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Crayon Dragon is amazing. The characters appear hand-drawn (I think), and the range of motion was impressive. I don't know the technical language to describe the technique, but the character's entire body was moving with each frame, not just the head or the arm like in 80's Saturday morning cartoons. Very impressive.

Hand-drawn, yes. But not on paper. Toniko and many others used TVPaint and a Wacom Cintiq tablet to do their work this year.

 

The distinction you're looking for is "limited" vs. "full" animation. Limited animation was used by Hanna Barbera, Filmation and other studios creating episodic TV series to cut costs (although it could be argued its origins started out as a stylistic approach much earlier than that). Basically, they had libraries of characters, expressions, body parts, etc., that could be combined and reused over and over to create "new" animation. Full animation is more along the lines of what Disney did for their theatrical shorts and feature films, where animation was generally (but not always) drawn new for each character and scene, and for each cartoon.

 

Classic Warner Bros. cartoons are generally considered full animation, but used a mix of both methods so effectively, you never really noticed it unless you were looking for it. They often made use of keeping a character completely static except only for what had to move. It was efficient animation, but also served a comedic purpose. For example, watch the characters not talking in this short:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSTLmhWIYTs

 

The director wants the audience to focus on who's talking, so there's no purpose in moving anybody else very much. If you think about it, how often do you really move around when you're standing around listening to someone?

 

Hanna Barbera and others took this to an extreme in limited animation though, where they'd often cut to a close-up of the person listening, and not even show the person talking at all.

 

Flash and other animation programs make it a lot easier to shortcut some of the animation process by having the computer do some of the work. The trick is, unless the artist is still effectively going through a frame at a time and telling the computer what to do, it ends up looking pretty lifeless and artificial.

Thanks for the info, Nathan. Of course I watched cartoons as much as any kid, but recently I've developed a new fascination with hand-drawn animation ever since finding The Thief and the Cobbler. I wasn't interested in Disney much in my late teens and 20's, but now I'm catching up on all the Renaissance movies I missed in the 90's.

Update - added links to:

 

Michael Piazza - Under a Big Tree

Taylor Price - Below

Natalie Wetzig - Royal Pain

A nice review of this year's show is available here.

Your school sure has a lot of talented students, and it's fun to see such a variety of styles. My favorite 5, in order of the presentation, are Crayon Dragon, Kagemono, When I Grow Up, The Princess Who Never Smiled, and Royal Pain.

Hey Nathan, have you seen The Princess and the Frog? I bring it up because in the audio commentary by John Musker, Ron Clements, and Peter Del Vecho, they mention your school several times. It seems that quite a few alumni worked on the movie, and the ending credits sequence was described as "kind of like a CalArts film".

I haven't seen it. Can't say I had much interest in it, although maybe I'll rent it on Blu-ray someday. There are quite a lot of our alumni working in the industry. I'll have to dig up a spreadsheet I put together on how many feature films had been directed by CalArts alumni. It's quite a few.

 

Added link to: Sam Kremers-Nedell - Know Me

Ah yes... here we go. Pretty sure these are all Character Animation alumni, but one or two may be from the Experimental Animation program here.

 

Edit: Okay, I give up trying to get this impossibly stupid, useless blog software to post simple space-delimited text inline.

 

Here's a link to the text file instead.

Nice list. Tim Burton? Who's that?

 

But seriously, the directors of The Princess and the Frog are apparently alumni too, so that explains why they talk about CalArts so much.

 

There are lots of private art schools out there, and the general public may not understand how yours stands out, being so connected to some of the biggest films in the history of animation. Thanks for posting the list.

According to the list, every hand-drawn film by Walt Disney Animation Studios since The Little Mermaid, except Brother Bear, was directed or co-directed by a CalArts alumnus.

 

So too for every Pixar film except Toy Story 3.

Yeah, John went here, but that was well before my time. I've met him a few times. Ron didn't go to CalArts, but the two are joined at the hip, directing-wise.

 

One of the Experimental students recently managed to interview Tim Burton, but he really hasn't had much to do with CalArts since he left, as far as I know. I don't recall ever seeing him here. Unlike, say Paul Reubens. He's come to our Open Show at least once. He's an alum of the Theater school (as are Katey Sagal, Ed Harris, Laraine Newman and yes... The Hoff).

 

Our most visible "alumni" isn't even really a person. We should really get them to use a different number now though, we haven't used that room since the early 80's.

 

Hmm... from the "better late than never department", it looks like CalArts' own blog finally posted about our show from last week.

Update - added link to: Brian Carter - Princess of the Magical Tears

Update - added links to:

 

Theresa Latzko - Days without accident

John Kim - You’ve Been Mimed