⤷ Animation Skillz ୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ
- freyamanning0
- Oct 7
- 10 min read
WEEK 2 -
objectives:
- research into Emile Cohl
- do research into the animation principle anticipation
EMILE COHL ☆ｏ(＞＜；)○
Emile Cohl is one of the first animators to release a fully animated film. He was an animator in 1857, so a pretty long time ago. He started out as a characturist in his 20's then found facination in chalkboard anination, moving a stick man from one area to the next in a series of drawings rubbed out and re put it back in. As Emlie Cohl got more and more interested in animation he created the first documented animation with over 700 taken photographs on a chalkboard.
Though due to the great depression he was fianically ruined and he died due to pneumonia and having no money to help himself with his illness he died broke and sickly. All of his films are short films, not fully 2 hour animated film like something from other big huge animation studios. His work doesn't compare to the animations now and the technology that we as a society do have but with the time and the fact its the first animation it is truly groundbreaking (as well as its just one person making it) what he managed to do, with his first footsteps in the door of animation more people followed and continued to create art and animations building the society of animation that we know today.
Now to truley understand what his work looks like I watched a few of his animations. One of them I just had to watch the pictures moving and not pay attention to the speaking because it was written in french and I cannot speak nor read french.
But from what I saw I really liked how if you look at his animations, animation really hasn't changed too much. Sure the quality is much better but the actual feeling of animation hasn't changed. In animation you can sort of stretch what reality is because its drawings and with his animations you can tel that he definelty did that when people turned into other things or, the people in the animations had something suddenly go over them and appear from the darknes of the chalk board. I personally believe that animation really hasn't changed at all because if I think about newly animated things, For example Kpop Demon hunters (2025).
Even though the animation is a million times better than being shot on a camera with chalkboard drawings there are silly parts to it as well as some sort of understand of moral. Now I would say that digital animation is much more sophisticated with it leaning toward more rules that should be learnt by everything or showing an important lesson but in terms of stop motion I believe it is still all the same. The animations that Emile Cohl created are stop motion. Pose to pose animation going form one pose to the next, not guidelines inbetween or breaking it down like you would for 2d or 3d animation. It is just move it pose to pose as you go. When I look at stop motions even now they are all still pretty silly, as you have to use the environment around you to create something. Even though there are insanely good and amazing stop motion things now (like The remastered 'Coraline' (2024) movie or 'Wendell and Wild' (2022)) I would say compared to 2d animations there is a more natural and funny feel to them because well its all done by a person and you can almost feel what emotions where put into the work physically.
I have alot of respect for stopmotion as well as the time it must take to do it. Watching Emile Cohls animation, for me, is really cool. I really like stop motion and learning how people did it and just watching his animations they are so clean. Every movment there is no mess, sure sometimes the lines may e thinner than others or the lighting around the bottem of the screen will change but overal the animations are perfectly spotless. I would think doing things on a chalk board you would struggle to make sure that the background always stays black, but no they are clean and the focus on just the characters moving. Looking more at his work to me it shows the clear example of what shows like "Looney tunes" are based off of. Possibly not directly as it is the first animations ever made but animation grew from that and the silly reality that Emile created contuined to flourish and grow through different forms of media.
One of the most important animations I looked into of Emiles was the animtion 'Fantasmigore'. It is the animation he is know for so I had to watch it. This is the first animation he made and is the first well recorded animation. I really, REALLY like it. It isn't the best animation out there. As well as the drawings arn't the most beautful things ever ethier. There really isn't and slowing down sections in the animation it is all really at one speed. But I feel lik from this animation, it shows to people of the past as well as now! (There is actually a academy deicated too him so modern artsits literally still think his work is some of the most important pieces of media out there) that you don't have ot be super talented or draw photographic images. As long as you have the idea and you can create it, and have the passion then do it. His art isn't something you would see in a gallery but his art is impactful giving people hope for there dreams knowing if they want to create something. The stick men in his animation are very expressionate even for simple stick men. From the character pulling feathers on the other characters hat. To this clown character being afraid of a cannon, it is all shown through the most simple yet effective drawings.
"Fantasmigore (1908)" screenshots from youtube (credits to the youtuber underneath)
"A love affair in toyland (1908)" screenshots from youtube (credits to the youtuber bellow)
"La maison du fantoche (1916)" Screenshots from YouTube (credits to the youtuber bellow)
Something else that I think is very effective in his work is the way that he does transition's, from the images bellow it shows that in the animation "A love affair in toyland" that the character turns into the next background. I think that is such a smart way to do a simple transition through to the next scene, as doing it now there is much more background and story line to everything so making a harsh cut tthe next scene is fine but with Emile Colh's animations you couldn't do that, the story is short and sweet and because of that the transitions have to be understanable for the auidence to follow along with the story line and using the already drawn in people to create the background gives it a shadow puppet feel in my opinion because shadow puppets are using limited supplies as well as Emile had too as welll!!
The other thing I like about his most famous animation would be the fact that Emile Cohl himself interacts with his own animation, showing him drawing the figure at the beginning almost giving the viewer the knoweldge this is a animation I did but even though you see the beginning of the drawing once the characters come alive you feel like you apart of their world. Which I think is a super important thing, in my head when watching this animation I feel like Emile is also watching with us the camera is his point of view watching his drawing come to life.
Being able to make your drawing come to like and feel real I think is the most important part of animation ever. If you characters or eniviroment doesn't feel real then you wont get viewers, you wont get the audience you want for your animation. But his characters do feel alive even though they are super simple drawings, the scenarios that they are in arn't real, I mean te backgrounds that they are in are just a black background with only the things that they will interact with drawn in but it all feels real, the music along side with all of the movment just makes it feel real. I would say making a stick man feel alive is a really hard task but through simple movments like bouncing or aniticpation for something that is about to happen right before the action just makes them feel out of this reality but in their own one where what they are doing makes perfect sense.
Something that I am taking from his work to hopefully be able to incorporated into my own media pieces would be feeling. I want to be able to make my drawings feel real. I am not completely sure how to do it but hopefully researching and working hard at university will get me somehwere where my animations at least feel real. I allways have the problem of making everything feel separate so the characters dont belong in the background but looking into Emile Cohls work it shows the background doesn't have to be super complicated I can make a simple one and as long as the charcters fit then its okay!!
Kpop Demon Hunters (2025), Directed by: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans, [Feature film], Sony pictures Animation
Coraline (2024), Directed by: Henry Selick, [Feature film], LAIKA
Wendell and Wild (2022), Directed by: Henry Selick, [Feature Film], Netflix
Looney toons (1930), Cartoon Network, Boomerang, April 13, 1930
ANTICIPATION ヾ(☆▽☆)
Anticipation is another one of the animation principles that are important to just knowing how to animate. Now last week I was able to just explain what squash and stretch was without researching , it seems to be the one that I always remember. So within my research and learning what anticipation is I can determine that it is the action that an object or character will do right before the action it is about to do will happen. For an easier way to explain it an example would be when someone is about to hit a nail with a hammer.
The action that create the anticipation for the watcher would be the action right before they hit the nail, they would swing upwards.
Now when I researched this I watched a super short and helpful video by AlanBeckertutorials, honestly seeing the video was just a really go visual way to understand as the nI got set this task I thought I was just going to have to explain what squash and stretch is again.
Because I don't really know what anticipation is, and I had to watch a video to really understand it I decided that I would try it out in a short animation.
Now this is a terrible animation, I am very a where like this is generally awful the movement isn't good at all, it changes shape but doing this I know have a reference my own to look back on and understand what anticipation is. It isn't really a hammer, hammering a nail.
I wanted it to end where the anticipation was but it looked super bad so I just made the hammer turn into sludge which also uses the skills I have learnt with the bouncing ball. Squash and stretch as it falls it gets longer. Now it isn't the best so the volume id change but I am aware of the mistakes and ifI here to do this for a actually full and lovely animation I would make it amazing but I did this fast just to know what it is.
Now this is a terrible animation, I am very a where like this is generally awful the movement isn't good at all, it changes shape but doing this I know have a reference my own to look back on and understand what anticipation is. It isn't really a hammer, hammering a nail. I wanted it to end where the anticipation was but it looked super bad so I just made the hammer turn into sludge which also uses the skills I have learnt with the bouncing ball. Squash and stretch as it falls it gets longer.
Now it isn't the best so the volume id change but I am aware of the mistakes and ifI here to do this for a actually full and lovely animation I would make it amazing but I did this fast just to know what it is.
Now in work terms the bouncing ball is still the animation I should be working on. As I pretty much did it last week I thought I would try out giving myself a harder task. Making a shooting star/ball of light.
This animation proved to be really difficult for some reason. The work was the same animate a bouncing ball but when I started I made it way to difficult to understand for someone at my skill level currently. I just made it too ambitious.
Here is the completely messed up one, Nothing was working and I felt super nervous that I was doing awfully. Now this isn't the first time this has happened this week I also did it within my animation and illustration practice but that doesn't matter for this blog! So instead of sticking with it, I worked hard to make a whole new version, doing key frames, a ball path and taking my time.
Now until I came to uni I actually didn't understand what keyframes really where used for but after the first mess-up and using them this time they proved to be super helpful.
It may seem stupid but the basic animation of just adding the keyframes and looking at it from a broken down version really did help. I defiantly learnt important lessons this week, take my time is the huge main one.
Here is the other ball animation I worked on. I really like this one, I took my time and made something that I also believe helped me calm down myself just something to do with the dark and stars. I really enjoyed doing the bouncing ball task, even though I have animated like a few things in the past this was such a good help and I really do feel like I understand just a bit more about the animation principles more. Something that I will try going forward is making sure everything is animated on 2's, I just completely forgot to do that for the animation and I am still learning the software TV paint so trying to sort it out proved otherwise be a struggle.
So I just left it as it was so I didn't ruin what I was proud of.
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