Animation Artifacts 20 Apr 2006 07:45 am
Firehouse Blues
- Back in the good old days, animators used to worry about knowing a lot about life to be able to properly caricature it in their animation. Art Babbitt took piano lessons, dance lessons, horseback riding lessons all as a way of bettering himself and understanding things that he needed to put into his artwork.
This wasn’t just a casual thing. The noted Firehouse 5 Plus 2 grew out of these animators who played music. With Ward Kimball on trombone, Danny Alguire on cornet, Frank Thomas on piano, Dick Thomas and/or Harper Goff on banjo, and Erd Penner on tuba this group routinely played Dixieland music for themselves and were able to manage a nice sideline – outside of animation.
– These days animators are only interested in other animation. Not too much time is spent at art museums, reading or concerts, never mind playing the piano. Yet, a lot of time is spent covering every poor animation wiggle. It ends up being a case of theft with everyone stealing from everyone else. “Homage” is an overused word, and every Ren & Stimpy wannabe tries to imitate Tex Avery’s snapping/popping style of animation. Whole films are looking like ripped off scenes from other films, and too little is looking original.
It’s bad enough in TV animation, but it’s slipped over to theatrical films, too. Every character ends up moving like every other character.
Bad animation is bad animation – even if it’s cgi. Sorry, guess I’m just turning into an old grouch.
on 20 Apr 2006 at 11:02 am 1.oscar grillo said …
Here you can hear them on “real Player”:
http://www.jazz-on-line.com/pageinterrogation.php
(Write “firehouse five” in the submit box)
on 25 Apr 2006 at 7:42 am 2.John Celestri said …
Michael,
Regarding the pervasiveness of “homage/rip-off” animation, my observation is that from the 1920s to 1940s the artists working in animation entered the field with other interests to help fuel their scenes/layouts/bg paintings. They were able to infuse their work with perspectives/energies generated from other artistic disciplines. Basically, today’s younger animation artists are drawn (no pun intended) from fandom–very much like today’s comic book artists. To me, I feel that those who do “homage” animation in the style of a particular Master like Tex Avery or Milt Kahl are really role-playing Avery or Kahl.
Unless the animation industry has an infusion of artists with broader tastes, the animation being turned out will continue to be like a puppy chasing its tail—covering the same ground over and over again, getting nowhere fast.
on 25 Apr 2006 at 3:19 pm 3.Jenny Lerew said …
No, you are saying a lot of true things…in particular while there are actually many very slickly done TV shows now(with what I know to be talented artists working on them), I am BORED to death with the same old styles–of animation, of design. Even thought the drawing is obviously better than 70s Saturday morning, it’s really all as unadventurous as can be.
btw, that little photo on the bottom of the album, of Kelly and Ward playing together? It’s cropped; the original has none other than Fred Moore on the right playing the mouth organ!
on 26 Apr 2006 at 2:03 pm 4.Cedric Hohnstadt said …
I think you make an important point. All art and no play probably keeps a lot of us from doing richer and more lively work than we otherwise do. I suppose part of the blame could be put on American culture where if you aren’t super-busy all the time you are considered to be lazy. We’ve forgotten the enriching value of rest, relaxation, and hobbies.