Storytelling, which is what animation is all about, is 95% play-acting and 5% genius. All of you pass the 5% genius prerequisite but as for play-acting, some of you have “grown up” and have gotten “serious” about drawing. People who grow up become sober, somber, sedate, and solemn and risk losing what it takes to become a performer, especially an illustrator of fantasy. Moviegoers want to be entertained. They don’t give a hoot about how well you can draw a model or copy a model sheet drawing. They want their amusement to whisk them out of their already too serious life. Most of them have forgotten how to play-act. Growing up takes its toll. But they seek to acquire it vicariously. So along comes the Disney cartoons, designed to whisk them into an hour or so of pure fantasy. Escape from the “normal” everyday sane world of serious living. And that’s where you come in — adding the visual stimuli to some very ingenious and amusing story material.
So what happens? You have to train for the job. What can be more serious than training, especially for something so illusive as drawing? Take studying to become a typist as a contrast. You learn the typewriter keyboard in two months. A couple of months of extensive training and you’re up to 45 or 50 words a minute. Two more months and you can put an ad in the paper, “Excellent typing done at home.” But after 6 months of art school, what kind of credentials can you come up with? Even after 4 or 5 years we still can’t capture a damned gesture. It’s enough to make you slightly solemn if not downright downcast. And being downcast is apt to filter down into your drawings, and another vicious circle is begun. But be of heart, the solution is not far. Attitude is a reversible coat. One side is seriousness and the other is play-acting. Wear the side out that gives pleasure, both to you and to your audience. Bring play-acting back into your life, at least into your drawing. You can be as sedate as your lifestyle calls for, but when it comes to cartooning you should be as flexible as a politician and as good at play-acting as a child (at least with pen and pencil).
Study this drawing by John Tenniel for excellent drawing and rendering and at the same time, playacting He was a cartoonist for the magazine Punch, but as you can see was a very fine artist to boot. He was even knighted for his high esteem.
Honore Daumier is an outstanding example of a fine artist who caricatured life, especially political life.
He had an eye for the grotesque. He saw through the protecting solemnity of the magistrate’s billowy black robes and found many of them to be mere windbags of the law. He concentrated the attention of the public upon their vapid expressions, upon their hideous Adam’s apples and their coarsened features.
Howard Simon — 500 Years of Art in Illustration
Gustave Dore was one of the finest and most prolific of artists, ever. There was not a mood or emotion he could not evoke. His humor stood out like a precious gem. Check out this illustration of a pompous woman and her (perhaps sycophantic) attendant. The gesture tells all. Even the horses prance along as if they were accompanied by some Leonard Bernstein music.
Energy and life flow from every line, shape, and form. Is it serious acting or is it play-acting?
And of course who was more adept at play-acting than the great Japanese artist Hokusai, a fine artist in the Japanese tradition, but also a master of grotesqueries and caricature. His facile brush probed all aspects of Japanese life and landscape.
The great Disney artist/animators of the past were well acquainted with these masters of drawing. Their works were inspirational not just for draftsmanship but also for acting — play-acting to be specific. Here are some drawings of the typical “Disney” style. They all have the same quality of play-acting that all great illustrators possessed.
Few know play-acting better than Ken Anderson. Ken went from animation into layout many years ago (now retired) and developed the function of visual presentation to a very high degree. He made numerous studies to inspire the directors, story men, layout men, and animators to squeeze out the maximum possibilities from each character and situation. Here is a page of his foxes. At the top is a rather serious realistic drawing of a fox by Ken Hultgren (The Art of Animal Drawing), as a contrast to Ken Anderson’s approach.
Is play-acting any different front just plain acting? Yes. Acting is where an actor acts out a part so the audience will believe it is the character he is portraying, and not himself. Play-acting is where a child, for instance, imagines he is someone else or somewhere else or in some otherworld situation and play-acts that he is actually experiencing it. Kids are fun to watch when they are doing this. They often become absolutely oblivious to their surroundings and are released of all ties with reality. They assume another personality and emote in ways completely foreign to their own. And there are no inhibitions — they go all out. It allows them to act out roles and make gestures that they might feel too self-conscious to do under normal circumstances. Play-acting is a magical emancipator in that respect.
I think that is why mimes make such good models. They are able to cross that line between everyday reality and some invented reality. Our mime models, Ken Martin and Judith Harding, do it. Craig Howell does it. He comes dressed as a carpenter, and with a tape, measures things on the walls and pretends to saw pieces of wood and to plane them. Kind of strange to see a grown man doing these things but a great opportunity for cartoonists to sketch someone at play-acting. Lalla Lezli is another great model who creates little vignettes of characters for us. She pouts, grimaces, leers, and sells plastic flowers shawled and bent over like an old lady. She will be modeling for us this week. So you who come to draw her, take advantage of her play-acting and allow a little of it to “rub off.”