that that the audience gets carried away into that world.

To many people, myself included, composition can therefore be a bit of a mystery.

The first time I heard about composition was in my Art History classes during high school. In these classes, we would analyze paintings from around the world and how they reflected the thought pattern of a given society during a specific time period. When we got to the Renaissance and Venetian art, we learned that these artists used shapes, such as converging lines and figural pyramids, to purposefully guide the eye through the painting and convey the ‘mood’ of the time. We learned that Renaissance artists used composition as a tool for creating visual depth and figurative meaning.

(Source: Marsha Russell)

Still, I wasn’t sure what makes a ‘good’ composition. If composition is the arrangement of shapes within an image, then at what point does it become a ‘bad’ combination?

To settle the ins and outs of composition, I took a class at CalArts that covered composition. I found that composition is really just about making art that looks good to you while being mindful of the purpose behind the composition. 

In a nutshell, composition is about not settling before you’ve reached a point at which you’re happy with the ‘flow’ of the piece.

That being said, there are a few basic ‘rules’ to keep in mind.

To reinforce and remind myself what I have been taught, I have started analyzing movies on my own, like I did How to Train Your Dragon. On top of that, I like to scout online to find any resonating insight. In this post, I’m going to share some of the handouts and videos that have been helpful in understanding how to lead the eye through a composition. Most of these sources agree that good composition is about clarity, i.e. leading the eye to a point of interest, while being mindful of what you’re trying to communicate story-wise.

Advice

Artist Rad Sechrist thinks about the relationships between shapes as he makes compositions. He has made a handout on his site Rad How To that analyzes a painting and how the artist guides the onlooker through it.

(Source: radhowto)

Another example of leading the eye is to point everything toward a single center of interest:

(Source: andreasdeja)

Having the perspective lines converge where you want the audience to look is another way to guide the eye.

(Source: Marsha Russell)

Yet more ways you can guide the eye through a composition is by contrast. You can create contrast though lighting, colors and/or patterns. Whichever element stands out the most (creates the greatest level of contrast to the rest of the elements) in a given composition will be where the eye looks. So for instance, if you have a composition with a majority of circular shapes and then one triangular shape, the audience will be attracted to the triangle.

(By Loui del Carmen, source: theartcenter)

Here is a video by Ahmed Aldoori that analyzes some paintings by Paul Felix. Aldoori explains how Felix uses some of the principles I have mentioned above to create his compositions.

I hope these links and explanations help!

As always, thanks to all the artists who shared this advice online!

-Christine-

TEACH YOURSELF | How To Do Gesture

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people

Leo Burnett, quoted in #Girlboss

As part of my Teach Yourself series, I’ve been wanting to do a post about advice on gesture drawing. After having searched online for tips for a while now, I realize it is hard to locate any blogs that focus specifically on gesture drawing. As a result, I have decided to compile specific advice in the form of videos and handouts as I have been able to find them. These tips all come from different corners of the Internet, as opposed to a few specific blogs.

Defining 'gesture'

Gesture is about capturing the essence of what you’re drawing.

It is arguably the single most important part of making a lifelike figure. Without it, a drawing will seem stiff. When I decided I wanted to go for CalArts, I made it a goal to really hone in on my gesture skills. 

Gesture is about feeling the action and making mental observations before you ever put the pen down to the paper. This way, you’ll communicate clearly and guide the eye of the onlooker through an appealing flow of lines.

Advice

Here is a handout by Griz and Norm on gesture drawing:

(Source: grizandnorm)

When you’re drawing a gesture, the essence of the pose should be captured within a minute or so – perhaps even sooner. Instead of focusing your attention on each little part of the body, you should focus on getting the whole figure down, without too much detail. This way, you have everything you need, should you decide to finish the drawing at a later point in time.

(Source: drawingsfromamexican)

Rad Sechrist shares some very good advice on his blog, Rad How To, about gesture:

In one of these handouts, Sechrist points to the fact you need to ‘push’ the pose. This is something I think a lot about, too, as I draw. It can be very easy to fall into the trap of  “straightening up” a pose and making it more symmetrical. But when a drawing looses its angles and tilts, it also looses its power and life. If this is something you struggle with, you have to make a conscious effort to overcome this tendency by exaggerating the pose.

(Source: grizandnorm)

On a final note, I want to thank all these artists for sharing their advice on gesture drawing!  

-Christine-

  

Back Down Memory Lane: Russian Animation

(Source: trans-siberian)

When I was little, I couldn’t wait for the time of day when I would watch animated TV shows and/or films. For me, it wasn’t just a way to pass the time. It was a whole ceremony in and of itself. I would sit in a miniature couch that had only enough room for me and my teddy bear, extremely close to the TV, with the blinds drawn. I loved delving into the worlds of the characters – believing, in a sense, that they were real.

I knew that animation isn’t real in the strictest sense of the word; I didn’t expect Pikachu to emerge from my backpack any second, or for Sinbad the Sailor to bring me along on his ship, Nimbus. I understood early on that the characters were made by someone else -- somewhere else in the world -- somehow. 

Even so, the emotions and the journeys of the shows and films were part of an alternate reality that felt real in its own right, regardless of the fact that it was all imaginary.

Thinking back on the shows and films I watched when I was little, I realize that they fall into two categories.

One category is that of animation I have continued to watch into adulthood, such as Disney and Dreamworks animation. The films from these studios have, in a sense, grown together with me and I continue to find new meaning in them.

Then the other category is that of cartoons that I have not watched since then. Now and then, a memory will pop up of a scene or a color I remember from a show. In those moments, I’m not sure whether I’m making the memory up, if it was a dream, or if it’s actually based on a show I used to watch.

Recently, I remembered a show about small fairies who live in flowers. That was all I could remember. I spent a fair amount of time trying to track it down on Google. I found that the show was real and it was called Petals.

So many memories came rushing back -- about the circumstances surrounding my watching it (every morning before school), about the characters and about the music. It all appeared to me like a forgotten dream. I must have been six when this show was on.

Having found this show, memories of other shows came to me and before I knew it, I was going down Memory Lane, trying to remember and then find long-forgotten animated films and shows from my childhood.

One of the first things that came to mind while uncovering the cartoons from my past was that I used to watch Russian animated films. They would air sometimes on TV, I think on Fridays. The films weren’t dubbed and they might have had subtitles, but I could not read at the time. So, I saw these films in Russian without knowing what they were truly about.

It was therefore really fun for me to find these now on Youtube and to go back and understand what was going on. In the end, though, I find that I had understood the gist of what was going on when I was little – just from watching the images unfold on the screen.

And what beautiful images! I don’t know the extent to which these films are known or whether or not many people have already seen them. But I have decided to share some links to them below, in case someone has not.

The fact that a kid could watch this, not understanding the words, and yet still grasp the meaning speaks a lot to the skills of the artists who made them. As Alexander Mackendrick explains in his book, On Film-Making, a film should mainly be visual and able to be told without words. But that is easier said than done!

Here are some of the Russian films (with subtitles) I was able to find on Youtube. You can turn on the subtitles on the right lower corner of the screen.

The Tale of the Tsar Saltan

The Little Humpbacked Horse/The Magic Pony

The Scarlet Flower/Beauty and the Beast

The Snow Maiden

The Wild Swans

-Christine-

TEACH YOURSELF | How To Do Solid Drawing

Solidity is the key to creating believable, three-dimensional characters out of your imagination.

I wanted to learn more about solidity during my studies at CalArts, so one of my teachers recommended I take a look at this video:

Seems simple enough! Solidity is just about imagining a 3D space, being conscious of overlap and avoiding twinning.

But in practice, I am finding this stuff doesn’t necessarily come easy if I don’t make a conscious effort – which is why I’ve been focusing so much on it. It’s not enough that I know about solidity – my drawings have to really show that I understand how to use it.

Glenn Vilppu’s Drawing Manual and Walt Stanchfield’s Drawn to Life are two books that have really helped in this regard. With these books, I am starting to better grasp how to easily visualize 3D space on a blank 2D piece of paper without reference. It truly is a basic skill needed in drawing from the imagination. Sometimes I get so frustrated with myself when I can’t draw what I intended in my mind! But maybe that's a good thing -- because it spurs me to want to become better.

As well as these books, I have also found a few online resources that I check back on regularly to better understand solidity and structure in drawing. As part of my Teach Yourself posts, I have shared these below. The idea behind this series is to use the internet to educate yourself about drawing.

Rad Sechrist – Rad How To

(Source: radhowto)

Sechrist is a story-board artist at Dreamworks. His blog focuses a lot on teaching you to see the structure underneath what you’re drawing. On his blog, he has also shared some amazing video recordings from his online classes (radhowtoschool.com)

Toby Shelton

(Source: tobyshelton)

A story artist at Disney, Toby shares some advice on structure of, in particular, hands (as well as some awesome storyboards from various films!)

Kirk Shinmoto – An Intro to Robutics

(Source: robutic)

Shinmoto has a post on his blog called “The Secret to Drawing” that is very inspirational. I have linked it above

Will Weston Studio

(Source: willwestonstudio)

A good website for advice on structure, volume and anatomy

Animation Meat – “Drawing for Animation”

This PDF file is a transcript of one of Eric Larson’s lectures on Entertainment. In the notes, Larson goes over the principles that make up a good, solid drawing

Also, here are some youtube videos that explain the things that make up solidity, such as volume, foreshortening, overlap and perspective.

Then in this video, Ahmed Aldoori explains how you can draw cubes to help you draw poses from the imagination (similar to Vilppu's approach).

Finally, these are some notes from Glen Keane that I've hung up on my wall:

(Source: lindadornart)

If you find yourself struggling with solidity as well, I hope these links might be of some help to you!

-Christine-