Edwin George Lutz

“ Where the artist wishes to present to the spectator an animated drawing of a waving banner, or flag, he makes a cycle of different drawings. If it is a flag, these drawings are made with undulating folds that pass the length of the flag as if it were agitated by the wind. Almost any sort of rippling effect, necessitating but three slightly different drawings, will satisfy the average audience. But if the artist wishes to do conscientious [156] work, he will give a little more attention to his planning and try to make it nearer actuality. ”

“ There is no need to consider physiological impossibilities of the human organism, the artist can make his characters spin as much as he pleases.
In a screen picture two boys will be seen fighting; at first they will parry a few blows, then suddenly begin to whirl around so that nothing is visible but a confused mass and an occasional detail like an arm or leg. It will be exactly like a revolving pinwheel. This is made on the film by having a drawing representing the boys as clinched and turning it around as if it were a pinwheel. ”

“ ON MOVEMENT IN THE HUMAN FIGURE Having now chronicled in a brief way the development of the cinematographic art, particularly in its relation to animated screen drawings, and having tried to give some notion of the fundamentals in their making with an account of their exhibition on the screen, it is in order now that we consider the matter of movement and its depiction by drawings that will give the visional synthesis of life. ”

“ The very first thing that a tyro in the animating art must learn is to draw a walk; or in other words, to become skilled in sketching the successive phases of limb and trunk movements so that they give in their order the appearance of walking when projected as a film.
Walking directly effected by the lower limbs calls into action the upper limbs too. The upper limbs act, as they swing from the shoulders, in concord with the legs, as counterpoises in maintaining [100] the equilibrium. ”

“ When it is remembered that an artist sometimes spends hours at a stretch photographing his numerous drawings for a cartoon film, and that all this time his head is but a few inches from the lights, this absence of heat is a desirable feature. ”

“ A single dummy would show but a mere mechanical turning, but by using several in different views, he gets a very good similitude of actuality in the wind twirling the hat around in a lively way. A little point to help the humor of the situation is that of having the hat hesitate, as it were, and give an extra spin immediately before it lands upon the head.
It isn’t always necessary for an artist to make a cycle or a series of drawings for a movement. For instance, he is showing a rather large face on the screen and it is intended that the eyes move. ”

“ The most frequent application that an animated cartoon artist makes of a vignetter is making cross dissolves, or causing one picture to blend into another. Imagine now that the idea to be expressed, through the medium of one of these cross dissolves, is that of a character standing in an attitude of reflection and supposed to be thinking of how he would look in a complete suit of armor. There will be two drawings: one with the figure in ordinary dress, and the other with him clad in the armor. ”

“ This idea of a cumulative chain of actions, increasing in force and resultant misfortune, is peculiarly adapted to animated drawings.
The animator, if he is a good draftsman, can manage his little picture people much easier than the theatrical manager does the members of his company. A great danger, nevertheless, is that the animator, with this facility of doing whatever he pleases with his characters, may overdo the matter. He must be careful that he does not create too much business for his actors, and so retard the sequence of those episodes proper to the plot. ”

“ There are innumerable things that the artist must think of while he is photographing his drawings, and one of the weighty ones is to have the lettering for any particular dialogue, or explanation, held long enough on the screen for it to be [175] read. Every studio has its own special rule as to the number of separate frames of a film to allow for a word. The only way to arrive at any conclusion as to how much film to take for any sentence in a balloon, or on a title, is to have some one read it and then time this reading. ”

“ An understanding of the principles underlying locomotion in man—walking or running—is an important matter to consider in this art. When an artist knows the basic facts of movement in the human figure, he will more readily comprehend animal locomotion and all other movements in general.
All forms of motion are pertinent as studies for the animator, and the all-important study is that of the human organism. ”

“ In other words, the ordinary camera takes about as much as our eyes appreciate, while the fast camera records on a length of film many more attitudes during the course of the given activity than the unaided eye can ever hope to see. ”

“ Artists when they begin to make drawings for screen pictures find a new interest in studying movement. In the study of art the student gives some attention, of course, to this question of movement. Usually, though, the study is not discriminating, nor thorough. But to become skilled in animating involves a thoughtful and analytic inquiry into the subject. If the artist is a real student of the subject its consideration will be more engrossing than the more or less slight study given to the planning of the single isolated phases, or attitudes, of action in ordinary pictorial work. ”

“ When quite sure that the blue marks will not photograph, the artist begins his drawing. It is not a difficult task that he has before him—he merely inks his previously drawn lines little by little. Each stroke of the pen, after it has been made, is photographed. If the ink lines are short the movement on the screen will be very slow, and if they are long the movement will be very rapid. And, again, whether the artist turns the camera handle once, twice, or three times for each pen stroke has its effect upon the speed with which the lines grow on the screen. ”

“ A FEW OF THE DRAWINGS USED IN THE MAKING OF A FILM TO SHOW A GASOLENE-ENGINE IN OPERATION.
On this subject of animating machinery, it is an interesting fact to note that as early as 1860, Desvignes, who invented one form of the zootrope, is recorded as having made a series of pictures for his optical instrument that showed a steam-engine in motion.
The teaching of history could be made still more interesting than it is by series of changing maps. Such maps would show, as their outlines changed, the growth or modification of a country as affected by events of history. ”

“ There are speeds in which the footprints coincide. In a more rapid pace than a walk, the imprint of the hind foot is farther forward than that of the forefoot. As the speed increases the stride lengthens and the footprints are much farther in advance.
In a certain type of humorous animation—the panorama—to be explained in a succeeding chapter, the artist is quite satisfied with his animation of a quadruped if a lively bewildering effect of agitated limbs is produced on the screen. This bewildering blur has after all a resemblance to that which the eye sees in rapidly running animals ”

“ The thaumatrope illustrates the persistence of vision in a very elementary way. Simply explained, the face of one side of the disk with its design is before the eye, the design impresses its true image upon the retina, the disk turns away and the picture disappears, but its after-image remains on the retina. The disk having turned, brings the other picture into view. Its true image is impressed upon the retina to blend with the [18] after-image of the first picture. In rapid sequence this turning continues and the two images commingle to give the fantasy of a perfect design. ”

“ Perhaps the principles of unity and variety—two essentials of any art work—enter into the matter. The variety in the uniforms of the different sections satisfies the eye, and the unity of the marching pleases the mind. ”

“ The principles of perspective are applied in the drawing of birds as well as in the picturing of objects.
The mode, generally, of making these strong black-and-white effects is to have the figures and moving parts of separate units to be arranged under the camera in connection with a simple scene drawn in white, or gray, on a black ground. The figures of animals are made as dummies, with [88] jointed limbs. This makes it possible to put them into the various positions necessary for giving the illusion of life as they are moved about over the background. ”

“ The speed of the ordinary camera, as we know, moves during every second but one foot of film and on which sixteen separate photographs are made. Now, in one type of camera for analysis of motion photography, eight times more film is moved with a corresponding increase in the number of separate pictures taken on it during this same time of one second. To take a specific movement of a model lasting one second: the ordinary camera catches sixteen phases of it, but the extra-rapid camera takes about one hundred and twenty-eight separate pictures of as many corresponding separate phases. ”

“ An artist intends to draw the picture of a man crawling on his hands and knees. Before beginning to work, the artist will visualize the movement if he can, if not, try it by personal experiment. Then he will see that when the right hand, we will say, is lifted to go forward, immediately the left knee leaves the floor and the two limbs—the right arm and the left leg—advance at the same time. ”

“ But an artist doesn’t make anywhere near as many drawings as that for a reel of this length, and of all the talents required by any one going into this branch of art, none is so important as that of the skill to plan the work so that the lowest possible number of drawings need be made for any particular scenario. ”

“ The general practice relative to taking motion-pictures is to have one-half foot of film move along for each turn of the camera handle. Eight separate pictures are made on this one-half foot of film. But in a camera that the animated cartoon artist uses, but one turn of the handle for each picture is the method. In most cameras the gearing can be changed to operate either way. To photograph drawings in making animated films a good reliable instrument is necessary, and requirements to the purpose should be thought of in selecting one. ”

“ The humorous proceeding operated so that any individual member of the audience was not compelled to shake or be agitated by laughter all the time, but could slacken up and rest rhythmically.
A cycle of drawings, like those above, used in turn and repeated for a time will give the screen illusion of a man spinning like a top. ”

“ Foreground details of a pictorial composition help the animator in several ways. Their inertness, for one thing, affords a contrast to the moving figure.
This feature of a picture is drawn on celluloid that is placed on top of the rest of the set having to do with the particular animation. It is possible, though, for an artist, if he is dexterous, to fasten this inert foreground to the under-side of the glass in the frame which is pressed down over the drawings during the photography. The foreground feature, of course, is cut out in silhouette and fastened with an adhesive like rubber cement. ”

“ It is very certain that there are some forms of motion productive of laughter that do not imitate actions natural to the human organism, but seem to acquire their power of risibility from their resemblance to mechanical motion. This is on the order of the notion that Bergson has elaborated upon in his treatise in explanation of the comic. He states, in substance, as one law of the ludicrous, that the human body appears laughable when its movements give a similitude of a machine in operation. ”

“ In the walking movement of a bird the method of getting the different phases will be the same as that of planning a walk for the human figure. Particularly, too, must [142] the artist observe in the bird’s walk, the middle phases in which one leg crosses the vertical of the body to go forward for the implanting of its foot upon the ground.
With respect to the study of wing movement in flying birds, it is interesting to note that the Japanese artist apprehended the various positions that wings took in flying before the fact was demonstrated by photography. ”

“ The true artist, in keeping with his talent for creative work, will be disposed to devise helpful contrivances or expedients to lighten irksome and monotonous details arising in this art. And in addition to the possession of this talent, and that of good draftsmanship, he must be quick in deciding on the best means of economizing labor, so that he can spend more time where thorough drawing is needed. ”

“ If the animator is planning to walk a figure [110] across the field of the screen, there is one matter in the representation that he punctiliously takes heed of. It is this: to have the trunk rise as it is in turn supported upon one rigid leg and then upon the other, and to show that it falls slightly when the two limbs are outstretched at their extreme positions. In this alternating rise and fall of the trunk in walking, the head can be observed as describing a wave. ”

“ Besides photographs, an ingenious auxiliary, as a help in study, would be a little cardboard jointed model of an animal. Say it is one to represent a horse, it can be employed by moving the limbs about in their order as they successively make the steps while the artist selects from a series of photographs a cycle of positions for a movement. In making a jointed cut-out model, however, and fastening the limbs by pivoting pins, it is well to remember that the model can be approximate only. ”

“ We are aware of this in looking at a distant airplane high up in the sky that we know is going very fast but seems as though it is going very slowly. And at night an illuminated railway-train in the valley below us, when we are on an elevation, seems to creep along like a snail. ”

“ A camera has a light-tight compartment within which a fresh strip of film passes and stops intermittently back of a lens that is focussed on a subject, a rotating shutter with an open and an opaque section makes the exposure. (When the strip of film is developed it is known as the negative.) (2) A printer pulls the negative, together with a fresh strip of film in contact with it, into place by an intermittent mechanism before a strong light. A rotating shutter flashes the light on and off. (The new piece of film, when it is developed and the pictures are brought out, is known as the positive.) ”

“ In a rapid walk of a horse a phase of movement that is apprehended by the eye is the lifting of a forefoot and then the immediate impact of the hind limb of the same side as it nearly falls into the impression left by the fore foot. ”

“ Often there is a question as to the number of drawings necessary for a movement. If a hand, for example, is to be moved from the side of the thigh to the head and then to touch the brim of the hat, one single position half-way between the two extreme ones may do for some swift action in a humorous cartoon, but if it is for a slower action it should have at least three positions between the extremes. ”

“ There is no special type of structure for supporting the camera above the board upon which the drawings are placed for photography. An artist contemplating embarking upon this line of work, and intending to carry on the whole process from the beginning to the time when he hands the exposed film to the laboratory for development, will have a chance to put any inventive ability that he may have into practice in designing a framework for the purpose. ”

“ As has been explained, an artist rarely finishes an entire set of drawings for a film without help, but has a staff of helpers. It can be well understood, then, that an essential to success is that the members of this staff keep the same quality of line in all the drawings. One of the difficulties in a staff of helpers is that of keeping a uniformity of portraiture in the characters. And because the circular lineaments are easy to trace that is the reason why they are chosen to form the basis for the details of a face. ”