I had this posted on the side of my animation desk years ago and just came across it again while cleaning my hard drive. I don’t know who came up with it originally, but it definitely speaks to my inner animator.

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AN-I-MA-TOR

1. One that provides or imparts life, interest, spirit, or vitality.
2. One, such as an artist or technician, who designs, develops, or produces an animated cartoon.
3. One who has a keen eye for details, a fertile imagination, a borderline obsessive-compulsive desire to recreate motion, the ego of an actor but with a withering case of stage-fright, a truckload of toys and knick-knacks on their desk (often still in the box), Xeroxes from Illusion of Life tacked up on the walls and a copy of Preston Blair’s Cartoon Animation at close hand, a severe case of eyestrain, a propensity for looking at themselves in the mirror constantly, saying it’s for lipsync and not narcissim; a love for cartoons that did not end with the onset of puberty, the notion that no animated scene is ever finished, only abandoned; the opinion that motion capture is a tool of the devil, often films themselves flopping around like a fool and calls it “reference”, uses “research” and “supporting the industry” as excuses for seeing even the worst animated films, the ability to listen to the same voice track over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over without going completely insane, and the occasional moment where they wonder how they managed to get paid for doing something they really enjoy.

Lots of follow through and squashy-stretchy bits still missing—like when the hand passes in front of the chest so it doesn’t look like he’s shooting jellyfish out of his gloves. Still, not a bad start for one Sunday morning’s worth of drawing.

click to watch 11 Second club animatic - only first half completed

I admit that for a gal of the digital age, I can be stubbornly “old school” at times. I’ve grown up with pencils and paper and the first time I felt like a real animator was when I sat down at an animation desk. There was something about the glow of the light table and the slipping of paper over those pegs that made me feel connected to countless animators down through the decades. I was working as animators had back in the days of “Snow White” and Bugs Bunny.

Yet finding the space in an apartment for a full-sized animation desk is problematic and even the coffee table alternative I cobbled together last summer has its problems. While one is busily romanticizing about ye good old days of animation, one tends to forget about rough sketches awash in pencil smudges and eraser bits all over the floor.

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Yesterday I saw James Cameron’s latest movie, Avatar. It was Christmas evening and the theatre was packed with people who had just spent the day unwrapping presents and and eating turkey. While part of me was excited and curious to see this movie, another part of me was dreading it to my core.

Somewhere, deep down inside of me, I knew as an animation fan what this movie would truly mean to the industry. It wouldn’t matter whether it made a gazillion dollars as Titanic had or whether it simply made back its gargantuan budget, even from the trailers I knew this was a movie that could represent the next evolution of computer graphics for Hollywood. Read the rest of this entry

For animation fans, I don’t think any one film has been quite so hotly anticipated as The Princess and the Frog. Disney’s (we really, really hope) triumphant return to classic 2D animation.

So, the big question is, does this film deliver on all that pent up hype and anticipation?

By and large, I would say it does although perhaps not in ways that audiences expecting a Little Mermaid or Cinderella story might expect. This is not your childhood Disney fairytale, but a tale that brings that fairytale into the modern age.

Read my full review of the Princess and the Frog on Keyframe