How Vi Hart Makes Her Viral Videos: A Look Inside Her Creative Process

in Animation, Film, Math, Writing | May 15th, 2014

Spend some time pok­ing around on the Khan Acad­e­my, or this site for that mat­ter, and your chances of run­ning into math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart are extreme­ly favor­able. 

I’ve tried—and failed—to keep up with her high­ly digres­sive, rapid fire, doo­dle-based expla­na­tions on such top­ics as net neu­tral­i­ty and the space-time con­tin­u­um. I had bet­ter luck fol­low­ing her direc­tions for turn­ing squig­gles into snakes, a math-based par­lor trick that seems more like mag­ic to me.

What I real­ly want­ed to know is how does she make those fun­ny lit­tle videos of hers?  Doubt­less, any sev­en-year-old who’s logged two or three hours in an after-school pro­gram devot­ed to stop motion ani­ma­tion would have the chops to explain how to make sim­ple draw­ings ren­dered in Sharpie on a spi­ral bound note­book come to life, but what if I still did­n’t get it? I would­n’t want to give the short­ies the impres­sion that the lay­men and women of my gen­er­a­tion are too dim to keep up with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy.

Then on a whim, I typed “how does Vi Hart make her videos” into a search engine and voila! The video above, in which the doyenne her­self reveals exact­ly how she does just that.

Actu­al­ly “exact­ly” might be over­stat­ing things a bit, giv­en that she does so in her imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able style. If I under­stand cor­rect­ly, she starts with a script, which she pares to the essen­tials, before shoot­ing the seg­ment with a team of interns, some of whom serve as body dou­bles for her hands, their arms encased in funky, detach­able sleeves. Then she speeds things up by delet­ing the frames in which the mov­ing hand obscures the page. I’m pret­ty sure she wings it when record­ing her voiceover nar­ra­tion, but I could be wrong.

She also seems to have a thing for pin­ning her long brown hair up with a turkey feath­er. Even so, I’ll bet the deci­sion to give her ador­ing pub­lic a glimpse of some­thing beyond mere hands cement­ed many a celebri­ty crush. She’s a Tina Fey for the geek set. (Not that Tina Fey isn’t already serv­ing that func­tion for the same demo­graph­ic.)

As win­some as she is, I have to say, I pre­ferred her 14-year-old intern Ethan Bres­nick’s con­sci­en­tious behind-the-scenes look at how these things come togeth­er. Have a look above if you’d like some straight dope on soft­ware, cam­era posi­tions, and the like.

(Depend­ing on how much work you’ve got to get done today, you may also enjoy the extreme­ly infor­mal, hour-plus inter­view Ethan con­duct­ed via Skype, dur­ing which Hart eats her din­ner and invites fans to join them via Twit­ter.)

The only thing lack­ing is the nit­ty grit­ty on how and where Hart stores her enor­mous video files. With­out a benev­o­lent Khan Acad­e­my to over­see my work, such tech­ni­cal specs would def­i­nite­ly come in handy for a begin­ner such as myself. The Sharpies on spi­ral bound I can fig­ure out on my own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

Vi Hart Explains & Defends Net Neu­tral­i­ty in a New Doo­dle-Filled Video

Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart Explains the Space-Time Con­tin­u­um With a Music Box, Bach, and a Möbius Strip

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, a cou­ple of which have mor­phed into ebooks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Johnny Cash Impersonates Elvis Presley: A Slapstick Version of “Heartbreak Hotel” (1959)

in Comedy, Music | May 14th, 2014

In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, John­ny Cash recalled meet­ing Elvis Pres­ley in Mem­phis, cir­ca 1954:

The first time I saw Elvis, singing from a flatbed truck at a Katz drug­store open­ing on Lamar Avenue, two or three hun­dred peo­ple, most­ly teenage girls, had come out to see him. With just one sin­gle to his cred­it, he sang those two songs over and over. That’s the first time I met him.

Although the two musi­cians were “nev­er tight,” they liked one anoth­er. Cash admired Pres­ley’s rhythm gui­tar play­ing and his show­man­ship. He writes: “Elvis was so good. Every show I did with him, I nev­er missed the chance to stand in the wings and watch. We all did. He was that charis­mat­ic.” Which brings us to the short, com­plete­ly amus­ing clip found above.

Accord­ing to the Pig Riv­er Records web site (a “com­pre­hen­sive guide to music as it was 50 years ago”), this footage dates back to a 1959 tour. Cash was the open­ing act; Pres­ley, the head­lin­er. And each night, “Cash would imper­son­ate his friend and tour­ing part­ner, and then Elvis would come out and do the same. Two char­ac­ters just hav­ing a good ol’ time whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cre­at­ing the genre of rock and roll.”

If you want to spend a lit­tle more time at the Cash-Pres­ley nexus, I’d encour­age you to lis­ten to Mil­lion Dol­lar Quar­tet, a record­ing that cap­tures Cash and Pres­ley’s impromp­tu jam ses­sion with Carl Perkins and Jer­ry Lee Lewis. It was record­ed in 1956, at the Sun Record Stu­dios in Mem­phis.

Final­ly, if you care to see more Elvis imper­son­ations, you can see how Cash stacks up against Quentin Taran­ti­no and the great Andy Kauf­man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ear­li­est Footage of Elvis Pres­ley, Bud­dy Hol­ly and John­ny Cash (1955)

The First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show, Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

Library Card Signed by 13-Year-Old Elvis Pres­ley, the Ear­li­est Known Sig­na­ture of the King

Catch Stevie Wonder, Ages 12–16, in His Earliest TV Performances

in Music | May 13th, 2014

The amaz­ing Ste­vie Won­der turns 64 today, and in hon­or of the singer’s long illus­tri­ous career, we present some of his ear­li­est moments in the spot­light. In 1963, Lit­tle Ste­vie Wonder—as he was then known—had his first num­ber one hit with a song called “Fin­ger­tips.” He was 12 years old. Not only did he top the charts, but he did so with the first ever live record­ing to hit num­ber one, and the first ever sin­gle to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly top the Bill­board Hot 100 and the R&B charts at once. See the young star per­form “Fin­ger­tips” above, fol­low­ing Mar­vin Gaye at the Motown Revue Live, and below one year lat­er on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

“Fin­ger­tips” came from the album Record­ed Live: The 12 Year Old Genius, which was, you guessed it, record­ed live, at the Regal The­ater in Chica­go. Despite his ten­der years, this was hard­ly Lit­tle Stevie’s first rodeo. At this point, he was vir­tu­al­ly a vet­er­an of the busi­ness, hav­ing signed to Motown at age 11, toured the so-called “chitlin’ cir­cuit” and released two pre­vi­ous albums—The Jazz Soul of Lit­tle Ste­vie and Trib­ute to Uncle Ray—both of which failed to chart.

Already a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist, Wonder’s first big sin­gle was not a stir­ring piano bal­lad or rous­ing funk soul anthem; it was more or less an extend­ed har­mon­i­ca solo, punc­tu­at­ed by exu­ber­ant call-and-response shouts to the crowd. But peo­ple loved it, and the musi­cal prodi­gy seemed well on his way to super-star­dom. Just above, see him play anoth­er har­mon­i­ca sin­gle, “Kiss Me Baby,” in 1965 on the British music show Ready Steady Go!

Though his star seemed to be on the rise after “Fin­ger­tips,” Lit­tle Stevie’s career hit a few snags after his big break, and Berry Gordy almost dropped him from the Motown ros­ter when his voice changed. But he was not, as we know, des­tined to be a one-hit-won­der (par­don the pun). Though puber­ty cut short the child prodi­gy act, Won­der sol­diered on, drop­ping the “Lit­tle” and becom­ing a seri­ous vocal­ist. He scored hits in the mid-six­ties with the super-catchy “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” and the beau­ti­ful “A Place in the Sun.” See him do both songs above on the Mike Dou­glass show in 1966. In-between songs, Dou­glass asks the six­teen year-old some pret­ty dopey ques­tions about his blind­ness, the result of a birth defect. Won­der responds with the same good-natured humor and grace we’ve come to expect from him. In these ear­ly appear­ances, you can plain­ly see all the qual­i­ties that have made Ste­vie Won­der so uni­ver­sal­ly beloved. The man’s still got it, as he proved in his Gram­my per­for­mance of “Get Lucky” this year with Daft Punk and Phar­rell. We wish Ste­vie the hap­pi­est of birth­days. If you’re lucky enough to be in Europe this sum­mer, do your­self a favor and catch him on one of his sev­en tour dates. He might even break out the har­mon­i­ca.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Mar­vin Gaye’s Clas­sic Vocals on ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’: The A Cap­pel­la Ver­sion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

David Lynch Explains Where His Ideas Come From

in Creativity | May 12th, 2014

Where do great ideas come from? If you ask Neil Gaiman, he’ll tell you that they come from con­scious day­dream­ing and ask­ing the right ques­tions: What if you woke up with wings? What if your sis­ter turned into a mouse?

Pose that ques­tion to Rod Ser­ling, cre­ator of The Twi­light Zone, and he’ll tell you, very emphat­i­cal­ly, that “They come from the Earth… They’re in the air. And, to put them on paper, you bleed!”

Now run the same ques­tion by David Lynch, and you’ll get a dif­fer­ent answer: “An idea comes, and you see it, and you hear it, and you know it.” “It comes, like, on a TV in your mind.”  That’s how Lynch summed things up in late April, while speak­ing at the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music (BAM) with mas­ter inter­view­er Paul Hold­en­gräber. Clos­ing his eyes, con­cen­trat­ing, Lynch elab­o­rat­ed, explain­ing that the big ideas start small. You start with just a frag­ment of an idea, and that frag­ment becomes “bait” that attracts oth­er frag­ments, and then more more frag­ments. And, before too long, you have an entire script. Or a paint­ing. If you want to delve fur­ther into Lynch’s cre­ative process, see our relat­ed post: David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

700 Free eBooks: Fiction, Poetry & Non-Fiction for Kindle, iPad & Other Devices

in e-books | May 11th, 2014

If you’re look­ing for a free read today, let us turn your atten­tion to our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. Arendt, Asi­mov, Austen, Balzac, Baude­laire, Brad­bury, Bukows­ki, Calvi­no, Chekhov, Clarke (as in Arthur C.), Dante, Dick (as in Philip K.), Dick­ens, Dick­in­son, Dos­to­evsky, Faulkn­er, Fitzger­ald, Flaubert, Freud, Gaiman, Gins­berg, Gogol, Hem­ing­way, Hux­ley, Joyce, Kaf­ka, Kierkegaard, Love­craft, Melville, Nabokov, Niet­zsche, Oates (as in Joyce Car­ol), Orwell, Plath, Poe, Pound, Proust, Rus­sell (as in Bertrand), Sartre, Shake­speare, Stein, Tol­stoy, Twain, DFW, Wells (as in H.G.), Whit­man, Zola — they’re all on the list.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing this instruc­tion­al video (not made by us) before­hand to take full advan­tage of the col­lec­tion. And, if down­load­ing files seems like a bur­den, fear not. We often give you the abil­i­ty to sim­ply read texts online.

Find our full col­lec­tion here: 700 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. You might equal­ly enjoy our relat­ed col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Enjoy.

The Animals of Chernobyl: An Inside Look at the Toll That Radiation Took on Animals & Wildlife

in Biology, Science | May 10th, 2014

On April 26, 1986, the num­ber 4 reac­tor at the Cher­nobyl nuclear pow­er plant blew up in what is now Ukraine. The site spewed a cloud of radioac­tive mate­r­i­al that spread over much of Europe. The area imme­di­ate­ly around Cher­nobyl received more than 400 times the radi­a­tion as Hiroshi­ma and won’t be safe­ly inhab­it­able for about 20,000 years. The gov­ern­ment set up a 1,000 square mile exclu­sion zone around the site. While short vis­its to the zone are pos­si­ble with­out too much dan­ger, liv­ing there is not advis­able. Can­cer is a real prob­lem for the cou­ple hun­dred elder­ly stal­warts who still make the zone their home.

With­in the zone, nature has tak­en its own course, dis­man­tling the Sovi­et-era bru­tal­ist ten­e­ments of the sur­round­ing aban­doned cities and turn­ing it into what at first blush looks more and more like a prelap­sar­i­an Eden. The truth proves to be more com­pli­cat­ed.

Dr. Tim­o­thy Mousseau, a biol­o­gist from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, has been exam­in­ing the wildlife around Cher­nobyl for fif­teen years. He’s dis­cov­ered that the radi­a­tion that has been bathing the area for almost 30 years is chang­ing nature. As you can see in the New York Times Op-Doc video above, birds are devel­op­ing tumors, bugs have abnor­mal spots and spi­der webs seem much more freeform than usu­al. Get more on the sto­ry over at the Times.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Scenes from HBO’s Cher­nobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Com­par­i­son

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Disney’s 12 Timeless Principles of Animation

in Animation | May 7th, 2014

Ani­ma­tion is essen­tial­ly an opti­cal illu­sion- a series of still pho­tographs that cre­ate the impres­sion of move­ment. Though Win­sor McCay pio­neered ways of mak­ing draw­ings move, Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men were the ones who per­fect­ed it. While mak­ing Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, not to men­tion count­less shorts in the 1930s, this team of ani­ma­tors devel­oped 12 basic prin­ci­ples that exag­ger­at­ed the laws of physics to best bring these images to life.

The prin­ci­ples came to define Disney’s look and became part of the lan­guage of ani­ma­tors every­where. Every time you see Wiley E. Coyote’s eyes bulge to the size of water­mel­ons at the sight of a falling boul­der, Olaf the Snow­man from Frozen stretch dur­ing a sud­den stop, or Tig­ger crouch­ing down before a pounce, you can thank these prin­ci­ples.

Frank Thomas and Ollie John­son, two of the nine old men, pub­lished the prin­ci­ples in their book Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion: Illu­sion of Life. Jason Kot­tke has post­ed a real­ly groovy (ani­mat­ed, of course) video illus­trat­ing the 12 Prin­ci­ples. Check it out above. And if you need fur­ther review watch this oth­er ani­mat­ed video. The prin­ci­ples, them­selves, appear below.

1. SQUASH AND STRETCH

This action gives the illu­sion of weight and vol­ume to a char­ac­ter as it moves. Also squash and stretch is use­ful in ani­mat­ing dia­logue and doing facial expres­sions. How extreme the use of squash and stretch is, depends on what is required in ani­mat­ing the scene. Usu­al­ly it’s broad­er in a short style of pic­ture and sub­tler in a fea­ture. It is used in all forms of char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion from a bounc­ing ball to the body weight of a per­son walk­ing. This is the most impor­tant ele­ment you will be required to mas­ter and will be used often.

2. ANTICIPATION

This move­ment pre­pares the audi­ence for a major action the char­ac­ter is about to per­form, such as, start­ing to run, jump or change expres­sion. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A back­wards motion occurs before the for­ward action is exe­cut­ed. The back­ward motion is the antic­i­pa­tion. A com­ic effect can be done by not using antic­i­pa­tion after a series of gags that used antic­i­pa­tion. Almost all real action has major or minor antic­i­pa­tion such as a pitcher’s wind-up or a golfers’ back swing. Fea­ture ani­ma­tion is often less broad than short ani­ma­tion unless a scene requires it to devel­op a char­ac­ters per­son­al­i­ty.

3. STAGING

A pose or action should clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate to the audi­ence the atti­tude, mood, reac­tion or idea of the char­ac­ter as it relates to the sto­ry and con­ti­nu­ity of the sto­ry line. The effec­tive use of long, medi­um, or close up shots, as well as cam­era angles also helps in telling the sto­ry. There is a lim­it­ed amount of time in a film, so each sequence, scene and frame of film must relate to the over­all sto­ry. Do not con­fuse the audi­ence with too many actions at once. Use one action clear­ly stat­ed to get the idea across, unless you are ani­mat­ing a scene that is to depict clut­ter and con­fu­sion. Stag­ing directs the audi­ence’s atten­tion to the sto­ry or idea being told. Care must be tak­en in back­ground design so it isn’t obscur­ing the ani­ma­tion or com­pet­ing with it due to excess detail behind the ani­ma­tion. Back­ground and ani­ma­tion should work togeth­er as a pic­to­r­i­al unit in a scene.

4. STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE ANIMATION

Straight ahead ani­ma­tion starts at the first draw­ing and works draw­ing to draw­ing to the end of a scene. You can lose size, vol­ume, and pro­por­tions with this method, but it does have spon­tane­ity and fresh­ness. Fast, wild action scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned out and chart­ed with key draw­ings done at inter­vals through­out the scene. Size, vol­umes, and pro­por­tions are con­trolled bet­ter this way, as is the action. The lead ani­ma­tor will turn chart­ing and keys over to his assis­tant. An assis­tant can be bet­ter used with this method so that the ani­ma­tor does­n’t have to draw every draw­ing in a scene. An ani­ma­tor can do more scenes this way and con­cen­trate on the plan­ning of the ani­ma­tion. Many scenes use a bit of both meth­ods of ani­ma­tion.

5. FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION

When the main body of the char­ac­ter stops all oth­er parts con­tin­ue to catch up to the main mass of the char­ac­ter, such as arms, long hair, cloth­ing, coat tails or a dress, flop­py ears or a long tail (these fol­low the path of action). Noth­ing stops all at once. This is fol­low through. Over­lap­ping action is when the char­ac­ter changes direc­tion while his clothes or hair con­tin­ues for­ward. The char­ac­ter is going in a new direc­tion, to be fol­lowed, a num­ber of frames lat­er, by his clothes in the new direc­tion. “DRAG,” in ani­ma­tion, for exam­ple, would be when Goofy starts to run, but his head, ears, upper body, and clothes do not keep up with his legs. In fea­tures, this type of action is done more sub­tly. Exam­ple: When Snow White starts to dance, her dress does not begin to move with her imme­di­ate­ly but catch­es up a few frames lat­er. Long hair and ani­mal tail will also be han­dled in the same man­ner. Tim­ing becomes crit­i­cal to the effec­tive­ness of drag and the over­lap­ping action.

6. SLOW-OUT AND SLOW-IN

As action starts, we have more draw­ings near the start­ing pose, one or two in the mid­dle, and more draw­ings near the next pose. Few­er draw­ings make the action faster and more draw­ings make the action slow­er. Slow-ins and slow-outs soft­en the action, mak­ing it more life-like. For a gag action, we may omit some slow-out or slow-ins for shock appeal or the sur­prise ele­ment. This will give more snap to the scene.

7. ARCS

All actions, with few excep­tions (such as the ani­ma­tion of a mechan­i­cal device), fol­low an arc or slight­ly cir­cu­lar path. This is espe­cial­ly true of the human fig­ure and the action of ani­mals. Arcs give ani­ma­tion a more nat­ur­al action and bet­ter flow. Think of nat­ur­al move­ments in the terms of a pen­du­lum swing­ing. All arm move­ment, head turns and even eye move­ments are exe­cut­ed on an arcs.

8. SECONDARY ACTION

This action adds to and enrich­es the main action and adds more dimen­sion to the char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion, sup­ple­ment­ing and/or re-enforc­ing the main action. Exam­ple: A char­ac­ter is angri­ly walk­ing toward anoth­er char­ac­ter. The walk is force­ful, aggres­sive, and for­ward lean­ing. The leg action is just short of a stomp­ing walk. The sec­ondary action is a few strong ges­tures of the arms work­ing with the walk. Also, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dia­logue being deliv­ered at the same time with tilts and turns of the head to accen­tu­ate the walk and dia­logue, but not so much as to dis­tract from the walk action. All of these actions should work togeth­er in sup­port of one anoth­er. Think of the walk as the pri­ma­ry action and arm swings, head bounce and all oth­er actions of the body as sec­ondary or sup­port­ing action.

9. TIMING

Exper­tise in tim­ing comes best with expe­ri­ence and per­son­al exper­i­men­ta­tion, using the tri­al and error method in refin­ing tech­nique. The basics are: more draw­ings between pos­es slow and smooth the action. Few­er draw­ings make the action faster and crisper. A vari­ety of slow and fast tim­ing with­in a scene adds tex­ture and inter­est to the move­ment. Most ani­ma­tion is done on twos (one draw­ing pho­tographed on two frames of film) or on ones (one draw­ing pho­tographed on each frame of film). Twos are used most of the time, and ones are used dur­ing cam­era moves such as trucks, pans and occa­sion­al­ly for sub­tle and quick dia­logue ani­ma­tion. Also, there is tim­ing in the act­ing of a char­ac­ter to estab­lish mood, emo­tion, and reac­tion to anoth­er char­ac­ter or to a sit­u­a­tion. Study­ing move­ment of actors and per­form­ers on stage and in films is use­ful when ani­mat­ing human or ani­mal char­ac­ters. This frame by frame exam­i­na­tion of film footage will aid you in under­stand­ing tim­ing for ani­ma­tion. This is a great way to learn from the oth­ers.

10. EXAGGERATION

Exag­ger­a­tion is not extreme dis­tor­tion of a draw­ing or extreme­ly broad, vio­lent action all the time. Its like a car­i­ca­ture of facial fea­tures, expres­sions, pos­es, atti­tudes and actions. Action traced from live action film can be accu­rate, but stiff and mechan­i­cal. In fea­ture ani­ma­tion, a char­ac­ter must move more broad­ly to look nat­ur­al. The same is true of facial expres­sions, but the action should not be as broad as in a short car­toon style. Exag­ger­a­tion in a walk or an eye move­ment or even a head turn will give your film more appeal. Use good taste and com­mon sense to keep from becom­ing too the­atri­cal and exces­sive­ly ani­mat­ed.

11. SOLID DRAWING

The basic prin­ci­ples of draw­ing form, weight, vol­ume solid­i­ty and the illu­sion of three dimen­sion apply to ani­ma­tion as it does to aca­d­e­m­ic draw­ing. The way you draw car­toons, you draw in the clas­si­cal sense, using pen­cil sketch­es and draw­ings for repro­duc­tion of life. You trans­form these into col­or and move­ment giv­ing the char­ac­ters the illu­sion of three-and four-dimen­sion­al life. Three dimen­sion­al is move­ment in space. The fourth dimen­sion is move­ment in time.

12. APPEAL

A live per­former has charis­ma. An ani­mat­ed char­ac­ter has appeal. Appeal­ing ani­ma­tion does not mean just being cute and cud­dly. All char­ac­ters have to have appeal whether they are hero­ic, vil­lain­ous, com­ic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear draw­ing, and per­son­al­i­ty devel­op­ment that will cap­ture and involve the audi­ence’s inter­est. Ear­ly car­toons were basi­cal­ly a series of gags strung togeth­er on a main theme. Over the years, the artists have learned that to pro­duce a fea­ture there was a need for sto­ry con­ti­nu­ity, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and a high­er qual­i­ty of art­work through­out the entire pro­duc­tion. Like all forms of sto­ry telling, the fea­ture has to appeal to the mind as well as to the eye.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era (1957)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Metafilter Highlights a Trove of Werner Herzog Films Online

in Film | May 6th, 2014

“To steal a char­ac­ter or a sto­ry isn’t real theft. But to steal a land­scape, that is a very, very seri­ous crime.” There we have one of the propo­si­tions agreed upon by film­mak­ers Wern­er Her­zog and Errol Mor­ris in a con­ver­sa­tion they had for the Believ­er. Though their fil­mo­gra­phies may not look ter­ri­bly sim­i­lar — Mor­ris with his inter­view-based doc­u­men­taries on pet ceme­ter­ies, emer­gent sys­tems, and old Sec­re­taries of Defense, Her­zog with his bare­ly defin­able, dis­tinc­tion-between-fact-and-fic­tion-repu­di­at­ing stud­ies of aggres­sive dwarfs, doomed nat­u­ral­ists, death row inmates, and con­quis­ta­dors and rub­ber barons aggran­diz­ing them­selves in the jun­gle — their work has much in com­mon under the sur­face. Don’t believe me? First watch through the list we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured of 30 Errol Mor­ris movies stream­able online, assem­bled on Metafil­ter by a mem­ber known as “Going to Maine.”  Then watch Going to Maine’s new list of 43 Wern­er Her­zog movies stream­able online, com­pare, and con­trast.

At the top of the post, you can spend nine min­utes watch­ing Her­ak­les, Her­zog’s very first cin­e­mat­ic effort, a mash-up (if it does­n’t stretch the def­i­n­i­tion too far to apply the word to some­thing made in 1962) of mus­cle men and rac­ing-car wrecks. Just above, we have 1969’s Pre­cau­tions Against Fanat­ics, anoth­er ear­ly exer­cise in Her­zo­gian form-bend­ing which repur­pos­es footage of real peo­ple, real places, and real ani­mals to absurd ends — in this case, to envi­sion a real­i­ty in which hired men work tire­less­ly to pro­tect hors­es from “horse fanat­ics.” The list also rounds up a few shorts that even true Her­zog fanat­ics may nev­er have had the chance to see, includ­ing 1976’s No One Will Play With Me (part one, part two) below, the sto­ry of a preschool social out­cast based upon expe­ri­ences relat­ed by the real chil­dren them­selves — the sort of thing we’d all have grown up watch­ing on tele­vi­sion, in oth­er words, if Wern­er Her­zog had made after-school spe­cials. If works like these don’t give you quite enough insight into the mind of this inim­itable, uncom­pro­mis­ing, and seem­ing­ly tire­less, Bavar­i­an film­mak­er, don’t for­get to check out his own favorite films as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Favorite Films

30 Errol Mor­ris Movies That Can Be Streamed Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Free Animated Films: From Classic to Modern

in | May 6th, 2014

Watch over 70 free ani­ma­tions online. The col­lec­tion fea­tures some clas­sics, plus some mod­ern gems. You’ll find a num­ber of ani­ma­tions of lit­er­ary clas­sics in the mix too. For more great films, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

For a full line­up of great movies, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

What Was It Like to Have Philip Roth as an English Prof?

in Literature | May 5th, 2014

Image by Thier­ry Ehrmann, via Flickr Com­mons

Writ­ing in The New York Times this week­end, author Lisa Scot­to­line remem­bers her days at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, back dur­ing the 1970s, when she took sem­i­nars with then-vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor, Philip Roth. One course the famous nov­el­ist taught was called ““The Lit­er­a­ture of Desire,” which prompt­ed stu­dents to think, “Who wouldn’t want to read dirty books with Philip Roth?”  It turns out the class did­n’t get very sexy. But stu­dents did learn quite a bit. Scot­to­line writes:

Look­ing back, I’ve come to under­stand that he was the best pro­fes­sor I ever had, not only because of his genius, but also because of his dis­tance. We were a group of girls eager to please, to guess at what he want­ed us to say, and to say that for him. We all want­ed to hear about him, or have him tell us how to write, but that was some­thing he stead­fast­ly denied us. By with­hold­ing his own per­son­al­i­ty, thoughts and opin­ions, he forced us back on our own per­son­al­i­ties, thoughts and opin­ions. He made us dis­cov­er what we want­ed to write about, and to write about it the way we want­ed to.

You can read the rest of her account here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Watch Philip Roth, Now 80, Read from His Irrev­er­ent Clas­sic, Portnoy’s Com­plaint

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters

Philip Roth Reads “In Mem­o­ry of a Friend, Teacher & Men­tor” (A Free Down­load Ben­e­fit­ing a Pub­lic Library)