A blank sheet of celluloid placed over the entire drawing is often employed to hold components of some quickly moving element of an incident. Each separate detail of its drawing, in this case, is made on this blank celluloid under the camera and photographed as it is made. Supposing that it is lightning zigzagging across a dark background. There will be drawn over this celluloid the first part of the bolt, photographed and then another part drawn which is photographed, and then the end of the bolt which is also separately taken. This drawing of the lightning-bolt, in white pigment, can be easily rubbed off with a paint rag, or cotton wadding, and then another lightning-bolt drawn and photographed in the same way.
In some cases where a large volume of smoke is to be shown in hurried movement, the animator draws the smoke in distemper pigment—sombre dark grays, half-tints, or in white—on a blank sheet of celluloid covering the scene. The effect of smoke moving very quickly could also be drawn in progressive fragments on the upper surface of the glass in the frame that is pressed down upon the drawings each time that they are photographed. If it is a house burning, for instance, the flames in white paint and the smoke in grays and black can be put on its surface.
A cycle of three drawings is sufficient to give a vivid representation of the puffing exhaust from an automobile.
Little happenings that form part of a general scene are managed, as a rule, too, by cycles of drawings or cycles of details in a drawing. To specify a few things, we may cite puffs of vapor from an automobile, steam pouring out of the spout of a teakettle, and smoke from a chimney.
Vapor, steam, and smoke are best represented by pigment, as hard ink contours are not exactly suited for such elements of a pictorial composition. But such elements defined by ink lines in a comic drawing are, of course, excusable. Sometimes to show smoke moving where the drawings are all on paper, representing it by crayon-sauce with a stump has been found to be effective.
AN EXPLOSION.
If an artist is picturing in a comic cartoon the firing of a cannon, he indicates a globular projectile leaving the cannon’s mouth. The artist does not do this because of any scrupulous care in picturing reality but merely that it seems in keeping with the idea of vivid comic delineation.
In producing the appearance of a cannon-ball following its trajectory off into the far distance he takes heed of the law of perspective that requires an object to become visionally smaller as it nears the horizon. This animation is easily managed. A certain number of models of the missile are cut out of thin cardboard graduated in size from the first that leaves the cannon’s mouth to the smallest for the distance. They are used by putting one at a time in their proportionate places under the camera in connection with the other work during the photography. Not many of these models would be required, as the action is so rapidly represented that almost any sort of illusive effect will do for the purpose.