A “pencil test”, as I mentioned in my recent post about Pencil Test Depot, is a hand-drawn animation sequence (or entire cartoon) in pencil, prior to the steps to final inking and painting.

A rare Disney animated short that was never finished, a classic style 7 minute Mickey Mouse cartoon called Plight of the Bumble Bee, directed by Jack Kinney in 1951, has surfaced on YouTube., giving us a rare glimpse of the classic animation process.

In much the same way that hand drawn animation has a visual charm distinct from any kind of computer animation, the even more raw and immediate look of animated pencil drawings has a wonderful look all its own.

The cartoon has a full soundtrack, and can be enjoyed as a if it were a finished work, but with the x-ray view of penciled-in characters against more fully (and wonderfully) drawn backgrounds.

Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News has posted the cartoon to his site along with a plea to John Lassiter to consider applying the contemporary Disney (Pixar) studio crew to finishing the unfinished work, and distributing it as an opener for a new Disney theatrical release (which was the role of the original classic cartoons in the early to mid 20th Century).

Great Idea.

[Suggestion courtesy of Gregory Frost]

[Addendum 9/2/10: This has been removed from YouTube by the Disney Copyright Hawks, but as of this writing is still viewable on Ain’t It Cool News.]

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, sometimes shortened to Royal Society of Arts, or RSA, is a British institution founded in 1754 to “embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine art, improve our manufactures and extend our commerce”.

Among their many endeavors is a series of talks in which leading thinkers examine social challenges and seek to shed light on issues both contemporary and timeless.

Some of those talks have been incorporated into animated presentations, in which the speaker’s words are accompanied by time lapse animation of a cartoon illustrator drawing and writing a clever whiteboard presentation of the topic.

These are created by a studio called Cognitive Media, though I couldn’t find individual artist credits. The stop motion is occasionally accompanied by added animated elements, but the end result seems seamless and is often clever in the way already drawn elements are repurposed as the talk and animated presentation continue.

The result is a visually entertaining presentation that holds your interest and adds clarity to concepts that might otherwise be a bit off-putting an effective combination of words and pictures.

[Via BoingBoing]