The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation Design

Foreword copyright © 1987, 2013 The Maurice Noble Estate.

Preface copyright © 1987 by The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity.

Text copyright © 2013 by Tod Polson.

Page 174 constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.

LOONEY TUNES including BUGS BUNNY, DAFFY DUCK, ROAD RUNNER, WILE E. COYOTE, PEPE LE PEW, ELMER FUDD, SAM SHEEPDOG, MARVIN THE MARTIAN, and RALPH PHILLIPS used courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-2738-5

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Polson, Tod, 1971-

The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of animation design / by Tod Polson.

     pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-4521-0294-8

1. Noble, Maurice. 2. Animated films--United States.

3. Animation (Cinematography)--United States. I. Title.

   NC1766.U52N637 2013

   791.43’34092--dc23

2012031595

Designed by Cat Grishaver

Chronicle Books LLC

680 Second Street

San Francisco, California 94107

www.chroniclebooks.com

Contents

9

PREFACE

BY Chuck Jones

10

FOREWORD

BY Maurice Noble

13

PROLOGUE

14

INTRODUCTION

16

SCHOOL DAZE

18

SLUMMING IT AT DISNEY’S

21

THE DISNEY STRIKE

23

THE WAR YEARS

25

DEVELOPMENT OF THE WARNER BROS. STYLE

27

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOBLE STYLE

27

COMPARISONS TO UPA

28

3-D AND JOHN SUTHERLAND PRODUCTIONS

30

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

33

THE END OF AN ERA

34

THE MGM YEARS

38

RETIREMENT

44

A NEW BEGINNING

46

LEGACY

48

STEP 01

Getting Started

48

WORKING WITHIN YOUR LIMITATIONS

50

WORKING AS A TEAM

54

STEP 02

Story

55

VISUAL STORYTELLING

60

STEP 03

Breaking Down the Elements

61

STORY BEATS

61

STORY ELEMENTS

66

STEP 04

Research and Inspiration

67

USING REFERENCE

80

STEP 05

Design

81

THUMBNAILS

83

WORKING IN THE CORRECT ASPECT RATIO

85

SUPPORTING THE CHARACTERS

85

SWEATY FUN

86

THUMBNAILS TO WORKING DRAWINGS

88

VALUE

91

TESTING VALUE

91

STACKING VALUE

93

FRAMING WITH LIGHT

94

CONTRAST

97

SIMPLIFYING ELEMENTS

98

STEP 06

Color

99

THE BASICS

102

COLOR PERSONALITY

103

THE PALETTE

103

SIMPLIFYING THE PALETTE

104

COLOR THEMES

104

COLOR FOR QUICK CUTS

105

COLOR CHORDS

114

COLOR CHORDS AS THEMES

115

CHARACTER COLOR

116

VISUAL HIERARCHY

118

COLOR REFLECTING PERSONALITY

119

ANALOGOUS AND SPLIT-COMPLEMENTARY CHARACTER COLORS

120

COMPLEMENTARY CHARACTER COLORS

124

DESIGNING CHARACTER COLOR IN MODERN TIMES

124

SATURATION

124

DULL COLORS AGAINST BRIGHT

125

PAINTING WITH SPIT

126

COLOR SKETCHES AND COLOR KEYS

146

LIGHTING TESTS

148

STEP 07

Layout

152

GRIDS AND COMPOSITION

153

GRID ELEMENTS

153

HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL LINES

153

DIAGONALS

155

RHYTHM AND SPACING

155

COUNTER-RHYTHMS

155

COMPOSITIONAL THEORIES

155

THE RULE OF THIRDS AND RABATMENT

156

ABOUT THE RULE OF THIRDS

157

ABOUT RABATMENT

159

PANS

160

PARALLAX

161

FRAMING WITH ELEMENTS

163

DEPTH

163

PERSPECTIVE

163

MULTIPOINT PERSPECTIVE

165

DISTORTED PERSPECTIVE

166

STEP 08

Final Film

168

IN CONCLUSION

170

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

171

INDEX

174

IMAGE & ART CREDITS

Maurice as the timid matador in Bully For Bugs (1953). Layout by Chuck Jones

Note from Chuck Jones to Maurice Noble, date unknown

To the grandson he hoped could come to know him a little better through these pages . . .

. . . and for all those still creating with passion, for no other reason than the joy of it.

PREFACE

I Have Sent for You, Dodgers!

Chuck Jones on Maurice Noble

If you describe Maurice as he would appear in the telephone book, you will have an exact idea of my respect and love for him.

But I tell you what he was not. He was not my good right arm.

My good right arm. What a splendid term. How nice it must be to be called a good right arm by your director if you are a writer or a layout man or a lead animator.

There’s only one drawback: a right arm, or a left arm for that matter, is stupid. It has no volition of its own. It only does what the prejudice and predilection of the director tells it to do.

As a right arm, Maurice Noble was an absolute failure. He had ideas, which is a pretty stupid thing for a right arm to have. His sense of color and design was, and is, vastly superior to mine, which, in a right arm, should be suicidal. He has a superb sense of humor, which is, in normal circumstances, almost profane for a right arm or a layout man.

But fortunately for Maurice and fortunately, to the point of survival for me, I had discovered years before he magically appeared in my unit that there are only two kinds of talent worthy of identification: one that you find, if you are very lucky, as a small, scrabbly little talent within yourself (this is the one you continually doubt and always, if you make any claim to artistry, of which you are constantly suspicious) and two, the talent to surround yourself with talent. Of the two, the only one I am confident that I possess in abundance is the second.

If a lawyer who defends himself in court has a fool for a client, then a director who tries to acts as his own background or layout man, lead animator, or sound editor is doomed to be spastically handicapped by his own limitations. It is not only necessary that he hire people in each department (except direction) of talent superior to his own, he must demand that each of them approach the same problem with a different background and viewpoint. For myself, I do not want a writer who thinks he is a director. I want him to have the confidence, and the knowledge, to know that I consider him far better at his job than I am. Mondrian said that the supreme joy of artistry is working within a discipline. Mike Maltese, Ken Harris, Ben Washam, and Maurice Noble, among all those many uniquely talented people I worked with, knew because I tried to exhibit it in the only form of respect and honor I understand how necessary to the final film was their confidence in the contributions they made through their individual disciplines and artistries.

Maurice seldom tried to provide animation gags per se, but he created a world where animation could flourish. If, for instance, in What’s Opera, Doc? he felt there was a lack of the flesh and frippery common to classical ballet, he designed the backgrounds in flesh tones and the trees as tutus. If, as in one of the Martian–outer space films, he got tired of all those film-studded mysterious planets, he simply designed a city of delicately hued transparent plates floating in space. In Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century, whose production design was freely asserted by George Lucas as having been a great stimulus to his Star Wars films, Maurice designed a forty-story rocket ten years before John Glenn had graduated from high school and vastly superior in design to anything seen at Cape Canaveral, plus the only gantry crane worth viewing.

Maurice’s visual jokes never intruded on the orderly advance of the story—if any story I ever directed could be called orderly.

He enhanced every story. He stimulated all who worked with him. He always used the concerto form: once he was on board with the story intent, every inspirational sketch he contributed was a variation on a theme. He never showed off, but he showed up every layout man I have ever known by his honesty, his devotion to his craft, and his devotion to the film at hand. This is never more vividly demonstrated than in What’s Opera, Doc? Without Maurice Noble, who excited, moved, and stimulated us all, that film could not have been made.

As the scientist said to Daffy in Duck Dodgers, I have sent for you, Dodgers, because the world supply of great layout men is appallingly low.

CHUCK JONES

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

1987

(From the introduction to Maurice’s Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the International Animated Film Society for creative excellence in the field of animation.)

FOREWORD

Designing for Animation

While there has been much written about the art and techniques of animation, little has been said about the overall look and backdrop that animated characters play against. To be more specific: the art direction, staging, design, and layout of an animated film. Over the past few years I have had the pleasure of coming out of retirement and sharing my knowledge and experiences with a whole new generation of young people. Many have asked me to write down some notes on design, and the Noble approach.

I would also like to say that my success as a designer is in a large part due to the many talented people I have worked with over the years. Chuck Jones, a director who trusted my vision and gave me the freedom to explore it. Mike Maltese, a writer with a pixie sense of humor. Ken Harris, Benny Washam, and Abe Levitow, talented animators all. And of course Phil DeGuard, the background painter who helped bring my vision to life.

For all these opportunities thank you, also, to: Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss, Friz Freleng, Frank Capra, John Sutherland, John Rose, Frank Tashlin, Norton Juster, Mrs. Chouinard, Henri Matisse, Braque, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Brueghel, Hieronymus Bosch, Arthur Rackham, and Adam and Eve.

The real art of animation is filled with ideas and beauty and is a never-ending joy.

MAURICE NOBLE

LA CRESCENTA, CALIFORNIA

Portrait by Yousuf Karsh

Maurice and Tod doing some serious research in Turkey.

Examples of Maurice’s notes on which the Noble Approach is based.

PROLOGUE

A Design and Life Philosophy

Originality is a quality over which an artist has as little influence as over the shape and distinction of his features. All he can do is be sincere and try and find out the things that really move him and that he really likes. If he has a strong and original character, he will have no difficulty in this, and his work will be original in the true sense. —From The Practice and Science of Drawing (1913) by the English artist Harold Speed (1872–1957)

If anything could be said about Maurice, it would be about the originality and sincerity of his art, and his sincerity as a person. Five minutes with the man would give you a strong sense of why his films looked the way they did. His jokes (if you could call them that) were so bad that you wanted to groan, but you had to laugh, which only encouraged him more. His cornball humor and pixie sense of fun would inform you of why the rocks in Road Runner country were balanced the way they were. And why his perspective was just a bit off-kilter. But as big of a ham as Maurice pretended to be, he was also a sensitive and thoughtful visual poet. He had a passion for making beautiful images that touched and moved people. More than anyone I’ve ever met, he loved beauty, and he loved life. He conveyed this on the screen, and to everyone whose life he touched. As great of an artist as Maurice was, he was an even greater human being.

The text for this book started years ago when Maurice began working with a group of us at Chuck Jones Film Productions. At eighty-three years old, when most men his age were, in Maurice’s words, dead, or enjoying their retirement, Maurice was concerned with training a new generation of designers. He would look at our work and, instead of simply talking to us, would write long notes about what he felt were the strengths and weaknesses of our designs. He did this with great effort because his eyesight had gotten so poor, and because we all had so much to learn. The notes he gave us would turn into long discussions. And long discussions turned into ideas that we all still ponder. For the few of us lucky enough to be called his boys (which also included a few girls) he not only changed the way we viewed art, he changed the way we looked at life.

Maurice never claimed to have any design secrets, and some of the ideas about design that are offered in the following pages can be found in some of the most basic texts dedicated to the subject. What is unique about Maurice’s work is the way he put these ideas together. Studying under Maurice, we all soon learned that how Maurice designed films (i.e., his design technique), wasn’t nearly as important as why he designed films the way he did.

Noble dreamed of sharing his ideas on film design with a larger audience in book form. Though he completed many pages of notes, he unfortunately passed away before his dream could be realized. This book isn’t meant to be a complete retrospective of Maurice’s life or work. Rather, it is what he wanted, an outline of his design philosophies, illustrated with some of his designs.

Although Maurice had intended this book to be more of a working textbook, with each chapter outlining a step of his process, I thought it was important to also include some stories, and at least give a little background information (pun intended) about the man. I’ve also combined a few of the steps in his process for clarity, indicating the areas where Maurice’s original plan has been changed.

Maurice rarely gave what you would call traditional lessons in design; they were more like conversations. Many of his pearls of wisdom were hidden in the stories he would tell. As you read this book, imagine, if you will, hearing his stories the way we heard many of them: seated in Maurice’s studio, in the midst of art from his remarkable career, stacked, stashed, and hung around the room in an order that only he understood. At the center of this controlled chaos, propped next to the animation disc that had served him so well, was the man himself, once described by Stan Freberg as the world’s tallest elf, gray hair mussed, a slight smirk on his face, and a devilish twinkle in his eye. Maurice often told many variations of the same stories throughout the years, depending on his mood and who was in the audience. We were relatively young, so we usually got the PG-rated versions of things, with a naughty word thrown in every once in a while to get a reaction from us.

The following pages are taken from notes he had started, as well as interviews and lectures he had given, and memories from the Noble Boys and other young people he trained and worked with. To Maurice when I knew him, a young person was anyone under the age of seventy-five.

TOD POLSON, NOBLE BOY

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

MARCH 2011

INTRODUCTION

Setting the Stage

Maurice Noble is best known for the fun, graphic layout design work he created for Warner Bros. and MGM Studios in the 1950s and 1960s. His animation design has been so influential that many refer to the highly stylized animation design from Warner Bros. simply as the Maurice Noble Style. But how did Maurice’s stylized approach to design develop? Where did it come from?

Maurice’s art education began on May 1, 1910, when he was born in the small lumber town of Spooner, Minnesota. (Maurice’s birth records actually show that he was born on May 1, 1911. But since this is Maurice’s book, I’ll leave this and most other facts just where he left them.) As he was growing up, his mother, an