Animated Thoughts: Unexpected Treasures

I like to go to conventions, even if they're not specifically about animation.

Having collected comic books since the mid-70's and having been a gamer for almost as long, every time I see a comic book convention or a gaming convention or an anime convention, I usually take time to look at the line-up on their website or social media page. Even though I rarely attend most cons and festivals (gotta stick to that monthly budget), I find it worthwhile to keep an eye on the events just in case that rare opportunity rears its head--like the time I learned that Natasha Allegri was attending the Midwest Media Expo and giving presentations on her animated show Bee and Puppycat. Or the time that Youmacon had a panel discussing the byzantine copyright and trademark status of the King Kong intellectual property. Or when I learned that Bobby Chiu's Schoolism.com enterprise was bringing Brenda Chapman and Kevin Lima to Toronto in order to talk about their careers.

Well one of the additional benefits of attending conventions is having the opportunity to meet some vendors that specialize in animation art. After a multi-year hiatus, I finally made it back to the Motor City Comic Con in Novi, Michigan (just outside of Detroit). And who should be there with their booth of animation production drawings and cels? Art-Toons!

I first met Daniel and Mary Anne Ergezi years ago at the Grand Rapids Comic Con and spent way too much time hanging around their booth perusing their selection. I didn't have the cash on me at the time to pick out some of the original painted animation cels from their Heavy Metal collection, but I did find a bunch of Giant Robo cels and drawings closer to my budget that made it into my personal collection of animation art.

There are other vendors out there at the cons and on eBay, but I keep coming back to Art-Toons primarily because of the breadth and the quality of their selection. On any given visit to their eBay store or their vendor's booth, I'll find cels and production drawings from both classic and more recent anime shows, American animation from movies, television, and commercials, and especially those hard-to-find animation cels from animated films geared towards adults--like Heavy Metal and Cool World. In my experience, these are some of the more difficult ones to find for an affordable price. Ralph Bakshi has his own eBay store and is selling the cels and drawings from his movies for a premium price (assuming they're from his private collection). Not that they're not worth it, mind you, but they are rather expensive. And much like Bakshi's films Cool World, Fire and Ice, and Wizards, decent production cels and production drawings from the Ivan Reitman produced film Heavy Metal are becoming harder and harder to find.

As time moved on and a lot of these older drawings and cels got bought up by private collectors, I rapidly found myself in a situation where if I really, really wanted to have an original Heavy Metal cel or drawing in my collection, I had to make a move sooner rather than later. So, when this production drawing of Taarna showed up in their selection, I nabbed it. Given that she's this strong, sexy swordswoman, Taarna is one of the more difficult characters from the movie to find in original cels or drawings. Now, don't get me wrong, you "can" find them from time to time, but they are often prohibitively expensive given her popularity and based upon the quality of the cel/drawing. And they are often smaller renderings of her--like when she's in a walk cycle scene and they're simulating a long shot through a movie camera. This makes her only two or two-and-a-half inches tall. Not a big deal if it's a painted cel against a background. Less impressive if it's just a production drawing or cel with a lot of empty space around her. As I write this, there's actually a pretty good production drawing of Taarna on eBay for $250 plus shipping and a painted cel of her for $400. But most others I've seen are in the $500 to $1500 range, especially if they have a certificate of authenticity. Ah, if money were no object. As you can see from the picture below, the production drawing of Taarna that I got was one of the better ones out there!

HEAVY METAL, 1981

TAARNA production drawing

Re-grouped after her savage treatment, she is about to re-dress.

Strong lines with red wound lines, blue underlying pencil, shading.

Well anyways, while I love the visual quality of the painted cels (especially when they have backgrounds--original or reproduction), I honestly like the production drawings better. These are the items that I'm really drawn to (no pun intended). This is mainly due to the fact that through the progression of several drawings in a shot or through the production notes scribbled in the margins, you gain valuable insight into the production process that you don't get through books or videos. 'How-to' books and 'Making-of' videos rarely provide a lot of the nuances in the production process that may seem mundane to most people but in actuality convey some snippet of very important information that the animators need to see or instruct the people in the next step of production. For example, if you look at the images below (which can be viewed on the eBay auction by vendor "collect_this") you can see what I'm talking about. 

On this production drawing, Taarna is attacking with her sword. In the first image, you can see that there are good solid pencil lines defining her form as well as internal details. Additionally, we see some blue shading on the part of her hair that's going to end up being painted a bluish-gray as opposed to the rest of her hair which will be painted white. Could've been a note to the artist painting the cel. Perhaps it was the animator reminding themselves of that little detail as they worked on other frames. Now, one reason a light blue pencil was used is because when the xerography machine duplicates the drawing from paper onto a clear acetate cel, the xerography process won't pick up the blue color. So only the dark lines show up on the cel. We also see light red pencils used from time-to-time as well. Okay, back to our example: in the upper right corner, you see that the animator has redrawn Taarna's mouth at a much larger scale with instructions that there should be a gap between her upper and lower set of teeth (see enlarged photo below). That one is far more likely be a note from the animator to the cel painter or whoever was drawing the inbetweens--a good reminder to maintain consistency between frames on a small detail that could get overlooked.

As stated, these are the details in the production process that you rarely ever see in "Making of" videos or instructional books or even "Art of the movie" books. And Daniel and Mary Anne, when possible, offer packages of these production drawings grouped together when they're in the same sequence. Take a look at this series of five drawings from Giant Robo where one of the villains, Shocking Alberto, has one of the heroes, Taisou, in his grasp and is about to channel an energy blast through him.

You can clearly see on the upper right side of frame two, the animator has written a small timing chart for himself and the inbetweener to follow as this scene is drawn (it's right above the "A2").

Another good example is this series of layout drawings that I purchased from them at Motor City. These drawings illustrate a scene where Giant Robo has been damaged during an attack on the Eye of Fogler warship/mecha and the Experts of Justice don't know if they can reactivate him before he's crushed by the rapidly approaching Eye of Fogler. In the drawings, you can see the mechanized warship "Eye of Fogler" in the background (the sphere) and in the midground is Giant Robo's outstretched arm as he lays there in the rubble. The three drawings progress from rough sketch to a more refined layout to a production drawing of the Giant Robo character.

There's a lot of interesting information you can derive from these drawings, but just a few are:

1. If you look at the top of the page, you can see holes for the registration pegs. While it varies from studio to studio, a lot of American animators are trained to load their paper where the registration pegs are at the bottom of the page, not the top. One of the reasons Jack Slutzky taught us this at R.I.T. is that when multiple pages are stacked on each other, it allows you to flip more pages with your hand and it makes the flipping easier (one point of flipping through the pages is to see the progression of motion between the keyframes and inbetweens so you get the motion right).
2. Another interesting note is that most American animation bond is 12.5 inches by 10.5 inches. Most of the Japanese animation production drawings and cels I have seen are approximately 10.5 inches by 9.5 inches. I don't know why this is. The only other size of animation bond I've seen for sale here in the States is the standard letter size (8.5"x11"). Something to ponder. Is it a filming process issue with the cameras they use? Is it something that just became a standard from those days of animation shortly after the end of WWII when resources were scarce--they used a smaller page because it would be less resource-intensive to produce than a larger page? I think I'll ask Sami, she does a lot of work in the anime industry. If you haven't read my interview with her, I highly recommend looking it up. You can find it at: Samantha Inoue-Harte pt 1 and pt 2.
3. I'm going to put up another video. In it, you can see some of the special effects for this episode. This is another 'oddity' as I see a lot of characters and some backgrounds for sale by vendors, but rarely do I see special effects work for sale! It's only a couple drawings but would love to take some time and examine these with my copy of Tezuka Productions' animation book where they cover hand drawn special effects ('Effects - Lightning', page 100 of Tezuka School of Animation Vol. 1 Learning the Basics).

Okay, just heard back from Sami. She's at a convention this weekend but was kind enough to take a moment to answer my question. Turns out I was close, but not enough to get the proverbial cigar. According to her, it's a fiscal decision based upon the smaller budgets that Japanese productions have when compared to American productions. Apparently the larger-sized cels "are" available in Japan, however, the smaller cels allow the studios to save a couple pennies per cel when compared to the larger sized ones--meaning, when you're buying hundreds of cels, the smaller, less expensive cels would be a better fit within some production studios' budgets. And the money saved could be allocated somewhere else on the production. Hrm. Makes sense.

To work out a hypothetical example: CartoonSupplies.com has a 100 sheet pack of blank 12f (10.5"x12.5") clear cels for sale at $99.99. Considering that an average feature-length animated film could end up using tens of thousands of cels, that number clearly adds up quickly. Now, obviously, a production studio is going to be buying in bulk so the price per 100 cels is going to be lower--volume pricing and all that--but we'll keep it as simple as possible. Consider the following example:

You're making a short 2d hand drawn animated film of five minutes in duration.

• There are 60 seconds per minute (5 minutes x 60 seconds = 300 seconds).
• You're filming at 24 frames-per-second (24 fps x 300 seconds = 7200 frames).
• If you're shooting your animation on 3's--meaning every drawing is filmed three times. That's eight individual drawings per second or a total of 2400 drawings (7200 frames / 3 = 2400 drawings).

Now, you've decided to draw the characters for each scene on one production drawing, therefore you're using one page of animation bond. And you're going to use one animation cel placed over a single background painting when you film each frame. You're going to need 2400 clear acetate animation cels (assuming no mistakes were made requiring the cel to be thrown out). If you buy your cels at $99.99 per 100 cels, it's going to cost you $2,399.76 (plus tax and shipping). That's a good chunk of your budget for ink-and-paint. And we haven't even gotten into the costs of paint, paintbrushes, xerography transfer from the production drawing to the cel, and the cost of labor to do both xerography and cel painting.

If we extrapolate using the example above from a five-minute short film to a 75-minute animated feature (using the same specs just to keep the math simple), you're looking at $35,996.40 just to cover the costs of the animation cels. And that doesn't factor in mistakes during production or the fact that many features have multiple layers of characters and props and foreground elements all layered one-on-top of each other per shot! So, as the numbers add up for the cost of production materials, you can see how a couple pennies saved per cel, by using a smaller cel according to Sami, could help keep a film within budget. And you can see why some American studios in the past used to hire people to wash the acetate cels clean so they could be reused for other animated films.

Well, before I go any further down the rabbit hole of animation production minutiae, let's get back to the point of all this: that I encourage people to build professional relationships with vendors--especially if you're an animator (or future animator) who is serious about your craft. Even if you don't buy something every time you see them, it really pays dividends to maintain those relationships. I like to buy from Daniel and Mary Anne. They sell a quality product, they're very knowledgeable about their product line, and I feel very comfortable purchasing animation memorabilia from them--knowing that I'm getting an original product, not a knock-off. I'm not sure how prevalent counterfeit items are in the "animation art" industry, but on more than one occasion I've backed off from an eBay sale when I read the fine print and saw the words "serigraph" or "reproduction" in the description when the image and title were billed as if it were an animation production cel. And don't get me started about counterfeit products in the Japanese animation scene! One of the things that the now defunct ShutoCon did right was that they wouldn't allow vendors to sell counterfeit merch at their convention and they had presentations that taught fans how to recognize a counterfeit product. Now, let's be clear: I'm not knocking actual promotional art items, like serigraphs and lithographs--I actually have a couple in my collection from movie premieres and animation festivals. But it you're looking for an "actual" production drawing or cel that was used in the film, it pays to keep your eyes open so you know exactly what you're buying. Working with people who have a proven track record of trustworthiness makes this easier. 

Disney was giving out these lithographs at the OIAF one year

Another bonus is that when they know your buying habits, they'll keep an eye out for some of the more unique items -- like the set of layout designs from the Giant Robo OVA series (shown previously). Even though I only see them every couple of years, Daniel knows what I like and is able to guide me to the latest Giant Robo or Ghost in the Shell product that he's added to his store as well as to more mature animation production drawings and cels--what I mean is, animation that's geared to a more mature, adult audience (stuff in the PG-13 to R range), shows with more mature stories and storytelling, like the Simpsons, Aeon Flux, Ghost in the Shell or the various films of Ralph Bakshi.

As the industry continues to move away from a physical media "drawing and ink-and-paint" model to mostly digital, you're just not going to see much of this kind of animation memorabilia with newer productions. A lot of the "hand-drawn" animation here in the States is done digitally using software like ToonBoom or OpenToonz or something programmed in-house. In Japan, Retas Pro and OpenToonz are two of the programs used by studios. TVPaint is used all around the world. And then there are those studios and independents who use Adobe Creative Cloud. 

The water spirit from Rocks in my Pockets

Still, there are people working in the realm of 2d hand drawn animation with paper and pencil: like indie animators Bill Plympton and Signe Baumane. However, with their more recent feature films, they've been moving to a digital ink-and-paint model. Bill's 2013 film Cheatin' was the first feature where he used a digital ink-and-paint system to support his hand-drawn animation. And on her first feature film, Rocks in my Pockets, Signe also drew her characters by hand, then scanned them into Photoshop for digital clean-up and coloring before digitally compositing them with photos of her live model 3d set backgrounds.

Is the day approaching where the only animation memorabilia worth framing that we'll be able to purchase from newer films are these mass-produced serigraphs or lithographs printed from a specific shot in the movie? I would argue that if we're not already there, then the day isn't too far off in the future. And given how physical media deteriorates over time, it becomes more important to preserve these animation treasures from days long gone. For a reasonable price, I can own and preserve one of those rare moments of animation history where almost everything was done by hand using physical media. Unless they create a film by themselves, drawn, inked and painted by hand, most of the kids who are studying to be animators today will never know this experience: one where the film is in the can and there's a box of drawings and cels in the closet and they are secure in the knowledge that if the hard drive got corrupted or a software upgrade was incompatible with their old files, they could still recreate their entire film if they had to. Or maybe just make a couple bucks on the side from selling a part of their film in order to fund the next.

Single hand-drawn and colored frame from Joanna Priestley

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NOTE: While the cels, lithographs, and production drawings displayed in this blog post are my personal property (unless where otherwise noted), the images and animations are being provided here for informational and educational purposes. Any intellectual property, copyrights, and/or trademarks remain with their respective owners.

NOTE #2: The production drawing of Taarna charging forward with her sword drawn... the one being sold by eBay vendor "collect_this"? Yeah, I was the one who bought that drawing after this blog entry was posted. I'm now looking at having both Taarna production drawings framed. Editor's note 06/13/2022

Animated Thoughts: Moments of Serendipity

I needed more space in the bookshelves for my gaming collection. The plan was to buy a half-sized bookshelf and move my Dungeons & Dragons collection over to the other wall. Thus, I'd have almost an entire bookshelf where my BattleTech collection could expand instead of being split between two walls. Well, on Sunday, I purchased what I thought was a workable solution: a bookshelf with the correct height and width and more importantly a number of adjustable shelves. Only when I got it home and unpacked it, the shelving unit turned out to be scaled for DVDs or CDs.

Now normally that wouldn't be an issue since the bookshelves were adjustable. However, when I got it out of the box, both the sides of the unit and the shelves were only about six inches in depth. Therefore, my full-sized D&D books would stick out and would probably fall onto the floor.

Manga and Memories from R.I.T.

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the bottom shelf would work for the full-sized books in my bedroom's bookcase and the upper shelves would fit my manga/light-novel collection perfectly (I'm keeping up with Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Delicious in Dungeon, and Restaurant to Another World). All I had to do was swap out the two bookshelves and I was back in business! Or so I thought.

Assembling the new shelving unit was an exercise in frustration as it broke several times during the whole process. However, it was corner clamps and Gorilla Glue to the rescue! And within two-hours, I had the display all put together and ready to accept books. 

Here's where the moment of serendipity occurred. Despite the disappointments and frustrations of the previous two hours, I soldiered on. And while the glue was setting on the new shelving unit, I removed all the books from the old bookshelf so I could move it to my gaming room. And there it was. On the bottom shelf, wedged between the inside of the bookcase and my oversized copy of the Red Cross First Aid/CPR handbook was my original copy of Jack Slutzky's book Mindscapes.

The cover showed no signs of wear or fading. It was as pristine and crisp as the day I had bought it, minus a little bending at the binding from its first reading. It now rests on the shelf in my office, with the rest of my textbooks from R.I.T.--right next to the autographed copy of Mindscapes which I bought as a replacement last December.

If I had taken the new shelving unit back to the store or if I had tried to use the new shelves for my D&D books, it might have been years before I found my copy of Mindscapes. If I hadn't misplaced it in the first place, I wouldn't have bought a replacement copy -- which turned out to be signed by Jack himself.

Serendipity.

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Annies and Oscars, 2022 edition

It was a good day for animation.

This weekend was the 49th annual Annie Awards, a celebration of animation's highest honors presented by ASIFA Hollywood. And it was also the day that animation luminary Ron Diamond hosted a private screening of the Oscar nominated animated short films -- and members of ASIFA were invited!

Given the restrictions that the DIA's Detroit Film Theater were still imposing on those of us who couldn't safely get the jab or had natural immunity, making my yearly trip to the DFT to spend a day appreciating some art before watching the Academy Award nominated short animated film program, well, it wasn't going to happen.

Fortunately, it was Ron Diamond to the rescue! Ron runs the Animation Show of Shows, a yearly curated program of animated short films that gets shown at arthouse theaters and colleges all across the country. So, this year he had a program dedicated entirely to the Oscar animated shorts. And as a member of ASIFA Central, I was sent a code to their website where Ron opened with a discussion about the awards and the films we'd be watching, followed by the program, and bookended with live interviews with some of the filmmakers. It was a good start to the day!

Later that evening, the Annies were streamed on their website. Everything was pretty much pre-recorded since they wouldn't be live streaming from the Royce Theater again this year. But, it is what it is. At least we were able to enjoy the show online rather than not at all. If you didn't get the chance to watch the show during the first broadcast(?), it can be viewed on the online in its entirety at: Annie Awards - Watch It Live and you can also download this year's program book on the same page.

And, thus, my yearly 'random thoughts I had while watching the show':

• Still loving that zoetrope animation that opens the ceremony!
• Best Short Subject: Night Bus had my vote to win. Saw it at the Ottawa fest... really quirky film that I found myself getting into for both the technical production and the story.
  
• "2021 was a continuation of the ongoing pandemic stress, yet animation continued striving and successfully leading the entertainment industry. More animation is being produced today than ever before and that bodes well for all of us." Very encouraging words from ASIFA Hollywood President Sue Shakespeare.
  
• June Foray Award: Was very pleased to see Renzo and Sayoko Kinoshita get some recognition for all their work in the field of animation.
  
• Best Production Design in an Animated TV/Media Production:  Arcane!!!!! A good start for one of the best animated series I've ever seen.
• Best production Design in an Animated Feature Production: Y'know, I was really hoping for Belle.
• I like how the awards are moving at more of a steady clip since we don't have to watch people walk down to the front of the Royce theater and accept their award--and give an extended speech before being played off by music--but the virtual format does seem to lack a little luster and the pomp & circumstance of the live awards ceremony.
• Character Design in an Animated TV/Media Production: Arcane again! So happy to see them pull this award. So rarely do the films I love get recognition, I'm gonna start crying any minute now. :)
• Glenn Vlippu received the Special Achievement award--and is very well deserved.
• Really liked how Dina Sherman was in a different location every time when she announced the next award and its presenters. Seemed a little odd at first, but it really grows on you.
• Character Animation in an Animated Television/Media Production: goes to Arcane!!!!! Wow. Just... wow! Wouldn't it be awesome if Arcane took home every award in all nine categories it was nominated in?
• Hrm. Didn't realize that the Annies started back in '72. Knew June Foray was the driving force behind the awards, but 1972? Hrm. I'm sure I'd heard that before, it just never registered with me.
  
• Animated Effects in an Animated Television/Media Production... Arcane wins again. My jaw is on the floor!
  
• Yeah, I really need to watch the Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf animated feature and the Castlevania series this year... :o
• Animated Effects in an Animated Feature Production... Please oh please let it be Belle... aaaand... nope. :(
• Editing in an Animated TV/Media Production: What If...Ultron Won... My favorite episode from my favorite show in the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- So freaking awesome!!!
• One of the Winsor McKay Awards goes to Lillian Schwartz -- Wow. So many years later, so many advances in computer imagery, and her work still holds up. The mark of a master filmmaker.
  
• Another to Toshio Suzuki. Ah, the Annie Awards, one of the few awards shows where Anime actually gets some of the respect they deserve for their contributions to the art form. Toshio Suzuki. A titan in the industry but, like Isao Takahata before him, spends more time recognizing the people who work for and with him at Studio Ghibli. Man, such a class act.
• And the third to Ruben Akino whose body of work embodies so many of the pivotal films from those years when I was studying to become an animator. Watching those clips, it was like I was sitting in the theater just off campus during college and grad school all over again.
  
• Voice Acting in an Animated Television/Media Production: goes to Ella Purnell - HELL YES!!!!! Let's hear it for Jinx! Arcane is set to sweep the awards after all! Gonna have to watch the whole series again while I still have a little time before the Spring season of Anime is here.
• Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production: was really hoping for a win for John Leguizamo, easily one of the best character actors of our generation. I can't think of a single film of his that I've seen, live action or animated, where he didn't bring his 'A' game and produced a stellar performance.
  
• Writing in an Animated Television/Media Production: Another well deserved award for Arcane!!!
• Writing in an Animated Feature Production: Nope. Still hoping that Belle would get 'some' love during the ceremony. But, there's still the best Indie Feature.
• In Memoriam... always a tough segment to watch. Brenda Banks, Giannalberto Bendazzi, Jacques Drouin, we lost some real heavy hitters this past year and the community is diminished because of it.
  
• Wow!! They got Momoro Hosoda (the director of Belle) to present an awards category. Very cool. Not "Belle wins some awards" cool, but still, a nice consolation.
  
• Best General Audience Animated Television/Media Production: Hell yes!!! Another richly deserved award for Arcane!!!
• Tomm Moore is presenting for the Annies. Very cool. I still have my drawing/watercolor of Pangur Bán that he sent me back when I purchased the PAL version of Brendan and the Secret of Kells and had it shipped in from Ireland (this was before GKIDS picked it up for North American distribution). Think I'll get it framed this year.
  
• Storyboarding in an Animated Television/Media Production: Goes to Arcane! One more award and Arcane sweeps the Annies!!!!
• Directing in an Animated Television/Media Production: AND ARCANE SWEEPS EVERY CATEGORY THAT THEY'RE IN!!! Would've also been cool to see Love Death + Robots or Invincible get some love, but I'm so blown away about all the accolades for Arcane. It's so well deserved. And so refreshing to see it happen.
• So great to see John Leguizamo back at the Annies.
• Best Indie Feature: And no love for Belle. What a disappointment. A somber reminder that my tastes are usually way different than most of the viewing public and that we've got a long way to go before Japanese animation fully receives the recognition that it rightfully deserves. At least the DVD comes out in May. I'll get to watch it again and again in the privacy of my home theater.
  

My 'Pangur Bán' watercolor by
Tomm More of Cartoon Saloon

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