When I was young, 15 years old or something like that, pretty much a kid that is anyway. I discovered a fantastic book from our local library. It was the "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life" by two of the Nine Old Men Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

I had already been a fan of Disney animations (and of course WB shorts as well!) but this book was something of a revelation to me. Eventhough it went behind the scenes and explained the principles of animation, sometimes in exhausting detail it still didn't ruin the magic for me. On the contrary from that point on I began to watch animations with a completely different mindset. I admired the craft, the effort and the skill of the individuals. I wanted to be an animator. I haven't even started my lukio(the finnish "high school") and began asking possibilites for going abroad to study animation. The option that I considered was CalArts (thanks for my tutor for finding brochures and info in the no-internet era!). Of course I was young and completely devoid of life experience on my own, tied to my family. Then..I chickened out. It would have been expensive for my parents too although they might have even supported me financially, I doubt that they would have let this young grazy kid from Finland go all the way to the USA...

OK, now I got carried away in remembrance! Maybe I'll get back on that subject again. The point however was that the book "Illusion of Life" was Inspiration of Life. It presented these amazing artists and one of them was Bill Tytla (for example Stromboli from Pinocchio and Chernobog from Fantasia). He was a master animator and projected a lot of emotion to his drawings. I have adopted a few principles for myself from Tytla's work that I try to get into my drawings and what they should contain by a happy accident. They should have weight, be dynamic and have emotion.

And what ever fits for the occasion!

The post for today is just life drawings, croquis to be exact just 5-10 min. studies on pose. Hope I got at least one of those qualities right...