Great, let’s talk about Harry Partridge’s animations!
Can you tell I’m trying to cram everything I put off for two years into the show before
episode 100?
Maybe I should’ve waited until I updated all this old wolf artwork.
Oh well!
I should mention that pretty much every one of Harry’s cartoons has some kind of inappropriate
joke in it, and on top of that most of his animations make me laugh, so I don’t even
know what to recommend to watch as an example if, by chance, you’ve never seen anything
of his ever.
I can’t imagine that, but I guess it’s possible.
He’s a king of meta animation jokes.
(clip) Start by watching With Animation You Can.
Dr. Bees is a classic.
And then two of my personal favorites are A Kickstarter Video and This Year.
Of course there’s the video game ones and his series Starbarians too, which is where
the clip I just showed came from.
There are three, mmm, four things that make Harry Partidge’s animations so good.
One is the humor.
Harry’s artwork always assists in making the dialogue even more funny.
Two is that it’s frame-by-frame animation.
Everything is an individual drawing, and Harry’s characters move a lot.
Time consuming, but obviously really good quality.
Three is character mass.
Most toons you watch are flat 2D characters.
Harry’s people have dimension to them.
Four is facial expressions.
That’s what I want to take a closer look at.
The way Harry animates heads uses all of the standard elements of course: animated pupils,
eyelids, eyebrows, and mouths.
The mouths have a line that defines the bottom lip.
Sounds simple enough, but that one line separates these animations from standard cartoon mouths,
which tend to be just the mouth shape with no lips.
You’ll also notice that the teeth in the mouths has depth.
The one thing Harry does exceptionally well with is articulating the eyelids and eyebrows
to match the dialogue.
A lot of times in cartoons the characters eyes are limited to simple blinks and the
rare pushed expression.
Harry’s toons have eyelids that are always doing things besides blinking: subtle movements
up and down both on the top and bottom lids.
The eyebrows also make those constant subtle movements.
For instance here, the eyebrow doesn’t stay cocked through this entire sequence.
It actually goes down and then back up again with the blink and head rotation.
This type of character animation is what makes his people so lively.
When we get into an extreme expression, Harry animates in extra lines to further define
the eyelids and brows.
The characters don’t just have the eyebrow shape, there are physical ridges on the face
the brows are attached to.
A lot of cartoons ignore that fact and go with floaty eyebrows.
One stylistic thing about Harry Partridge eyes is when they’re open, there’s a little
line at the top.
This is the eyelid, more or less, and the direction it points depends on which way and
at what angle the head is facing.
This more defined eye style feels inspired by older cartoons; it’s not really the type
of eyes you see around often anymore.
Everybody’s doing semi-perfect ovals these days.
Hrrrmmmm.
Ok that’s enough talk about faces.
They tend to be one of the most unique things between different animators.
Everybody has their own way of drawing them.
Thanks for watching and see you next time.