Appeal doesn’t necessarily mean like-able but rather that the character is interesting to watch. Even some of the best villains are appealing. You want your audience to be able to watch your characters no matter what role they play. Each of the characters and hands (or character sketches) above are derived from appealing shapes. Though these are quick sketches, you begin to get an idea of what each of these characters personalities are. The gestures in each of the hands even tell a story. These shapes are exaggerated versions of real world shapes. Shapes on their own can simply tell the attitude of a character.

Often one of the first exercises presented to students in a beginning animation class is the flour sack (for those who don’t remember, flour used to come in cloth sacks). The exercise consists of animating one of these sacks as if it was partially filled with flour. By positioning the sack in different poses, the animator can bring it to life and even give it different attitudes. It’s a great way to learn how to give a character personality through the use of body language. This same effect can be used by using a simple bean shape.

Interesting shapes can also give your environment an appealing look. Though realistic looking environments can be appealing, using interesting shapes can make it more fun and add to the style of your animation. It’s worth observing some everyday objects to see what appealing simple shapes you can use to help define them. Look at how people use interesting and appealing shapes to decorate the environment around them. Obviously these shapes need to match the style of animation you want to achieve. The more cartoon-y the style, the more you can push those shapes and even eliminate some detail. So as you go to work or school, look around you and try to find the shapes in people, places, objects and animals.

I met Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas when they came to give a lecture at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts). Being a student of animation, I was completely awestruck, and in situations like that you tend to forget what you wanted to ask. Having grown up wanting to be a Disney animator, I was very familiar with these two men and the work they had done. Since I was a teacher’s assistant, I was in charge of getting all of their AV materials set-up and ready to for their presentation, so I was privileged to sit and talk with them for a little while as they handed all of their materials to me. As soon as the head of the program introduced me as Rusty Mills, Ollie immediately responded with, "You should get that fixed.” Then Frank added, “It’s better than rusty nails,” to which I responded by looking at my fingers and replying, “Well, not yet.” We continued to joke as Ollie made light of the fact that he and Frank were beginning to get rusty under the nails. Their quick wit and humor really helped break the ice and made talking with them much easier.

They had just released their book, "Disney Animation: the Illusion of Life," and this was their first stop outside of the Disney studio to give a speech. They were still refining their talk, and as an early audience member I was fortunate enough to have them both sign my copy. I asked them a few questions about the best way to approach a new scene, and Ollie said, "Know your character before you ever put pencil to paper.” Frank added, “Understand how they think. Once you know them, begin to experiment drawing them with that knowledge in mind.” This advice has stuck with me over all of these years and I have always approached my scenes that way. The one thing I will always remember about Ollie and Frank is that no matter what amazing things they had accomplished, they were just two great people who were very willing to share their industry knowledge.

If there is one particular phrase attributed to Ollie over and over, it is, “What is the character thinking?” As an animator, that can be one of the most daunting, yet helpful assessments of a scene. Glen Keane once said that when he was showing some CG animation to Ollie, his response was, “…But what is she thinking?” Ollie often gave that same critique to many young animators.

Though we mourn the loss of such a great animator and individual, we can be comforted in the fact that he left behind an abundance of knowledge that we all can learn from and carry on. For continued Ollie inspiration, check out FrankandOllie.com, where you can find some of his anecdotes and advice, along with other site and book recommendations.

Goodbye Ollie, we’ll miss you.

Let’s take a look at some steps that are used in a typical animated project.

Many times a script is written to start the process. On lots of independent projects the script process is skipped or becomes a simple dialog script generated from the storyboard for use in recording.

Storyboards are a crucial part of the process. It’s the first time you’re able to visually put your thoughts down. If there are multiple people working on the project, it’s essential that you have a storyboard to help convey the story.

Two storyboard pages from the Animaniacs short “Two Note Song”

I use storyboards on my personal projects to help work out some of the initial staging and acting points of the film. When doing work for a client, it’s the first way you can get them to understand concepts and even sign-off on various aspects of the final piece.

Visual development is a way to throw out some ideas for the design and color of the finished production. You may have seen various “art of” books , such as The Art of Finding Nemo, published about mainstream feature animated films.


Here’s a background color key used for Tiny Toon Adventures “Night Ghoulery.” Color keys are small versions of the background used to direct other artists on the color and style of backgrounds of similar scenes.

Development art is a favorite choice among publishers of these books. This process can range from simple character sketches to painted illustrations. Some artwork created for development is used later in the production when color and lighting are being determined.

The interesting thing about development art is that you can use the color styling of one piece and the design of another for the final project. That is why sometimes when you see development art from a production, it doesn’t look like the final film. It also may be an idea that was changed or thrown out.

This is a color script which was created for my film,“Gotcha Covered.” Color scripts are used for determining the color styling for a particular sequence of a film.

One of the best preparation steps you should do just before you animate a scene is thumbnailing, which is sketching a small rough draft. No matter what kind of animation you are doing, or how well you draw, doing some thumbnails will help you figure out your scene. With thumbnails you can figure out poses and acting for your scene.

Doing some of these preliminary processes can make a big difference in the quality of your final animation. Plus it can save you time and headaches during the production.

You’ve seen all the pieces, now check out the finished product! Go to Rusty’s page to check out his work from start to finish!

To begin, I used ToonBoom Storyboard Pro to create the storyboard. Having a solid storyboard helped in planning out the animation. I also created an animatic with this program which helped plan the camera moves and the timing of the scenes. I was able to take the storyboard directly into ToonBoom Digital Pro where I was going to do the animation.

At the same time I was able to take layered images into a digital bitmap animation program where I could create pencil-like layouts of the backgrounds. I chose this program because it allowed me to achieve a look very much like real world tools. This could also be done in programs like Photoshop or Painter.

Once these were completed, I brought them into Digital Pro to animate the scenes in order. I worked with the extremes and in-betweens before I moved on to the next scene.

When I finished all the scenes I used an editing program to put all of the rough scenes together to be sure it all flowed well. I used colors on the characters to help make them stand out from the backgrounds. You will also notice that there were a few changes I made from the animatic for better clarity, such as the first scene of the bird sweeping. In this area, I lengthened the scene slightly to allow more time for the audience to see what was happening.

I then worked on the clean-up and coloring of the characters and painted the backgrounds. To help with the classic look I kept the lines clean and solid, much like an ink line. I also gave the characters colored lines which helped give it a look of old classic cartoons.

When it came to painting the backgrounds I studied some backgrounds from old short cartoons to see how they handled the color and what techniques they used. The nice part about doing the entire clip myself is that I had total control over all aspects of the project. I was also able to jump back and forth during the production, from layout to animating, and especially in the final two steps: clean-up and background painting.

All together I feel it was a successful piece and perfectly illustrates the point that classic-looking cartoons can be made using digital technology. This whole project took me a few hours in the evenings; six weeks from beginning to end.

Want to put these words into practice? Watch Rusty’s animation here to jump start your inspiration! Rusty also invites MyTooners to check out his animatic and the pencil test of this piece on his profile page.