"Suggestions On Follow Thru"

My wife worked in Clean-up at Disney for years and she once found this old Disney photostat on "Follow Thru" at an animation art dealer.

A couple of definitions: "Clean Up" is the category of artist that draws over the animator's rough drawing and creates the clean drawing that will appear on the screen when the movie is seen in it's final form. This is quite a discipline in itself and it pretty unknown and unappreciated by the general public.

"Follow Through" or "Overlap" is the word for the things in animation that move because a character or object moves but cannot move by themselves. For example the clothes and hair on a character.

This is a photostat from long ago that teaches the basics of follow-through. I scanned it at a high resolution. If this large size is unwieldy so I created a smaller one too (the lower one is the smaller version).




Overlap is one of those things that is a very simple, straightforward concept but can become quite difficult in more complex situations. The best approach (as it is with everything) is to always keep it simple, simple, simple.

There were always some animators who would actually leave it off in their ruffs and let the clean up people add it for them. There were also animators who would leave it off in their initial pass and after the movement, timing and acting were finished they would go back and add it to their drawings. The advantage of this approach is that you're only focusing on the most important things in your first pass and not distracted by unnecessary details. However, I have to say that you could always tell when people animated this way, because each drawing is a design and overlap has to be carefully integrated into every drawing because it's not just a static, mechanical process - just like everything else, overlap has to be used to frame the action and accentuate the acting, it's another tool to convey the feeling and mood of the scene and character - it has to be an organic and essential part of the design of the whole drawing and idea of the scene...if that makes any sense. We all know how great a drawing is when we do it "all in one" and every part relates to everything else. When we do a drawing and then go back later and add a detail to it, the detail usually looks like it was "stuck on" because it wasn't part of the original thought and wasn't considered as part of the original elements and design. So if possible I think it's better to at least have it in mind and rough it in at least minimally in the first pass of the drawings.

However that's probably good advice for some and terrible for others. Keep in mind that I was never a very good or accomplished animator. Maybe some of the very skilled animators out there might give their two cents in the comments so I don't accidentally send newcomers down the wrong path!

Steve Purcell at Comic Con

Cartoon Brew did a great job of running down all of the animation-related panel discussions that are going to going on at Comic Con next week. And in the comments section of their post several people listed other relevant events as well, like the "Scrambled Ink" signing with Jenny Lerew, Dave Pimental and other DreamWorks story artists.

The one event that I haven't seen hyped is a discussion by Pixar story artist and creator of "Sam and Max", Steve Purcell. according to the Comic Con website, he will be appearing in Room 2 from 1:00 to 2:00 on Thursday - all the info is here.

I don't know much about Steve other than he draws really well, he worked a lot on "Cars" as a story artist, that he's still working at Pixar and that Steve's first "Sam and Max" book was a huge inspiration on many of us when I was at CalArts. I never bought comic books as a kid but somehow I had a copy of "Sam and Max" when I showed up at CalArts and I was astonished to find how many other people there had also ended up with a copy of it.

A Couple of Comic Con Panels to Look Out For

Somehow I goofed up my template which has kept me from posting for a bit. Anyway I reset it and now I can finally post this (although Jerry Beck already scooped me):

I've never attended a panel discussion at Comic Con and so I was amazed when I clicked here and saw how many of these panels are schedules for Thursday alone. It's amazing how many they do each day! How do they have enough room for all of these?

Anyway, take a look at this one scheduled for Thursday morning:

11:00-12:00 The Disney Animation Story Process— Nathan Greno (head of story, Bolt), Don Hall (head of story, The Princess and the Frog), Mark Kennedy (head of story, Rapunzel), Joe Mateo (story artist, Bolt), Michael LaBash (story artist, Bolt), Paul Briggs (story artist, The Princess and the Frog), and Josie Trinidad (story artist, The Princess and the Frog) offer an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look into the story process at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Coming together exclusively at Comic-Con, these story team leaders will take you from first concept to final story approval as they discuss the art of storyboarding, re-create story pitches, and share boarding styles from their upcoming animated features. Don't miss this revealing and humorous panel and your chance to get a sneak peek at Disney's next animated feature, Bolt! Room 32AB

I also found this one, listed within all of the other stuff planned for Saturday:

2:30-3:30 Disney Pixar: Bolt and UP—For superdog Bolt, every day is filled with adventure, danger and intrigue, at least until the cameras stop rolling. Be the first to see exclusive animation as directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard present the new 3D comedy-adventure from Walt Disney Animation Studios! Then it's UP: From the inventive storytellers that have taken you into the worlds of space, toys, and superheroes comes the extraordinary adventure that will take you to a lost world where anything can happen, and everything will. Meet director Peter Docter (Monsters, Inc.) as he presents the first-ever look at Disney Pixar's new animated 3D adventure comedy, UP. Hall H

I'm really hoping I can make it to this Thursday panel so I can talk like I'm scheduled to. In any case, if you're at all interested in animation and/or storyboarding you ought to make an effort to check these out!

Why The Character Arcs in "Raiders" Makes the First Film Superior to the Other Films in the Series

***WARNING: Mild spoilers of "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" ahead.

I have never understood what happened to the Indiana Jones movies after "Raiders". Like a lot of film makers, Spielberg and Lucas seemed to lose sight of what made their original creation so great and instead of building on what they'd done in the first film they completely undermined their creation with the successive films.

I know many people will disagree with me on this but I'll try and write up all my thoughts anyway and hopefully it'll make for a good read if nothing else (and probably a good debate in the comments section).

One of the things I like best about "Raiders" is the journey that Indy's character takes. Part of what makes the movie work so well for me is that he seems to undergo a fairly significant personal transformation during the telling of the story.

After he talks to the government agents about what the Ark is, and why Hitler might want it, Brody comes by his house to tell him he's free to go and try to retrieve the Ark. Brody has a great scene where he hints that maybe the Ark has powers that mere men aren't meant to tamper with, but Indy completely rejects this and tells Brody that he doesn't believe in such nonsense. So this is a clear statement that Indy doesn't believe in the power of the Ark and to him, it's just an object to be pursued.

By the end of the movie, his experiences have changed him so much that he believes in the power of the Ark. He tells Marion to "close her eyes" because he has come to understand something deeper than what he understood at the beginning of the movie: he now knows that there are things in life which hold a greater power than just their material or archaeological value.

But you can see the problem this can cause within the movie's structure: he doesn't believe at the outset that there is any power to the Ark. Therefore, he can't begin his journey with the motivation of "keeping the Ark's power out of the hands of the Nazis", because he simple doesn't believe there's any power to be had from it.

So the film begins with a sequence that, among other things, shows his determination to get that golden idol from the temple at any cost. It shows his fierce competition with Belloq to get whatever archaeological find he can grab at any cost, without ever considering that it might have any powers that can't be seen. To him, finding treasures is only about what they are worth in material terms.

After all, we saw in the opening of the movie that he doesn't care at all that the Hovitos tribe doesn't want anyone in their area. We see that they are still around - not some long-extinct tribe - and they are protecting their territory, and that they don't welcome outsiders. Somebody built some elaborate traps to keep people out of the temple and to protect the idol, and yet there is no hesitation on Indy's part, or any thought that maybe stealing the idol is a bad idea. There's no morality problem to him that the idol might mean something to these people and removing it might be detrimental to them or harmful to their way of life. To him, it has no "value" other than what it will fetch on an open market or add to his reputation after he collects it.

And we see in his willingness to risk life and limb to get the idol and through his interaction with Belloq how driven he is to posses the idol, how competitive he is to grab the greatest archaeological finds he can before anyone else does.

Which is all a great setup, because it provides a motivation for him to go after the Ark - his competitive nature and his burning desire to find the greatest historical treasures the world has to offer. Because it wouldn't work if he was going to keep the awesome "power" of the Ark out of the hands of the Nazis - because he doesn't believe in that kind of power, period.

Once again, you can see how meticulously plotted this movie is and how many things are setup within the story without the audience realizing that it's being fed exposition. The opening sequence feels like it's just an exciting piece to hook you into watching the movie. But it's not just that - it sets up a lot of things in a very effortless way, so we don't realize we're being shown things that will be important later.

So that's one of his "arcs", or journeys that he takes through the story: he comes to learn that there is a power to these things he collects, that they are not just objects, but that these things deserve our respect and reverence and that they have a power greater than we can imagine.

The other arc is also a very interesting one, and I really love the subtle way it's laid into the movie. When Indy is first introduced, he's seen (famously) in shadow and then walks into the light, revealing his face. It plays well, and I think it's well-known because it's such an interesting and weighty introduction and gives him a great mystique.

The first time you see his head, from behind - reacting to the sound of the porter pulling a gun on him.



The first time we see his face - as he steps out of the shadows.





But if you look at it within the context of the rest of the movie you can see that it's much, much more than that. The idea of "shadows" and light are very important within the film.

When he appears in The Raven (Marion's bar) he is re-introduced by his shadow, which appears behind her. Again, he is equated with shadows.



And interestingly, after he leaves, the Nazi contingent arrives and there is a very similar scene to Indy's, where their shadows are thrown onto the wall in the same way as his was. This can only be seen as a connection between the Nazis and Indy. The implication is that he is hardly better than they are - he is as morally ambiguous at this point as they are.





The real key to this idea is said very plainly by Belloq after Marion's apparent death in the marketplace. Belloq has a whole speech to Indy where he says (basically) "we are no different, you and I, we are just a shadowy reflection of each other". Significantly, this is the only thing Belloq says which seems to get under Indy's skin and prompts Indy to reply "now you're getting nasty", which tells you that deep down he probably thinks that this is true.

When Belloq is first introduced, outside the temple where Indy has taken the idol, the reason Belloq is able to take the idol away from Indy is because Belloq has learned to speak the native tongue and influence the natives into helping him - arguably a more noble approach than just walking into the temple and ripping it off. I think that's a great idea that Belloq took the approach to learn the native tongue and insinuate himself with the tribe to accomplish his goal whereas Indy just took the most obvious, blunt approach. It says a lot about their different personalities, and also, you can't necessarily say one approach is more "moral" than the other.

I take all of the moments that equate Indy with shadows and compare him to Belloq and the Nazis to mean that he is morally ambiguous, that he is not committed to fighting on the "right" side as he is to accomplishing his goals in any way possible. From the outset of the film, his character seems to be teetering on a precipice and could go either way. Will he decide to live a life of righteousness, of fighting for what's right, or will he become merely a soldier of fortune, doing whatever it takes to get whatever he wants in life?

Now, as a counterpoint to the "shadow" idea of Indy, Marion seems to be constantly equated with light. There are a lot of scenes that are staged in an unusual way and seem to be arranged to link her with light sources.






So the obvious conclusion is that she is the "light" that will illuminate his shadowy side and put him on the right path in life. Certainly it feels this way at the end of the film. There is a sense at the end that he is better off with Marion than he would be if he continued along the same path as before. And in his concern for the Ark and the fate of it within the government's possession that makes it seem like he has a newfound respect and concern that wasn't there at the beginning of the film.

I like both of these arcs very much and they're very unusual. Most character arcs in movies are very standard and tend to hit you over the head - not so with either of these ideas, and the movie is richer and deeper for them.

Unfortunately it is just these things that the subsequent movies failed to consider and they are much weaker for it. Not only that but the sequels seemed to deliberately undermine these ideas.

For example, "Temple of Doom" is a prequel to "Raiders" - it all took place before "Raiders" did, supposedly. And yet in "Temple" Indy witnesses a man pull another man's beating heart out of his chest and also he uses a magical incantation at the end of the movie to make the magic rocks burst into flames, thus defeating the villain. Now if all of this is supposed to happen before "Raiders", how are we supposed to believe that he went through these experiences - witnessing acts of unexplainable mystical power and even using the other-worldly power of the stones - and yet remain skeptical that there are mystical forces at work in our world?

Also, in "The Last Crusade", we see him as a Boy Scout at the beginning of the movie. He is played as completely moralistic: he is full of indignation when he discovers men digging around for the lost Cross of Coronado and he immediately sets out to steal it with the goal of getting it to a Museum. There is no hint at all of any kind of lack of morality. Right after this scene we see him as an adult, and his morality remains exactly the same - he is still pursuing the Cross of Coronado, still full of righteous umbrage and still saying the same thing: "that belongs in a museum".

Now I'm not suggesting that he should have been introduced as a rotten, larcenous Boy Scout with a complete lack of morals. But the film casts him as a completely moral and blandly simplistic version of what he was in the first movie, playing him like Superman, a completely honest and forthright person who's always in the right. That's inherently uninteresting and also untrue to what made the character so fascinating and compelling in the first place. The film makers forgot what was great about their creation and seem to think that as long as he has a hat and a whip he will be a great character. Great characters are made great and watchable by the choices they make that define who they are, not because of their costumes.

It's interesting that in a lot of interviews, Lucas, Spielberg and even Harrison Ford seem completely sold on the idea that the third and fourth movies made the right choice by introducing Indy's family members and making the films "emotional" through the family connections that are explored. I completely disagree.

First off, I disagree that family connections are the instant formula for "emotion". The family relationships in the third and fourth movie are played more for laughs than for anything - there's almost nothing there that could even be considered emotional or anything even remotely like a real actual human father-and-son relationship. And I don't really look to my "Indiana Jones" movies to be emotional, any more than I look to dessert to fulfill my nutritional needs or look to broccoli to satisfy my sweet tooth. It's a complete fallacy to think that all movies need to be "emotional" to mean something to an audience. Some of the greatest movies ever made were never meant to be "emotional" and they don't need to be.

The weirdest part of all this is that Lucas and Spielberg freely admit that they invented Indy to be their own version of James Bond - that's even why they cast his father as Sean Connery. So why didn't they stop to think about whether they, as fans of James Bond, ever found themselves wanting to find out about James Bond's family?

Does anyone want to see a movie that tells us what Bond was like as a kid? How he got his start on the road to being a spy in his adolescent years? Do you want to meet Bond's dad and see them hang out together, working through their issues? Do you want Bond's illegitimate son to show up at some point and see them work through their issues? Because I sure don't. And I don't want to see Jones do this either. So it's inexplicable to me that this was the way Lucas and Spielberg went; I don't find it interesting or satisfying and it doesn't even follow the model they were purportedly following in the first place. And every time he interacts with his Father or his son on a familial level he just seems to be complaining or chiding them...not much fun to watch, and not the cool, carefree Indy I met in the first film.

Strangely enough, I actually thought it kind of worked to have Indy hanging out with "Short Round" in the second film. There's something about a loner, a guy who outwardly seems tough and completely self-reliant hanging out with some orphaned kid he got hooked up with. It tells you a lot about the guy: he has a lot bigger soft spot than he lets on and when you see some one relate to a kid on a kid level it's fun. When a Father does that it seems kind of irresponsible but when it's an adult who isn't the kid's dad it becomes fun to watch and telling about that character. It allows the character to show a different side than he is able to in his relationships with other men and women (and it worked just as brilliantly in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" as well as countless other films).

If nothing else, maybe the other three movies can't ever live up to the first one simply because you can't really top God in terms of spectacle. After witnessing the power of the Almighty, everything else seems a little bit like a letdown.

Who Is Rocket Johnson? (part two)

The frustrating thing about talking about our new comic book is that I can't show you any of my favorite artwork from my story....I want the reader to experience the story in a certain way and if I post my favorite stuff it will give too much away. Anyway after July maybe I will post some of the stuff I like better. Also keep checking the official website for updates and (hopefully) soon there will be a peek at other people's stories.



So the challenging and scary part about doing the comic book was that doing it involved doing a lot of things that I don't have much experience doing, including doing final cleaned-up artwork (see precious post) and using color. I don't really know anything about color or have much experience playing around with it, so right from the beginning I planned to keep the palette simple. It's not an exaggeration to say that I honestly can't tell you off the top of my head what all the complementary color groups are (shameful, I know), but one that I can always remember is blue and orange, and that just happened to be perfect for my story which takes place at night on Halloween.

I always like stories with limited palettes so I wanted to do that anyway. The next problem I faced was: how was I going to know what my colors would look like when they were finally published? My Cintiq certainly isn't calibrated to show exactly how it will look when it's printed. So a friend of mine (who was working on a certain project of his own and facing the same problem turned me on to a life-saving solution.

He showed me the "Color Index" books, which are great because they not only show how different colors will look when they are published, but they arrange the colors into different combinations so you can pick a color scheme where you know all the colors will work together. And not only that but the book provides all of the numbers you need to find exactly the colors listed in the book within any digital graphics program you might be working with.

Bear with me if everybody else already knows this, but here's how it works for Photoshop. All you have to do is take the numbers listed either next to the RGB values or the CMYK values and then type them into the Color Picker in either the RGB columns (the green rectangle, below) or the CMYK columns (the blue rectangle, below). Then you know exactly what it will look like when it's printed.

A sample book page from "Color Index" by Jim Krause



The Color Picker window from Photoshop



The only other thing I know about color - and, luckily, it's the most important thing to know - is that value is the key to creating great color. If the values work then you're halfway there to a great picture. And, of course, when you're coloring in a computer you can easily turn the image into a Black and White version and check you're values while you're working. Some artists even work in Black, white and gray first and then convert the values into color after the values are all figured out.



The other thing that I enjoyed about working with Photoshop is that you can turn off the ink lines and see how the color looks without it. I actually prefer how it looks with just the blocks of color. Some of the pages look almost like nice abstract paintings without the ink lines. Maybe if I ever do this again I will avoid an ink line and just describe the forms with tone.



I will show you more of that stuff after July when the book has come out and people have had a chance to read it. Even though this isn't some of my favorite stuff from the book I do like the way the visuals seem to work well at telling the story, even without the dialogue.

I somehow managed to avoid learning much about color because it was never really integral to anything I was doing, job-wise. When I was in Art School I never felt like I knew enough about drawing and I didn't want to start tackling the world of color until I felt like I had a good handle on knowing how to draw. Of course that's a silly way to think and you should always be learning everything you can about all aspects of art....there's no excuse to keep from learning anything and everything you can. Everything you learn helps inform the other aspects of art as well.

If there's some point to all of this it's that you should always tackle projects that force you to grapple with things you're not comfortable with. It's the only way to get better at those things you're not good at. People tend to stay in their comfort zones and play off their strengths as much as they can, and it's hard for us to force ourselves to stretch, artistically, and work on our weaknesses. But it's the only way to get better and, just like working out, it can be painful and uncomfortable at first but it will definitely provide great benefits over time.

Who Is Rocket Johnson (part one)

For the past two and a quarter years I have managed to blog without ever plugging anything for you to buy. Over the next few posts I will talk a bit about a comic book that some of us at Disney have created called "Who Is Rocket Johnson?", but I don't consider this "plugging" the book because I don't think the book needs any promotion. There will only be 1,000 copies printed and they will only be for sale at the San Diego Comic-con. If you are headed to the Con and you want one, head on over and grab one as soon as you get there. For booth information and updates on the book please visit here.

Several guys at work put this thing together and there are a lot of great artists who contributed work for it. Paul Briggs deserves a big kudos for putting in a lot of the elbow grease so if you get a copy and you like it drop him a line and tell him how much you enjoyed it.

Working on that book took a lot of time away from blogging so I suppose it's only fitting to blog about it now. I actually learned a lot doing it, because doing your own thing is so different from working on stuff that's for your day job.

One of the first things I learned was something I am already painfully aware of, and probably 90% of all artists are used to experiencing: that cleaning up my rough drawings was a miserable and tedious process because I could never capture the life and energy of my rough drawings in the cleaned-up finished drawings.

This is the case at work as well, of course, but at work we rarely have much time to devote to clean-ups and we work under such intense deadlines that there's not really time to dwell on the quality of the drawings. Also there's a difference when it's your own personal work of art, and it's probably the only thing the world will ever see of yours and judge you by, and you may never get another chance to be published again in your life, so there's a lot of pressure to do something that you will be at least partially proud of.

The reason roughs are easier to do, I guess, is because you're not feeling as much pressure when you're doing them, because in the back of your mind you're thinking "well, nobody will ever see this drawing anyway so it doesn't have to be perfect". Also you're really thinking when you're roughing it out, you're experiencing the action and the acting of the drawing for the first time and you're trying to get all of it on paper which gives it a wonderful energy. Then, when you go to clean it up, you're at a terrible disadvantage because you're trying to remember that original feeling and recapture it and preserve it, so it's not as strong to you and now you're experiencing a little bit of fear because now you have something to lose: if you goof up the clean-up, the drawing is ruined and you destroyed the great rough you had.

Also when you're drawing the roughs you're thinking about big shapes and how they move in space. Once you're cleaning it up, it's too easy to focus on lines instead of shapes in space, as well as wrinkles, buttons and all of the other fussy details that can destroy the overall feeling of the drawing and reduce it into a mess of pointless lines.

So I was paralyzed for a while after I completed my roughs. I was miserable about having to start cleaning up my drawings, and unwilling to let the roughs stand as the final artwork, because they were just too rough to tell the story.

What finally saved me and lifted me out of my funk, allowing me to continue, was that I had a realization: I don't ever like an artist's cleaned up drawings. Whenever I see an artist's roughs, I always like them better than the finished final product, no matter who the artist is, and that actually helped me quite a bit. It helped me accept that I am just like everybody else and that we all tend to lose a bit of something in the cleaning up phase...at least in my opinion, anyway.

It's a shame that we rarely get to see the rough unfinished work of an artist, that everything is so refined and polished before we get to see it. Did you know that there's even a magazine devoted to the rough drawings of comic book artists called "Rough Stuff"?

Anyway, I don't have any brilliant solutions to offer about how to clean up your drawings, but in general it is easier to clean up a drawing if you don't focus on the lines as you put them down but distract yourself with other considerations, above all thinking about design: how to use a good variety of small, medium and large shapes, how to strengthen the poses of your characters, how to arrange the backgrounds to better frame the action, etc.

Anyway, here are some examples of my progression, from rough to final color. I wish I could show better examples but I don't want to give anything away before anyone's had a chance to read it...





The original roughs were done on paper; the clean-ups and the color were done on a Cintiq.

Three Mini-Indy Posts

In honor of the new Indiana Jones movie, here are three small posts concerning the airplane fight in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

#1: The Plane Fight: Simplified Geography

If you take a look at how the "Flying Wing" airplane from the movie is laid out, it has a cockpit at the front of the plane (the part with the open canopy) and a turret at the rear of the plane with machine guns sticking out of it (sorry to sound so technical, but bear with me here). There appears to be a crawlspace connecting the two that's probably about twelve feet long.



Okay, so the pilot is standing in the cockpit during the fight, until he's knocked unconscious by Marion with the plane chocks (the things that hold the wheels in place until you're ready to takeoff). The part I want to talk about is a ways down, but I'll include every shot in this section, just for those who want to check out the staging and cutting.







So after she conks him on the head, he falls onto the plane controls and the plane starts to rotate in place.









She jumps into the cockpit to pull him off the controls, the cockpit closes shut, and then she sees a truck of German soldiers approaching so she abandons the effort to lift the unconscious pilot -













ducks out of frame-




there's a very brief wide shot of the whole tableau (very brief - like maybe 12 frames)



-and then she's in the rear turret, and begins to blast away at the German truck with a machine gun.






So here's the part that's interesting to me: there's no scene of her crawling through the tube that runs down the center line of the plane, traveling between the cockpit and the rear turret.

Now, later both she and Indy realize that there is gas flowing towards a fire nearby-




And he climbs on top of the plane to get her out. At first he tries to free her from the turret - that's the turret he's pulling on here, and the cockpit is on screen right. But the turret is stuck, it won't open, and the German mechanic interrupts Indy's efforts.




Indy is knocked to the ground and the fight continues there. Here you can see the empty cockpit behind them - she's still in the turret.



After the mechanic is finally dispatched, and the gas is reaching the fire, Indy reappears near the cockpit. If you look closely, you can tell that Marion is just finishing her crawl from the turret back to the cockpit.








Maybe everyone else is more observant than I am, but I actually had never noticed until recently that she even spends the sequence in two separate locations; in my defense I haven't watched the film that many times in my life, but I always thought that the cockpit was where the machine guns were located and I completely missed that she was moving between two different points during the sequence.

The reason I bring all of this up is to point out how much can be glossed over or under-explained in film. I know I said (two posts ago) that carefully presented geography is the key to making an action sequence work - and it is - but the unimportant parts of the geography can be left out in order to let the viewer focus on the parts that really are essential.

When board artists, writers and film makers are just starting out, they tend to over-explain everything and sometimes seem to feel that no single step in a process can ever be left out, lest the audience be confused or disoriented. This sequence is a good example of a piece of action that can easily be skipped and the audience doesn't miss it at all. I have to admit it, but I certainly would think, if I were boarding this sequence, that it would be necessary to include a cut away shot of her crawling through the middle section of the plane before she appears at the machine guns and begins firing away. But that's really just "shoe leather" (that's slang for unnecessary footage of characters moving from one spot to another) and doesn't have any entertainment value for the audience, so it's a smart choice to leave it out.

I wonder if Spielberg ever even shot coverage of that?

It's also worth pointing out how much more interesting the scene is because Marion is wearing a flimsy, feminine dress through all of the action - it's a great contrast to all of the "tough guy" stuff that she's doing all through this part and creates great visual interest. It's a great choice that might seems obvious at first glance, or like a throwaway idea, but it actually serves to lift the sequence up above what you've seen before or what you would expect to see.

#2 The Plane Fight: More Simplified Geography

Another good example of Simplified Geography, or maybe better known as "What you can leave out that you don't think you can". This is a really good example of something that has never bothered a viewer of a film, and yet, you would never ever get away with this if you were storyboarding in animation.

As the big mechanic notices Indy and gets into the fight...




Marion is crouched by the wheels of the plane, looking around, scanning for some way to help Indy out. her gaze falls on the chocks underneath the plane's wheels...





Cut back to the German mechanic convincing Indy to join him into a fight...





Then back to Marion, removing the chocks from beneath the wheels...



And then wide as Indy slides down and engages in battle with the mechanic.









Now this long shot with the mechanic is actually a shot that lasts a really long time. As you can see, it's long enough for Indy to try to trick him by pretending to see something, then he kicks the guy, then tries to punch him, misses, gets punched by the big guy and starts to fall on his rear end.

The interesting thing is that nowhere in the shot is Marion visible. We can clearly see all the wheels of the airplane in the shot, and we just saw her by the wheels, so she should be somewhere in the shot. And yet she's not, and the viewer isn't jarred or confused by that at all. The next time we see any indication of her is when the chocks hit the pilot in the back of the head (see part #1 above).

If that wide shot was a quicker shot, I could see a rationale for leaving Marion out, but in animation storyboarding, if you did that (in my experience) people would tell you that you can't do that. That you would need a shot in between Marion's medium shot single and the wide to cover the fact that she slips away out of the scope of the wide shot. And yet, this version here works fine - in fact, it seems like it would be distracting to have her in the wide shot, she would take away from the main action and add a layer of complexity that would take away from the humorous aspect of the wide shot, which works well as a humorous setup because it's staged so flat and wide.

#3 The Plane Fight: Introduction of the Big Guy
Okay, this one is really subtle and I don't know that I can even communicate what an impact this bit had (and continues to have) on me, but I'll try. I guess it kind of jumped out at me when I was first looking at movies and trying to figure out what makes them work, so it had a big impact on teaching me something and that's why I love this bit so much. But, in and of itself, it might not seem all that impressive.

Okay, while Indy is fighting with the mechanic who's holding the wrench, we cut away to a hut nearby and we are introduced to the big muscular mechanic who's going to pummel Indy for the next few minutes.

I like his introduction because it's really good at making him look huge in a subtle, unobtrusive way. It takes several innocuous elements and uses them all combined together to add up to the idea that this guy is big. And yet none of the elements stick out as unnatural or contrived.

First and foremost, it goes without saying that his whole intro is filmed in an upshot to make his look like he looms above the viewer.

When we first see him step out of the hut, he is stooped over to get through the doorway and fit under this awning. He sees Indy, takes a couple of steps forward and stands up straight once he clears the awning. The camera pans up to follow him as he straightens up.

The camera follows him around as he walks forward to end on a shot of him (huge) in the foreground looking off towards the fight in the distance, which, being so far away, makes both the figures and the airplane look rather small compared to the big guy.








Now, again, its not a spectacular bit of film making on its own, I know, but what struck me about it was how many ideas were combined to make him look big, and yet how subtle they all were, and none of them called undue attention to themselves; they all feel natural and flow together so well that nobody would really notice them unless they are looking for them.

So many times in story boarding, I feel like I have a tendency (as do a lot of people, I've noticed) to over-think and over-explain things, to the point that you're belaboring the point. It's a real gift to have a subtle touch and be able to put things over without the audience being aware of the tricks you're pulling on them, but it's vital, because once they realize you're pulling tricks on them, the tricks lose all of their effectiveness.

In particular, the subtle pan up with him as he straightens up really left an impression on me, and, frankly, I use that all the time. Whenever I'm trying to show that something is big, I tend to use all the tools I can, but I include a subtle pan up a lot of the time. Also, if a character is looking down a deep hole, for example, I'll have a little bit of a camera drift down, or a push in, to make the hole feel deeper. I'll always try to use the camera movement to emphasize what I'm trying to say, and it all comes from noticing what Spielberg did with this particular section.



One more interesting thing to talk about concerning the whole sequence of trying to get onto the airplane is that the whole sequence breaks a kind of cardinal rule in film making: the whole sequence doesn't really have any effect on the progression of the overall story.

It's a good rule of thumb that something should always be different by the end of each sequence; that is, as a result of the sequence our hero should be closer to or further away from his or her goal. If things are the same at the end of the sequence as at the beginning, then the sequence is static and doesn't progress the story and should probably be taken out of the movie.

At the end of the airplane sequence, I can't say that Indy and Marion are any closer to their goal (of obtaining the Ark) or further away from it. In the next beat they are back at square one and Indy now has to try and commandeer the truck that is going to be used to transport the Ark.

And yet somehow the sequence works; it doesn't feel static or like a waste of time.

One more thing - take a moment to admire the frames of film here and note how simple the shots are. A great action sequence doesn't have to be made up of overly dramatic angles that ooze with dynamic angles and poses. A great action sequence can be made from simple, clear shots that tell an entertaining and dramatic story through the arrangement and timing of shots. Also take a look at how great the compositions in all of these shots are. Simple shots that have elements arranged well to create great breakups of space always work really well.

Taro Gomi's "Doodles"

Been busy lately, I have been working on a big project that I want to talk about soon, but I can't just yet.

I got my kids this great book called "Doodles" by Taro Gomi (the Japanese artist behind "Everybody Poops") and it's full of big pages that have great drawing projects. It's a huge book - close to 400 pages - and pretty inventive. It's full of really funny and whimsical ideas that will spark any young artist's imagination.

A while ago I read a book (I think it was "Why We Draw" by Peter Steinhart) and if I remember correctly, it said that most kids stop drawing around age seven because that's the age when teachers and parents start to tell kids "you're drawing that cat wrong, cats don't have seven legs" and so drawing stops being fun and starts being a chore, which makes kids give it up completely. And why not give it up? Schools and parents rarely seem to put much importance on art or learning to draw, those are always the first school programs cut when budgets shrink (it seems to me, anyway) and so very few people keep drawing throughout their lives.

This strikes a personal chord with me, I stopped drawing around that age, myself, and didn't pick it up again until I was around fourteen years old. To this day, I struggle and struggle with every drawing, and - I may be imaging this - but I always notice how many people around me seem to draw effortlessly and easily. Not me - every drawing for me is a bit of a search. I always have to scratch around to find what I'm trying to draw and I can't say any drawing ever really comes easily to me. Probably a lot of that is just genetic, or something, but drawing is definitely counter-intuitive to me. Drawing, for me, is not a natural activity at all. It takes all of my brain power and powers of concentration to do a good drawing (or even a bad one)! So I can't help but wonder: if I hadn't taken a seven-year-break from drawing, would drawing be easier and more natural for me? I'll never know.

So if you have a young child, or nephew or niece, or cousin, do them a favor and encourage them to draw and to not give it up. It's a useful skill to have, no matter what career you end up doing. And think about giving them one of Gomi's books (and maybe a big box of crayons) as a way to keep them drawing and spark a little inspiration as well.

(As a side note, Gomi has written several versions of the book. If you're in the market for one, check the Amazon reviews. In one of the books, apparently Gomi drew an empty coffin and encourages the reader to "fill it with a body". This, apparently, shocked quite a few adults when their child discovered that page. So avoid that particular edition if that kind of thing upsets you. Probably it's cultural - maybe in Japan that kind of thing is more palatable than it seems to be to English-speaking Amazon reviewers).

Anyway, here are some sample pages from "Doodles":

This one says "Draw a very small elephant walking across the table."



This one says "These are hamburgers. Draw what you think is inbetween the buns".



This one says simply "Feed the Bunnies".



My favorite pages in the book are two in the back, which are blank, and one says "Draw a cushion in trouble", and on the next page it says "Draw a chair that is bored".

That's pretty cool. How awesome would it be to have someone throw a challenge like that to you when you were a kid?!? This guy is a genius. If I ran an animation school, that would be the only requirement to get in: if you can draw a cushion in trouble and a chair that's bored, and put that over, you are truly ready to be an animation artist.

Bigger and better posts coming soon.

Geography (and the Power of The Unseen Threat)

Geography is an important but rarely used device that is the key to making any action sequence work. No action sequence will have any real tension to it unless we know exactly where everything is at all times: where the hero is in relation to his objective, how close or far away he is from his goal, what obstacles are at play and where they are in relation to the hero in the scene.

Most film makers don't bother to figure this out, because it's difficult and time-consuming, and requires a lot of forethought, so usually action sequences are just a frenetic and confusing pyrotechnical fest that ends when the loud music stops. In a well-done sequence, we know what the hero is trying to do, and we always know how far along he is in his goal of obtaining his goal, and the sequence is over when we see him clearly get what he wanted or when he is definitively denied what he wanted.

When film makers try to add something to their action scenes that is fresh or new, they usually only aim for adding elements that we haven't seen before, like more interesting explosions or more violent weapons.

When a really masterful film maker creates a great action sequence, he or she usually treats the sequence like it's own little three act story within the larger story of the movie: with a clear beginning (act one), progressive complications that make the scene build (act two), and then a satisfying climax that wraps up all of the loose threads and brings the scene to a conclusive end (act three). Also, after a good action sequence, we know exactly how the scene has advanced the story and how the world of the story has been altered by the sequence: is the hero now clearer to his ultimate goal, or further away? In a poorly constructed movie, nothing is altered by the action sequence, and it was just there to add some noise and flash, to wake up the audience between the boring and/or confusing talky parts.

Nobody is better than Spielberg at geography. If you just look at any sequence from Raiders, you will see how well they are all plotted out, how you always know where everything is, what elements are in play and how close or far away Indy is from getting his goal.

Think about the sequence where Indy and Marion are trying to commandeer the Nazi plane. There are so many elements in the sequence that affect how it turns out, and they are all added very clearly and always one at a time (which is very important, but again, very rare) to build a nice progression and keep raising the tension at a constant rate, and always we are oriented to where we are, what the dangers are to our heroes and and where they are coming from.

The sequence has a good example of one of a really cool film trick that can only be pulled off if the audience has a clear understanding of where everything is located. I don't know what to call it other than the unseen threat.

As Indy first approaches the plane, we see clearly how everything is laid out (Indy's goal here is to subdue the pilot and commander the plane). The plane has two spinning propellers at the rear and Indy starts to climb up between the propellers to sneak up on the pilot but he's spotted and confronted by a mechanic with a wrench. As Indy climbs down off the plane and begins to fight this mechanic, the propellers are always visible. Indy and the mechanic are always seen fighting in the area that's between the two massive spinning propellers.

Indy is able to destroy the wrench that the guy is holding by forcing it into the propeller. This is a great setup of the destructiveness of the propeller (call this Act One of the propeller's story).






So after Indy is able to overcome the first mechanic guy, he is approached and confronted by a second guy (this is the big muscle-bound guy). The propeller is offscreen for just a moment as Indy as the guy have their verbal exchange, and then we see it again as they begin their fight (again, we see clearly that they are sparring on the ground in the area between the two propellers).

So now as the big guy punches Indy, Indy falls to the ground, and we cut closer, then out one more time as the pilot gets into the fray, pulling out a gun.










Okay, so here's where all the setup of the propeller will come to fruition: as we cut closer to see the guy pick up Indy, and then to a different close shot as Indy bites the guy, we are still very aware of the propeller that's offscreen to the left. So after Indy bites the guy, the guy hurls Indy away from him and to the left.

This is where all the payoff of the constantly spinning propellers comes to a great payoff: as the big guy throws Indy off to the left, your heart skips a beat because, as a viewer, you know that propeller is there, and you know how dangerous it is (we saw it chop up a big steel wrench already) and yet we can't see it in this shot. It's offscreen, spinning dangerously, we know, and yet we can't see it, which makes us very anxious on a subconscious level as Indy hurtles in that direction. So the combined knowledge we have that it's there and the fact that we know Indy's heading right toward it makes us jump because we can't tell if he's about to collide with the propeller and get chewed into bits.







As the pan continues, it is revealed that in fact he was behind the blades of the propeller and he's okay. This is the Act Two of the propeller story, and again, a great setup that heightens the tension of the spinning propeller, builds the threat of it and adds to the emotion we feel when the big guy is eventually taken out by the propeller himself (this is Act Three and the end of the propeller story).


I know many of you will think I'm over-analyzing this sequence and think that this is an accidental occurrence that isn't intended to accomplish what I'm saying it does. All I can tell you is that a good film maker never leaves things up to chance and that in a well-made film every shot is staged and presented in a certain way to achieve a definite goal. Every time I've watched this sequence my heart skips a beat at this point and the reason why, I'm certain, is exactly because of what I've described above. I've seen George Lucas use this trick too, and I'm sure Spielberg has used it in other films as well, so I can tell you it's not accidental, it's intentional.

And this is why I disagree with those that responded to my post below by saying that they felt all three Indy films are comparable, because the first one is an amazingly meticulous piece of visual narrative. The visual story telling in "Raiders" is so inventive, so daring and so carefully planned that any student of film should watch it and analyze the way it's constructed. There's just no way you can say that about the other two films. They may have their strengths, but they are not nearly as perfectly crafted on a visual level.

The action set pieces in "Raiders" may seem outlandish but they always seem comparatively "natural"; they seem believable within the world of the film and they always seem to flow organically out of the narrative and build in a way that seems plausible...this, in itself, in film, is no small feat. When you think of some of the action set pieces in "Temple of Doom", you have to admit that sequences like the fight on top of the rock-crushing conveyer belt, the Mine Chase and the showdown on the suspension bridge at the end seem like contrived show pieces set on a Hollywood Soundstage and not like they could really happen in the real world. That's fine, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I'm never going to be on the edge of my seat when the action doesn't feel natural or "real" on some level, and I just know how much harder it is to write and present things that seem "real" and tangible that I'm always going to prefer that kind of film making. I suppose it comes down to a personal taste issue in the end.

And for those who say "ah, 'Raiders' is no great piece of art, it's exactly like those old Hollywood serials, they're just mindless fun", again, I have to say I disagree, because "Raiders" is a very sophisticated piece of finely crafted visual storytelling, and those old serials can't hold a candle to the film making in "Raiders"...very few movies ever made can.

Personally, I think "Raiders" marked about the time in Spielberg's career where he abandoned the careful way he presented his storytelling and started to get a little sloppy. I just can't think of anything in the other Indiana Jones movies that can hold a candle to the way things were done in the first film, which is why I hold it in much higher regard than the others, and why I am nervous about the prospect of a fourth one.

I was disheartened to see how few people actually responded to the real issue I was trying to address in my last post - the way a character must see and relate to the world around him - and how many people just argued with me about whether the next one will be any good. The only reason I used "Indy 4" as a starting point was because I had jus