Mike Ollerton Blog

 Andreas Deja has been working on this beautiful short film about a little girl and a tiger, I don’t know much more about it than that, except he’s been working away on it for many years. I first discovered it when I first stumbled onto his blog and I have been excited to see it ever since. We have now finally got a trailer and it is of course full of beautiful animation. Enjoy! Also check out this teaser from 2012! Gosh it’s been a while, I think I personally learnt of the project in 2017. It really goes to show how long animated projects like this can take.

 Little loop rotation of the character Morrigan. I’m enjoying working traditionally, I need to start working through some proper exercises though.

So far all my 2d animation practice and work has be done digitally. I have owned a peg bar and disk for a while but not knowing what I was doing, I bought the cheapest, largest paper available at the time. I had no idea the mistake this was for a beginner. So I’ve had a huge stack of really cheap flimsy 16 field paper that I just have really struggled to use.  As I’ve worked through more tutorials I’ve learnt even good quality 16 field can be difficult to flip and beginners are recommended to go smaller, also because my paper is so thin and flimsy the paper just buckles and collapses on its self as you try to flip. I’ve since bought some high quality 12f paper and the difference is night and day, I was really working in hard mode. All that said because I have so much of this flimsy paper I don’t want it to go to waste so I’m using it more for general drawing practice. Yesterday I sketched out a quick drawing of Chun Li from Street Fighter and well, before I knew it I had stuck anot...

 Saw these great pictures today, shared by Paul Briggs on twitter of Pres Romanillos animation desk, which I believe is now on display at the Walt Disney studio. Just look at those carvings!  Pres was a phenomenal artist and we lost him far too soon! I discovered him and his work after he had passed away though I’m very glad I got to grow up watching his work.  Here’s some photos of a book I own of his work, I love the way he could draw the figure, so much gesture and believable weight. Rest in peace Pres, and thanks for you wonderful art!

 Stumbled onto this wonderful interview with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston discussing Mickey Mouse. It’s fascinating to hear there’s thought as they handle these old drawings. Both animators worked on the Brave Little tailor which I think is one of the best Mickey Mouse shorts, I love the medieval setting and mickeys costume, Frank’s scene where Mickey describes his encounter to the king is probably my favourite sequence of Mickey. There’s also a great documentary on Frank and Ollie, directed by Frank’s son covering their career and their long friendship.

 Here’s a beautiful pencil animated scene that was cut from Lilo and Stitch. It’s rather crazy to me that a scene as powerful and important as this, that has been taken this far through production then got cut. The themes are very moving and it’s quite a statement in itself to decide to not include it. Someone had to watch this scene, understand the message and then say “nah let’s not go there”   I’m not sure who the animators were on this, Andreas Deja was main animator for Lilo so that’s not a bad guess, that he might of been involved. I suspect it was multiple animators, as it’s really multiple shots / characters that could be handled by different people. Anyway the animation is superb…

 Milt Kahl is probably one of the most studied and beloved artists in animation. He has often been pointed to as the greatest draftsman of his generation. I am in no exception of also being in complete awe of his drawing, I first became aware of him for the skill he showed in drawing hands, however this skill really extended to every facet of his work.  The Disney style really refined and evolved from Milt’s pencil in the years he was active at the studio. Many artist would turn to him to help refine there character designs and have him help out with particularly difficult drawings. In a studio full of masters of their craft he stood out way above the rest. But what made his work so good and so much better than the rest.  When I first started looking more seriously into the Disney artist and particularly Milt’s work while I could clearly see his skill in areas such as the hands and just generally all his work looked flawless however I didn’t necessarily see why he was so ...

Here’s a selection of Pencil tests by the legendary James Baxter. Gosh is he good! Pencil test for The Croods Incredible moment from Hunchback  I believe this was done for a lecture demo Another lecture demo I believe Amazing dress movement and great example of moving towards the camera in perspective Especially enjoy the horses movement in this one. Look at the dress! Quadruped run cycles. Big cat walk cycle 

 Check out what just arrived in the mail today. I’m excited to check these out, I’ve enjoyed the few demos and tutorials I’ve followed before from Don Bluth so I’ll be curious to see what he has to share in these dvds.  Some of this will cover stuff I’ve already done in tutorials from many other teachers like the classic bouncing ball but you can never have too much practice. Here’s a great video he did on hands, this 4 min video really change the game for me in terms of understanding how to approach hands and get that Milt Kahl feeling, Don Bluth was always praised for his drawing abilities, rising up the Disney ranks from low level inbetweener to full Animator in a very short time.  I even remember reading a interview Milt did that Andreas Deja shared on his blog where Milt specifically mentioned Don as one of the new guys that he thought was good, Which was high praise from that man. Here’s the article with Milt’s praise for Don…  http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Int...

Glen Keane is probably the most influential artist in my life, I could watch him draw forever. I had grown up with his work for many years without knowing who he was but my first major discovery of him as an artist was when I first saw his expression sheets for Rapunzel in the movie Tangled. From then on I think Glen became an artist I always had in the back on my mind. Expression sheets have always interested me since then, something about how they make a drawn character feel alive instead of just lines on a paper. It wasn’t until a few years later when I was feeling unsure about my artistic career, I was actually experiencing my first significant success, landing a good artist job but instead of being happy I and was overall feeling very uncertain about if this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I’d spent so long grinding to get good enough I hadn’t taken a moment to go up for air and make sure I was swimming in the right direction.  It was during this time I decide...

 Growing up I absolutely loved the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog show. We had a channel that would show various sonic the hedgehog show episodes in random orders, They included Adventures of Sonic (1992), Sonic the hedgehog (1993) and Sonic underground (1999). While I loved them all Adventures was always my favorite because of the strong Looney Tunes inspiration it took, I eventually gave up on the sporadic tv order and bought the dvd box set.  On this box set it included these bonus features with the main artist involved with this show Milton Knight. I re watched these short tutorial videos constantly and i reckon they had a pretty big impact on my art, I was fascinated by his quick and loose drawing style and tried to emulate it. looking back what i really like is how he really doesn't draw them on model with the games or existing media, he really just did his own thing which makes them feel iconic, unique and undeniably his own take. He now runs a Patreon where he seems ...

I have been really enjoying these short documentaries by Dizographies on YouTube. This one is on Ken Harris who was an animator I first heard of in Richard Williams book. His career is very impressive and this video does a great job covering it.  I especially enjoy the small segment on how he enjoyed hobbies outside of his work…

 John Pomeroy just shared this incredible little animation that he did where he was only 15 years old. He talks about not having any hole punches so had to line up the corners of the paper. The skill even at this age is just undeniable. I wonder if he closely referenced footage from Sorcerer's apprentice (which would of been difficult if not impossible to do at this time which I think would of been 1966, not much by way of home media)  or did he just create this from memory.  John Pomeroy is an incredibly skilled animator who started at Disney in 1973 then famously left with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in 1979 to start making their own films that competed with Disney. He would then later return to Disney in around 1995 to continue his legendary career. The list of characters he has brought to life is almost too big to go through but some personal favs of mine is his work on Princess Daphne, The Great Owl and Milo. John now runs an Online Learning resource which I have...

Not one of Don Bluth’s best works though I don’t think it’s one of his worst efforts either and there’s a lot I like in the film. Regardless I think it’s great to see some behind the scenes during production. Having read his biography recently it was interesting to learn that members at his studio weren’t too sold on the film’s concept as well.  Part 1 Part 2

Again these can all be found on Andrea’s deja blog with much more interesting and informative comments.  https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/10/milt-kahl-crowd-scenes.html Adding this post here so I can come back to reference it again later along with the drawings all in one place. I appreciate this blog is very derivative of  Andreas Deja’s with posts like this but this will probs be a common theme with this blog, most of the stuff I’m adding can be found elsewhere on the internet but I just want to compile the stuff I like somewhere for myself to be able to reference. Such a masterclass of animation, I will be studying these extensively!

Here’s a wonderful short film from Disney that went completely under my radar until learning and reading more about storyboard man Bill Peet. It is a beautiful looking piece which was used to test the xerox process that would then be adopted for there full feature films, an era of Disney I particularly love! You might recognise several elements from this film reused in the jungle book however those sequences came from this picture first, not the other way around. Also the elements with the crocodile are of course reused from Peter Pan. I have always had no issue with Disney animation reusing work like this, which I might talk about more in depth in a later post, but I’ve always felt was done minimally and tastefully. Bill wrote the story as an illustrated childrens book, a career he was trying to transition into and eventually became incredibly prolific in with over 35 titles under his belt. As a side note Bill Peet wrote a fantastic autobiography in an illustrated format that is a won...