THE SIMPSONS NEWS – Breakdown of a Simpsons scene: Itchy and Scratchy trying to Kill Bart and Lisa

I explain this crazy drawing below.

Simpsons Quote:

“Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.” — Homer Simpson

I’ve animated on The Simpsons, quite a few times. By “animated”, I mean, done it all. From key poses to inbetweening to putting all the info on exposure sheets.

One of the times I did this was on Treehouse of Horror IX, when Itchy and Scratch chase Bart and Lisa into the Live with Regis and Kathie Lee show.

Basic Animation Principles

When you first learn to animate,  one of the first things you’re taught to animate is the “bouncing ball”.  It is meant to teach you the animation principle of squash and stretch. It’s usually the second lesson you’re taught in animation.  The first lesson being “ease in” and “ease out”.  Sometimes using a pendulum swinging or a ball starting to roll down a slant.

What am I talking about?

Okay, real quick, in case you don’t know:

Got this picture at: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelJungbluth/20110114/6788/Adding_Weight_to_Your_Game_Design_Part_6_Slow_In_Slow_Out.php

“Ease in” and “Ease out” – is when an object, like a  pendulum, slowly begins moving and then speed up as it moves forward. When it reaches the other side it slows down do to gravity and then slowly swings the other way.

In animation, in order to get this effect, you put more drawing in the slow parts and less drawing in the fast parts causing a “easing into” and “easing out of” effect.

Almost every action an animator animates has an “easing in” or “easing out” component.

Got this picture at: http://mattsfdablog.blogspot.com/2011/10/principles-of-animation.html

“Squash and stretch” – is an animation principle where an animated object is deformed (without changing it’s mass) for a single frame of film, either by squashing or stretching, in order to get a sense of weight or impact. Like when a ball hits the floor and bounces back up.

So what does this have to do with the episode? Read on.

Bart and Lisa Fall in Soup

Steve Moore, my director, asked me if I wanted the assignment doing this live action scene and I jumped a the chance. I talked up my animation skills to get it. It had been years since I had gotten a chance to fully animate anything. On top of that, I had never worked on anything quite like this either.

To be quite frank, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do it.  I was telling Steve how much experience I had, but really, it was only from a few animation tests I’d done. This would be something outside of my experience.

When I got my scene folder, it was full of pre-pegged Photostats . Photostats, are frame by frame photos of a of live action scene. This is what I was going to use in order to draw the characters interacting with the live action.

The one thing that you don’t see in the final version that was present in my Photostats, was the tennis balls that where dropped into the pot in order to make the splashes.  I covered the balls with the characters.

So I’m sitting there looking at the stats, roll up my sleeves and just start animating as I do it all the time.  I just went for it.

All those hours of sitting in “the little dark room” for Jeff , all the tests I’d done for classes, years of drawing the characters, and anything else I could draw upon, kept me going.

As I worked, it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t really doing anything complicated at all. Just because I was drawing characters with legs and arms didn’t mean that I was animating anything I hadn’t done before.

As I worked on the scene, it became VERY clear that I was basically animating a variation of the bouncing ball test. Let me show you.

Keep in mind that the screenshots I’ve got below are not the best representation of the drawings I would have liked to capture.  The method I use to get the screen captures was really imprecise:

Okay so taking a look at the screens above, in screen 1 you can see Lisa and Bart in a very strange pose. This would be a “not-so-deformed” stretch pose.

When Bart gets out of the pot, I drew a more stretched out drawing but was unable to capture it, so we have the drawing in screen 2 where he’s actually at the peak of this “ease out”.

Then he “stretches” in 3, landing with one foot first,  in order to make it more natural looking.

In screen 4, he lands and that’s the “squash” pose.

He “stretches” again in 5, as he takes to the air.

In 6 I didn’t quite capture the apex of his jump, but I did get Lisa’s “squash” pose.

7 is Lisa’s “ease out” pose and then her stretch on screen 8.  That’s that, the rest is just the kids running off screen.

Having done that, I was then able to do Itchy and Scratchy easier.  I went out of my way to really push them more since they’re “cartoons”:

Alright, so I start with a subtle stretch of the two character in screen 1 as they fall.

As Scratchy leaves the pot in screen 2 I really stretched him out. He looks deformed.

Then in screen 3 I REALLY do something crazy. This is a “smear”.  This kind of effect was used a lot in Looney Toon cartoons when a character had to do a quick action in only one frame.  I needed Scratchy to end up in the pose on screen 4 without having to use up any frames to do it, so I did this crazy blur effect.

When you look at the final animation, you can’t even see it unless you’re looking for it.  It happens so fast.  It totally works.

Screen 5 is Scratchy “easing out” of the apex of his jump and then stretching to to land in screen 6.

Screen 7 we see Scratchy in his “squash” position.  Itchy is now out of the pot, BUT if you go frame by frame, you will see that Itchy also had a crazy blur effect with his knife.  I wasn’t able to capture it though.

In Screen 8 you can clearly see Itchy stretching as Scratchy “eases out” of his jump.

I REALLY stretch Itchy in screen 9. He’s really fighting gravity as it pull down on him.

Just for fun and variety, I had Itchy do a flip when he jumped, as you can see in screen 10.

It turned out looking good. After worrying about the scene and whether or not I was going to be able to pull it off, it turned out to be really simple and really fun. It just required, mostly, basic animation knowledge with just a touch of advance know how.

Special E-mail Surprise

So in THIS week’s e-mail, I posted a very special surprise. I happen to own a photocopy of  the manuscript that became: Character Animation Crash Course!
By (Disney animator) Eric Goldberg (who designed and animated the Genie in Aladdin). Yes, it’s an affiliate link.

I used this manuscript in order to figure out how to do the “smear” effect on Scratchy. There’s a page in the manuscript that explains it. I don’t own Eric Goldberg’s book, so I can’t say whether or not the page I’m referring to is in it.

What I have done though is pasted the page in the e-mail I sent out this week. That way, even if you own the book, you can see the original manuscript page where it came from.

If you want to get this e-mail, simply opt in to the e-mail this week BEFORE next Thursday and I’ll resend the e-mail.

If you’re not receiving my e-mails, your missing out on a lot of fun stuff like this.

WEBSITE – Drawing Stick Figure with style

A new Drawing Website post is up.

Alright, so the drawing on the left doesn’t look like much, but believe me when I say that, the post this drawing belongs to will change the way you look at cartoon characters.

I really went all out on this new post and you have not idea how excited I am for you to read it.

Whether you’re a real beginner or much more advanced at drawing, this post has info on design that you might have never heard before.

In fact, I know a lot of professional draftsmen, who don’t know some of what I’ve written in this post. The crazy part, is that I do it all with stick figures!

If you’ve ever wanted to learn to draw cool stick figures, this is the post for you.

Check it out, give it a read, and leave me feedback about what you think.

Stick figures, with style! – Basic design.

For more comics and stories written by me: COMICS AND STORIES

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