Animators

2D Hand drawn:
Hayao Miyazaki – Miyazaki used to animate before moving on to becoming a producer of some of the most well-known films eg ‘Spirited Away’ that reached international success, which he hand drew the story boards for (which he did for all of his films). I chose Miyazaki as a point of reference as I like the more traditional style he works in, as well as the level of simplicity within his technical work as everything is quite clean and 'proper' despite it looking highly complicated.

Eric Larson – Disney based, one of ‘Disney’s Nine Old Men’, worked on things such as Lady and the Tramp, Bambi and 101 Dalmations and went on to teach plenty of the newer animators such as Henry Selick after opening a recruitment training program. Of course, doing an animation course, I had to pick a renowned disney artist, otherwise my research would not be complete. I chose LArson as he worked on some of my favourite disney films.

2D Computer drawn:
Alex Hirsch – Creator of Gravity Falls, Hirsch started out as a story board artist as well as experimenting with animation whilst studying at CalArts. Since the arise of computers, the animation was simply done there instead of traditional pen and paper. Gravity Falls is one of my favourite new cartoons out today, so it was an obvious choice for me to pick Hirsch as one of my artists.

Cleo Harrington – Harrington is a self-proclaimed feminist artist, and dabbles in stop motion, hand drawn and computer drawn animation. She has worked on things such as ‘100 square Inches of White’ as she liked having control over all elements of her work and ‘Moushole Cat’ which was for the BBC. Granted, there are not a lot of credited female animators out there, as most are pushed into the background, so I tried really hard to find some female artists for me to reference, and i'm very glad I did as I really like Harrington's purely different way of styling within her animation.

Stop Motion:
Henry Selick – Worked on the likes of The Night Before Christmas and Coraline. He studied animation in California in CalArts along with the likes of Tim Burton and Brad Bird.  His work is some of the most well-known within the Stop Motion world as most of his work is critically acclaimed which was the reason I researched him.

Alice Dunseath – A more recent animator, Dunseath is an English animator who has worked on the likes of ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ having the ability to manipulate materials. She has also worked on a number of title sequences for things such as Gucci. I really enjoyed watching fantastic Mr Fox, as I liked how smooth the transitions were in between each frame within the claymation, whilst also retaining it's very 'old' style which looked a little stilted.

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I chose a variety of artists form each of my researched methods as I wanted to have a range of artists for my inspiration as I didn't want to limit myself throughout the experimentation process. I chose each of my artists for their rather unique sense of work, as each artists style differs greatly.