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Directors don’t always have input into character designs for a TV series, but they should. There are many design issues that have enormous impact on production. Design is far more than how a character looks.

In drawn animation, the amount of pencil mileage – the number of lines on a character – has a direct effect on how long it takes to do a drawing. The number of colors on a character determines how quickly color can be applied, whether it’s by hand or by a digital system. Both of these things have an enormous impact on the schedule. If each image of a character is going to take a long time to produce, you’re going to get less animation.

In computer animation, a big issue is intersections. While 3D characters look solid, there’s nothing to stop one surface from penetrating another. A character can easily push his hand through a table or his own body. When you’re dealing with capes, skirts or long hair, you have to be concerned about the potential for intersections. Even something as simple as the design of a character’s neck might lead to intersections when the character talks or moves his head.

The more time the animators spend fixing intersections, they less time they’re spending on new animation. Being human, animators will often avoid moving something if they know that it will end up causing intersections and slow them down.

Non-artists don’t realize that a design implies a style of motion. The audience expects a realistically designed character to move in a realistic fashion. This takes more time than moving a character in a stylized fashion. If you have a conflict between the level of realism in the design and in the motion, the audience doesn’t perceive the character as believable. While a viewer might not be able to articulate it, the viewer knows that things just aren’t right.

Drawn animation deals with this fairly well due to experience. There’s been a resurgence of UPA style design in shows like Dexter’s Laboratory or The Fairly Oddparents because these designs can be moved in a stylized fashion that fits well with TV budgets. Even drawn action-adventure cartoons, such as the ones that Bruce Timm has designed, are stylized. Besides the visual appeal of the designs themselves, they also work with the quality of animation that will be done for the budget.

Computer animation on TV is still grappling with this issue. Certain shows, like Angela Anaconda and several pre-school shows, have taken the stylized design route and use animation that matches the design style well. CGI action adventure shows like Max Steele or Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles have gone with a more realistic design that the animation couldn’t live up to. These shows have failed to catch on with audiences and I think that the gap between design and motion styles is at least partially responsible.

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CARTOON SUSHI

May 12, 2004 4:57 pm

Via Boing Boing, here’s the latest fad in Japan: Food preperation designed like your favorite cartoon stars!Enjoy Hamtaro, Doremon, Hello Kitty, Powerpuff Girls in a new way, for lunch! Images Here!

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Tim Biskup’s 100 Paintings

May 12, 2004 4:14 pm

Tim Biskup’s new book 100 PAINTINGS is tiny – about 5″ x 5″ – but that’s because the 100 paintings in it are even tinier – 3-1/2″ x 3-1/2″. All of the works in the book are reproduced at actual size. The Dark Horse release is printed very nicely, with the paintings set against black paper, which really serves to bring out the rich colors in Tim’s work. I can’t imagine many other artists being able to pull off a project like this, as one hundred paintings created in such a confining canvas size has the potential of quickly becoming repetitive and tedious. But as Gary Baseman writes in the book’s introduction, Tim’s work can be likened to a jazz musician improvising, and the way Tim manipulates colors and shapes in each painting is constantly imaginative and fresh. There is more effusive praise from me on the book’s duskjacket, so needless to say I recommend picking up a copy of this book.The wait for Tim’s next volume of miniature paintings may be a while though: he writes in the book that he’s currently working on the “Jackson 500″ which is an ambitious series of 500 business card-sized paintings.

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“VICTORY” IN DC

May 12, 2004 8:57 am

Dave Bossert, who produced the ON THE FRONT LINES dvd and hosted a fantastic 35mm screening of World War II Disney cartoons last night in Glendale (see Christian Ziebarth’s review on Animation News) is going east.On Sunday May 23, at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Springs Maryland, Dave will be hosting a 35mm screening of the feature VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER and several wartime Disney shorts. This will be the only east coast public showing of these films. For more information, go here (this screening was set up so fast, the info hasn’t been posted on the website yet).

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Directing TV Animation Part 1

May 12, 2004 7:04 am

The job of directing an animated TV show varies with each production. There’s no single way to approach it and how much power a director has will vary enormously. What I want to talk about in these articles are some of issues that directors have to deal with.

First, let’s talk about live action direction for TV. The director’s job is to communicate to the actors how something should be played. The director deals with how a scene is staged for the camera and where the camera is located for each shot, all the time keeping pacing in mind.

In animation, the job is very different. Depending on the production, there may be a recording director who’s responsible for recording voice tracks for all episodes. There may be a storyboard supervisor, who’s responsible for directing the boards for all episodes. There may also be a timing supervisor who oversees the sheet timing for the show. Depending on the budget, the production may have a layout supervisor to oversee layouts. In other cases, layouts are done overseas.

The director may participate in all these aspects, providing notes or approvals, but won’t be doing the work himself or herself. The animation will be sent someplace (probably in Asia) to be done and then the director will call retakes for scenes that have mistakes or need to be revised. The director will probably never meet the animators and depending on the production, may never meet the voice talent either.

In live action TV, the director has his or her hands on everything and is communicating directly with the people doing the work. In TV animation, the director is often separated from the people doing the work by levels of bureaucracy or by thousands of miles.

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