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Reflections on the art and business of animation.
About Me
- Mark Mayerson
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- I've worked as an animator, writer, producer and director in TV animation for 29 years. I created the cgi series Monster By Mistake. I hold a Masters degree from York University in Cinema and Media Studies.
Links
- A. Film L.A.
- Academy of Art Animation Notes
- Al Eugster
- Alan Cook
- Animation Guild blog
- Animation Podcast
- Animation Scoop
- Apatoons
- ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive
- ASIFA-Hollywood blog
- Bob Jaques
- Canadian Animation Resources
- Cartoon Brew
- Cartoon Research
- Chris Walsh
- Cinematech (Scott Kirsner)
- David Nethery
- Dean Yeagle
- Disney History (Didier Ghez)
- Floyd Norman (Mr. Fun)
- fps magazine
- Hans Bacher
- Harvey Deneroff
- HEAL EMRU
- James Caswell
- James Wood
- Jenny Lerew
- John Canemaker
- John Celestri
- John K
- John Lei
- Keith Lango
- Kevin Koch
- Kevin Langley
- Larry T
- Mark Achtenberg
- Mark Kausler
- Mark Kennedy
- Michael Barrier
- Michael Sporn
- Nancy Beiman
- Oswald Iten
- Paul Spector
- Peter Emslie
- Scott Caple
- Seward Street
- Sheridan Animation Alumni
- Sheridan Animation Students
- Thad Komorowski
- Tom Sito
- Ward Jenkins
- Warren Leonhardt
- Will Finn
Mosaics
- 101 Dalmatians
- All the Cats Join In
- Donald's Lucky Day
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse
- Dumbo
- Lonesome Ghosts
- Mickey's Birthday Party
- Mickey's Delayed Date
- Mother Goose Goes Hollywood
- Mr. Duck Steps Out
- Pinocchio
- Plutopia
- Symphony Hour
- The Autograph Hound
- The Bandmaster
- The Brave Little Tailor
- The Little Whirlwind
- The Nifty Nineties
- The Night Before Christmas
- The Pied Piper of Basin Street
- The Reluctant Dragon
- Thru the Mirror
- Wacky Bye Baby
Posts
8 comments:
I'm pretty sure the whole movie will be like this.
I'm not against realism, and certainly not against a level of naturalism in animation.
But reality & realism are always right in front of us.
Animation shouldn’t have to constantly try to encompass every aspect of it.
There are places where we can go that regular film can't.
What’d be the point of animating a cat walking across the room if it were lit, rendered, had CG fur and was made to look pretty much like any cat you could see with your own two eyes?
I’d much rather animate (and see) a simple three tone shape that was a design abstraction of a cat, and push THAT to exude the observed nuances and feel of a feline personality up on the screen.
Currently we're relying soo heavily on the dimensional puppet and dimensional space given to us inside the 3D-CG tool/application that we are neglecting the pure tailored approach of traditional image creation. As asinine as that might sound, I believe it to be true.
New techiques don't simply replace old knowlege, they build upon and sit beside it. You can't grow higher if you're constantly neglecting your base.
Again, Form or Representation, either approach is a valid choice and there are many ways/degrees in which to do both, but the thing I keep coming back to is...
Yes, reality is ‘a / the’ source, but it shouldn’t inevitably be the product.
To be fair, a recent poster on the Brew going by 'The Obvious' gave some apparently unexplained perspective on the history of the project which is worth a read.
Despite this, it still seems a fairly ambiguous visual direction for the characters, and only ads to the dangerously narrow industry precedent that Lucas, Spielberg and others have laid down in regards to the use of these new tools.
As I said in my own post on the Brew: These wondrous new film making technologies seem to have currently killed off the magic & art of film making.
Lets hope film makers acquire some RESTRAINT and TASTE in the implication of these and other technologies in the years to come. Currently all the dials are set to ELEVEN and are staying there.
PS:
I KNOW it's a Mo-Cap film, but I'm lumping it under 'animation' due to the iconic graphic history of the characters as well as the fact that ANIMATORS, of one form or another, ARE part of a production like this.
I'll second everything Matt Bell wrote.
Spielberg and Jackson are live action filmmakers. They're out to make a live action TIN TIN. It's a special effect film not an animated film.
maybe the story will be good. Maybe it won't take up one of the animated nominations come Oscar time.
Word on the street is that they ARE hiding something. Apparently they're having a lot of trouble getting the facial controls to look right. Everyone thinks they'll nail it down eventually.
But yes, this should have been a stylish live-action film instead, I think.
But I won't see it anyway, because I was always more of an Asterix kid.
Ever the eternal optimist, I'm going to wait and see. My guess is that the end result will be spectacular.
I mean, it's Spielberg.
Steven Speilberg doesn't exactly have a very good reputation when it comes to animation. Why would things change now?
And yes, Weta, the BEST at the proper use of MoCap is having a very, VERY difficult time pulling some of the work off. They should have just spent the money properly and animated it key frame from scratch, instead of spending all the scratch on mo-cap and more trying to fix it.
Matt Bell and Mr. Michael Sporn are spot-on. I think one ought to think of this as a live-action film, though one that has been captured and processed into an image through a different method than light on chemical emulsion.
I'm with Warren that a stylized live-action film would have been a better route. For an idea of what such a film based on Tintin could have looked like, a friend showed me the trailer to Luc Besson's recent "The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0389lPZdGU
This film, like Tintin, was also based on a Belgian comic. In fact, in the second shot of the trailer you can see the Arumbayan fetish from the Tintin adventure, "The Broken Ear."
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