Animated cartoons

by Edwin George Lutz

“ANIMATOR’S” DRAWING-BOARD.

Now with a huge pile of white linen paper cut to a uniform size of about nine by twelve inches, the animator apportions the work to the several assistant animators. The most important scene or action, of course, falls to his share. There are several ways of going about making animated cartoons, and trick titles, and these methods will be touched upon subsequently. But in the particular method of making animated cartoons which we are describing now—that in which paper is the principal surface upon which the drawings are made in ink—all the workers make their drawings over a board that has a middle portion cut out and into which is fitted a sheet of thick glass. Under this glass is fixed an electric light. On the board along the upper margin of the glass, there is fixed to the wood a bar of iron to which two pins or pegs are firmly fixed. These pegs are a little less than one-half inch high and distant from each other about five inches. It doesn’t matter much what this distance is, excepting this important point: all the boards in any one studio must be provided with sets of pegs that are uniform with respect to this distance between them. And all of them should be most accurately measured in their placing. Sometimes as an expedient, pegs are merely driven into the board at the required distance.

These pegs are seven thirty-seconds of an inch in diameter. That the animator should use this particular size of pegs was determined, no doubt, by the fact that an article manufactured originally for perforating pages and sheets used in certain methods of bookkeeping was found available for his purposes. This perforator cuts holes exactly seven thirty-seconds of an inch in diameter. Each one of the sheets of paper from the huge pile spoken of above, before it is drawn upon, has two holes punched into one of its long edges at the same distance apart as the distance between the two pegs fixed to the animator’s drawing-board.

A SHEET OF PERFORATED PAPER AND THE REGISTERING PEGS.

Fitting one of these sheets of paper over the pegs, the artist-animator is ready for work. As the paper lies flat over the glass set into the board, he can see the glare of the electric light underneath. This illumination from below is to enable him to trace lines on a top sheet of paper from lines on a second sheet of paper underneath; and also to make the slight variations in the several drawings concerned in any action.

Now the reason for the pegs is this: as in an ordinary motion-picture film certain characters, as well as objects and other details are quiescent, and only one or a few characters are in action, so in an animated cartoon some of the figures, or details, are quiescent for a time. And as they stay for a length of time in the same place in the scene, their portrayal in this same place throughout the series of drawings is obtained by tracing them from one sheet to another. The sheets are held in place by the pegs and they insure the registering of identical details throughout a series.

When the animator designs his setting, the stage scenery of any particular animated play, he keeps in mind the area within which his figures are going to move. Reasons for this will become apparent as the technic of the art is further explained. The outline of his scene, say a background, simply drawn in ink on a sheet of paper is fitted over the pegs. The light under the glass, as explained immediately above, shows through it. Next a fresh sheet of paper is placed over the one with the scene, and as the paper is selected for its transparent qualities, as well as its adaptability for pen-drawing, the ink lines of the scene underneath are visible.

Let us presume now, that the composition is to represent two men standing and facing each other and talking. They are to gesticulate and move their lips slightly as if speaking. (In the following description we will ignore this movement of the mouth and have it assumed that the artist is drawing this action, also, as he proceeds with the work.) The two men are sketched in some passive position, and the animation of one of the figures is started. With the key sketch of the men in the passive position placed over the light, a sheet of paper is placed over it and the extreme position of a gesticulating arm is drawn, then on another sheet of paper placed over the light the other extreme position of this arm action is drawn. Now, with still another sheet of paper placed over the others, the intermediate position of the gesture is drawn. As the man was standing on the same spot all the time his feet would be the same in all the drawings and other parts of his figure would occupy the same place. But the animator does not draw these parts himself but marks the several sheets where they occur with a number, or symbol, that will be understood by one of his helpers—a tracer—as instructions to trace them. The other man in the picture, who all this time has been motionless, is also represented in all the drawings line for line as he was first drawn in the preliminary key sketch. This again is a job for the tracer.