A Kick in the Head, Part Six

I'm beating a familiar drum with this one, so I'll keep it short.

Bring something personal to your work to make it great.

To be a great animator, story artist, layout person or any kind of artist, it takes more than just the ability to draw well or the technical ability to do the job well. To be truly great at our jobs, we have to be able to crawl inside our worlds and characters and understand them from the inside. We have to be able to know how they would act in any situation, what drives them, what their deepest desires and biggest fears are. These are all what makes a great actor able to give a great performance, and we are no different. It’s easy with our rushed schedules and overwhelming amount of workload to lose sight of the only really important part of our jobs - creating great characters and telling compelling stories.



Only someone who has ever had a cat lay on them would be able to feel this action in their mind and capture the expressions that really show how this feels. There's a real gravity and sincerity to the way it's handled, and anyone that watches the cartoon "Feed the Kitty" will react to this with a smile of recognition if they've ever had a cat curl up on them. You can't fake that kind of sincerity and there's no short cut to finding great ideas like this. You have to live life and experience it and then know how and when to apply those experiences to your work to give your worlds a sense that they are real places with actual living, breathing characters in them.

Every person has a unique viewpoint that has been created by their life experiences. As much as you may admire another artist’s work, you can never have the same life experiences that caused them to be the artist they are. Bring your singular viewpoint to your work and make an original statement. Don’t repeat what’s already been done.

Why do I sound this constant drumbeat? I guess because I see this as the greatest challenge facing animation today. We are in a period where more animation is produced for film, television, video games and other media than ever before. And I think much of it is disposable and completely unmemorable, which is a shame.

If you're like me you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons on television. The best of those feature nothing more than great personalities in conflict with each other (a sly, clever rabbit and a manic, explosive duck try to convince a naive hunter to shot the other one instead of themselves) and that's all you need to generate great entertainment. Sure, the Warner Bros. cartoons occasionally had references to other movies and pop culture nods but those were the bits that went over our heads as kids. So when I see TV shows that do nothing more than reference other movies or shows or pop culture, it's never really funny or inventive, and it invariably feels like a missed opportunity. Great characters will always be the most entertaining and inventive part of our business and will always be the cornerstone of any movie or TV show that gets the best reviews, biggest audiences and is remembered fondly for years to come.

So don't spend all of your time watching movies and sitting in the dark drawing cartoons. To do great work you have to have other interests and experiences to draw from. These don't have to be monumental, earth-shattering experiences, if you just take the time to be aware of the world around you and be present as your life happens. Just the simple everyday experience of having a cat curl up on you can lead to an original, compelling moment of animation that will bring a smile and a laugh to your audience and can live on forever.

What You Don't See

Sometimes a picture is more effective because of what is left out.

I scanned this illustration by John Gannam. My scanner, for a reason I can't fathom, is built in a way that prohibits me from laying books flat on it, which is why there's a shadow along the edge.



I love this illustration because of what it leaves out. If you saw the girl's face, it would be a rather pedestrian picture of a pretty girl reading the Sunday funnies. But because we can't see her face, we are forced to engage with the picture and use the clues we are given along with our imagination and life experience to figure out what her personality is like. And, of course, when a picture manages to trick us into working with it to understand it, we stop and become involved with it instead of just glancing at it and moving on without a second thought.

So let's examine the clues we are given that tip us off to what kind of girl she is. First off, we have her rather unfeminine pants, which tell us she's not too much of an overly feminine girl, and the rougher dark-colored pants give a nice contrast to her light-colored, very feminine skin. Also I like the fact that she's surrounded by comic pages from several different newspapers, so we know she's not just pausing to read the comics as she devours the whole. She's the type of girl that only reads the funnies.

Her jewelry is a bit bigger and flashier than a very dainty girl would wear. Also you have to consider what it tells you about a girl's personality that she wears her jewelry while she lies around in bed reading the funnies. I suppose we can surmise that she was out late last night (it would have been Saturday night, after all, since these are the Sunday funnies) and slept with her jewelry on. Her red toenail polish seems to suggest that too. And red toenail polish is another touch that fits with the other clues we've been getting...red is the most flashy and bold color, after all. Even the fact that she's relaxing in bed instead of say, sitting in a chair, tells you something about her character. And it suggests that last night was a late night as well. One thing we know, she's probably not planning on going to church...

The cliche standard would say that girls always cross their legs in a more dainty and demure way, with the upper legs touching and the knees together, and that you should always paint them this way. The way this girl crosses her legs tends to be much closer to the way men (again, according to the cliche) usually cross their legs. The way she's crossed them here feels very aggressive and confident. But it still comes across as very feminine because of the masterful way he's painted her legs (very feminine shapes) and even the way that bottom foot is tucked around so that she's resting her lower foot on its side. A more masculine approach would be to have the sole of the foot resting on the bed.

I also like how the illustrator has placed her high in the frame by leaving some blank area at the bottom. It makes her seem more powerful and strong (which is the type of girl she seems to be). Also it just makes the space breakup more interesting.

Somehow the painter has found a way to give her a great feel of femininity but balanced that with a good sense that she's not too feminine, and that she's a strong, confident and fun girl. I love how the hand gripping the paper is handled. It's so well-observed and confidently painted. Her fingers grip the paper with real intensity. It would have been easy to make her hand much more feminine but that isn't the point the illustrator is trying to make. Her hand seems to complete the picture of a girl who is strong, confident, and feminine without being too girly. I love how the other hand is artfully hidden by the paper. I think it makes you focus all the more strongly on the hand that you can see. And since we can't see her face, that hand is the closest thing to a face we are ever going to see, and we put a lot of weight and focus on it to decipher who this mystery girl is.



Again, love the big green ring. Even the rectangle seems like the right shape...elegant without being demure or fragile.

I just think a lot of the success of the image comes from that contrast between the feminine and unfeminine. Seeing her face would make the picture tilt too far one way or the other, maybe. Anyway, a mystery always adds interest to a picture, so it serves this one well.


My favorite example of seeing less but in order to get more impact out of it is from the Chuck Jones short "Feed the Kitty". As Marc Anthony the bulldog watches his kitty friend get mixed up in some cookie dough, rolled flat by a rolling pin and cut up with cookie cutters, he reacts with horror outside the window. In the last scene of him watching, you can only see his eyeball. It rolls back in shock and he falls over out of frame.



I think its so much more powerful this way than if you saw his whole face.

As always, feel free to leave a comment and tell me if you're confused by this, and want me to clarify, or you agree with my analysis, or totally disagree...