This was a great panel. Tom Sito, Dave Burgess, Don Hahn, Kevin Koch, Andreas Deja, and Frank’s son Theodore all gave awesome insight into Frank & Ollie and their work.

Tom Sito, who recently directed PBS’s first animated show – the wonderfully silly As the Wrench Turns, – moderated and kept the conversation moving along at a good pace. I was pleasantly surprised that they really didn’t rehash much of the Frank & Ollie documentary that T.Thomas had done, but instead jumped right into their personal reasons for admiring Frank & Ollie’s work. Each of the animators brought clips and/or drawings to show so they could point out specific moments they admired. Here are some of the key points that were hit upon:

• Frank and Ollie were fearless contemporary artists who studied the work of other artists and generally paid close attention to the world outside of animation. They were whole people who drew upon their lives outside of Disney for inspiration
• Frank and Ollie spent a lot of time commuting to work together, talking about their problems, and just general being a sounding board for each other. This kind of interaction with your fellow artists is key.
• One of the hallmarks of Frank and Ollie’s work is how the characters interact with each other physically. Touching, hugging, jabbing, etc… all add so much to the emotional reality of a shot. I think Dave was talking the most about this, especially how hard this traditionally has been to accomplish in CG and that only with movies like Ratatouille are we beginning to see the technical advancement that will allow these kinds of fleshy-feeling interactions to happen.
• Frank & Ollie did not treat each shot as a potential demo reel piece and neither should we. They tried to figure out how to do each scene so that it served the needs of the larger story and the picture as a whole.

Specific scenes that were called out:

• Sleeping Beauty, Merryweather says “Hoptoad”
  a use of broad squash and stretch that is still very graceful, working within the design of the character to make interesting shapes
• 101 Dalmations, Nana patting and hugging Pongo
  A specific example of characters touching
• Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts croquet sequence
  These scenes are broken up beautifully between large extremely cartoony moves and smaller subtle moments. Since not everything is pushed all the way, when the Queen breaks out into one of her broad angry movements it is very effective.
• Song of the South, Brer Fox plans to cook the captured Brer Rabbit for dinner
  When Brer Fox pushes his whole body into a giant curve to look through a knothole at his victim, it really shows how broad you can be and still have the character feel “real.” Every part of Brer Fox, ears, toes, etc., is used to express the character and every part moves in beautiful arcs while maintaining the silhouette

Also mentioned as favorites:
Baloo’s first entrance, and Smee in Peter Pan (Ollie)
Lady and Tramp’s spaghetti dinner, and Wart and Merlin as squirrels by Frank

For me, one of the highlights of the panel was when Andreas Deja brought out a stack of drawings from his personal collection and just started putting them up on the overhead projector one at a time. It was great to be able to see so clearly the differences in their styles; how Frank’s drawings were so strongly lined and searching, while Ollie’s were lighter and freer. When I briefly ambushed Kevin Koch after the panel to say hello (sorry Kevin, I know you needed to get out of there but I didn’t think I’d get another chance) he mentioned that it had been decided in advance that this part would have to go last because Andreas just had so many to share that it could have eaten up all the time. Tom Sito did eventually make him stop so there was time for questions. I would not have minded if he kept going though.

The Animation Mentor team did a great job putting this together, and it was a well attended event. I was pleased to see that the audience was more than just AM students, but also included students from other schools, professional animators, and technical folks. Thanks so much guys!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Siggraph 08, animation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.