Don Bluth S Art Of Animation Drawing
Drawing is the language of traditional animation. This class will reveal the secrets of the master animators who communicate eloquently with a pencil. Your focus should be on ideas and gags, no the mechanics of drawing
Don Bluth S Art Of Animation Drawing
The "layout" is comparable to "the set," in a live action film. This class teaches you how to create a 3 dimensional reality with a 2D design. Besides providing a space for characters to act, the drawing must create a mood.
This class will ask you to write, storyboard, layout, and animate your own production. It can be any of the styles of animation discussed, and it must put across an idea or a gag. (Short will no longer than 3 minutes)
Bluth's passion for the Art of Animation is the driving force that fueled his film career for a period of more than four decades. According to Bluth, he was not driven to animation but extremely attracted to it mainly because of the sheer beauty of its look.
The Don Bluth Collection of Animation came to the Savannah College of Art and Design as a donation from Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in fall of 2005. The collection consists of cels, animation drawings, storyboards, color models, and other materials created by Don Bluth Productions and later incarnations of this company in the creation of animated features and video games between 1979 and 2000. Also included in the collection are administrative, legal, and other documents, as well as scripts, concepts, and publicity related materials. The studio operated in both the United States and Ireland, and was, at various times, affiliated with other production companies. A preliminary inventory was completed by summer of 2006 and processing began in fall of that same year. Though the processing of the collection will continue for many years, materials already processed are available to researchers now.
Classes begin January 2023 through January 2024. This is a full year of online animation classes taught by Don Bluth. The curriculum includes: Draftsmanship, Intro to Animation, Animation Timing, Art of Storyboarding, Art of Layout, Principles of Acting, Script Writing, Producing a Short and a week Masterclass at the end of the year.
Donald Virgil Bluth (/bluːθ/; born September 13, 1937)[2] is an American film director, animator, production designer, and animation instructor, best known for his animated films, including The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Anastasia (1997), and Titan A.E. (2000), for his involvement in the LaserDisc game Dragon's Lair (1983), and for competing with former employer Walt Disney Productions during the years leading up to the films that became the Disney Renaissance. He is the older brother of illustrator Toby Bluth.
Bluth returned to college and earned a degree in English literature from Brigham Young University. In 1967, Bluth returned to the animation industry, and joined Filmation working on layouts for The Archie Show and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.[9] In 1971, he returned full-time to Disney as an animation trainee. His first project was Robin Hood (1973), in which he animated sequences of Robin Hood stealing gold from Prince John, rescuing a rabbit infant, and romancing Maid Marian near a waterfall.[10] For Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), he animated Rabbit alongside John Lounsbery.[10] During production on The Rescuers (1977), Bluth was promoted to directing animator alongside the remaining members of Disney's Nine Old Men. He then worked as an animation director on Pete's Dragon (1977). His last involvement with Disney was the 1978 short The Small One. Meanwhile, he produced his first independent film, Banjo the Woodpile Cat.
For The Fox and the Hound (1981), Bluth animated several scenes of the character Widow Tweed. During production, creative differences between Bluth and studio executives had arisen concerning artistic control and animation training practices. On his 42nd birthday in 1979, Bluth resigned from the studio to establish his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions, along with Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy, and nine fellow Disney animators.[11][12] To this end, Don Bluth Productions demonstrated its ability in its first production, a short film titled Banjo the Woodpile Cat, and this led to work on an animated segment of the live-action film Xanadu (1980). The studio's first feature-length film was The Secret of NIMH (1982). Bluth employed 160 animators during the production and agreed to the first profit sharing contract in the animation industry.[12] Though only a moderate success in the box office, the movie received critical acclaim. Later, with the home video release and cable showings, it became a cult classic.[13] Nevertheless, due to the modest gross and an industry-wide animation strike, Don Bluth Productions filed for bankruptcy.[14]
In 1981, he, Rick Dyer, Goldman, and Pomeroy started the Bluth Group and created the arcade game Dragon's Lair, an on rails game which let the player choose between simple paths for an animated-cartoon character on screen (whose adventures were played off a LaserDisc). This was followed in 1984 by Space Ace, a science-fiction game based on the same technology, but which gave the player a choice of different routes to take through the story. Bluth not only created the animation for Space Ace, but he also supplied the voice of the villain, Borf.[16] Work on a Dragon's Lair sequel was underway when the video arcade business crashed. Bluth's studio was left without a source of income and the Bluth Group filed for bankruptcy on March 1, 1985.[12] A sequel called Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp was made in 1991, but it was rarely seen in arcades.[17]
In 1985, Bluth, Pomeroy, and Goldman established, with businessman Morris Sullivan, the Sullivan Bluth Studios. It initially operated from an animation facility in Van Nuys, California, but later moved to Dublin, Ireland, to take advantage of government investment and incentives. Sullivan Bluth Studios also helped boost animation as an industry within Ireland.[19] Bluth and his colleagues taught an animation course at Ballyfermot Senior College.[20]
On October 26, 2015, Bluth and Goldman started a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of resurrecting hand-drawn animation by creating an animated feature-length film of Dragon's Lair.[28] Bluth plans for the film to provide more backstory for Dirk and Daphne and show that she is not a "blonde airhead".[29] The Kickstarter funding was canceled when not enough funds had been made close to the deadline, but an Indiegogo page for the project was created in its place.[30]
On September 11, 2020, it was announced that Bluth had launched a new animation studio called Don Bluth Studios with animator and vice president of the company Lavalle Lee, founder of traditionalanimation.com. His goal is to bring a "renaissance of hand-drawn animation", in the belief that there is an audience demand for it. His first project is called Bluth's Fables, an anthology of short stories written, narrated, and drawn by Bluth. The stories will stylistically resemble Aesop's Fables and nursery rhymes. The studio's productions will be live-streamed first, and then uploaded to YouTube. Bluth's Fables is done with pencil tests and then traced and colored in Clip Studio Paint.[35][36][37]
Throughout Bluth's career, there were many projects that ended up unproduced or unfinished due to studio closures, his severed partnership with Steven Spielberg, or the video game crash of 1983. Many art designs, filmed animation tests and videos of these unfinished projects still circulate online.
After acquiring the rights to The Beatles' songs in the mid-1980s, Michael Jackson approached Bluth with a movie idea called Strawberry Fields Forever. The film would have had animated Fantasia-style vignettes featuring Beatles songs, similar to Yellow Submarine. Bluth agreed to the idea, and even planned to produce the film in computer animation. Had the movie been made, it would have predated the ground-breaking 1995 Pixar film Toy Story by about eight years. The project fell through when surviving Beatles members denied permission to use their images in the animated film. Only a scene of test footage featuring a group of "Beatle's gangsters" survives.[43]
A sequel to the 2003 game I-Ninja was planned, which had input from Bluth.[citation needed] Work on the sequel started soon after the first game's release, but its studio Argonaut Games had some economic problems and eventually closed down in October 2004. The few aspects remaining from I-Ninja 2's development are some concept drawings.[51]
In 2009, Bluth was asked to produce storyboards for, and to direct, the 30-minute Saudi Arabian festival film Gift of the Hoopoe. He ultimately had little say in the animation and content of the film and asked that he not be credited as the director or producer. Nonetheless, he was credited as the director.[60]