Tezuka School of Animation: Vol. 2 Animals in Motion

Part of the reason I made this blog was to share my research with people, which is helpful whenever someone asks "How do I animate?" or "Any idea how I can animate a good animal run-cycle???" I can't answer this in an easy way, the best I can do is refer them to something I've found helpful before or find them some good reference, and say: Have a go!

Today I'm going to share some thoughts (and pages) from an animation-book I've found very useful. I guess it's going to be a review of sorts. It's called "Tezuka School of Animation: Vol 2. Animals in Motion" by Tezuka Productions, published by Watson Guptill Publications in 2003, and it's apparently been used in the curriculum of Manga Academy. The front cover looks like this:

It comes with a pricetag of 13.95$, but I think you can get it even cheaper from amazon.

I got this for my 16th birthday from my best friend who is now also studying to become an animator. I wasn't too impressed about the anime-style at first, but Tezuka is such an early style that it might as well be European or early Disney. In some cases anatomy is overly simplified, but it is good enough for reference and if you follow the instructions well, your animation will look really believable. 

I have not read the first volume in the series, but according to the (very short) preface of this book, the first volume talked about the basic aspects of animation. Which means, there are very few general animation-principles to be found in this book. Instead it focuses specifically on animals and what's special about how they move - which I really enjoy. It makes this book to-the-point and I'm not being told the same principles about squash-and-stretch or secondary motion, which I've already read about in other books many times. This makes the book useful not just for beginners, but it raises a lot of points which might be useful for people who have been animating for a long time.

So let's look at some pages from the book (right click and open in new tab/window for higher resolution.)

After a very short introduction about plantigrade, digitrade and unguligrade animals, we get to the first chapter which is entirely devoted to dog animation cycles. There are a total of ten(!) different cycles to choose from, including walking, running, trotting and turning, where walk and run can be seen at several angles (front, diagonal front, side and rear).

Notice that the frames need to be read like a japanese manga, starting at the upper right and "reading" down towards the lower left corner.

In a sense, the book might function as a handbook for people like me, who would like reference when animating animals. The authors also provide some simple but very useful tips, facts and heads-up's like in the image below.

I've never thought about animals being right/left-foot dominant and having irregular run-cycles. This is a great little fact I've started to take into account about when designing my animal-characters, and it's a good way of giving them subtle unique body-language. 

After the dog-chapter follows a longer horse-chapter, which has 16 different horse-cycles to offer. This includes walking, trotting, cantering, galloping and jumping - again some of the more basic cycles are shown at several angles. 

Horses and dogs are one of the most usually needed animals in animation, which is probably why they got the longest chapters. The third chapter looks at a few other animals, but at lower variation of angles and speeds. This chapter has amongst others six big-cat cycles, four bear-cycles, three camel cycles, and one or two cycles with cats, weasels, deer, antelopes, giraffes,elephants, rabbits, baboons, kangaroos, dolphins, bats, snakes, crocodiles, turtles, lizards and frogs.

Phew, that is quite a selection!

Tezuka was known for making the "Kimba"-films, which is probably why there's quite a nice selection of lion cycles to choose from. 

I've found this book to not only be good place to go for references, but it's also good for inspiration. Especially if you need inspiration for an interesting cycle to use for a fantasy animal. It might seem strange, but I think these baboon cycles would be be really nice reference for the movement of a dragon.

The very last chapter focuses mostly on birds, fish and insects. There's not much walking and running here (obviously), but rather swimming and flying. There's some really nice variation here, and thus another great source of inspiration. If I were to animating a phoenix, I'd look at the crane-cycle! If I were to animating a fairy-dragon, I'd look at the butterfly! There's also a chicken and sparrow walk/hop cycle, which I think would be awesome for dinosaur-references.

This animation is a prime example of the pros and cons of this book. The movement in focus (here the wings) is well timed and has got a nice "eagle"-feel to it. However the anatomy is slightly wonky and over-simplified, and sometimes parts of the animal looks a static - like the legs on this poor eagle.

This is why you should probably look at the reference in this book slightly critically, and then cover it up with your own knowledge and style. I'll be talking more about this in a second. 

As you might have noticed, the whole book is in black-and-white, which doesn't really matter much until you get to the last quarter of the book, where some frames from Tezuka's work is shown as examples. They look really messy compared to the rest of the book and they are hard to follow as the motion in focus is obscured by other elements on-screen. This has lead to me not using this part very much at all, even though it has a cool flipbook-effect.

I don't want to publish the entire book, so that is all for now!

However if you are interested, I suggest you go ahead and buy the book! It's cheap, so it's definitely worth the money.

A little note on referencing vs. rotoscoping:

I've seen some of the cycles from this book used in videos on YouTube by beginners. It's fine to use it as reference, but sometimes it's really obvious that people have just traced (rotoscoped, as it's known in the animation-business) right over the illustrations in the book and coloured it. 

Some people think that's fine, as long as you add your own design over the animation, but I think it's utterly unimpressive. You don't observe when you trace, which means you don't learn anything.

The way I do it, is I crudely rotoscope it once, and pay close attention to the movement, and timing. Then I start from scratch again, using the design I want and maybe exaggerating and toning down the motion I like or dislike, while occasionally looking at the reference when I need to, but never tracing over. 

Remember though, referencing is fine! Use lots of reference for your art. Tracing, on the other hand, is generally frowned upon.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you've found this post useful!

Don't forget to leave a comment, and check by regularly for more of my art and posts about where I get my inspiration from. 

If you'd like me to look at another product, let me know and I might try and get my hands on it.