Character animation

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Character animation describes the high-quality design of a character in an animation film , with special attention to the fitting of realistic features into the figurative world through an elaborate representation of emotions, thoughts and movement, as a supplement to dubbing .

General

The contrast to normal animation of a character is basically subjective, but is usually subject to certain characteristics. Character animation is usually carried out by a limited number of animators , usually simply called chief draftsmen in German-speaking countries, some of whom also work as directors and on storyboard and background designs. The designation Character Animator is almost only given to draftsmen who have worked for a studio for a long time.

It is not known when the term character animation found its way into the animated film vocabulary, but the earliest draftsmen of this type are Winsor McCay for his work on Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and Otto Messmer with Felix the Cat in the 1920s. Both worked primarily on animated short films, as the full-length animated film was already known, but was not more widespread until the 1930s and later - especially through the films of Walt Disney  - became popular.

With four-time Oscar winner Nick Park and Russian independent animator Juri Norstein , character animation is not limited to Hollywood studios.

The only "German" character animators were or are the two Disney cartoonists Wolfgang Reitherman (1909–1985), who was born in Munich, but whose parents emigrated to the USA when they were young, and Andreas Deja (* 1957), who has German citizenship, but originally comes from Poland. The only Swiss character animator was Albert Hurter (1883–1942).

Character animator

Other animators who are largely attributed to character animation are listed below. In brackets are the dates of life, the studio and the active time in the film.

literature

  • Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston: Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life . Abbeville Press, 1981, ISBN 0-7868-6070-7

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