Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in my Heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech and his time for another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. This episode is called How hand Drawn
Speaker 1: Animation Works, and it originally published on October two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: And I'm a huge fan of animation. I love animation.
Speaker 1: I think when it's done well, it can be an
Speaker 1: incredible art form. One of my favorite films of the
Speaker 1: recent past is Into the Spider Verse, a truly gorgeous
Speaker 1: animated movie. Although not necessarily talking just about hand drawn
Speaker 1: animation in that respect, but I thought it would be
Speaker 1: good to look back on this and kind of get
Speaker 1: an appreciation on how this stuff works. So let's listen
Speaker 1: in as Chris and I go down the path to
Speaker 1: understanding hand drawn animation. Today, we wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: the traditional hand drawn animation process, what goes into it,
Speaker 1: why does it work, and how has it changed over
Speaker 1: the years. Uh. And we were specifically focusing on hand
Speaker 1: drawn animation because I think we may have I know
Speaker 1: we've talked about computer animation in previous podcasts. I don't
Speaker 1: think we've done a full episode on it, but but
Speaker 1: the two disciplines are different enough where I think it
Speaker 1: warrants two different podcasts. Yeah, the I have done some
Speaker 1: research on it, just by accident, just because I was
Speaker 1: interested in a topic from time to time, and I
Speaker 1: started thinking about it the other day when I saw
Speaker 1: something and suggested it. Um. It's uh, it's very different
Speaker 1: in quite a few ways from from computer animation, and
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I like to talk about how old styles
Speaker 1: of tech have affected us and uh, the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that people used to do. Um. You know, there
Speaker 1: are some very famous studios that have have gone computer
Speaker 1: only these days, but um, some of the very same
Speaker 1: studios were pioneers and some of the amazing tech that
Speaker 1: went into making a piece of hand drawn animation look
Speaker 1: very realistic. UM. And I thought, you know, it would
Speaker 1: be really fun to kind of touch on that. Um,
Speaker 1: which is which is why I think we decided to
Speaker 1: go ahead and make an episode of it. We should
Speaker 1: probably already attach this into our movie making tech series
Speaker 1: of stuff, just because we haven't done one in a while.
Speaker 1: And then now we can say we have. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's been I think it's been like a year.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, okay, that that that's fun with me. This
Speaker 1: belongs in our movie Magic Technology series. It really does.
Speaker 1: It's just that I wasn't thinking of it that way.
Speaker 1: So before U, before we get into the actual process
Speaker 1: of making a hand drawn animated project, whether it's television
Speaker 1: for television or for film or whatever, um, we should
Speaker 1: kind of explain the whole concept behind animation. It's the
Speaker 1: idea is that it's an illusion, obviously, an illusion of movement.
Speaker 1: And this is because the way our our brains and
Speaker 1: our eyes work, we have this uh, this sort of
Speaker 1: it's it's almost like a visual memory in a way,
Speaker 1: and we're able to fill in enough information where if
Speaker 1: you have a sequence of images of an object that
Speaker 1: appears to move because it has a different um orientation,
Speaker 1: or you've slightly changed the location of the object from
Speaker 1: one page of of a like a pad of paper
Speaker 1: to another, and then you move those at a fast
Speaker 1: enough clip, it gives the illusion that that that's actually
Speaker 1: an object that's physically moving through a space. Yeah, persistence
Speaker 1: of vision, Yes, you might call it. Yes, in fact,
Speaker 1: that's its name. That's and that is reason to call
Speaker 1: it that. And so I mean, anyone who has played
Speaker 1: with a little notepad or post it notes or whatever
Speaker 1: and have created their own little versions of this knows that.
Speaker 1: You know, you you get a uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: create this illusion of movement, You move the figures, you
Speaker 1: you draw the next figure a little bit further away
Speaker 1: from the first one, or you give it some other
Speaker 1: form of motion. Uh, And when you flip the book,
Speaker 1: then it looks like something's happening. I used to do
Speaker 1: this all the time with post it notes. I went
Speaker 1: through so many packs of post it notes, drawing my
Speaker 1: own little cartoons, which almost always ended in violent mayhem.
Speaker 1: They usually began innocently enough. Yeah, I'd be like, okay,
Speaker 1: and now he's jumping over hurdle, and now he's opening
Speaker 1: up a door, and now he's hit in the head
Speaker 1: with an ax, and now he's running away from a monster,
Speaker 1: and yeah, things fell apart pretty quickly for me. If
Speaker 1: you're if you've ever read the comic strip Calvin and Hobbs,
Speaker 1: where Calvin is uh, you know, coming up with these scenarios.
Speaker 1: And now look, the giant tanker truck full of acid
Speaker 1: is coming toward it and meteor from space? How can
Speaker 1: they avoid this? And this is the image I'm seeing
Speaker 1: of Jonathan doing this. Yeah, it wasn't pretty. So how
Speaker 1: do you take that and you transfer it over into
Speaker 1: making an animated show or film? Well it's been done
Speaker 1: for centuries now really in a way. In a way,
Speaker 1: but the the process that kind of defines the way
Speaker 1: modern animation worked throughout the twentieth century was really defined
Speaker 1: by Earl Heard, and Earl Heard actually patented the cell
Speaker 1: animation process, and we call it cell animation. The original
Speaker 1: material that people drew, the drawings of figures or whatever
Speaker 1: was being animated within a scene, they would draw draw
Speaker 1: that on celluloid. Eventually the end stream made a transition
Speaker 1: from celluloid to cellulos acetate. Part of that was because
Speaker 1: celluloid is um yeah, extremely flammable, very flat. It's both
Speaker 1: flammable and inflammable and also it uh, it could be
Speaker 1: prone to spontaneous decomposition, so you couldn't store it indefinitely.
Speaker 1: Are you see those stack of drawings? They were right?
Speaker 1: They see that public goo over there? Yeah, that's snow white.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, they would they would. It seems problematic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't you know, you couldn't archive this stuff,
Speaker 1: which in the early days the industry wasn't a big concern.
Speaker 1: You know. The concern was to create this this product
Speaker 1: and then have it shown, usually in a movie theater
Speaker 1: in the early days. You know, this is this is
Speaker 1: before television. So this was something where you would go
Speaker 1: to a a like a theater and see it projected
Speaker 1: on a screen. But there wasn't weren't too concerned about
Speaker 1: storing stuff for for posterity, not prosperity. They wanted prosperity, posterity.
Speaker 1: They weren't so concerned about um. But yeah, so, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't a big deal. But then the move to
Speaker 1: cellulous estate, which is essentially kind of plastic, helped take
Speaker 1: that that problem out of the picture, so to speak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the reason that now this this material um, the celluloid
Speaker 1: was was clear, yes, basically a clear sheet of plastic
Speaker 1: if you will, just just for the sake of the
Speaker 1: image in your head. Actually, most of you have probably
Speaker 1: seen somebody working on cells for animation. It's you know,
Speaker 1: we sort of know what this looks like. We haven't
Speaker 1: gotten so far out from that realm that it's foreign
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, but this is this was a big
Speaker 1: improvement because before this, uh, there were some very early
Speaker 1: animation uh you know, moving pictures that were made with
Speaker 1: drawings on paper, and that is so much more time
Speaker 1: consuming because just as you know, um, there are several
Speaker 1: frames of film that pass. Each second is the standard. Yes,
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember per second of standard for film thirty
Speaker 1: for television. I was thinking television. If you're in the
Speaker 1: United States, I have to you have to make these
Speaker 1: qualifiers because other other countries have different standards. So imagine
Speaker 1: if you will, then you are one of the animators
Speaker 1: and you have to draw twenty four complete drawings for
Speaker 1: each second of film. This is very time consuming, where
Speaker 1: using the the cell method allows you allows the animator
Speaker 1: to make a subtle change to the original drawing and
Speaker 1: and just change make those subtle changes and you can
Speaker 1: see it because um again, if you watch a video
Speaker 1: of somebody making an animation with cells, they are able
Speaker 1: to overlay them on top of one another and they
Speaker 1: can make those subtle adjustments seeing where the differences are
Speaker 1: between the two drawings, which you you won't be able
Speaker 1: to do as well with paper because it's especially if
Speaker 1: you're using hand especially if you're using paper, Like if
Speaker 1: there's a background image that's involved with paper, you have
Speaker 1: to draw the whole thing each time, right, So you're
Speaker 1: drawing that whole background because you know, again your paper
Speaker 1: is not transparent, so you're joining the whole background. Plus
Speaker 1: they're drawing whatever is in the foreground that's that's animated,
Speaker 1: and then the next frame you have to draw it
Speaker 1: all over again. Whereas with cells, what you could do
Speaker 1: is you could have a pre generated background image that
Speaker 1: is laid down in a frame, and then you could
Speaker 1: overlay these cells on top of it, one at a time,
Speaker 1: and because the cell itself is clear, anywhere that you
Speaker 1: have not drawn, you could see the background. And then
Speaker 1: you take that cell out, you put another cell in,
Speaker 1: you take another picture, which represents a frame of the film.
Speaker 1: You know, when you think about film, really is animation,
Speaker 1: Even live action film is technically animation because you're talking
Speaker 1: about looking at a series of photographs that are played
Speaker 1: at such a speed as to create the illusion of movement. Yes. Uh, Now,
Speaker 1: the granted this is we're talking about physical film here,
Speaker 1: because once we get into digital there's different things to
Speaker 1: you know, consider. But in the old film days, that's
Speaker 1: that's really what we're talking about. So with animation, each
Speaker 1: of those frames is essentially a photograph. You're using a
Speaker 1: camera to photograph this drawing, and with the cells, like
Speaker 1: I said, you take one cell out, you put another
Speaker 1: cell in the background remains static. Uh. Then you have
Speaker 1: a character that is appearing or object or whatever that
Speaker 1: it's appearing to move on top of this background. If
Speaker 1: it's a movement that is you know, easily repeatable, you
Speaker 1: don't even have to draw more than the number of
Speaker 1: cells it takes to complete one cycle of that action.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you wanna picture You've drawn a
Speaker 1: cartoon kangaroo and the kangaroos just jumping straight up and
Speaker 1: down five times. Well, you don't have to draw enough
Speaker 1: cells to do that five times. You draw it so
Speaker 1: it does one full cycle, one jump from start to finish,
Speaker 1: and then you you could photograph that sequence five times
Speaker 1: using those that same cells. So, in other words, you've
Speaker 1: just cut down on the amount of work you would
Speaker 1: have to do if this were all done on paper. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the important points to that that
Speaker 1: so many animators have used in the past. Um Uh.
Speaker 1: The the illusion of movement you've got your kangaroo hopping
Speaker 1: up and down. Now, if the background stays static, um,
Speaker 1: then it looks like the kangaroos hopping up and down
Speaker 1: in place. UM. This technique that Jonathan was just saying,
Speaker 1: um or just talking about uh is often used to
Speaker 1: create the illusion of movement across a linear surface from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. Let's say the characters are
Speaker 1: walking down a street in the city. Man, I remember
Speaker 1: those old Marvel Comics heroes animations from the sixties and
Speaker 1: all the buildings. If if you watch a lot of
Speaker 1: these shows, um, Hanna Barbary did this kind of thing
Speaker 1: to all the time, where you're moving down the urban
Speaker 1: landscape and they've you've got your drawings of the city.
Speaker 1: And after a while to build, the buildings begin to
Speaker 1: look the same, which is because underneath what the characters
Speaker 1: are doing, the same images of the city. You know,
Speaker 1: once they've gotten uh you know, let's say twenty four
Speaker 1: for each frame, they probably had uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: certain number of those, and once they got to the
Speaker 1: end of that, then they started over at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and loops and loops and loops. So if you think
Speaker 1: of if you think of like a cell a cell
Speaker 1: is generally the size of whatever the the whole frame
Speaker 1: of that images, right, So so one cell has the
Speaker 1: character or object or whatever, or characters or objects or
Speaker 1: mix of whatever. Um it has those in the center
Speaker 1: or what has those on the on the center, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter it has on the cell. The rest
Speaker 1: of the cell is clear. That's what's showing you. The background. Generally,
Speaker 1: the backgrounds are much wider than the frame on sometimes
Speaker 1: taller as well than the frame that you are looking at.
Speaker 1: So when you take that picture and you remove the
Speaker 1: cell so you can put the next cell indicating the
Speaker 1: next movement of that character, you would also adjust the
Speaker 1: position of the background so that you would have that
Speaker 1: illusion of a character walking forward. So let's say the
Speaker 1: characters staying in the center of the frame, and the
Speaker 1: animation is the character is making a walking motion. Then
Speaker 1: what you would do is between the different shots you
Speaker 1: would move the background horizontally so that it would look
Speaker 1: like the characters making progress. Well, eventually you're gonna run
Speaker 1: out of back ground. You'll have to switch to a
Speaker 1: different background, or you have to reuse one, which is
Speaker 1: what Chris was talking about. You also notice in a
Speaker 1: lot of those old animations, characters have very limited movement.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it looks like a static character who's just kind
Speaker 1: of bouncing up and down a little bit as the
Speaker 1: background is moving. And again, that was a way of
Speaker 1: saving money by drawing fewer cells. You draw a character
Speaker 1: on a cell, and you're using that same static image
Speaker 1: of the character. You're just repositioning the cell slightly and
Speaker 1: adjusting the camera's frame so that there the character appears
Speaker 1: to be moving up and down as if they are walking,
Speaker 1: but in fact you're just using the same picture over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. Pretty get to the clutch
Speaker 1: cargo days, where you replace the cartoon character's mouth with
Speaker 1: a human mouth and generate a whole generation of nightmares.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure though, that this this method is exactly
Speaker 1: why he Man always appeared to be moon walking everywhere
Speaker 1: he went, Right. Yeah, The match matching the h the
Speaker 1: background movement with the animated character movement is an art
Speaker 1: form of it's in and of itself, and if you
Speaker 1: don't do it carefully, then you get this weird glide
Speaker 1: e motion where the character either seems to be uh
Speaker 1: walking too quickly but not making enough progress, or walking
Speaker 1: slowly but moving really fast. And um, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a form of art really. To get that
Speaker 1: just right, we're kind of getting a little too far
Speaker 1: into this though. I want to talk kind of about
Speaker 1: the whole process of building an animated feature. But before
Speaker 1: I jump into it, one other thing I need to
Speaker 1: say is that this traditional form of animation we're talking about,
Speaker 1: where you're drawing pictures on cells, Uh, it takes up
Speaker 1: a lot of space. Yes, it does. The equipment takes
Speaker 1: up a lot of space because you usually have to
Speaker 1: have a table on which you are photographing all this
Speaker 1: stuff and you're not using like a hand camera, No,
Speaker 1: this is professional, huge camera. And generally speaking, uh, this
Speaker 1: kind of helps cut down on the amount of materials
Speaker 1: you need. But generally speaking, for film, most animation is
Speaker 1: done where they call it animating on two's, which means
Speaker 1: they take two pictures per h position, which means that well,
Speaker 1: the playback is twenty four frames per second, the positions
Speaker 1: are more like twelve frames per second. So uh, that way,
Speaker 1: you've just cut the number of cells you need to
Speaker 1: create in half. Also, the number of times you need
Speaker 1: to adjust the background, You've cut that in half. Uh,
Speaker 1: which makes a big difference. Now for things that are
Speaker 1: like action that's moving really really quickly where you want
Speaker 1: to really smooth, you might be animating on ones, which
Speaker 1: means every single time you take a picture you have
Speaker 1: to change it whatever you know, either the background or
Speaker 1: the foreground or both between each picture. So you've just
Speaker 1: added twice as much work. You know, sometimes even more
Speaker 1: than twice as much because you think about all the
Speaker 1: departments that are involved in this. But uh, it creates
Speaker 1: a lot more work that way. It also means you
Speaker 1: have to have storage space for all this stuff because
Speaker 1: cells take up room, backgrounds take up room, the equipment
Speaker 1: takes up room, and film itself takes up room. So
Speaker 1: you know, you talk about film footage, well that really does.
Speaker 1: That really does refer back to how many feet of
Speaker 1: film you've shot? Right footage. I mean when you think about, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got some great footage, but you don't think of
Speaker 1: what that really means. Well, in the film days, that
Speaker 1: actually meant how many feet of film you had exposed,
Speaker 1: how many you had you had shot of whatever seen.
Speaker 1: If you want to know how much film animated, an
Speaker 1: animated picture takes about sixteen frames is a foot okay,
Speaker 1: one second of film is twenty four frames. So one
Speaker 1: second of film is a foot and a half. Okay,
Speaker 1: most about half. Most cartoons are longer than a second.
Speaker 1: So you have lots and lots of film that you're
Speaker 1: dealing with. All right, So that's that's the space issue,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about how we've kind of worked
Speaker 1: around that, uh and move beyond the cell based animation
Speaker 1: these days while still staying hand drawn. Um So, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to make an animated film, Uh, the way
Speaker 1: you would generally approach this is you come up with
Speaker 1: an idea for a story. That's the best thing. That
Speaker 1: the best way to start, in my opinion, I just
Speaker 1: drew some stuff bouncing around. Is that all right? You
Speaker 1: could do that. It's not terribly you know interesting, Um
Speaker 1: beyond maybe a certain group of friends who are amused
Speaker 1: by anything you My friends know who they are. Um, hey,
Speaker 1: they like my stuff anyway. So you create a story,
Speaker 1: and then you think of how you want to visualize
Speaker 1: this story. This is where you create a storyboard. Now,
Speaker 1: storyboard is kind of like a comic strip or a
Speaker 1: graphic novel. It tells the story in a series of frames,
Speaker 1: and uh, it all depends on how detailed you want
Speaker 1: to get. Sometimes you just show a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a frame, and then you might make a note about
Speaker 1: what is happening as far as the action goes, because
Speaker 1: of course a frame is a still image. We don't
Speaker 1: see movement in a frame. We can see the implication
Speaker 1: like that it's implying movement perhaps, but it doesn't actually move.
Speaker 1: So you might say, you know, like I have a
Speaker 1: have a picture of a character who is holding an
Speaker 1: American football, and is, uh, that's for my friends in
Speaker 1: in places other than the United States. But holding an
Speaker 1: American football is if they're going to throw a pass,
Speaker 1: so their arm is cocked back they're holding the football,
Speaker 1: and then you might draw some arrows showing that this
Speaker 1: is the forward motion that the character is going to
Speaker 1: throw the ball. And then the next shot might be
Speaker 1: the football in the air, and then the next shot
Speaker 1: might be a character with arms wide open trying to
Speaker 1: catch this ball, and the next shot might be the
Speaker 1: ball passing right between the character's arms. That would be
Speaker 1: several frames within a storyboard. You fill out the entire
Speaker 1: story this way, so you end up with a huge,
Speaker 1: depending upon the length of your project, a huge comic
Speaker 1: strip that is your story and it's told in this
Speaker 1: visual format. UM. Once you've got an idea of what
Speaker 1: it looks like and the mood you're trying to get
Speaker 1: across in various parts of the story, the next step
Speaker 1: UH and and not every project takes these steps in
Speaker 1: this exact order, but in general, the next step would
Speaker 1: be you get your cast together and you record all
Speaker 1: the voice work. So it all depends on the project
Speaker 1: of how you do that. Some some UH and Asian companies,
Speaker 1: what they would do is they would bring in the
Speaker 1: voice actors UH individually and they would just deliver their lines.
Speaker 1: And they might deliver a line five six different ways
Speaker 1: so that the director has the choice of which line
Speaker 1: to use, which which delivery to use. Right, So the
Speaker 1: line might be, Chris, I need you to say this line,
Speaker 1: don't go in there. Don't go in there now. I
Speaker 1: need you to say it like you're scared. Don't go
Speaker 1: in there now. I need you to say it like
Speaker 1: there's a big surprise and you just you can't let
Speaker 1: this person see the surprise yet, don't go in there. See.
Speaker 1: So that's exactly what the voice actors would be doing.
Speaker 1: And it sounds ridiculous, but that's truly the way a
Speaker 1: lot of these studios work, unless they're casting Robin Williams,
Speaker 1: in which case they give them a microphone like like,
Speaker 1: here's here's your stuff, here's your queue line, here's the
Speaker 1: line you need to give so that the next actor's
Speaker 1: line makes sense. Go at it. Yeah, the stuff that
Speaker 1: ended up on the cutting room floor for Aladdin is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: I mean, the stuff that made it in was great.
Speaker 1: The stuff that made it on that was cut was
Speaker 1: pretty amazing too. Anyway, that's that's one way of doing it.
Speaker 1: Another way, sometimes studios will bring in groups of actors
Speaker 1: and they will all have headphones on. They'll be uh
Speaker 1: in the studio and they will they will read outlines
Speaker 1: together and you will actually have actors acting off of
Speaker 1: one another's delivery like a group read, which which is great.
Speaker 1: And usually there's also a group read before they even
Speaker 1: go into the recording process so that they can kind
Speaker 1: of get that feel. This is particularly true for television animation,
Speaker 1: where they'll get a table read so that the actors
Speaker 1: kind of know where they need to go with their
Speaker 1: performance before they go into the studio. But if they're together,
Speaker 1: it makes it easier at least, and I have done
Speaker 1: this for me, it makes it easier for me to
Speaker 1: act when I have someone to act opposite of. That way,
Speaker 1: we can we can judge how to deliver the next
Speaker 1: line based upon what the other person has said. It's
Speaker 1: a lot more challenging when you're doing it in a
Speaker 1: void and you just hope that the way you deliver
Speaker 1: a line matches up with the way they delivered their line.
Speaker 1: But both approaches are used, and there are some phenomenal
Speaker 1: animated works out there where every single actor never ever
Speaker 1: encountered any of the other actors, which to me blows
Speaker 1: my mind. Um, so they record this thing and then
Speaker 1: you have what is called a scratch track. This is
Speaker 1: the audio track of the film that includes all the
Speaker 1: vocal acting, including songs if there are any vocal songs
Speaker 1: that the characters are performing in there, and usually some
Speaker 1: temp music tracks, because often the music for a film
Speaker 1: is not finished until you've got at least something to
Speaker 1: look at so that the composer can kind of match
Speaker 1: the mood of the music to whatever's on screen. But
Speaker 1: they'll be temp music tracks to kind of give the
Speaker 1: the you know, music tracks that are selected that give
Speaker 1: sort of a similar feel to what the filmmakers are
Speaker 1: going for, so that the animators have something to work
Speaker 1: off of. So you've got the scratch track done. By
Speaker 1: the way, this was not how it was always done.
Speaker 1: Prior to the nineteen thirties. Animators would create an animated
Speaker 1: film and then record the sound matching, trying to match
Speaker 1: the sound to what was already created in film format.
Speaker 1: So they were going the opposite way. They would create
Speaker 1: the film and then they would try and essentially do
Speaker 1: foley for whatever the animated film was. But but eventually
Speaker 1: it moved to the other way. Yeah, if I were
Speaker 1: going to do this, it would probably be more like that, right,
Speaker 1: That would be because I'm not an animator. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: because what the animators are doing is they take that
Speaker 1: that that soundtrack, that scratch track, and they start to
Speaker 1: create the animation. Now, sometimes there's another step. In fact,
Speaker 1: very often there's another step called an animatic or a
Speaker 1: pencil test. This is a very primitive version of the film,
Speaker 1: so it goes beyond the storyboard model where you've got
Speaker 1: some some movement usually involved in the antimatics. But it's
Speaker 1: if you think, you know, the most primitive form of
Speaker 1: the animatic could just be a storyboard set to the
Speaker 1: scratch track, and this again is a reference for the
Speaker 1: animators to look at when they start to really generate
Speaker 1: the the visuals for the film. Now, at this point
Speaker 1: you can start to divide up the labor, which is
Speaker 1: very useful because it means that you can have different
Speaker 1: departments working on various stuff all at the same time,
Speaker 1: and people can specialize in very particular tasks and it
Speaker 1: makes the whole project move much more quickly. It's like
Speaker 1: an it's it's an assembly line approach. So and it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of key to how they started making animated
Speaker 1: motion pictures. I'm glad you said the word key, but
Speaker 1: I'll get to that. So that you might have a
Speaker 1: background department. This is the department's purposes just to create
Speaker 1: the backgrounds that you're gonna see in this animated feature.
Speaker 1: We'll be back here if you need us. So they
Speaker 1: actually are. That's that's their job is to create the backgrounds.
Speaker 1: And these backgrounds might, like I said, be larger than
Speaker 1: the frame is when you're taking pictures with your film camera,
Speaker 1: so that you can move the background around in relation
Speaker 1: to what's going on in the foreground, so that you
Speaker 1: can have that illusion of characters moving around a scene
Speaker 1: and you aren't. You aren't restricted to just what you
Speaker 1: can see in any given frame. Uh. So they that
Speaker 1: department starts to work on the backgrounds. You've got the
Speaker 1: drawing department, and what they usually do is start on
Speaker 1: paper and they'll start drawing out the characters. They'll they'll
Speaker 1: start creating character concepts. This is the time where, uh,
Speaker 1: they really start to refine the way characters look and move,
Speaker 1: and not just the characters themselves, but anything the character
Speaker 1: happens to have on him or so for example, if
Speaker 1: you've drawn a space marine character who's got a big gun,
Speaker 1: a big clunky armor, you would want to draw a
Speaker 1: lot of different poses for this character to kind of define, like,
Speaker 1: this is how this character moves, Like the armor restricts movements,
Speaker 1: so things need to be really angular and there can't
Speaker 1: be a lot of flexibility here. And when the character
Speaker 1: expressed a surprise, um, his eyebrows actually go down, not up,
Speaker 1: and that sort of stuff. And these are things that
Speaker 1: really define acting choices in the movie. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a weird. Another weird thing is that a performance in
Speaker 1: an animated film is defined by not just the person
Speaker 1: who's recorded the voice, but the person who has drawn
Speaker 1: that character, And so you've got an acting performance coming
Speaker 1: from at least two different people, and usually more than
Speaker 1: two different people. Yeah, there there are times in uh,
Speaker 1: for example, I know this is not a hand drawn animation.
Speaker 1: There are times in Monsters, inc. When I'm watching Mike
Speaker 1: Wazask and I'm seeing Billy Crystal in my head because
Speaker 1: they've captured some of the same facial And that's not
Speaker 1: unusual either. Often often people will film or videotape the
Speaker 1: cast recording sessions in order to get a look at
Speaker 1: how the actors, uh, you know, some of the some
Speaker 1: of the facial expressions they use, or the quirks they have,
Speaker 1: and they'll even incorporate that into the character designs, which
Speaker 1: is that's always fun when you see an animated character
Speaker 1: make a movement that is something you associate with a
Speaker 1: physical human being, that's always a fun moment. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's another benefit of doing it the
Speaker 1: other way around. Not only do you have to not
Speaker 1: match up the voice to the animation, but you actually
Speaker 1: get to to breathe a little life into the animation
Speaker 1: too and make it more appealing, right, We've got more
Speaker 1: to say about how animation works, but before we get
Speaker 1: to that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So the next step is, once you've got the drawings
Speaker 1: on paper, you start to trace it onto cells. Now
Speaker 1: technically it's on the back of the cells that you're
Speaker 1: tracing this stuff on. And after after you've drawn the
Speaker 1: line drawing, you know, after you've inked it, it's the
Speaker 1: inking phase. It's time to go to paint, where you
Speaker 1: have to use the very specific colors you have designated
Speaker 1: for that character. Um there are you know, there are
Speaker 1: guides for every single animated feature or television show about
Speaker 1: what color belongs to which character. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: a very specific thing because when it's off, it's noticeably off,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's off within a single uh episode of
Speaker 1: a show or a single film, But if it's something
Speaker 1: that's between episodes, even then it can be noticeable. Even
Speaker 1: like Homer's Simpson's pants aren't the right color of blue.
Speaker 1: It's true, you know, you can. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: companies that have had problems where the paints they were
Speaker 1: using no longer existed because the company that produced them
Speaker 1: was gone and they had to try and figure out
Speaker 1: how to recreate that exact color or or there are
Speaker 1: times too when um, you know, especially for TV shows
Speaker 1: where they're they're creating many episodes of a show where uh,
Speaker 1: the producing studio farms the animation work out to other studios,
Speaker 1: so you'll see differences sometimes in colors when one studio
Speaker 1: does it versus another. Yeah, and that's that's that can
Speaker 1: be distracting for long time fans. That's another issue I
Speaker 1: was going to mention, is that, so you get to
Speaker 1: this point where you're drawing the cells and you're painting
Speaker 1: the cells. You're inking and painting the cells. Everything is
Speaker 1: being done on the back of the cell. That also
Speaker 1: hides the brush strokes. So that way, when you turn
Speaker 1: the cell over, you've got this beautiful color image of
Speaker 1: a character or an object or whatever, but you don't
Speaker 1: see the individual strokes or anything, cause that's on the
Speaker 1: back of the cell. Uh. Then once those cells are done,
Speaker 1: if if you were to do all the animation yourself,
Speaker 1: you would produce all the cells you needed two complete
Speaker 1: the animation for the various scenes you're doing. And sometimes
Speaker 1: that means that you're going to be using some of
Speaker 1: the same cells again and again, like if there are
Speaker 1: a lot of scenes of a character walking down the road,
Speaker 1: then you may have a certain sequence of cells that
Speaker 1: you use several times. Uh. You don't want to rely
Speaker 1: on it too much, of course, because otherwise it just
Speaker 1: looks like it's the same thing through the whole picture.
Speaker 1: But you would put those cells individually on top of
Speaker 1: the respective backgrounds. Take a photo, make the adjustments, take
Speaker 1: the next photo, make adjustments, take the next photo until
Speaker 1: you were done. And you know, you do that all
Speaker 1: the way through and you're matching it up to that
Speaker 1: scratch track. You actually have to make sure that the
Speaker 1: animation matches up with the soundtrack for the film. And
Speaker 1: then they the final soundtrack comes through with the music
Speaker 1: and effects and everything, and uh, you master out the
Speaker 1: film and then you've got your finished animated project. However,
Speaker 1: like Chris was saying, a lot of television shows in
Speaker 1: particular farm out animation to other countries, particularly Korea. Korea
Speaker 1: is is like a known factor in animation UM and
Speaker 1: shows like The Sibsons and Futurama, they use these studios
Speaker 1: in Korea to complete the animation. What usually happens is that, uh,
Speaker 1: the team back in the United States will create what
Speaker 1: are called key frames. Key frames are showing very specific
Speaker 1: points in the animation that need to happen, and you
Speaker 1: have these segments between the key frames that are left unfinished.
Speaker 1: They need to be filled in, and that's called in
Speaker 1: between meaning, which makes sense. You're you're creating this the
Speaker 1: action that exists in between the key frames. So if
Speaker 1: you think about it back when I was talking about
Speaker 1: the storyboard with the whole football, uh example, you would
Speaker 1: probably have more key frames than just the three or
Speaker 1: four panels I had talked about, But that would essentially
Speaker 1: be the same sort of thing saying this is your
Speaker 1: starting point, this is your ending point. We need to
Speaker 1: have the pathway connecting these two. It needs to be
Speaker 1: this many frames long. So that's that kind of dictates
Speaker 1: how fast the action takes UM and then once that
Speaker 1: is all done, the the foreign for us anyway, the
Speaker 1: foreign studio sends the footage back and you can incorporate
Speaker 1: into your show. Now, often you have to do a
Speaker 1: lot of work to match up things like vocal work,
Speaker 1: in particular with UM with the animation that's sent back,
Speaker 1: because you're talking about a language barrier. Often you're talking
Speaker 1: about people who may not get the gist of a
Speaker 1: joke because of either linguistic or cultural differences. So something
Speaker 1: that makes sense and is funny to us may not
Speaker 1: be funny to another culture because they don't have the
Speaker 1: same cultural background or same linguistic background, so they're there
Speaker 1: are adjustments that need to be made at that point.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that the bulk of the work
Speaker 1: is done, which ends up being less expensive for the
Speaker 1: studio here in the United States because, frankly it the people,
Speaker 1: the animators who are working in Korea are doing it
Speaker 1: at a much lower cost than it would be to
Speaker 1: produce it all here. So that's the general approach. Now,
Speaker 1: we have a couple of special things we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about. One of those being something that was invented
Speaker 1: uh many decades ago by Disney animators Disney engineers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this may uh, I'm not certain that that we're talking
Speaker 1: about this same thing. Yes, the multiplane came. That's exactly
Speaker 1: I'm doing the multiplane camera gesture so that Chris would know. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the the international symbol for the multiplane camera, which
Speaker 1: is putting putting your horizontal hand in five different levels.
Speaker 1: This um, this is a little different in technique. Um
Speaker 1: and and it's it's similar in other ways now, Um,
Speaker 1: this is something that the Disney studios there were there
Speaker 1: were several people who worked on this. Disney himself did
Speaker 1: some work on it, and the the semi famous UBI
Speaker 1: Works also worked on it as well. Um and Uh,
Speaker 1: Basically they had noticed there's a there's an awesome film
Speaker 1: of Disney himself introducing this and talking about it. I
Speaker 1: assume that it looks like it came from the Disneyland,
Speaker 1: uh TV show that was out in the fifties and
Speaker 1: six or so, and I'm sure it was using in
Speaker 1: something like The Wonderful World of Disney. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's He did a whole series of films where he
Speaker 1: talked very you know, just just a matter of fatter
Speaker 1: of fact approach about how they do what they do
Speaker 1: and how they make Disney magic, which in my mind
Speaker 1: made it all the more magical because you saw the
Speaker 1: amount of thought that went into producing the stuff they made. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But it's been in about five minutes. I had actually
Speaker 1: read about this in a biography of Walt Disney, but
Speaker 1: seeing it actually explained step by step and how they
Speaker 1: make it work. Um. Now, when you show a traditional
Speaker 1: two D animation, uh cell being shot, a photo being
Speaker 1: taken of the cell against the background. Basically there's a
Speaker 1: frame that holds the cell in place over the background.
Speaker 1: They clamp it down so it's not gonna wiggle while
Speaker 1: they take the shot. And the cameras mounted above the table,
Speaker 1: so it is taking a picture of what is inside
Speaker 1: the frame, the physical frame on top of the table.
Speaker 1: So you basically have a shutter shutter release control. You
Speaker 1: mount that, you put the cell in place, lock it
Speaker 1: down in place, uh, you know, back out so you
Speaker 1: don't take a picture of the back of your head
Speaker 1: and gets some weird reflection in there or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and do the shutter release you know, with
Speaker 1: your with your thumb, you know, finger and uh you know,
Speaker 1: take your two shots if you're doing uh you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you got it. But what what Disney was explaining
Speaker 1: in this video was, uh, basically the problem of perspective.
Speaker 1: How certain things appear larger when they're closer to you
Speaker 1: or smaller farther away. Now you have, um, something like
Speaker 1: a barn and that's specifically from this with a moon
Speaker 1: hanging in the sky in the background. Yeah, Now, you
Speaker 1: as you get closer, as you walk toward the barn,
Speaker 1: it's going to start to appear larger. But in in
Speaker 1: traditional animation, you know, two D animation, you start to basically,
Speaker 1: if you everything gets larger because you're basically zooming in
Speaker 1: on Yeah, you're if you if you're thinking of it
Speaker 1: in purely physical terms, you are either moving the camera
Speaker 1: closer or focusing the lens so that the focal length
Speaker 1: is different. But you're you're essentially moving the camera closer
Speaker 1: to the frame, or you're moving the frame closer to
Speaker 1: the camera. In either case, you're decreasing the distance between
Speaker 1: camera and frame in order to create the illusion that
Speaker 1: you are zooming into a physical landscape. So in a
Speaker 1: real world situation, it'd be like a cameraman holding a
Speaker 1: camera and walking toward this barn that's on a hill
Speaker 1: on the moon is hanging behind it, And in that situation,
Speaker 1: the barn would gradually start to appear larger in the
Speaker 1: frame because you're getting closer, but the moon would not
Speaker 1: start to get larger because the moon is so much
Speaker 1: further away. You would have to go a really long
Speaker 1: way before that moon started looking like it was getting bigger.
Speaker 1: But in animation because it's a static background and it's
Speaker 1: drawn on a two dimensional piece of paper or whatever.
Speaker 1: When the camera gets closer, everything gets bigger because you
Speaker 1: cannot selectively say, hey, static image that it was drawn
Speaker 1: once that we're going to use over and over again.
Speaker 1: Make sure the moon doesn't get bigger when I get
Speaker 1: closer to it. It doesn't work that way. We got
Speaker 1: a little bit more animating to do, folks, But before
Speaker 1: we can do that, we're gonna take another quick break.
Speaker 1: So the way that that the Disney Studios decided to
Speaker 1: work around this was to essentially, and it's not exactly
Speaker 1: like this, but if you will essentially use a stack
Speaker 1: of layered cells um mounted, you know, one over the other,
Speaker 1: over the other over the other, so that the table
Speaker 1: underneath them still has the bottom and the camera is
Speaker 1: still above them. But what this enables the animators to
Speaker 1: do is to adjust. Uh. So the moon in this
Speaker 1: case will be on the very bottom because it's not
Speaker 1: going to move, but there might be a tree between
Speaker 1: you and the barn. So as the camera gets closer
Speaker 1: to the layer with the tree on it, it eventually
Speaker 1: goes out of sight. Because at this point, you uh,
Speaker 1: there the illusion is that you have passed the tree.
Speaker 1: The barn is still ahead of you, and it still
Speaker 1: appears to be getting larger, but more slowly than the
Speaker 1: bush on another layer in between, and then you eventually
Speaker 1: don't see the bush anymore because you have theoretically passed it.
Speaker 1: And uh, as you get closer to the barn is
Speaker 1: still appearing larger, but the moon still appears to be
Speaker 1: the roughly the same distance away. So as the camera gets,
Speaker 1: you know, layer by a layer closer and closer down
Speaker 1: the stack of layers. UM, you know, you do have
Speaker 1: that illusion that you are that the perspective is working
Speaker 1: the way would in real life. UM. Now it is
Speaker 1: not exactly the same as as sell animation. In this case,
Speaker 1: they're actually using oil paint on glass. Don't drop that
Speaker 1: layer I worked on all day, Bill, Don't don't get
Speaker 1: your filthy, smudgy hands off the layer I just felt.
Speaker 1: So they for every shot. Now this this again, this
Speaker 1: is an expensive process because now they are drawing not
Speaker 1: just one frame at a time, they are drawing several
Speaker 1: layers that you may or may not get to reuse later. Um.
Speaker 1: But they have to mount these in the holders for
Speaker 1: each frame. So let's say you've got seven layers. Um,
Speaker 1: the bottom one with the moon on it, that's gonna
Speaker 1: stay the same, Yeah, it's just it'll be on a
Speaker 1: stationary table. Yeah, but you might have to animate. You
Speaker 1: might have to replace the ones on the first three
Speaker 1: more frequently, and then the four and then the five.
Speaker 1: So you're you're for every shot, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to adjust the different layers as needed. And so you
Speaker 1: got you've got this device that has all these platforms
Speaker 1: that can hold each layer. So, and the platforms themselves
Speaker 1: are adjustable where you can move them closer to or
Speaker 1: further away from the camera. The camera remains stationary. You
Speaker 1: can also move them left to right, or up or down.
Speaker 1: Frankly genius. So yeah, again, again, you can create a
Speaker 1: much wider scene than can be seen on a single
Speaker 1: shot of the camera. And remember we're still doing this
Speaker 1: this approach where we take one picture, than you adjust,
Speaker 1: take one picture, then you adjust. You couldn't theoretically do
Speaker 1: this live if you really wanted to, but it would
Speaker 1: look it would probably be a chaotic mess. So um, instead,
Speaker 1: let's say that you are doing a panning shot through
Speaker 1: a forest. Well, the stuff that's closer to you is
Speaker 1: going to appear to move more dramatically than the stuff
Speaker 1: that is much further away. Well, that was the shot
Speaker 1: that used in the video you were talking about was
Speaker 1: from Bambi, where it was a panning shot through the forest,
Speaker 1: and and this effect was very impressive because you had
Speaker 1: different layers of the background moving at different speeds relative
Speaker 1: to our perspective, and so it creates a much more
Speaker 1: realistic feeling than just camera panning across a static painting
Speaker 1: which doesn't have any other layers to it. Um And
Speaker 1: it really did add this level of immersion to those
Speaker 1: early animated films. Now, it was a very kind of
Speaker 1: primitive form of three D sense because you're not you're
Speaker 1: not having any it's it's giving the illusion of depth.
Speaker 1: It's not coming out at you. And also ultimately it's
Speaker 1: the illusion of depth of a series of two dimensional paintings. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's almost like uh, And I've seen this with
Speaker 1: televisions that do three D conversion two D to three
Speaker 1: D conversion. The problem I have with two D two
Speaker 1: three D conversion is that it always gives the appearance
Speaker 1: of a bunch of cardboard cutouts that are at different
Speaker 1: depth levels. So if you had if you took a
Speaker 1: photo with a two D camera of a bunch of
Speaker 1: people lined up so that they are like, like, there's
Speaker 1: one guy who's really close to fairly close to you,
Speaker 1: another person who's a little further back, another one a
Speaker 1: little further back, and another one at the very back
Speaker 1: of the picture. And you've adjusted the focus so that
Speaker 1: everyone's more or less in focus, and you take the
Speaker 1: photo and then you converted to three D. Well, now
Speaker 1: it looks like a cardboard cutout of your friend is
Speaker 1: really close and a cardboard cutout of your other friend
Speaker 1: is in the middle. It doesn't, don't They don't appear
Speaker 1: to be three dimensional objects. The same thing is true
Speaker 1: with this multiplane camera approach is that the backgrounds all
Speaker 1: look like two dimensional paintings because that's what they were,
Speaker 1: but that there were some that were closer to the
Speaker 1: camera than others. So it created a very interesting effect
Speaker 1: and it was immersive, but it was not so immersive
Speaker 1: as a true three dimensional background. Yeah. Um, Nonetheless, I
Speaker 1: think it was a very clever way to to work
Speaker 1: around the limitations of two D. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in thinking about it just now, I think in a
Speaker 1: way it inadvertently forced the ken Burns effect because when
Speaker 1: you're when you're shooting documentaries as as he has, and
Speaker 1: he's showing still images and they're you know, they they're
Speaker 1: interviewing somebody, they're talking, and basically you're watching a photo
Speaker 1: that was taken a hundred years ago. There's it's it's
Speaker 1: a static photo of a real person, and it's what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do. You're gonna sit there and stare
Speaker 1: at the photo of Abraham Lincoln for two minutes while
Speaker 1: this guy is talking about it. No, you've got to
Speaker 1: do something to make it more. I think it's sort
Speaker 1: of set an expectation that when you're watching a video,
Speaker 1: it should be moving and it should appear realistic. So, um,
Speaker 1: I started thinking about it. You know, I bet that's
Speaker 1: why we have the ken Burns effect, because you know,
Speaker 1: we we came in with that perspective of moving in
Speaker 1: to the photo or panning across a still photo. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly actually what I was thinking when now
Speaker 1: he was when Disney was narrating this, this thing is like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you can zoom in if you want to,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of seems like you're getting closer but
Speaker 1: it does it's not as realistic as if you had
Speaker 1: this sense of perspective as we will create with the
Speaker 1: multiplane camera. So I just kind of thought about that now.
Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to talk about is another
Speaker 1: development that has dramatically changed the way hand drawn animation
Speaker 1: works today, and that is using a digital platform to
Speaker 1: create hand drawn animation. So it's not computer animation. You
Speaker 1: are not building computer models. You're still drawing stuff by hand,
Speaker 1: You're just doing it with a computer right to assist
Speaker 1: to you and tip. Typically this is through the use
Speaker 1: of things like Waycom tablets, specifically centreat tablets tend to
Speaker 1: be favored by a lot of the artist's sign note
Speaker 1: mainly because you can with the right tablet you can
Speaker 1: actually still look down and see as you're drawing. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a something that I've I've got a friend
Speaker 1: who does animation, actually got a couple of friends to
Speaker 1: do animation. My buddy Lucas Ryan was talking to me
Speaker 1: about this because I said, we're going to do an
Speaker 1: episode about hand drawn animation. What would you suggest we
Speaker 1: talked about? And he says, well, you know, you're going
Speaker 1: to cover the whole history and that's great, But I
Speaker 1: want you to talk about what it's like for an
Speaker 1: animator today to use one of these digital tablets, and
Speaker 1: you talked about, you know, there's a disconnect. There are
Speaker 1: some tablets where it's like a giant touch pad, right,
Speaker 1: and you've got a stylistic use a pen that you
Speaker 1: use and you draw on the touch pad, and the
Speaker 1: touch pad itself doesn't display anything. You have to look
Speaker 1: at a screen. He says, there's some people who they
Speaker 1: just can't get past that. They can't get past the
Speaker 1: fact that they are looking at a screen but they're drawing,
Speaker 1: you know, on a on a surface that they are
Speaker 1: not looking at, and that that's kind of understandable. I mean,
Speaker 1: someone who's just learning to touch type, it's pretty intimidating
Speaker 1: because you have to you have to really teach yourself
Speaker 1: the layout and everything. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: tablets out there now where there's also a display built
Speaker 1: into the tablet itself, So drawing on the tablet, it's
Speaker 1: also being reflected on a display on a computer, but
Speaker 1: you can look down and see what you're doing, so
Speaker 1: that way you can make these adjustments. Also, he talked
Speaker 1: about the the benefit of moving from a raster based
Speaker 1: system to a vector based system. We've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: Where raster is all pixel based, right, well, vector is
Speaker 1: math based. Yeah, it's a line art, line art, which
Speaker 1: is yeah. And and the nice thing about vector graphics
Speaker 1: is that it's it's relatively easy to adjust lines after
Speaker 1: you draw them, So you can reshape a line much
Speaker 1: more simply with a vector based drawing than you could
Speaker 1: with raster, where you would essentially have to erase what
Speaker 1: you did and draw it again. So there's some illustrators
Speaker 1: and animators out there who they're just used to it.
Speaker 1: They'll be they'll draw a line and say, no, that's
Speaker 1: that curves not right, and a racing they'll drawing some
Speaker 1: well it's closer, but that's not what I want, and
Speaker 1: they'll erase it and they'll draw another line. But then
Speaker 1: with the vector based ones, you can draw a line
Speaker 1: and say, oh, you know what, I just need to
Speaker 1: tweak this a little bit and it's going to be
Speaker 1: exactly why I need um. So that helps cut down
Speaker 1: on on a lot of stop and start work, and
Speaker 1: also the inking and painting part is much more much simpler.
Speaker 1: Now you have a huge variety of colors, you can
Speaker 1: choose from depending upon what sort of programs you're using.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about it not being consistent
Speaker 1: from one shot to the next because it's all digital,
Speaker 1: so that that code of color is going to remain
Speaker 1: the same no matter what um And you might even
Speaker 1: be able to use some effects in some software to
Speaker 1: create lighting effects that you don't have to necessarily do yourself,
Speaker 1: so it would know that, all right, if you're going
Speaker 1: to put a shadow of this intensity over this particular picture,
Speaker 1: it needs to adjust the color to look like that
Speaker 1: so that you know, so that it's natural to the viewer.
Speaker 1: So that's really the change the way illustrators and animators
Speaker 1: have created artwork. I know there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who create web comics who exclusively use tablets now.
Speaker 1: For the longest time, they would do all their art
Speaker 1: on paper and then they would scan the paper and
Speaker 1: they would upload the art that way. So Kurts used
Speaker 1: to do it that way, the guys at Penny Arcade
Speaker 1: used to do it that way, and then they all
Speaker 1: began to switch over using digital tablets. And almost every
Speaker 1: single one I hear the animator or or the artists
Speaker 1: talking either on a blog or on a podcast or
Speaker 1: whatever about how the initial transition period is incredibly painful
Speaker 1: and frustrating, and then after they get past the learning curve,
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't know why I didn't do this
Speaker 1: earlier because it makes things so much easier. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's become sort of the new standard is using
Speaker 1: these this digital format to do hand drawn animation. And
Speaker 1: we also have seen some combinations of hand drawn animation
Speaker 1: haired with computer generated backgrounds. So, I know, Beauty and
Speaker 1: the Beast did that the big ballroom sequence with the
Speaker 1: dance and Angela Lansbury singing and um and stuff that
Speaker 1: had a computer generated background. Uh so, you know, we
Speaker 1: were seeing some marriage of computer generated animation and hand
Speaker 1: drawn animation, uh happening, and it's been going on for
Speaker 1: a while. It's not like Beauty and the Beast was
Speaker 1: the first and only example. It's just one example. Uh So,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure we'll see more of that. I'm
Speaker 1: glad to say that there are plenty of artists at
Speaker 1: studios out there that still support hand drawn animation because
Speaker 1: I think that there is something special to that. There's
Speaker 1: a feel hand drawn animation has that's its own thing
Speaker 1: and I like that. Yeah, it seems like, well, at
Speaker 1: least in my opinion, it seems like there's a warmth
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah. Um, but you don't necessarily get Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's an asterisk cleaner you can't. Yeah. And there are companies.
Speaker 1: There are companies out there like Pixar that can make
Speaker 1: you sob like a little baby with some computer generated graphics. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I you can you can ask my wife. There
Speaker 1: is not a Pixar movie that I see without me
Speaker 1: going look at the fill in the blank here, like
Speaker 1: the Water and Finding Nemo or the fur Unsully in
Speaker 1: Monsters and absolutely blows my mind. The the the story
Speaker 1: of the the balloons and up where they did their
Speaker 1: computer modeling to determine how balloons would actually behave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of made me think of the engine that
Speaker 1: what I've built for um, the Armies for Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings. It's like, let's why don't we take that
Speaker 1: technology and convert it for helium balloons. It's essentially what
Speaker 1: they did. Uh, that's fascinating stuff. But there is there's
Speaker 1: a Um, I agree with Jonathan, there's a feeling that
Speaker 1: you get when watching hand drawn animation that is different
Speaker 1: than the feeling that you get when you're watching a
Speaker 1: computer It doesn't doesn't mean better or it's just different.
Speaker 1: It's just different. And and you know Lasseter of Pixar,
Speaker 1: he would argue the same thing. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: it's we use at Pixar, we use computer animation because
Speaker 1: that's the tool we use. But to us, the most
Speaker 1: important part of any film is the story, and that
Speaker 1: ultimately the tool you use is nowhere near as important
Speaker 1: as the story is. So if your story is solid,
Speaker 1: then as long as you are good at using whatever
Speaker 1: tools you have, you should be able to tell that
Speaker 1: story effectively. Now that if those tools are hand drawn animation,
Speaker 1: that's great, and if it's computer animation, that's great. There's
Speaker 1: no there's nothing wrong with either choice. You're going to
Speaker 1: get a different experience depending on which one to use,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't mean that one experience is superior or
Speaker 1: inferior to the other. And that wraps up this classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: always enjoy going back and listening to these old shows
Speaker 1: and hearing Chris and his uh wonderful delivery. I miss
Speaker 1: him and his puns. He's still doing quite well, by
Speaker 1: the way, she's just not with our company anymore. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed this. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for brand new episodes of tech Stuff, you can
Speaker 1: reach out the email addresses tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or you can pop on over to
Speaker 1: our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com, where you're
Speaker 1: going to find an archive of all of our past episodes,
Speaker 1: including these classics. You also find links to our social
Speaker 1: media presence, and you'll find a link to our online
Speaker 1: store where every purchase he make goes to help the
Speaker 1: show and we greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tex Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Eight