It came to my attention today that Ollie Johnston died recently. For those who don’t know, Ollie was one of Disney’s “nine old men”, nine of the most talented animators in the history of the art form, and the cornerstone of Disney animation for years.

He was the last great animator of his time to pass away…It came to my attention today that

What is a pencil test? It’s the part in 2D animation production where the animator tests the rough drawings he or she has made thus far to see how they flow, so that the animator can spot and correct any problems before the images are cleaned up and colored. There’s a similar step in 3D computer animation where you do a quick render without a lot of detail to check your work, but that’s another topic for another day.

As I try my very best to get Vision Rider’s animation launched (this was supposed to happen way back in July, by the way), I’ve finally gotten to a concept that’s far enough along that I’m doing actual animation for it. Here’s a pencil test that I put together today to test the level of quality I can achieve in a given amount of time. If I strive to make the animation and characters look *too* good, then the end product will obviously look much better, but it will take too long for a single person to animate. Thus, I have to find a good middleground. This happens in all animated productions–you have to draw the line somewhere–it’s just that larger studios and groups can draw the line closer to quality because they have more manpower and resources and probably a lot more skill.

In any case, enjoy the little three second clip. If you watch close enough, you’ll find some mistakes that I have to fix. 😉