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Osamu Tezuka and Carl Barks were long-time friends. They began correspondance in the early 1940’s, giving Tezuka the inspiration to create his 1949 manga, Metropolis. Tezuka idolized Barks, his art style directly imitating his and Walt Disney’s.

"Any help!? I think Kuro saw a squirrel!"

"Any help!? I think Kuro saw a squirrel!"

I think I need to explain how names work amongst French-speakers of origin first. 

Also, little reminder I wasn’t raised nor live in France. I’m a francophone living on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, so there might be nuances and France specifities I may not be aware of.

In French, our naming conventions is “Prénom” and “Nom”. 

The “Prénom” is your name. We call it a “prénom” because it precedes the “Nom” which is the name of your family. 

We have no specific number of prénoms to give to a child to respect. In Catholic culture, the norm is 3, but it is a suggested number. No one was going to punish you if you only give 2 prénoms or added an extra one. It usually starts with a Saint name then followed up by two other names your parents wanted to give to you. 

So, for example, let’s say two French catholic parents decided to name their child : Pierre Francis Olivier. That’s his given name. Which prénom is used though is up to his parents and later himself. We have no rules regarding which prénom of the given name is THE one. In the past, it was commonly the last one of the given names. Nowadays, it’s mostly the first (probably because you aren’t as forced to pick a saint name first). 

However, like I’ve said, there is no clear limit of prénoms parents can give to one of their children that I’m aware of. They could be minimalist and only give a total of one or two prénoms or liked several prénoms or wanted to pay hommage to people they love and decided to put all on the prénoms inside their child’s given name

But here’s the thing, we don’t use our other prénoms, not even in most of our legal documents. When I am filling a form or signing a paper, I am not writing my entire given name. I am not even putting any initial indicating the présence of my other prénoms. I only write down the prénom I use to identify myself with and my family name.

We don’t use our other prénoms like Americans use their second name. When our parents are angry at us, they don’t say our full given name. Just our prénom and our nom. 

We do have compound prénoms but that’s another topic and I’m extrapolating too much now.

Anyway, if someone of French origin tells you “Oh that is my fifth prénom”, it’s simply mean that in their given name, the fifth prénom they have is this one.

And no we don’t celebrate our other prénoms of our given name xD That’s just Marinette being extra as always. It was only a pretext she has found to give him a present without wanting it to be too weird (and the date gave her a deadline). And even though it’s very unusual, it was nonetheless cute and harmless.

My first anatomy tutorial! How I connect arms to the torso. Simplified the muscles for better comprehension

I’ll try to explain, even if it’s a bit hard without pointing out things in real time on a video: RDK animates by drawing the frames by hand, on paper, to then scan them and color and edit them digitally, while Sugarcube does everything digitally, working with vectors (in Toon Boom). So Sugarcube outlines are extremely smooth, clean, often with the same thickness all over the frame (look at the difference in the eyes outline)

Meanwhile RDK ones, being hand drawn, on paper, are less smooth, and sometimes you can see where the pen left the sheet

The way the characters are drawn is also quite different, in some scenes, but that’s not always as obvious or apparent. The one below is an extreme example.

That’s probably because Sugarcube animates all episodes by strictly following the proportions of the character sheets, so they look the same in every episode, while RDK seems to adapt the style of the individual episodes to those of the storyboarders who worked on it: some draw the characters with biggers eyes, some with bigger irises, some draw them a bit taller / slimmer, some draw their heads bigger…

Similar pose, very different proportions

As mentioned earlier Sugarcube draws using vectors, so the models can be rescaled indefinitely without loosing quality or details: characters seen in the distance are just smaller versions of the usual models

Meanwhile RDK draws by hand, so obviously small, fast moving details are going to have less details, since there’s a physical (and efficiency) limit to the way one can ink.

Learning how to animate like Milt Kahl (of Walt Disney Animation Studios)

Recently I found myself fascinated by the work of Milt Kahl. He worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios from 1934 to 1976 and was famous for his way of animating “head swaggles.” He is widely regarded as one of the best animators to ever live. However, I haven’t found many examples of people trying replicate his techniques. It feels very much like “Oh his work is so amazing, I could never animate like that!” 

WHY NOT? If Milt Kahl could figure it out, why can’t someone else? So here are a few rough animations I made trying to figure out the head swaggle. 

-The First Head Swaggle Test

This first attempt was made before I really dissected how Kahl actually animated the swaggle. The bulk of this was animated in about 45 minutes. Mostly I was testing the waters here. It’s not quite right, but I’m still pretty happy with it. 

-The Look and Pivot Swaggle Test

Around here, I realized that there is a trick to the swaggle: they are all guided by the nose. Many of Kahl’s best head swaggles are on characters with very pronounced noses or muzzle areas (Shere Khan from the Jungle book, Edgar from the Aristocats, Tigger, etc). Very often the nose acts as a pivot point for the swaggle. It will stay relatively still while the whole head swivels around it. Even though I had figured that out, I wasn’t fully satisfied with the swaggle in this animation. Too subtle. I had to try again.

-Full Pivot Swaggle Test

I wanted to fully commit to the pivot swaggle with no ease in or out. Having a slightly more defined head shape definitely helps with making it appear more three dimensional. The secondary action of the ears also helps sell the movement. While still a little rough, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out!

-Final Thoughts

It was a lot of fun trying to figure this out. I’ll likely continue to study Kahl’s work to further improve as an animator. I’m not going to say it wasn’t hard, because it was! Even with using animation software and animating on twos, it was hard.