Fascinating Look at an Animator at Work

Bill Plympton is a wonderful animator. He has been making animated shorts and movies for a long time. Recently I discovered that he has something on his site called an "Ani-Cam," which shows time-lapse movies of his drawing board as he is making animations. Check it out!

This is a great way to see how animation is done. You'll notice that he's using what looks like tracing paper, so he can see the drawing underneath. This is called "onion skinning" because the skin of an onion is layered and you can see through it. You put each new drawing on top of the last one so you can see how to draw the next frame.

You'll also see that sometimes he's looking at something that seems like a comic page. These are storyboards, where he has drawn out how the story goes. They are used to figure out what scenes to draw in what order, and keep the story moving along.

There are lots of time-lapses on there, I've only gotten through a few of them. But they are really cool and fascinating.