I start by listening to the track in loops of one second. As the loop plays back, I jot down the sounds and mouth shapes being made on a chart listing each frame (0-1, 0-2, 0-3…0-6, 1-1, etc).

The storyboard usually has the major dialogue beats mapped out, so I thumbnail the key frames from that and consider whether any others should be added.

The key frames in my work come from the stress in the voice. Every major action is designed to link up with a point of emphasis in the voice. If I respect each frame and look for ways to ride the flow of the voice track with smaller gestures — the opening and closing of a clenched hand, the raising of the eyebrows, a shift in posture — the end result is so tightly tied to the audio that the relatively low frame rate is acceptable to the eye.

I think of the performance as a kind of choreographed dance. Our characters often talk for as long as thirty seconds without the camera ever moving or cutting. Their performance must be compelling, without gaps or redundancy.

The following video is the finished animation for the sequence shown above. As you can see, I push the finished drawing past what I’ve indicated in the thumbnail. The biggest addition in this sequence was the shifting of his weight and darting looks over the shoulder. I also made an effort to push the composition of the movement, making the action read more clearly through silhouette.

Everyone has different processes and preferences when it comes to planning animation. What are yours? Do you have a frame rate that you swear by? Let me know in the comments!

For optimal playback, download the Quicktime to your desktop.

Mike and Tim at Annecy

Hello all. June has been a very busy month for Mike and I, and it started off with a bang: the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. “Q&A” had it’s European premiere at this prestigious annual event which takes place in some of the most breathtaking scenery I can imagine. The festival draws top animators and animation fans from all over the world to a town set beside a giant blue lake at the foot of the Alps. There were parties every afternoon and evening, film screenings all over town and a general spirit of friendliness among the people we met.

We were pleased to have several of our New York friends there to share the good times: the Krause brothers, Erin Kilkenny, Signe Baumane, Amid Amidi, Jen Oxley & Tone Thyne, PES and Bill Plympton. We also met some of our personal animation heroes: Cordell Barker, Nick Park, Adam Elliot and Paul Fierlinger to name a few.

Mike and I enjoyed watching “Q&A” in Le Grand Salle, the festival’s “center stage”. Compared with American audiences, there was a lot less laughter from the mostly French crowd. But as we learned, a quiet audience may be enjoying the film just as much as a boisterous audience. There were plenty of comments that indicated the film had really made an impact. People remarked on the warmth and unusual honesty they saw in Sarah as a mother, as well as the exceptional intelligence and curiosity of Joshua. I was slightly surprised to be approached several times during the week for drawings of Joshua by boys about the age he would have been when the recording was made. Up till now we’ve had plenty of positive feedback from adults, but we will be extremely pleased if this turns out to be a film that kids really enjoy too.

Outside of the more formal events, there was a lot of fun to be had in Annecy. A party sponsored by Autodesk at an upscale bowling alley on Tuesday night turned into one of the most furious dance floors I’ve ever seen. Bill Plympton and the inimitable Nancy Phelps continued the tradition of Annecy Plus: an outdoor screening of films with live music during the intermissions, free-flowing beer and a small, chatty crowd. There were parties thrown by the Danish, the Finnish, the Belgians, parties on boats, parties in gardens, parties in swanky hotels. There was always something to do.

Truly, all good things must come to an end. We were worn out and ready to return by the end of our stay but had a terrific time and would be thrilled to return any time they’ll have us!

Many thanks to Brett Thompson, our friend and President of ASIFA-Atlanta, for sharing most of these photos.

Tim, Will Krause and the always enthusiastic Brett Thompson enjoy some sunshine

Mike and Tim at a directors interview (photo by Alexandre Dubosc)

Bill, Nancy, Signe and the band at Annecy Plus

Self Portrait, 1931

I always envy the ability of a great sculptor to create a riveting piece from a single figure or a small, tightly composed group. No background, no color. Just masses composed one next to the other. Few sculptors have ever done this with the kind of imposing presence that Ivan Mestrovic brought to his work.

I know very little about him other than what can be found on Wikipedia, except that he was an artist-in-residence at Notre Dame while my father was an art student there. I can still remember visiting the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus and my father pointing out his dominating Pieta. Unfortunately, the Pieta posted below is not the same, but his forms are always large, dramatic and riveting. For years this was the only sculpture by Mestrovic I’d seen until I came across a very worn out catalogue from a March 1955 show of his work in Paris. Unfortunately, the book is in French so I have no idea what any of it says, but the images are fantastic and I thought I’d share a few of them here. Hope you enjoy!

Mother of the Artist, 1910

Pieta, 1932

The Annunciation, 1913

Madonna and Infant, 1917

Rauch Bros. work inspired by W. H. Johnson

As mentioned here last week, the above image is from a new Rauch Brothers project for which we are using William H. Johnson’s work as our visual inspiration. Looking forward to diving in on this one!

A little festival news. As noted before on our Twitter page, “Q&A” will be playing at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival (June 8-13). Mike and I are thrilled to be showing at this prestigious annual event and will definitely be in attendance along with many of our great NYC animation friends (Signe Baumane, Alex Budokovsky and PES are three other NYers screening this year).

William H. Johnson

For the visual aesthetic of one of our upcoming projects, Rauch Bros. is looking at the work of William H. Johnson.

Born in Florence, South Carolina in 1901, Johnson took off for Harlem in 1918 and immediately became involved in the community of artists that was beginning to bloom at that time. He was a painter of African American life and chronicled the excitement of Harlem, the experience of blacks fighting in WWII, the struggle of sharecroppers, the power of great leaders and the dignity of ordinary lives. Some of my favorite paintings of his (see Mount Calvary and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot below) put a new face on Christian traditions.

His personal history has heavy doses of tragedy: the death of his wife, wandering through Europe with all of his paintings tied to a cart, sleeping under bridges and mental illness. Much of his work has been lost or damaged because of this complicated history, his career cut relatively short, and his final years were spent in an institution. He died in 1970. Fisk University holds a great deal of his work and a major retrospective was organized by the National Museum of American Art in 1991.

I am a huge fan of his bright colors, strong, playful compositions and knack for personalities. If we can squeeze even a drop of Johnson into our work, I’d be thrilled.

Chain Gang, 1939

Jitterbugs, 1940-41

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot 1944

Li'l Sis, 1944

Mount Calvary, 1944

Moon Over Harlem, 1943-44

Underground Railroad, 1945

“Going Equipped” was perhaps the first animated film I had ever seen that used naturalistic human acting. The character on screen anxiously massages his palms, shifts his weight, and furrows his brow. Like any other animation, it’s still an abstraction of reality. It’s choreographed, it’s fabricated, it’s controlled. But this is a performance more about subtlety and nuance than dynamic movement, and that was revolutionary to me. A bizarre film for a 12-year-old to become obsessed with perhaps, but it blew me away.

What are some of your favorite performances in animation?

Besides “Brewer’s Bell Museum”, which Mike mentioned last week, we’ve been working on character designs for a series of new pieces that use the recorded stories of real people again. Below are a few early character designs for that project.

Welcome to the new Rauch Brothers Animation production blog. It’s been four months since our last post on the old blog, a long period of silence brought on by the demands of finishing “Q&A”. The film would have taken much longer to complete were it not for the contributions of our four interns – David Merrique, David Dubuc, Bethany Heimbigner and George Conkin. The Wonder From Down Under, Elliot Cowan, also provided some pixel pushing and a touch of animation assistance.  Many thanks to all of them.

The new film has been extremely well received and we look forward to seeing where it takes us. Opportunities to show our films and speak about the work continue to crop up. Just a few weeks ago I screened “Q&A” and “Germans in the Woods” at Little Airplane Productions, the studio I left just over a year ago before starting Rauch Brothers. The success of our work owes a great deal to my time at LAP, where I learned technical skills and gained a better understanding of the business of animation. It felt good to be back.

Mike and I are moving forward, developing several new projects with the same focus on great stories and rich art work we tried to bring to our first two projects.  In the next few weeks, we will be debuting a new studio site, studio reel and a special preview clip from “Q&A”. Looking forward to a great 2009!