Artist Resources We Love, Vol. 4
Plus: news and an incredible indie film.
Welcome! The Animation Obsessive newsletter returns with a new issue. Here’s our slate today:
1) Highlighting some of our favorite free resources for artists.
2) About a stunning movie from the underground.
3) Newsbits in animation.
With that, let’s go!
1 – The good part of the internet
People say it everywhere: the internet is dying. It’s built for sharing information, but real and helpful information is getting harder to find. So many things (especially search engines) are clunkier than they used to be. It’s tough to learn online.
All of that is true. Even so, the internet isn’t dead yet as a study tool. It still holds the equivalent of thousands of Libraries of Alexandria in itself — and more. The good stuff hasn’t all been lost. For the most part, it’s just buried.
With that in mind, today’s issue brings a new installment of a series we’ve been running for three years.
While working on this newsletter, we sometimes come upon free resources for artists — some obscure, some less so. When enough turn up that resonate with us, we share collections of them, as we did in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Those linked to troves like Character Design Crash Course and the great storehouse of animation pencil tests, Living Lines Library. But today’s batch is all new.
Below, you’ll find material on animating, painting and more — which, with luck, will help artists of all interests and experience levels. We hope you’ll enjoy!
1.1 – Painting the Samurai Jack way
There’s something about the background paintings in the original Samurai Jack (2001–2004). They speak to people: they’re slick and stylized, but still visibly handcrafted — textured and human.
The team gave them serious thought and care. Leading that effort was art director Scott Wills, who touched every Samurai Jack background to some degree. He set the style that the painters followed — most of them working at Rough Draft in Seoul.
While guiding the crew, Wills shot a few tutorials to show his painting techniques. The videos aren’t perfect (he himself called them “poorly made”), but they’re priceless. Back in 2010, he uploaded three of them to YouTube: here, here and here. A fourth one, also excellent, seems to have been made later.
Wills didn’t aim these videos at beginners — they’re meant for artists versed in fast-paced TV production. But there’s value here for anyone who watches closely, and puts time into understanding what Wills is doing. We see him use plastic stencils, tape, paper towels, blow dryers. He spatters his board with red paint and then spins it, making it bleed. It’s a very physical process.
In the videos, Wills doesn’t say much about the tools he’s using. Luckily, he corrected that in his reply to a comment. As he wrote:
The paint is Cel-Vinyl from Cartoon Color and the board is Crescent Illustration Board No. 310 (cold press). I use an HP-C Iwata airbrush (mostly to wet the board), a flat brush for washes such as a Grumbacher Aquarelle 1”, a Grumbacher “Badger Blender” and a good sable brush size 4 or 5. The drawing is transferred to the board with Saral Transfer Paper (usually blue).
Wills painted traditionally here, but digital artists can take ideas from him, too. The way he handled shape, texture and line can be applied almost anywhere.
1.2 – Tips from an animation veteran
Not everyone recognizes John Pomeroy’s name. He isn’t as famous as the Nine Old Men — even though they were his teachers. But his animation for Disney and Don Bluth movies (like Atlantis and The Secret of NIMH) is legendary.
And, since 2023, Pomeroy has been sharing what he knows in video form. His YouTube channel, Pomeroy Art Academy, updates regularly. He’s also amassed more than a million followers on his popular Bilibili account, where he posts drawing videos in English with Chinese subtitles.
There’s gold in this stuff. Take his explainer on pencils — where he discusses not just the differences in handling between brands, but how he uses a chisel point, how he learned to hold a pencil at Disney and why Ollie Johnston drew in blue and gray lines.
Elsewhere, Pomeroy goes into sketching exercises, old-school impacts and the portfolio that landed him a Disney job in the ‘70s. You find super-technical stuff as well, like the video on exposure sheets that doubles as a guide to lip sync.
Although his main audience is in China right now, people from all over the world can benefit from Pomeroy’s wisdom — whether they animate or not.
1.3 – The Eric Larson notes
At the beginning of his career, Pomeroy was one of the newcomers who joined Disney in the twilight years of the original team. Those elder statespeople, among them the Nine Old Men, were racing against time to teach their replacements.
A recent issue of ours was about that era. Artists like Brad Bird and Glen Keane learned directly from the Disney vets back then. That said, what were they learning? To get a peek at that, look to the lecture notes of Eric Larson, one of the Nine.
These were posted long ago by a now-inactive blog. They’re a bit unknown today, but they shouldn’t be. They find Larson crisp and lucid as he passed down his ideas in the first half of the ‘80s. In one standout lecture, he argued:
The rhythm and timing of animation is like a good musical score — it builds to crescendos and drops into quiet — it surges and it slows — it lifts and it falls. An audience needs that change. It must have periods of excitement and periods of rest. Our action must have variety and vitality in timing lest it becomes monotonous and irritating.
Larson’s notes cover ground: acting, music, pacing, techniques of movement, different types of line. And they’re full of lightbulb moments. At one point, he compared the principle of anticipation to the “mystical babble and gesturing the magician uses” in the lead-up to a magic trick. At another point, he said that a great animator becomes their characters, puts “themselves, physically and emotionally, into their roles.”
It’s valuable stuff — and a link in the chain that Pomeroy’s videos continue today.
1.4 – Literal master classes
Our fourth item today is really several in one, and they’re curveballs. We’re sharing writings on art by two master painters — one classic, one modern.
The first comes from Leonardo da Vinci. In his time, he wrote copiously about painting, and much of that writing became A Treatise on Painting. The book is hundreds of years old, but it remains one of the great art manuals, with many insights that are just as valid today. It’s in the public domain and can be read for free on the Internet Archive.
Skip to any page of this book, and you’ll find things. We hear from da Vinci about the art of acting, conveying emotion and composing scenes — with details relevant to animators, illustrators and beyond. Then there’s his more general advice. In a section called “The Method of awakening the Mind to a Variety of Inventions,” he wrote:
By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colors, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions, landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions.
In another section, da Vinci wrote about sketching in day-to-day life:
A painter is to be attentive to the motions and actions of men, occasioned by some sudden accident. He must observe them on the spot, take sketches, and not wait till he wants such expression, and then have it counterfeited for him; for instance, setting a model to weep when there is no cause; such an expression without a cause will be neither quick nor natural. But it will be of great use to have observed every action from nature, as it occurs.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got the writings of Paul Klee — one of the top modern painters, and part of the Bauhaus movement. Anyone who’s watched the cartoons of UPA or Zagreb Film has felt the impact of his ideas: his art had a major influence on mid-century animation.
Like da Vinci, Klee wrote a lot about his approach. And the amazing Monoskop has a digital collection of these writings in English.
In texts like Pedagogical Sketchbook, The Thinking Eye and The Nature of Nature, Klee took an abstract, structural look at the mechanics of line, color and so on. As with A Treatise on Painting, you can gain things just by flipping around — although Klee’s words are denser and trickier to follow.
But his ideas are real, and he defied those who dismissed them. As he argued in On Modern Art, another work Monoskop carries:
... is it not true that even the small step of a glimpse through the microscope reveals to us images which we should deem fantastic and over-imaginative if we were to see them somewhere accidentally, and lacked the sense to understand them?
Your realist, however, coming across such an illustration in a sensational magazine, would exclaim in great indignation: “Is that supposed to be nature? I call it bad drawing.”
1.5 – Alex Grigg’s animation tutorials
The books of Klee and da Vinci can be a bit daunting. What isn’t daunting is Alex Grigg’s calm, friendly and open-minded method of teaching animation.
His videos are big — in fact, you might already know about them. But they’re big for a reason, and they deserve to be spotlighted again. Through his YouTube channel, Animation for Anyone, he shares guides to things like anticipation, breakdowns and spacing, tailored to beginners and designed to be fun.
Grigg keeps things accessible: when analyzing weight in animation, he uses the example of scrolling on a phone. “The designers knew,” he says, “that if they added some weight to this imaginary space within their app, it would feel better to use.”
He’s an experienced animator based in Australia — active in ads and motion design. Grigg’s teaching sits alongside his industry career. He knows what he’s doing, and he passes along his knowledge with the confidence and clarity of a seasoned pro.
That’s our collection today! If you’re interested in further resources along these lines, don’t forget to check out the previous entries in this series from 2022, 2023, and 2024.
There’s definitely more to share from here, and we’ll be looking out for material. When we’ve stumbled across enough, you can expect us to be back with a fifth volume.
2 – Worldwide animation news
2.1 – The underground film that’s wowing people
More gets buried online than educational resources. Some of the main victims of the algorithm era are artists — especially the ones who don’t play the social media game. In tiny corners of the internet, important art is being made for a select few, largely out of sight.
That includes our favorite movie of the year so far, whose title is more of a sentence. We’ll call it Take Off the Blindfold — but its full name is Take Off the Blindfold Adjust Your Eyes Look in the Mirror See the Face of Your Mother.
The film comes from animator Jonni Peppers. It’s feature-length, and she drew nearly all of it herself — much as she did with her last animated feature, Barber Westchester (2022). Peppers has made another funny, odd and deeply felt piece of art here.
It has her signatures: the jittery line and wild cartooning. But it’s also her hardest-to-describe, hardest-to-place film to date, and the one that hits with the most force. It’s tied into all of her past work, including Barber and The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascensia, but it isn’t exactly a sequel. It cuts up and reinterprets those films — everything becomes material to express something new, and even more personal.
Take Off the Blindfold came out last month. Only a few have seen it. Peppers keeps her work mainly on Patreon and Gumroad, purposely, to remove it from the algorithmic swirl. The free way to watch her films is to catch one of her YouTube livestreams (the next happens on June 1, according to her schedule).
Yet the people who have watched this latest film — Peppers’ true believers — are in awe. You find that in its Letterboxd reviews. “Jonni is 1 of 1,” wrote Lily Alexandre, the video essayist. Another viewer noted, “It’s hard to find words for this except for wow.” Which is accurate.
Later in May, Take Off the Blindfold will hit the festival circuit. Animation Magazine reports that it’s going to screen at the Mammoth Lakes Film Fest (in California) first. If you’re near the area, that isn’t a screening to miss — particularly if you’ve enjoyed Peppers’ work to date.
We’ll be writing more about Take Off the Blindfold soon. Until then, you can find its trailer below:
2.2 – Newsbits
The Latvian government invested €1 million into Limbo, the next movie by Gints Zilbalodis (Flow). Another million is planned. Meanwhile, the director revealed details: the film stars human characters, has dialogue and will continue to use long takes.
As its Cannes debut nears, the French film Little Amelie or the Character of Rain now has a full trailer. See Cartoon Brew for details on the project.
The American government ordered funding cuts to PBS, and to a host of PBS animated shows by extension. In addition, there could soon be “a 100% tariff on all films produced abroad that are then sent into the United States,” reports Reuters.
Elsewhere in America, the battle to get state support for the California industry continues. A new report argues that “California risks permanent displacement” in animation unless there’s “prompt action to match global incentives.”
In Japan, on Friday, The Boy and the Heron aired on television. Tied into that, the actors for Mahito and the Heron spoke about their interactions with Miyazaki, and how much room he gave them to define the characters.
In Russia, animator Galina Barinova put out a detailed article about working on The Story of a Crime (1962), one of Fyodor Khitruk’s iconic films.
Also in Russia, Soyuzmultfilm is uploading restored copies of its cartoons from the ‘40s to YouTube.
Jumbo has surpassed 8 million attendees in Indonesia — and looks set to be the country’s third-biggest domestic film.
In America, the first volume of Treasures of Soviet Animation is up for preorder from Deaf Crocodile. This one includes a restoration of the classic Mystery of the Third Planet — see a trailer here.
Lastly, we wrote about the development, influences and creative philosophy of Kihachiro Kawamoto — Japan’s great puppet animator.
Until next time!
Just thank you so much. I can’t quite put it into words but in a world that feels so exhausting sometimes it’s so lovely to receive your posts and see the beauty, joy and knowledge in them. The generosity of each post is so special too! Thank you again.
Thanks!
I read Galina Barinova's article and found it very interesting. I had no idea that it was Hitruk's team that was responsible for the film's modernism (largely because they were fans of Polish animation and avant-garde art), while the director himself apparently, although he intended to make a great film, originally had in mind a much simpler story done in a traditional visual style.
Also, it goes into the economics a little - one 10-minute cartoon cost the same as a live-action feature film, but nevertheless the government "understood that you had to make them for the children". Still, they looked for ways to bring the cost down, and wanted to do a "limited animation" experiment. However, Hitruk's film actually took twice as long as normal (almost 2 years instead of 9 months), and was more expensive because he'd hired twice the normal number of animators (8-9 instead of 4). So while it was a critical and popular success, it failed at the task of "proving" the economics of limited animation... except at the very end of its production, where they still had a huge crowd scene left to animate and no time, so "rediscovered" the technique of cutout animation that Soviet animation had stopped using in the mid-1930s, and manage to finish that scene in a day instead of a month.
I'm thinking about translating this article...
Those four 1940s Soyuzmultfilm restorations really do look fantastic! I hope we see more in the days to come. For now, two of them can now be seen with subtitles on Animatsiya.net:
"Elephant and Pug" (1941) https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=125
"The Titmouse" (1944) https://www.animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=1047
And I'll get to the other two in the next few days.
It's a bit disappointing, though, that they're releasing them on YouTube in the PAL TV frame rate of 25fps rather than in the original 24fps. I mean, it's easy enough to correct in VLC by playing it at 96% speed, but still.