So this is what i’ve been reading since i couldn’t get a dude to sit down…
Drawn to Life (volumes 1 and 2) by Walt Stanchfield
Cinematic Storytelling by Jennifer van Sijll*
The Filmmaker’s Eye: Learning (and Breaking) the Rules of Cinematic Composition by Gustavo Mercado*
Action Analysis for Animators by Chris Webster
Directing the Story by Francis Glebas*
Timing for Animation (1981 edition) by Harold Whitaker and John Halas
The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank & Ollie (this one took two days)
I read “Illusion of Life” after all. If you ever want to know how Walt Disney Studios made the movies they made in their Golden Age (from Snow White to at least The Jungle Book), down to actual organisational structure and workflow, that’s the book to read. There’s a damn good reason it’s so big.
I was right to be worried about the lingering effects of reading it. Fortunately i watched Pinocchio after i finished reading it and that made me feel a hell of a lot better – because i don’t want to make stuff like Pinocchio. I don’t really like Pinocchio that much as a movie. After reading about how amazing it was in Illusion of Life, it felt pretty underwhelming to actually sit down and watch it.
Kind of cool how dark it is, though. Dude nearly turned into a donkey.
I guess watching The Thief and The Cobbler (Recobbled) before Pinocchio set it up to be disappointing. For all its flaws, horrors with pacing and patchworkiness (the version i saw was a ‘fan edit’), Cobbler was farking stunning. Well worth tracking down.
I watched Mutant Aliens (the Bill Plympton film) yesterday. That’s still fun. Still extremely weird but still fun. 🙂
So anyway. I feel like i should get drawing. Sketching, gesture drawing, whatever.. it just feels like a glaring deficiency right now. If i don’t get better at drawing, it makes everything else further down the track (action analysis, storyboarding, character design, etc) much harder, even if i am ultimately animating in CG and not using cel or stop-motion.
I’ve still got a few more books to get through at my discretion. But i should start drawing as soon as i can, whether or not i’m back in front of Blender tomorrow evening. I don’t know how much of this stuff has sunk in but i suspect i’m going to have a similar hiccup to when i was writing music and i learnt about jazz one day. It was confusing at first but once i assimilated everything by working through it and discovering the truth in what i’d read, it clicked.
So i wouldn’t say i was learning from reading all those books; i only learn once i discover the truth (or otherwise) in what i’ve read, and that only happens by doing things for myself.
