Thursday, March 01, 2007

What Makes Rod Great
part 1

To attone for my wrong scene sins I'm now doing a series of posts about what makes Scribner's drawing and animation unique. Hopefully this will be helpful to me and you for spotting Scribner scenes in the future.

Intense Emotions:
This is Scribner's strong suit. I think a common mistake is to think of Scribner as doing wacky or crazy work, and while certain scenes are really wacky and funny, Scribner was really the best at vividly displaying emotion. This is what I think makes Rod Scribner most important as an animator. Bob Clampett, as a director, knew Rod's strengths and would assign Rod scenes that required extreme emotions. This allowed Scribner to flourish and give tremendous life to the characters and the cartoons. One important note about Scribner's animation of extreme emotions is he will sometimes distort the characters physical appearance, like Porky's eye being huge below in Kitty Kornered, but those distortions were always in service of an emotion, thus enhancing that emotion and making the character seem more real. This was a breakthrough in animation that I feel Scribner was responsible for and Clampett fostered. Interestingly, it is a breakthrough that has been largely forgotten about over the years. (With a few exceptions) Often times a comment about great animation acting is"You can read every emotion the character is having through their acting." Meaning the animator takes a characters inner thoughts and externalizes them by the way they draw the character. This comment is kind of handed out like candy in books and audio commentaries to some, I feel, undeserving animators. I feel that no one ever externalized a characters emotions better than Rod Scribner.

Examples: Anger














Giddyness













Surprise