Sheridan Industry Day Promo

It's almost that time of year again, where the students graduating from Sheridan's animation program screen their films for industry guests. The above is a taste of what's coming. There's a version being worked on to identify the clips by student, and I'll replace the above with the version with credits when it is available.

Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton

I never saw Brad Bird's Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and I won't be seeing Andrew Stanton's John Carter. The analyst in me is still interested in the contrast between the two.

Brad Bird
Made a sequel to a successful franchise
The film starred one of the few actors who can still "open" a film
Made a film that had similarities to his animated film The Incredibles

Andrew Stanton
Made a film based on a 100-year-old book with no preceding movie
The film starred someone who has never before received top billing in a feature
Made a film that was not similar to his animated films Finding Nemo and Wall-E.

John Carter is being touted as a flop that may not hit $30 million for its opening weekend. While Bird emerged from Mission Impossible as somebody who is bankable in both animation and live action, Stanton is already being declared a live action failure. I found this paragraph from Deadline Hollywood interesting. I have no idea how valid it is, but the fact that this is the perception in at least part of Hollywood doesn't bode well for Stanton's future in live action. The ellipses are in the original; the paragraph is quoted verbatim.

"To summarize: this flop is the result of a studio trying to indulge Pixar… Of an arrogant director who ignored everybody’s warnings that he was making a film too faithful to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first novel in the Barsoom series “A Princess of Mars”… Of the failure of Dick Cook, and Rich Ross, and Bob Iger to rein in Stanton’s excessive ego or pull the plug on the movie’s bloated budget … Of really rotten marketing that failed to explain the significant or scope of the film’s Civil War-to-Mars story and character arcs and instead made the 3D movie look way as generic as its eventual title… Disagree all you want, but Hollywood is telling me that competent marketing could have drawn in women with the love story, or attracted younger males who weren’t fanboys of the source material. Instead the campaign was as rigid and confusing as the movie itself, not to mention that ’Before Star Wars, Before Avatar‘ tag line should have come at the start and not at the finish. But even more I think John Carter is a product of mogul wuss-ism as much as it is misplaced talent worship. More detail to come."

Deadline Hollywood is not the only one examining John Carter's box office failure. The N.Y. Times wades in as well.

Michael Sporn, Poe and Kickstarter

Michael Sporn has been developing an animated feature about author Edgar Allan Poe and has decided to use Kickstarter to finance the project.

One of the most encouraging things about the increased number of animated features in the last several decades is the content that is not aimed at children or the family audience. Films like Persepolis, Mary and Max, Waltz with Bashir, etc. use animation to deal with adult themes.

Michael Sporn is no stranger to those themes. Even his films that appear to be aimed at children, such as Abel's Island, are really about adult concerns.

As the cost of mainstream animated features continues to go higher, the films take fewer risks. There are more sequels, more adaptations and just more of the same. Even Pixar seems to be falling into established patterns.

Directors like Michael Sporn, working on a shoestring, take more chances than Hollywood. Their continued existence is essential for the health of the animated art form. The only way pop culture changes is by absorbing influences from existing work, but the big studios are all so similar that they've got nothing to absorb that they're not already doing. It's the outliers, people committed to their vision in the face of high odds, that break new ground. When their work comes into being, it affects the creative conversation.

Michael Sporn has been fighting the good fight for decades. He's gravitated towards thoughtful, original films when he could have surrendered to service work. He's consistently given opportunities to artists starting their careers. He's worked with top voice and music talent who are not the usual suspects. And he can do more with a dollar than any producer I know. Large animation studios spend more on catering than Michael gets to make whole films.

I hope that this Kickstarter campaign succeeds and I get to see the completed feature. I have made my financial pledge to make this film a reality and I hope that anyone interested in the artistic growth of animation will throw a few dollars in the direction of this project.

A Canadian Wimp

Apparently, somebody complained about the above clip from Family Guy, and

"The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled on Thursday that the broadcaster did a good job warning viewers about sexual content and bad language in the show, but didn’t provide a heads up about violence. To make amends, Global [the broadcaster] must tell its viewers it violated the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Violence code during prime time viewing hours, and then repeat the message once more time at any time."

The idea that anybody watching Family Guy would find this shocking is shocking to me. In fact, the idea that anybody watches Family Guy is shocking to me. However, I do sleep better at night knowing that the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council won't allow Bugs Bunny to die unless viewers are warned in advance.

Oscar Thoughts

Today is traditionally the day when everyone complains how boring the telecast was, how awful the fashions were and how out of touch the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is.

I've stopped watching the Oscar telecast, finding it much more efficient to read the list of awards the next day in 5 minutes or less.

My take on the Oscars has always been that it's just a fancy marketing tool. A film that wins or loses is the same as film it was before the win or loss. Perception may change, but not the actual film. And as perceptions keep changing over time anyway, an win or a loss is just a blip in the how the world judges a film or the people who made it.

While La Luna lost for best animated short, it will have the last laugh. Being paired with Brave this coming summer, it will be seen by more people than the winning film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

Rango's win will probably allow ILM to make another feature, but the film's influence will be slight for the immediate future. This year's releases are essentially done, so it will be next year at the earliest that any Rango qualities deemed attractive will be filtered through other studios' animated features. Personally, I found the film's tone wildly inconsistent and its references to other films distracting.

I called the probable Rango win last November (though Tintin was the wild card and it didn't even get a nomination). It wasn't difficult as the field was so weak last year. Admittedly, I got the nominations very wrong. However, the nominations were better than I expected. I'd much rather see drawn features like A Cat in Paris and Chico and Rita get nominations than The Winnie the Pooh Film.

Let's hope that this year will be a better year.

Jolly Frolics

The DVD collection of UPA Jolly Frolics is now available for pre-order through both the TCM website as well as Movies Unlimited. The pre-release price is $34.99 U.S. For those of you ordering in Canada, Movies Unlimited offers the better deal in that they're charging $8 for postage, where TCM wants $20.

The importance of these cartoons has probably been dulled by time, but when they were released, they shook the foundations of American animation and were widely influential around the world. Prior to UPA, the bulk of American animation was built on the Disney design model, where characters were drawn to be dimensional. While American animation had progressed beyond the circle and hosepipe design approach, it was still based on rounded forms that could be turned in space and that had definite volume. There was also a discontinuity between characters who were painted in flat colours and backgrounds that were rendered to give the impression of light hitting rounded forms. Each American studio had a house style that was a variation on the above.

UPA embraced a flatter graphical approach in their backgrounds, which made the overall design of their films more consistent. In addition, they varied their design approach in each cartoon. While the artists there shared a design sensibility, they worked to avoid developing a house style.

Their films also differed in content. By the time UPA arrived on the theatrical cartoon scene in the late 1940s, American animation had hardened into formula. Slapstick conflict was the norm, whether it was Donald Duck vs. Chip and Dale, Bugs vs. Elmer, Tom vs. Jerry, Popeye vs. Bluto, Woody Woodpecker vs. Buzz Buzzard, or Mighty Mouse vs. Oil Can Harry. UPA returned to stories similar to Disney's Silly Symphonies of the 1930s, albeit with their own sense of design.

The cartoons in this set include Gerald McBoing Boing (written by Dr. Seuss), The Unicorn in the Garden (based on the story by James Thurber), The Tell Tale Heart (based on the story by Edgar Allen Poe) and Madeline (based on the book by Ludwig Bemelmans). In the case of the Thurber and Bemelmans shorts, the films are designed based on the art of the authors.

In addition, there are original cartoons directed by John Hubley (Rooty Toot Toot), Bobe Cannon (Christopher Crumpet) and Art Babbitt (The Family Circus). Hubley, of course, went on to create many independent films such as Moonbird after leaving UPA. Cannon is, in my opinion, an animator and director who deserves much more attention than he's been given. While he animated for Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, his films are very different in tone and subject matter than his animation.

While there are still studios that are underrepresented on DVD such as Terrytoons and Mintz/Columbia, this is one of the most important DVD releases of the last several years. Based on the influence these films had on everything that came after them and the high quality of many of these cartoons, it's about time that they are available. They fill a large hole in American animation history.

Christopher Crumpet

Rooty Toot Toot

The Unicorn in the Garden

2012 Annie Awards Streaming

This year the Annie Awards are being streamed live, starting at 7 p.m. Pacific (10 p.m. Eastern) time on various websites, including Cartoon Brew, A. Film L.A, Canadian Animation Resources, Animazing and the Animation Guild.

You can download a pdf of the program book, 68 pages long, here.