The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams will be recommended to countless students beginning animation classes in the next few weeks. Cited by Paul Wells in his SAS Toronto keynote in a shortlist of texts commonly found in professional studios, The Animator’s Survival Kit is what John Canemaker describes as the “bible for animators internationally” and AWN correspondent Don Perro considers “one of the must-have animation books in any animator’s collection.” First published in 2001 and rereleased in 2009, Williams’s best-selling opus, based on the master classes he developed in the 1990s, could well be described as a canonical text for animators, alongside Frank and Ollie’s Disney Animation: Illusion of Life.
Generally speaking, I’m hardly a maverick when it comes to teaching animation. Even when instructing non-animators, I rely on the classics—the bouncing ball, the 12 principles of animation, the walk cycle. Despite its stature, the Williams book nevertheless gives me pause. An admittedly “politically incorrect” anecdote about a “gay walk” begins its section on walks. In an age of “it gets better”, where students (mine anyhow) will take offence to homophobic remarks, Mr. Williams comes off as retrograde at best. Sure I could (and do) dismiss him as ridiculous, old-fashioned and move on, but his gaydar is only one indication of some troublingly normative views on gender. Most of Williams’s textbook examples are drawn as stick figures, but their ‘neutrality’ (i.e. masculinity) is made apparent by illustrations of a “more feminine walk” that shows the identical foot passing positions of a “fashion model”, a “ballerina”, and a “stripper”—the last in a garter belt and fishnets. To show action in silhouette, Williams provides a sequence of a woman removing her stocking, and for flexibility, four pages of drawings of a topless exotic dancer. Williams does not sexualize all of his female characters, for he also animates an old crone. Though Williams explains his examples are “in exaggerated form”, that’s not to say he doesn’t perpetuate some pretty antiquated ideas about women. After all he is the creator of Jessica Rabbit. But even Jessica recognizes that she’s performing a construct, as the cartoon embodiment of the patriarchal male gaze that Laura Mulvey long ago associated with classic Hollywood cinema. Lacking irony or narrative context (beyond being the doodles of a dirty old man), the representations in The Animator’s Survival Kit naturalize gender stereotypes, and make bad acting acceptable. If that’s the industry animation manual, is it any wonder that Ubisoft animators eliminated female avatars in their recent release of Assassin’s Creed, having found that #womenaretoohardtoanimate (Runningbrooke)?
Pop Matters D.R. Peak says, “This book isn’t filled with the so-called “secrets” of animation, this book is the holy grail itself.” For J.R. Riki of Animator Island, the book’s only “downside…is that it does not come accompanied by video examples of the animations inside.” Of course, one could always purchase the App or the $1000 16-box DVD set of The Animator Survival Kit Animated. A preview for the set, shows a clip of the previously mentioned animated exotic dancer at its end, along with Williams performing his gendered walks for an appreciative and mostly male audience. According to Williams, a macho man’s walk has more vertical displacement because he spreads his legs to accommodate his “equipment,” whereas women tend to glide because they keep their legs together. Never mind that his macho walk (as both performed and animated) by a man is simply awkward, whereas in role reversal, the animated woman just appears angry. Williams apparently likes his women in tight skirts and high heels if clothed at all, but he says their walk—one foot directly in front of the other—results from them “protecting the crotch (p.106)” Is that some veiled reference to rape culture? If any crotch needs protecting, isn’t it the one more likely to cause weeping when kicked?
That said, The Animator’s Survival Kit is not a baby I’m tossing out any time soon. Williams offers wonderful advice on animating weight, timing and breaking joints, while engaging readers in a first person account of cartoon history. Moreover, some of his examples give us an opportunity to talk about gender representation and stereotypes in the context of building technical skills. Besides his section on walking comprises over 100 pages, which makes it easy enough to skip the problematic parts. However, I do think it important to acknowledge their existence and offer students alternative templates. Preston Blair offers a slew of classic walk and run cycles, whereas Eric Goldberg’s Character Animation Crash Course is a good guide for developing skills in cartoon acting. For character animation founded more closely on observation and life drawing, the National Media Museum videos on “the art of Joanna Quinn” constitute a welcome online resource that makes me want more. And for a basic walk cycle, Quinn has a simple and elegant 2-spread guide in Drawing for Animation (Wells et al), which makes for a great handout.
What resources do you recommend or avoid for teaching animation?
Cited
The Animator Survival Kit Animated
Preston Blair, Cartoon Animation. Tustin, Ca: Walter Foster Publishing, 1994.
John Canemaker, “Review: The Animator’s Survival Kit,” Print, 28 Jan 2010.
Eric Goldberg, Character Animation Crash Course, Beverly Hills: Silman-James, 2008.
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (reprinted from 1975 Screen) in Visual and Other Pleasures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
D.R. Peak, “The Animator’s Holy Grail,” Pop Matters, n.d.
Don Perro, “Book Review: Expanding the ‘Animator’s Survival Kit’,” Animation World Network (AWN), 8 May 2010.
J.R. Riki, “Review: The Animator’s Survival Kit,” Animator Island, 28 Nov 2011.
Paige Runningbrooke, “Dear Ubisoft, You Really Let Us Female Gamers Down with the New Assassin’s Creed,” Nerve, 16 June 2014.
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. New York: Abbeville Press, 1981.
Paul Wells (with Joanna Quinn and Les Mills), Drawing for Animation. London: Ava, 2009.
Richard Williams, The Animator’s Survival Kit. London: Faber & Faber, 2001
Alison Reiko Loader is a lapsed NFB animation filmmaker. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where she has taught in the Computation Arts and Film Animation programs as a part time faculty member since 2001. Among her concerns about Gender and Animation is an attraction to Bugs Bunny in drag that has troubled her since childhood.
This strikes me as a bit reductive. Yes: it would be silly to deny that ASK contains some retrograde ideas and old stereotypes along with a lot of incredibly useful, nuts & bolts information. But compared to the general background level of ‘rapey-ness’ prevailing in the culture, Williams’ slightly shopworn observations about gender are pretty anodyne. It makes a clever headline, but positioning ASK as something which must be ‘survived’ cheapens (and sensationalizes) the experience of people who have undergone real trauma.
Contrary to popular belief, being exposed to ideas that one finds disagreeable or upsetting doesn’t rise to the level of trauma, and it’s not the educator’s job to chew the students’ food for them. Give them the tools to cultivate an eclectic mix of influences, and to decide for themselves what’s worth keeping. They don’t have to choose between Williams and Joanna Quinn — they have the incredible good fortune to inhabit a cultural landscape that has room for both. If we had to scrub our primary sources clean of all content we find distasteful, there wouldn’t be much left.
nice ^__^
Thanks for this Alison, it has been quite some time since I open my copy of ASK, so your observations prompted me to revisit (and be suitably gobsmacked). Thanks also for pointing me in the direction of the #womenaretoohardtoanimate discussion – I’ve just spent a good half hour working back through that!
Plenty of food for thought with Canterbury 2015 in mind 🙂
Richard Williams is ooooold school. His peers demonstrated women this way not only because of the gender inequality time but it was simply the “style”.
Eric Goldberg is in a different generation and current with the trend.
Now the style in movies such as Rango, Rio, Brave, and Frozen (I could keep going) is to show great strength in female characters.
My preferable technique in class is going frame by frame on a shot, much like an animation studio doing dailies. I especially like to point out Disneys blatant squash and stretch in their movies.
Nice of you to call out an old pro who authored a bible, perhaps The Bible, in the field you are interested in. You fail to see that every generation has its stereotypes and social caricatures………something cartoonists and animators make a point of. While Williams may be naive to these faults and merely a product of his era and upbringing, you consciously seek the moral high ground as his superior in order to set yourself apart from the status quo. WIlliams, warts and all, has been a pioneer and has achieved greatness in his life. Drudging up something to criticize is mundane and easy. In the end one such as WIlliams will be recalled with high regard, he will have experienced many successes and will leave a body of great work while the one who ignores substance in favor of an opportunity to stand out will have a growing chip on their shoulder to show for their efforts.
Hmm, I need to reply to both Michael and Luke here as I think their comments are connected.
First of all, it would be easy to dismiss ASK as an historic relic and suggest that it is a product of its time, i.e. “that era was sexist but its in the past” and just ‘get over it’, but you can still criticize something as problematic (hello numerous papers on Disney’s anti-Semitic sympathies) even just by looking at the context.
It doesnt matter how great the author of the problematic text is/was, they are still open to critique.
The issue I think that Alison is raising is more about how this text is still being used as a staple teaching tool. This is where it becomes problematic in terms of sexism and homophobia – if the students are not alerted to the issues then they might conceivably accept these standards of representation and carry them through in their own practise. This is where we get ‘rape-culture’ with assumptions made about (mostly) women and their availability through cultural signifiers.
I dont think we should compare ‘rapeyness’ as Luke suggests – why does it make it ok that William’s isnt as bad as he could be? If generations of animators see highly sexualised women moving in this way then this is how we end up with ridiculous sexy spiderwoman! Oh and in no way is this about semantics and comparing real and imagined trauma. Dont use language as an excuse to defend some pretty shockingly sexist material.
Ok so he’s an animation god or whatever but I think its right (and brave) to point out the issues and, yes Luke, let the students choose to use a wealth of materials, but dont make excuses for something (that is still used) by saying it was the 70s/80s and that’s how it was. It all contributes to our greater culture.
Sigh. I’m not suggesting that Williams is beyond critique by virtue of his ‘greatness’ (whatever that means) or anything else — but come on, the first five minutes of Roger Rabbit is flipping brilliant. Nor am I here to ‘make excuses’ for his work — I don’t own it, so how can I make excuses for it? And I don’t flatter myself into thinking that I’m capable of stamping out rape culture. I’m not sure how one would even go about doing that, but I’m pretty sure book-banning is the wrong approach.
If you’re going to lay the blame for hyper-sexualized Spiderwoman on artists of the past, why not widen the circle of guilt to include Renoir or Titian or the prehistoric sculptors of big-boobed fertility figurines? That’s the logical endpoint of the argument, and I’m sorry to say it’s very much in keeping with the narcissism and anti-intellectualism already prevalent in the larger culture, at least in the US. We’re constantly being told that the present moment is the best and only possible culmination of all that has gone before, and that the past is populated by idiots with nothing to teach us. We should be actively un-teaching those tendencies, even if that means exposing students to things that are unpleasant. Otherwise, we’re telling them that they’re incapable of evaluating things (and by saying it, making it so).
We need new animation books. New animation theory. Especially on acting techniques. The ASK as others is filled with many manners and styles from the earliest toon animators. That is great from studying the historic process of animation. But it is very old to teach technic and aesthetics in animation, because this manners brings some ideas that sticks to the tecnic that doesnt nessesary be that way. Here in Argentina for example, we have some of the best theatre performers and drama theories in the world, but in industrial animation many characters act like bad imitators from Disney´s Snow White. We need to cross theories.
“Ok so he’s an animation god or whatever but I think its right (and brave) to point out the issues” ~Nichola Dobson
“Brave” ??? Come on. Contrary to the hyperbole over cyber-bullying there is little danger in saying something on the internet. This blog author is just expressing another tired angle that some people choose to be passionate about like the benefits of a gluten-free diet.
Every stereotype Williams speaks of depicts caricatures of what we see all around, in the West at least. Women used to look like that naturally and now they have surgery to look that way. Many non-meat & potatoes sexual people deliberately exaggerate the stereotypical mannerisms of their sexuality (male and female). People on all sides maintain stereotypes because a stereotype is recognized as true of a segment of the population. If it was no longer relevant there would be no use for it in art. No one understands a lost language.
The only difference that browbeating people over this makes is that people think of the browbeaters. Browbeaters don’t eliminate their targeted behavior. Getting up on a soap box about it is just taking the stage for yourself to push your own agenda.
In this case Allison Loader wants to be noticed and is choosing to criticize a man for his personality flaws because she cannot compete with his skills, talent and accomplishments.
Thanks for the comments and likes on this and the posts of our wonderful August contributors. This past month has provided some interesting (if sometimes hard to digest) food for thought. In December, the SAS blog will continue the Gender and Animation theme. So please get your submissions in by November 15th. Posts on masculinity, queer, trans and intersex issues in animation production, representation and pedagogy are also very welcome. In the meantime, to those of you returning to school as teachers or as students, have a lovely semester and keep reading (and responding!) to the weekly SAS blog posts.