Sunday, January 20, 2008

BJ Crawford

Sorry I've been rather late in updating this blog, but I've been keeping rather busy with teaching and freelancing. I'll be posting up some new drawings later this week, but in the meantime I'd like you to take a look at the following clip of animation that I accidentally ran across while looking for something else on YouTube. It's by a fellow named BJ Crawford, whom I had the pleasure of teaching in his first year of animation at Sheridan College way back in 1997. (Actually, that was also my first year teaching there too!) I recall that BJ was one of the more natural cartoonists that year and that his Character Design assignments were always fun to look at. It was therefore a real treat to happen upon both this clip and his sample reel to see just what great stuff he's been doing in the 10 years since I last saw him. As I've often harped on about my dissatisfaction with most modern day animation being of the flat, Flash cutout variety, it is indeed refreshing to see a young guy doing some full character animation with personality in the movement:



And, though it's certainly made the rounds on many sites before this, I'll also add this bit of animation by the great James Baxter for more visual pleasure. This is a short cycled piece of a self-caricature that James did of himself dancing that shows the pure magic of the animated drawing at its finest. No fancy backgrounds, no digital paint job, just what appears to be nothing more than coloured pencils on sheets of animation paper. It is examples like these of both James Baxter and BJ Crawford that sum up what animation should be. I personally never tire of a hand-drawn cartoon character seemingly having that "Illusion of Life". Enjoy!

6 comments:

Tapan Gandhi said...

oh my god bj crawford's stuff is so inspiring.. thanks for sharing, pete!

Eric Noble said...

Very cool stuff. It is nice to see full animation with more rounded character (not just flat designs). Cool post.

Kitty said...

Oh wow - that was amazing. Thank you so much for posting it. :-)

Pete Emslie said...

Tapan - First of all, you're no slouch yourself, as there is a high degree of visual appeal in your art and animation too. Whether you students realize it or not, we instructors are very proud when you guys go on to accomplish great things in this field. There is a very real satisfaction that we derive from seeing you all succeed after you leave Sheridan.

Steve Hearn said...

Awesome! I love this animated caricature, it totally rocks!

Tony DiStefano said...

Great work!I wish there would be more hand drawn animation(done on paper)for commercial use.Cartoons today are to slick looking or to mechanical or to whatever without being what they should be.I dont mean context or subject but the look and feel and how it moves.These were wonderful examples of great animation without all the gloss.