Animation &Animation Artifacts &Hubley &Independent Animation 21 Sep 2011 06:48 am
Marky’s walk – recap
After posting a large piece about Moonbird last Monday, I felt inclined to recap this Bobe Cannon walk from the film. I love it. Originally posted March, 2009
- If I had to choose who was my favorite animator, I’d have a tough time. Equal credit would probably have to go to three different people: Bobe Cannon, Tissa David and Bill Tytla. Ed Smith and Jim Tyer would fall just a smidgen below these three, for me. But there are none like them all, as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve posted a lot of drawings from Tissa and Bill Tytla, but have very few drawings by Bobe Cannon (nor have I seen many published anywhere.)
Here is a walk cycle from the beginning of Hubley’s monumental short, Moonbird. The odd numbers are extremes by Cannon, and the inbetweens (even numbers) were done by Ed Smith. Three different sized papers were used for this, and you can view them full sized if you click the thumbnails.
You’ll notice there’s paint all over the drawings. The ink & paint involved tracing the drawing, then using oil paints to cover all of the clear area in black. Some of that paint seeped onto the originals. In one drawing even to coloring the hat accidentally.
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On twos at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.
There’s a lot more to this scene including several variants on the walk.
At some future time, I’ll add the other drawings to show off the entire scene.
on 21 Sep 2011 at 8:40 am 1.Mark Mayerson said …
I wish that there was more material about Cannon and his work available. He died too soon for the explosion of interest in animation history.
on 21 Sep 2011 at 10:13 am 2.Joel Brinkerhoff said …
What I’ve always enjoyed about this type of stylization is that even though the design is graphically flat, it moves in 3D space. The arm with the bird cage swinging toward us and back is very nice and keeps everything from appearing like the hinged puppets we see with today’s vector based animation.
on 21 Sep 2011 at 11:56 am 3.Michael said …
You’re right, Joel, it really is beautifully done. The cage and the fluidity of the line and shapes just tells us that this is drawn with pencil on paper. It’s alive.
I relaly have to post the rest of the drawings from this scene. The problem is that every drawing is done on different sized paper. Every other drawing by the inbetweener is a different size than Cannon’s drawings, and both used several different sized papers. It’s hard to register unless scanned on pegs one drawing at a time. I will do it, though.
on 21 Sep 2011 at 5:18 pm 4.bob kurtz said …
SOOO GOOD!!!so many different movements within one major movement. bobe was a master at that.michael,thanks for the post.
on 22 Sep 2011 at 1:23 pm 5.Eric Noble said …
Magnificent! I need to study these little masterpieces.
on 23 Sep 2011 at 8:33 pm 6.hans bacher said …
thank you so much michael. what a masterpiece! my most favorite film