Bigger Picture

The Bigger Picture

Case Studies

Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is an Animator, director, cartoon artist, screenwriter and producer best know for his contribution to Looney Tunes. His work has influenced many of today’s biggest animators due to the timelessness of his work. Having worked since the 30s his creations have been part of every generation since.    

He began his career after graduating; he received a call from the Ub Iwerks studio (co-creator of Mickey Mouse and close friend of Walt Disney) offering him a job. This allowed his to work his way up from cell washer to in-betweener animator. Later on he joined independent studio ‘Leon Schlesinger Productions’ that produced cartoons for Warner Bros.

Over the years he would develop his own style straying away from the influence of Disney Animation in hopes of making a more humorous cartoon. Over this period he created Marvin the Martian, Pepe LePew and the Road Runner his most popular character. After becoming a more developed character designer he went about changing the personalities of some of the huge characters such as Daffy Duck. Jones describes this, as “Bugs is who we want to be Daffy is who we are”. This made the characters more individual and therefore better when placed in episode together as they could really play on the personalities. Eventually this all came to a halt and the studio ended up closing in 1963, he felt this was Warner Brothers learning they weren’t Disney and nor could they be.

He worked in the traditional form, and had expressed his dislike for modern Animation and where it was heading calling most of it especially TV cartoons ‘illustrated radio’. I believe this was a dig at the visuals suggesting that the quality of the cartoons were not on level with the Animation of his time. Jones was an important part of Animation, being part of a generation that demanded Disney he kept alive variety in the medium with his more comedic and less wholesome style.

Pernille Orum

Pernille Orum is a Danish Animator and illustrator based in a games studio in Copenhagen as well as being a freelance artist. In interviews she has listed Disney as one of her main influences in regards to her style. Especially if you look at contemporary examples such as frozen or tangled the style of her illustrations are very similar.

This is how she describes her process “I use Adobe Photoshop CC and have a wacom Cintiq. I usually play around with rough sketches in Photoshop, or scan in a sketchbook drawing. Currently I work without outline and with one gouache-like brush. I put in a base colour, and create a ‘clipping mask layer’ where I render in the drawings details and shadows. I find it to be a loose and fun way to work. As a finish I like to put in a coloured multiplied gradient layer. It creates a nice feel”.

Pernille primarily draws women due to their interesting shapes, mood and style. She keeps a folder filled with pictures that inspire her for possible drawing, on her instagram account she will often show us her process and with this shows us the reference along side her response. Over the last few years she’s grown a fairly large following on social media due to her fan art on tumblr of things such as Disney, star wars and marvel. What drew me to her work was its similarity to Glen Keane’s concept art. This combined with her own style results in modern looking Disney characters.

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A Glitch in Nine saves time

The Portrait 

Glen Keane

Animator/ Character Designer

Glen Keane is a very successful character designer and Animator for Disney, creating strong female characters like Ariel, Pocahontas and Rapunzel. During the 70s Disney went in to what they describe as the ‘dark age’ where the animations being created weren’t living up to the standard they had set over the years. They stopped producing high quality animations and instead made darker films like ’The Black Cauldron’ and ‘Oliver and company’ which didn’t have the same charm and appeal as previous. As Keane began

working his way up he found himself in his most famous position as character design and animator for title character ‘Ariel’. This success of this film brought Disney back into the spotlight and gave it the success they had been anticipating. After this he continued a successful career in character design. I believe he is a big contributing factor as to how Disney came out of the ‘dark age’.

To the left you can see Keane’s work, he works in primarily pencil and does fairly simplistic pictures compared to other artists I’m looking at. With Keane’s work I feel it’s more to do with what becomes of the pictures as they are like blueprints for something even bigger to come. I feel his style and skill is beyond most accomplished artist’s ability. The most noticeable feature are the eyes, he can convey varieties of emotion through this one feature making a simplistic image powerful.

Britney Lee

Visual Development Artist

Britney Lee is another popular Disney Visual artist working on films such as Frozen and Wreck it Ralph both of which she had a huge artistic impact on. Lee has two significant methods of work the first being digital which is most related to her work with Disney and the second is paper. Her work with paper is used more for her personal art blog work. Like concept artist Mary Blair, Lee's use of colour is very effective and probable a big contributor to her success. In the book "ladies of Animation" She describes her process and presses the importance of accidents and creative freedom when finding her style. Lee also goes into her fascination with movement and how she tends to gravitate towards projects that would include such things, a popular one being mermaids and all kinds of underwater scenery. 

One of Lee's projects called "boy meets girl" best shows her skill for story telling i believe. These pictures she created would show a romantic scenario in which the viewers can take multiple ideas from it. 

The Landscape

Mary Blair

Concept Artist

Mary Blair was a long employee of Disney; she worked on concept art for many Animations becoming one of the Disney legends. Her style of work was noted and praised by walt himself, I feel her work was best communicated through Alice in wonderland and sleeping beauty. Her work interests me in relation to landscapes as unlike most animators who strive for  a realistic image Blairs appear very flat as you can best see in her illustration of a city. There isn't much depth in the image everything appears very level. This draws our attention to the colours and lines. She uses sharp lines and shapes to make the image more dramatic. She then uses contrasting colours to enhance the pictures.

I feel she is one of the best fantasy concept artists due to the surreal images she creates. Aswell as concept art she also has a lot of involvement with the Disney parks putting a lot of input into the design of the "its a small world ride". This ride has now become one of the few that is within all 4 parks around the world. Most of all you can see her influence through the concept artists of today such as lisa and clair keane. 

Night and Day

Pixar Animation short 

This pixar short, 'night and day' includes both 3D and 2D animation. The idea follows these two 2D characters thats don't get along due to their differences. One being night and the other being day which is presented in how there bodies are coloured in. They are coloured in using 3D giving it a more depth and detailed appearance which contrasts with the black frame surrounding it. 

The animation shows a varied amount of locations during different times of the day. And the scenes that are occurring relate to the emotions of both characters. The sound effects also act as a voices for the characters.  

The Gothic

Snow White Witch

Animated by Norman Ferguson

Snow white is one of the darker adaptations of fairy tales from disney. Most of the story is set in a dark forest which is a perfect set up for a gothic tale. The animator Norman Ferguson would became an important contributor to the stylistic development of the studio. His creation of pluto is probably his most notable achievement. 

This film is a lot darker than the ones that come after and seems closer to the folk tale than others.    

The Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter Animation sequence 

The animation sequence within the deathly hallows part 1 was directed and designed by Ben Hibon. During the creation of the sequence Hibon's felt strongly that the characters should appear as puppets and not like traditional characters in animated films. He felt it would force audiences to see it theatrically. By not giving the characters eyes it really helped his vision for a silhouette puppet type animation. 

The sepia tones in contrasted with the dark silhouettes is what first struck me as being gothic. As the animation goes on we see more of the 4 characters each designed to resemble skeletons which hints to the main theme of the sequence, death. 

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3 in 1
Creature

Rise of the Guardians

Creature characters 

The film rise of the guardians I feel best encompasses all the possible descriptions for creatures defined above. 

Animal or Person

Jack Frost & Easter Bunny

Jack Forst is the protagonist in the film, he was once human but after an accident on a frozen lake he became an immortal supernatural being. He has powers that allow him to manipulate ice and snow, and uses this power to create chaos. The easter Bunny is the Guardian of hope but unlike frost is able to be seen by people. All of his family were wiped out leaving him as the only survivor which lead him to become a guardian. From this he accumulated more humanistic features which reverts back during his disbelieved state in the film.  

 Fictional or Imaginary being
The sandman

Sandy is the oldest Guardian originally appointed by the man in the moon to give people good dreams. He is the only one unable to talk but yet is seen as the wisest of them all and communicates through dreams. He is Pitch's enemy being a complete opposite to him in every way and eventually the two go against one another in a battle that everyone assumed killed sandy. Later he returns and finally destroys pitch with the help of the other guardians.  

A person of a specific kind

Pitch Black

Pitch is the antagonist in the film, and sets out to make the world dark and scary. He sets out to try and turn all of Sandy's dreams into nightmares. His powers are in the form of black sand that often take the form of a horse. What makes pitch so scary to the other guardians is that he was there long before the rest of them.  

Kapre

Smoking Tree Giant

The Kapre is a mythical creature, often presented as a tree demon. It originated from the spanish but since has been interpreted into various different cultures, it has been thought that it was created to prevent Filipinos helping African slaves escape. Kapres are also known to trick travellers in the mountains and woods and cause them to get disoriented and lose their way. 

We know few things about the appearance of the Kapre, only that it is around 7 - 9ft, male and stickily.  The Kapre are known to sit under neither acacias, mangoes, bamboo and banyan trees. Some interpretations of the Kapre state that he holds a white stone and anyone that obtains this stone will be granted a wish. Fire and smoke is also associated with the creature often being suggested that signs of the creature come from smoke coming from the top of tree and even fireflies which are actually the embers. Kapres are known to trick travellers in the mountains and woods and cause them to get disoriented and lose their way. 

Creatures of Gravity Falls

creature characters

 Gravity falls created by Alex Hirsch is a TV show that follows a brother and sisters summer in Gravity Falls with their uncle. Throughout the series supernatural things are happening and strange creatures are appearing. The lead character Dipper finds a journal that has insight on all the mysteries of Gravity Falls. The show follows him and his friends investigating the town. 

The show was based on creator Hirsch's own childhood with his twin sister going to visit relatives. Hirsch stated "I really owe my sister and her many quirks. She also always wanted a pet pig growing up so I gave Mabel a pet pig on the show so she can live vicariously through her". Gravity Falls was inspired by the towns and national parks around America but mostly a town called Boring in Oregon.  

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