With the passing of Disney great Ollie Johnston, the last of "The Nine Old Men". I found myself questioning where the future of character animation will go, especially in the areas of Traditional or 2-d hand-drawn animation. Computer Generated (CG) or 3-D animation has seemingly taken the world by storm for the past 10 years or so, and studios are not as inspired to embark on a film completely drawn by hand.
Back in the Era of 2-d animation domination, it was not uncommon for an animator to grab hold of one character for the entire movie to perform, act, and grow with that character throughout the film. Today with pipelines are seemingly set up for everyone to animate. There seems to be a loss in the intimacy of character performance (not necessarily in the quality for storytelling, but the in the personal aspect of the individual artist) . Although, I am sure keen eyes of computer animation can distinguish animator from animator, it still doesn't grasp the sincerity, devotion, and passion that a pencil on paper and an artistic hand etched rendering can perform with frame by frame.
There is a quote from Disney animator Glen Keane in Dohn Hahn's new book, The Alchemy of Animation: Making an Animated Film in the Modern Age, that I really enjoy:
"All you can do sometimes is just press harder on your pencil to try to make the drawing express what you're feeling in your heart and hope that the audience can feel it as they're looking at it"
- Glen Keane
There just seems to be a passion and intensity about analog renderings and the ability of an animator to think exactly how each character moves and performs rather then letting the computer make some of the moves for you. For me, learning to draw should come before all animation know-how. The ability to understand form, poses, and anatomy will much greater benefit an animator then the ability to learn a software package. These artists of the 2-d medium seem to express their passion for animation technique and style from within and through expressions of internal struggle and exploration (which is what I really hope to tap into this semester), and not merely by expressing that your tangents are off. hehe :)
Now, don't get me wrong, I love CG animation and work in it myself! I just feel that the true modern day animators or "Middle Aged Men" (bad joke? hehe) are those who either learned directly from the "Nine Old Men" or sought them out individually in their quests for personal knowledge and respect for those who came before them. These artists worked and learned traditionally, and some are now making leaps into the digital realm. Computer animation is still young and perhaps it will take time before some of equal passion and knowledge can emerge to personalize their CG characters in a way that only the masters of the past could. Currently though, I think the best learning comes from a traditional background of study and exploration.
What I think is really sad is the lost art of "apprenticeships". Now-a-days, it seems that the only way to indulge yourself one on one with a master animator is to personally find a way to contact them and see if they will be willing to sit with you and share a bit about themselves and a bit of how they work with you. There are opportunities to partake in "internships" or post graduation "apprenticeships" but these opportunities don't seem to hold the same richness of an assistant animator sitting down with the likes of Ollie, Frank, Milt, Woolie, Marc, Les, John, Eric, or Ward, and learning about their own personal style through the knowledge and comradery in having a mentor like one of these guys. One of my favorite animators, Andreas Deja, speaks with great passion and sincerity on his desire to learn from the masters (although in my opinion, a master himself) and gain more knowledge by making the efforts to study their work and to show interest in them by asking them to sit with you for a little while to chat.
SO, this is my attempt to do the same with the masters of the present! I hope that through this Directed Research I am able to learn more about character animation and performance as well as a little about myself and my personal techniques. I hope that I can arrange some great sit down sessions with some great animators and really soak up as much information from them as humanly possible. This will be a great way to study character animation and performance technically, historically, and internally through self exploration and investigation!
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