Mayerson on Animation

More Reasons Why Work-for-Hire Stinks

2012-01-28T19:20:00.004-05:00

Another copyright case from the comics world, but one that has implications for people working in animation.

Writer Gary Friedrich created Marvel's version of Ghost Rider. He sued Marvel claiming that it was created and offered to them and was not done as work for hire. He lost the suit.

Previously, Friedrich commissioned artwork of the character which he sold at various comics conventions. Here's where it gets ugly:

"As per the courts instructions Friedrich has to account for any and all money that he has received, “...relating to the gross and net amount derived from Plaintiffs' sale of goods bearing the Ghost Rider image, likeness, or Marvel trademark.” This means that Friedrich has to account for every cent each and every time he sold a print at a convention or any other item to anyone, that has the Ghost Rider image or name on it, and he has to account to all of the defendants in the case, and there’s quite a few of those, including, but not limited to, Marvel Defendants, Movie Defendants, Hasbro, Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. If the defendants don’t like, or don't agree with, the numbers that Friedrich supplies then they can, and probably will, ask for a deposition whereby they can question him, under oath. It was no secret that Friedrich commissioned artists such as Herb Trimpe, Arthur Suydam and others to draw Ghost Rider images which were then sold as prints over the years. If you bought one thinking you were helping Gary, well, that cash will most likely end up in Marvels pockets. This amount will be factored into any damages that the defendants can claim from Friedrich, all of which will be bundled up neatly into a final judgement so the case can then proceed to the appeal stage."

So, if you work in animation and sit at conventions selling your drawings of characters that you've worked on (or not) but don't own, you are not only violating copyright, you may have to account for each and every sale if the copyright owner ever comes after you.

Cartoonist Dave Sim once said that no corporation will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them. He's certainly right in Friedrich's case. Friedrich is appealing the copyright decision, but is already broke. He owes his lawyers $100,000.

"If his appeal fails Friedrich will be a financially ruined man. He stands to lose everything he owns, and ever will own. Naturally the court doesn’t care for this, but Marvel might. With the imminent release of the second Ghost Rider movie, a franchise that draws heavily from the mythos that Friedrich helped create and has never been compensated for from Marvel (outside of payments for the comic books), Marvel is set to see another financial windfall of multiple millions of dollars. It’d be nice to think that, perhaps, someone at Marvel can see the logic that a settlement would have in this case, if only in the value of good publicity alone. As it is Marvel have done to Friedrich what DC did to Siegel, Shuster, Bill Finger and many others – ground him into the dirt, taken his creation, made more money in a week than the original creator will see in a lifetime and then keep on keeping on. Perhaps it’s time that a campaign designed to embarrass Marvel be undertaken – the sheer threat of such a campaign worked for Dave Cockrum. While Cockrum didn’t get millions, nor did Gene Colan when he approached and asked Marvel, they did get sizable amounts which, in Cockrum’s case alone, allowed him to live his remaining years out in relative comfort and ease. As it stands the people who’ll be making the most money from the Ghost Rider sequel will be people who had nothing to do with the character. As it stands, according to Box Office Mojo, the first Ghost Rider movie has grossed over $115,800,000 worldwide. The sequel should do similar amounts, meaning Marvel will clear a nice sum, again, while denying the creator a cent."

The above information is from 20th Century Danny Boy. Torsten Adair reflects on the situation as well.

And in case you've forgotten, Marvel is owned by Disney. So if you work (or have worked) for Disney, Pixar or Marvel, pay attention.

More on Those Dirty Tricks

2012-01-21T10:54:00.005-05:00

This blog seems to be tipping more and more into the business, as opposed to the art, of animation, but it's hard to avoid when various media industries are conspiring against artists and the public.

I reported earlier (here and here) that Pixar was implicated in an illegal "no poaching" agreement with other high tech firms, meaning that if a Pixar employee applied for a job at Lucasfilm or Apple, those companies would refuse to hire the Pixar employee. Pixar returned the favour by refusing to hire applicants from Lucasfilm or Apple. That violates anti-trust laws. The damage is that it prevents employees from changing jobs or earning higher pay elsewhere. The case is about to go to trial and the Department of Justice has released some evidence that you can read below. For instance, on page 3 you can read that Lori McAdam of Pixar wrote in an internal email:

“I just got off the phone with Danielle Lambert [of Apple], and we agreed that effective now, we’ll follow a Gentleman’s agreement with Apple that is similar to our Lucasfilm agreement.”

TechCrunch - High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation Conference Statement 1/19/2012 - Analysis here: http:/...

(Link via TechCrunch)

The Trials of Superman

2012-01-20T09:52:00.004-05:00

The character of Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, has a long and complicated legal history. Jerry Siegel's heirs have terminated their half of DC Comics' copyright of the character and are entitled to share in any revenues made since the copyright termination.

Warner Bros, the owner of DC Comics, has not exactly cooperated. The Siegel heirs have been forced to sue, claiming that the revenue they are owed is being underestimated. That was the subject of the above trial. In the words of Daniel Best, who compiled those transcripts,

"The argument was that DC Comics had undervalued Superman and licensed the rights to exploit the character in movies and television by dealing with their parent company, Warner Brothers. DC argued that it had always done the right thing, that the deals negotiated and that the payments received, going back to the Salkind era (the 1970/1980s Superman movies with Christopher Reeve) and extending through to the current deals, including the television series Lois and Clark and the highly successful Smallville, along with the most recent movies, were more than fair and indeed over market value. The argument to resolve this was taken to a ten day bench trial, at which time DC Comics would have to prove that it had not undersold Superman, and the Siegel’s would have to prove otherwise. The trial gave a great insight into the machinations of comic books and motion pictures along with the true value of Superman, as a multi-media concept"

You can download the entire trial transcript for free courtesy of Daniel Best here. It's over a thousand pages and this is not everyone's idea of fun reading. However, I keep banging the drum on creators' rights on this blog, and this transcript is an example of what happens in court if there is a dispute between a creator (or his heirs) and the company he has done business with. Even if you only read a dozen pages, you'll learn more about how a real trial works than any TV show can tell you.

Against SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T07:01:00.016-05:00

UPDATED BELOW.

If I knew how to block out this site on Jan. 18 in protest against SOPA and PIPA, two bills currently in the U.S. Congress that claim to be against internet piracy, I would do it. I am not in favour of piracy, though I have major issues with what media conglomerates have done to distort copyright laws world wide.

The problem I have with these bills is that they are too vague and too broad. While they may become a U.S. law, it will affect internet users and site owners beyond U.S. borders. As a commenter on Boing Boing (dark for the day) said, in order to stop piracy, we're going to outlaw the sea.

There is a lot of rhetoric on both sides of the issue, but I recommend this article in The Globe and Mail for a clear-eyed look at what the internet community is upset about. There is also this comment to the article, which talks about the lack of due process:

"A website (of a corporation, individual, what-have-you) is considered guilty as soon as they are accused. Only once the site is shut down or made inaccessible can they try to defend themselves.

"Given that the whole concept of "fair use" is still, after 300 years, being refined, someone could use something fairly and still be shut down (see lack of due process above)."

If you are in the U.S, I urge you to contact your Congressman and Senators and register your opposition. You can do this easily by going to AmericanCensorship.org or the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

UPDATE: Clay Shirky is one of the smartest people in the room when it comes to talking about media. I've read his books and been lucky to hear him speak in Toronto. Watch the video below to get a "big picture" explanation of what SOPA and PIPA are actually about.

Review: The World History of Animation

2012-01-15T15:45:00.009-05:00

Last summer, I helped a friend develop a course outline for an animation history course. In looking for a textbook, I found that there wasn't a single volume that seemed appropriate. When The World History of Animation by Stephen Cavalier was later published, I wondered if this book might be the solution. Unfortunately, it isn't.

The book is a wide ranging history of animation. It starts with a short historical summary for different parts of the world before launching into a year by year history where particular films are singled out. The entries are wildly uneven, both in terms of the writing and the accompanying illustrations. One would think that the amount of space devoted to a film would be proportional to the film's importance, but there doesn't seem to be any relationship. Not all the films are represented by stills and here, too, the number or size of the stills bears no relation to the importance of the film.

I don't think I can articulate the author's point of view beyond the fact that he has personal favorites. While art, content and technology are all mentioned, none seems to be uppermost in the author's mind. Directors are the only contributors mentioned consistently. Designers and animators who aren't directors are mostly ignored.

Finally, there are many factual errors. I would not pretend to be an expert on European or Asian animation, but I am reasonably conversant in American animation history. The author is British, which might account for his errors regarding America, but there is no way for me to know if the same number of errors exist in all parts of the book.

I've listed the errors I found during my reading below, if only to document my reservations. There is no doubt that the book is an ambitious undertaking, but it seems to have defeated the author and his research team. Perhaps it isn't possible to get a single volume history of world animation that is accurate and with a defined point of view, but this book does nothing to challenge that assumption.

The errors:

A still identified as being from Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) on page 63 is obviously from one of the later Gertie films, as it has a grey scale and looks to have been done on cels. The 1914 film was just line and done entirely on a single level of paper.

On page 74, Cavalier states that Joe Oriolo was working on Felix the Cat as early as 1922. As he was born in 1913, that would make him a precocious nine year old. In fact, Oriolo didn't meet Messmer until the two were working at Famous Studios in the early '40s.

On page 97, Cavalier says that Steamboat Willie was half finished before Disney made the decision to make it a sound cartoon. This is wrong. The synchronization that is Steamboat Willie's great advance was due to planning the musical beats in advance of animation.

On page 99, sloppy writing implies that Ub Iwerks' multiplane camera was in use as early as the first Flip the Frog cartoon when it was introduced in the ComicColor series. He also says that Iwerks returned to the Disney studio in 1938, when it was 1940.

On page 115, Cavalier implies that the Fleischer 3D setbacks were the Fleischer version of the rotoscope. First of all, there is no relationship. The setbacks were purely for background elements, not character animation. Secondly, as the Fleischers invented the rotoscope, they had no need for their own version.

On page 122, Leon Schlesinger is invited to open an animation studio on the Warner Bros. lot in 1927, when his studio didn't open until 1930. Then the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are described as being produced at the Harman-Ising studio, which is also wrong. On the same page, Chuck Jones, not Tex Avery, is credited as the director of A Wild Hare.

On page 123, Cavalier states that producer Edward Selzer imposed a 5 week production schedule on each cartoon. While a cartoon may have been forced to move through each department in 5 weeks, there is no way that an entire cartoon was created in 5 weeks.

On page 142, Tex Avery is credited as creating Porky Pig, but Avery had nothing to do with Porky's debut cartoon I Haven't Got a Hat, which was released before Avery's first cartoon at Warner Bros.

On page 198, regarding The Jungle Book, Cavalier states, "for the first time the characters' movements and acting were based on the personalities and filmed performances of the voice actors, who were encouraged to improvise as they recorded." It was hardly the first time, as it was done at least as early as the tea party sequence in Alice in Wonderland (1951).

On page 219, Cavalier states, "Crumb also claimed that Bakshi had got the agreement [to make an animated Fritz the Cat] with his ex-girlfriend more than with him, and that she had no ownership rights, which Bakshi denied." The woman in question is Dana Crumb, who was married to Crumb at the time the contract was signed.

On page 225, Jerry Beck is identified as Jeff Beck.

On page 246, Don Bluth's Banjo the Woodpile Cat is identified as a feature when it is 29 minutes long.

On page 248, MAGI Synthevision is identified as MAG.

On page 286, Cavalier claims that the cgi ballroom in Beauty and the Beast was supplied by Pixar. It was created internally at Disney. I confirmed this with Dan Philips, who was CGI Manager on the film.

On page 308, there is a commentary on Super Mario 64 that sounds more like the work of a public relations flack than a historian. "Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo's Super Mario 64 is not only one of the greatest computer games of all time, but also one of the greatest works of art/entertainment of the twentieth century. From the moment the player takes control of Mario and finds that through some simple controls he can run, jump, swim, slide, or even fly in any direction of the beautifully-realized world, he or she is held in a similar state of wonder and exhilaration that the first audiences must have felt when watching Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur or Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

On page 331, in discussing Gendy Tartakovsky's credits, there is no mention of Dexter's Laboratory, a show that he created.

On page 386, Shane Acker's feature 9 is identified as stop-motion, when it is cgi.

John Hubley Alert

2012-01-12T08:14:00.006-05:00

Turner Classic Movies will run We Learn About the Telephone (1965) early Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m. Eastern time. This film contains animation designed and directed by John Hubley and features voice work by Mel Blanc.

Michael Sporn has written about this film and if you don't want to get up early Saturday, you can see it at the Prelinger Archives.

Freelancing

2012-01-07T19:07:00.006-05:00

I'm writing this post for the benefit of Sheridan animation students and grads, but it may prove useful to others.

If you are not on salary or working under a contract and somebody asks you to produce some art or animation, here are the things you need to know in writing before you start work.

How much will you be paid and what is the payment schedule?
Are there royalties or other compensation you are entitled to in the future?
What are the specifics of the work you are providing?
What format are you delivering the work in?
When is the work due?

Then there is the question of rights. What exactly are you selling in exchange for the money?

Are you selling the work outright?
Are you selling the work only for a specific use?
Are you selling the work for a limited amount of time?
Is the sale for exclusive or non-exclusive rights to use the work?
Will the artist get screen credit or be allowed to sign the work?

If the client provides this information in a written document, you have the right to ask for changes to anything that is specified. The client has the right to say no, but so do you. An agreement implies that both parties (the client and the artist) see eye to eye on conditions under which the work will be produced.

You also have the right to consult a lawyer, agent or other professional on the agreement before signing it.

There is a tendency for artists to be so thrilled that somebody wants their work that they skip all of the above or worse, they agree to work on spec. Spec work, (work done on speculation), means that the artist produces work for a client with no promise of payment. There are also cases where a client promises no money but offers the benefit of experience or exposure.

There is a word that describes working for free: slavery. Slavery can only occur through force, which we have not yet sunk to in North America, or complicity, where the artist agrees to be a slave.

There are occasions where artists may choose to work for free. Work gets donated to a charity or done to help a friend or family member. But if a profit making company is asking for artwork, they should pay for it and all of the above conditions should be met.

Please note that the above is different from pitching. In that case, you are creating the artwork for yourself and hope to interest a buyer in it. If no payment is forthcoming, you are free to take that artwork elsewhere to try to market it. Doing free work for yourself is different than doing free work at the request of a profit-making company.

I'm going to talk about two instances that I've been consulted on in the recent past. I have to be vague so as not to break any confidences.

In the first case, a distributor was interested in a student film made by a Sheridan graduate. The distributor wanted non-exclusive theatrical rights and exclusive rights for DVD, TV, internet and merchandising. In exchange for these rights, the distributor was willing to pay $50. I told the grad that for the low fee, none of the rights should be exclusive. If the grad had the opportunity to sell the film again in any market, he should be able to do it. The student asked for changes to the contract and the rights were made non-exclusive.

In the second case, a Sheridan grad was commissioned by a company to produce a film for a fee. When the film was delivered, the grad was told that the person who commissioned the film didn't have authorization to do it. The company was sorry and felt bad about it, but could only offer the grad half the agreed upon fee as a gesture of good will. The grad asked me for advice. I warned the grad that if she made a fuss, there was a chance that the company would refuse all payment. The grad wanted to proceed anyway, so I counseled the grad to tell them that she had an email from a company employee and she looked upon that as a contract. If there was a problem, it was between the company and the employee, not the company and her. If they didn't pay her in full, she would publicize the fact that the company had ripped her off and would warn other artists not to do work for the company. Furthermore, if the company didn't pay the full fee and used the work, she would sue the company for copyright infringement.

The company responded that they regretted her aggressive tone. This is known as blaming the victim. However, they did agree to pay the full fee.

There is no shortage of companies looking to take advantage of young artists. It is important to understand the proper way to do business, demanding a signed, written agreement that covers the payment, the rights, the deadline and the deliverables before the artwork is created. Your art and your time are what you are selling as a professional. If you work for free or don't proceed in a professional manner, you are merely a hobbyist and you are hurting people who are professionals.

New Year's Greetings

2011-12-30T17:37:00.001-05:00

Kaj Pindal is the lucky owner of this New Year's greeting from animation legend Norman McLaren. There's much more than the above photo shows, and you can see it all by clicking here.

The Artist, Perception and Animation

2011-12-26T10:28:00.016-05:00

Can this film tell us something about animation?

I recently saw The Artist, the new silent film that has been picking up awards at festivals and is in the running for the major awards this season. It's clear that the film's creators have a genuine fondness for silent Hollywood cinema and I found it to be a very enjoyable experience. I recommend it.

The film is silent, black and white and with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, taking on all the trappings of films of the silent era. It occurred to me, though, that at this point in time, it's all an affectation.

Silent black and white films existed due to technological obstacles. Early sound and colour systems were unreliable, producing results that clearly failed to meet the audience's standard. Without sound and colour, films compensated with the use of orchestral scores in the larger cities, increasingly sophisticated photography and a style of directing, acting and editing that communicated characters' thoughts clearly to international audiences. Silent film makers like Griffith, Murnau, Lubitsch Vidor, Ford, Borzage, Chaplin, Keaton, etc. made films that can still move audiences (when given the chance) even though audiences are no longer accustomed to the limitations of silent films. The Artist certainly proves that silent film can still be a potent experience.

But it is now an artificial experience. A silent film of the 1920s was as advanced as the technology would allow. The Artist is a conscious decision to go backwards in both time and technology. In its way, it depends as much on novelty as Avatar did with its use of 3D. However, I would be surprised if The Artist was the first of a new wave of silent features.

Audiences embraced sound and colour because it brought film closer to their own perception of the world. Sound became omnipresent in film by 1930. Colour, due to cost, took considerably longer. Black and white films were still being made into the 1960s, some even in Cinemascope.

(What I think sounded the death knell for black and white film was color TV. So long as people were watching black and white at home, they would accept it in films. Once color TV was widespread, a black and white film somehow seemed cheap. And truthfully, the majority of black and white films in the 1960s lacked color due to budget restrictions.)

The Artist got me thinking about the transition from drawn to computer animated features. Perhaps our view was influenced by the weak drawn features that were competing against better computer animated films. Certainly, that's the line that many in the industry and fans took, blaming the films rather than the medium.

While the quality of the films was an undeniable issue, perhaps it hid something larger. Perhaps our own biases in favour of drawing prevented us from seeing things from the audience's point of view. Throughout the 1930s, there was a strong movement to bring animation closer to the audience's perception of the real world. Animation embraced sound and colour early. There were also experiments of various kinds to give animation a greater illusion of depth. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney was attempting to give a greater impression of depth both with cel painting techniques and the multiplane camera. It was cost that forced him to back away from these techniques and so that in the '60s you have films like 101 Dalmatians, where the linear quality of the animation drawings is extended to the backgrounds and there is no attempt at spatial depth through the use of the camera.

When computer animation came along, it increased the image's verisimilitude to how the audience perceived the world. Light striking the characters provided a more accurate feeling of solidity and shadow. The computer allowed for a greater use of texture and, unlike drawn animation, allowed that texture to move with the characters. The virtual space had depth and perspective similar to the world the audience lived in and the camera had the freedom to move through it. Computer animation succeeded the same way Disney did in Snow White in making the image closer to the audience's experience.

At this point in time, drawn animated features may be seen as a throwback, much as The Artist is, as they deprive the audience of some of their perceptual experience of the world. Of course, just as silent films had qualities that are emotionally powerful, so, too, do drawn features. Much was lost with the death of silent and of black and white films, but those things were developed to compensate for shortcomings. Similarly, much is being lost with the death of drawn animated features, but again, many of these things were developed as a means of compensation.

Furthermore, live action directors who started in silent film (Ford and Hitchcock as an example) continued to use silent film techniques in their sound films. Both directors have long passages driven purely by the visual. Similarly, animation directors such as John Lasseter and Brad Bird have brought drawn animation techniques into computer animation, such as animated acting techniques and the ability to design the on-screen world from scratch.

Every artist knows that limitations are often a blessing, forcing solutions that are more creative than would otherwise be arrived at. But as movies are a mass medium, depending on a world-wide audience in order generate a profit, the artistic love of drawing and understanding of limitations is up against the audience's preference for a world on screen that matches its real world perceptions. It isn't a question of one group being right and the other being wrong. It is simply a question of competing preferences, and as the audience is footing the bill, it wins.

No Editorial Comment Intended

2011-12-22T15:59:00.003-05:00

I keep an eye on politics, even though I've kept this blog free of it. However, today I saw this image of Ron Paul at Salon.com.

Film history buff that I am, I immediately thought of this image from the 1910 version of Frankenstein produced by the Edison company.

As I said, no editorial comment on Ron Paul intended, but the pose similarity is too strong not to note.

Why No Animated Feature Award?

2011-12-19T18:50:00.003-05:00

Howard Fine of the New York Film Critics Circle writes about why the group declined to give an award this year for the best animated feature.

"To me, the key word in that award title is "feature." It's not an award strictly for animation -- it's for the whole movie, which happens to be animated. And I'm hard-pressed to think of an animated film this year that could make that claim, among the 18 recently announced as the animated titles that qualified for this year's Oscar.

"Because it's not about the animation -- it's about what's being animated. If the script is dumb or flat or just plain not funny (and, like it or not, the vast majority of animated films are comedies aimed at children), I don't care how spectacular it is visually -- it's not cutting it."

The Oscar Race

2011-12-12T12:34:00.006-05:00

I'm interested in this year's Oscar race for Best Animated Feature because my perception, right or wrong, is that it was a weak year.

The various film critic organizations have begun to weigh in on their bests of the year, and Rango seems to be off to an early lead. The Boston, L.A. and S.F. critics have picked it as the best animated feature. The N.Y. film critics chose Tintin, though Richard Corliss of Time also picked Rango for his 10 best list.

It's interesting that with critics from three major cities accounted for, there isn't a Pixar or DreamWorks film mentioned.

Brad Bird and Ignorance

2011-12-10T07:43:00.005-05:00

No, I'm not implying that Bird is ignorant. But a great many of the reporters who interview him about Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, which Bird directed, definitely are. Here's an article in the N.Y. Times about Bird and it contains this paragraph:

"Plenty of live-action directors have successfully taken on animated movies, including Gore Verbinski (“Rango”) and Tim Burton (“Corpse Bride”). But the flow almost never goes in reverse — if you can name a successful example you have movie historians beat — making Mr. Bird’s chance at bat a fascinating one for Hollywood to watch. A similar attempt will come in March, when Andrew Stanton, the director of Pixar’s “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E,” unveils his live-action space saga, “John Carter.”"

So the writer has no knowledge of film or animation history. He doesn't know that Tim Burton's first job was as a Disney artist. He has no knowledge of Walt Disney(!), let alone Frank Tashlin, Gregory La Cava or George Pal. And he's unaware of Rob Minkoff or Frederick Du Chau.

I don't have exact numbers, but I think that more animation film makers have moved to live action than the reverse.

It's going to be painful reading this swill in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: A writer in the Philippines knows more about animation directors crossing over into live action than the N.Y. Times.

NFB Hothouse 8 Now Open for Submissions

2011-12-07T15:20:00.003-05:00

The National Film Board of Canada holds an annual hothouse, where emerging Canadian animators are offered a 12 week internship at their facility in Montreal. The next hothouse will take place from March 5 to May 25, 2012 and submissions on the theme of sheep dreams must be in by January 24.

The complete details are here. By following links on the left, you can see the films that have been created during previous hothouse sessions.

Hank Ketcham Animation

2011-12-05T17:45:00.006-05:00

This is something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

The 1976 paperback collection, Dennis the Menace: Short Swinger, contains a flipbook that appears to be done by Hank Ketcham. The registration, however, is horrible. I bought a cheap copy of the book on Ebay and pulled it apart, registered it to the best of my ability and then shot it. The character is less than an inch and a half high and the pulp paper was surprisingly hard to see through on my lightbox, so the registration still leaves something to be desired.

Here it is exactly as it is in the book, on 2's.

Here it is with my retiming to make it read better:

Ketcham got his start in the animation business, working for Walter Lantz and then Disney before he enlisted in the navy during World War II. After the war, he concentrated on magazine cartooning before selling Dennis the Menace to newspapers.

After the war, Ketcham really blossomed as a designer. His style, using a pen, was expressive and elegant. With Dennis, he handled the daily panel while handing off the Sunday strip and the comic books to assistants such as Owen Fitzgerald, Al Wiseman and Lee Holley, terrific cartoonists all. Ketcham's influence is still felt in Jaime Hernandez's work.

The animation above shows that Ketcham remembered the basics, but there are weak spots. The stitching on the ball doesn't rotate when it rolls farther from Dennis. I focused on registering Dennis and discovered that the position of the ball isn't controlled well. The timing works for a flipbook, but it needed more room than the 63 images in the book for the timing to work on screen.

I wonder what motivated Ketcham to try animation again? Was it an attempt to help sell a Dennis animated series? Was he influenced by Walt Kelly, who animated a short for Pogo? Or was it just a lark? In any case, I hope that the video versions of the flipbook show off the animation better than the print version.

Studio Ghibli Retrospective

2011-11-29T16:13:00.008-05:00

UPDATE: Here's a link to the schedule at the IFC Center.

A major Studio Ghibli retrospective will soon be starting at IFC in New York City and will travel to Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and other cities in 2012. The films will be projected in 35mm. Here's a list of what will show and the dates for IFC:

STUDIO GHIBLI FILMS – IFC CENTER – DEC 16 TO JAN 12

Title	Director (Producer)	Versions	Year	RT

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind	Hayao Miyazaki (Isao Takahata)	Subtitled and dubbed (Uma Thurman, Shia LeBouf, Edward James Olmos, Mark Hamill)	1984	116 min

Castle in the Sky	Hayao Miyazaki (Isao Takahata)	Subtitled only	1986	126 min

My Neighbor Totoro	Hayao Miyazaki (Toru Hara)	Subtitled and dubbed (Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daly, Frank Welker)	1988	86 min

Kiki’s Delivery Service	Hayao Miyazaki (Hayao Miyazaki)	Subtitled and dubbed (Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartman, Janeane Garofalo, Debbie Reynolds)	1989	102 min

Only Yesterday	Isao Takahata (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled only	1991	118 min

The Ocean Waves	Tomomi Mochizuki (Nozomu Takahashi)	Subtitled only, digital only	1993	72 min

Porco Rosso	Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled and dubbed (Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Brad Garrett, David Ogden Stiers)	1992	94 min

Pom Poko	Isao Takahata (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled and dubbed (J.K. Simmons, Brian Posehn, Tress MacNeille, John DiMaggio)	1994	119 min

Whisper of the Heart	Yoshifumi Kondo (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled and dubbed (Ashley Tisdale, Cary Elwes, Harold Gould, Brittany Snow)	1995	111 min

Princess Mononoke	Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled and dubbed (Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Gillian Anderson, Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton, Jada Pinkett Smith, John DiMaggio)	1997	134 min

My Neighbors the Yamadas	Isao Takahata (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled and dubbed (James Belushi, Molly Shannon, Tress MacNeille)	1999	111 min

Spirited Away	Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled and dubbed (Daveigh Chase, Jason Marsden, Michael Chiklis, Susan Egan)	2001	125 min

The Cat Returns	Hiroyuki Morita (Toshio Suzuki)	Subtitled and dubbed (Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes, Peter Boyle, Elliott Gould, Tim Curry, Andy Richter, Kristen Bell, Avril Lavigne)	2002	75 min

Howl’s Moving Castle	Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)	Dubbed (Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, Billy Crystal)	2004	119 min

Ponyo	Hiroyuki Morita (Toshio Suzuki)	Dubbed (Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey)	2008	101 min

For more details, go here.

Mini History Lesson

2011-11-22T20:09:00.004-05:00

Profiles in History is having an auction entitled Icons of Animation on December 17. While the majority of items are out of my price range (maybe all of them actually), you can download a catalog of the auction for free.

Even if you're not in the market to buy, the catalog is a mini history lesson by itself. It contains art from Disney, MGM, Warner Bros, Fleischer and Hanna Barbera. There is work by Bill Tytla, Fred Moore, Carl Barks, Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross, Irv Wyner, Mary Blair, Preston Blair, Gustav Tenggren, Charles Schulz, etc. There are worse ways to spend time than by paging through the download and admiring so much beautiful stuff.

(link via Disney History)

The Genius That Was Pocoyo

2011-11-15T13:13:00.011-05:00

If you've ever worked on a TV series, you know the limitations. The budgets are tight and the schedules are short. There is always the danger of attempting something too ambitious for TV or letting the limitations restrict everyone's creativity. Either way, the end result is mediocrity.

Usually, the first casualty of TV schedules and budgets is the animation itself. Whether it is subcontracted to a low wage studio or not, it still takes a lot of time to get done. Shows often throw the animation overboard, relying instead on the scripts, the audio tracks and the designs to keep the audience entertained.

Occasionally, though, somebody decides otherwise. Pocoyo is a pre-school cgi show made in Spain. The creators, Guillermo García Carsí, Luis Gallego and David Cantolla, made conscious design choices that free them up to move the characters. What are they?

No backgrounds
Little to no dialogue
A limited number of characters

Most TV series will have the characters go into new environments at least occasionally. That requires design and in cgi also requires modelling, texturing and lighting. By eliminating backgrounds all together, there's a significant time and money saving.

Many pre-school shows just use a narrator. It makes it easier to create versions of the show in different languages in that there is only a narration track to replace and it can be done with only one performer, not a cast. The lack of dialogue also forces the animators to communicate visually.

By limiting the number of characters, once the design, modeling and rigging of the characters is done, that's it for the series. No new neighbors, visitors, villains, etc.

As the design, modeling, rigging and texturing jobs are limited in scope, the money normally spent on them can be put into performance. The Pocoyo characters move in distinct ways. Their rigging is excellent, resulting in playful shape changes and funny movements.

In addition to these creative choices, the show has something that's hard to write into a budget or schedule: charm. It's just fun to watch. There are pre-school shows I find deathly boring or puerile. Pocoyo is a show that doesn't need apologies. It works for pre-schoolers, for their parents and certainly for animators.

Two other things are worth mentioning. Where many North American shows now default to 11 minute episodes, Pocoyo is roughly 7 minutes per episode. That gives the show a snappy pace where other shows feel padded to fill their running times. The other thing is that for years, the conventional wisdom was that holds don't work in cgi. Pocoyo proves they do. It's not the cgi that makes holds feel dead, it's the designs and style of movement. Pocoyo's designs are cartoony enough and the movement stylized enough that holds work. That's another money-saver, too.

The first season is the best. Unfortunately, when it came time to do another season, somebody decided to "improve" the series. While Pocoyo is a perfect example of "less is more," somebody decided that less wasn't enough. Characters were added and so were environments. Instead of Pocoyo and friends living in limbo, they now visited cliché environments like the sea bottom and outer space, making it just another pre-school show.

While the original vision lasted, however, Pocoyo showed that there are artistic choices that can overcome TV's budgets and schedules. As TV budgets continue to shrink, animation doesn't have to be sacrificed unless the producers want it to be.

Bil Keane R.I.P

2011-11-09T14:04:00.002-05:00

Bil Keane, cartoonist of the comic strip The Family Circus and the father of Disney animator Glen Keane, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 89. Details here.

A Discussion of the Kirby Copyright Decision

2011-11-07T20:35:00.003-05:00

I'm sure some of you have your eyes glaze over every time I bring up Jack Kirby or copyright. However, I keep mentioning it as intellectual property, more than factories or natural resources, has become one of the most valuable assets in the world today.

The decision against the Kirby estate in its attempt to recover copyrights on many of the Marvel characters is a warning to anyone who creates for a living.

At the Center for Cartoon Studies, a graduate school program in comics located in Vermont, Stephen R. Bissette, cartoonist, publisher and creator rights advocate, discussed the Kirby decision with lawyer Oliver Goodenough, a professor at the Vermont Law School. The audio runs an hour and covers issues like nepotism, work-for-hire, risk, ethics and the history of employer-employee relations in the comic book field. I recommend it highly.

Maybe Not So Weak?

2011-11-07T17:41:00.004-05:00

I haven't seen this film, but Movie Morlocks, the official blog of Turner Classic Movies, has a review and stills from the French animated feature A Cat in Paris. It looks like a film I'd like to see, though I have no idea if it will get a North American release outside of Los Angeles. In any case, I will keep an eye out for it.

A Weak Year for Animation?

2011-11-06T10:01:00.003-05:00

The following 18 films have been submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the category of Best Animated Feature. With 18 submissions, there can be five nominees.

The Adventures of Tintin
Alois Nebel
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
Arthur Christmas
Cars 2
A Cat in Paris
Chico & Rita
Gnomeo & Juliet
Happy Feet Two
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
Kung Fu Panda 2
Mars Needs Moms
Puss in Boots
Rango
Rio
The Smurfs
Winnie the Pooh
Wrinkles

I have to admit to not having seen many of these films and some of them have not yet been released. Many of them are sequels or spin-offs. At least three contain motion capture (Tintin, Happy Feet 2 and Mars Needs Moms). And none have a strong buzz, at least so far as I've heard.

While it is great that this many animated features are being made, both from an employment and audience standpoint, it's disheartening that this year's Oscar winner will likely be something that won't stand the test of time.

My guess for the five nominations are: Cars 2, Tintin, Rango, Rio and Winnie the Pooh. The latter will be there only to maintain some visibility for hand drawn animation. The eventual winner will depend a lot on the critical and box office reception of Tintin. Should that film be a hit, I expect it to win, regardless of the fact that I think it's completely wrong-headed. If it doesn't have a strong showing, I would guess the winner will be either Cars 2 or Rango.

The nominations will be announced on January 24.

Upcoming Toronto Events

2011-10-30T17:36:00.005-04:00

On November 4 at the NFB (150 John Street), the Toronto Student Animation Festival will screen. The doors open at 6:00 and the screening runs from 6:30 to 8:30. Admission is $10. John Bissylas, a local high school teacher, created a festival several years ago to showcase the animation of high school students. This screening, however, will feature work from older students from around the world.

On November 10, there will be an industry event to raise funds and awareness for the Toronto Animated Arts Festival International. It's an animation festival that will take place next June at the Bell Lightbox downtown. Admission to the fundraiser is $15 in advance and $20 at the door and the event takes place at the Vogue Supperclub, 42 Mowat Avenue in Liberty Village.

You Can't Go Home Again

2011-10-30T06:41:00.005-04:00

Børge Ring called the above to my attention. It's a 2005 Tom and Jerry, co-directed by Joe Barbera. In some ways, it does a remarkably good job of duplicating the look and feel of the Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons of the 1940s and '50s. However, in other ways, it doesn't, and surrounded by those things that work, the lapses stand out even more.

Børge pointed out that Bill Hanna's timing just isn't there and that this cartoon inadvertently shows the importance of Hanna's contribution. He's right. For instance, the gag at 3:05 where Tom hurtles into the garbage truck is timed too slowly. Hanna never would have had the extended pause between Tom landing and the jaws closing. Furthermore, the jaws would have closed faster. That wouldn't have been true to life, but it would have been funnier.

Like the opening titles, a collision of Warner Bros. and MGM fonts, some of the character poses look to be from Warner Bros. rather than MGM. Jerry's look to the audience at 2:36 smacks of Chuck Jones. Jerry's pose at 1:36 has the look of a Robert McKimson cartoon. Tom's look to the camera at 3:26, with his eyes merging, is also more reminiscent of Warners.

The music can't compare to the exuberance of Scott Bradley's scores.

There are good things here. The characters stay on model. The animators have captured the way Tom scrambles off screen, including the subtle stretch in his mid-section, and have also captured the way Hanna and Barbera had characters shooting and rebounding into holds. As I said above, because so much of this is right, what's wrong stand out and that is why you can't go home again.

Revivals work in the theatre because the originals only exist in memory. There is no expectation that a revival will duplicate the look and feel of the original because the original is not there for comparison. In film and TV, though, the originals are not only there, they are often front and center, showing right next to attempts at a revival. The comparisons are inescapable.

Creative works are not only the product of people, they're also the products of a time and place. As the world keeps changing, it is impossible to recreate something from the past. While artists often wish to duplicate what they love, they can only approximate it. Paradoxically, the closer they get to it, the more they've succeeded in doing nothing more than an good imitation. And since the originals are everywhere to begin with, is an imitation necessary?

From a corporate standpoint, it's another cartoon to add to the library. From an artistic standpoint, it's a dead end. What could this budget and these creators, including 94 year old Joe Barbera, have come up with if they tried something new?

Chuck Jones' Comic Strip

2011-10-27T06:38:00.003-04:00

Comic Book Resources has an interview with Dean Mullaney and Kurtis Findlay, who have edited Chuck Jones: The Dream that Never Was, a collection of the comic strip Crawford that Jones did in the late 1970s. The book will be available in December.

I remember reading the strip and clipped a few of them before I lost interest. One of the ironies of Jones' career is that he received more attention and opportunity when his work was in decline than he did when he was at his peak. Crawford suffers from the cuteness that infected much of his post-Warner Bros. work and the coarsening of his drawing that also occurred then.

I will definitely look this book over when it is published for the opportunity to see unpublished work and to compare my current impression with my memories of the strip, but I don't believe that Crawford is a hidden treasure that will add anything to Jones' reputation. This is not Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes. If it was, the strip never would have been cancelled and would be better known today.

Another Loomis Reprint

2011-10-22T13:25:00.003-04:00

The second volume of the reprinting Andew Loomis's art instruction books is now available. I've seen copies in stores, though Amazon won't release it until Oct. 25.

Loomis was a commercial illustrator in the days when mass circulation magazines were full of painted illustrations accompanying fiction. He also authored a series of art instruction books that are still much sought after, even 6 decades after first being published. The books were out of print for years and copies commanded over $100 apiece on used book sites. Titan Books (who are also publishing The Simon and Kirby Library; the next volume is of their crime comics and due out momentarily) have undertaken to reprint Loomis. This volume follows Figure Drawing for All It's Worth. While art styles have changed since Loomis's day, the fundamentals don't change. Anyone interested in learning to draw will benefit from Loomis's books.

Those Animated Lectures

2011-10-21T21:29:00.003-04:00

By now, I assume everybody has experienced at least one of the lectures illustrated/animated by cartoon drawings on a whiteboard. They are done by Andrew Park, a British artist who listens to each audio entry 50 times before completing his art.

Here's an article on Park, detailing his approach to making these pieces.

Screen Captures

2011-10-21T08:27:00.004-04:00

From Galloping Gaucho

From Peter Pan

Disneyscreencaps.com features thousands of screen captures from shorts, features, and made for DVD films. It also includes work from Pixar and Dreamworks.

I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason for the particular captures. It doesn't appear that they were selected by an animator. For all I know, the captures were done by an automated process. In any case, if you're looking for a handy visual reference from any of the films they've covered, it may be quicker than hauling out the DVD.

Walt's People Volume 11

2011-10-13T10:59:00.003-04:00

You would think that by volume 11 of Walt's People, a series of books composed of interviews with people who worked with and for Walt Disney, that editor Didier Ghez would be down to interviewing the grandson of the janitor who emptied the wastebasket of Milt Kahl's inbetweener. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Editor Ghez continues to come up with interviews of historical importance filled with fascinating anecdotes and production details.

The contents of volume 11 are:

Foreword: John Canemaker
Didier Ghez: Ruthie Tompson
Christopher Finch & Linda Rosenkrantz: Walt Pfeiffer
John Culhane: Shirley Temple
John Culhane: I. Klein
Peter Hansen: Basil Reynolds
Christopher Finch & Linda Rosenkrantz: Eric Larson
John Culhane: John Hubley
Robin Allan: Jules Engel
Darrell Van Citters: Ed Love
Darrell Van Citters: Mike Lah
JB Kaufman: Frank Thomas
Dave Smith: Carl Nater
John Culhane: John Hench
John Canemaker: Ward Kimball
Dave Smith: Ward Kimball
Didier Ghez: Frank Armitage
Robin Allan: Ray Aragon
Didier Ghez: Ray Aragon
Gord Wilson: Jacques Rupp
David Tietyen: George Bruns
John Canemaker: Dale Oliver
John Canemaker: Iwao Takamoto
John Canemaker: Richard Williams
Charles Solomon: Brad Bird
Alberto Becattini: Don R. Christensen
Jim Korkis: Tom Nabbe
Dave Smith: Roger Broggie
Didier Ghez: David Snyder
Didier Ghez: Carl Bongirno
John Culhane: Daniel MacManus
John Culhane: Ted Kierscey
John Canemaker: Glen Keane
Didier Ghez: Joe Hale
Jérémie Noyer: Mark Henn
Christian Ziebarth: Andreas Deja and Mark Henn
Didier Ghez: Ed Catmull

This is yet another book I've got to add to my overburdened shelf. Copies can be ordered from Xlibris for those living in the U.S. and from Amazon for those living in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Guess Whose Eyes

2011-10-13T08:37:00.001-04:00

Go here, for an interactive version of the above. And go here if you want a print.

(Link via Boing Boing)

Warner Bros. Animated Coming Attractions

2011-10-10T09:11:00.004-04:00

In addition to voicing the Loony Tunes characters for animated cartoons, Mel Blanc also voiced them on records for children. Warner Bros. has now created new cgi animation to go with one of those records.

I previously mentioned Sam Register's address to Mipcom Jr, a TV market in Europe. Above is the video of that address and at 27:03, you can see a clip of the Daffy Duck animation done to the Mel Blanc record. You can also see a clip of Thundercats at 19:33 and the cgi Green Lantern at 23:39.

Disney Live Action Reference

2011-10-10T08:51:00.003-04:00

Someone known as lostvocals4 has taken live action footage from Operation Wonderland, a live action promotional piece that Disney made for Alice in Wonderland, and synched it up with the finished film.

Disney was shooting live action reference footage at least as early as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. That procedure continued in the 1950s, especially because the budgets were tighter and the films had to be made more efficiently. Ed Wynn was filmed as the Mad Hatter and Jerry Colonna was filmed as the March Hare, with Kathryn Beaumont as Alice. What's interesting is that the audio from the reference footage was used as the final audio in the film.

The artists on screen, in order of their first appearance, are Les Clark, Fred Moore (at left) with John Lounsbery, and Ward Kimball.

If you want to see the entire Operation in Wonderland, which contains additional live action reference for the Walrus's dance and the march of the playing cards, you can see it here and here. Look for Walt Disney manning the animation camera. I doubt that he did that much after the 1920s.

(Link via Drawn.)

The Rauch Brothers Interviewed

2011-10-10T08:31:00.005-04:00

Left to right: Mike and Tim Rauch.

"The key is to try and be as honest and true to the story as possible."
- Mike Rauch

I admire the work of the Rauch brothers enormously as their work, based on documentary audio recordings done by Storycorps, is built on emotional truth. That's something too often lacking in modern animation.

The brothers are interviewed by Jeremy Helton, talking about their history, their influences and their process. There are also photo comparisons between real people and settings and the designs that the brothers have created from them.

You can see four video interviews with the brothers here and a selection of their work here.

Steve Jobs as Walt Disney

2011-10-07T11:38:00.005-04:00

Left to right: Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs, John Lasseter. Image lifted from the Pixar website.

It's been a few days since Steve Jobs passed away and I've had some time to gather my thoughts. It occurs to me that Jobs was like Walt Disney in that they shared traits common to visionary entrepreneurs.

Walt Disney didn't create animation. He wasn't responsible for every advance that came from his studio. And while there were others in animation who broke ground, the public identified the animation medium with Walt Disney. Disney went through a bankruptcy and several setbacks (the loss of Oswald the Rabbit and the defection of staff), but still managed to overcome the problems and continue to pursue his goals.

Steve Jobs didn't create personal computers. He wasn't responsible for every advance that came from Apple. Certainly there are others who broke ground in computing, but Jobs was the very public face of computers as lifestyle enhancers. Jobs was tossed out of the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak, but during that period, he bought Pixar from George Lucas and created a second success before returning to Apple, where his second stint may have been more influential than his first.

I don't doubt that somebody would have made a cgi feature had Pixar not existed, but as we can see from films like Beowulf, cgi films might have been extensions of the visual effects world more than the animation world. As there have been animated films in every medium that were duds, who knows if that first cgi feature would have had the impact on audiences and on the marketplace if the film hadn't been Toy Story?

Pixar was not a sure thing. There were many technical problems to be solved and it was uncertain how an audience would react to an hour and a half of computer graphics. Jobs supported Catmull and Lasseter's goals, resulting in one of the most successful animation companies in history. Jobs' importance to animation history is secure for that alone.

So Jobs, like Disney, pursued his goals though they were risky. They both overcame setbacks to innovate in several fields. They both enhanced the lives of their audiences and were feted for it. That last item is a key point. Business schools may one day examine the careers of Michael Eisner or Robert Iger and take lessons from them, but the public won't. Jobs, like Disney, worked on a public stage, combining vision with showmanship. There are many successful business people, but few have the vision of these two men and fewer still have a vision that the public willingly embraces.

Animation is lucky to have crossed paths with both men.

(One of the best summations of Jobs' career I've read is an obituary written by animation fan and technology writer Harry McCracken for Time magazine.)

Steve Jobs R.I.P.

2011-10-05T19:48:00.003-04:00

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and savior of Pixar, has lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. The official announcement is here.

Jobs was also a major shareholder in Disney after he sold Pixar to Disney. While he clearly prepared Apple to continue without him, we'll have to see who inherits his Disney shares. In any case, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull have lost an ally and Robert Iger's hand is no doubt strengthened.

Men like Jobs are rare and he will be missed. There was no one in the computer or electronics field to compare with him.

A Clay Animated Batman?

2011-10-02T19:21:00.004-04:00

Those of you interested in what's happening with the Looney Tunes characters, Thundercats and the animated version of Green Lantern should read coverage of Sam Register's keynote speech to MIP Jr, a European TV market for children's programming.

One of the revelations in the article is that Warner Bros. is teaming up with Aardman Animation to make clay animated Batman shorts. There's also a cgi Batman series coming in 2013.

Some Ottawa Festival Thoughts

2011-10-02T08:31:00.005-04:00

Everyone who attends the Ottawa Festival (or any other large event for that matter) is going to have an individual opinion. It's impossible at Ottawa to see every screening and attend every presentation, so opinions will vary based on what a person experienced. What follows are my thoughts, based on being there for just the weekend and the programs I chose to attend.

It's a shame that the animator picnic is not included in the weekend pass, as it is now the only venue at the festival where everyone is together. When the festival used the National Arts Centre, it was a central place for everyone to meet. This is my second year attending since the National Arts Centre is no longer used, and my feeling that the festival is spread over too great a distance remains. The individual venues are nice, but the lack of a real hub makes it tougher to find people and lessens word of mouth for any hot films.

I saw The Bug Trainer, a European documentary on Ladislas Starewitch, the stop motion animator. I didn't know much about him personally, so I was grateful to the film for filling me in, but I wish that the film, which only ran an hour and was most likely made for TV, had showcased more of his animation. Perhaps Europeans are more familiar with his films and didn't need to be reminded, but I've seen only a few Starewitch works and would have liked to see more.

John Canemaker

John Canemaker's presentation on Joe Ranft and Joe Grant was a highlight for me. Canemaker knew both men, so there was a personal dimension to the talk, which included artwork that isn't in his book Two Guys Named Joe. The Joe's emphasis on entertainment value was a contrast to much of what is screened at Ottawa. Canemaker mentioned that his next book was on Herman Schultheiss, an effects animator at Disney, who kept an extensive notebook about how the effects of the time were achieved, such as the snowflakes in "The Nutcracker Suite" section of Fantasia.

I always attend the screenings of children's films as I find them to be more satisfying than the films in competition. This year, my favorite was Princess' Painting, a German short by Johannes Weiland and Klaus Morschheuser about a Princess who receives automatic praise for superficial work and how she discovers that her priorities are wrong.

Saturday had several panel discussions set up by Tom Knott to give guidance to aspiring animation artists. I was on a panel about web portfolios chaired by Richard O'Connor of Ace and Son Moving Picture Company that also featured Knott, Brooke Keesling of The Cartoon Network, and Cal Arts instructor Fran Krause. Some solid information was passed along during this panel. The following panel, which I stayed for, was a collection of directors including Jan Pinkava, Marv Newland, Joanna Priestly, Isaac King and Jessica Borutski.

Left to right: Marv Newland, Jan Pinkava

Saturday night, I attended two competition screenings. The only film that I'd like to see again is Joost Lieuwma's Things You'd Better Not Mix Up from the Netherlands. The film was funny, something you'd think wouldn't be in short supply at an animation festival, but you'd be wrong.

Sunday, I saw two presentations from Disney-Pixar. The first was Enrico Casarosa screening the Pixar short La Luna, which will be released next year with Brave. The film is charming and clearly comes from a personal place for Casarosa. That personal connection is what separates the film from some other Pixar shorts and too much Disney these days.

The second presentation was of the Winnie the Pooh feature and the short The Ballad of Nessie. Pooh directors Steve Anderson and Don Hall were there to talk about the film after the screening. While they made it a point to go back to the original shorts for the design of the film, they talked about reworking the characters of Owl and Rabbit to make them carry more of the comedy. Personally, I felt that those characters were pushed too much, to the detriment of Tigger. Originally, Tigger's hyperactivity and wackiness was a strong contrast to the staid nature of the other characters. Now Tigger is only one of many broad characters. I also thought that the animators on Tigger (Andreas Deja) and Rabbit (Eric Goldberg) were miscast. Goldberg should have been given Tigger and Deja Rabbit.

Nessie also looked backwards to the Disney design of the 1940s and '50s. Johnny Appleseed was referenced for design.

Both the feature and short lacked the personal connection of La Luna. They were well crafted, but seemed to me to be imitation Disney rather than stories that needed to be told. By coincidence, the day after I returned from the festival, I was reading Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland and came across this quote:

In the first third of [the twentieth] century, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and a few fellow travelers turned the then-prevailing world of soft focus photographic art upside down. They did so by developing a visual philosophy that justified sharply-focused images, and introduced the natural landscape as a subject for photographic art. It took decades for their viewpoint to filter into the public consciousness, but it sure has now: pictures appearing in anything from cigarette ads to Sierra Club books owe their current acceptance to those once-controversial images. Indeed, that vision has so pervasively become ours that people photographic vacation scenery today often do so with the hope that if everything turns out just right, the result will not simply look like a landscape, it will look like an Ansel Adams photograph of the landscape.

This too will pass, of course. In face, artistically speaking, it has passed. The unfolding over time of a great idea is like the growth of a fractal crystal, allowing details and refinements to multiply endlessly -- but only in ever-decreasing scale. Eventually (perhaps by the early 1960's) those who stepped forward to carry the West Coast Landscape Photography banner were not producing art, so much as re-producing the history of art. Separated two or three generations from the forces that spawned the vision they championed, they were left making images of experiences they never quite had. If you find yourself caught in similar circumstances, we modestly offer this bit of cowboy wisdom: When your horse dies, get off.

If drawn Disney animation is to survive, the artists are going to have to find their own voices, not "making images of experiences they never quite had." Time to find another mount.

As I said above, this is only my experience of the festival. For other viewpoints, see Jerry Beck, Richard O'Connor (1, 2, 3 and 4) and Michael Valiquette.

Animation Insider

2011-09-26T21:04:00.002-04:00

Animation Insider is a site whose mission is to "focus on the real people in the trenches who make the award winning stuff we love. " The good news is that there are a great many interviews on the site, focusing on people who don't normally get coverage. The bad news is that the questions are standardized, so all kinds of opportunities for follow up questions are missed. Still, the site is a good place to discover the varied backgrounds and sensibilities of the people who earn their livings in animation.

Here's a link to an alphabetical listing of interview subjects.

Gil Alkabetz in Toronto

2011-09-26T20:31:00.003-04:00

Fresh from his appearance at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

(click to enlarge.)

At the Ottawa Festival

2011-09-19T18:52:00.003-04:00

I will be at the Ottawa Animation Festival from sometime Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. On Saturday at 1:00, I'll be on a panel called Web Portfolios with Richard O'Connor of Ace and Son Moving Picture Company and Brooke Keesling of The Cartoon Network.

Stop by and say hello if you're there.

Invitation to the Dance

2011-09-18T06:17:00.004-04:00

Most animation fans are familiar with the sequence in Anchors Aweigh where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry, the mouse from Tom and Jerry cartoons. Fewer fans have seen Invitation to the Dance, a feature spearheaded by star Gene Kelly which consists entirely of three dance sequences. The last sequence is "Sinbad the Sailor" and features Kelly dancing with animated characters produced by Hanna Barbera while they were still at MGM.

The film will be showing on Turner Classic Movies early in the morning of Tuesday Sept. 20 at 12:15 a.m. Eastern Time. Or if you prefer, late Monday night. In any case, TCM only runs the film every few years, so you might want to catch it if you're interested.

Below is an excerpt from the animated sequence.

I Have An Idea for an Animated Film. Can You Make It For Me?

2011-09-12T13:15:00.006-04:00

Steve Bissette, a comics artist who also writes and publishes, has posted a great piece on issues surrounding collaborating on a graphic novel.

The piece is relevant because the requests that Bissette is addressing are similar to those that I regularly address as the coordinator of Sheridan College's animation program. I am constantly fielding phone calls and emails requesting that students create films for individuals and organizations. As Bissette points out, like it or not, drawing takes longer than writing. And animating most certainly takes longer than writing.

My first question when I get these requests is to ask if this is a paying project. Most times it isn't. In that case, my response is that we have a highly structured curriculum and we're not able to accommodate the request. If the job is paying, I try to connect a recent graduate with the project.

I don't doubt that many animation artists get requests like this. I remember somebody who wanted an animation done for her daughter's birthday party with a caricature of the mother as the main character. I think the fee on that was as high as $100, but when I quoted industry rates, that ended the discussion quickly.

People generally don't understand how labour intensive drawing and animating are. They also assume, as Bissette points out, that artists are devoid of ideas, just sitting around waiting for somebody to give them one. The problem is never finding an idea, it's finding the time and money to work on an idea.

Bissette raises a lot of issues concerning ownership, royalties, etc. which are food for thought for anybody who is hired to collaborate, as opposed to simply being hired to execute. While the issues surrounding graphic novels and animation don't match exactly, there are enough in common to make the piece worth reading.

Kim Deitch

2011-09-09T09:55:00.002-04:00

Kim Deitch, son of animator Gene Deitch, has been writing an autobiography of sorts at The Comics Journal site. This installment mixes comix, music and animation into a gumbo that features animators Sally Cruikshank, Tony Eastman, Gene Deitch, and comix artist R. Crumb.

Who Owns Our Modern Myths and Legends?

2011-09-09T09:27:00.004-04:00

(Click to enlarge. It's a big one.)

Charlie Jane Anders at io9 has put together this chart showing how six large corporations essentially control the pop culture franchises that make up our common experience.

The chart doesn't really represent ownership as much as it represents control. New Line Cinema doesn't own The Lord of the Rings, only the film version. And Harper Collins doesn't own Tolkien's novels, only the publishing rights. But when you see how much these six companies control, it's clear why copyright and digital rights management have become major issues and why the United States is leaning heavily on other countries, including Canada, to write legislation to protect U.S. corporate assets.

The chart is also incomplete. Notice that while Disney is listed, none of the drawn animated characters are on this chart. Neither is Nickelodeon or CBS (both Viacom companies), though Cartoon Network makes it. That just shows that what's here is only the tip of the iceberg. The odds are that if you've bought a book, seen a movie, bought a DVD or watched TV, you've been feeding these corporate behemoths.

Fred Moore's 100th Birthday

2011-09-07T21:17:00.005-04:00

Cartoon Brew has a photo of Moore I've never seen, Jenny Lerew posts a lovely photo of Moore with his wife Virginia and their infant daughter, and Andreas Deja posts a large sampling of Moore's work. The above is the one Moore from my own collection.

Moore is practically a mythical character. His influence is ubiquitous, not only in animation but also in greeting card art of a certain vintage. Because he died before fans and historians could interview him, he's a mystery compared to other Disney artists. His death, often falsely attributed to his alcoholism, has spawned more versions than I can count. He's the Bix Beiderbecke of animation: the flawed boy prince, bursting with a unique talent, who left us too soon.

What would we give to have known him?

She Was the One

2011-09-07T20:23:00.001-04:00

Another Storycorps film from the Rauch Brothers.

Early Computer Animation

2011-09-05T21:24:00.005-04:00

Ed Catmull, currently the president of the Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios, was one of the key people in the development of computer animation. Catmull was and is a software engineer, somebody who developed the nuts and bolts of making animation work with computers.

A couple of his early pieces have surfaced. The first, reported on Cartoon Brew, is a film from the University of Utah in 1972.

After the University of Utah, Catmull went to the New York Institute of Technology, located on Long Island, where he was involved with trying to find ways of joining the computer with drawn animation. John Celestri has reprinted a paper Catmull wrote called "The Problems of Computer-Assisted Animation."

Computer animation has reached a high level of sophistication but it wasn't that long ago that it was struggling to establish itself as a practical medium. These pieces show how far it has come in less than 40 years, all within the working lifetime of Ed Catmull.

Guys with Pencils Podcast

2011-08-29T08:06:00.004-04:00

Andrew Murray and Adam Hines are two Sheridan graduates who have a podcast talking about what it's like to be starting out in the animation business. You can find all their podcasts here.

I'm their guest in episode 22, talking a bit about my career and a whole lot about creator rights.

Jack Kirby's 94th Birthday

2011-08-28T21:33:00.002-04:00

August 28 would have been Jack Kirby's 94th birthday. Mark Evanier, who worked with Kirby, has his birthday tribute here, including an embedded documentary on Kirby made for the DVD release of one of the Fantastic Four movies. Tom Spurgeon prints a great gallery of Kirby artwork and Mark Seifert has a gallery of Kirby originals to enjoy.

I wish that we could be celebrating the success of the Kirby estate's attempt to recover copyrights, but the recent court decision that went against the Kirby estate is now being appealed. Perhaps there will be better news for Kirby's next birthday.

Miss Devine

2011-08-24T16:22:00.003-04:00

The Rauch Brothers' latest short combines documentary audio of grown children remembering their Sunday school teacher with animation designed by Bill Wray.

I love this kind of work, mixing real life events with animation. All of the Rauch Brothers' work for Storycorps can be seen here and all of it is worth watching.

Bill Plympton Interview

2011-08-18T13:17:00.000-04:00

Salon has an interview with Bill Plympton.

That Famous Film Comment Animation Issue

2011-08-18T13:13:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of Tom Knott, here's the complete contents of that 1975 Film Comment issue on animation. Get it quickly as Tom has indicated that it won't be up for long.

Disney Animators Who Sculpt

2011-08-14T21:28:00.004-04:00

I've been on the road for the last ten days: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley (second time!) and now Loveland, Colorado. I'm guessing that readers are scratching their heads over the final location, but this weekend was the occasion for two annual shows that attract hundreds of sculptors who display their work. As I've been sculpting for the last two years, I wanted to see what was being done.

Sun Dog by Ellen Woodbury

I knew that I'd see Ellen Woodbury at Sculpture in the Park. I met Ellen a year or so ago when she visited Sheridan College and I learned that she's now living in Loveland and sculpting full time. Ellen works in stone and her subject is animals, not a surprise given her animal animation at Disney on characters like Pegasus in Hercules.

Reviewing the Troops by Mark Henn

I did not expect to see Mark Henn, who participated in the Loveland Sculpture Invitational Show. Mark is still at Disney, having recently completed work on the Winnie the Pooh film, but sculpts subjects from American history as a hobby and casts the work in bronze.

The link between animation and sculpture is a strong one. I know that Bill Tytla, Blaine Gibson, Milt Kahl and Andreas Deja, all associated with Disney, have done both. As Disney-style animation requires drawings that are structured and dimensional, it's only logical that animators can transfer their knowledge into a three-dimensional medium.

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Walt Disney and Tex Avery

2011-08-04T09:29:00.004-04:00

In early 1975, Film Comment magazine devoted an entire, oversize issue to Hollywood cartoons. It's well worth finding in a library or through an online service, as it contains a comprehensive interview with Chuck Jones as well as an interview with Grim Natwick and articles by Greg Ford and Mark Langer.

One piece was an essay on Walt Disney by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum has now posted the first part of that essay on his website with the second part to follow shortly. As Thad has pointed out in the comments, part 2 is now up.

And here is Rosenbaum on Tex Avery.

Animated Leo the Lion

2011-08-02T07:16:00.004-04:00

Here's an oddity. The trailer for MGM's 1935 feature No More Ladies starts and ends with an animated Leo the Lion. According to Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation, the animator is Bill Nolan, a veteran of the silent era whose previous job was at the Lantz studio in the early '30s. The voice, of course, is by Billy Bletcher, who voiced the Big Bad Wolf in Disney's The Three Little Pigs and also did cartoon voices for Warner Bros. (Little Red Riding Rabbit).

(Link via The Golden Age Cartoon Forum.)

Kirby Estate Loses Copyright Battle

2011-07-28T19:12:00.006-04:00

I am sure that this judgment will be appealed, but a Federal court has ruled that the work Jack Kirby did for Marvel was "work-for-hire." This is despite the fact that the legal term was not part of the copyright law at the time Kirby co-created characters such as The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, The Silver Surfer, Thor, etc.

Here's the Associated Press story and here is Deadline Hollywood's.

While I am sure that there is a celebration occurring in the Disney and Marvel boardrooms as a result of this ruling, it's a questionable victory. When the artists at Marvel realized that the company was not going to compensate them beyond paying them by the page, they simply stopped creating new characters. Image Comics exists because a group of artists realized they would never be fairly compensated for their work at Marvel and so they formed their own company. Marvel's treatment of their artists has been consistently bad. See this article on the recently deceased Gene Colan.

Corporate copyright is strangling creativity, not promoting it.

Kirby's case and the ongoing litigation regarding the Superman copyright are just more evidence that anyone who creates something without securing ownership is a chump. It's one thing to be hired onto an ongoing project or series to make a contribution, but quite another to originate an idea and only be paid a regular salary or a flat price.

Stop giving your ideas to corporations. Own them and control them. Or else there will be more Jack Kirbys, Jerry Siegels, Joe Shusters, and Gene Colans ad infinitum.

Why in hell should stockholders and executives who weren't born when the work was created be profiting from it when the people who created it and their heirs get nothing?

(For my earlier take on the benefits of ownership, go here. For Heidi MacDonald, a comics news columnist, on the Kirby decision go here. It's worth quoting her conclusion: "Don’t ever create characters for work for hire, no matter how much “back end” you’re promised. In this day and age there is NO excuse for giving up your creations. We may never see another Jack Kirby among us, but let his lessons stand, both the triumphs and the sadness." )

Steven Spielberg Needs His Eyes Examined

2011-07-24T18:36:00.003-04:00

"According to [Spielberg], the biggest challenge was 'getting it to look like the drawings in the Hergé books. We love the art so much that we used animation to get it as close to the art as we can.'"

Full story here.

Robert Rodrigues to Remake Bakshi's Fire and Ice

2011-07-24T12:05:00.004-04:00

Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

As you'll see in the above clip, Robert Rodriguez is going to remake Fire and Ice using the approach he used for Sin City. Frank Frazetta was a designer and producer on the original film and Ralph Bakshi directed it.

Rodriguez feels that he can now get closer to the look of Frazetta's art than was possible in 1983. That's probably true. However, I think it's a waste of time.

Frazetta was certainly a strong draftsman and painter. His images are striking due to his sense of composition and colour. In addition, there's a healthy dose of sex present in most of his work. However, while Frazetta worked in comics before his career as a painter, he wasn't really known for his narratives. His paintings are striking images, but they are no more than moments. His themes are limited and his worldview is that of a hormonally-drenched fourteen year old male. While that might make him the perfect source for current Hollywood movies, I doubt that Rodriguez will be able to bring anything to the film that isn't already present in Frazetta's paintings.

I understand the urge to adapt. When you love something, you want to be able to immerse yourself in it and somehow connect yourself to it more strongly. Everyone creative is influenced by existing work and many can recall "ignition moments" when they encountered something that crystallized an urge to do work of a certain kind.

Jack Kirby used to laugh when comics artists said they were going to work on characters he created "in the Kirby tradition." His response was that the Kirby tradition was to do something new. I think Kirby had it right.

When adapting a novel, a director at least brings visuals to a story. But when a director adapts something from an already visual medium, such as Rodriguez will do here, I think he's fighting a losing battle. Rodriguez may nail Frazetta's look (and I admit to being skeptical), but he'll fail to add anything to an appreciation or understanding of Frazetta's work.

For the record, here's what Bakshi and Frazetta did with Fire and Ice.

Oh Bother!

2011-07-16T12:08:00.006-04:00

"Sixth place? YOU'RE FIRED!"

It's noon on Saturday as I write this, but Deadline Hollywood is estimating that the Winnie the Pooh film will finish sixth for the weekend with a gross of $8 million. No sane person expected the Pooh film to outgross the Harry Potter finale, but it's interesting that films two through five are hold overs. Pooh couldn't outgross Transformers 3, Horrible Bosses, Zookeeper or Cars 2. Cars 2 is in it's 4th week and may still outgross the Pooh film. That's bad as both are aimed at similar audiences of young children.

The final domestic gross for the Pooh film should be somewhere between $20 and $32 million, depending on how it holds up. That will undoubtedly put downward pressure on the budgets of any future drawn films to come out of Disney as neither Pooh nor The Princess and the Frog have gotten close to the grosses for cgi films. I would be the last to blame the grosses on the fact that the films are drawn -- both films are retreads of what audiences have seen too many times before -- but from a business perspective there isn't much justification for Disney making drawn films.

Ward Kimball Biography Coming in 2012

2011-07-13T06:01:00.004-04:00

Caricature of Ward Kimball by Walt Kelly

Didier Ghez's Disney History site has details of Amid Amidi's biography of Ward Kimball to come out in the latter half of 2012.

"The Kimball family has generously granted me access to all of Ward's personal files, photos and diaries, and I've combined this with new research and interviews to present a thorough celebration of his life that acknowledges his impact on the art form."

This is a book I very much look forward to reading.

The Elements of a Scene: Suspense and Surprise

2011-07-12T10:21:00.004-04:00

This is the seventh and last in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. This entry is about suspense and surprise.

When people think of suspense in movies, they tend to think of film makers like Alfred Hitchcock or big set pieces where you're on the edge of your seat wondering what will happen. All sporting events are built around suspense. Who will win? Will there be any memorable plays or blunders? Game shows and competitions are the same. Who will be voted off the island or eliminated? While the above are certainly good examples of suspense, suspense is actually at the root of any kind of storytelling. Suspense is anything that makes you wonder what will happen next.

If you've ever watched a story and guessed early on how it comes out, it's boring to sit through. Why bother to watch if you know what's going to happen? Audiences want to know what will happen, but not too soon. The audience is counting on the storyteller to keep it in suspense until the story's resolution.

Hollywood conventions usually mean that the audience knows in advance how the film will end, but doesn't know how the story will get there. Does anyone think that the bad guys will actually win in a Hollywood film? Who expects James Bond, Batman, Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter to fail at the end of a story? Who expects that the lovers won't get together or that the characters' problems will get worse? Unless the film is billed as a tragedy or based on a historical event known to the audience, these things don't happen.

How the good guys win, the lovers unite, and the problems are solved are up in the air and that's why the audience watches. Without being curious about what happens next, there's no reason to stick around.

The above scene is a small example of how suspense operates even in a scene that lacks overt drama. Pa Joad tries to buy bread. Will he get it or will the waitress kick him out? As the audience is invested in the survival of the Joad family, it cares about about what happens and waits to see if Pa will succeed. There is other suspense in that the truck drivers are totally silent during the encounter. What are they thinking? What will they do? The audience knows how Pa, the waitress and the cook feel about the situation, but what about those truckers?

Surprise is another quality that is attractive to audiences. Like suspense, surprises work against predictability. However, surprises have to be logical and fit into the world of the story. As David Mamet, playwright, screenwriter and director, says, "Make them wonder. Answer their question in a way both surprising and inevitable."

If a genii appeared in the above scene and made Pa Joad a rich man, it would be surprising, but not inevitable. It would violate the world of the story, where poverty and hunger are real and where there are no obvious solutions. A surprise has to be believable in the context of the story, or it alienates the audience instead of satisfying it.

In the scene above, it appears that the waitress is pressured into selling the bread by the cook. She bows to his wishes. The surprise comes when she sells the candy so cheaply. She's reached a point where she doesn't want to disappoint the children and while she's been penny conscious, refusing to sell a 15 cent loaf for 10 cents, resulting in a nickel loss, she now sells ten cents worth of candy for a penny, a 9 cent loss! She's gone further than we ever expected.

The other surprise is the truck drivers walking out without their change. As I said above, they are silent during the encounter and when one of the drivers calls the waitress on the price of the candy, he sounds gruff, not understanding. When they validate what she's done by leaving money to make up the shortfall, it's a surprise to both the waitress and the audience.

The elements I've talked about in this series are in every good scene and story. I don't claim they are all that's necessary, but they're a handy list: setting, personality, objective, motive, conflict, obstacles, resolution, business, arc, suspense and surprise. If any of them are missing, it's worth re-examining the story. The above scene is just three minutes long, the same length as many animated shorts. If screenwriter Nunnally Johnson can fit them into three minutes, animation creators have no excuse to leave them out.

Kim Deitch Continued

2011-07-12T10:16:00.002-04:00

Kim Deitch's memoir continues at The Comics Journal. Part 4 covers rock and roll, but includes comments by animator Tony Eastman that supply information about his parents, both of whom worked at Disney on the early features, and what he's up to currently.

Growth, Maturity and Decline

2011-07-04T05:58:00.009-04:00

I haven't seen Cars 2 (and won't), but the critical drubbing it took and Pixar's move into sequels has me wondering about the bigger picture.

Companies, like individuals, go through a life cycle. They grow, they mature and eventually they decline. The only difference between companies and individuals is that because companies can outlive individuals or change their personnel, they sometimes revive.

Growth is a phase where companies get larger but also expand their skills and discover their point of view. If we look at the Disney studio during Walt Disney's lifetime, we can see growth from 1923 to 1942. We can argue the exact dates or films, but the overall pattern is clear. During that time period, the skills and what exactly a Disney cartoon was supposed to be continued to evolve.

After Bambi, the studio was mature. A Disney cartoon was a particular, identifiable thing . When the studio deviated from that, in The Three Caballeros or Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, it was imitating Tex Avery and UPA respectively. It wasn't breaking new ground, it was trying to stay current with other studios that were in growth mode.

For me, Disney's decline takes place when Woolie Reitherman was the sole director of the films. The narrative energy was dissipated, budgets were cramped, and there were significant amounts of re-used footage.

None of these stages is without variation. There are better and worse films in every stage and there's always room for differences of opinion. In broad terms, though, I think these descriptions work for Disney.

You can apply the same categories to individuals. If we take Chaplin as an example, his growth is roughly 1914-1917, the years at Keystone, Essanay and Mutual (where he perfected his art in shorts). His maturity is 1918 to 1940, the years of his best known features: The Kid, The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times and The Great Dictator. His decline is 1947 to 1967, the years from Monsieur Verdoux to A Countess from Hong Kong. There are critics who find much valuable work in those later films and I agree with them, but there's no question that Chaplin's popularity was waning and that the films lack consistency.

Which brings us to Pixar. We now know what a Pixar film is like and what it isn't. That's a sign of a mature studio. The firing of various directors says that they were not capable of producing a Pixar film. We're also seeing less artistic growth. The preponderance of sequels proves that. What's going to be the ratio of sequels to original films? Two to one? Three to one?

The larger question is how long will Pixar's maturity last? Are the reviews of Cars 2 a sign that the studio is tipping into decline? If the film is a relative failure at the box office (acknowledging that the merchandising will more than make up for it), is that also an indication of decline? Did the studio actually reach maturity with Monsters, Inc. or Finding Nemo and it's maturity phase is now ending?

It may be too soon to get answers to these questions, but the pattern is inescapable. Disney revived and entered a new growth phase for a while in the years following The Great Mouse Detective. There's no reason that a declining Pixar couldn't revive as well, but it usually takes new management and a new creative team. There's no indication that's about to happen at Pixar, and it may be years before Pixar enters an indisputable decline. However, I sense that the studio is on the cusp and I'm curious to see if the next few films confirm my suspicions.

John Celestri Blog

2011-07-03T10:44:00.003-04:00

Animator and friend John Celestri (Rock and Rule, Space Ace) now has a blog. John made some contributions to this blog early on, so it's nice to see that he's set up a blog of his own. I've added his link to my list of links.

Kim Deitch Remembers

2011-07-03T10:29:00.003-04:00

Cartoonist Kim Deitch, son of animator Gene Deitch, is writing a series of reminiscences at The Comics Journal site. The first two (one, two) are mostly about jazz (but include some jazz related art by Gene), and the third is about early television and includes material about Gene, UPA and Tony Eastman. The series is ongoing.

On Vacation

2011-06-22T18:12:00.001-04:00

There will (probably) be no updates to this blog for the next week or 10 days. See you soon.

Tyrus Wong at the Walt Disney Family Museum

2011-06-22T18:03:00.005-04:00

From left to right: Tyrus Wong, Diane Disney Miller and Kim Wong, Tyrus's daughter.

From left to right: Paul Felix (Disney animator), Tyrus Wong and Ralph Eggleston (Pixar art director)

I wish that I could have attended this event. Tyrus Wong, whose style was a major influence on the look of Disney's Bambi, appeared at the Walt Disney Family Museum on June 11. Wong is now 100 years old and had a lengthy career in live action films after leaving the Disney studio.

The Flying House: Resurrection or Ruination?

2011-06-18T09:42:00.005-04:00

Independent animator Bill Plympton is using Kickstarter to raise money to "resurrect" Winsor McCay's 1921 short The Flying House. Plympton is digitally cleaning the film, colorizing it, replacing word balloons with audio dialogue and adding music and sound effects.

I am torn about this. On the one hand, the film is in the public domain. I personally think that copyright has become way too restrictive and that the public domain is a good thing for society at large, allowing past work to be re-issued and to inspire new work. What Plympton is attempting here is fully within the law and an example of how the public domain can feed contemporary creation.

On the other hand, the historian in me believes that the past has value and to remake the past is to distort it. I was always against colorization when it was applied to black and white films. I also believe that there is great value in attempting to understand the past by immersing yourself in it. The world was a different place socially, culturally and technologically, and understanding how the world has changed can only be accomplished by understanding how the past was different from the present.

I don't think I'd have a problem if Plympton decided to remake the film. Leaving the original alone and offering a new interpretation of a past work is something people have been doing throughout recorded history. Restoration has always been focused on returning a work to its original state. This is a posthumous collaboration. Because film is mechanically reproduced, the original is untouched, but is this something like changing the background behind Mona Lisa or revising Duchamp's painting so that it is Nude Ascending a Staircase?

It's not fair of me to judge an unfinished work as it's impossible for me to come to a conclusion, but the project does raise questions.

Marjane Satrapi on Making a Film From Comics

2011-06-17T10:41:00.003-04:00

Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis and the co-director of the animated version, gives her thoughts on making a film from comics.

"Animation and comics are false siblings. They resemble one another but they're two completely different things. The relationship a reader has with a comic is nothing like the one a viewer has with a film. When you read a comic, you're always active, because you have to imagine all the movements that happen between the frames. In a film, you are passive: all the information is there. And when you make a comic it never happens that you have 500 or 1,000 people reading it in the same place at the same time, all reacting. The language of cinema and comics is different, even though they both use images. In comics, you write with images; they're like pictograms. And in a movie you think about movement and sound and music, all those things that are not considerations when making comics."

The Elements of a Scene: Character Arc

2011-06-15T09:33:00.002-04:00

This is the sixth in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. This entry is about character arc.

People change. They change as they age and as they experience new things. In drama, the conflict is a crucible for altering the main character's view of the world and him- or herself.

Using Casablanca as an example, the Humphrey Bogart character starts out emotionally dead due to a failed love affair. His past political activities and his way of relating to others have both been frozen. When he is forced to confront his lost love, he undergoes a painful transformation. By the end of the film, he is once more alive emotionally and committed politically. The thaw that takes place over the course of the story is the Bogart character's arc.

As John Truby writes in The Anatomy of Story,

“Drama is a code of maturity. The focal point is the moment of change, the impact, when a person breaks free of habits and weaknesses and ghosts from his past and transforms to a richer and fuller self. The dramatic code expresses the idea that human beings can become a better version of themselves, psychologically and morally. And that’s why people love it.”

Sometimes, the inability to change is the point of the story. If you are familiar with the film From Here to Eternity (based on the novel by James Jones, screenplay by Daniel Taradash and directed by Fred Zinnemann), the three main characters, played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra, are all incapable of change. As a result, each loses something due to their unwillingness to bend.

Within the larger film of The Grapes of Wrath, the main character arc is that of Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda. Over the course of the film he is exposed to how his family and people like them are treated. As a result, he goes from being concerned only with his family to a larger class consciousness.

In the scene above, the protagonist is Pa Joad, trying to buy a loaf of bread. But he has no character arc. He leaves the scene with the same mindset as when he entered it. The arcs in this scene belong to the antagonist, the waitress, and also to the truck drivers. She starts out resisting Pa's request and slowly awakens to the Joads' situation as she hears Pa's explanations and sees the children staring at the candy. Like Tom in the larger story, she achieves something of a class consciousness as a result of her encounter.

The same can be said of the truck drivers. They start out resolutely neutral, saying nothing during the conversation between Pa and the waitress. After the waitress lies about the cost of the candy so that the Joads can afford it, the truckers are also moved to declare their solidarity with what's gone on by refusing their change.

Character arc is a problem when it comes to characters who are part of a series. An arc implies a change of worldview, yet a series character can't change without losing the very qualities that make the character popular in the first place. Homer Simpson can never wise up. Regardless of what he might learn in an episode, he has to forget it by the start of the next if he's to stay Homer Simpson. No real person could live Homer Simpson's life without getting smarter or getting killed.

But if a story is self contained, a character's change or lack of it is the whole point.

Commencement for Creatives

2011-06-09T06:55:00.003-04:00

Author J.C. Herz gave the commencement address at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida. It's specifically aimed at people doing creative work and is the commencement address that creative people everywhere need to hear.

"As a creative professional, you have to get over the idea that your employer or your client owes you a wide blue sky or a creative romper room. You are the one who’s responsible for your continued growth and development. Sometimes, you have to make your own fun, on your own time. The downside is, you don’t necessarily get paid for that. The upside is, you don’t need sponsorship or buy-in. Realize the leverage you have when no-one’s paying you to do something, and use that leverage to carve out new opportunities. Remember: you have talents and skills that are valuable, and there are a lot of ways to leverage that value. It might be the chance to contribute visually to a non-profit organization or shoe-string arts effort that appeals to you. It might give you a chance to collaborate with writers, musicians, or other artists you respect or admire. When you bring your own talent to the table, there are a lot of social and creative dividends you can earn. It’s not just about the dollars.

"But when you are talking dollars, realize one thing: Most people say that time is money. But for a creative professional, it’s exactly the opposite. Money is time. Having some extra money gives you time to say no to things that will put you in a professional holding pattern. Money gives you time to say yes to the right thing, not just to the first thing. It’s hard, but try to live in a way that leaves you with enough of a financial buffer to take enough time to make the right career choices."

Read the whole thing here.

(link via BoingBoing.)

Andrew Loomis Back in Print

2011-06-06T19:57:00.005-04:00

Here's one that snuck up on me, but one I'm grateful for. Titan Books has brought Andrew Loomis's excellent book Figure Drawing For All It's Worth back into print and at a reasonable price. It's $23.49 at Amazon.com and $28.84 at Amazon.ca.

Andrew Loomis was a commercial illustrator working out of Chicago, a contemporary of Chicago artists Haddon Sundblom and Gil Elvgren. In addition to his illustration work for what used to be called slick magazines (on slick paper as opposed to the pulp magazines), he also wrote several great books on drawing and painting. The out-of-print books are hard to find and usually very pricey.

Titan will be reprinting Drawing the Head and Hands by Loomis in October. They also plan to reprint his Creative Illustration and Fun with a Pencil. I hope they get around to Three Dimensional Drawing, and The Eye of the Painter and the Elements of Beauty.

(link via BoingBoing)

Blue Sky at the Norman Rockwell Museum

2011-06-01T20:22:00.007-04:00

There will be an exhibition called Ice Age to the Digital Age: The 3D Animation Art of Blue Sky Studios at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts starting on June 11 and running through October 31. On June 10, there will be a preview party with an appearance by designer and illustrator Peter de Seve. On June 11, there will be an opening party with de Seve and director Chris Wedge. Details for the parties (which require advance tickets) can be found here. Details of the exhibition can be found here. Peter de Seve's thoughts on the exhibition are here.

John Lasseter in Toronto Cancelled

2011-05-27T10:52:00.004-04:00

John Lasseter's appearance at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m has been cancelled. Details are here.

R. O. Blechman Interview

2011-05-26T18:31:00.005-04:00

Over at The Comics Journal website, Jeet Heer interviews designer, illustrator and animation director R. O. Blechman. Blechman talks a bit about the production of The Juggler of Our Lady at Terrytoons and his disappointment at never getting to direct a feature.

The Elements of a Scene: Business

2011-05-25T05:14:00.003-04:00

This is the fifth in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about business. Business is what performers do in a scene besides delivering dialogue.

An awful lot of animation, especially TV animation, has degenerated into talking heads. All the audience sees on screen are shots of characters talking. The animator spends a lot of time figuring out where to put in an arm gesture or a head bob to keep the character alive while the dialogue is delivered. It's boring for both the animator and the audience.

It's better for everyone if a character has something to do in addition to speaking and the obvious thing is to give the character something to do that relates to the setting or the meaning of the scene. Business is something that is usually not in the script and is the creation of the director and the actors in working out the staging of a scene.

The above scene is in a roadside diner and there are obvious bits of business as a result. The waitress clears dishes off a table. The fry cook works at the grill. The two truck drivers eat and drink throughout the scene, giving them something to do while Pa Joad makes his request, as they say nothing the whole time that Pa Joad is present.

There's nothing particularly inventive in this, but it does provide action for the characters. Where business in this scene gets interesting has to do with Pa Joad and his children.

In buying the bread, Pa Joad takes out a change purse and there are two bits of business relating to it that help to illuminate his personality and situation. He produces the change purse around 1:24 and when it appears that the fry cook is being charitable, giving Pa more than he can pay for, Pa snaps the change purse shut at 1:34. That action helps to communicate Pa Joad's pride. He knows he's poor but he's determined to pay his way, not take a handout. When Pa decides to accept the whole loaf, he digs deep into the change purse for a dime from 1:39 to 1:45. That visually shows how little money is in that purse and how broke the Joads are.

The children have no dialogue for the entire scene and yet director John Ford is very skillful at giving them business. Ford has made a conscious decision that he's wants the audience to focus on the girl and not pay much attention to the boy. Note that at 0:21, when he brings the children into position outside the diner, he partially obscures the boy's face with the window frame and leaves it in shadow while the girl is facing the camera and is not obscured. That becomes more obvious at 0:27 when the camera moves closer.

When Ford finally focuses on the children, starting at 1:06, the boy is hidden behind his sister for part of his entrance and then immediately turns his head to look at the candy. By almost never giving the audience a clear look at the boy's face, Ford has successfully brought him into the scene without him taking attention from what Ford wants to focus on: the girl.

When she walks in, she grabs her father's arm and looks around. Those gestures say that she's nervous and needs the physical reassurance of her father's presence. Her nervousness is explained by how she moves her head. The audience senses that this is a new experience for her; she's never been in a diner before. When she spots the candy, she grabs her father's arm with both hands, a subtle expression of her excitement. After the bread is purchased, she goes over to her brother and puts her hand on his shoulder. Ford has used touch to communicate both her nervousness, her excitement and her closeness to family.

There are seven characters in this scene. That makes it tough to stage. How do you keep the audience aware of everyone without creating visual confusion? Ford does it by cutting to characters in various groupings and also does it by making characters more or less prominent by the business they engage in. Everyone in this scene has actions to perform; nobody just talks. That's a lesson that animators should keep in mind.

Alimation

2011-05-24T10:20:00.003-04:00

Alimation - Annecy Festival 2011 from Alexandre DUBOSC on Vimeo.

Here is Alexandre Dubosc's edible animation done for the upcoming Annecy Festival.

(Link via BoingBoing.)

Tintin Trailer

2011-05-17T09:22:00.002-04:00

The trailer for the mocapped The Adventures of Tintin is now online. Note how little the trailer focuses on the characters and especially the faces. Are they hiding something?

The Elements of a Scene: Conflict, Obstacles and Resolution

2011-05-14T08:07:00.004-04:00

This is the fourth in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about conflict, obstacles and resolution.

There are three types of conflict: character vs. character, character vs. circumstances, and character vs. self. In the past, these were often referred to as man vs. man, man vs. nature and man vs. self. What's important is understanding that without conflict, there is no drama.

If Pa Joad walks in and asks for a 10 cent loaf of bread and they sell it to him, the scene is over. Furthermore, we've learned nothing new about the characters or the world they live in. Conflict by itself is valuable for what it reveals.

The other important thing to realize is that there can be more than one kind of conflict in a scene. The more levels of conflict there are, the more interesting the scene and the more information gets revealed. In the above scene, we clearly have character vs. character. Pa Joad wants to buy bread and the waitress doesn't want to sell it to him. Pa Joad is also in conflict with circumstances. His family has been thrown off their land, they're poor and they're traveling over a thousand miles in a truck that's little more than a junk heap. Finally, we have character vs. self in the person of the waitress. She could have chosen to quote the accurate price for the candy, knowing full well that the Joads could not afford it, but decided instead to lie so that the children could have a treat.

There is also a character vs. self conflict going on with the truck drivers. They know that the waitress has lied and sold the candy at a discount. They could choose to pay their bills and leave, but they decide to endorse the waitress's action by not accepting their change.

Obstacles are related to the type of conflict. In a character vs. character situation, each character is the other's obstacle. The waitress stands between Pa Joad and the loaf of bread and Pa Joad stands between the waitress and her having a good time with the truck drivers. The circumstance of poverty is Pa Joad's obstacle. With more money, he'd have no problems. For character vs. self, it's a character's conscience that is the obstacle. The waitress has to struggle with charging the correct amount and disappointing the children, or making an economic sacrifice so that the children can be happy.

The conflicts here illuminate the characters. Pa Joad will not take no for an answer but will also not raise his voice or make threats. The waitress and the truck drivers have a hard shell, but there is humanity underneath. Ultimately, they recognize that others are struggling and decide to help.

The resolution of this scene is that Pa Joad succeeds and the waitress does not, but she is touched by the actions of the truck drivers. The resolution of any scene is not a foregone conclusion; it must come naturally out of the events of the scene, but still keep the audience wondering what will happen. There is no shortage of bad news for the Joads in this film; they are treated poorly on many occasions. Because of this, the outcome of this scene is uncertain in the eyes of the audience. It could go either way. It is one of the few scenes in this part of the film where the Joads get some relief from their troubles.

TCAF This Weekend

2011-05-04T08:19:00.005-04:00

A reminder to everyone in the greater Toronto area that the Toronto Comic Arts Festival is this weekend at the Toronto Reference Library at Yonge and Bloor. Admission is free.

Guests include Seth, Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Chester Brown, Darwyn Cooke, Dave Boswell, John Porcellino and animation related guests include Vera Brosgal, Graham Annable and Pendleton Ward.

The schedule of panels can be found here and exhibitors can be found on the first floor and the second floor.

On Saturday at 2:15, there will be a panel entitled Comics & Animation: A Conversation with the Artists of Adventure Time featuring Michael DeForge, Bob Flynn, Andy Ristaino, Steve Wolfhard and Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward.

Jaime Weinman on The Looney Tunes Show

2011-05-04T08:13:00.002-04:00

Jaime Weinman reflects on the latest updating of Bugs and Daffy, with quotes from Amid Amidi, Michael Barrier and yours truly.

Sheridan Industry Day 2011

2011-05-01T15:22:00.005-04:00

(Updated Below.)

The industry awaits the screening

April 28 was Sheridan's annual industry day for its two animation programs. It wasn't until it was over that I realized that I took far fewer pictures this year than in years past and I don't know why that is. For photos of past industry days, click here. Each year, the student faces change, but the guests and the events stay pretty much the same.

Based on industry attendance this year, it appears that the business is recovering from The Great Recession. There were companies from outside the local area attending, including DreamWorks, Walt Disney Television Animation, Bioware, Pixar, Atomic Cartoons, JibJab and Blue Sky. Nine studios conducted job interviews on campus on April 29. Many of the local studios prefer students to come to their premises for interviews.

I didn't see any TV cameras this year, but the Toronto Star covered the event.

Above, the students set up their presentations for their post-screening meetings with industry people.

Tony Tarantini is behind the podium. He is responsible for organizing industry day and has done so successfully for the last several years. To the right of the podium are Chris Walsh and Chang Dai. Chris was in charge of the 4th year production course this year and Chang is receiving the award for best animation for her film Vigour.

While industry day is fun for professionals who meet up with friends and for returning alumni who are back to scout out talent, it can be a stressful day for the students. Everyone is hoping to attract studio interest, an interview, and best of all, a job. I try to explain to students that rather than look at industry day as the climax of their educations, they need to scale down their expectations and think of it as the first day of their job hunt. No matter how good their films are, the students can't control the state of the larger economy, the schedules of industry projects or the needs of a particular studio. While students feel judged, the quality of their work is only one variable of many.

The other stressful thing is that from kindergarten on, students have been told what to do in order to succeed. Read this chapter, answer this question, get a good grade and get promoted. School is a highly structured environment. Work is, too, but the time between school and the first job is one which has no rules. There are no guarantees for getting a job, there are only strategies and luck. Some students, due to their personalities or their histories, deal well with the uncertainties of the job hunt. Others are less likely to take initiative and can't bridge the gap. It can be one of the tougher transitions in life.

As always, I wish the class of 2011 the best of luck in their quest to find their places in the animation industry.

Update: By coincidence, Leisha-Marie Riddel, a graduate from last year, has written a blog post talking about her transition from student to professional that is definitely worth reading by anyone still in school or has just graduated.

100 Animated Feature Films

2011-04-27T09:18:00.003-04:00

One of the curious things about this book by Andrew Osmond is the lack of an adjective in the title. It's not the "100 Best," or "100 Ground-breaking," or even "100 Favourite." The lack of an adjective is evident in the films selected. Osmond has decidedly mixed reactions to Happy Feet, yet it is included. The introduction states that, "the selection is shaped by [the author's] taste, as the entries make clear, but I hope it is not wholly capricious." Try as I might, I found it hard to discern a point of view in these entries. I value Osmond's inclusion of films from all parts of the world and look forward to seeing some of the films that I'm not familiar with, but this isn't so much a book as a collection of unrelated essays. The only thing that holds them together is that they add up to 100 and that they are all about animated features.

I don't insist on agreeing with an author's point of view, but I value the presence of one. Reading these essays, I occasionally picked up some new information, but whether I liked or disliked a film, there was little that challenged my opinion or made me reconsider a film.

Perhaps the format is to blame. One hundred is a nice, round number, but not necessarily a good choice for animated features. Twenty years ago, it would have been hard to assemble a book of 100 animated features and now, perhaps, it's hard to assemble a book of 100 good ones. In addition, as each essay is forced into a standard length of a page and a half, some films are shortchanged and others are given more attention than they deserve. I enjoyed Osmond's book on Spirited Away, but the short length of these pieces does not provide him with the same opportunities to discuss a film.

No Thanks

2011-04-26T13:21:00.002-04:00

I will not be getting one of these tattoos.

(link via Boing Boing)

The Elements of a Scene: Objective and Motive

2011-04-26T09:46:00.006-04:00

This is the third in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about the concepts of objective and motive.

These two things are the motor behind every actor in every scene. An objective is a concrete thing that a character wants to accomplish. The motive is the reason the objective is important. The objective is the what and the motive is the why.

The example I always give my students is that if the classroom is on fire, our objective is to get out the door. Our motive is to stay alive. In the scene above, Pa Joad's objective is to buy bread. His motive is the well-being of his family members. That same motive is what causes him to ask about the candy and then to purchase some for this children.

The waitress's objective is to sit down next to the truck driver and hear a dirty joke. Her motive is pleasure. The cook's objective is to cook whatever is ordered. His motive is to earn a living so that he can survive. The truck drivers' objective is to eat. Their motive is to keep going so that they can also earn a living and survive.

It's important to understand that a single motive can lead to a variety of objectives. If a character is motivated by the desire to get rich, the character could get a gun and rob people, study hard and become a brain surgeon, marry somebody rich, or buy lottery tickets. Each of these objectives might satisfy the character's motive, but we would judge the character differently based on his or her objective. Someone who works hard and benefits others, such as a brain surgeon, is more admirable than someone who robs people or takes no action beyond buying lottery tickets. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "action is character," meaning that what characters do to satisfy their motives determines who they are.

I often refer to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a good tool regarding motive. If you're writing a character or trying to understand a character that you're performing, the hierarchy is a way of determining a motivation. Those items lower on the pyramid have to be in place before a person can worry about things higher on it. In addition, the things lower on the pyramid are common to every person alive, regardless of location or circumstances. It's one of the reasons that Chaplin's tramp character was so popular with audiences; anyone could understand his need for food, shelter, security (from the police), and love.

The Grapes of Wrath is dominated by the lower three rungs of the pyramid. The family has been evicted from their farm and they have to struggle to find food and shelter. They are victimized by police and by big agriculture and all these things are a threat to the survival of the family. Their motive is to stay alive and together. Their objective is to get to California, where they hope they will find work to allow them to do that.

Preview Trailer - The Cobbler and the Thief Documentary

2011-04-25T09:40:00.003-04:00

I've written before about Kevin Schreck, a student at Bard College in upstate New York. He's working on a documentary on the making of Richard Williams' The Cobbler and the Thief and he used Kickstarter in order to finance the project. It's now complete for his course and the preview trailer is above.

Kevin will continue to refine the film. As I am an investor ($25), I'll be receiving a DVD when it is finished and will be reviewing it here.

(I recognize Greg Duffell at 1:33 in the trailer, but not the other interview subjects. If you know who they are, please identify them in the comments.)

Animation Art Auction

2011-04-22T09:33:00.009-04:00

Pinocchio concept art by Gustav Tenggren

Milt Kahl thumbnails from The Rescuers

Back in the '90s, animation art was all the rage. Sotheby's and Christie's both staged multiple auctions that featured animation art from the 1930s to the present. Animation art is no longer as prominent for a variety of reasons. The current economy doesn't leave people with a lot of extra money to spend but probably more important is the fact that digital films don't generate much art on paper or canvas. The art that is created, being digital, is not one of a kind. It can be copied endlessly with no loss of quality, which destroys the whole concept of owning an original.

Profiles in History will be having an auction featuring much animation art on May 14. Even if you're not in a position to buy, you might be interested in a copy of the catalog, which can be downloaded for free. Hans Perk has been talking about some of this art and publishing better reproductions than are in the catalog. You can see his posts here.

Besides Disney art, the auction also features work from Warner Bros, Fleischer, MGM, Lantz, Mintz, Iwerks, Hanna-Barbera, UPA and Bill Melendez. In addition to drawings, cels and background paintings, there are also posters, maquettes, autographs and correspondence. The back of the catalog contains various memorabilia from live action films but starting at page 325 is material from The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and The Corpse Bride.

The animation portion of this is a very nice collection and the equivalent of many animation art books that cost significant amounts of money. Grab your free copy while you can.

The Elements of a Scene: Personality

2011-04-15T07:58:00.007-04:00

This is the second in a series analyzing the elements in a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about personality and how it affects the scene's action.

The act of buying a loaf of bread is not particularly dramatic; it's not the kind of scene that performers fight to do. Yet, we learn an awful lot about Pa Joad, played by Russell Simpson, through his attempt. First, he is polite. While his conversation is with a waitress, not a profession high on the social scale, he always ends his sentences with "Ma'am." He never raises his voice to her, even when she doesn't cooperate. He is also persistent. While the waitress keeps throwing roadblocks in his way, he doesn't give up. He explains the reasons for his actions and provides as much detail as is necessary to move things forward.

While he is quiet and deferential, he is also proud. When the waitress tries to get 15 cents out of him for the loaf and he can't afford it, he asks her to cut off 10 cents worth. When Bert, the fry cook, tells him to take the whole thing, Pa raises his voice for the only time in the scene. "No sir! We only want 10 cents worth." While he is poor and struggling, he doesn't want charity. He wants to pay his way.

The last thing to say about Pa Joad is that he is altruistic. He is not buying the bread for himself, but for his mother-in-law, who has no teeth. Later in the scene, though we know he's counting every penny, he spends a penny on his children. While he has spent considerable effort in the diner, none of it has been on his own behalf.

The waitress is a very interesting character. She knows the truck drivers by name and sits next to Bill. Her question, "Heard any good etchings lately, Bill?" requires some explanation. In the early 20th century, if a man invited a woman up to see his etchings, it was an invitation for sex. In this scene, screenwriter Nunnally Johnson has used the audience's familiarity with the use of the word "etchings" to have the waitress ask the truck driver if he's heard any dirty jokes lately. The construction is clumsy, though; how can anybody "hear" etchings? Johnson couldn't have her ask about dirty jokes directly as the censors in the Hays office would have cut the line. By using a euphemism, Johnson could count on the adults in the audience picking up the meaning without saying anything explicit that the censors could object to.

The line is important as it marks the waitress as somewhat vulgar and low class.The audience doesn't have high expectations of her and her subsequent actions confirm the audience's opinion. When Pa Joad makes his request, she has multiple reasons why she can't give him what he wants. When Bert says to give Pa the bread, she objects to Bert, too, saying that they'll run out before the bread truck comes. When she gets up to go get the bread around 1:01 in the clip, she is clearly not happy. When she returns with the bread, she's still trying to get full price for it. She is stubborn and clearly doesn't care about Pa Joad's problems.

Only at 1:38 in the clip, after Pa and Bert have tussled, does the waitress give in. Interestingly, she says, "Bert says to take it." She won't take responsibility for what's happening. She only takes ownership of a charitable act when Pa inquires about the candy. When she's called on it by the the truck driver, her response is a surly, "What's it to you?" She doesn't want to appear soft. Only after the truck drivers don't take their change, does she warm to the idea of people helping others.

The truck drivers say nothing while Pa Joad is present. However, director John Ford does keep them in the action. The truck driver near the cash register swallows uncomfortably when he looks at the children's poor attire and their hungry stares at the candy. The drivers exchange knowing looks when the waitress says that the candies are two for a penny. Bill calls the waitress on her charity in an accusing manner, but the drivers are clearly sympathetic to Pa Joad's plight as they endorse the waitress's actions by leaving extra money.

Imagine this scene if these personalities were different. If Pa Joad became frustrated and started yelling, I doubt that the truck drivers would sit passively during the confrontation. If the waitress responded sympathetically to the information about the old lady with no teeth, Pa Joad would have gotten the bread a lot sooner. Given the waitress's attraction to Bill, what would have happened if Pa Joad flattered the waitress and flirted with her? Would she warm up to him or be repulsed by him? How would the scene play out if the fry cook agreed with the waitress that they couldn't spare the bread? How would everyone react if the children were bratty and made demands for the candy, rather than looking at it silently?

If you change the personality of any of these characters, you have a different scene. The actions that occur are the direct result of the characters' personalities. If you're in story or in animation, you've got to know who the characters are if you're going to have a scene that makes sense.

Addendum: For contrast, here's another diner scene with an uncooperative waitress. It's from Five Easy Pieces. Jack Nicholson is as persistent as Pa Joad, but as you'll see, not nearly as polite. These two clips are good examples of the term "character driven." The personalities of the characters determine the outcomes of the scenes.

The Elements of a Scene: Setting

2011-04-10T10:20:00.002-04:00

I'm going to do something different for several entries. What's above is a scene from The Grapes of Wrath, based on the novel by John Steinbeck, screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and directed by John Ford. The scene is only 3 minutes long and not central to the plot of the film. However, it is like a one act play that has all the necessary elements for drama.

I became aware as an animator that a good performance depends very much on the script. Good actors with a bad script are fighting an uphill battle. There are many elements that have to be present in order for a performance to work. I eventually composed a list of these elements that can be summarized with the clumsy acronym spomcorbass, and I want to examine this scene in light of these elements. They are:
Setting
Personality
Objective
Motive
Conflict
Obstacles
Resolution
Business
Arc
Suspense
Surprise

In the past, I didn't pay much attention to setting, but I've come to realize how critical it is. Too many animated films use setting as the basis for the background visuals, but ignore its other aspects. Setting is not only time and place, important though they are, it is also a social hierarchy and the expectations of the characters. Setting isn't merely a geographical location, it is a cultural context as well.

The above scene is set in a roadside diner off Route 66 in New Mexico. Based on the waitress's familiarity with the truck drivers, they are regulars. This scene is all about food and money, and practically every shot has a signboard in the background advertising something to eat and its price. In animation terms, the layouts never let us forget where we are or what the scene is about.

Culture is both invisible and arbitrary. It is invisible to those living within a culture as it is simply the way things are done. It's what's considered normal. However, as soon as a person confronts a different culture, the arbitrariness becomes apparent. There is more than one way for people to organize their lives.

While I'll talk about business in a later post, everybody, with the exception of Pa Joad and his children, is behaving in way consistent with the cultural nature of a roadside diner. The waitress is clearing tables, the cook is cooking and the truck drivers are eating. The invisible expectation is that the customers will only order what's on the menu and that they will pay the stated price. Pa Joad can't fit the culture's expectation of how to behave in a restaurant for economic reasons. He needs groceries, not a prepared item, and he can't afford to pay for the whole item. While this is a working class establishment, his request clearly marks him as someone beneath them. His request breaks the accepted pattern of behaviour associated with the setting, which creates the conflict that drives the scene.

While the scene is not central to the plot, it is central to the film's theme. What's more important, the system or the people within it? If people are suffering, shouldn't the system change? In this scene, there are hints that people can support each other in spite of the system, something that's developed later in the film.

Sheridan Alumni Event

2011-04-02T14:26:00.004-04:00

The Sheridan Alumni Association is holding a reception and screening on Wednesday, April 6 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King Street West in Toronto. There is a reception with food and drink starting at 6 p.m, followed by a screening of The Best of the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2010 and Sheridan student films that have won awards from the Toronto International Film Festival. That screening starts at 7 p.m.

Tickets for the event can be purchased at the Lightbox or online for $20. You have to RSVP in advance for the reception, and details for that can be found on this page.

Read This Letter

2011-03-28T11:52:00.003-04:00

"My daughter Laura and I, as well as the Shuster estate, have done nothing more than exercise our rights under the Copyright Act. Yet, your company has chosen to sue us and our long-time attorney for protecting our rights."

Nikki Finke has published a letter from the late Joanne Siegel to Jeffrey Bewkes, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner, Inc.

The Siegel estate has been fighting to recapture their share of the copyright to Superman. Under U.S.copyright law, works sold to companies can be recovered by the creators at specified periods. There is no question that Superman was not a work for hire. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created it independently and tried selling it for years before it was bought by what was to become DC comics, now owned by Time Warner.

I've spent a fair amount of time on this blog warning creators about losing their rights. Anyone who has an idea that they hope to bring to the public needs to read this letter. Paste a copy of it wherever you do your creative work to remind you that it's possible to create a billion dollar property and still have to fight for what's legally yours.

"As for this letter, the purpose is three-fold:

"To protest harassment of us that will gain you nothing but bad blood and a continued fight.

"To protest harassment of our attorney by falsely accusing him of improper conduct in an attempt to deprive us of legal counsel.

"To make you aware that in reality this is a business matter and that continuing with litigation for many more years will only benefit your attorneys.

"This is not just another case. The public and press are interested in Superman and us and are aware of our and your litigations.

"The solution to saving time, trouble, and expense is a change of viewpoint. Laura and I are legally owed our share of Superman profits since 1999. By paying the owed bill in full, as you pay other business bills, it would be handled as a business matter, instead of a lawsuit going into its 5th year."

Walt Kelly Animation Drawing

2011-03-27T10:39:00.003-04:00

Click to enlarge.

I haven't bought much original artwork in recent years, but I couldn't resist this drawing that I purchased on eBay recently. It's from the film We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us, made by Walt and Selby Kelly.

Walt Kelly, creator of the Pogo comic strip, was reportedly unhappy with the TV special made of the strip, The Pogo Special Birthday Special, which was directed by Chuck Jones. Following that, Kelly and his wife Selby decided to make an animated film on their own. Both of them had worked at Disney on the pre-war features and Selby had continued to work in animation after Walt left it to work in comic books and strips.

The film was to be a half hour, but it ended up being only 15 minutes or so. It also suffered from poor distribution, never playing TV and rarely screening anywhere. VHS copies were for sale several years ago, though I have no idea if that offer is still good.

The drawing above is of the pig villain in Kelly's film, a polluter who is happy to point out that he is no more guilty than those who think of themselves as innocent. Kelly's environmental view was that we were all responsible, not just the large companies who were known to pollute.

The drawing above is typical of Kelly's work in many ways. It is dimensional and Kelly's line varies its thickness to sculpt the forms of the character. The face is expressive; Kelly was a master of the pose that communicates.

I'm looking forward to having this drawing framed.

Mars Needs Box Office

2011-03-15T07:08:00.003-04:00

The New York Times analyzes the failure of Mars Needs Moms:

“Mars Needs Moms” may lead to the end for the Zemeckis style of motion-capture filmmaking, which has proven increasingly unpopular with audiences. Unlike the digital animation used by Pixar, in which movies are created entirely by computer, the Zemeckis technique requires actors to perform on bare sets while wearing uniforms outfitted with sensors to record their movements. Those movements are then transferred into a digital model that computer animators use to create a movie.

Critics and audiences alike, with audiences voicing their opinions on Twitter, blogs and other social media, complained that the Zemeckis technique can result in character facial expressions that look unnatural. Another common criticism is that Mr. Zemeckis focuses so much on technological wizardry that he neglects storytelling.

Tatsumi Trailer

2011-03-13T11:13:00.003-04:00

The trailer for the animated feature based on the work of manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi can be seen here.

The Benefits of Ownership

2011-03-13T10:12:00.005-04:00

Two comics, two creators, two different outcomes.

A couple of things popped up this week which show, by contrast, the benefits of ownership.

Jeff Smith is a former animator who is the creator of Bone and RASL. Bone began in the '90s as a self-published comic book distributed to comics shops. Since then, Smith has collected the comics in a series of graphic novels and a one volume edition. Scholastic Books reprinted the series in colour and later this year, there will be a one volume colour edition.

Smith had a movie deal with Nickelodeon for Bone, but Nickelodeon dragged things out Smith and Nickelodeon parted company. Later, Smith made a deal for Bone with Warner Bros. The experience with Nickelodeon made Smith more demanding, and Warner Bros. agreed to his terms.

Now, Smith's latest comics series RASL has also been sold to Hollywood.

The week, the depositions in the copyright termination case brought by the Jack Kirby estate against Marvel were made public. The case turns on whether Kirby's work was at the direction of the company or if Kirby was a creator who sold his work to Marvel. The waters are muddy as the legal arrangements in the comic book business in the 1960s were shockingly casual.

Regardless of the legal decision and one's own opinion, Kirby is definitely the designer of The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Thor, Ant Man, Nick Fury, The X-Men, and the many villains and supporting characters who filled the stories that he drew for these characters.

Kirby was way more prolific than Jeff Smith in terms of the number of his creations and the number of pages he drew. Yet Smith is a millionaire and Kirby never received a nickel beyond what he was paid for each individual page.

Because Smith owns Bone, he has been able to repackage it and profit from it each time. He's been able to merchandise it and license it to other media. He will be able to do the same with RASL and will be an executive producer of the film.

Kirby owned nothing of what he created at Marvel, unless the termination of copyright suit determines otherwise. Just using the Hulk as an example, the work has been reprinted countless times, been an animated TV series, a live action TV series, two feature films and countless toys, posters, etc. Kirby was not compensated for any of this.

As much as we love animation, it is a team sport. It takes a lot of people and a lot of money to make a film. That leaves animation creators pitching their ideas to corporations in order to get their ideas funded, and the corporations routinely take ownership. A first-time creator has no leverage to gain a percentage of the profits, merchandising or to reserve certain rights. In this regard, animation creators resemble Jack Kirby more than they resemble Jeff Smith.

However, if you can establish ownership of your property and demonstrate that it has an audience, you can continue to control and to profit from your work. That probably means working in a medium other than animation to start with, but given Hollywood's current mindset about sequels and pre-sold properties, it's probably more likely you'll get an animated film made by creating something outside animation than inside it.

Jeff Smith could take advantage of different economic circumstances in the comic book field in the '90s than Jack Kirby had in the 1960s. And with all due respect to Kirby, Smith has a better head for business than Kirby ever had. That's the point. I'd be hard pressed to name anyone who worked in popular culture in the 20th century who was more fertile or prolific than Jack Kirby. Smith, by comparison, is a lightweight. But because Smith maintained ownership of his work, he maintained more control of it and made more money from it than Jack Kirby. That's the benefit of ownership.

Børge Ring's New Website

2011-03-13T10:06:00.003-04:00

As a 90th birthday gift, Børge Ring's children have created a website for him. You can watch his independent films there and leave him a message. Eventually, the site will include links to articles about Børge and information about his musical career.

Toronto's Starz Animation Studio Sold

2011-03-04T07:22:00.004-05:00

The Winnipeg Free Press is reporting that Starz Animation has been sold to a group of investors headed by marketing executive J. Thomas Murray and executive producer Steven B. Hecht. Starz LLC, the current owners, will continue to own a minority stake.

Starz latest project is Gnomeo and Juliet, which has grossed more than $74 million and is still showing in theatres.

The studio was founded by Dan Krech and was known for years as DKP. It was sold to American telecom company IDT, which made the cgi feature Everyone's Hero in the facility. IDT abandoned the animation business and sold the studio to Starz LLC. The Toronto studio is also responsible for the feature length version of Shane Acker's 9.

(Thanks to Paul Teolis.)

False Comparisons

2011-02-27T09:25:00.005-05:00

Michael Barrier was interviewed in the Huffington Post for an article entitled "Animated Man: Cartoon Expert Michael Barrier Decries Pixar, Computers." This article already has multiple comments about Barrier's views and the article was linked to on Cartoon Brew, where there are yet more comments.

Two quotes caught my eye.

"What I'd call the direct connection between the animator and the character that you have when the animator is drawing the character with a pencil on a sheet of paper, it simply doesn't have an equivalent as far as I'm aware, or if it has an equivalent, it's much harder to establish."

I've already attempted to debunk this based on the techniques of both drawn and computer animation. My opinion hasn't changed. It's not the technique, it's how the production is organized. Should a cgi feature want a strong connection between animator and character, there is no technical reason why it couldn't be accomplished.

There are other reasons, salaries being one, that are incentives to prevent it. The more animators remain anonymous and the less distinctive their work, the harder it will be for an animator to demand a higher wage. As it is unlikely that an animator's name will ever increase the box office gross the same way a star voice does, why create star animators who will only drive up the budget?

The other quote is this one:

"If you look back, we've had computer animated features for 16 years going back to 'Toy Story,' and we've had computer animated characters before that, I have not seen the kind of evolution of those characters anything like the extremely compressed and dramatic evolution of the hand drawn characters in the 30s. When you think about how Disney went from 'Steamboat Willie' in 1928 to 'Snow White' less than ten years later, I think that's an extremely compressed [growth] that I don't think computer animation has nearly approached. What you have instead in computer animation is a continuing elaboration on texture and surfaces and three dimensional space without anything comparable for characters."

I am at a loss to understand why the development of one medium is being measured against the development of another. It assumes that both media exist in a vacuum, not part of larger forces such as the Hollywood industrial model of the time, the availability of media to the public, the prevailing popular culture and the world economy. The conditions that existed when Walt Disney grew from Steamboat Willie to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are wholly different than those that exist today.

Let's examine what Walt Disney actually did. If you look at the Oswald cartoons, made immediately before Steamboat Willie, you see films that are ten or more years behind the times compared to live action films. The films are shorts instead of features and at the level of story, characterization and acting, they are not as accomplished as Chaplin's The Immigrant of 1917. Compare the Oswalds to the best live action of the time (The Big Parade, The General, The Gold Rush, Sunrise, Seventh Heaven, The Crowd, Underworld, etc.) and you see a medium that cannot compete as an equal. Except for its use of sound, Steamboat Willie was no better.

What Disney was able to do in ten years was bring animation up to the level of live action films. Snow White and the films that followed were taken as seriously by film professionals, critics and audiences as the live action films of the time.

While computer animation struggled mightily against its technical limitations in the '80s and '90s (and I know because I was there), the advances made by Disney were taken for granted. The techniques developed at the studio were codified to the point where they could be taught in a classroom to 18 year olds at Cal Arts, including John Lasseter, and put between book covers by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Computer animation's problem wasn't knowing what was needed, which was often the case in the '30s, it was figuring out how to make characters flexible enough via software. Which is to say that computer animation didn't start as crudely as Disney animation did and had less far to go to get up to the level of live action films.

And the state of live action films is a key point. Disney did not exceed the expectations of what a live action film was supposed to be in his time and computer animation is not exceeding it today. I can make an economic and cultural argument that computer animation is more successful than Walt Disney ever was in that cgi films have been nominated for Best Picture, are more numerous and have been more profitable on a consistent basis than the features Disney made himself.

You can't criticize computer animation without looking at the bigger picture. This article in GQ, entitled "The Day the Movies Died," is subtitled "No, Hollywood films aren't going to get better anytime soon." Computer animated films exist in the same economic structure and cultural zeitgeist as live action films and aren't going to escape the problems that plague the larger industry.

I'm not defending the current state of computer animated features. I just saw a preview of Rango, directed by Gore Verbinski, and while the people at ILM have done a great job on the technical side, the film itself is thoroughly mediocre. It's emotional tone is all over the map; sometimes it's a parody and sometimes it wants to be taken seriously. Its references to other films only reminded me that it's inferior to the films it's quoting. And it is a perfect example of Barrier's observation that "computer animation is a continuing elaboration on texture and surfaces and three dimensional space without anything comparable for characters."

But I insist that it's not the medium. It's the structure of Hollywood and its economic model and it's what the public expects from movies. If computer animation sucks (and it often does), there are many more reasons than technology that are the cause. Furthermore, I don't think comparing it to Disney in the '30s is a valid or useful comparison.

Jones and Freleng Interviewed in 1980

2011-02-24T21:30:00.005-05:00

Chuck Jones (top) and Friz Freleng. That's a Blackwing pencil in Jones' hands and he spends the interview playing with it. I don't know where the Jones interview was shot, but Freleng's is in his office at DePatie Freleng. I met Freleng there in 1978.

For years, Elwy Yost hosted a show called Saturday Night at the Movies on TV Ontario. He would run classic films and TVO would send him to Hollywood once a year to film interviews that related to the films he scheduled. In 1980, he interviewed Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng.

Elwy was very much a fan, and not a particularly informed one. His questions were often naive and his reactions were overly enthusiastic. However, he did speak to a great many important Hollywood figures and was genuinely interested in their careers.

I have these interviews on VHS somewhere and remember being disappointed by how superficial they were. If I recall correctly, you could see Freleng's patience getting a little thin at times. However, how many on camera interviews are there with Freleng? Jones certainly received a lot of coverage in those days and had his stories down pat, but it's still nice to see and hear him again.

Michael Barrier has recently printed an interview with Warner Bros. director Robert McKimson from 1971. That's essential reading and frankly way better than Yost's interviews. If you hunger for more Warner directors looking back, though, you can watch Yost's interviews with Jones and Freleng here.

Scott Caple Retrospective

2011-02-23T19:25:00.006-05:00

Scott Caple is having a show of his work at the Toronto Cartoonist Workshop, 486 College Street, just west of Bathurst, in Toronto. The opening is Friday, Feb. 25 from 7 to 11 p.m.

Scott is a 30 year veteran of the business, having done effects work on Raiders of the Lost Ark and layout and design for films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Incredibles. He's worked for Nelvana, Industrial Light and Magic, Don Bluth, Disney and Pixar and has also done designs for videogames and book illustrations. For the last several years, Scott has been teaching layout at Sheridan College, where he also mentors 4th year students in the making of their films.

While the art will be up for awhile, it is in the regular classroom space of the workshop. As such, the retrospective doesn't really have regular hours. Scott tells me that he'll try and set up an additional time when the art can be viewed for those who can't make it on Friday.