DRAWING
FOR CLASSICAL ANIMATION
 In 1988, an extraordinary thing
happened in the world of animation. The film "Who Framed Roger
Rabbit?"( Directed by Robert Zemekis, animation directed by Richard Williams) was
released. The film gleefully celebrated the kind of imaginative slapstick
cartoon violence that was the staple of the most popular short cartoon
classics that were made during the period from around 1940 till the decline
in the year that the film takes place,1947. Cartoon
lover's eyes popped like Tex Avery wolves all over the world for this caliber
of animation hadn't been seen since...well, 1947. The film was a major hit,
and a powerful shot in the arm for the until then sluggish animation
business. For me personally, well...it saved my life, and my faith in the
power of the animated film.
It was also in 1988 that I became associated with the Joe Kubert
School of Cartoon Art in Dover, New Jersey.
School founder and comic book illustrator Joe Kubert
had begun an animation department, with Milt Neal, an animator who had worked
at Disney in the hyperion days on such great
cartoons as Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon. I was
hired to come in a couple days a week and keep an eye on Milt's students
while he worked on a film of his own in his room down the hall. I made the
mistake of complaining to Milt one day that some of the students were not
doing animation, but wasting their time on figure drawing. Well, the old guy
really lit into me. What he basically said was that if I really knew anything
about animation then I would know that figure drawing has a lot to do with
animation, that is at least, the kind of animation that has come to be called
"classical animation". I would soon come to see that he was
absolutely right. Without even realizing it, I had been applying the principles
of figure drawing to my own animation work. Once I became conscious of this,
my character animation began to improve vastly.
The next year, Milt left the school, but I stayed on as an animation
instructor and have since been teaching a course in what the school lists as
"life drawing". My class however, goes in a different direction
from standard life drawing methods. While we do work with live models, we
also work from video tape, freeze framing the action of a selected sequence,
and using the "poses" as animation drawings. First year students go
through a series of assignments that involve the basic drawing principles and
the ability to create movement with drawings, or "animation". I
call my class unofficially: Drawing for Classical Animation.
What
follows are the notes for my class. To use them, all you need is a big stack
of nice drawing paper, animation bond preferred, and a good soft pencil. A
hard pencil is a detriment to creating loose action drawings. Your pencil
should feel as if it glides across the surface of the paper, leaving a dark,
solid line. My fave is an Eberhard
Faber Blackwing 602. Unfortunately the company no
longer manufactures them so these days I usually use a Turquoise or a Sanford
3B or 4B. NEVER an H!! Also, keep a few pages underneath the one you're
drawing on for softer, prettier lines. Thanks and credit must be given to
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, for defining and ennumerating
the 12 principles of animation that I have given my own take on here, in
their highly recommended book, "Disney Animation: The Illusion of
Life" (Abbeville Press,1981)
So, are we ready to start drawing? 
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