Pixar in Vancouver Continued or The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

I've been quite surprised by the absolute glee that has resulted from the announcement that Pixar will be opening a studio in Vancouver. It is, of course, a good thing. However, I hope that the people celebrating are not blinded by the Pixar dust in their eyes. It is a good thing, but not a great thing. There are limitations relating to Disney, Pixar, general corporate behaviour and the nature of Canadian industry.

The good things are fairly straightforward. It's always good when there's an increase in employment opportunities, especially in the current economy. There will undoubtedly be educational benefits. Pixar will bring their rigs, their pipeline and their software tools and more people will have the opportunity to use them. While they are proprietary, the nature of software is such that once something exists, it is relatively easy to imitate. Just as Disney knowledge spread into the larger animation industry at the time of the 1941 strike, Pixar's approach will spread into Canada.

The Pixar name will enhance people's resumes and job opportunities. A commenter in the previous post seemed to believe I was endorsing Pixar by praising them "for being THE place." I was not praising them so much as pointing out a Canadian reality.

To date, Canada has no animation studios that can compete with Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, etc. Canadian studios have yet to produce an animated feature that grossed $100 million or attracted the same kind of critical attention. Furthermore, those features that have come out of Canada are based on scripts and stories that originated outside the country (Pinocchio 3000, The Wild, Everyone's Hero, 9, etc.) so even if any of those films had done well at the box office, it would have been a mixed endorsement of Canadian studios at best.

Canadian studios are aware of this. Therefore, when they see a resume with a big name studio on it, they see it as a mark of excellence. A studio better than a Canadian studio has seen fit to hire this person, therefore, they have no reason to question the person's skills. This attitude is not unique to Canadian animation. Many people go to Harvard for the opportunity to have it on their resume and many employers are happy to welcome Harvard graduates.

This does not mean that all graduates of Harvard or all former big studio employees are uniformly excellent. It also doesn't mean that people who came from other places are unworthy. However, when the hiring is being done by someone who is unqualified to judge someone's skills -- and that person might be from Human Resources or be a producer -- or if a company is in a hurry to fill a position, the right name on a resume is a shortcut to a solution. This is not fair, but it is a fact of life. Those people who work at Pixar Vancouver will be taken more seriously than those who work at other Canadian studios.

The last bit of good news will be determined by the quality of films that come out of Pixar Vancouver. If they are good, then the people who work on them will have the pride and pleasure of doing good work in an industry where that is rarer than it should be.

Now, on to the bad. The following quote comes from an email list I'm on. The author is a Pixar animator who has given me permission to reprint the quote but has asked to remain anonymous.

There are some factual errors in this article (big surprise). The Vancouver studio will only be producing ancillary work with legacy characters, like Cars and Toy Story. All the stuff that Pixar doesn't have the time or money to do to keep the franchises alive. The original shorts and DVD shorts will still be done in Emeryville. As I understand it, Pixar will still generate all the stories for the ancillary work, and the Vancouver studio will be strictly for production.

In other words, Pixar Vancouver is for outsourcing. It will be owned by Disney and not a service facility bidding on work, but will still be treated like a subcontractor. In essence, it will do the work that Pixar doesn't consider important enough to bother with itself. The article referenced above also states "John Lasseter, chief creative officer at both Pixar and Disney Animation, is not expected to spend much time at the Vancouver studio." That's because his time is too valuable to waste on what will be produced in Vancouver. I don't doubt that Lasseter will make an early appearance to give the staff a pep talk about what great work they're going to produce, but with the budgets, concepts and stories being worked out in Emeryville, Lasseter has no need to spend time in Vancouver. Should Vancouver not produce sufficiently good work, the Vancouver managers will be called to account in Emeryville. Lasseter's appearances in Vancouver will be more for morale and publicity purposes than for making creative or managerial decisions.

Now we get to the ugly, and I'm sorry to say that it relates more to Canada than it does to Pixar. While I've lived in Canada since 1980, I was born and raised in New York City. As a result, I've got a dual perspective on Canada. There is much about this country that I love; I feel more comfortable politically here than I did in the U.S. I value ethnic and cultural diversity and living in Toronto I am surrounded by people from all around the world.

However, Canada suffers from two major problems. The first is colonialism and the second is a small population. Canada never fought for its independence and has historically seen itself as a junior partner to a larger, protector nation. Canada entered World War II in 1939 when the British entered the war, even though Canada itself was not attacked. Since the war, Canada has seen itself as depending on the economic and defense largesse of the U.S. While Canada has not marched in lockstep with the U.S. (Viet Nam and Iraq being two examples), no political decision is ever made in Ottawa without first thinking about U.S. reaction. I don't doubt that if the U.S. was not so vehement about its war on drugs that marijuana would be legal in Canada.

Canada's population is 1/10 the size of the U.S. population. It is easier for U.S. companies to expand their products or services by 10% to take advantage of the Canadian market than it is for a Canadian company to grow by 1000% to compete in the U.S. market. Besides logistical problems, there is also the problem of securing the necessary capital.

Canada's economy can be roughly divided into three parts: natural resources, branch plants and protected industries (primarily culture and communications). The presence of resources is just a matter of luck. Because Canadian companies have difficulty competing with American companies 10 times their size, it has been easier to open branch plants of American companies than to create Canadian companies. For instance, many countries have their own car companies. The U.S., Japan, Korea, England, Germany, Italy, etc. all have cars identified with their countries. Canada has many auto manufacturing plants, but there is no Canadian car.

Entertainment falls in the area of protected industries and this is an area of particular annoyance to me. Canadians don't create markets. They wait until someone else creates a viable market and then Canadians go to the government and ask for protection in order to participate in the market. It's easy for American studios to dump TV shows in Canada for less money than it costs Canadians to create original programming. For the Americans, the money is pure gravy. On the face of it, it makes sense that the government should carve out a percentage of TV air time for Canadian programs and then figure out a way to fund them.

The danger of not doing this can be seen in the film industry. The U.S. walked into Canada in the 1920's and owned all the movie theaters. They treated Canada as part of the U.S. domestic market and the Canadian box office is still considered part of the U.S. domestic gross. Furthermore, on average only 3% of screen time in Canada is devoted to Canadian films. As low as that number seems, it's actually lower because the percentage is higher in Quebec due to language differences. So in English speaking Canada, the percentage of Canadian films is actually less than 3%. The government, not wanting this pattern to repeat in other aspects of popular culture, instituted various quotas and then fought to have culture exempt from the free trade agreement and it's successor, NAFTA.

While this works in theory, the reality is another story. What happens is that the companies who are protected under the quota spend more time working the system than creating work that would allow them to compete. As in most democracies, profitable companies make political contributions to protect their interests and are happy to hire former government officials to lobby for them at salaries higher than those people made in government. So while Canadian television has benefited from government intervention in ways that Canadian film has not, it has not done a significantly better job of creating popular work because the companies have been too busy protecting their profits.

Name a Canadian animated character who is a worldwide success. If you managed to name one (and I'd be surprised if you could), I'll bet that it was based on a children's book and was not an original character. The branch plant mentality combined with government protectionism has killed risk-taking in Canada and creative Canadians know this. That's why so many of them head to the U.S.

The problem is not the talent, the problem is the management. I can personally name dozens of Canadians who have worked at ILM, PDI, Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, etc. and have done well at those studios. The U.S. welcomes people with ability while Canada is content to let them leave. There are no Canadian animation managements with the guts, brains and resources to create original material that entertains a worldwide audience.

That's why when a company like Pixar opens in Canada, people are so gleeful. Maybe here is an opportunity to go beyond the run of the mill Canadian product. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. What comes out of Pixar Vancouver is going to be the equivalent of the direct-to-DVD Tinkerbell features. Those films make money for Disney, but nobody takes them seriously. They are there to bolster the bottom line, not to win awards, not to inspire critical essays, and are only known by parents with young daughters. With all due respect to the people who work on them, they are conceived as filler and they fulfill their corporate duty.

People in Vancouver have a right to be happy over Pixar's arrival, but keep it in perspective. The problems of Canadian animation (and entertainment generally) are still there and still awaiting solutions. When Canada produces its own Aardman or Ghibli, then no one will be cheering louder than me.

Pixar in Vancouver

The Vancouver Sun is reporting that Pixar will be opening a studio in Vancouver.

The studio will hire 75 to 100 people, most of them Canadians, and will make all of Pixar’s three-dimensional, computer-animated short films, which usually run three to five minutes. All Pixar theatrical features will continue to be made at its main studio in Emeryville, Calif., which employs almost 900.

This is not the first time that Disney (which owns Pixar) has set up in Canada. Earlier, Disney opened two studios, one in Vancouver and one in Toronto, to produce direct to DVD sequels. Those studios were both closed during the period when Disney was shedding studios (in Florida, Japan, France and Australia) at a dizzying pace.

At present, anything that increases employment opportunities is a good thing. However, past experience shows that satellite studios tend to stay satellites. Rather than regard the satellites as minor league teams, where talent is developed and then moved up to the majors, the satellites are walled-off as facilities for lower budget work. Disney already has two studios turning out cgi features and there's no shortage of cgi family films. Furthermore, with rumours that John Lasseter is treating Pixar's studio more favorably than Disney's, it's unlikely that a Vancouver studio will be allowed to compete on a level playing field.

The reason for the new studio is convenience and cost. Vancouver is fortunate to be located in Pixar's time zone, but the other incentives are the cheaper Canadian dollar and various tax incentives.

No doubt that the people hired will have opportunities to learn techniques and sharpen their skills. They'll also have a credit that will improve their future job prospects. However, no one should apply to the Vancouver studio with the hope that it will be doing features. Where many artists see Pixar as their ultimate destination, Vancouver, at best, will be a way station.

(See further commentary by me here.)

Sheridan College Industry Day 2009 Part 2

Courtesy of student Frank Macchia, who uploaded it, here's a TV news report from CHCH in Hamilton on Sheridan's industry day. Laura Friesen and Frank are featured as students. Other people visible include instructors Scott Caple and Jim Caswell (1:11-1:15), instructor Tony Tarantini, and student Brent Dienst (1:34).

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse Part 1

Watch Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Mouse - Tom and Jerry in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com






This cartoon is available on the DVD Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Volume 2. Mark Kausler's animator identifications come from his blog.

Garage Sale

For those of you in the Toronto area, Steve Schnier is having a garage sale on May 9 that includes some animation equipment. Details here.

Sheridan College Industry Day 2009

Once again, it's industry day. The work of graduating students is screened for people who are looking for talent. Below is a collection of photos from today.

Robin King, founder of Sheridan's cgi program and currently a consultant.

Students and guests inside the cgi lab.

Frank Macchia (left) and Mark Sperber prepare to receive the industry.

Left to right: Animator Stephen Barnes, John Mariella of CORE and independent producer Doug Masters.

Sheridan alumnus Marceline Gagnon-tanguay, currently at Blue Sky.

Two aerial views of the learning commons, where the students met the industry.

Three excellent animators I've had the pleasure of teaching. From left to right: Jason Teeuwisson, Brock Gallagher and Kelly Turnbull.

Naz Ghodrati-azadi's film is called Gobbled. She'll be moving to Los Angeles this summer, so west coast studios should keep an eye out for this talented animator.

Tapan Gandhi's film is called The Ballad of Amelia von Earl.

Tracy Qiu's film is called Lobster Boy.

Industry Day coordinator Tony Tarantini presents an award to Kayla McIlwaine for her film A Princess Story.

Mark Simon (left), coordinator of the post-graduate cgi program, presents an award to Inigo Ahedo for his film Smores.

A panel of industry professionals giving advice to the students. From left: Tom Knott (formerly of Laika, Warner Bros. and the Ottawa Animation Festival), Evan Spiridellis of JibJab, Doug Masters (formerly with CORE and currently an independent producer) and industry day coordinator Tony Tarantini.

What's above is only a fraction of what transpired. More than 4 hours of student films were screened.

I will be screening a selection of this year's films at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto on Tuesday, June 9 at 7 p.m. and again on Wednesday June 10 at 9:30. Admission will be $5 and it's open to the public. I'll post more about this screening as it approaches.

If you were at industry day and have any thoughts about the films or the days events, please leave a comment.

Sir Ken Robinson

"At the heart of creativity is a willingness to take risks, a willingness to experiment, a willingness to explore avenues that don't go anywhere and a willingness to be wrong. And if you're living in a culture of standardized testing, high-stakes funding, where mistakes are not tolerated and seen as a sign of mental infirmity, then you're breeding a contradiction right at the heart of the system."

"The real innovation and creativity always comes from people crossing borders, crossing boundaries, thinking differently and very often through the interaction of disciplines through applying ideas from one field into another field. The real vitality of intelligence and creative thinking is in making connections, not from keeping everything separate."

The above quotes come from an interview with Sir Ken Robinson in The Globe and Mail. I first became aware of Sir Ken Robinson from the TED video that is embedded below. The Globe and Mail has a pair of videos that I can't embed, but you can find them here and here.

Robinson comes off as much as a stand-up comedian as someone interested in reforming education. While he is entertaining to watch, he also has important things to say about arts education and those things also apply to the animation industry. The first quote above speaks directly to our need to fail faster and cheaper. As it is impossible to succeed every time, failure must be tolerated as the price of innovation. As failure is inevitable, the faster and more cheaply we can fail, the more quickly we can find out what works and we'll have more resources left to support it.

The second quote is not only true of education, it is also true of animation production. Thanks to J.R. Bray and Walt Disney, the animation business was built to resemble a Ford assembly line. Bray was satisfied with being the Model T of animation, but Disney himself was able to make connections between his various departments. Because he valued innovation, the various departments competed to impress him. He was blessed with a steady stream of new ideas and techniques during the 1930's and he chose what suited his vision.

As good as Disney's results were, I don't think the system was perfect and without someone of Disney's calibre at the top, the product drifts back towards the Model T. Certainly that's the case in TV animation. The need to cross boundaries is made more difficult by outsourcing, where there are economic and geographic walls between departments.

Not everyone is equally good at everything. We naturally fall into specialization. But when the system limits collaboration and feedback, we are throwing away opportunities.

Maurice Noble's Biography

It's taken me a while to get to Stepping Into the Picture: Cartoon Designer Maurice Noble by Robert J. McKinnon. It is slightly less than one third of a good book and I'll explain what I mean.

What's here is a fairly straightforward biography of Maurice Noble, the designer whose most well-known work was for the Chuck Jones unit at Warner Bros. The book is drawn from interviews with Noble and his co-workers and to the extent that it fills in the details of Noble's life, it is mostly good. It covers Noble's childhood, education and professional jobs, including Disney, Warner Bros, John Sutherland Productions and MGM, in addition to providing details about Noble's personal life. The information about the physical set-up of Warner Bros. and the personal dynamics of the Jones unit are the best things in the book.

However, the writing sometimes stumbles. There is a story about architectural drawings done by Noble while a student at Chouinard. The drawings vanished and the book initially suggests that they were sold and used in the design of Radio City Music Hall before backpedaling to say that "the likelihood that the designer of Radio City, Donald Deskey, was in any way influenced by Maurice's designs was highly improbable" [italics in original]. If that is the case, why suggest otherwise?

The author quotes Noble criticizing Picasso. "I've run into people in the art 'game' who are fairly well known, but they become so egotistical about what they've done that it suddenly shows in their work. They do the same thing over and over again because that's their success. I think one of the traps that Picasso fell into was an 'ego trip.'" However there is apparently a double standard operating in the book should Noble be criticized. "I happened to mention [to Chuck Jones] how upset Maurice had been made by some negative comments (regarding his work with Chuck) written in a then recently published book by a well-known animation historian (perhaps the only historian who has seen fit to disparage Noble's contributions to Jones's films). When Chuck discovered how disturbed Maurice had been by what the author had written, he said, "He [the author] upset Maurice? That bastard!"" [Italics in original.]

This brings me to the missing two thirds of the book. While there are several pages of colour reproductions, the size and format of this book don't allow for Noble's work to be shown at its best. A biography of a designer that barely reproduces his designs is inadequate.

The other third missing is evaluation and analysis. As the first biography of Maurice Noble, it is the author's obligation to make a case for Noble's work. While animation professionals and fans will know Noble's name, those unfamiliar with the films need to know why Noble is worthy of attention. While McKinnon quotes Noble on his design approach, there is no evaluation of Noble's cartoons. Are all the films that Noble designed equally good? If not, which are the better ones and why? Where and when did Noble stumble? McKinnon is not an artist and not enough of an art critic to write about Noble's work with sufficient depth.

I would recommend this book to those wanting to know more about Noble as a person and the conditions he worked under, but anyone interested in Noble's designs is better off looking at his cartoons.

The Art of the Title Sequence

Here's an interesting site that specializes in title sequences for both animated and live action films and TV shows. The animated films include The Incredibles, Kung Fu Panda, Aeon Flux (pictured above), Cowboy Bebop and Tekkonkinkreet. Live films include To Kill a Mockingbird, Casino Royale, Natural Born Killers, Vertigo, Iron Man, etc.

There's lots more at the site, so if you have an interest in title design and the various ways titles are used (for backstory, for setting mood, etc.) it's worth a visit.

(Link via Leonard Maltin.)

Charming

One of the interesting things about the web is that you can track which sites visitors to your site have come from. The majority of visitors here either come from animation sites that I'm familiar with or from Google searches of various types. Occasionally, I discover an animation site that is new to me.

Txesco is a Spanish animator who worked on the animation and direction of Pocoyo, a pre-school cgi series that is probably my favorite cgi ever done for television. I didn't know his involvement when I visited Txesco's site, but having seen his work, it makes total sense.

What I first saw was this piece of musical animation. There's no word to describe it except charming. In many ways, it is dead simple. The design is spare but elegant. The music is public domain and the musical arrangement is anything but fancy. The movement is not overly complex, but it does everything that good animation is supposed to do. The shapes change. That's one of the most basic things required in animation, but it's regularly forgotten. There is beautiful contrast in the timing; slow movements are placed against faster movements. Most of all, it is playful; the character's attitudes, poses and motions are fun to watch. The movement itself is entertaining.

Here's some other animation by Txesco that is also fun.

What I love about this work, and Pocoyo, is the back-to-basics approach. It is well designed, but the design doesn't overwhelm the motion as happens in so much TV work. The lack of dialogue prevents speech from being used as a crutch. This work relies on motion to entertain, and that is the heart of animation.

So much animation, especially on TV, is dull and literal. It truly is what Chuck Jones labeled it decades ago: illustrated radio. It doesn't have to be that way and artists like Txesco prove it by showing us a better way to do things.

Fail Faster and Cheaper

"The main problem, as I see it, is that over seven years of development, there was a whole lot of money spent. I’d guess somewhere around half a million. In the end, there is just one eleven-minute pilot that is not aired. Consequently, the network is very, very cautious and slow with the production of each pilot. Also, the eleven minute pilot doesn’t really tell much more about the show than, say, an eleven minute animatic with one minute of animation that could be completed for one-tenth the cost."

-Fran Krause

Amid Amidi of Cartoon Brew has an interview with Will and Fran Krause about their experiences pitching and producing a pilot for the Cartoon Network. As you can see from the above quote, the process went on for a very long time and cost a lot of money. In the end, the pilot didn't become a series.

While everyone wants success, whether it's defined as money, popularity or quality, the hard truth is that most things fail. So long as the audience has choices, it will migrate to what it enjoys, and abandon everything else. While no one courts failure intentionally, it does have one undeniable benefit: it proves that something doesn't work.

Both the Krause brothers and Cartoon Network learned this but at much too high a cost. The resources spent on the pilot could have used to make several pilots or a couple of half hour specials. The Krause brothers retain the rights to the characters, but there's a lien against them. Anyone interested in picking up these characters has to reimburse Cartoon Network for the money it has already spent. Therefore, the odds of this happening are low.

This gets back to the idea of efficiency that I talked about here. In industry, where time is money, there is a benefit to rapid prototyping -- taking an idea and putting it into tangible form as quickly as possible. The next step is to test the prototype and see if it is viable. In other words, you want to fail quickly and cheaply. If the only benefit of a failure is to discover that an idea doesn't work, the less time and money you spend on a failure, the smaller your loss. Furthermore, the less you spend on one idea, the more money you have left to spend on another. Success is often a question of percentages. The more ideas you can afford to test, the more you learn and the more likely you are to finally succeed. Too many enterprises fail because they run out of money before they find an audience.

The answer to all this is to fail faster and cheaper. Why do an 11 minute pilot? While that's the format that Cartoon Network ultimately wanted, why not do 30 second pilots and put them on the web? Far more ideas could be tested for the money spent on an 11 minute pilot and the network could have tangible feedback in terms of hits and comments from a real audience, not executives or focus groups. Once an idea showed promise, then money could be spent to expand it to an 11 minute pilot and the odds of success would be much greater.

That wouldn't eliminate the network bureaucracy, though, which is why I still think that artists shouldn't bother pitching at all, unless it's directly to the audience. Costs for 30 second pilots can be low enough that they can be supported independently, though an individual can't afford as many as a larger business can. However, if the idea clicks, everything changes. Paul Graham, a software engineer and venture capitalist has written:

"Someone running a startup is always calculating in the back of their mind how much "runway" they have—how long they have till the money in the bank runs out and they either have to be profitable, raise more money, or go out of business. Once you cross the threshold of profitability, however low, your runway becomes infinite. It's a qualitative change, like the stars turning into lines and disappearing when the Enterprise accelerates to warp speed. Once you're profitable you don't need investors' money. And because Internet startups have become so cheap to run, the threshold of profitability can be trivially low. Which means many Internet startups don't need VC-scale investments anymore. For many startups, VC funding has, in the language of VCs, gone from a must-have to a nice-to-have."

What Cartoon Network, and other big media companies, bring to the table is money. It used to be money and distribution, but now distribution is free thanks to the web. If artists can keep their costs low enough, they no longer need Cartoon Network for money plus they get to own their creations. Artists will still fail, but if they can fail faster and cheaper than media companies, they have better odds for success.

Commerce vs. Art

There's an interesting article in the NY Times about how Wall Street is afraid that Pixar's next release, Up, will not meet their financial expectations. Disney, to it's credit, is defending the film's prospects. The article contains some interesting material on box office grosses and merchandising revenue.

Pixar’s last two films, “Wall-E” and “Ratatouille,” have been the studio’s two worst performers, delivering sales of $224 million and $216 million respectively, according to Box Office Mojo, a tracking service. Attendance for Pixar films has also dropped sharply over the years, suggesting that ticket price inflation helped prop up overall sales for “Wall-E” and “Ratatouille.”

Retailers, meanwhile, see slim merchandising possibilities for “Up.” Indeed, the film seems likely to generate less licensing revenue than “Ratatouille,” until now the weakest Pixar entry in this area. (“Cars” wears the merchandising crown, with sales of more than $5 billion.)

It appears that Up will be the last original Pixar feature for at least 3 years, with Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 in line as the next releases.

Peering Through the Fog

(Updated with new links at the bottom.)

I've been reading a lot of interesting books in the last year, all of them about the economic shift that's resulting from the web. This shift started before the economic downturn, but the downturn is accelerating it in various ways.

For the record, the books include Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe, Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, Remix by Lawrence Lessig and What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis. All of these books are about aspects of the web that have fundamentally changed how the economy functions. The first three talk about how improved communication allow for people to organize themselves or find information in ways that were not efficient in the past. Remix is about how digital tools allow us to use existing media as raw material for new expressions. What Would Google Do examines Google's business model and seeks to apply it to other industries. Jeff Jarvis feels that we're not in a recession or depression so much as a fundamental restructuring.

The problem with this kind of shift is that nobody knows where it's headed. Here's Clay Shirky from a fantastic essay on the what's happening in the newspaper business.

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify.

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

According to Jeff Jarvis, one of the fundamental changes is that the old economy was about managing scarcity where the new economy is about managing abundance. Here's an example from before the web. Initially, there were three U.S. TV networks. If your company wanted to advertise a mass market product, you literally only had three places to go to reach large numbers of people. The networks could charge a premium because what they offered was scarce and the demand was high. While a network ad could reach 30 million viewers, it was highly inefficient in that there was no way to know how many of those viewers were actually in the market for the product. You could pay to reach 30 million, but maybe only one or two million would be interested.

Once cable TV fragmented the audience into specialized niches, advertising migrated to cable because while the audience was smaller, it was more targeted. In order to reach the two million interested viewers, you might only have to pay to reach 5 million. What you get here is a lower cost and higher efficiency. The cost is lower because the resource is no longer as scarce.

The web takes things even further. You can advertise on Google and tie your ad to a keyword search. Therefore, everyone who sees your ad is interested in your product because they're actively searching for information about your product category. And you can count click-throughs precisely.

This has had a devastating effect on any media based on advertising. Newspapers and magazines are suffering because their revenues are dropping faster than their costs. They're trying to preserve inefficient models while customers and advertisers are voting with their browsers for something that works better for them.

Efficiencies cut costs. They also eliminate jobs. When photocopying was used to transfer animators' drawings onto cels, inkers were eliminated. When scan and paint software became available, fewer painters were needed. When Flash or ToonBoom allowed for a library of assets that only needed to be coloured at the time of their creation, more painters lost their jobs as did inbetweeners and assistant animators. When this happens on a massive scale, as is happening now, it takes time for all these people to figure out how to earn a living.

One of the aspects of the Google economy, according to Jeff Jarvis, is that in an abundance economy, you want to keep your profit margin as low as possible. Otherwise, you're inviting someone to undercut you. It also means that any efficiency you can imagine will eventually be put in place, by some other company if not by your own. Therefore, the companies that most rigorously pursue efficiencies are the ones that have a chance to survive.

I think that this means flatter management structures and fewer middle men. In entertainment, this is a good thing as those in the middle add cost to a project and often slow down its production.

It also might imply more outsourcing. I'm on record as being against this, but I'm not sure if outsourcing doesn't work because of the difference between entertainment and machine parts, or if it doesn't work due to the managerial structures of the old economy. There are unlimited opportunities for improved communication via the web. Would outsourcing work if was artist-to-artist as opposed to management-to-management? I don't know the answer to this.

Those companies on the high end of animation are still in the business of managing scarcity. Whether it's feature films or big budget video games, they're protected temporarily by the difficulty in assembling the money, talent and technology to enter the field. I don't believe that we'll see new companies that are capable of competing against Pixar, DreamWorks, Electronic Arts, etc. However, the danger for these companies is not direct competition, it's the erosion of their audience. TV once again provides an example.

Broadcast television used to be filled with ensemble dramas at 10 p.m. Shows like ER, Law and Order, St. Elsewhere, NYPD Blue, etc. were the standard and they took money and talent to produce. They were not destroyed by direct competition, but by the audience moving to cable. When the audience got smaller, the economics of those shows were no longer viable. What the broadcasters did was to clone the remaining successes, which is why there are so many versions of CSI right now. What the broadcasters were also forced to do was go to less expensive programming. That's why there are so many reality shows and Jay Leno is now at 10 p.m.

I'm guessing that cloning is the final stage before collapse and movies and videogames are taking the same path right now. Everybody, including Pixar, is now producing sequels. That's certainly true of the videogame business. What's going to hurt these companies is the abundance of choice for the audience. It's going to steadily erode their bottom line until, like 10 p.m. dramas, the product will no longer be profitable.

These companies may act like newspapers, trying to preserve the structure of their businesses more than understanding what their product really is. Jeff Jarvis and Clay Shirky have both pointed out that newspapers are in the news business, not the paper business. Printing and distribution are costs that the newspaper business can no longer afford and Jarvis and Shirky argue that newspapers should abandon paper altogether and put their remaining resources into re-inventing themselves online. I don't know what feature and gaming studios should be doing to reinvent themselves, but I worry that the economics of the blockbuster won't remain viable.

Another thing that Jeff Jarvis points out is that the more control you can give to your customers, the happier they will be. Right now, Hulu is a website that makes TV shows available on demand. Another site called Boxee allowed Hulu's material to actually play on a TV. Hulu is now working to encrypt their videos so that Boxee can't use them, because Hulu's owners (Fox and NBC) are afraid of killing their broadcast earnings. This is what Jarvis refers to as the "cash cow in the coalmine." Hulu can't see that a screen is a screen is a screen. Trying to maintain a barrier between a TV screen and a computer screen is useless as the computer screen places more control in the customers' hands, which is why viewers are abandoning TV in the first place. Spending time and money to prevent people from watching your product on the screen of their choice is doomed to failure and a waste of resources.

Similarly, restricting your online content based on geography in order to preserve existing distribution agreements is also problematic. Besides alienating the people who want to consume your content, you're creating a niche that pirates are happy to fill.

This essay probably rambles more than my writing typically does (at least I hope my writing doesn't usually ramble), but it's a reflection of the chaos we're experiencing now. Nobody knows what's coming except for broad outlines: abundance instead of scarcity, greater user control, and closer relationships between companies and their customers.

There is now literally more animation being produced than any person can consume. Between features, DVDs, TV, and videogames, you could literally spend all your waking hours consuming animation. With TVs, desktops, laptops, netbooks, and cellphones, there's no shortage of screens. Ultimately, animation is going to have to be produced as efficiently as possible and is going to have to find an audience that can be monetized somehow. Just like TV and newspapers are undergoing massive transitions, I think the same thing is going to happen in animation. We're not going to recognize the industry in five years. It hasn't been conceived yet and it won't be conceived by those people with a vested interest in the status quo. Something different is coming, but who knows what it will be?

(For those interested in reading more, see Jeff Jarvis's series in progress, "The Great Restructuring." Here's part 1, part 2 and part 3.)

Oops

If you have ever bought anything from Amazon online, you know that they send you emails to alert you to items they believe you will want based on your past purchases. Occasionally, though, the recommendations leave me scratching my head, such as this one:

(Click to enlarge.)

Reruns Redux

I'm frankly amazed (and amused) that the video of Disney re-use is still generating comments after more than a week. I was certainly aware of how heavily Disney re-used animation during the Reitherman years. The video didn't surprise me so much as wrap things up in a neat package.

Thad Komorowski has created a similar video cataloging Bob Clampett's history of re-use, some of which I wasn't aware of.

Anyone who has worked in animation production knows the twin pressures of budget and deadline. While nobody has brought it up, Chuck Jones re-used animation multiple times within his half hour TV specials, including The Grinch and Riki Tiki Tavi. We can argue over a director's motivation and judge whether the end result has value or not, but I don't doubt for a second that given the opportunity, every director would opt for new footage instead of re-use.

It's the Cat Again

Mark Kausler has updated the site for his independent film, It's the Cat. There are original cels for sale as well as artwork on display. One of the neat features of the cels for sale is that when you display them, you can flip between the cel and the drawing it is based on. If you buy a cel, Mark will throw in a DVD of the finished film for free.

(If you just want the finished film, you can download it from MyToons for $1.99.)

The real plum, however, is the complete pencil test online. I'm one of those people who loves pencil tests and prefers them to finished animation. I love seeing the pencil lines in the rough and even the grain of the paper animating. It's animation, unplugged.

Run (or dance) over and take a look.

Against Outsourcing

"And 44 percent of the time (there are commercial airline crashes), the two pilots have never flown together before, so they're not comfortable with each other."
-Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

"A palpable energy is released when inspiration and dedication come together in a creative art. The energy is transformative in an individual who is innovative, but it is transcendent when manifested by a group. There are no words for the dynamic thrill of participating in a mutual mosaic of creativity."

— Wynton Marsalis

My father worked for over 60 years as a machinist. His job was to take a blueprint supplied by a client and figure out how to make the machine part using the tools and crew at his disposal. Often, my father had only the vaguest sense of what the piece would be used for; he rarely saw his piece assembled with any other pieces.

The system worked because of the nature of blueprints. I grew up listening to my father talk about the challenges of making certain parts. The allowable tolerances, meaning the amount that the part could deviate from the blueprint without being rejected, was often as small as four ten-thousandths of an inch. As a child, working with a ruler whose closest marks were one thirty-second of an inch apart, I was amazed that anything could be made so exactly.

It works for machine parts; it doesn't work for entertainment.

The theory behind outsourcing is straightforward. If you can buy something for less money than it costs to build yourself, it makes sense to buy it. If a dentist needs a stapler, it's far more cost-effective to buy one than to order raw materials and tools to make a single stapler. Even when a dentist needs a crown for a patient, it's more cost effective to buy the crown from a specialty company than to make it in-house.

Problems arise when entertainment is treated like something that can be built to a blueprint. The relationship between client and supplier is very different than that of collaborators. Both client and supplier need the instructions to be as specific as possible (down to four ten-thousandths of an inch if possible). The client needs this so that the resulting work will fit his or her needs; the supplier needs this as he or she is being paid piece-work, and poor instructions inevitably mean rejects, which cut into profits and threaten the existence of the business.

It's clearly a master-servant relationship. The master has a need; the servant wants to meet that need with as little fuss as possible. While this sounds like a symbiotic relationship, where both parties benefit from each others existence, it often becomes an adversarial relationship. The master doesn't always know what he or she really wants. The servant has to satisfy the master in order to get paid, but has a limit as to how much effort can be expended before taking a loss. The master rarely takes this into consideration, thinking that payment allows for unlimited revisions. The goals of the master and the servant are different and the financial relationship they enter into makes this inevitable.

Collaborators share the same goals. They may disagree as to the particulars or how to reach the goals, but they agree in principle or they would abandon each other as collaborators. What happens in a good collaboration is something called a positive feedback loop. One collaborator does something which presents opportunities for another collaborator to elaborate on. If the elaboration is any good, it often stimulates additional improvements. The feedback between collaborators pushes the idea or product farther than one simply giving directions to the other.

In many cases, animation is now thought of as a service to be outsourced. It requires that pre-production be far more detailed than in the past. Storyboard artists (especially for TV) are being asked to draw tightly and on model, as their work serves as the basis for the creation of the animation. In other words, the boards are thought of as the blueprints. But there is no way that a storyboard can contain as much information as a blueprint, and so inevitably there are mistakes and retakes. More money is spent on pre-production to take advantage of the economics of outsourcing, but due to the nature of entertainment, there are more retakes required to fix the mistakes. More money is being spent up front and at the end in order to justify saving the money in the middle.

Furthermore, this process eliminates the possibility of a positive feedback loop. There's no financial incentive for servants to try and outperform their masters' expectations. It only makes life more difficult when masters are already asking for too much for the money. Masters don't see their servants as collaborators; servants are merely "the help." My father never knew how a part was to be used, so it was impossible for him to suggest design changes that might have made a part work more efficiently.

What outsourcing does in entertainment is to increase costs in certain parts of production and to wall off any supplier innovation from the rest of the production.

You can't put a dollar figure on collaboration, because until it happens, you don't know what will result. Eliminating collaboration is a false efficiency. In entertainment, it may reduce cost, but it also reduces quality. As the marketplace becomes more crowded and as the internet drives the cost of everything towards zero, the cost of entertainment is going to become less important than its quality.

Chuck Jones Reminder

This Tuesday, March 24, Turner Classic Movies will be running four and a half hours saluting the work of animation director Chuck Jones. The complete schedule is here.

Highlights include the TV premiere of the documentary Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, as well as such noted cartoons as What's Opera Doc?, Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening. The evening will also include early works, such as Jones directorial debut The Night Watchman, as well as Prest-O Change-O and Elmer's Candid Camera, two early steps in the evolution of Bugs Bunny. TCM will also screen The Phantom Tollbooth, Jones' feature, based on the book by Norton Juster, made for MGM.

The entire program will be repeated twice during the evening, followed by 1001 Arabian Nights, a UPA feature starring Mr. Magoo and directed by veteran Disney director Jack Kinney.

Upcoming Sheridan Industry Day

For those in the Toronto area who might be interested, this year's industry day at Sheridan College will take place on April 30.

In addition, I am in the process of booking the Bloor Cinema for a selection of this year's films. The dates I am trying to book are June 9 and 10, with both dates featuring the same films. Once details are confirmed, I'll pass them along.

Reitherman Reruns

Ressemblances dans les films Disney - Vidéos humour

One of my students, Agnes Salek, pointed this compilation out to me. It is skillfully cut together, showing all the Disney re-use, most of which was the work of director Woolie Reitherman. It seems he never saw a scene he couldn't reconfigure. I think that only the material re-used for Beauty and the Beast is from the post-Reitherman era.