animation, but it pokes a finger at the
motivations behind Disney’s sugar-coated
simpletons as well.
Let Me Feel Your Finger First
Drawing and adaptation
LMFYFF explain:
‘The psychologist talks about Francis in a kind of hybrid language that includes technical terms referring to animation defects (“he’s not frame-accurate”, “might suffer from jitter”, “overlap”, etc). The spinning vortex that Francis disappears into at the end of the film is another cartoon convention, most obviously associated with the Tasmanian Devil. And then there’s Pinocchio, the original simple boy trying to break out, but being led astray.’
Francis is a challenging film because of its
juxtaposed image of the dysfunctional boy and the psychobabble rhetoric that seeks to define, manage and control him: ‘Francis is a hybrid work, and the voice-over reflects this; the narrator is actually a former child- psychologist so the voice-over includes some of his observations. Then there’s also the animation terminology. The large part of it though is the language of the 1960s psychologist formulating opinions about the “retarded” child, language that can be very harsh but sometimes also very suggestive. It is also a language that often reveals more about the context of the speaker than the child.
Literary adaptation and graphic narrative
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Job No:01055 Title:Basics Animation: Drawing for Animation
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Commer
cials >
Literary adaptation and graphic narrative
> Adapting aesthetics
title
Francis
animator
Let Me Feel Your Finger First
Francis begins to resist both the control of the animator and the controlling counselling of the psychologist.
‘I did a lot of research for another project into the invention of “feeblemindedness” in Victorian England and you come across these incredible and absurd differentiations (moral idiot, idio-imbecile, lower-grade and higher-grade types, etc) that seem to have been formulated by scientists, philanthropists and others seeking to justify controlling and incarcerating children and youths who appeared to be “not normal”. At points during the animation it seems unclear whether the psychologist is interpreting Francis’s behaviour or instigating it through his descriptions, and Francis certainly starts to resist the psychologist as the assessment progresses.’
LMFYFF has embraced drawing not merely as a tool of expression but as a set of codes that fix certain things, and require challenge.
Francis seems to be fundamentally about
this: ‘I think of Francis as a film about animation and about animate or maybe inanimate behaviour. It is playful and it celebrates animation, but it pokes a finger at the motivations behind Disney’s sugar- coated simpletons as well.’
Job No:01055 Title:Basics Animation: Drawing for Animation
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Drawing and adaptation
Adapting comic book sources Mike Mignola’s extremely popular Hellboy graphic narratives have found yet further success in the live-action film adaptations directed by Guillermo del Toro (starring Ron Perlman as the mutated devil figure), and later their adaptation into animated form by Tad Stones at Revolution Studios. Intrinsic to this success was Sean ‘Cheeks’ Galloway’s distinctive approach in adapting Mignola’s iconic graphic designs and storytelling techniques in the animated Hellboy films
Sword of Storms (2006) and Blood and Iron (2007).
In the animated version, Mignola’s signature placing of characters high in the frame so that the viewer seems to be looking up at them, and employing rapid shifts in perspective, were seamlessly re-presented in the animation, while trademark uses of colour to enhance mood and atmosphere were also readily embraced in the more exaggerated effects. For the most part, the animated version resists Mignola’s off-centre framing in preference to an almost continual sense of motion and, crucially, the rethinking of character design to facilitate the
requirements of animation.
In Hellboy, Galloway had not only to work with an iconic character, but also to resolve particular problems that the character presented such as not being symmetrical, with his ‘right hand of doom’ and, further, in making sure that backgrounds, layouts, other characters and effects complemented his red body colour. Galloway’s main achievement was to soften Mignola’s original design, rounding out the character and reinventing him as a shape in the first instance, one that worked in silhouette and offered a particular bounce and energy in its construction. Crucially, this design enabled Hellboy to be configured in the standard five-point construction required for this kind of animation, which is based on a 360-degree turnaround.
Galloway’s redrawing of Hellboy rendered him a 3D sculptural figure that could readily exist in full graphic environments and facilitate the action required of the character in more heightened fantastical situations and narratives. Mignola’s vertical stacking of graphic images was replaced by a 3D depth of field and continual movement. This highly persuasive adaptation has enabled Hellboy to exist afresh in a number of cross-platform environments where each one can add to the iconography and narrative development of the character, rather than merely copying another.
Literary adaptation and graphic narrative
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Job No:01055 Title:Basics Animation: Drawing for Animation
Proof - 2 Page:141 title Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms director Phil Weinstein
Hellboy finds himself in a samurai-styled adventure in his first animated film. The art direction is based on a number of Japanese design idioms, echoing the popularity of manga and anime with Western audiences, and the success of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai
Jack TV series.
Commer
cials >
Literary adaptation and graphic narrative
> Adapting aesthetics
Five-point construction
In order for a figure to be animated convincingly with full recourse to cinematic staging, all angles of the character must be considered and drawn. Most model sheets emphasise these key five points, and often add many other perspectives and points of detail. 1. Full front perspective.
2. Three-quarter front perspective. 3. Profile.
4. Three-quarter back perspective. 5. Side(s).
For example see page 96.
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