Notes from a Lecture Class with the Bancroft Brothers

Today we had a lecture master class with the Legendary Bancroft Brothers, masterminds behind characters like Mushu or Pumba, and many others.

Here I would like to share my notes from their lecture, I hope they might be helpful to many others as they will be for me. Also they are my humble misinterpretations mostly, but the idea is there somewhere.

They divided their presentation, Tom with Character Design and Tony with Character performance, however, they keep speaking in tandem, so most of the notes come from both brothers, even when it was their single part of the presentation. 

Notes from Tom:

When doing a character design think of:

• Role in the Story
• Its Personality
• Does the plot is physically related with the character? (Dumbo ears, Pinnochio's nose, Shrek is ugly, etc)

Look for unsuccessful examples of similar characters and analyze why doesn't they work, then think on ways to make them work.

Character design basics:

• Size: Have size variations on the shapes that compose your character, try to not keep head, body and limps relationship in a same level, play with small, medium, large, concepts.  For example, have a small head with a huge chest and medium hip and legs, or a medium head with tiny chest and huge hips, play around.
• Shape:  In what shape is the character based? Circles, triangle, teardrop, etc
• Variance: Have variance between the character itself and between all the cast of the story
• The best way to explain this is with pictures, I'll get them in an update, but note how these 3 concepts maintain a constant relationship between each other, and are one and the same (some holy concepts here) the idea is that.

Contrast and Dynamism:

• It's a game of angles and poses. 
• I keep thinking of all of this as RHYTHM, have rhythm in everything you do, that means a contrast of everything, lines, curves, shapes, poses. Keep things flowing.

Keep it Loose, But Accurate:

• GESTURE DRAWING! Here they talked about Glen Keane and how they worked with him in several feature films. He is the one to look when it comes to gesture drawings, they said, it is pure emotion! 
• They also said that the only stiff drawings one should make are the model sheets, those should be the ONLY ones, everything else you make about a character should be full of gesture, emotion, rhythm, however you want to call it.

This one blew my mind a little bit:

LESS LINES LEAVE MORE TO IMAGINATION

Notes from Tony:

His lecture was mostly about character performance, how to bring your characters to life.

• Tell a STORY
• That reads clearly with only a glance
• Attitude
• Or personality, have your character have character
• Avoid formulaic approaches
• Don't use the same expressions or poses for every character, just as everybody have a different way of laugh, every character should have their own distinctive smile, or sadness, etc.
• Normal people (clients) are usually unable to differentiate a good design, but they do recognize CHARACTER, or emotion. They look for life. Humans are empathic, if you character is emphatic it's probably successful.
• THUMBNAILS!
• Explore your character with thumbnails, built up stories where your character is just doing something and draw it, don't just draw the triumph confident pose.
• Line of action
• Or as another professor likes to call it, the line of intention, this line can easily tell what the character is doing, it is the core idea of the pose.
• Eyesight
• Eyes tell stories, put a lot of attention on what and how your character is looking.
• Expression
• Go to the extremes or be subtle, study actors and the way of acting, but find a way to communicate effectively. Emotions are communication.There are many ways to tell a emotion.
• Emotion is a reaction.Think of situations (stories) that trigger emotions.
• Be able to tell when something is successful  keep it or walk away from it if it isn't but find a way to improve it.
• Hit accents with your animation
• Animation is a choreography, choreograph where the audience looks, ANTICIPATE

Last Notes by both of them:

• Be tenacious, keep trying, don't give up
• Best things come from risk.
• Independent creators, create, big companies follow trends.

Also on the subject of 2D animation (which is what I want to work on):

It's up to YOUR generation to bring 2D back, be risky, get together and create, once you are successful, the big ones will follow, be tenacious.

Also be sure to visit taughtbyapro.com, they have some online classes in there.

I learned a lot from this visit, and having these experiences is just awesome, they rarely happened back in my country, and I'm very grateful for this experience, that's why I'm sharing this notes, I'll try to make them less confusing, and post more stuff from other classes and workshops I get to see.