Boiling Lines and Lightning Sketches: Process and the Animated Drawing

Lightning sketches and animated sketching

Rather than merely an image, a drawing can also be thought of as a composite of numerous processes and transformations. The process of drawing can be considered in terms of making marks, and quite often in terms of making marks that then become something else. Lines become forms, forms and scratches aggregate to become other forms. This process of becoming – whether or not it amounts to a recognizable form – is one of the very remarkable aspects of drawing; and it can, in and of itself, form an important area of exploration. Process philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, claimed that ‘the very essence of real actuality … is process … this process involves a physical side which is the perishing of the past as it transforms itself into a new creation’ (Whitehead, 1967: 355). Process philosophy is a school of thought that places primary emphasis on process and flux and suggests that all things are merely the consequence of process. It is processes that constitute things; in another words, ‘processes are basic and things derivative’ (Rescher, 2006: 7). We can consider that all things are continuously becoming other, and therefore it is possible to focus more intently on the concept of change and evolution and less on any one state. From this perspective, we can consider the drawing process of mark making and manipulation to be just as significant as the finished product. Paul Wells (Wells et al., 2008: 42), in his consideration of experimental drawing, seems to echo these ideas: ‘[Drawing] facilitates a call-and-response in the artist as he or she is intuitively “mark-making” and yet simultaneously going through a process of immediate evaluation and revision while drawing.’

The lightning sketch artists exploited the idea of this process of drawing as they drew large pictures in front of the audience. Spectators would delight in witnessing a talented artist draw something very quickly and with great efficiency and precision. But in order to add additional layers of conceptual information, the artist often provided an oral description of the drawings progress through humorous ‘patter’ and, most importantly, the drawing often appeared suddenly and dramatically to transform before the audience’s eyes. Thus a fly might suddenly become an angry housekeeper, or a cat might transform into a giant mouse. This was the most popular genre of the lightning sketch and came to be referred to as the evolution sketch.

Evolution pictures are produced by drawing a picture and then with a few strokes of the crayon changing it into something radically different from the original conception. Such a picture never fails to hold the interest of an audience, because it always keeps them on tiptoe with curiosity until the drawing is finished. (Tarbell, 1926: 21)

These drawing performances presented a combined fictionalized spectacle and a factual demonstration of the drawing process. The audiences were able to witness the actual drawing process of an image, mark by mark, but at the same time be entertained through the overlays of fictional narrative and, as a climax, by a dramatic metamorphic twist. But regardless of their entertainment value, these performances unquestionably did emphasise above all else the drawing process.

Some lightning sketch artists began using the magic lantern to amplify their craft. For example, Alec Laing, of Sydney, Australia, drew his lightning sketches directly onto frosted glass plates while the magic lantern projected them onto the stage. ³ Laing regularly created ‘screen sketches of political, sporting and theatrical celebrities’. One reviewer noted: ‘On Saturday the house roared its recognition when Johnny Sheridan and Bland Holt were transformed on the screen.’ ⁴ Once cinema came into more widespread use, the lightning sketch artists came to recognise that film could give them a performative edge. Not only could the cinema speed up the drawing process, but it could also facilitate the transformative effect that they so desired. Remarkably, many of the earliest cinematic drawn animations (especially from 1900–1910) were made with the animated sketching process, and it was not until after this that the bulk of cinematic animation reverted to the primary use of sequential replacement drawings.

Most traditional drawn animation inevitably obscures the fact that an artist drew it. It tends to conceal the individual material nature of a drawing, and instead presents something else – such as a moving character or object. It is a form created out of the aggregation of multiple drawings, a dynamic collage that allows the viewer to experience a single moving form. However, with animated sketching, the drawing process was always visible. These animations were not concerned with making forms or characters move in the conventional cinematic sense but with animating the drawing process and articulating a drawing’s evolution. With the aid of animated trickery, the artist became a super-artist whose drawings seemed simply to flow from the tip of the pencil.

To further highlight the drawing performance, quite often these early cinematic efforts featured the artist’s visible hand. For Donald Crafton (1993: 11), this was an important facet of early animation, for it not only emphasized the fact that there was an animator who was responsible for the animation, but it also helped to develop ‘mythologies that gave the animator some sort of special status’. In many cases, as Crafton notes, it elevated the animator to a ‘demigod, a purveyor of life itself’. Such an interpretation of these early animated films seems particularly appropriate when we see the hand interacting with a seemingly autonomous form (such as in much of the Fleischer Brothers’ Out of the Inkwell series). However, I believe that another significant reading (particularly in the earlier films from 1900–1910) is one that places emphasis explicitly on the super-human artistic abilities of the animator. With the emphasis directed towards the super-human artist, the act of creating the image is paramount and it might seem somewhat inconsequential as to whether or not the drawn image would later ‘come to life’.

Such an approach can be seen in some of the early animated advertisement films that were produced in Melbourne by animator/artist Virgil Reilly (from 1910). One of these films featured, for example, the hand of Reilly creating an intricate drawing of a woman dressed in fine clothing at incredible speed. Sometimes the hand was seen drawing just a single line, at other times it merely passed over the board, miraculously rendering a whole section of the image at once. Once the image was completed, it would not come to life (as one might expect from a character in a Fleisher Brothers cartoon), as it was first and foremost an animation of the image’s creation. Similarly, in J Stuart Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, much of the animation is devoted to the drawing and sketching of images. Though in this film we ultimately see characters ‘come to life’, we are also presented with quite prominent sequences in which the animator appears as a super-human sketcher (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Frame grabs from Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (Blackton, 1906). In Figure 1a we can clearly see the artist’s hand at work which then culminates in the finished drawing in Figure 1b.

It made sense that the lightning sketch artist would want to demonstrate the drawing process through filmed animation; as contemporary artist Tim Knowles (2011: 132) notes:

For me drawing is all about movement, it is always the result of an action, a record of motion as a result of a force exerted over time. Whether it be the artist’s hand or body, seismic movement, the motion of a tree branch or the path followed by the wind through the landscape it is always the result of movement.

Malcolm Cook (2013: 246) suggests that the traditional lightning sketch artists were, in a sense, anticipating the animated qualities of cinema, through their performative actions. He argues that, because they drew so dynamically, ‘working furiously to produce the image within a few seconds: these were animated cartoons’. That is, their performances evoked the idea of animation because of the rapid and almost magical way in which the images were made to appear. However, the practice of animated sketching is quite different from the traditional lightning sketch process. It involves the continual stopping of the drawing motion and it is only through the very artificial process of animation that a drawing could appear to be created at such high speeds. A news story described the production process of early Australian animator, Harry Julius, as follows:

As [Julius] begins the first lines of the drawing, the operator turns the handle of the camera … then he calls ‘Stop’ and the handle-turning ceases. Continuing, the second phase of his drawing until a convincing outline has been completed, he orders the operator to turn again, and, after adding a few strokes to show his hand at work, he again calls ‘Stop’, and so on till the cartoon is finished … If the camera accompanied every movement of his pencil … the entire effect of instantaneous production would be lost through slowness of execution, and an interminable length of execution, and an interminable length of film. ⁵

As the lightning sketch artist developed his craft for the animated film, the actual process of constructing the image and its relation to time changed dramatically. Whereas the traditional lightning sketch artist tried to draw as quickly as possible in order to create a fast-paced performance, the animated sketcher was required to draw extremely slowly (that is, with constant interruptions between each minute mark) in order to create a fast-paced filmed performance. In his discussion on time in animation, George Griffin (2013: 289) notes that animation is most often composed of ‘synthetic time’ which

is meant to suggest the artifice of animation in contrast to the essential documentative process of cinema, which records and plays back real time events. Using myriad techniques animators piece together sequences of discrete images or objects to build either an imitation of continuous motion or an indifference to continuous motion based on strategies of discontinuity. In either case, the result is not a record of an actual performance.

It is the stop-motion production technique or ‘strategy of discontinuity’ that not only provides a remarkable animated sketching effect, but also forces the animator to work not at lightning speed, but at a snail’s pace.

William Kentridge is one notable contemporary artist who utilises animated sketching. His animated works, such as Felix in Exile (1994) or Automatic Writing (2003), are primarily focused on the drawing process.

My technique begins with a sheet of paper stuck up on the studio wall. Halfway across the room is my camera, usually an old Bolex. A drawing is begun on the paper. I walk across to the camera, shoot one or two frames, walk back to the paper, continue and change the drawing (marginally), walk back to the camera, walk back to the paper, to the camera, and so on. So each sequence, as opposed to each frame of the film, is a single drawing. (Kentridge, cited in Benezra, 2001: 114)

Accordingly, many of his works are specifically about the ‘becoming’ process of an image, highlighting the process-biased nature of both drawing and animation. In one sequence of Automatic Writing, a procession of words and letters appear to write themselves, only to be overdrawn by an image of a rather banal domestic scene. Once this image is complete, subtle movements, often isolated in small areas, are visible. The entire image then becomes smeared and smudged as it is transformed into yet another scene.

Lev Yilmaz is another artist whose work focuses on the animated line. His films, perhaps more than any other contemporary artist/animator, strongly echo the early lightning sketch artist – particularly in the manner in which he utilises voice-over. Lev (as he is known as) has produced well over 50 shorts in his series, Tales of Mere Existence. Similar to the early lightning sketch artist, the oration imbues the drawing with a layer of fictionalized narrative. His working process involves drawing with pencil directly onto the reverse side of semi-transparent paper while it is being videoed. The line-work is visible from the front, but his hand and pencil are not, making it appear as if the line were drawing itself (see Figure 2). Though some have debated whether his films are truly animation, the fact that his work appears to move autonomously makes it quite indistinguishable from animated sketching. Because of this approach and the clearly visible linkage to early lightning sketch works, his films have been screened at numerous animation festivals and anthologized in animation DVD collections.

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Figure 2.

Frame grab from Protégé part of the Tales of Mere Existence series (Lev Yilmaz, 2003), From Animation Unlimited (2004) DVD.

Lightning sketch performances and animated sketching both seemingly shift the viewer’s focus away from the completed drawn image, and instead allow one to think primarily of the construction of the drawing – of drawing as process. Essentially, the techniques of animation that I am analysing in this article are those which underscore the process of drawing and almost seem to deliberately de-emphasise the completed drawing or stable form within the practice of animation. ⁶

Animated erasure as part of the drawing process

The process of drawing, in addition to mark-making, can also involve the smearing and even the erasure of the line work. For example, preliminary or extraneous marks may be removed and, if working in soft graphite or charcoal, smudging and smearing can occur frequently, either by accident or through the deliberate manipulation of the material after it has been applied to paper. Drawing, therefore, is not just the act of applying a line, but is also the act of modifying a line.

Importantly, the act of erasing should not be seen as a backwards step in the creation of a drawing, for it too propels the drawing forward. In fact, according to process philosophy, all processes are always forward moving; even those that might appear to be going backwards – an eroding hillside, a rusting nail, the crumbling of ruins are all, in reality, progressive. A process is a procedure that is ‘a sequentially structured sequence of successive stages or phases’ (Rescher, 1999: 37). Processes are temporal, and are therefore always progressive and developmental regardless of whether they appear to present the accretion or reduction of forms.

Erasure also plays an important role in the animated work of William Kentridge: ‘When I began drawing, I tried very hard to make perfect erasures. I later understood that the traces left on the paper were integral to the drawing’s meaning’ (Kentridge, cited in Benezra, 2001: 17). He continues:

A film of the drawing holds each moment. Often, as a drawing proceeds, interest shifts from what was originally central to something that initially appeared incidental. Filming enables me to follow this process of vision and revision as it happens. This erasing of charcoal, an imperfect activity, always leaves a grey smudge on the paper. So filming not only records the changes in the drawing but reveals too the history of those changes, as each erasure leaves a snail-trail of what has been. (p. 114)

In J Stuart Blackton’s, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) the images are seen to draw themselves on a chalkboard and subsequently each image is then smeared and erased out. In one instance, after an image is animated into being, the animator’s hand enters into the frame holding a chalkboard eraser and proceeds to erase the entire image (leaving only a faint trace visible). Another sequence displays the animated erasure of two figures in reverse, so that they seemingly emerge from a fog of smeared chalk dust (see Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Frame grabs from Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (Blackton, 1906).

Jules Engel’s animated short film, Accident (1973), also explores the idea of erasing as a process of drawing. His animation features a cycle of a dog running (which he created with a series of replacement drawings rendered with graphite pencil on white paper). During the first portion of the film we see the dog gracefully running in place. After a short time the dog begins to be rubbed out, one small portion at a time; progressively the sprinting dog disappears, and in the end only the very faint remnants of the dog figure remain – but even so, a faint running motion is still visible. Here is Jules Engel (1985: 110) describing the process:

You take [the dog] off the paper, bit by bit; and eventually all I had left there was the smudge or something that I couldn’t quite get off the paper altogether. But at the same time I have arrived at another image, and arrived at this other image, again, this form, because I’m working in time and I’m working in movement.

It can be just as remarkable to watch a drawing being drawn, as it is to witness it being erased. As Engel suggests, the erased image is not nothingness, but an outcome of an evolving process of drawing. This is echoed by an early artwork of Robert Rauschenberg, Erased De Kooning (1953), in which the artist took an original drawing on paper, originally created by Willem de Kooning, and simply erased all of the line-work. All that remains is the faint remnants of the original image, and a caption that reads ‘Erased de Kooning Drawing’ – but it is an image nonetheless. Thus, drawing – and in particular animated sketching – can involve not just the application of pigment, but also its manipulation and even its removal from the drawing surface. In some cases this erasure is not just an essential part of the process, but an integral part of the visual narrative.

Animated tracing as a unique event

Many of the early lightning sketch artists actually worked upon pre-drawn images – and their lightning sketch performances were perhaps more akin to that of a ‘lightning tracer’. One how-to text on lightning sketches suggests:

It is advisable for [the artist] to pencil the various subjects lightly on the drawing paper previous to the performance, making the outline just heavy enough to act as a guide but not so heavy that it will be visible to the audience. This preliminary penciling will be found very helpful. Artists frequently pencil in their work before they pen-and-ink it. In [lightning sketch work], the result is what is wanted rather than the manner in which it is obtained. The audience need not know that the entertainer is being helped by pencil lines. (Tarbell, 1926: 13)

Tracing was one of the best-kept secrets of the lightning sketch artist, making many of these performances a relatively streamlined portrayal of the actual act of drawing. Yet, as the above quote indicates, tracing (or re-drawing) over an artist’s earlier more tentative line-work is often an important stage in the traditional drawing process.

As the lightning sketcher made the transition to filmed animation, this under-drawing became even more essential. In his influential text on animation production, EG Lutz (1920: 93–94) describes the use of tracing in the animated lightning sketch:

The general idea or composition of the drawing is sketched out first on a piece of ordinary paper, then its outlines are traced in blue markings to a sheet of Bristol board that has been fastened down to the table beneath the camera within the photographic field. Light-blue marks do not take on the ordinary sensitized film. But the blue markings, it is to be remembered, must be of the faintest … When sure that the blue marks will not photograph, the artist begins his drawing. It is not a difficult task that he has before him – he merely inks his previously drawn lines little by little. Each stroke of the pen, after it has been made, is photographed. If the ink lines are short the movement on the screen will be very slow, and if they are long the movement will be very rapid. And, again, whether the artist turns the camera handle once, twice, or three times for each pen stroke has its effect upon the speed with which the lines grow on the screen.

The process of animated sketching is a consistently intermittent process. In order to create the effect of an animated line that appears to draw itself, minute and sequential marks must be added incrementally to the evolving line – often just a centimeter at a time. With such a process it would be quite difficult to create the impression of, for example, the growth of a smooth arching line – unless there is a guiding under-line to follow. Even in Kentridge’s seemingly experimental drawn animations there are instances where it is clear that it began with very faint (nearly unnoticeable) pre-existing grey lines that were then traced over with vivid white chalk lines. The resulting effect is that the line seems to grow from nothing, forging its own unique and perfectly arched pathway.

Tracing is often considered to be in stark contrast to the typical practice of exploratory drawing since, rather than articulating a new form, the artist must generally focus on tracing over the original demarcating lines. It therefore places emphasis solely on the edge lines of a drawing. But, as with all stages of the drawing process, this should not be considered as a restrictive step, but merely another part of the drawing’s progression and an opportunity to further enhance the image. It can be seen as a chance to alter or perfect the line, or as an opportunity to add greater emphasis or weight – even to provide further indications of implied movement. The fact is that, regardless of the artist intentions, the traced line will always exhibit different qualities in comparison to the original drawn line. Each tracing process presents a unique drawing event as well as a reflection of the quivering imperfections of the artist’s hand.

Boiling: A materialization of difference and repetition

Boiling is an animated process that also involves tracing. In order to create the boiling effect, an original drawing is made and then a number of tracings (normally somewhere between three and eight) are prepared. These tracings are then played back cyclically for as long as necessary and, depending upon how carefully the images are traced, the resulting animation will have either less or more quivering movement. There are two primary motivations for boiling, either to sustain an image (or part of an image) over time, or to provide the impression of life or liveliness to an otherwise still image.

Winsor McCay’s 1914 film, Gertie the Dinosaur, shows an early example of the boiling effect. As this was made prior to the invention of the cel animation technique, the characters and the backgrounds had to be drawn on the same layer. This meant that the background had to be re-drawn (traced) onto every new drawing that depicted the dinosaur character moving. The result was a consistent background of rocks and trees on the one hand, and quivering lines on the other. More recently, independent animators such as Raimund Krumme, Kathy Rose, Bob Godfrey and Joanna Priestly have also produced single-layered drawn animation. These too feature background imagery that appears to boil as it is traced over and over again onto each drawing.

Quite often the contemporary independent animators have used this process as an economical means of adding ‘life’ to their drawn animations. Therefore, instead of having to actually animate the character into moving (that is, to redraw it in a substantially different pose each time) they would simply make an almost (but not quite) exact copy of it. Bill Plympton is one standout animator who has extensively used this strategy, particularly in some of his earlier pencil-drawn animations such as 25 Ways to Quit Smoking (1989), One of Those Days (1988), How to Kiss (1989), and his feature film, I Married a Strange Person (1998). For example, in 25 Ways to Quit Smoking, we see numerous instances in which a character is made to boil as it stands (otherwise still) in the frame (see Figure 4). This character is at once motionless and full of effervescent life. In this case, the boiling effect serves to draw attention to and compound the humorous effect of the rather lengthy pause as the character is seen to be waiting and waiting in anticipation of some over-the-top animated antic to occur.

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Figure 4.

Frame grab from 25 Ways to Quit Smoking (Plympton, 1989), an animated short that extensively uses the boiling technique. In this case it not only serves an economical purpose, but also adds to the humorous effect of the sequence. From Plymptoons: The Complete Early Works of Bill Plympton (2006) DVD.

The American television series, Dr Katz: Professional Therapist (1995–2000), also used the boiling technique quite effectively, essentially to create an animated series composed of almost nothing more than traced-over still images (thus with quivering ‘animated’ lines). The producers of the show developed a digital drawing process which they trademarked as Squigglevision.™ The following is a summary of the original process:

An artist creates a still image and it is manually traced four times, resulting in a total of five very similar versions of the same image. While these five versions are quite similar, there are, in fact, slight random differences between each of the five images as a result of the manual tracing process. Each of the five images is then pasted on to identical copies of a background image. Then, these five images are displayed sequentially in successive video frames in a repeating sequence. (Snyder and Lyman, 2001)

Later they patented an automated version of this process in which computer software would automatically ‘boil’ the edge lines.

The boiled image materializes a unique dichotomy of movement and stillness. In many societies, movement is regarded as one of the fundamental expressions of life, and even when things appear to be still (for example, a person standing motionless or a cactus plant placed on a window sill), movement is nevertheless thought of as persistent within these living beings, even if it is not overtly visible. The animated boil can provide an exaggerated illustration of this concept as it appears to vivify the form. For example, it can simulate the act of breathing, imitating a very visible inhaling and exhaling cyclical action that can seem to encompass the entire form.

Of course, the reason that an image appears to boil is because each tracing is slightly different. However, if one were to compare the original image and its tracings side-by-side they would all look virtually identical but when they are subjected to the animation process, their minute differences become fundamentally apparent. This type of animation can be very successful in revealing the differences that are inherent within the seemingly repetitive image. Such a concept has been explored more broadly in philosophy – for example, in Difference and Repetition (1994), Deleuze considers how the general ideas of these two contrasting concepts (‘difference’ and ‘repetition’) actually reveal a substantial degree of overlapping commonality. Even though the concepts of difference and repetition may seem to be mutually exclusive, they are in fact quite interrelated: there is manifestation of repetition in difference, and there is expression of difference in repetition. And though Deleuze does not apply his discussions directly to animation, I believe that they are quite relevant to the issue of the boiling effect. He notes that: ‘every object, every thing, must see its own identity swallowed up in difference, each being no more than a difference between differences’ (p. 56). To put it more succinctly he states that, ‘Difference lies between two repetitions’ (p. 76). When this concept is applied to the animated boil, it can reveal that each repetitive tracing is actually a unique event that can overtly foreground the drawing process in animation.

When and where animation ‘first began’ has been the subject of many discussions within animation studies. And since animation comprises a great many different production methods, one of the difficulties of this debate is that its origins might arguably stem from varying sources depending upon which animation technique is being considered. However, many have traced the roots of drawn animation back to the ancient cave paintings of Lascaux (Williams, 2001: 11). These paintings, in particular, seem to imply movement within the depicted figures. Some of these figures, for example, are shown with extra limbs in various positions of locomotion, which can imply an accurate sense of movement. However, in terms of the process of creating the animated boil, I suggest that a more direct linkage can be found in the ancient, and still practised, rock art of the Australian Aborigines. What is most remarkable about these is that some of the images (particularly those in central Australia) have been repeatedly traced over with the same image during a period of hundreds (or thousands) of years as a means of revitalising the image (Layton, 1992). They do not simply present a single image or archaeological artifact, but are, by contrast, enduring images which have been continuously updated. A single image would of course fade and degrade over time – but a continually redrawn figure will endure from year to year and from generation to generation. Intriguingly, each re-drawing will at the very least exhibit subtle differences that indicate the current drawing event (the particular qualities of the current artist, the materials used, and the general environmental conditions at the time), placing it unquestionably within a particular moment in time. This continual updating serves to contemporarily recontextualise and reify the drawings of the rock art, enabling them not only to last over time, but also to persist through time. In drawn animation, one artist would normally perform the tracing process over a relatively short term (a few minutes, perhaps an hour). In the case of the indigenous Australians, there would perhaps be many different artists tracing over the images across a span of countless years. Yet, similar to the animated boiling process, there would inevitably be significant differentiation between the drawings so that, if they were to be treated as animation (being photographed and projected as a time-based sequence), they too would appear to incorporate significant motion and undulating line work.

The boiling image presents a form that is ceaselessly in flux, but at the same time, its movement is limited to the quivering of lines, which invariably foregrounds the drawing process of that image. Because the form of a figure itself does not appear to ‘move’ in space, the viewer’s attention is likely to focus on the form’s more superficial fluctuations. This suddenly provides an enhanced understanding of how the image was drawn and draws attention to the constructive basis of, for example, the graphite line. Thus, rather than focusing on the animated antics of a character that might dynamically move about, we primarily see the wiggling lines of the graphite and are reminded that it is a drawn animation – we can almost see the hand of the artist drawing each of the iterations. The contour lines of a still image also imply the movement of the form; they can provide clues as to the gestural movements of the artist’s hand. However, boiling contour lines show the difference in gesture from one reiteration to the next and provide an animated emphasis to the drawn image – and conceivably a de-emphasis of the moving image. But it does more: boiling also sustains the event that is drawing. It creates a vigorous entity that is an aggregate of many drawing events which can essentially extend a single drawing into an animated form without end.

In these cases, the limited movement of the boiling line arguably suggests more about the drawing process (and materiality) than either the still line or the fully animated character is able to do. Boiling not only provides a visible and concrete application of Deleuze’s idea that difference can be found within repetition, but also presents us with a vibrant construct of the dynamic being-state of a drawing. It is a sustained form that is comprised of competing, yet unified notions of difference and repetition. In this amalgamation, the individual images, though present, become nullified and then transformed as components of a persistent and dynamic animated image. Boiling presents a type of animated drawing, expressing mobility, yet always tethered to its place of origin – it does not normally appear to move or translate from one place to another, yet it is full of movement. This movement is essentially a contained movement that then directs our attention to its constructed nature. It is a unique dialectical form, alive yet sedentary, moving yet immobile: a form or character on one hand, but more importantly it is always a group of drawn lines – the wiggling contours seem to call out ‘I am a drawn line first and foremost.’

Conclusion

Animation has often involved some degree of drawing. Boiling and animated sketching are two forms of drawn animation that overtly foreground the drawing process. The origination of animated sketching represents a unique moment in animation history: it was the result of a merger between cinema and the traditional lightning sketch performance. The tradition of using individual, sequentially drawn images (evident in pre-cinematic devices) was overshadowed during the first decade of the 20th century by the extensive production of animated sketching. During this time the emphasis of drawn animation shifted primarily from the endeavour to make things move to the drawing process itself.

A different animation practice known as boiling similarly places an emphasis on the act of drawing – specifically on the act of tracing. By loosely associating boiling with Deleuze’s idea that ‘repetition’ is actually a concept which overlaps with ‘difference’, I have sought to underscore how the repetitive process of tracing an image over and over again can not only provide the animated effect, but also highlight the animator’s hand-drawn process. Because the animated movement is limited to the quivering of lines, it invariably places emphasis on the drawing of those lines. The quivering line thus serves an additional role of sustaining and vivifying the image.

Furthermore, by associating the processes of animated sketching and boiling with ideas of process philosophy, I shed light on just how important the process of drawing can be, not only in terms of the production practice, but also for the aesthetics and narrative of the animation. The foregrounded process of drawing (rather than the finished product) echoes process philosophy’s claim that ‘what exists in nature is not just originated and sustained by processes, but is in fact ongoingly and inexorably characterized by them’ (Rescher, 2006: 3, emphasis in original). In these instances of process-oriented drawn animation, the ‘animated movement’ tends to show rather slight changes and to be mostly restricted within the figure. In the case of animated sketching, the drawing activity of a form constitutes its movement. That is, the animator was not normally concerned with making forms or characters move in the conventional cinematic sense – but with animating the drawing process and articulating a drawing’s evolution. Such limitation of movement is even more prevalent in the case of boiling, where merely the surface or outline of the form appears to move. Both of these techniques undoubtedly express animation, yet this animation appears to be mostly contained within the form. The resulting visible image is at once immobile and mobile; and within this dichotomy of movement, the process of drawing is further accentuated.