Before the Fall

The article below dates from about 1981, though I no longer have a record of what Canadian publication it appeared in. Though no one knew it at the time, it was published at the peak of Nelvana's promise. The studio's trajectory had been on a steady climb with its TV specials and it was working on its first feature, known originally as Drats and later renamed Rock and Rule.

By the time the feature was finished, it almost finished the studio. Nelvana had been forced to sell of its share of the film in order to raise the money to complete the film, which had gone over budget. Had the film turned into a hit, Nelvana would not have benefited except in the area of reputation. The distributor, United Artists, lost all interest in the film after a disastrous test screening in Boston, so even that potential benefit failed to appear.

After the film's completion, the company was essentially bankrupt, but Michael Hirsh managed to bring in enough service work to keep the doors open. Eventually, he would prove his genius for sales by finding well-known properties that TV networks and distributors were happy to purchase animated versions of. The company prospered to the point that it was bought by Corus, a Canadian cablecaster, making Hirsh, Loubert and Smith millionaires. Of the three, only Hirsh is still involved in animation. He took over Cinar after a major financial scandal crippled the company and has successfully turned it around, renaming it Cookie Jar.

Nelvana today bears no resemblance to the company portrayed in this article. The young, enthusiastic and talented crew who were bent on changing animation are long gone and the company is now a division of a public corporation focused on its bottom line. The failure of Rock and Rule (and unfortunately it deserved to fail) changed the course of Canadian animation history for the worse. To date, no Canadian studio has accomplished what Nelvana was trying to do, so the promise of 1981 remains unfulfilled.

Happy Birthday Ralph Bakshi

Today is Ralph Bakshi's 71st birthday. Below is a publicity pamphlet that accompanied the release of Heavy Traffic. I still feel that Traffic is Bakshi's most satisfying film and one that pointed in a direction that too few have followed. Persepolis may be the only animated film I can think of that's similar.

Note that the film was rated X at the time of release. Current versions are rated R, though I have no memory of what's been cut. Regardless of the rating, what makes the film groundbreaking for me is the combination of cartoony designs and realistic emotions. Besides breaking animation's family friendly stereotype, Bakshi also showed how much more a cartoon was capable of.

Most of the film is on YouTube. One part is missing, and I suspect that it's the Maybelline sequence that Mark Kausler animated, as there is some explicit sexual content there. The film is also available on DVD for $10 U.S. It's not a great transfer, but the film is worth seeing in any condition.

(Click to enlarge.)

Musker and Clements Interview

I'm sure that there will be many interviews coming to publicize The Princess and the Frog. Here's one that deals with some technical issues, the crew and the possible futures for drawn Disney animation.

(link via Jim Caswell.)

Gene Deitch's 50th Anniversary

Gene and Zdenka Deitch

Gene Deitch has now been in Prague for 50 years and The Prague Post commemorates the occasion with this article on Gene and Zdenka.

(link via Fantagraphics Flog! blog)

Animation Development

Animation Development From Pitch to Production by David Levy is a very good book about a very bad process.

What's good about it is that Levy does not minimize the difficulties of pitching and maneuvering a creation through the broadcast bureaucracy. He interviews creators and development executives about the various stages of the process and he is as quick to point out mistakes made by creators as those made by broadcasters. Levy has pitched his own material for over ten years and he is not shy about relating his own experiences, including those with unhappy endings or those where he later recognized he was at fault.

If you are interested in selling a show to television, this book is the best preparation in print that I'm aware of. If you've just toyed with the idea, this book will let you know what you're up against and perhaps persuade you that there are better ways to spend your time.

The development process is a badly flawed process on multiple fronts. One of the ironies is that development executives are paid salaries where the people who create ideas to pitch to them create these works for free. Should an idea be accepted for development, the amount of money a creator can expect to see to develop a script or bible will be minimal and the process will take a long time, meaning that creators can't afford to devote their full time or attention to the idea in question.

Development executives seem to know everything a successful show needs except how to create one in the first place. They are also unwilling to devote time to determining if an idea is worthy or not, so creators are forced to start off with the barest descriptions of a show. Should a creator put effort into a more detailed proposal, the odds are that the executives won't bother to read it and may also consider the creator someone who isn't willing to collaborate. On the one hand, executives want creators with a vision; on the other hand, they want creators who will be happy to take direction. In effect, creators are asked to suck and blow at the same time and the proportion varies depending on the executive, the broadcaster and the day of the week.

These executives are powerless to actually put anything into production, so their notes are questionable to begin with. Should they like something, they have to sell it to their superiors and there is no guarantee that the development people share the taste or prejudices of their bosses.

If a creator is lucky enough to move to a pilot or a series, the creator has to hire a lawyer to negotiate the right to continue on the production and for a share of profits or royalties. It's a certainty that the creator will have to give up ownership of the property in order for it to go forward.

The system is set up so that major corporations have a creator work for peanuts until such time that they think that there's money to be made, then they take ownership of the property and allow the creator to continue contributing for as long as it is convenient. The corporations would no doubt point to all the money they spend on development, but the majority of that money is spent on their own employees, not the creators who bring them the material they need to survive. The entire process is so drawn-out and stacked against creators that it's a measure of creators' optimism and commitment to their ideas that anyone bothers to pitch in the first place.

Anyone who watches television knows that the results are nothing special. The majority of shows fail, even with all the work that goes into their creation. Except for pilots, usually made on a shoestring, the development process completely divorces the idea from the execution, which can often be crippled by budget, deadline or choice of subcontractors, something the creator will not have final control over.

Levy is the eternal optimist; someone who feels that his career has been enriched by pitching and development. It has led him to some successes and to some employment opportunities on projects he didn't create, so who is to say that he is wrong? My own feeling is that any creator committed to an idea would be better off figuring out a way to develop it without interference, even if that means the idea isn't realized as animation. From my perspective, as someone who managed to get a show on the air, the compromises are too high a price to pay.

In any event, I do wish that I had the chance to read Levy's book before my series was sold and went to air. There is valuable information here about what to expect and I recommend this book for that reason. I hope that one day the book will be a historical curiosity about a process that didn't survive the changing media landscape.

Not Attending Ottawa

I had plans to attend the Ottawa International Animation Festival next week. In particular, I was looking forward to the feature films that will screen there. Unfortunately, some family business has come up that must be dealt with during the festival, so I am unable to go.

I'm mentioning this in the advent any of you would be looking for me there. For those who are going, enjoy the festival.

Alice in WTF?

I have no idea who created this, why they created this, how they created this or if it ever ends. If you are one of those people who enjoyed Alice in Wonderland while (how shall I put this?) under the influence, I suspect that you will find this an enjoyable experience.

Frederator Aggregator

Let’s get one thing straight: Paying artists is always a positive thing. But the manner in which the guys at Channel Frederator are doing it continues to reflect their lack of regard and respect for the filmmaking community upon which they’ve built their brand. Seriously, in what universe is $50 considered an acceptable fee for anything nowadays? Have they been misinformed that filmmakers can time travel back to 1964 to make all their purchases?

Here’s a reality check—the last time I went out to lunch with Channel Frederator founder Fred Seibert, our lunch bill ended up being over fifty smackers. In other words, this paltry amount isn’t even enough to fill up Fred’s tummy for one afternoon, yet somehow it’s supposed to represent a filmmaker’s reward for months of blood, sweat and tears. They’ve also announced that every month they’ll pay the filmmaker of the most viewed film a whopping $200. Guess what? That’s still less than what we pay every single filmmaker on Cartoon Brew TV.

-Amid Amidi on Cartoon Brew

As you can see from the above, Channel Frederator has started paying a small amount for animation it will host on its site. Amidi is somewhat outraged at the amount. I think that Amidi is missing a fundamental aspect of Fred Seibert's business model and I think that the animation community doesn't yet understand how to function in the online world.

If you want to understand what Seibert is doing, I'd recommend that you read three books: The Long Tail and Free by Chris Anderson and What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis. Seibert's Next New Networks is practically a textbook case arising out of these books.

The long tail occurs when shelf space becomes infinite. In a brick and mortar store, space is limited so the proprietor focuses on those items that sell the best. That way, each square foot of space produces the maximum amount of income. However, in the online world, space is infinite and the cost of servers and hard drives is continuously coming down. Therefore, it's possible to offer a much wider variety of merchandise. Items that might only sell once or twice a year could not be carried in a brick and mortar store because they wouldn't produce sufficient profit, however when shelf space is unlimited and the cost approaches zero, a retailer might as well carry everything. The long tail consists of those items that, individually, do not add up to much in the way of sales, but if you have enough of those low-selling items, they can add up to a profitable business. Online retailers of this type are aggregators. The gather up anything in their category and make money by tiny profits on thousands or millions of items. Examples of long tail businesses are Amazon and Ebay.

The cost of duplicating something digitally is close to zero. With servers and hard drives becoming cheaper, the cost of hosting things also approaches zero. This is the thinking behind the book Free. Free is the most attractive price, so if you can afford to make something free, you're sure to find interested customers. The trick is to find something that you can sell while you're giving away the free item.

Jeff Jarvis says that the way to succeed in the online world is to build a platform that other people can use to form communities or do business. Google is the obvious example, but so are Amazon and Ebay. Amazon is a platform for anyone who wants to sell a book, whether a multinational conglomerate or a hobbyist in a basement. Ebay has created a worldwide market for any item you can think of.

Channel Frederator, now part of Next New Networks, is a classic aggregator. They gather up anything they think has the potential to attract a viewer. They don't have access to libraries of material from Disney, Warner Bros, Nickelodeon, etc. so they'll take material that's in the long tail and try to gather up enough of it to keep pulling viewers to the site. As recommended by Jarvis, they've built a platform that animators can use to reach an audience.

The material is available to viewers for free. What Next New Networks does is sell the viewers to advertisers. This is exactly the model that broadcast TV and radio have used for years.

Amazon or Ebay don't pay you to list with them, because the expectation is that you (and they) will profit from that listing. Channel Frederator is paying, though a pittance, but the amount is besides the point.

What's missing is the animation community's understanding of how to take advantage of Channel Frederator.

What Channel Frederator supplies is a piece of internet real estate. It is worth exactly zero, as anybody can start a blog or upload to YouTube for free. The valuable thing that Channel Frederator supplies is an audience. People interested in animation will go there looking for something to watch. It's likely that putting your film on Channel Frederator will result in more views, at least initially, than putting your film on YouTube, because Frederator is more focused. YouTube has everything, but your video is the proverbial needle in the haystack without some other kind of marketing to direct the audience to it. At Frederator, the audience for animation is already there.

Rather than complain about how little Frederator is paying, animators need to work the system. They should be using exposure on Frederator to drive to the audience to their own sites, where they sell something. Free points out that you can't charge for things that are abundant, you can only charge for things that are scarce. Therefore, while the audience can watch your film for free, you want to sell DVDs of it and include an autograph and quick sketch with every purchase, giving your viewer something they can't download. You can also be selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. And of course, there should be a "donate" button on your site.

If you've got a reasonably good film, you'll probably make more from selling swag than from what Frederator is going to pay you. Furthermore, you should be collecting email addresses from your buyers, so that every time you release a new product, you've got a list of people to notify who have already bought something from you. By definition, these people like you enough to pay something for your work. They are a valuable resource.

If Frederator is willing to gather an audience for your film, carve off as much of it as you can and then monetize it.

Now, before you do this, I suggest that you read Frederator's Terms of Use. In particular, I want to quote the following:

Ownership; Licenses

We do not claim ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by uploading, submitting, emailing, posting, publishing or otherwise transmitting any User Submission to any of the Sites, you hereby grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works based on, perform, display, publish, distribute, transmit, stream, broadcast and otherwise exploit such User Submission in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed, including without limitation on the Site and third party websites, podcast, video game consoles and services, video-on-demand and television. You represent and warrant that you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses to us. We shall own all right, title and interest in and to all derivative works and compilations of User Submissions that are created by us, including without limitation all worldwide intellectual property rights therein. You agree to execute and deliver such documents and provide all assistance reasonably requested by us, at our expense, to give us the full benefit of this section.

If you can wade through what's above you will note that while they don't claim ownership of your work, they claim perpetual non-exclusive use of it. They also have the right to modify it and prepare derivative works from it. They can place it on game consoles and all of the above are without any additional compensation. So, they can use your film forever, they can cut it or add to it, they can ship it with the next version of the Playstation or XBox. They can do all that and more without asking you for permission.

Note that they can develop derivative works. In historical terms, imagine that you've created a film called Porky's Hare Hunt with the prototype of Bugs Bunny. Frederator decides that the core idea is a good one but you didn't make the most of it, so they turn around and derive A Wild Hare from your film, only now, they own the new version of Bugs Bunny (not you), and they continue to use your film as a Bugs Bunny DVD extra or as part of a package of Bugs Bunny cartoons they sell elsewhere.

Would Frederator do any of the above? I have no idea. However, they have the legal right to. More than the $50 fee they're willing to pay, the Terms of Use are the part of the deal that smells the worst to me.

Some artists will inevitably complain that they don't want to deal with selling stuff, they just want to create their work. While in the past you could sell that work to a studio and receive a reasonable paycheque, those days are rapidly coming to a close. The economic model for film and TV as it existed is crumbling. Fred Seibert (and Cartoon Brew TV for that matter) will not pay you enough to create your work. We may see the studio jobs in animation vanish the same way that journalism jobs are vanishing. If that happens, we may all be reduced to creating work for free and then selling something related to the that work. Certainly, if you want to retain ownership of your work, that's what you'll be doing. However, if you want to maintain control over your work, you won't be contributing to Channel Frederator.

(This article is about strip cartoonists, not animators, but the lessons it talks about are ones that animators should be thinking over seriously.)

Bill Mechanic Speaks

If you have any interest in the way the film business operates or the climate that exists for independent films, you must read this talk given by Bill Mechanic, former head of Fox and now an independent producer. It's the keynote address to the Independent Film & Television Production Conference and is essential reading.

ScribeMedia.org

Fred Seibert at left.

ScribeMedia.org is a video site focusing on the business, technology and culture of the web. There is a six part, 90 minute interview with Fred Seibert, called "Building Digital Entertainment Brands," which talks about Next New Networks, his collection of internet channels. Other videos are on "The Power of Online Storytelling," "Maximizing the Monetization of Online Video Content," "Independent Filmmaking in the Digital World," and "Hollywood 2.0 -- Content and Commerce."

All the above links are to talking heads videos. I wish that they were transcripts instead, as they would be searchable and easier to speed read for relevant information. However, the interviews are with industry professionals, so their insights are worth hearing.

Michael Hirsh Profile

Canadian Business profiles producer Michael Hirsh, a founding partner of Nelvana and currently the head of Cookie Jar. Whether you like the shows he's produced or not, there's no question that Canadian animation would have been significantly different without Hirsh.

(link via Paul Teolis)

It's Clobberin' Time!

Rich Johnston, Nikki Finke and the N.Y. Times are reporting that the estate of Jack Kirby has filed for termination of copyright on the characters he co-created for Marvel Comics. Will this have an impact on Disney's intended purchase of Marvel?

There is no single person in the history of comic books who created more successful characters than Jack Kirby. There is no one in the history of comic books who received less of his rightful financial due than Kirby. I have no idea how this will play out, but I hope that the Kirby estate realizes millions from this. I'm only sorry that Kirby himself isn't alive to benefit from it.

9

(There are spoilers below.)

9 is a post-apocalyptic fantasy that suffers from huge huge logic holes and underdeveloped characters. This is a shame, as the film has strong art direction and what Variety would call "solid tech credits."

The story is about a scientist who invents a machine for the betterment of mankind and has it taken away from him and subverted by a military government. The machine is used for war and then turns on humans, wiping them out. Somehow, the scientist ends up being the last man alive. I would think that either he would be drafted to stop the doomsday machine or would be killed by an angry mob, but it appears that he's left alone to build dolls. Why he considers this the appropriate response is never explained. There's a streak of mysticism running through the film, as the scientist imparts a piece of his soul to the nine burlap dolls. After the ninth, the scientist has apparently run out of soul and dies.

I have to assume that numbers one through eight were unsuccessful prototypes, because the scientist leaves instructions explicitly for number 9. Based on the image above, 1 through 8 have specific tasks to perform, but they don't cooperate with each other or know what to do. 9 himself is responsible for a colossal blunder which exists only for the convenience of setting the plot in motion. That blunder is even more convenient in that a device the scientist has invented to save the world also fits perfectly in the doomsday machine, making it even more powerful. Way to go, scientist!

At the end of the film, 9 frees the parts of the scientist's soul that were embedded in five of the dolls. The souls ascend to heaven, causing a rainstorm. The implication is that somehow, the rain will renew the earth and there are hints that the raindrops contain bacteria to start the evolutionary process over again. I can only wonder why the souls of billions of humans who died previously were not capable of causing this rain.

Furthermore, the future for the four remaining dolls is uncertain at best. They seem incapable of reproducing, sexually or otherwise. Will they eventually wear out? Will they perish through accidents? Some dialogue states that the world is now theirs to remake, but the appearance of the bacteria-laden rain implies otherwise.

If the characters were memorable, these questions wouldn't matter quite so much. However, the characters are not well developed. While they have voices by Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau and Crispin Glover, the actors have nothing to work with. These characters have no arcs and have less personality, with a few exceptions, than the 7 dwarfs. That's a handicap that the animators can't overcome.

An audience enters a film through the characters. When characters are weak and underdeveloped, the audience has no reason to identify with them or care what happens to them. This reduces the impact of the various action sequences of the film. They are well directed and animated from a technical standpoint, but don't have the effect they should because the audience is not invested in the characters' fates. What makes it worse is that the film is almost all action sequences in order to pad out the slim plot.

The artists who worked on this film have done their jobs well. The film's shortcomings are not in the visuals, which are consistently good. As often happens, the artists have been let down by the script. Good art direction and slick production values are not enough for an audience. If they were, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow would be considered a classic instead of a film most people have forgotten.

Starz, the Toronto production company responsible for the bulk of this film's visuals, is developing into a first class studio. Because they are a shop for hire, they're stuck with the scripts they are handed and are in no position to demand rewrites. Eventually, they may get lucky and work on a hit, but it's a shame they have to trust to luck. The artists on this film have done work to be proud of, but it can't overcome the script's deficiencies. I hope someday they work on a film worthy of their talents.

A Gaggle of Guests

(Updated at the bottom.)

Paul Fierlinger

It's only the second week of classes at Sheridan College, but due to a variety of circumstances, we've been lucky to have three industry guests in three days.

Paul Fierlinger was in Toronto to attend the Toronto International Film Festival screenings of his new feature My Dog Tulip. I was able to reach Paul and arrange for him to speak at the college, but the notice was so short we wedged him into a first year animation lecture and then spread the word to students from other years.

My Dog Tulip

Fierlinger spoke about his long career as a freelancer and independent film maker, urging the students to be original and to use their originality as their main selling point. He said that except for corporate logos, he never did a job that wasn't in his own style. It wasn't enough for him to say that his style was better, he had to show the client (often with sample animation) that his approach would work better than a design approach they put forward.

Fierlinger was very bullish on the internet, urging students to find communities that exist on line and figure out ways to serve them through animation. He mentioned a friend who was a 5th grade teacher who made simple animations for his students as a hobby, and now other teachers were now requesting copies and the friend was making several hundred dollars a week marketing the shorts while continuing to teach.

Fierlinger stressed the power of the internet, both in terms of making sales but also for doing research and for collaborating. Fierlinger was able to research the location of My Dog Tulip without traveling to England thanks to the internet and he found Shay Lynch, the composer for his next film (on John Slocum, the first man to sail around the world solo), after hearing his work on The Animated Life blog on the New York Times.

Fierlinger has been freelancing continuously for 51 years and his example is a good one for animation students, who often only think of landing a job at a studio. His determination to work with his own artistic style and his ability to deal with adult content in films like A Room Nearby and Still Life with Animated Dogs, point in directions that students need to consider.

Don Hahn

On Wednesday evening, Don Hahn made an appearance at Sheridan College. The event was held in the large theatre on campus and over a hundred students were still turned away. Hahn did a presentation about Walt Stanchfield, artistic inspiration and the production process. After his presentation, he signed copies of his recent books. Hahn was also in town for the Toronto International Film Festival, where his documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty was screening. The film is about the revival of Disney animation in the 1980s and '90s.

Walt Stanchfield was a Disney animator who taught drawing extensively at the studio. Stanchfield's notes on various drawing and animation topics have circulated in photocopy form for years, and Hahn has compiled the notes into a recently published two volume set called Drawn to Life. The presentation on Stanchfield included lots of his art and several videos of him teaching at the Disney studio.

Hahn showed a great many pieces of illustration art that inspired Disney's original artistic crew and more recent work that had an influence on the newer generation.

Not by design, Hahn started off by taking the opposite tack from Fierlinger, saying that animation is a team sport and talking about the pleasures and necessities of collaboration. He stepped through the entire production process, showing sample art and video for each step. He showed rejected character designs and played a bit of the first version of "Circle of Life" to make the point that you want to fail fast and fail often. It takes going down wrong paths before you find the best solution and the collaborative process allows for many more variations to be examined before the best solution is found.

Hahn was enthusiastic for the future of animation and drawn animation in particular, saying that he greatly admired what he had seen on The Princess and the Frog, but should it fail at the box office, Disney would still continue to make drawn features. He talked about how international animation has become and the many opportunities thanks to that and technology that were not available when he started. He was excited to see what films would be made in the next 10 years by the people who were currently students.

Hahn was asked what his most pleasant working experience was and he answered that it was working on Atlantis. While he admitted that the people had to judge for themselves how successful the film was, he said that he was working with people he had known for 10 years and very much liked. By contrast, the toughest working experience he had was on Beauty and the Beast, where the production had to deal with Howard Ashman's death, having its budget cut and Hahn having a child during production.

Joe Haidar

The last guest of the week was Joe Haidar, a veteran animator who has worked in Canada, England and the U.S, including 15 years at Disney. Joe was in Toronto to visit friends and family and brought along Animated American, a live action and animated short film he co-directed with James Baker and that was produced by Susan Cohen.

I had Haidar as a guest in my second year lecture, though many third and fourth year students sat in. He screened the complete film and then talked about how the film was made. When he and Baker were laid off at Disney, they decided to do something for themselves rather than just look for another job. The two wrote the story and then brought in screenwriter Tim Talbott to polish the script. The live action was shot over 4 days and then Haidar and Baker did the bulk of animation themselves over more than a year.

Haidar was surprised and sorry to discover that people from live action were far more cooperative and generous in helping the film get made than people in animation. He also mentioned that when they started the film, they realized that they knew hundreds of artists, but no business people and he suggested to the students that they don't limit their professional relationships to other artists.

Animated American is currently playing festivals and Haidar and Baker are planning to do a live action feature as their next project together.

The best thing about these guests is their varying viewpoints. Fierlinger is the lone independent, Hahn is the corporate team player and Haidar is the new director looking to launch his own projects. If nothing else, they demonstrate that animation, as an occupation and a medium, has greater possibilities than many people realize.

(Update: Paul Fierlinger posted his impressions of how My Dog Tulip was received at the Toronto International Film Festival here. The Globe and Mail has an article dealing with both My Dog Tulip and Waking Sleeping Beauty here.)

Pencil Test Depot

Jamaal Bradley has set up a blog that collects pencil tests from all around the web. Right now there are pencil tests from Tarzan, Treasure Planet, Curious George, The Aristocats, The Jungle Book, Nocturna, Sinbad and Lady and the Tramp. Consider it your one stop shopping destination for pencil tests.

Miyazaki's Starting Point

This book, a collection of articles and speeches by director Hayao Miyazaki as well as interviews with him, is one of the most important books on animation ever published. It contains almost no pictures; instead it is a book of philosophy and observations that reveal Miyazaki to be as perceptive and articulate as anyone who has worked in animation.

It isn't necessary that creators be able to write or speak intelligently about their work. I greatly admire director John Ford, who actively disliked interviews; he would take sadistic pleasure in abusing interviewers and left no writings of any consequence. Anything Ford wanted to say he put on the screen and that was more than enough to earn him respect.

However, when a director reveals himself in words as well as films, it can lead to an enhanced appreciation of the person and the work. I have admired Miyazaki for quite some time, but I have to say that my respect for him increased enormously after reading this book.

Miyazaki has a broad range of interests. Of course, he talks about animation (with interesting perspectives on Disney, Dave Fleischer and Tezuka), but he also talks about politics (Marxism and Yugoslavia), history (particularly Japanese history), technology, children, audiences, mentors, economics and the environment.

I can't do better than to extensively quote Miyazaki to give you a flavour of the thoughts that this book contains. Here he is on the relative importance of content and technique:

Having said all this, if someone were to ask me what the most important thing is when creating a new animated work, my answer would be that you first have to know what you want to say with it. In other words, you have to have a theme. Surprisingly, perhaps, people sometimes overlook this basic fact of filmmaking and overemphasize technique instead. There are innumerable examples of people making films with a very high level of technique, but only a very fuzzy idea of what they really want to say. And after watching their films, viewers are usually completely befuddled. Yet when people who know what they want to say make films with a low level of technique, we still greatly appreciate the films because there is really something to them.

I was particularly taken with this paragraph on running. There are many animation textbooks that will explain how to do a run, but this single paragraph says more about why you would have a character run than any animation book I've read.

The running of surging masses on fire with anger, the running of a child doing his best to hold back tears until he reaches his house, the running of a heroine who has forsaken everything but the desire to flee -- being able to show wonderful ways of running, running that expresses the very act of living, the pulse of life, across the screen would give me enormous delight. I dream of someday coming across a work that requires that kind of running.

What Miyazaki is talking about here is the emotional heart of animation -- the emotions that literally animate a character -- not simply the path of action of a foot or the spacing between drawings.

Miyazaki takes a dim view of the production conditions for television.

What does seem to be a big problem to me, however, is that both the film and TV worlds are always desperately running after whatever carrots are dangled in front of them. The carrots for the TV world are particularly small, truly piddling overall, and for both TV and film projects that pass muster tend to be low risk and highly disposable. For TV today, the biggest problem is the huge increase in the number of shows being made. Everyone's confused about what is being done. No one knows who is making what, or where. And no one is watching what others are making. If you watch something for three minutes, you feel like you know everything about it, even what went on backstage, and then you don't feel like watching the rest.

In reality, it's impossible for creators to keep working at the same pace year in and year out. The harder it is to try to make one good program, the more difficult it is to achieve that same level of quality over and over again. If you really want to create good shows year in and year out, you have to create an organization or system that makes this possible. But in the world of TV animation, it's physically impossible to create a series where each episode is like a theatrical feature. Since we have to cram shows into a system of mass production and mass marketing -- and keep pumping episodes out in such a tight cycle -- it's only natural that the works eventually become anemic. I think that's the point where the industry is now.

Miyazaki considers the appeal of animated films.

I like the expression "lost possibilities." To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, and a life. To exist here, now, means to lose the possibility of being countless other potential selves. For example, I might have been the captain of a pirate ship, sailing with a lovely princess by my side. It means giving up this universe, giving up other potential selves. There are selves which are lost possibilities, and selves that could have been, and this is not limited just to us but to the people around us and even to Japan itself.

Yet once born,there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us. And in this sense I think that the animation we see today often lacks the vitality of older cartoon movies. Economic constraints in production are often said to be the main reason, but it seems to me that something spiritual is also missing. It would be stupid to turn my back on the times in which we live and act arrogrant about it all, but I always find myself thinking that the old cartoon movies were indeed more interesting and exciting that we have today.

But while animation can serve a spiritual purpose, it's also tainted by commercialism.

After working in cel animation for so many years, I've recently become more away of the things I have been unable to do, rather than the things I have been able to do. I still think that encountering wonderful animation as a child is not a bad thing. Yet I'm also acutely aware that this profession is actually a business, targeting children's purchasing power. No matter how much we pride ourselves in being conscientious, we produce visual works that stimulate children's visual and auditory senses, and whatever experiences we provide them are in a sense stealing time from them that otherwise might be spent in a world where they go out and make their own discoveries or have their personal experiences. In the society in which we live today, the sheer volume of material being produced can potentially distort everything.

Miyazaki's view of life is nuanced.

I think there is is no way we can live and "not cause difficulties for others," as the saying exhorts us. I have come to think that even when we are overflowing with love and goodness, the world of human beings is one in which we cast our shadows onto each other, giving each other troubles as we grow and live.

The question then becomes, what it is hope? And the conclusion I'd have to venture is that hope involves working and struggling along with people who are important to you. In fact, I've gotten to the point where I think this is what it means to be alive.

As I said above, it isn't necessary for a director to say anything beyond what's on the screen, but reading Miyazaki, I'm convinced of the intelligence behind his films. I wish that intelligence was more widespread in animation today.

Disney and Marvel: Two Creative Failures

Disney's purchase of Marvel has generated a lot of discussion about the specifics of the business deal and the potential synergies, but what I see is one creatively bankrupt company buying another.

This is Robert Iger's second major purchase for Disney. The first was Pixar at a cost of $7 billion. Marvel went for "only" $4 billion. These purchases have defined Iger's tenure as head of Disney, but not in a way that speaks well for him. While business writers are taken with Iger's boldness, what we have here is someone who doesn't believe that his company is able to compete.

When Walt Disney moved into live action, he didn't buy an existing studio. When he went into television, he didn't buy an existing production company. When he went into distribution, he didn't buy a distribution company. When he went into theme parks, he didn't buy an amusement park. In each case, Walt Disney grew his own company and built its expertise in these areas until the company could compete, and in some cases lead, the particular industry. When Walt Disney was interested in accomplishing something, he did it from the ground up.

By contrast, when Robert Iger needs to compete in computer animated features or to capture a larger share of the young boys audience, he pulls out the corporate wallet and buys what he needs.

Consider the numbers involved. Let's say that it costs $250 million to make and market a cgi family feature. For the $7 billion Iger spent on Pixar, he could have made 28 feature films. With 28 kicks at the can, a company could try a wide variety of approaches and techniques in trying to succeed with audiences.

One of the areas that the Marvel deal is supposed to help is the Disney XD cable channel. Let's say it's going to cost $15 million to create 13 episodes of a TV series (a very generous budget for cable). For $4 billion, Disney could create 266 TV series in an attempt to attract the boy's audience.

With those kind of resources, it's appalling that the company never made a serious attempt.

And what exactly has Disney bought in buying Marvel?

While Marvel recently celebrated it's 70th anniversary, the truth is that the company was creative for approximately 10 years of that time (1939-40 and 1961-68). If you were to remove six people from Marvel's history -- Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko -- you would remove the majority of the characters that define Marvel and the ones that are left are based on examples created by these six.

Marvel has had success recently in creating films based on its characters, but the characters are all more than 30 years old. The company's attitude towards creators guarantees that no new characters will be forthcoming. Marvel took ownership of the work of its writers and artists (even when those people were independent contractors and not employees), but the bigger blunder was to withhold profits or royalties from those creators. As the characters gained popularity and began to generate real money, the creators finally figured out that they would see none of the wealth they created, so they stopped coming up with new ideas.

Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko both left the company as a result of broken promises for compensation. Steve Gerber and Marv Wolfman both sued the company to regain ownership of Howard the Duck and Blade, respectively (and lost). In the '90s, a group of artists split from Marvel to form Image Comics precisely because they realized that they would never receive a fair deal there. Marvel's history of dealing with creators has guaranteed that the very characters that Disney covets are finite in number.

When Disney bought Pixar, they were buying a future: Pixar was still generating new films and characters. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, two people responsible for Pixar's success, were still with the company and still attracting audiences. By contrast, buying Marvel is buying the past. The characters are already decades old and the people who created them are no longer with the company. In this sense, the purchase of Marvel is closer to the purchase of the Muppets than the purchase of Pixar.

Time will determine if the purchase of Marvel was a good one or not. However, the pattern that Iger has established doesn't speak well for Disney's future. Creators need places where they can try things free from a corporate bureaucracy and where they can share in the wealth that they create. Disney would prefer to let those things happen elsewhere and then buy them after the fact.

The Filmation Paradoxes

The new issue of Flip is online and the lead article is a look back at Filmation by three artists who worked there: Tom Sito, Bronwen Barry and Tom Mazzocco. The piece highlights two paradoxes that are common within the animation industry.

The first is that it's possible to work at a studio that has a comfortable environment and a friendly crew while turning out work that is, to put it charitably, of little value. Filmation is best remembered for shows like He-Man, She-ra and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. While those series may produce a nostalgic glow for a generation of children, a dispassionate look at them shows them to be low budget formula cartoons. While artists would prefer to work on good projects, the truth is that a comfortable environment is perhaps as valuable as the quality of the finished work when the project takes up most of an artist's waking hours.

The other paradox is that artists tend to be judged by the projects they work on, and that's a false standard. A great many of the Filmation crew migrated to Disney, where they were major contributors to the success of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. While resume credits are a handy way to pigeon-hole someone, they don't accurately reflect the skills of an artist. The intelligence and taste of the management, the size of the budget and the length of the schedule have more to do with the results on screen than the abilities of the crew.

Pondering Ponyo

(There are spoilers below.)

When I first watched Hayao Miyazaki's latest feature Ponyo, I thought it was another of Miyazaki's ecological fables. Based on Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke, it wouldn't be surprising to once again see Miyazaki dealing with humans' relationship to the environment. However, a second viewing and much thought has led me to the conclusion that the ecological elements are something of a MacGuffin, Hitchcock's term for an excuse to set the characters in motion when the director's real interest is somewhere else.

Miyazaki's subject here is love, though not romantic love and certainly not sexual love. What the characters in this film are missing is devotional love. Just about every character in this film has been abandoned in one way or another.

The nursing home that Sosuke's mother Lisa works at is next door to a school (or is it a pre-school?). In each case, the old and the young have been isolated from the world of adults. The old women in the home are, I presume, widows, and their children are not taking care of them. The children in school are not being looked after by their parents. In each case, the group is being looked after by somebody collecting a paycheque, not family. Humanity's past and future are not integrated with the present.

Both Sosuke and Ponyo have two parents, but those parents are not together. Sosuke's father is captain of a ship and over the course of the entire film, he never gets off it. There is always a geographical gulf created by work between the father and his family, which leads to an emotional gulf between husband and wife. Ponyo's mother is a goddess who is not present in Ponyo's home and who only interacts with Ponyo once during the entire film. The parents that are present, Lisa and Fujimoto, Ponyo's father, are so wrapped up in work that they abandon or ignore their children in favour of their jobs. Ponyo and her sisters don't like Fujimoto and Sosuke sees him as a threat at the end of the film and flees from him.

It is significant that Sosuke is the only character to pass between the nursing home and the school and that he does it through a hole in the fence. He breaks through boundaries that adults have set up and his need to connect is the same need that connects him to Ponyo when he finds her. His renaming of her is transformative, much the way that Chihiro being renamed in Spirited Away is. Ponyo's need to connect is so strong that she transforms herself from a fish into a girl and in a bravura sequence runs along the tops of fish and waves to reunite with Sosuke. Her repeated transformations bring to mind Sophie's changing age in Howl's Moving Castle. In Miyazaki's world, characters change physically as they change emotionally.

Ponyo running atop the fish, an absolutely astounding sequence

It is Ponyo's actions that release the magic that results in the flood. This flood is the catalyst for everything that follows and the reintegration of what has been separated. Extinct fish once again swim in the ocean, uniting past and present. The old women are able to walk again and rejoin the adult world. The goddess and Fujimoto are brought together. Sosuke's father is able to bring his boat back home.

When Ponyo and Sosuke set off in Sosuke's toy boat, it is significant that they are the first in the film to encounter a complete family. It is the only time we see a man, woman and child together. Ponyo is fascinated with the baby and attempts to give it food. When the mother explains that the child is too young to eat it, but if the mother eats it she can produce milk for the child, Ponyo is happy to let the mother have the soup and then loads her up with sandwiches. The father returns the favour as best he can by giving Sosuke a candle. This is the moment in the film when the world begins to regenerate.

Sosuke's acceptance of Ponyo, regardless of whether she is a fish or a girl saves the world because it acknowledges no boundaries. The devotional love between them has no limit. The boundaries that people have erected -- between nature and humans; between the past, present, and future; between water and air -- are dissolved by Sosuke's declaration.

The plot elements of humans hurting the environment and the world being out of balance are there as outgrowths of the film's central problem: the gulf between people. Ponyo is an argument for us to reconnect with each other more strongly in order to bring the world back into balance.

(There are many brilliant visual things in this film, and I just want to point out two small ones that stood out for me. I greatly admire Miyazaki's detailed observation of human behavior. When Sosuke first sees Ponyo, he kicks off his shoes before wading into the water to pick her up. This still, lacking motion, doesn't do the moment justice, but what caught my attention was how Sosuke was totally focused on what he saw. Sosuke's concentration was portrayed beautifully by not moving his head as he kicked off his shoes.)

(Another thing that struck me was Lisa's pose, below. At this point in the film, her husband has called to say that he will not be coming home and then used light signals in an attempt to make up. Lisa's anger prevents her from accepting his apology. Her despair over the state of their relationship is beautifully captured by her pose on the bed.)

A Sunshine Makers Mystery

Issue 88 of Alter Ego, a magazine devoted to comic book history, has a lengthy article on Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, an early comic book publisher whose company was taken over and eventually became DC comics.

What's interesting from an animation standpoint was this page from the first issue of New Fun Comics published in 1935. The illustration is credited to Dick Loederer.


When I saw this, I instantly recognized the character from The Sunshine Makers, a 1935 cartoon directed by Ted Eshbaugh that was released by Van Beuren. Here's a poor frame enlargement, but hopefully it makes the resemblance plain.


Both images are from 1935, so it's not obvious which came first. While there is some information about Dick Loederer, it doesn't mention any animation experience. There is no mention of Loederer on Alberto Becattini's index of animators. Neither is there a mention of Loederer in Talking Animals and Other People, Shamus Culhane's autobiography which includes his time at Van Beuren during this time period. While many animation artists also worked in cartoon illustration, I can't tell if Loederer was responsible for both designs, if he originated the design, or if he swiped the design. Swiping was extremely common in early comic books, so that might be the most likely answer. However, it's still interesting that the design made enough of an impression at the time to inspire a swipe.

Can anyone shed any light on Dick Loederer or the origin of this design?

The complete cartoon is included below for your enjoyment.