I sent a question in to the Unofficial Disney Animators page and Eric Goldberg replied!

Question of the Week - This question comes from Marc Hendry:



“Hi, I’m a big fan of your Twitter and Facebook accounts and it’s incredibly cool to be able to interact with the Disney Animators. I have heard a lot of animators talk about studying scenes by Milt Kahl and the other veterans either by framing through the films or looking at the original drawings, and I’m wondering:



What questions do you ask yourselves when you study another animator’s work?



I’m an animation student myself, and I’m dying to learn as much as I can from all this great stuff. Thank you!”



Here is an answer from animator and director Eric Goldberg:



“Studying any classic Disney scene raises a multitude of interesting questions, no matter if it’s Milt, Frank, Ollie, Marc, Ward, Freddie Moore, or any number of others. Here are a few examples in no particular order:



-How are the different attitudes expressed using the entire body?



-What kind of shape design is used to graphically support the idea of the pose?



-How are secondary items like hair and cloth, used to support the overall design and movement?



-What kind of shape manipulation is going on, particularly in the face, to better feel the expressions and lip-synch?



-What’s a key, what’s a breakdown, and what’s an inbetween?



-How are internal and external features defined in the animation? (What’s hard bone, what’s fat, what’s muscle, what’s loose hanging flesh, what’s squishy, what isn’t?)



-How is the use of one or two frames of distortion effective in defining the action?



Hope that answers your questions about questions!”



That concludes our eleventh Question of the Week! Thanks to Marc for the question and Eric for the answer! Email more questions to Disneyanimators@gmail.com and we will post another one next week! Keep them coming! Thanks, everyone!