Bob Welbaum: This One is About Me: A Uniquie Look at Animation
Page 1 of 1

I�m glad to see the NFFC, the club for Disneyana enthusiasts, is once again hosting events in Florida. (The 2nd Annual Florida Convention will be at Disney�s Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World September 27-30, 2007. For more information, visit www.nffc.org).

At one time the World Chapter of the NFFC was organizing their own mini-conventions, or �mini-cons.� I know of two, because I attended them both: in 1991 and 1993. Then The Walt Disney Company started its Disneyana Conventions, usually at Walt Disney World, and the mini-cons faded away.

But the idea of NFFC Florida events is logical and I�m glad to see them come back. Walt Disney World is a huge, diverse place with many talents and skills coming together. And unlike the company�s conventions, where the drawing cards were usually from the upper echelon, like the surviving Nine Old Men, the original Mouseketeers, or top company executives, at the NFFC mini-cons you had a chance to meet the people who actually did the real work of running a destination resort.

So as I look forward to this year�s Florida Convention, memories of the mini-cons have come flooding back. I went to my video file and have selected something which I hope will show you what I mean.

Two of the speakers at the 1993 Mini-Con were animator Tom Bancroft and cleanup artist Jennifer Oliver. I have heard animators speak many times before, but never a cleanup artist. (A good definition of cleanup is �The process of refining the lines of rough animation and adding minor details.�*) Having the two of them appear together, hearing their individual viewpoints, and watching them interact gave a more complete, unique insight into hand-drawn animation. Here are some highlights.

Tom (not to be confused with his twin brother Tony, who also animates) went first. He gave a basic explanation of the traditional animation process, using an �animation kit� of storyboard drawings, exposure sheets, etc. and video clips provided by the company.

Then it was Jennifer�s turn. After showing her own before-and-after video segments, she had this to say:

Jennifer: Like animators, cleanup artists are cast just as one character in the film. It�s pretty much all you do for eight months. And you kind of get typecast. Tom is sort of the comic-relief guy, the sidekick guy, and I generally did the lead characters, which by comparison were probably a little more dull than the rest of the characters. They had to be the straight guys that all the eccentrics sort of played off of. They had to be handled very carefully and very delicately. They don�t move a whole lot generally, but like Ariel and Belle and Jasmine, those princesses, they�re kind of floating from pose to pose and it takes a real careful hand. If you just move a line a millimeter off, you get a little jangle going there. And one of the artists who�s here tonight, Tim Hodge, came up with a good analogy for the relationship between the animator and the cleanup artist. It�s sort of like a composer and a musician. The animator is the composer. They design the work. But it takes a really good musician, the cleanup artist, to kind of make it or break it. How strong the artist is, that really shows in the scene.

Later in the program, a question regarding keeping the finished animation consistent when a character is the product of a collaboration of artists with diverse styles led to this exchange:

Tom: That�s mostly in the hands of the cleanup artist.

Jennifer: Yes, even when you see like Abu on Aladdin�s head, he�s tugging at him? There were different cleanup artists for each of those characters. I only did Aladdin. Somebody else did Abu. Sometimes even with the ones with Jasmine and Aladdin in �A Whole New World,� Jasmine was sometimes done in California and I did so many Aladdins down here [in Florida], so we really had to kind of orchestrate it. That�s the thing that keeps the consistency. The animators don�t draw the same way at all.

(Tom holds up a board with two model sheets.)

This is a model sheet for the Beast here, and a packet of these is made up at the beginning of the film showing just everything � proportions, how many heads high they are, little details � just all sorts of formulas that are used to draw the characters, and those are passed down to the units. Now people like breakdown artists and inbetweeners, other assistants, they�re generally cast, too, in units where they�re just doing one character. So they�re really specialists�

Later came a comment/question from the audience about the level of detail � or lack of detail -- in a rough drawing. Did Jennifer ever feel like she was the animator?

Jennifer: Sometimes he�ll [the animator] put in maybe five or six really tiny mat drawings � Generally he�ll do enough so that�s good enough to start out with. It takes an experienced cleanup artist to follow up that kind of work. Because you almost have to have some psychic connection with your guy. These little �snow people� you�ve got to make into something. Mark Henn�s drawing for a hand like this [demonstrates] is an L. And if you�re working with him, then you can say �Oh, I should be doing this kind of thing.�

Do animators get to pick their assistants?

Jennifer: No. They�re usually assigned by the head of Cleanup, who kind of reviews everyone�s work. They [animators] try to. Yes, they do ask the animators. But they don�t always get who they want. Sometimes a cleanup assistant will stay with the same animator. Like I think Goldberg has stayed with Glen Keane for ten years, so they really understand his work. And Glen said it�s hard, too, even though there�s more lines. It�s like picking the [correct] line, it�s always really tough because he has so much emotion in his work. It�s very aggressive, his style. That choosing the line to use and just simplifying it that much. It always feels like you�re killing something in the drawing. It�s just an experience thing.

Tom: I would say that, very much as an animator, getting your cleanup assistant is a lot like picking baseball teams, that we very much fight over [assistants]. � If you got the good cleanup artist, you�re happy, basically. You�re saying, �Okay, now my scenes are gonna look great. I�ve got Jennifer Oliver!� �

You�re saying �Why doesn�t the animator draw a little bit better? Wouldn�t that be better?� Basically it�s a lot like, you do this handoff thing because it is a lot like making a car. The animator doesn�t want to do the background painting, the layout drawing, all the inbetweens, the cleanup � because it would take that one person forever � That�s how we stay sane basically is that we do just our part and that way it�s not so all encompassing and you�re not thinking �I have a million drawings to do to finish Beauty and the Beast.� You�re saying �Okay, I have this part this week and this is my section. I�m just doing Belle in this scene or somebody else is doing Beast.� This is how we split things up and the animator specifically, his creation [looks at Jennifer] � his or hers, I�m sorry � the idea is that the animator�s sole job and purpose is basically to get the point across, to communicate to the director the action and the acting of the character. And yes, they should draw them like the model sheet � It should look like the character� But then we do in some cases rely heavily on an assistant.

And I should say, Jennifer didn�t mention it, but an assistant�s job is very much animation, it�s still animation. She has to know almost as much as I do about animation because, like she was saying with Mark Henn, � a lot of times the animator won�t necessarily fill in Ariel�s hair as she�s swimming, it kind of flows behind her and it does this little bounce as she stops and it does this nice little action like that. Well, a lot of times the animator�s more concerned with her facial expression at that moment, and how she turns and what she�s looking at, the eye direction, and blah blah blah. So a lot of that, he or she will just rough out some kind of a little blockie, �Okay, the hair kind of goes this way.� Now it�s up to the assistant in a lot of cases to really do that secondary animation; that�s what we call it.

Jennifer: As for the roughness, I�d rather work with an animator who�s very rough than one that�s very clean. It gets back to [an earlier audience] question �How do you stay sane? How do you feel creative?� If you have somebody who does all the work for you, you get bored real fast. So if there�s a challenge, that kind of keeps me going.

I hope you see why I�m really looking forward to attending another Florida convention.

* Thomas, Bob Disney�s Art of Animation New York: Hyperion, 1997, p. 221

Related Links

• NFFC Official Site

Discuss It

• Discuss this article on the LaughingPlace.com Discussion Boards