stevethompson-art:

In defense of “Clean Up”-

When I worked at Disney Feature Animation, I worked in the animation clean-up department. I started as a Breakdown Artist on “Hunchback”. By the time I left animation, I was Key Assistant animator. Often times people would say, ”Oh, so you trace other people’s drawings ?”. Well, we did put really pretty final images on the screen. But no, we did not trace. I went to school at CalArts. I studied character animation. I knew what I was doing. I liked putting characters “on model”, and completing what was needed in a scene I received from the animator. It’s true sometimes artists would not understand what the animators intention was and would end up changing the animation in the process. Not good. But, a good “clean-up” artist could keep the animators vision, understand the animation and keep it all looking consistent.  The best scenes happened when an animator and clean up artist had a mutual respect for the role each other played in getting a film finished.  Attached you can see a rough drawing along with my cleaned up version. Did I trace? Not exactly. But hopefully I put in the detail I needed, while keeping what the animator had imagined. It takes a LOT of people to make magic happen. Being part of a team working to make a character look like they were all drawn by one hand is an amazing experience. One that unfortunately seems to be gone. #2D