Sunday, April 5, 2009

I Love Smears

Smears are one of the few things I can never get tired of seeing in animation. They add a bit a snap, they're beautiful to look at (in motion as well as the individual drawings themselves) & they conserve time & money. But most importantly, they're loads of fun to animate!

I love all kinds of smears:

Smears with trails

Stretched-Face smears



Smears with multiple eyes

Smears with MORE multiple eyes

Smears with multiple everything

But my absolute favorite type of smears are the ones where the characters are so skewed that they look almost nothing like the actual character. They're like 1 frame Salvador Dali paintings.



Darla Dimple or Quasimodo?

I even like the mini ones

For a recent animation project, I animated a 20 second logo for the Tribeca Film Festival, & a big portion of it was all smears. It was probably one of the most fun things I ever animated. I'll post it up on Youtube within the next few weeks.  

More smear goodness to come soon.

4 comments:

Zach Bellissimo said...

Haha I remember you showing me those Darla ones. She looks like some kinda fat beast ape thing. I love the Ratigan one too.
"FINISH IT, FLAVERSHOME!"

Zane Asylum said...

These are wonderful. I am working on a tutorial for flash animators about smears. Could you please post what toons these smears are from?

Michael J. Ruocco said...

Thanks guys!

Zane, here's the list of cartoons/films these smears came from:

1 & 2 - Wackiki Rabbit

3, 9, 10 & 11 - Cat's Don't Dance

4 - Fun & Fancy Free

5 - Great Mouse Detective

6 - Fantasia 2000

7 - Ali Baba Bunny

8 & 12 - Aladdin

Hope that helps!

Zane Asylum said...

Thanks so much!