BA2B Week 5
How character design has developed and adapted over the course of the history of animation
Chapter 1: Traditional animation
Character design is the art of defining a character through their physical appearance. Style comes into play depending on which format the character is needed for. Style can go from extremely minimalist (like “Hello Kitty”) to very photo-realistic (as with CG animated characters like the “Hulk” in the Avengers film series). [1]
Like most art, character design is a little subjective, due to the immense range of variation in styles, depending on an artist's tastes or criteria. That being said, there are guidelines and tropes that have evolved with the medium because they have been proven to elevate character design for it's intended purposes. In this report, I intend to explore how such guidelines have developed by assessing the design processes of several animated works in film and TV, from many different eras of animation, in an effort to shed some light on why these styles work and persist. In this chapter, we are going to be focusing on Disney, as they are responsible for the most influential and innovative films in the history of traditional animation.
First, let’s take a look at an old but well-known Disney animation, the classic ‘Steamboat willie’ from 1928. It was the very first disney cartoon to use synchronised sound, with it’s own pre-recorded soundtrack and voices. Not much information still exists about the design process itself, but at a glance we can tell that the simple, block colour, black and white shapes made it easy to manipulate the anatomy of the characters for the exaggerated slapstick humour they were going for. This simplicity also lends itself to traditional animation quite nicely, having less to draw every frame, and making it much easier for multiple animators to mimic so they can work on the same project.
Moving forward a decade, lets talk about Disney's first animated feature in 1937, ‘Snow White and the seven dwarves’. This film is where more realistic character design started to take root in Disney, possibly to make certain characters more relatable and capable of evoking a more emotional response than a humorous one.
Early designs for Snow White somewhat resemble Betty Boop, and early designs of the evil queen make her look more fat, frumpy and comical, much like the designs of the actual Betty Boop take on the Snow White story from four years earlier. Over time they moved away from the caricature look, into something more realistic that reflected Walt Disney’s own vision. They used live-action footage of a dancer (Marge Champion) performing as Snow White for reference, to better understand the dainty, light-footed characterisation they were going for, just as they noted down how the evil queen's voice actress (Lucille La Verne) changes her attitude and posture for the role. [2] [3]
Disney had a lot of fairy tale films during the 60’s, but still not a lot of information about pre-production processes were recorded, so let’s move forward a bit. Graphic novels and comic books were made popular in the 1970’s because of the work of a man called Will Eisner, and with the rise of comic books raising standards for the appearance of characters in entertainment, character design suddenly became much more important. [4]
In the 1992 film Aladdin, we can see that traditional Disney animation has become a lot more stylised since the days of Snow White, with bigger eyes that express more emotion, and far more exaggerated shapes, to the point where a character can be recognisable by their silhouette alone. The more comical and comedic side characters like the sultan use a lot of circular shapes in their silhouette - shapes that create a feeling of safety and positivity. Main characters like Aladdin and Jasmine, again, are the closest to proper human proportions, making them the most relatable and appealing - but these proportions are slightly distorted to contain a lot of circular and square shapes, conveying a feeling of positivity and stability. Jafar, on the other hand, is all dramatically squashed and stretched squares and triangles, shapes that convey danger. [5]
Interestingly enough, Aladdin started the production as a young boy, but to be less boy-ish and more appealing, he became older, more athletic and good-looking. [6] Jafar didn’t change a huge amount over the course of the production, but It was interesting to see how he was created in the blog of artist Andreas Deja. He admitted that a lot of characters took inspiration from the fluid lines of famous caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. [7] This kind of style was probably helped by the fact that it also wasn’t that long ago that Disney started using CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing system of software and hardware developed for Disney by Pixar. This allowed for a wider range of colour, shading and line effects, and the ability to animate things on different layers to simulate depth. [8]
Finally, let’s talk about Disney’s most recent traditionally animated film - The Princess and the Frog. With the rise of computer animation in the 2000’s, these types of animated films have been few and far between, especially at Disney. The crew were aiming for a style reminiscent of The Lady and the Tramp from 1955, as they believed that to be the definitive Disney style before it ventured into more stylised approaches. [9] Andreas Deja agreed, saying "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing.” [10]
So, to summarise the character design guidelines we can learn from the history of traditional animation - good character designs tend to have distinctive silhouettes, that can be broken down into a number of simple shapes. Circular or spherical shapes indicate goodness, beauty and safety, square or box-like shapes indicate stability and sturdiness, and triangular or sharp shapes indicate danger and evil. Exaggerate the features that need to stand out, they make the character more expressive.
Chapter 2: Anime
Chapter 3: 2D vector based animation
Chapter 4: 3D computer animation
Chapter 5: Stop motion
Bibliography
Chapter 1: Traditional animation
Character design is the art of defining a character through their physical appearance. Style comes into play depending on which format the character is needed for. Style can go from extremely minimalist (like “Hello Kitty”) to very photo-realistic (as with CG animated characters like the “Hulk” in the Avengers film series). [1]
Like most art, character design is a little subjective, due to the immense range of variation in styles, depending on an artist's tastes or criteria. That being said, there are guidelines and tropes that have evolved with the medium because they have been proven to elevate character design for it's intended purposes. In this report, I intend to explore how such guidelines have developed by assessing the design processes of several animated works in film and TV, from many different eras of animation, in an effort to shed some light on why these styles work and persist. In this chapter, we are going to be focusing on Disney, as they are responsible for the most influential and innovative films in the history of traditional animation.
First, let’s take a look at an old but well-known Disney animation, the classic ‘Steamboat willie’ from 1928. It was the very first disney cartoon to use synchronised sound, with it’s own pre-recorded soundtrack and voices. Not much information still exists about the design process itself, but at a glance we can tell that the simple, block colour, black and white shapes made it easy to manipulate the anatomy of the characters for the exaggerated slapstick humour they were going for. This simplicity also lends itself to traditional animation quite nicely, having less to draw every frame, and making it much easier for multiple animators to mimic so they can work on the same project.
Moving forward a decade, lets talk about Disney's first animated feature in 1937, ‘Snow White and the seven dwarves’. This film is where more realistic character design started to take root in Disney, possibly to make certain characters more relatable and capable of evoking a more emotional response than a humorous one.
Early designs for Snow White somewhat resemble Betty Boop, and early designs of the evil queen make her look more fat, frumpy and comical, much like the designs of the actual Betty Boop take on the Snow White story from four years earlier. Over time they moved away from the caricature look, into something more realistic that reflected Walt Disney’s own vision. They used live-action footage of a dancer (Marge Champion) performing as Snow White for reference, to better understand the dainty, light-footed characterisation they were going for, just as they noted down how the evil queen's voice actress (Lucille La Verne) changes her attitude and posture for the role. [2] [3]
Disney had a lot of fairy tale films during the 60’s, but still not a lot of information about pre-production processes were recorded, so let’s move forward a bit. Graphic novels and comic books were made popular in the 1970’s because of the work of a man called Will Eisner, and with the rise of comic books raising standards for the appearance of characters in entertainment, character design suddenly became much more important. [4]
In the 1992 film Aladdin, we can see that traditional Disney animation has become a lot more stylised since the days of Snow White, with bigger eyes that express more emotion, and far more exaggerated shapes, to the point where a character can be recognisable by their silhouette alone. The more comical and comedic side characters like the sultan use a lot of circular shapes in their silhouette - shapes that create a feeling of safety and positivity. Main characters like Aladdin and Jasmine, again, are the closest to proper human proportions, making them the most relatable and appealing - but these proportions are slightly distorted to contain a lot of circular and square shapes, conveying a feeling of positivity and stability. Jafar, on the other hand, is all dramatically squashed and stretched squares and triangles, shapes that convey danger. [5]
Interestingly enough, Aladdin started the production as a young boy, but to be less boy-ish and more appealing, he became older, more athletic and good-looking. [6] Jafar didn’t change a huge amount over the course of the production, but It was interesting to see how he was created in the blog of artist Andreas Deja. He admitted that a lot of characters took inspiration from the fluid lines of famous caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. [7] This kind of style was probably helped by the fact that it also wasn’t that long ago that Disney started using CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing system of software and hardware developed for Disney by Pixar. This allowed for a wider range of colour, shading and line effects, and the ability to animate things on different layers to simulate depth. [8]
Finally, let’s talk about Disney’s most recent traditionally animated film - The Princess and the Frog. With the rise of computer animation in the 2000’s, these types of animated films have been few and far between, especially at Disney. The crew were aiming for a style reminiscent of The Lady and the Tramp from 1955, as they believed that to be the definitive Disney style before it ventured into more stylised approaches. [9] Andreas Deja agreed, saying "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing.” [10]
So, to summarise the character design guidelines we can learn from the history of traditional animation - good character designs tend to have distinctive silhouettes, that can be broken down into a number of simple shapes. Circular or spherical shapes indicate goodness, beauty and safety, square or box-like shapes indicate stability and sturdiness, and triangular or sharp shapes indicate danger and evil. Exaggerate the features that need to stand out, they make the character more expressive.
Chapter 2: Anime
Chapter 3: 2D vector based animation
Chapter 4: 3D computer animation
Chapter 5: Stop motion
Bibliography
- Bancroft, T. (2017). What is Character Design? Characted Design Defined. [online] Taughtbyapro.com. Available at: http://taughtbyapro.com/what-is-character-design/ [Accessed 10 May 2017].
- Disney Wiki. (2017). Snow White (character). [online] Available at: http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Snow_White_(character) [Accessed 8 May 2017].
- Disney Wiki. (2017). The Evil Queen. [online] Available at: http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/The_Evil_Queen [Accessed 10 May 2017].
- JN_GhostArt, V. (2017). The History of Character Design. [online] JN Ghost Art. Available at: https://jaydenossiterghostart.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/character-design/ [Accessed 8 May 2017].
- Livlily.blogspot.co.uk. (2017). Aladdin (1992) - Character Design: Concepts, Model Sheets & Production Drawings. [online] Available at: http://livlily.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/aladdin-1992.html [Accessed 10 May 2017].
- Thomas, Bob: "Chapter 9: A New Tradition", pages 133–135. Disney's Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Hercules, 1997
- Deja, A. (2017). The Evolution of Jafar. [online] Andreasdeja.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://andreasdeja.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-evolution-of-jafar.html [Accessed 10 May 2017].
- Trousdale, Gary; Wise, Kirk; Hahn, Don; and Menken, Alan (2002). DVD audio commentary for Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition. Walt Disney Home Entertainment
- Todd Gilchrist (October 23, 2009). "Interview: 'Princess and the Frog' Directors Ron Clements and John Musker". Cinematical.com.
- "Insights From ADAPT 2008". Animated World Network. October 8, 2008. Archived from the original on May 14, 2009.
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