Animator
Posted:
Nov 15, 2009, 12:40 AM
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Animation Art-Styles
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Here's some new-coined phrases for different animation art-styles along with the decade they originated or were most common, followed by examples.
Bubbleball (20's/30's) Felix the Cat (3 shorts by Van Beuren, 1936)
Naturalist (30's/40's) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney, 1938)
Freestyle (40's) Wolfie cartoons (Tex Avery/MGM, 1942-49)
Realist (40's) Superman (Fleischer, etc., early 1940's)
Abstract (50's/60's) Rocky & Bullwinkle Show (Jay Ward, 1959-64)
Sketchbook (60's/70's) The Jungle Book (Disney, 1967)
Psychadelic (70's) Star Wars Holiday Special (Nelvana, 1978)
Folklorist (70's/80's) The Hobbit (Rankin-Bass, 1977)
Neo-Traditional (80's/90's) The Great Mouse Detective (Disney, 1986)
Neo-Abstract (90's/00's) Prince of Egypt (DreamWorks, 1998)
HodgePodge (90's/00's) SpongeBob SquarePants (Nickelodeon, 1999-present)
Compumation (90's/00's) Asterix and the Vikings (A-Film, 2006)
Digital Puppet (90's/00's) Astro Boy (Imagi, 2009)
NittyGritty (00's) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Square Pictures, 2001)
Digitoon (10's) Rapunzel (Disney, 2010)
*Compumation- 2D/3D
*Digitoon- 3D/2D
*Digital Puppet- 3D (CGI)
*NittyGritty- digital performance capture (remniscent of PC fighting games)
*HodgePodge- mixture of new and retro styles (for instance, SpongeBob is abstract/bubbleball)
*Other terms in use- flash animation, claymation, Japanimation
(This post was edited by Gareth708 on Nov 15, 2009, 12:41 AM)
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Animator
Posted:
Nov 22, 2009, 8:24 PM
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Forgot I was going to mention "An American Tail" for neo-traditional (since I used several Disneys already), but many of the examples are fairly random anyway.
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Zinc Saucier
Posted:
Nov 22, 2009, 9:55 PM
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Could you clarify the sources you have for these terms? Are they industry, fandom-specific, personal, etc?
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Animator
Posted:
Nov 22, 2009, 11:49 PM
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I just made them up. Thought it'd be easier than saying the 'style in this-or-that movie'.
Curious for input: alternate names, additional styles, whatever.
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Zinc Saucier
Posted:
Nov 23, 2009, 12:09 PM
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I'll sticky this... let's try and find a definite set of terms that everyone can use, maybe pare down that list or redefine (to be tighter) some on there so that we can establish a reference list term- sort of a glossary for people to avail themselves of.
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Animator
Posted:
Nov 24, 2009, 12:47 AM
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'Kay. Thanks.
The phrases themselves are kinda self-descriptive. Several were defined more clearly below. The decade dates show when it started or was most prevalent, the date after each example is when the example itself came out. The examples provide a visual reference.
There's certainly many cross-overs, but these seem to be the main distinct styles. Perhaps there's more. Try thinking of different cartoons and what style they were done in, that's the best way to get a feel for it.
The idea of course is not to over-catagorize, but simply provide a basic reference. Heck, perhaps some of these great styles died out partly because they didn't have a name!
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Animator
Posted:
Dec 2, 2009, 7:44 PM
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By the way, these nick-names and catagories are certainly not absolute. Anyone think of some better nick-names or already existing ones? What about other specific styles?
There's obviously quite a spectrum within the 'sketchbook' style from Disney's films like The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmations, Robin Hood, and the Rescuers, to the kind of sketchy style often seen in animation festivals, for example. Perhaps they need a differentiation.
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Animator
Posted:
Dec 19, 2009, 1:38 AM
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More examples..
Naturalist: Brer Rabbit (Song of the South), Roger Rabbit
Bubbleball: Betty Boop, 'Big Eyes'-style Japanimation
Freestyle: Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (Bakshi '87 version), Animaniacs
Realist: Sunbow/Filmation action toons (GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, Star Trek, etc.), Fire & Ice
Abstract: UPA 50's cartoons, Hannah-Barbera 60's cartoons
Sketchbook: The Rescuers, Bon Voyage Charlie Brown
Psychadelic: Fat Albert, Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure
Folkloric: Return of the King, The Last Unicorn
HodgePodge: The Simpsons, most flash-animation
Neo-Traditional: The Little Mermaid, Rock & Rule
Neo-Abstract: Pocahontas, 90's/00's Batman/Superman,etc. (starting w/ 'Batman the Animated Series')
Compumation: The Princess and the Frog, Treasure Planet
Digitoon Puppet: (new form) Rapunzel
Digital Puppet: Toy Story, Ratatuoille
NittyGritty: Beowulf, Disney's A Christmas Carol
*Notes
Some works have more than one style side-by-side, so I go by the style most predominant in that work.
For example-
Gulliver's Travels (1939): Bubbleball, only Gulliver himself in realism
Cinderella: Naturalist, with Cinderella and Prince in realism and occassional abstract background
Hannah-Barbera's 60's cartoons: Abstract, characters sketchbook style + abstract, backgrounds mostly abstract
Mighty Mouse ('87 version from example): Freestyle, characters freestyle, backgrounds abstract + freestyle
Darkwing Duck: Neo-Traditional (varies by studio), characters neo-traditional + freestyle, backgrounds neo-traditional + abstract
Prince of Egypt: Neo-Abstract, characters neo-abstract, backgrounds neo-abstract + compumation
**Side Note
Notice how with some compumation (The Princess and the Frog and Asterix and the Vikings, for instance) some of the characters' and objects' outlines are often a darker shade of whatever color they're surrounding. Seems to be a new characteristic of these films. Anyone know the reason? Perhaps considered an asthetic, aided by the flexibility of 2D/3D coloring.
(This post was edited by Gareth708 on Dec 19, 2009, 1:44 AM)
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Animator
Posted:
Jan 17, 2010, 10:13 PM
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>>Challange:
Try to describe the art style of various cartoons not mentioned, particularly ones dificult to define, using the above terms or your own.
(no right or wrong answers necessarily, just your opinion).
(This post was edited by Gareth708 on Jan 17, 2010, 11:21 PM)
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Animator
Posted:
Jan 17, 2010, 11:30 PM
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It kind of goes without saying that studios producing theatrical shorts for long periods changed their styles over the decades.
Mini-Challenge: How would you describe the changes in art styles, chronologically, for theatrical shorts that spanned several eras in animation (such as involving Disney characters or the Looney Tunes gang)?
*Note: On the second list of examples I changed 'Digitoon' to 'Digitoon Puppet', but now back to just 'Digitoon' after seeing Disney's recent improvements for this new upcoming style.
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Member
Posted:
Mar 9, 2010, 10:08 AM
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I don't understand whats sketchbook?
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Animator
Posted:
Mar 12, 2010, 5:33 PM
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Thanks for asking..
‘Sketchbook’ is one of the terms I suggested earlier to describe different styles of animation and makes reference to the sketchbooks artists sometimes carry around with them to capture ideas from everyday experiences or on outings for doodling, or for sketching new ideas as they come to them. I thought it a fitting term for cartoons with more of a rough-draft, unpolished look to the line art as part of their aesthetic appeal. When you think about it, there’s quite a variety within this one category.
By the way, all these terms and designations are open to constructive criticism and other suggestions.
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Directing Animator
Posted:
Apr 24, 2010, 12:36 PM
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Not all of the characters in Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were actual puppets; so why the designation, "digital puppet"?
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"I'd like to cover you with furs and automobiles!"
(This post was edited by zavkram on Apr 24, 2010, 1:03 PM)
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Directing Animator
Posted:
Apr 25, 2010, 12:41 PM
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It's not enough to compile a list of terms and just list arbitrary examples.
You need to clearly define exactly what you mean when you use terms like "Naturalist"... what criteria are you using when you select your examples?
For instance, how exactly does "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" qualify as "Naturalist" within the same vein as the "Brer Rabbit" sequences in "Song of the South" and "Bambi"? It would help if you could illustrate your points with frame-grabs.
The list as you have it right now is too long and confusing. What exactly does "Digitoon" mean, and how does it differ from "Digital Puppet"?
For "Sketchbook" you do seem to have at least a definition of what it entails; but how do you determine which films fit into this category? You mention both "The Rescuers" and the "Charlie Brown" as examples, but what exactly is it that these two examples have in common?
"The Rescuers" and every previous Disney animated feature that came before it; starting with "101 Dalmatians" employed the xerox technique of photocopying finished animation drawings directly onto cels. This completely bypassed the need for hand-inking those cels and also preserved the roughness of line inherent in the original drawings.
Do the "Peanuts" TV specials and films also employ the xerox technique, or are the cels hand-inked and painted in the traditional manner of Golden Age Hollywood? You have to be specific.
When you say "Abstract", are you referring to the animation or to the layouts and backgrounds, or both. UPA in the late 1940's and the 50's used a lot of abstract backgrounds; but so did some of the 1940's WB cartoons of Chuck Jones (I'm thinking specifically of those that had layouts by John McGrew)
Also, many of the WB cartoons of the 1950's used UPA-style backgrounds but had full animation. The WB characters also retained, more or less, their appearances that were codified in the model sheets of the mid-1940's.
So, again, what is it exactly about the UPA cartoons of the 1950's and the H-B cartoons of the 60's that makes them both "abstract"?
The one-piece construction of character faces in the H-B cartoons was heavily influenced by Alex Lovy; who had previously worked at the Lantz Studio. You see similar character design in such MGM Tex Avery cartoons as "Field and Scream" and "Dixieland Droopy" (I'm not sure if Ed Benedict was responsible for those designs or not). Would all of these examples I've just mentioned also qualify as "abstract"? If not, why?
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"I'd like to cover you with furs and automobiles!"
(This post was edited by zavkram on Apr 25, 2010, 1:02 PM)
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Animator
Posted:
May 6, 2010, 9:48 PM
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Thanks for your questions.
I came up with the idea of distinguishing different animation art styles just for fun. I’m definitely not an expert, so I appreciate the input, you sound really knowledgeable.
My designations aren’t based on the production techniques, only the appearance of the final art. With the fully computer-animated categories, however, each technique is also its own specific style, as follows:
Non photo-realistic CGI (the new format created for Tangled): ‘Digitoon’
Current mainstream CGI: ‘Digital Puppetry’
Motion-capture: ‘Nitty-Gritty’
‘Digital Puppetry’ distinguishes the appearance of CG character animation from the look and feel of hand drawn characters.
The terms for hand drawn animation all likewise describe the appearance of the final art:
‘Naturalist’: a traditional or natural style of animation (has nothing to do with whether there’s a nature theme, but the art style itself). Decided to combine this term with ‘Neo-traditional’ because they’re basically the same. I actually didn’t use Bambi as an example for Naturalist because, though I’d definitely classify it as predominately Naturalist, it’s not a perfect example since it occasionally uses Impressionist-influenced (abstract) backgrounds in some of the close-ups, albeit a ‘naturalist abstract’ rather than the exaggerated kind seen in other cartoons.
‘Bubbleball’ utilizes cute, roundish-looking characters and sometimes similar looking backgrounds.
‘Freestyle’ uses stretchy/bouncy looking characters and sometimes similar backgrounds. Freestyle is rubbery-yet-stylized, in other words a very flexible, expressive, bouncy, stretched out version of a traditional looking Naturalist style. Lots of extra ‘squash-and-stretch’.
‘Sketchbook’ uses sketchy/sketchbook style characters and often similar backgrounds. I’d say Sketchbook style can be either the roughness of the line content as in the Disney examples (101 Dalmatians, etc.) or having a simple, sketchy appearance to the art, as in the Charlie Brown film example, the style itself basically being that of the comic strip (not that all comic strips are in sketchbook style, the contemporary version of Garfield, for example, is Bubbleball).
‘Realism’ is an aim at intentionally realistic-looking characters and backgrounds, to the point of feeling more surreal (in a super hero comic book sense) rather than necessarily natural, per se. The emphasis, or exaggeration, is on structural aspects. This would be the ‘nitty-gritty’ style of hand drawn animation, but less so than motion-capture, because the hand drawn element retains more naturalism than computer generated imagery.
‘Folkloric’: has the appearance of being from a book of folktales, very organic, flowing, intentionally ancient and mystical looking.
‘Psychedelic’: has a psychedelic look, like some of the art that was around in the 60’s and 70’s. An full-blown example is the original Yellow Submarine hand drawn film.
Folkloric and Psychedelic are the least common styles and have rarely been produced outside the time period this kind of art was culturally popular (one exception is in the Christmas Films series, ‘Testament’, where the ‘Jonah’ and ‘Creation and the Flood’ episodes are done in a rich folkloric style).
You’re right, that some cartoons have the characters in one style and their backgrounds in another, thus it’s not always easy to pinpoint a cartoon to one specific style, but you can still see the different components. I gave some examples of this in the notes on my 6th post. The reason I chose UPA 50’s and Hannah-Barbera 60’s cartoons for an example of ‘Abstract’ was that the characters themselves also had some abstraction to them, not just the backgrounds.
Like you mentioned, there’s examples of Looney Tunes/Warner Bros. shorts that have more traditional styled characters with backgrounds that are 100% abstract, thereby splitting the styles 50/50 between character style and background style. In cases like this, I’d say character style carries the greater weight in determining the overall predominant style of the cartoon. Yet such contrast between characters and background really calls for an additional category, ‘Hybrid’, to accurately describe these types of cartoons. ‘Hodgepodge’ is a mixture of cartoon styles too blended to really fit into a single existing category. ‘Hybrid’ thus could be used to describe distinct styles used side-by-side within the same cartoon, rather than a fusion of styles as in Hodgepodge.
The two cartoons you mentioned, Tex Avery’s ‘Field and Scream’ and ‘Dixieland Droopy’ are both perfect examples of ‘Abstract’ style, both in background and character art. Of course, at an earlier period Tex Avery’s Wolfie cartoons, also starring Droopy, were a perfect example of Freestyle. The new segments for the much-later Tex Avery shows of the 90’s and some of Kennedy Studios’ work is a more extreme example of the Freestyle category at its wackiest, stretchiest and least-stylized.
Feel free to offer more examples you’d like me to pinpoint if you’re still unclear on some of the categories I’ve suggested. This kind of dialogue really helps solidify and illustrate these concepts. I’d have used photo references, but am not able to inline pictures when I upload them from my computer. Followed all the steps, just doesn’t work from my browsers for some reason.
(This post was edited by Gareth708 on May 6, 2010, 9:59 PM)
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Animator
Posted:
May 7, 2010, 11:04 AM
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By the way, the length of the original list was because there’s so many different styles. However, if we were to focus on hand drawn animation, and just use the technical terms for the three computer animated styles (‘CGI’, ‘motion-capture’, and ‘non photo-realistic’), that would help simplify things.
Also, the term ‘Compumation’ for 2D/3D could be dropped and just called 2D/3D, or better yet, simply go by the predominant style of the hand drawn element in these examples for classifying their art style.
I also dropped Neo-Abstract for the same reason I dropped the term Neo-Traditional. Neo-Abstract styles can be classified with the earlier (albeit different) Abstract styles. The difference between Abstract and Neo-Abstract is greater than the difference between Traditional and Neo-Traditional, but lumping the Abstract categories together would still work. If anything, the ‘Neo’ versions could be sub-categories.
Another possibility is for ‘HodgePodge’ and the newly-suggested ‘Hybrid’ to both be called ‘HodgePodge’. Hybrid could still be a sub-category term.
Thus the core terms would be as follows (pared down from 16 in number to 9):
Naturalist
Bubbleball
Freestyle
Realist
Abstract
Sketchbook
Psychedelic
Folkloric
HodgePodge
Another way of grouping them would be comparatively:
Naturalism vs. Realism-
Naturalist
Realist
Rounded vs. Stretchy-
Bubbleball
Freestyle
Abstract vs. Sketchy-
Abstract
Sketchbook
Pop Culture vs. Antiquity-
Psychedelic
Folkloric
Mixed vs. Side-by-Side-
HodgePodge
(Hybrid)
These 9 refined terms were all described in detail in the previous post. Hope this helps.
(This post was edited by Gareth708 on May 7, 2010, 11:11 AM)
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Animator
Posted:
Jun 11, 2010, 6:59 PM
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Quote from earlier..
“On the second list of examples I changed 'Digitoon' to 'Digitoon Puppet', but now back to just 'Digitoon' after seeing Disney's recent improvements for this new upcoming style.”
After watching Tangled’s new trailer, I’m ready to write off that category all together, with the rest of CG-only animation. Very disappointed with it. Maybe it will eventually become more organic and lifelike, but why not just stick to the real thing?
..“If we were to focus on hand drawn animation, and just use the technical terms for the three computer animated styles (‘CGI’, ‘motion-capture’, and ‘non photo-realistic’), that would help simplify things.”
Indeed.
(This post was edited by Gareth708 on Jun 11, 2010, 7:01 PM)
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Animator
Posted:
Dec 3, 2010, 1:53 PM
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..There was actually a later, more official trailer that came out that I liked, and of course once you've seen Tangled you realize it's a breakthrough in more natural, cartoon-like styles for CG, making it a very important new format and category.
Non-photo CG worked perfect for the type of story Tangled told and was impressive in many aspects. Rapunzel's hair came out nicely in this format, too. Many of these effects could be used in 2D/3D, though, without the playset-ish (albeit attractive) non-photo CG backgrounds and with hand drawn characters instead.
However, I think by now there's few who'd disagree that this new format, although far from perfect, is aesthetically sound enough to stand entirely on its own, existing side-by-side with hand drawn as an alternative style. It no longer feels merely trendy and surfacely-impressive, there is some depth and realness to all the visuals in every respect.
It's been important to look out for hand drawn not only as having been (strangely) the underdog, but because it's still more capable of the fullest aesthetics. Only now, the alternative is more bearable, and enjoyable in every way when made this well, using this new format.
(This post was edited by Gareth708 on Dec 3, 2010, 1:57 PM)
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