When I wrote Part 1, I originally intended to include this film as an example. But when I realized how much I was getting out of it, I decided to branch it off into its own separate study. It also inspired me to turn this into an indefinite series of posts. I don’t know when I’ll end it, but I know I’ll learn a lot. I plan to analyze some very old movies, real classics, so stay tuned for that.

I’m going to analyze a scene from the film, Sexy Beast (2000), starring Ben Kingsley as Don Logan, badass extraordinaire. First off let me say that if you haven’t seen this film, you need to. Make sure you also watch Ghandi (1982), also starring Ben Kingsley, and you will understand the measure of a good actor. Don Logan’s first scene uses The Unknown Principle I talked about in Part 1. This scene is a fantastic example of effectively establishing a villain, so I’m going to break the whole scene down so I can figure out what makes it work so well. Watch the scene below now.

I’ve combined all the Tarzan posts into this one. You can browse through the gallery below and pick the ones you like, or you can download this handy RAR archive with all the images in it. You’ll need to get WinRAR to unzip it. Enjoy, there’s some magnificent art work in here.

Like so many other accepted students before me, I was not able raise the funds to attend Cal Arts this September. Instead, I had to defer for a year. The school gives accepted students this option, and I can imagine a lot of people use it due to the difficulty in raising the funds. Despite the fantastic scholarship Cal Arts awarded me (I take back what I said earlier about the lack there of), and my own savings and loans, there still wasn’t enough to cover tuition. While it’s disappointing that I won’t get to start school with the fantastic people I got to know from Animated Buzz through the process of preparing our portfolios, I’m looking forward to next year, and I will be diligently preparing for my opportunity over the next year and a half.

This doesn’t really come as a surprise; I knew what I was getting into, but at least I can say I tried everything, to the extent of throwing myself under the bus according to some people, to make it happen. If you haven’t guessed, I’m referring to my Cartoon Brew appeal. A lot of positives came out of that, but it still amazed me the extent to which people can assume and make snap judgments. Maybe in that respect, I am naive. So here’s the lesson learned: A good deal of people naturally draw conclusions and assume the worst. People will tell you what you can and cannot do because it’s easy. From a few paragraphs of text on the internet, people will attempt to define you. You can’t listen to them. You have to follow your heart and do what you want to do. If the pioneers and revolutionists of our industry have taught us anything, it’s that nothing is impossible, it just seems that way (Raul da Silva). And while I wasn’t able to raise the funds to go this September, I have by no means failed at anything. I have networked with so many positive people in the industry that enjoy their work that I am more confident than ever moving forward.

So now what?

Well now I have about a year and a half of straight work ahead of me. Just like the nine months I put into preparing my accepted portfolio, learning to experiment with color and story in my figure drawing, I’m going to dedicate this time to similar intense study. Except this time, I’ll be studying animation and character design up the wazoo. I’ll also be doing a lot of film analysis, which I really enjoy. This all bodes well for the content of this blog, so stay tuned because I will be posting a lot of work in the coming year.

Ironically, this is actually quite an exciting time for me. I’m still aiming for the same goal as always, but now I have Cal Arts in my back pocket for next year. The one crucial element that I will be missing is being surrounded by like-minded peers. An environment like that is gold, because everyone pushes each other to their respective extremes. The absence of that will only make me work harder.

Check out these fantastic pencil tests uploaded by Victor Ens. Amazing!

I’ve posted a few examples of the type of work the NFB produces before, but I was recently reminded how innovative and broad their films are after re-reading Shamus Culhane’s, “Animation from Script to Screen.” Here’s a selection of NFB films done in various styles of animation that I think every animator should see. Being from Canada, I grew up on this stuff, and consider it part of the reason I got into animation. No matter how many times I saw one of these as a kid, my eyes were glued to the tube, and I never got tired of them.

Search your movie memories. Do you remember a character that just scared to crap out of you? You might have to go back to your childhood, a time of full imagination, when suspension of disbelief wasn’t just a concept brought on by good storytelling, it was all you knew. I myself have very clear memories of fear brought on by certain villains of the cinema. I’ve always wondered why they affected me so much, and so much more than others. I decided to study these villians and find out why they were so scary.

This will be the first of a series of posts I’ve been working on for some time. Before I dive in, I think a little specificity is in order here. I’m not just talking about your obvious evil mofos here. It’s blatantly obvious why The Witch King of Angmar is scary.

The same is true of Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, and the T-Rex from Jurassic Park (1993). They all have one pretty identifiable characteristic in common, they all look scary.

I think the scariest bad guys are the ones that don’t. They could easily be you or me, except somehow we know they are actually sadistic, pyschopathic, murderous S.O.B’s that are pure evil to the core. How do we know this? Acting is a big clue, more on that soon, but let’s look outside of acting. Dramatic music is also popular, most villains even have their own theme or sound effect, but let’s scratch that off the list of indicators as well. What else makes them evil? For example, through what techniques of cinematography can we identify a badass? Ah ha! Now we are talking in strictly visual terms, strictly film grammar.

When I was a kid the real baddies, the ones that scared the snot out of me, were characters like Hannibal Lecter, Max Cady, or Eddie Dutton from Unforgettable (1996). Now acting is without a doubt the biggest part of creating a successful villain. When I first started this research, it was hard to get past the magnificant acting. Villains really are the juiciest parts that require the best talent (Anthony Hopkins, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson to name a few). Animators are always after the villains too. To excell at creating a villain puts you in talented company (On a side note I’d recommend you pick up a copy of Frank and Ollie’s book, The Disney Villain, if you don’t have it. In the back there’s a list of all the Disney villains, and the talented men behind them). But a lot of the time, acting doesn’t even come into the equation before we already realize how scary some characters are. Usually a word isn’t even spoken before were aware of their threatening presence, and it all has to do with the way they’ve been introduced.

So how do you introduce a bad guy? Easy, don’t show him. The reason this works so well is because everyone has a natural, instinctual fear of the unknown. If we can’t fully see them, we are more alert and cautious, and the longer this plays out, the more badass they seem because we are naturally painting our own picture of how evil they are in our own minds. It’s a great way of letting the audience do the work for you. And when you add elements like great acting, and dramatic sound effects/scores, you’re in business. Here’s some examples:

Cape Fear (1991) opens on Max Cady doing dips in his cell. It starts with a tatted up guy working out, and zooms out to him being framed by the bars of his cell. Immediately we know he’s bad news.

This is the day he’s getting out of prison, which judging by the ominous thunder clouds and his intimidating walk off the prison grounds and right into the camera, is not a good thing for someone. Watch the movie to find out what happens.

Panning up from the feet is another way of not showing your bad guy right away. In Gangs of New York (2002) this is how Bill “The Butcher” is introduced:

Now this doesn’t always mean you’re looking at an evil character, but with the addition of quickly cutting between long, medium, and extreme close-up shots, the menacing quality of Bill the Butcher is established.

You can also use lighting to hide your villain, keeping him in anything from very low light to complete silhouette. In the first four minutes of The Departed (2006), we barely see Costello’s face:

At this point Costello is obviously a bad guy. Nobody in the audience or the film wants to mess with him. It isn’t until the main character, Colin, sees him as otherwise, that we see him in another light (pun intended):

But establishing a character as a villain doesn’t always happen in their first scene. In this situation, you are revealing a different side of a character, and you can do that in the same way visually. In The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Warden is introduced as a disciplinarian along with Captain Hadley in a couple of harmless medium shots. This doesn’t mean he’s evil, that’s his job.

Here’s the Warden’s second encounter with Andy, same thing:

But as his relationship with Andy sours, and we see how evil he can be, the shots change. Notice the slight up shots here. This is when Andy first steps out of line, and locks the Warden out of his own office:

This is when the Warden sends Andy to solitary for a month. A close up, slighty up shot, with a three quarter view. An angle we haven’t seen on him yet (Something is changing).

When the warden shows his true colors, we get a series of conventional extreme up/down shots that establish power. Andy is completely lit (good), while the Warden is in shadows (evil).

Now let’s bring acting back into the mix, because it’s often an extention of the unknown principle. In The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Dr. Hannibal Lecter is all about the unknown. He’s so creepy because nothing riles him up. He’s way too calm, and collected. Way too expressionless, and rigid. Here’s his introduction:

He barely moves:

He doesn’t blink:

He’s extremely focused, and is observing Clarice’s every move. He’s picking up so many details about her, while she knows next to nothing about him (outside of her dossier on him). We empathize with her, because that is just plain scary.

When he does emote we get this (Yikes!):

Go back and look at all of scenes I’ve mentioned, and you will notice how still and rigid the characters are. They are all devoid of any expressions, and they barely blink (Somewhere Michael Caine is smiling). They are all blank slates, and that’s intimidating.

The unkown is scary, whether it is achieved through acting or cintematography. It immediately gets our attention, and we have our emotional guard up until we know more. Until we are safe.

Shamus says….These are the books you should have:

The World of Animation
The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Cartoon Animation (The Collector’s Series)
Composing Pictures (Pssst….You can get that right here!)
Muybridge’s Complete Human and Animal Locomotion (1, 2, 3)
The Screenwriter’s Workbook (Revised Edition)
Computer Graphics
Special Effects in the Movies

Don’t know who Shamus is? Shame on you! You better click here, here, and here. Or watch the five part series on YouTube starting with the video below:

Here’s some more great photos. I have literally hundreds of these kinds of photos backed up on disk. The magical moments in the images below are what make life so damn amazing, and life is the only real inspiration for our art after all.

If you want to see more of this kind of stuff, follow this link. I’d recommend sorting by “All Time” and “All Time Average”.

If you thought I posted a lot in the last post, this one will definately set the bar. There’s about seventy five pieces of production art here all from Hunchback. If you enjoy this kind of stuff than you really need to pick up the Art Of books from Chronicle, Disney Editions, and Hyperion Press. A lot of them are out of print, but they’re worth the price you pay for them. I have just about every one ever made on every movie (toot, toot), and they aren’t going anywhere. They’re my little treasure on the bookshelf. Check sites like eBay, Abe Books, Alibris, and the Amazon Marketplace to find them.

Oh, and if you think I scanned all this stuff then you’re crazy. I know I scanned Composing Pictures, but these Art Of books are way too big and awkward to scan. Credit for getting these images to me goes to James Robertson of Iron Scythe fame. That goes for all I’ve posted in the last week, as well what I will eventually post in the coming weeks. James was nice enough to bestow his “vault” on me a couple of years ago, and since neither of us has posted it all, I figured it was about time it was shared.

Enjoy!

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When I was a teenager I went through a brief phase where I was crazy about Photography. I still love to see a good picture, and I’m very particular about my tastes. My recent education in Color and Design, and Painting at AAU has altered my tastes a little. But I’ve always loved Nudes (usually Black and White), and Wild Life pictures.

There’s a sort of beauty of form in Nudes, along with a tension while viewing them. It’s like you appreciate the general aesthetics of the image (composition, shape, etc) but it also appeals to you in a more human way, and you’re borderline aroused. It’s a great experience.

With Wild Life Photography on the other hand, it’s an intimacy with nature, those breathtaking closeups of tigers and other really wild animals are what does it for me the most. There the tension is danger, and the excitement that comes along with it. I’ll do a post of incredible wild life pictures later. For now take a look at these amazing nudes. These were all found on Photo.net.

Scroll down for the good stuff…

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