Animation Notes From Ollie Johnston and John Lasseter

The passing of legendary Disney animator Ollie Johnston has stirred a lot of emotion, memories, and discussion among animators and animation fans. In that spirit fellow Minnesotan Robbie Halvorson sent me a link to some of Ollie’s notes on animation. The notes came from Disney animator G. Scott Owen Pixar’s John Lasseter, who writes:
When I [...]

“3-2-1 Penguins” Character Designs

This past Saturday morning NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! which I had the pleasure of working on. There were only two characters who needed to be designed, Admiral Sowmaster and his assistant, Cash. Both were to be pig-like aliens.

Here’s an early rough concept. The Admiral is on the left.

After turning in the first [...]

Disney Legend Ollie Johnston Passes Away

Animation legend Ollie Johnston, the last surviving member of Walt Disney’s famous “Nine Old Men”, passed away yesterday (April 14, 2008). He was 95.
Johnston was a phenomenal artist and widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest animators. In 1935 he was hired to work at the Disney studio alongside his pal Frank Thomas. They [...]

Fun Animated Shorts

Kelly McNutt, a talented Minneapolis animator whom I mentioned in yesterday’s post, has been working with Michael Jantze (creator of the comic strip The Norm) on some fun new animated shorts. The shorts are now viewable on the new Jantze Studios YouTube site:
At Your Service is a cartoon created for a client in the hotel/hospitality [...]

Interview With Disney Legend Bill Peet

Here’s an interview with Disney animation artist and legend Bill Peet. The interview is rather long and I haven’t had time to read it yet myself. But my friend Dan sent it to me and he’s usually pretty good at passing on interesting sites related to art and animation.

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs (part 2)

Continuing yesterday’s post…I also designed a future version of Zidgel, the ship’s captain. He’s big on vanity and low on brains. As an old man, er…penguin, at first he appears to have retained his youth and vigor. Then, through a series of gags we find that he is actually wearing a truss, false teeth, and [...]

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs (part 1)

On Saturday NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! for which I did some character designs. The plot centered around a malfunctioning time machine that sends the penguins’ space ship into the future where they meet their future selves. (The lesson for kids was about respecting the advice of our elders.)
The original penguins were [...]

Free Animation eBook!

Award winning animator Shawn Kelly has written a 90-page eBook called Animation Tips and Tricks. It’s hot off the presses, so to speak, and chock full of advice for aspiring animators. Best of all, it’s free! It’s being offered as a PDF download from the folks at Animation Mentor. Just sign up to download the [...]

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs

On Saturday NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! which I did some character design work for. This was a funny episode (directed by Tom Bancroft) with a lesson about the importance of inner beauty and character as opposed to vanity.

One of the characters I was asked to design was a cheezy George Hamilton-type alien [...]

My Schoolism.com Character Design Assignments

A few months ago I took a character design class online through Schoolism.com. The instructor was Stephen Silver, one of the top character designers working in animation today. Stephen’s video lectures were very inspirational and full of meaty content. I probably learned more from Stephen than I did from some of my professors when I [...]