well, A4-sized grey cells
When traditional paint-and-trace animation was explained to me as a child, in arts programmes of old, I was never able to understand how, when the painted cells were placed upon a lightbox to photograph, the brushstrokes showed up flat and brightly coloured as though lit from above, rather than as smeary, backlit shadows. When I was finally given the opportunity to make my own cartoon in Moving Image Class, as a seventeen-year-old foreign exchange student at Milton Academy Massachusetts, I was able to find out for myself.
Except I didn't, because I was right. The Sitting looks exactly what you might expect a light shone through a series of increasingly opaque painted body parts to look like. The white patch above, for example – intended to mask the coal miner's legs as he's coughed up by the Gibson Girl – does not match seamlessly with the wall behind, so I guess I'll never understand the properties of the lightbox. But I'm still incredibly pleased with it and proud of it. And, as you can see, I still have every hand-painted cell from it in a box under the bed, so I can always reshoot.
See if you think this next bit is interesting. I posted this barely discernible digital transfer of the VHS transfer of the American NotTheSameColour transfer of the original film shot in class to YouTube towards the end of last month, but didn't immediately get round to telling anyone. It turns out not telling anyone is actually what you're meant to do though, because it lets the algorithm get to work unmolested by acquaintances, and within a week I was surprised to see the video had received over six hundred views, which I know isn't much, but it's more than most videos I post. I guess it helps it's short. That number's plateaued however, so I reckon I can declare the accidental experiment over now and let you loyal, ugh, losers in on it without fear of nobbling the stats, therefore enjoy!
Oh! Animation! Hurrah! Really not bad at all for the first go. The secret to things lining up between one cel and another is registration pegs. And the light should be above the cels, not below – ink on one side of the cel, paint on the other, lit and shot from above. That's why you sometimes get cel shadows, those slight rims of darkness where there's enough air between cel and BG that the paint casts a shadow. In scenes with a lot of layers of cels, the gradual greying effect of layers of acetate either turns up on screen (if you're cheap) or has to be anticipated by the art department (if you're Disney).
ReplyDeleteHow marvellous that you still have this recording – my first animation was lost to the ether many aeons ago!