How to use this Page

Studios around the world are now using TVPaint to craft their latest features.

The post How TVPaint Is Expanding Into Japan and Increasing Its Involvement In Feature Films appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Millions of people are likely to be familiar with the colorful cartoon bears that savor wiping their butts with softer than average toilet paper. Joanna Quinn is the character designer and animator behind the original commercials that feature the hand drawn versions of these characters. The Charmin bears have recently been transitioned to CGI, arguably resulting in less charm. There’s nothing wrong with the new ads, but they just can’t supply the human element that the graphite smeared drawings of the originals carried with them directly from Joanna’s pencil to the television screen. The production company responsible for the new approach is not Joanna’s, although she is credited as a creative consultant.

I’m curious about the progression that the designs took from Joanna’s pencil animation to Joanna’s animation cleaned up and colored in a slicker fashion (see the “new look” commercials on her website), to CG characters, and what the driving forces behind the decisions to change the art over time could have been.

If the original designs had been created with a slick commercial sheen from the beginning, like your average cereal mascot ad, then there would be nothing to discuss here. But because they started with the distinctive pencil work of Joanna Quinn, it seems strange to buff out the roughness and individuality over time until eventually removing her unique stamp from the work entirely. Is it simply an inevitable progression? An example of typical corporate decision making? Does slicker work sell more rolls?

Fortunately, besides creating commercials, Joanna’s larger interest is undoubtedly creating her personal, funny, and expressively drawn films. Above are stills from her short film Dreams and Desires: Family Ties which she directed and animated with additional animation by Andy McPherson.

On her Beryl Productions website you can see a selection of production art from some of her films such as the above layout drawings from Famous Fred, which is also available there to watch in full.

“Animation is a young man’s game,” Chuck Jones once said. There’s no question that animation is a labor-intensive art that requires mass quantities of energy and time. While it’s true that the majority of animation directors have directed a film by the age of 30, there are also a number of well known directors who started their careers later.

Directors like Pete Docter, John Kricfalusi and Bill Plympton didn’t begin directing films until they were in their 30s. Don Bluth, Winsor McCay and Frederic Back were late bloomers who embarked on directorial careers while in their 40s. Pioneering animator Emile Cohl didn’t make his first animated film, Fantasmagorie (1908), until he was 51 years old. Of course, that wasn’t just Cohl’s first film, but it is also considered by most historians to be the first true animated cartoon that anyone ever made.

Here is a cross-selection of 30 animation directors, past and present, and the age they were when their first professional film was released to the public.

1. Don Hertzfeldt (19 years old)
   Ah, L’Amour

Some of the biggest names in the UK animation scene are expressing their condolences on the occasion of Bob Godfrey’s passing. Here’s what they’re saying on Twitter:

Filmmaker Joanna Quinn (Body Beautiful, Britannia, Famous Fred, Dreams and Desires—Family Ties):

Peter Lord, Aardman co-founder and director of The Pirates! Band of Misfits:

Online animation filmmaker Cyriak:

Matt Jones, Pixar story artist:

Beakus Animation Production Studio:

Curtis Jobling, production designer of Bob the Builder and creator of Frankenstein’s Cat:

Filmmaker Chris Shepherd (Who I Am And What I Want, Dad’s Dead):

Paul Franklin, visual effects supervisor on The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: