One of the inspiriting things about this new art of making drawings for animated cartoons is that it affords such opportunities for a versatile worker to exercise his talents. A true artist delights in encountering new problems in connection with his particular branch of work. The very fact that he selects as his vocation some art activity, rather than employment that is mechanical, evinces this.

In making drawings for animated films and in following the whole process of their making, the artist will find plenty of scope for his ingenuity in the devising of expedients to advance and finish the work.

The first animated screen drawings were made without the labor and time-saving resources of the celluloid sheet. As has been explained, it holds the still parts of a scene during the photography. The employment of this celluloid is now in common usage in the art. It is found an expedient in various ways; sometimes to hold part only of a pictorial composition as in the method touched upon in the preceding chapter where ink drawings are made on paper; or, again, in another method to be used instead of paper, to hold practically all of the picture elements. By this latter method, in which a pigment is also put on the transparent material, the projected screen image is in graduated tones giving the appearance of a monochrome drawing.

Animators sometimes are released from the irksomeness of making the innumerable drawings for certain cases of movement, as that of an object crossing the picture field from one side to the other, by using little separate drawings cut out in silhouette.

It is an airplane, as an instance, we will say, that is to fly across the sky. For this, the airplane will be drawn but once on a piece of thin cardboard, finished in light and shade and then carefully cut out around its contour so that it will be like a flattened model. This model, specifically spoken of as a “cut-out,” is pushed over the background under the camera and photographed. The manipulation of this airplane cut-out, to a chance observer, would be thought of as being child’s play. It is anything but that, however, as infinite patience is required to move it properly and have the distances between the various positions evenly spaced. If, too, there is a change of speed intended, the necessary ratio of spacing and timing must be relatively proportionate. Of course, it is understood that the airplane cut-out is, after each move, photographed. The distance that it is moved determines the speed that will show on the screen. If, for example, it is moved only one-sixteenth of an inch each time, the movement will be very slow.

When an artist wishes to give a more natural effect in a moving object in which a cut-out is used, he makes some allowance for the laws of perspective by making several cut-outs in which the outlines defining the object observe these laws to some extent.

It is to be remembered that an object looks differently according to whether it is viewed on an extreme side or in the centre of the field. To be absolutely correct, there should be a separate drawing for each position. To explain: Beginning with an extreme side position, the lines defining the thickness go off somewhat obtusely to the centre of vision; as the object moves and nears the middle, these lines keep their direction but change their angle. The direction is always toward the centre of vision, and the angle, with respect to a vertical, is always sharper. In the very centre, the object, if it is on a level with the eye, is in profile.

The entire matter is one of a different perspective drawing for each position. In the movement of the subject toward the other side a reverse change takes place in the direction of the lines. Generally only a few separate drawings—or cut-outs—are needed to render the screen illusion sufficiently resembling actuality to satisfy the eye.

There is a form of animated cartoon in which the objects, details of the view, and the figures are in white on a black ground. Usually this kind of film is of a comic subject. With the delineations of the characters in a burlesque style and the actions indubitably ludicrous, they provoke a great deal of laughter. Such screen stories, when the figures are well imagined and drawn in an exaggerated way, and the other parts are conformably incongruous and with a unity of ridiculousness and absurdity in story and action, are to be considered as true works of dramatic art.

The mode, generally, of making these strong black-and-white effects is to have the figures and moving parts of separate units to be arranged under the camera in connection with a simple scene drawn in white, or gray, on a black ground. The figures of animals are made as dummies, with jointed limbs. This makes it possible to put them into the various positions necessary for giving the illusion of life as they are moved about over the background.

These dummies are designed with but little detail and are drawn on a carefully selected white surfaced cardboard or thick paper that gives in contrast with the background good white-and-black negatives. The joinings of these figures or animals, are made with the thinnest kind of wire fashioned into tiny pivoting pins. Sometimes in spite of the artist’s efforts to conceal these wire pivots by placing them where a hooked ink line indicates a fold of drapery, sharp-eyed individuals can detect them on the screen. Where such jointed dummies are used under the framed glass, the wire pivots will not do. Instead, the artist must find some way of fashioning cardboard rivets, or washers, to join the parts of the figures. A thin elastic tissue would do perhaps, as an expedient, to clothe these little dummies and hide the joinings of the cardboard segments.

Here we may note the so-called “trick” titles that are shown in theatres for special occasions, or in connection with the regular films. They add with their liveliness a little variety to the tedium of a long presentation of monotonously toned photographs. In them, the letters make their appearance one at a time, and in most cases they are white on a black ground. The production of these titles with their letters that merrily cut capers all over the background before they come into their orthographic order is a very simple manœuvre. The separate letters, cut out of cardboard, are laid down to be photographed one at a time as they spell the words. Where they are first made to move about in an amusing manner, they are similarly manipulated on the background under the camera by being pushed about as desired and photographed at each change of position.

The best background for these titles, when it is to be solid black, is a piece of black velvet. This material is a serviceable article in motion-picture work as it gives an intense and certain black, and if wrinkles form in it they do not betray themselves by any lights or shadows in the photographic print.

Sometimes in trick work it is intended that some part of the design is masked while another part is being photographed. This is a simple matter if the background is a dark one, as a piece of paper, or cardboard, of the same color is placed over it while the photography is taking place. A line of letters, for instance, that is already drawn on the dark ground is to appear letter by letter. A strip of this dark-colored paper covers the words at first, but is pulled away to expose the letters one by one. Another way would be to clip off a section of the paper bit by bit. Blackening the edges of the paper will provide against these edges showing as light lines and so giving away the ruse.

In selecting for working under the camera of dark-colored cardboards, it is advisable to pick out only those with dead mat surfaces and reject those with any enamelled or shiny surfaces.

As previously mentioned, for trick titles, a larger field is used than that for animated cartoons. It makes the manipulation of dummies and detached items much more convenient.

An amazing and wonderful screen illusion is that of animated sculpture. The audience first sees a shapeless mass of clay which of itself seems to assume in a few seconds a plastic composition. It is a portrait of a notable, perhaps, or it may take the form of a grotesque mask.

The trick of animated sculpture is produced like this: A camera is centred on a rough mass of clay, which is first photographed in this shapeless form. A sculptor now pushes the clay around to a desired preliminary effect, then when he has stepped out of the picture, that is, gets out of the range of the lens, the clay is photographed again. Once more the sculptor moulds the clay to a stage approaching the contemplated form, steps out of the picture and the camera brought into action again.

The proceeding is continued: modelling the clay, the sculptor getting out of the range of the lens, and the camera brought into action, until the clay has been fashioned in its complete form. The interruptions during which the sculptor was working will not be represented on the screen as the camera was not working then, and so no exposures were made. Instead, the effect will be a continuous one of a mass of clay miraculously forming itself into a plastic work.

The way of working in making animated sculpture, like that of the process of using dummies that are moved, little by little, while the shutter is closed and then photographed after each time that they have been moved, is called the “stop-motion” method. The motion of the camera is stopped, in other words, while the particular object is placed in a new position each time before it is photographed.

When on the screen you see some thin black line appearing on one side, crawling reptilian fashion, suddenly turning upward, twisting and soon beginning to outline the silhouette of a figure or part of a pictorial composition, there is exemplified another instance of this “stop-motion” photography.

This extraordinary performance of a plain line, to the average spectator seems wondrous, and its production a veritable mystery. But it is managed very easily.

For news picture reels it has been found judicious for variety’s sake, as well as for business reasons, to combine with them cartoons satirizing topics of the hour. When they are wanted, they are wanted in a hurry, and as the regular type of cartoon takes not a little time to make, the living line drawings adverted to above, as they are quickly made, are often used for the purpose. We shall try to give in the following few paragraphs an elucidation of the method of making a film like this.

The general idea or composition of the drawing is sketched out first on a piece of ordinary paper, then its outlines are traced in blue markings to a sheet of Bristol board that has been fastened down to the table beneath the camera within the photographic field. Light-blue marks do not take on the ordinary sensitized film. But the blue markings, it is to be remembered, must be of the faintest. The very cautious artist in beginning a work of this sort makes a preliminary test of his blue pencilling by photographing a short length of film and developing it to see if the marks show on the negative. If they show at all, it will be necessary to take a soft eraser and go over the drawing and make the blue marks less distinct, and only have them show enough to be able to follow the drawing in executing the pen work.

When quite sure that the blue marks will not photograph, the artist begins his drawing. It is not a difficult task that he has before him—he merely inks his previously drawn lines little by little. Each stroke of the pen, after it has been made, is photographed. If the ink lines are short the movement on the screen will be very slow, and if they are long the movement will be very rapid. And, again, whether the artist turns the camera handle once, twice, or three times for each pen stroke has its effect upon the speed with which the lines grow on the screen. If somewhat long pen strokes are made and the exposure is but one picture for each stroke the lines will run in and finish the design at a rapid rate. On the other hand, if they are very short strokes and three pictures (about one-fifth of a foot of film) are given to each one, the lines will creep in on the screen at a snail’s pace.

All this, making a line, a patch of tinting, a small detail of a picture, and photographing each item after it has been made, is continued until the entire pictorial design is completed.

Variety is produced by having the lines go slowly or fast according to the requirements of the idea to be expressed or the story to be told.