Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- It’s time to talk about books that try to tell you how to make animated cartoons. For better or worse, my interest is in 2D animation of the old fashioned kind. I don’t know enough about cgi animation to know if a book is good, so I won’t talk about them. I don’t like Flash animation, as it exists now, so I’ve never looked at a book about that method of production. I couldn’t tell you what I think is a good book, since I don’t know of any. (Yes, I know my bias is somewhat elitist, but that’s something I’m not going to apologize for. I’m a 2D guy, and can’t change that. I also love puppets and have worked in stop motion, hence I’ll broach that subject, too.) I love the old kind of animation, am glad to be doing it on a computer – using the most modest of methods – so that’s all that I can discuss. What I know.

Saying that. Here’s my first of the How To posts. There are so many books out there, that I couldn’t do it all in one shot. I’m going to start by talking about books that are hard to find.

- At one time John Halas was the grandaddy of animation writers. He wa enormously prolific with a number of successful books on how to make animated films. His book, How To Cartoon for Amateur Films was the first, done in 1951 with Bob Privett.

This book is a pocket sized paperback with lots of simple little pen & ink illustrations showing how to build a camera, how to draw with arcs and all the materials you’ll need. The book, to me, seems excessively detailed and complicated since it’s trying to speak to “amateurs.”

Some of the illustrations are priceless. Here are two:

(Click on images to enlarge.)

– Of course, Halas‘ finest book was The Technique of Film Animation which he wrote with Roger Manvell. This book covers all aspects of animation (done in 1959 when it was first publilshed) from cel to cutout to stop-motion.

The illustrations in the book are so engrained in my subconscious that I pull them out as reference often. (Just recently when a friend was looking for animation references on fire, I emailed her as one example, the series of Goofy cels holding the Olympic torch (interestingly the authors mistakenly attribute them to Clock Cleaners) on page 195. Everyone owns this book, don’t they? If not stop wasting time and get a copy somewhere. Try a discount used-book shop like the Strand.

The oddest part of this book is the article in the back of the book by Brian G.D. Salt., Mathematics In Aid of Animation. I’ve always considered myself fairly good at math, but somehow I’ve never been able to understand this chapter. I must have tried reading it a dozen times. I’m sure it’s just me, but I don’t mind admitting it. Somehow, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything.

– Eli Levitan, who started in the business as an errand boy at Fleischer’s, wrote a number of books that were all nuts and bolts and never inspired me. Just the same, I still think of them as an important part of my past. His book Animation Art in the Commercial Film is a book I gave some attention to in the past, and I suggest you go to that post to get more information about this book. Check it out here.

It’s interesting that Levitan also wrote one of the first consumer books about computer animation in 1977. This book has a big title: Electronic Imaging Techniques: A Handbook of Conventional and Computer-Controlled Animation, Optical, and Editing Processes.

- Finally let me point to a book that I’m not really going to recommend since its information is so basic, but it did interest me for years. E.G. Lutz wrote Animated Cartoons, How They Are Made Their Origin and Development back in 1920. Back in my younger years, this book was referenced more often than any other by the great animators of the Golden Age. Everyone from Chuck Jones to Walt Disney to Walter Lantz to Bob Clampett mentioned it in interviews I’d read. It became a mission of mine to find the book. My local library in New York didn’t have one, so I kept my eyes open. Eventually, I was able to find one from a rare book dealer, but that happened long after I was well settled in the business.

The book does have a lot of basic information and must have been a real revelation in 1920 to so many people. I guess it was the only book that was available at the time, so it’s understandable how many people back in the silent era were influenced.

A company called Applewood Press reprinted it in 1998, so it’s easy to locate in its reprinted version. hell, now you have the internet, so the original version can be found fairly easily.

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