Nancy Beiman explains why animators ought to study Charlie Chaplin

The Little Tramp. Photo: Wikipedia

Why should animators watch Charlie Chaplin films? Nancy Beiman, former supervising animator at Disney Feature Animation and now one of the key professors at Sheridan College in Toronto (and contributor to FLiP), has the answer. It's because good animators are pantomime artists, and Chaplin was "the greatest pantomimer of them all". At the 2014 SAS (Society of Animation Studies) conference in Toronto, Nancy explained how animation and silent film comedy developed together, inspiring one another to perfect the art of physical comedy.

Charlie Chaplin has Left Leicester Square

by Jane Wright

Jane (Smethurst) Wright did traditional, hand drawn special effects back in the 1990's on features like Prince of Egypt and The Thief and the Cobbler.  She wrote to FLIP with a story of obsolescence that any old school animator can relate to, and maybe get a chill from....

Last weekend I made my way to Leicester Square for the sole purpose of taking a photograph of London’s much-loved Charlie Chaplin statue. Not being a tourist I hadn’t been there for ages; even so, looking around I wondered if I’d entered a time warp and stumbled onto the set of It's a Wonderful Life and into Pottersville by mistake. I was dismayed at the soulless place I now found myself in. Worse still, Charlie had gone.