Blog10:
Glen Keane: Top Disney character animator
Demonstration
and interview with Glen Keane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xus02QEJon0&list=TLzEvawLGUECc
"My sketch books and the figure drawings are the source for everything
I've ever animated. It's all
these observations. The little things that make a huge difference. You don't see it unless you are drawing it,
and you have to draw it. In order to draw it, you have to have observed it. You can see it, or you can really see
it."
-Glen
Keane
Glancing
into the world of Disney I found yet another great animator Glen Keane, who
worked on movies such as Aladdin, The
Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Pochahontas, and the most recent movie Tangled. As I was glancing at his
character sketches of Rapunzel I realized that it takes a trained artist to
make a believable character with only a few strokes of the pencil. There is no need
for immense detail within his sketches because he delivers the point across to
his audience. His talent lies within the facial expressions of his characters,
such as Rapunzel's grin or raised eyebrow. When it comes to Disney, their focus
remains within the expressions. In order for these artists to create these 3D
animated movies, they must put forth a painstaking amount of artwork beginning
with concept art, to storyboards, to animating and rendering one single frame.
The ending result is very rewarding. One single scene will display every tree
and character to a single blade of grass. Glen's interest in art dawned from
the start of his existence since his dad had already had a career in
cartooning. His father would instruct him to study human anatomy and eventually
he had a greater understanding of it. Keane gained an immense amount of
knowledge about animation when he mentored under Jules Engel, a famous
animation teacher. After watching his demo on YouTube (linked above), it was a
lot easier to understand how he draws and where he draws his inspiration from.
He stated that drawing Caucasian women was a lot easier for him because it's
what he had practice with. But when he had to draw anything else like
Pocahontas, it was a lot more difficult because the facial proportions were a
lot different being her cheekbones were pointier, serious facial expression,
straight eyebrows, and jagged face. It was very interesting to watch him draw
because even though he is an amazing artist, being put on the spot in front of
many people can be uncomfortable even for him. Again, his knowledge of anatomy
is evident in his demonstrations because he speed draws with ease on characters
that many people would struggle with, such as the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Glen Keane gives
me hope that with further knowledge of anatomy and a lot of practice, an artist
can excel in that type of field.
