We all likely grew up watching animated movies and shows, it’s like an entrance to visual entertainment, right after picture books. It is therefore not much of a stretch to make the claim that animation affects us a great deal. So, today I’m going to talk about beautiful animation, with the help of some gifs I painstakingly made.
Balto (1995), Amblimation
Balto is a movie about sled dogs fetching a serum to cure diphtheria, focusing on the story of a half-wolf half-dog named Balto, who doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. The movie is (fairly loosely) based on a true story of the diphtheria epidemic in the 1925 Nome, Alaska.
Many of us probably saw this when we were young. I certainly remember loving the movie, I even have it on a VHS. I rewatched it to make gifs and while it still has great moments, scenes and other aspects, some of it, I find, falls flat. Especially the attempted comedy to lighten the story. But I won’t go into that more, it's not my focus. Why I’m writing about this movie is that it had some great animation and background, as well as character design. The scene I made a gif of is from one of the beautiful scenes - Balto struggles up from a pile of snow after falling down a gorge. After this, he remains huddled up in the cold and sees the white wolf, Aniu. Just look at that smooth animation and the light effects. Gorgeous.
Since I am essentially celebrating the work of artists who worked on this film, I tried to find the sites of the animators, which can be quite a difficult thing to do. Many simply do not even have online galleries and this seemed to be the case with a lot of the artists working on Balto, despite the fact that many are working in the industry even today. For example, Kristof Serrand (lead animator of the character Boris) also worked on How To Train Your Dragon. Andy Schmidt (lead character, Steele, additional animator) seems to currently work on Disney/Pixar and he has worked on Rescuers Down Under, Beauty And The Beast, Up, and Brave, among other things. All I could find of him was his LinkedIn profile. Since I am falling ill currently, I do not have the energy to quite search the whole animation team, but here are the sites I was able to find from Balto team:
Steven Albert - background artist http://www.steven-d-albert-art.com/
Stephen Hanson - background artist http://www.stephenhanson.co.uk/
The movie was worked on by Amblimation studios, an animation studio founded by Steven Spielberg (closed down in 1997). The studio also worked on An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. I recommend never watching the awful sequels made for this movie.
Rescuers Down Under (1990), Disney
A Disney movie about a young boy, who, in an attempt to save a rare golden eagle, Marahute, gets captured by a poacher. Two mice, Bernard and Bianca, are sent to his rescue. This movie has several beautiful scenes, which for traditional 2-D animation are absolutely amazing, yet people tend to forget about this film when they consider Disney movies. Especially the scenes featuring Marahute are great to look at.
One of the most notable animators and character designers working on this film was Glen Keane. I would have to say that he alone is responsible for what I thought for a long time eagles should look like, especially in art. Hell, I still carry that influence, his work on Marahute was simply that beautiful to me, even when I was little. His animation is consistently great and his work can be seen in Beauty And The Beast, Tarzan, Little Mermaid, and Tangled, among other things. While he doesn’t have his own portfolio site or an official blog, I recommend searching his name and looking at his work. Here is an excellent blog displaying his work
http://theartofglenkeane.blogspot.com. He recently retired from Disney.
How To Train Your Dragon (2010), DreamWorks
A movie about an awkward but inventive young buy, Hiccup, who cannot seem to fit in with the rest of the Vikings. Despite his clumsiness, he manages to down a dragon who no one has even managed to see before. Instead of killing the beast, he befriends it, naming it Toothless, and learning more about dragons than anyone else in the process.
This is just a great film. The final battle scene alone is a gorgeous work of art, but another striking thing about the animation are the flying scenes. If I could see the 3D effect, this would be the one movie I would like to see in 3D. The wind affects the dragons’ wings in a such a realistic manner that you can practically feel it yourself. The skin on the wings quivers and bulges from the strength of the wind. In the scene where Hiccup manages to pull up Toothless just in time, avoiding crashing into trees at a dizzying speed, you can see how the wings really cut the air. The variety of animation on fire in this movie is also great to look at. Some of the fire is almost lava-like, while some works like an explosion.
To see the work artists and the production crew did, I recommend watching this video,
The Making of How To Train Your Dragon:
http://youtu.be/vDsFQIWVfEQ This is one of the best making-of videos I have seen on a film.
You can see more How To Train Your Dragon production/ concept art in the How To Train Your Dragon tag of the animation tidbits Tumblr blog:
http://animationtidbits.tumblr.com/tagged/how-to-train-your-dragon
Nico Marlet - character design http://artofnicomarlet.tumblr.com/ (unofficial)
Alessandro Carloni - head of story, animation department http://alecarloni.blogspot.com
or http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/alessandro_carloni
Simon Otto - head of character animation http://simonotto.com/
Mark Williams - animator http://www.markwilliamsart.net/index.html
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010), Warner Bros (Village Roadshow Pictures, Animal Logic studios)
A young owl, Soren and his brother are kidnapped by owls referring to themselves as The Pure Ones, who are building themselves an army that could take over all the owl kingdoms. Soren’s only hope is to find the legendary Guardians, who he isn’t even certain exist.
Thos movie is pretty much full of absolutely gorgeous scenes and animation, yet very few seem to have seen this movie and no one has talked about it in years. It is a severely underappreciated movie, yet I sort of understand why. When I saw the first trailers for this movie, I laughed. It displayed owls in helmets and it looked ridiculous. But the trailer also showed one of the movie’s most striking scenes, where Soren flies through a vortex of air in a storm, which lead me to want to see the movie. It is gorgeous and dramatic, and after seeing the movie, the owls in helmets idea didn’t seem so silly. They managed to make them convincing. The story itself, though perhaps predictable, reminds me of stories the likes of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. More people definitely should watch this movie, if not for the story, then for the beautiful animation and cinematography.
Tohru Patrick Awa - character design http://www.patrickawa.net/
Felicity Coonan - art director http://felicityc.blogspot.com
Cecile Dubois-Herry - character artist http://cduboisherry.blogspot.com
Vivienne To - concept artist http://www.vivienneto.com/
If you want to find more of the artists’ pages (of any of the animated movies you‘ve seen), I recommend checking out the full crew lists on IMDB and proceeding to google. You might get lucky and find some of the artists who have contributed to your favorite movies.
