Up until very recently I didn't know anything at all about James Baxter. But as soon as I discovered his work it inspired me so much, and so now he's become my superfavourite character animator; he absolutely is one of the greatest character animators of all times. He was animation supervisor on Belle, Rafiki, Quasimodo, Moses, Tulio, Spirit, etc etc etc. Check out his page on imdb. And I just discovered he's the guy teaching kids how to draw Spirit on the Spirit DVD :) You can see him there. And also listen to the Nick Ranieri podcast part 3, and I don't remember where else exactly, but he's mentioned in other podcasts.
What strikes me, as well as probably every animator watching James Baxter's animation, is this fantastic fluidity. As Richard Williams sais, "good spacing is a rare commodity" - now James' work's got this fantastic flow, fabulous spacing, his arcs are so clean and... it's all simple. Simple, motivated, in full controll... I'm sure he inspired many people to get pops and imprecissions out of their animation, and just better themselves and polish their work.
What I managed to figure out by now is that he uses soft accents a lot. This is actually the reason for me to post this entry here. He doesn't interrupt the arcs unnecessarilly, he prefers to continue them and he uses a lot of soft accents to phrase those movements. The spacing just feels very natural because of this, I think. Accents are a matter of timing, but the difference from hard to soft is a matter of spacing (check out my animation dictionary if this sounds obscure).
And here's some original James Baxter:
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About me
I'm a character animator, visual artist, game dev, and music composer. I like to doodle, write, experiment, and plan my next big thing. I love tech that inspires and enables art. I have a formal background in music composition. And I like to walk around the world and see things up close. Archives
February 2022
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