Animation &Disney &repeated posts &walk cycle 18 Jan 2012 05:23 am
101 Dalmatians Walk Cycles
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- When I was young, as I’ve pointed out many times, there were few books available about animation and as few illustrations and photos which ellicited the art of animation. Hence, it was always a treat when a Disney feature was released. The adjoining publicity would provide a trove of material, some worth saving. An encyclopedia my parents bought at about the time of release of 101 Dalmatians included several key images of Pongo running. One of those photos of many cels overlayed to detail the cycle. I loved that picture and frequently looked at that encyclopedia under “Cartoons, Animated” to study the photo of the cels.
At the very beginning of 101 Dalmatians, Pongo looks out onto the street to search for a good mate for both himself and Roger, his owner. At this point we’re treated to a number of walk cycles that I think are brilliant. A number of women are perfectly matched to the dogs that they walk.
Now with DVDs available to us, we can see that the characters originated in the storyboard drawings, and we can study these walk cycles. I’m determined to take these animated bits apart to watch them a bit closer.
The first of these is the “girl art student” as described in the drafts (which can be found on Hans Perks’ excellent site A Film LA.) Oddly, from my very first viewing of this film back in 1961, I identified her as a “beatnik,” which was the fashionable joke back then. Now I find out she was an “art student.” I guess that makes sense.
Here’s the pan BG that this scene employs.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
And here is the walk cycle animated by Frank Thomas and Blaine Gibson.
Gibson handled the following scene which pans across the bodies of the pair as they walk.
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Animation note: The two separate feet are divided by a short space. The left foot is on one plane, and the right foot is on another. This is a BASIC precept for animators to follow, and it’s something that is not appearing in a lot of the recent walk cycles I’ve been seeing. It’s annoying.
Here’s scene 21 “French girl walks French poodle” animated by Blaine Gibson. It employs the same BG as scene 14, the art student (posted Apr 3), but it extends, beyond what we’ve seen before, to include a telephone booth.
______________(Click any image to enlarge.)
This is a slightly faster walk than others, and I’ve been able to grab all of the drawings. It’s animated on “ones.”
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14This walk is an absolute gem !
Once again, check out Hans Perk‘s excellent site A Film LA to get the drafts for this film to be able to identify who was behind what. Then go to see Mark Mayerson‘s arduously constructed and informative mosaics as well as his detailed commentary about the film and its animators.
Check out Floyd Norman‘s story about Blaine Gibson on Jim Hill Media.
Here’s the young child with her puppy. She not only walks, but she licks her lollipop. The pup is just an absolute innocent. It’s another great walk by Blaine Gibson.
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_______(Click any image to enlarge.)
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18The piece, in the film, includes a zoom into the cycle. I’ve tried to adjust for it but don’t think I was wholly successful. There’s a marginal enlargement of the drawings as it goes on – noticeable only in motion. It’s actually interesting in the walk.
Here’s Blaine Gibson’s animation for what is labelled in the drafts “Buxom Girl and Bulldog”. I left the backgrounds in this one for you to get an idea of the BG movement.
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on 18 Jan 2012 at 8:15 am 1.Kat said …
Wow!! It brings back good memories. My first animation was The Aristocats. I loved it soo much and I still miss them!!
on 18 Jan 2012 at 11:52 am 2.Andy Menter said …
I used to love this movie to an unhealthy level as a kid because of all the dogs. Now I love it to an unhealthy level because of the design!
on 18 Jan 2012 at 11:54 am 3.David Wachtenheim said …
Great post Michael. Walk cycles are the most difficult and most underrated thing to do in animation in my mind. The slightest misalignment and it will be off and your characters feet will be sliding or it will have a limp. Also, to do a walk that is character specific is essential. Too many times animators do a generic walk just so they can get a character from point a to point b but a walk can speak volumes about a character as your post so wonderfully shows. Of course, it is much quicker and simpler to just do a generic walk and often we don’t have the time to labor over it but a walk is as much about a character’s performance and personality as any other movement or action if not more.
on 18 Jan 2012 at 12:06 pm 4.Tone Roberson said …
To have archives of animation processes done early on from great animation work are awesome! Who better to learn from. What a reliable source of info. Thanks Michael Sporn.
on 18 Jan 2012 at 2:01 pm 5.Don Peri said …
Michael, thanks for posting this. I sent the link to Blaine Gibson’s family and they are going to show it to Blaine. He will be thrilled to see it. By the way, Blaine will be 94 in February! You have made my day, their day, and Blaine’s day.
on 18 Jan 2012 at 3:05 pm 6.bill said …
Michael, once again you mention the principle of having the feet on two different planes during walk cycles. I agree that it is a basic concept that many animators, especially students starting out, seem to ignore.
How about a post where you elaborate on this subject?
on 18 Jan 2012 at 4:56 pm 7.The Gee said …
the pigeon-toed and bow-legged characters have less margin for error. they also allow for funnier walks. it starts with the right construction, I suppose.
I’ve cheated on cycles before and didn’t animate the rest of the body appropriately and effectively. So, those were really generic walks and maybe wrong. I guess I got away with that. There was rarely a need to plus the characterization via how they walked. It was more like get them from here to there, ya know.
Onward and forward though….
The plump woman’s walk, if you had to animate her then it would be so very important to consider the hip movement and that would force an animator to make better choices for the way she walks. So, you’d need to ensure the body moves in the best manner and that both feet are on the right planes, with respect to the bg/ground.
on 18 Jan 2012 at 7:12 pm 8.Fraser MacLean said …
It always brightens my day to see or read anything relating to Disney’s “101 Dalmatians”. Back in 1986 when I was working in the cutting room for Christine Edzard’s extraordinary “Little Dorrit” at Sands Films in Rotherhithe, London, the lab used to send us reels of “junk” 35mm film print, usually with some colour flaw or damage to the emulsion, which we could then use as “spacer” when we were track-laying the many different reels of 35mm mag for dialogue and “spot” sound effects. For many weeks, to give one example, I found myself cutting into thousands and thousands of feet of a damaged German language release print of “The Mosquito Coast”. But from time to time, for whatever reason, the occasional solitary reel of something truly extraordinary would appear out of one of these “junk” boxes – and to my delight, one morning I found myself just about to cut into an entire 1,000-foot 35mm reel of “101 Dalmatians”, and not just ANY reel – the Sequence which has Cruella’s arrival right at the heart of it. Just in time – before I had damaged the print by cutting into it with the 35mm splicer (remembering that sound used to be cut on the diagonal blade, so an entire frame might have been lost to the sticky tape…) – I realised what it was and eagerly set it aside so that I could lace it up on the Steenbeck after work. That evening, for the first time ever, I was able to move through all these so-familiar Disney scenes, one frame at a time, marveling at the draftsmanship, the energy, the colour, the personality… From time to time I’ve wondered if that surprise “find” had anything to do with me answering Disney’s job ad in Screen International the following year – the job ad recruiting people for “Roger Rabbit”. Somewhere, safe in a grey plastic 35mm film case up in the attic I believe I still have that 1,000-foot reel. Now if only I had a Steenbeck in the house…..
on 18 Jan 2012 at 7:48 pm 9.Michael said …
Great story, Fraser. In the next couple of weeks I’ll have a few scenes of “Roger” by Milt Kahl to post (on Wednesdays). One of them is the scene where Roger mimics Cruella in the song he sings after she leaves.
on 19 Jan 2012 at 5:50 am 10.Jarl said …
Here are some great walk cycles (by Kristof Serrand?):
http://vimeo.com/32952730
Not really in the same vein as dog with person, but really cool as far as dog walks go.
on 19 Jan 2012 at 10:45 am 11.Fraser MacLean said …
Watching the footage one frame at a time all those years ago, I can vividly recall how amazed I was at the close observation involved in creating the “follow through” or overlapping action on so many costume and character features – but particularly on Pongo’s tongue as he turns around in his dance with Roger. And this was long before I was familiar with the names of any of the animators or artists (or techniques) involved. We’re so fortunate now to have the computer, BluRay and DVD technologies that allow us to study and enjoy these films in that kind of close detail. And students in particular are additionally fortunate to have keen, passionate and informed bloggers like yourself, armed to the teeth with this kind of background material…!
on 19 Jan 2012 at 11:43 am 12.Ray Kosarin said …
It was interesting to see what would turn up in the sound fill. The labs often put a nasty scrape down the emulsion to make sure the footage not find its way somewhere it wasn’t supposed to. While I was laying in SFX on SANTABEAR the opening reel of BARFLY, then playing in the theaters, turned up; during HUNTING OF THE SNARK we got a reel from THE ARISTOCATS. The ARISTOCATS, to put it gently, is no 101 DALMATIANS: the editor (Greg Perler) and I ran about five minutes of it on the Moviola on a coffee break and then had no compunction about cutting into it. Deadline.
on 19 Jan 2012 at 12:38 pm 13.Fraser MacLean said …
Hi there, Ray – Greg was Editor on “Tarzan” when I was working as Artistic Coordinator…!! Small world…. Yeah – there were usually two narrow parallel channels scratched into the emulsion of all the “junk” footage we received. I have no idea how it came to be that the “Dalmatians” footage – and a shorter reel from “Mary Poppins” and one of the Goofy shorts – escaped being disfigured in this way. There was a distinct color bias on all three reels though, presumably the reason they were discarded. I disagree with you on “Aristocats” though, deadline or no (!) – even if “Dalmatians” is unarguably stronger in many important ways. It’s been so heartening to see – in the Disney Archive Series “Layout & Background” book AND in Pierre Lambert’s fantastic “Le Livre de la Jungle” – so many original Disney BG layout drawings finally being made available for students to see and study. There’s a particularly handsome example from “Aristocats” in the Disney volume, showing the original drawing of the house exterior alongside the finished painting. Definitely worth a look.
on 19 Jan 2012 at 1:07 pm 14.Fraser MacLean said …
Correction – sorry – that’s an INTERIOR of the house (the exterior view that’s included shows only the painting). There are some really beautiful “Dalmatians” examples too on the preceding pages of the Archive Series book: see pages 154 to 159 and 168 to 171