MOMA Video: How to Make Hand-Drawn Animation

From the Museum of Modern Art, here's a lovely guide to creating hand-drawn animation presented by Kohana Wilson. Their explanation of how persistence-of-vision works is easy to understand and foundational to perceiving animation. Here's the description from the YouTube page:

Learn how to make hand-drawn animation from start to finish. In this tutorial, animator Kohana Wilson (they/them) walks through the tools, techniques, and principles behind classic paper animation, from your very first drawn frame to a finished animated sequence in After Effects. Whether you're animating an abstract dot, a dragonfly, or a cartwheeling character, this video breaks down the full traditional animation workflow — from rough sketches to a polished, moving sequence.

You'll learn:

• The science behind animation — persistence of vision, explained with a zoetrope, praxinoscope, and flip book
• Essential tools: light boxes, peg bars, and paper choices for hand-drawn animation
• Straight-ahead animation — drawing frame by frame in sequence
• Keyframe animation and in-betweening — planning key poses first, then filling in the motion
• Core animation principles: squash and stretch, easing in and out, follow-through, overlapping action, and smear frames
• How to clean up rough animation and scan your frames for digital editing
• Bringing your sequence to life in Adobe After Effects

Artwork references included: Lotte Reiniger, John Canemaker, Winsor McCay, David Ehrlich, Eadweard J. Muybridge, Mary Beams, Maria Lassnig, and William Kentridge.

Tom Humberstone: "Did Somebody Say Just Work; The Gig Economy, Platform Capitalism and the Battle for Worker Rights."

 

British cartoonist Tom Humberstone has this new minicomic "Did Somebody Say Just Work; The Gig Economy, Platform Capitalism and the Battle for Worker Rights." 

From the site:

"This comic explores the history of couriers, the conditions of modern riders, and their ongoing struggle to improve worker rights.

"You can read a free mobile-friendly version of the comic here.

"Risograph printed on context natural 135gsm paper in 2 colours (orange, black) by Out of the Blueprint in Edinburgh" 

 

Sketchbook: Dad's House Hunting Advice

 

From the sketchbook: my dear old Dad's moving advice.

Dad was an expert house-buyer and had much knowledge. I moved to NYC where I rented for a couple of decades, so I had NO IDEA about how to buy a house when the time came to look. This was his advice. 

Art by Charles Geer: THE MYSTERY AT REDTOP HILL

 

Happy birthday to Charles Geer, born on this day in 1922.

Let's talk about THE MYSTERY AT REDTOP HILL. It is a Whitman Tween Age Book ("In-Between Books for In-Between Readers") by Marjory Schwalje and illustrations by Charles Geer. It's copyright 1965 by Whitman Publishing Company. I had no idea that the term "tween" had been around for more than fifty years!

Nancy, Tod and Steve are the protagonists in this mystery. I am sure it's good, but I have not read it.

I found this in a second-hand shop in Laconia, NH. Like I said, Redtop, schmedtop. I didn't care about the mystery, or the kids. I just fell in love with the illustrations. They were slapdash, confident and showed enormous life and skill.

Charles Geer (1922-2008), born in Long Island and educated at Dartmouth College, served in the US Navy during WWII. Afterward, he attended Pratt.

He illustrated many books, and enjoyed painting. He moved to Rockland, Maine, where he painted watercolors, and enjoyed sailing. He even built a couple of boats. Sounds like a guy I would like to hang out with!

Here are some of his illustrations from THE MYSTERY AT REDTOP HILL. This isn't quite half of them. And there are a good number of full page, gatefold illustrations. Lots of energy in these drawings and it made me a Charles Geer fan.

Related:

Art by Charles Geer: THAT SUMMER WITH LEXY!

- This has been an edited version of an original March 18, 2015 blog entry.

My Desk

 

Here’s a quick sketch of my drawing that I did up for Lotte Wagner's drawing prompt to draw your desk.

I draw on a kidney bean shaped board in my lap, facing a cluttered desk. The cat in the pic is Fergus, who received a clean bill of health at the vet's a week ago today. He is 14 years old and threw up and popped and yowled all the way there, so having a good report was a relief. 

The desk light on the right belonged to my father and is probably from the 1950s.

Happy Weekend and Be Good!

 

Ed Frascino 1930 - 2026

 

New Yorker cartoonist Ed Frascino passed away this past Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 96 years old.

Via Michael Maslin:

"Ed contributed over 500 cartoons to the magazine in his 61 year run at the magazine. His last drawing in print was in January of 2025, but not too very long ago Ed told me that he’d sold a drawing for the magazine’s Daily Cartoon spot (I was supposed to let him know when it ran). A 61 year run at The New Yorker is, of course, remarkable. Only six other New Yorker cartoonists (out of the nearly 800 who contributed in these past 101 years) had reached that mark."

 

 The Daily Cartoonist:

"While a contract cartoonist with The New Yorker since 1965 Frascino also published cartoons in Playboy, Saturday Evening Post The New York Times, Look, Esquire, Punch, The Saturday Review of Literature, and others.

"Frascino also illustrated many books by himself and by others.

"The Conde Nast Store has nearly 200 Frascino cartoons for viewing"

 

Talented and prolific, Ed was also my leading competition for The New York Daily News weekly cartoon that I would pitch every week to the editors there back in 2002-2003. It was not a guaranteed spot and you had to email some roughs mid-week for consideration. If I didn't sell one that week, it was usually Ed that succeeded.