Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1936)

MOVIE MAKERS 13 Adapting animation VICTOR McLEOD THE creation of a present day animated cartoon is a complicated and tedious process requiring highly skilled work. Some idea of the labor required in producing one of these amusing novelties is realized when it is learned that it takes the combined effort of over a hundred people — writers, artists, assistant artists and technicians — to produce, in three weeks' time, a cartoon of approximately eight hundred feet. These pictures require drawing, inking, painting and photographing between twelve and fifteen thousand drawings. It is practically impossible for any person to produce successfully a cartoon without a complete and competent staff. There are several novel and entertaining effects, however, that can be animated and produced by the amateur movie maker with a minimum of effort. These can be used to advantage in the production of novelty titles and graphs and in the illustration of points in an industrial reel. Sketching in titles and drawing pictures under the camera are a novelty to most audiences, and they can be used in many productions. This effect is quite simple and it does not require a great deal of time. The motion picture camera must be equipped with a stop motion device that will enable you to shoot one picture at a time. It must be mounted on a camera stand so that it may be focused on a flat, horizontal camera field. If the stand can be made so that it is possible to truck up and down with the camera, it will be very advantageous for some shots. This is not absolutely essential, however. Sketch the title lightly with blue pencil on the drawing surface that is used for the background. Over a section of this pattern, draw, with a black pencil, a heavy line from a quarter of an inch to an inch in length. The exact length of this black line will vary according to the speed with which you wish the title to appear. Leave the pencil point at the terminus of the segment of the heavy line and take one exposure. Repeat until the sketch is completed. This can be done equally well with a pen, crayon or brush. The same process is used in drawing a picture. The outline can later be shaded and filled in with a pencil or brush by using, with each exposure, full length shaded strokes of about a quarter of an inch in width. Another novel effect is writing a title with a pen that seemingly rises unaided from a bottle of ink and, without human aid, proceeds to write or draw upon the drawing surface background. The simplest way to achieve this effect is to secure separate pictures of an ink bottle and a pen. Mount the pictures on heavy cardboard and make cutouts of them. The ink bottle is placed and securely fastened to one side of the drawing paper, but well in the camera field, so that, when a photograph ine Practical outl of basic elements of cine animation of it is taken, it appears on a background made to look exactly like a drawing easel with the ink bottle resting on the ledge at the bottom of the board. A slit is cut in the top of the ink bottle so that the cutout of the pen can be inserted under the cutout of the ink bottle, causing an effect of the pen being in the bottle. The pen now is slowly raised from the bottle in half inch moves and one frame is exposed in each position. Continue the motion until the pen has reached the proper position on your drawing board. The backgrounds can then be changed to eliminate the ink bottle from the picture. This can be done by using a larger pen cutout and a new, plain white background to give the effect of a closer shot or, if your camera stand is movable, this can be accomplished by trucking down to a closer field. A gray shadow cutout of the pen will give the illusion of the pen being in the air; this shadow is moved to a corresponding position with each move of the pen. Drawing ''line daffodils," such as those in Figure 1, is a good approach for a beginner who wishes to learn the fundamental rules of animation. Action of this sort is quite easy to draw and will help to familiarize the animator with movement and timing. The illustrations show the proper action used as a batter swings and connects with a ball. Animation of this kind is the fastest and easiest to do, because it requires inking the drawing again or "opaqueing" it. Each drawing is done on a separate sheet of paper and is photographed separately and in sequence, the white paper acting as the background. All studios use this method of making tests to photograph the rough action of their characters before going ahead with transferring the drawings to the transparent celluloids. It Figure 5