Animating Buddy and Romeo
24 frames per second of traditional hand-drawn animation on paper
For you Taylor Swift fans, Happy [belated] July 9th.
That video made me want to see Tangled for the first time, which I did soon thereafter. We (Frega + DiPerri) watched it on our first New Year’s Eve together. Anyhow, more on Taylor Swift behind the paywall…
THIS WEEK:
Five animated Buddy and Romeo shorts
WHERE ARE THEY NOW: Larry, that F.F.
WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND? Animation textbooks, supplies, and software
BEHIND THE PAYWALL: DiPerri ranks Taylor Swift’s albums
DiPerri here. I taught hand-drawn animation as a semester course for high school aged artists from 2011 until 2022. After a two year hiatus, this week marks my return to teaching hand-drawn animation and, with it, I resume work on a Buddy and Romeo short that began production in early 2019.
The short, which will be Buddy and Romeo’s fourth animated outing, has not been in constant production for five years. I’ve been picking it up and putting it down at will. I first worked on it from January-March 2019; put it aside; animated more of it from December 2020-January 2021; put it aside; and haven’t touched it since.
That is, until this past Monday evening, when I picked up right where I left off three years ago without really missing a beat (fortunately I leave myself copious notes and outlines). We’ll see how much of it gets done in this phase. Turns out Buddy’s role is almost fully animated already and he’s got the most to do. So that was today’s surprising discovery. Who knows, maybe it’s coming sooner than any of us expect.
As we continue to wait for that short to be completed, here are the three shorts that have been released thus far.
Good Night! a Buddy and Romeo short (2017) *
*Exclamation point and subtitle added retroactively to fit what became the title system of a joyful proclamation of reality that is revealed to be otherwise or a mislead or sarcasm.
production period: November-December 2014; August, October, December 2016; January 2017
When I watch Good Night! I see myself learning how to draw new characters (Buddy and Romeo were created in August 2014; Their comic strip, Mates and Dates did not begin its newspaper run until September 2015 so I had a year of pre-vis development) and properly teach myself the animation process (this was the first time I used charts and X-sheets). Good Night! was less about story and more about taking the time to explore how each character moves. You may have noticed that each character takes turns having prolonged sequences of motion (Romeo, then Genevieve, Romeo again, then Buddy). Thanks to Good Night!, I learned how to draw and pose the characters better for the comic strip.
Understand THIS! a Buddy and Romeo short (2018)
production period: June-July 2018
I’ve written quite a bit about Understand THIS! on this Substack in the past. If you’re new here, I drew this short in five weeks in the summer of 2018 during which time (for unrelated reasons) Frega and I lived in Georgia. It was an incredible time! Animating all day, watching The Great British Baking Show (which we’d just discovered) at night, reading The Infinity Gauntlet for the first time, and washing our two dishes, two forks, and two glasses after every meal. It was awesome. I entered Understand THIS! in a contest, which was a major comic syndicates’ one-hit-wonder foray into animation. The syndicate’s brief was that they were looking for material that could be developed into an episodic series and I followed that brief closely with the hope that the syndicate would order more animated Buddy and Romeo episodes. The short was designed to be the national audience’s introduction to Buddy and Romeo (and it was) and to serve as a greatest hits montage of their dating failures from the comic strips. Understand THIS! was a finalist in the competition and the syndicate didn’t pursue any of the animated entries beyond those initial offerings.
For me, the best part of Understand THIS! was that I showed myself I could produce an animated short, start to finish, in a short period of time. Obviously, I’ve never bothered to duplicate that schedule because there has been no reason to do so. But I know it’s possible if need be. At the time, I prepared storyboards for five more Buddy and Romeo shorts so that I’d be ready to put them into production the moment the syndicate ordered them.
Ha.
Moving Piano! a Buddy and Romeo short (2021)
production period: March-June 2021; November-December 2021
The fourth short that I spoke of earlier was supposed to be the third but Moving Piano! came out of nowhere and put itself on the front burner. I’m proud of the smears and the poses on Buddy and Romeo and the dialogue work and movement on Bianca (she’s a one-off character created for this short) is probably the best animation I’ve done to that point.
The fourth short was designed to be a single-shot short (like Good Night! and Moving Piano! where the camera never cuts away and everything is set on a the same stagnant stage. The fifth short (which was storyboarded and edited as a video animatic with a rough dialogue audio track in 2018) is more ambitious. It’s dialogue-driven and story-driven with numerous characters (including the animation debut of Buddy and Romeo’s moms!) and camera angles.
And Buddy and Romeo sing.
Looking forward to starting that someday!
Want more Buddy and Romeo animation? Animation takes a lot of time (and money) so please consider leaving a tip in the Tip Jar.
As I’ve said, Buddy and Romeo are presently back on the animation table. You know who else is back?
Larry.
Larry is the F.F. who keeps getting into our vegetable garden and has eaten the bottom halves of our cucumbers, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, all of our kale and strawberries and most of our basil.
Fool.
In case you’re curious, here are the “textbooks” I’ve used on my journey as I teach myself hand-drawn animation.
Through The Animator’s Survival Kit, the late Richard Williams is the quintessential animation professor.
Disney legend Eric Goldberg (best known for designing/animating the Genie in Aladdin and Phil in Hercules among many renaissance and post-renaissance Disney characters) offers an easy to digest guide to learning charts, X-sheets, and all the animation basics like squash and stretch. This is a good starting point for anyone just learning.
For supplies, I use 17lb 12f Acme punched animation paper and Ticonderoga pencils. I built my animation table out of plywood, MDF board, and a frosted glass disc as a DIY project for less than $100 in 2011 (the glass disc was the most expensive part. Just over $50 from a local windshield glass business). I order paper and pegbars from CartoonSupplies.com
After scanning all of the drawings, I use the incredible AnimationPaper software to assemble and time the drawings and Adobe Premiere Pro to assemble the AnimationPaper video export with the soundtrack.
Stick around after the paywall for DiPerri’s ranking of Taylor Swift’s 11 studio albums. He’s got some explaining to do…
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