SCAD’s animation department has found a champion of a chair in Chris Gallagher, who assumed his new role last summer. Through this column, I invite not only animation students but the entire SCAD community to listen in on my animated chats with Chris.
Chris’s office is hardly dull. It’s as animated as he is, from the mementos of films he’s worked on perched on his desk and filing cabinets to the three whiteboards drafted with plans to update the animation major’s curriculum. He envisions several different “tracks” for students interested in 2D, 3D, stop-motion and technical direction.
Like Chris, it was 2D animation that ignited my interest in the animation process. We each remember the first 2D films we saw (“Tarzan” for me, “Pinocchio” for him) and, for better or worse, the 2D art seems to have gradually disappeared from cinemas and taken over television, from Netflix to Amazon.
When it comes to traditional, salt-of-the-earth 2D animation, the number one skill to have, according to Chris, is a passion to draw. Though it almost seems too obvious a requirement, Chris reiterates this by pointing to one of the whiteboards. Scribbled on the lower half is the same message: students must love to draw.
“Somebody who wants to be a 2D animator, I want them to have multiple sketchbooks, just page after page, because you’re going to be doing that forever,” Chris said. “You can’t just like watching cartoons. How do you have time to produce what you see on those shows? That’s the biggest thing I want from animators. They’ve never done as much drawing as they’ll be doing as a 2D animator. There’s 24 drawings per second.”
Even though fewer 2D animated movies are these days, Chris wants to reassure students that the skillsets of 2D animators are still needed for 3D films. He uses acclaimed animator Glen Keane as an example. Keane hand-animated all the characters for “Tangled” before they were 3D-rendered.
“He was a major influence on a lot of the styles of 2D animation,” Chris said. “I worked with him at Disney, and sitting in dailies watching him do draw-overs of 2D animations was eyeopening. Glen would take his Wacom pen and bring it in. As he’s going through the dailies, he would actually stop on a certain frame and draw the adjustments over it, so there was zero confusion. The way he does all his stuff is really inspirational.”
Chris believes blending 2D with 3D skills enhances the creative process and overall look of an animated film, because, as was the example with Keane, drawing is much quicker and more convenient than waiting on a memo sent to a 3D animator.
“You as a 2D animator can make those judgment calls immediately compared to the three months it might take to get it to an animator’s hands in 3D,” Chris continued. “A 2D animator can come up with things fast. How fast would it take to draw a ball? Two seconds. Doing the same task in 3D is a much longer process.”
This plays into Chris’s plans to have 2D and 3D animators collaborate more on projects as the animation program grows. Even though both disciplines require the animation basics (concept of space and proportions), a 2D animator looking for opportunities outside of school or post-graduation should know that there is more 2D animation being produced on a global scale than in the past.
“Everybody always wants to work at ‘the names,'” Chris explained, referencing the large, well-known animation studios such as Disney, DreamWorks and Illumination Entertainment. “I let them understand that the nature of Disney animation is not going for 2D anymore, but there’s probably more 2D in the world than ever before. There’s so much more to 2D than there’s ever been in the history of animation.”
Stay tuned for the next piece in this series in which Chris shares portfolio tips and advice for students preparing to apply for jobs in the animation industry.
Written by Emilie Kefalas.
