Ward Kimball Biography Coming in 2012

Caricature of Ward Kimball by Walt Kelly

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

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

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

The Elements of a Scene: Suspense and Surprise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kim Deitch Continued

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

Growth, Maturity and Decline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Celestri Blog

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

Kim Deitch Remembers

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

On Vacation

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

Tyrus Wong at the Walt Disney Family Museum

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

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

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

The Flying House: Resurrection or Ruination?

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

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

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

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

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

Marjane Satrapi on Making a Film From Comics

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

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

The Elements of a Scene: Character Arc

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

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

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

As John Truby writes in The Anatomy of Story,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commencement for Creatives

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

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

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

Read the whole thing here.

(link via BoingBoing.)

Andrew Loomis Back in Print

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

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

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

(link via BoingBoing)

Blue Sky at the Norman Rockwell Museum

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

John Lasseter in Toronto Cancelled

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

R. O. Blechman Interview

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

The Elements of a Scene: Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alimation

Alimation - Annecy Festival 2011 from Alexandre DUBOSC on Vimeo.

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

(Link via BoingBoing.)

Tintin Trailer

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

The Elements of a Scene: Conflict, Obstacles and Resolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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