What Would Oskar Fischinger Think?

Patatap is a browser-based abstract animation and sound package that works off a keyboard.  It was developed by Jono Brandel and the musicians at Lullatone.  You can read about it here and can try it here.  It's fun!  Instant animation gratification.

Sheridan Industry Day Trailer

This year, Sheridan Animation's industry day is Thursday, April 24.  Here's an advance peek at this year's student films.

Stephen Silver Interview

"And you're right, the model is changing in many ways, and I don't want to keep doing work-for-hire, piecemeal stuff where you get your little bit of money to design, and then someone else owns the franchise, and you're creating everything for them, and you're just waiting for that next job, and hopefully that next job will come.  It's always chasing other people's ideas, and for me that's why it was so important to keep trying other things.  I realized we live in the greatest time ever, where if I want to create an app, I can do it.  If I want to publish my own book, I can do it.  That's what's exciting to me, and that's why I do it."

"That's why I'm a firm believer in entrepreneurship and building your own brand and creating something where you can deal directly with the consumer.  The consumer is the one with all the control.  They're the one who makes the choice whether they want to buy this drawing or that drawing, this book or that book, this T-shirt or that T-shirt.  It doesn't matter where they get it.  And more stuff is going online.  I can get whatever I want online, and I can go directly to the artist I like."

Character designer Stephen Silver is interviewed in the latest issue of Draw! magazine, now out in comics shops and available online (including a .pdf version) from the publisher.

Book Review: Directing for Animation

There are many books that describe the jobs in animation in a bloodless manner.  They lay out the procedures but do it as a mechanical process, devoid of human influence.  The truth is that the human element is embedded in every part of the process, and managing it is often the toughest part of the job.

Tony Bancroft is the co-director of Disney's Mulan and has also worked as a feature animator and animation supervisor.  His book, Directing for Animation, confronts the messiness that comes with the role of director.  While the public might think that the director is the one in charge, the truth is that the director is in charge of keeping everyone else happy.  Caught between the financiers and production managers on one side and the crew of artists and technicians on the other, the director has to keep all parties satisfied while trying to establish a vision for the film and keep it on schedule.

Bancroft takes the reader through the process of directing a feature, dealing with each stage of the production and the pitfalls to look out for.  In addition to his own experiences, he interviews other directors, most with feature experience: Dean DeBlois, Pete Docter, Eric Goldberg, Tim Miller, John Musker, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Nick Park and Chris Wedge.  Bancroft is a good interviewer and it helps that he knows what questions to ask.  The interview subjects are forthright in talking about their experiences.  As they are talking to a fellow director, they don't sugar-coating their stories as they might for an interviewer from outside the field. 

These interviews add considerably to the range of experiences a director might face.  The interviews with Goldberg and Miller are particularly insightful, as their experiences are not limited to features.  Goldberg directed commercials for years and Miller, a founder of Blur Studios, has done commercials and game cinematics.  As they have worked on shorter projects, they have confronted a greater variety of artistic, technical, financial and political challenges.

This book is a good companion to David Levy's Directing Animation.  Bancroft's experiences are west coast, Levy's are east coast.  While Bancroft focuses on features, Levy talks more about television and independent films.  Between the two books, a prospective director has a wealth of information to draw on and a list of problems to watch out for.

Neither book, however, gets to the nitty gritty of how directors make their creative choices.  Those choices include story, casting, voice direction, art direction, staging, animation, lighting, editing, musical scoring, sound effects and mixing.  I hope that someday a feature director publishes a diary of a production or allows a writer to shadow the director so as to provide the thinking behind each  decision as it arises. 

Until that time, this book will give readers with the ambition to direct a feature a good grounding in the challenges that they will face.  Even casual fans of the medium will learn more about how the films they enjoy come together.

Who Will Succeed Robert Iger at Disney?

The names Jay Rasulo and Thomas Staggs don't mean much to animation professionals or fans right now, but the Los Angeles Times speculates that one of them may be Robert Iger's successor when he retires in 2016.

I wonder if they would consider Jeffrey Katzenberg.  I'm not joking about that.  While Robert Iger has been using Disney's money to buy everything in sight, Katzenberg has been building an organization from scratch and diversifying it so that it is stable enough to survive any problems.  Katzenberg also has his own record of success at Disney.  There are many worse candidates out there.

With the exceptional profitability of animated features, combining Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks makes sense from a business standpoint, if not an artistic one.  Who knows?  Since Robert Iger is running out of things to buy, maybe DreamWorks and Katzenberg are already on his list.

Inside the Pixar Braintrust

"While problems in a film are fairly easy to identify, the sources of those problems are often extraordinarily difficult to assess. A mystifying plot twist or a less-than-credible change of heart in our main character is often caused by subtle, underlying issues elsewhere in the story. Think of it as a patient complaining of knee pain that stems from his fallen arches. If you operated on the knee, it wouldn't just fail to alleviate the pain, it could easily compound it. To alleviate the pain, you have to identify and deal with the root of the problem. The Braintrust's notes, then, are intended to bring the true causes of problems to the surface--not to demand a specific remedy. We don't want the Braintrust to solve a director's problem because we believe that, in all likelihood, our solution won't be as good as the one the director and his or her creative team comes up with."

Here is an excerpt from Ed Catmull's soon to be published book Creativity, Inc.

(Thanks, James Caswell)

An Aspect of Disney Films You Had Not Considered

The public thinks of Disney movies as entertainment.  Artists may think of them as inspiration.  Ron Suskind describes how Disney movies were the key to his autistic son overcoming isolation and learning to deal with the world in an excerpt from his book Life, Animated, to be published April 1.

The story is inspirational for watching someone overcome obstacles, but it's a reminder of the power of communication.  We don't consider what we're communicating in animation often enough, but Suskind's story should remind all of us that what we're communicating matters.

Go read it.  You won't be sorry.

Phil Tippett on Mad God and Crowd Funding

"When working with material objects they look at you and demand attention. They tell you things and maybe you wouldn’t otherwise be so perceptive. It is about the process and listening to the things around you, hearing and what they can tell you. That takes time."

Friend and fellow Sheridan instructor Chris Walsh interviews stop motion and effects wizard Phil Tippett about his independent production Mad God.  Tippet talks about his influences, the nature of physical objects and the opportunities from crowd funding.

Raymond Chandler Hates the Oscars

"The head of a large studio once said privately that in his candid opinion the motion picture business was 25 per cent honest business and the other 75 per cent pure conniving. He didn't say anything about art, although he may have heard of it. But that is the real point, isn't it?—whether these annual Awards, regardless of the grotesque ritual which accompanies them, really represent anything at all of artistic importance to the motion picture medium, anything clear and honest that remains after the lights are dimmed, the minks are put away, and the aspirin is swallowed? I don't think they do. I think they are just theater and not even good theater. As for the personal prestige that goes with winning an Oscar, it may with luck last long enough for your agent to get your contract rewritten and your price jacked up another notch. But over the years and in the hearts of men of good will? I hardly think so."

The Oscars are this weekend.  I stopped watching the ceremony years ago as the results are completely irrelevant to me.  I would never say I hate the Oscars, as that would require more energy than I'm willing to devote to them.

The above quote is from a long piece by Raymond Chandler that appeared in The Atlantic in 1948 and you can read it in its entirety here.  Chandler was the creator of the private eye Philip Marlowe in the novels The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely, both of which have been turned into movies several times.  He was also a screenwriter who contributed to Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train.  Chandler had an inside view of the Oscars and he hated them.  In this age of Twitter, I don't know how many people will bother to read his entire article, but it is a good counterpoint to all the hype that will wash over us in the next few days.

Working Conditions for Board Artists

"It would be good to have audio, designs and b.g.'s BEFORE we start a board."

"Somebody who's never done the work has created the schedule.  [Storyboard]  artists never have input on the time that's realistic. Writers should use a stop watch when writing their scripts. They write (overlong) 16 page scripts for 11 minute segments."

The Animation Guild in Los Angeles recently had a meeting about the conditions facing storyboard artists and published several comments on its blog.  As there was discussion in Canada recently about studios asking storyboard artists to cut animatics (for no additional pay), I thought it was interesting that even in a union situation, board artists are being squeezed for time, handed scripts that are unquestionably too long and being asked to work overtime for free.

I Am the Very Model of an Animation Graduate

Witty, but it would be so much better with a character on screen.

Anniversaries

For a short month, February has a lot of anniversaries, and this February marks several milestones.

February 8 was the 100th anniversary of the release of Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur.  First performed in vaudeville by McCay, it was not the first animated film by McCay or others, but it was arguably the most influential of the silent era, as it inspired many other cartoonists of the time to try their hands at animation.
February 2 was the 100th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin's debut on film in Making a Living.

That was followed on February 7 by the release of Kid Auto Races at Venice, the first film where he wore the costume of his tramp character.

February 1 was the 120th birthday of director John Ford and February 6 was the 20th anniversary of Jack Kirby's death.  Both of these men continue to occupy my thoughts and their work continues to occupy my attention.

Ed Hooks on Hollywood Animation

Ed Hooks is an actor and acting teacher who has run workshops for animators.  He has a monthly newsletter where he talks about animated acting and comments on animated films.  This is from his latest:

"Even a cursory glance at the evolution of feature animation in the United States reveals a lack of thematic diversity. Walt Disney started out making movies for children, and that is still pretty much the situation today. For one brief moment in history, it looked like John Lasseter and his Pixar crew were  going to break the mold. "Toy Story" was for adults, as was "Monsters Incorporated", "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille".  These movies worked for the kids in the audience, but they had adult themes and featured characters with adult wisdom. Pixar gave Hollywood animation a real Camelot moment. But then Disney bought Pixar, and we are back where we started, with movies for kids. The stories invariably are about  good vs. evil, virginal first love or non-life-threatening bravery. There is definitely sufficient talent in Hollywood to handle tough adult-world issues, but there is more money to be made with kids' movies and their tentpole merchandising opportunities."

Remembering Michael Sporn

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I cannot remember exactly when I first met Michael Sporn.  In the mid-1970s I began attending events given by ASIFA-East, and I’m sure that’s where I met Michael, but I couldn’t name the event or the year.

Certainly, I knew him by the time he was working on Raggedy Ann and Andy in 1976.  I began working in the animation business that year.  Michael was 8 years my senior and while farther along in his career, he was close enough to my age to be accessible.  His love for animation was obvious from the first time I met him and he was always happy to share his knowledge.

While American animation was born in New York, its survival there was tenuous from the 1930s onwards.  The Fleischer studio left for Miami and later returned under new ownership.  The Van Beuren studio went out of business.  Paul Terry left the city proper for the suburb of New Rochelle.  As theatrical cartoons died in the 1950s and ‘60s, New York survived on TV commercials with longer projects appearing only occasionally.  The artists in N.Y. animation were older, pretty much all veterans of the theatrical studios.  Some had entered the industry as early as the 1920s and others as late as the 1950s, but the industry wasn’t steady enough to entice newcomers except for those who loved animation deeply.  There were many better ways to earn a living as an artist in New York when Michael entered the business.

By the time of Raggedy Ann, Michael had already worked for John Hubley, someone who influenced Michael deeply.  Hubley was a pioneer in breaking the monopoly of the Disney design style, which he continued to do at UPA and at his own studio.  He also gravitated to projects that were far from typical in animation.  His films with his wife Faith dealt with childhood from a child’s point of view and with the politics of nationalism and the arms race.  Michael continued the Hubley tradition of eclectic design and films that were socially aware.

I think the two best words to describe Michael were courage and determination.  It took both to brave the uncertainty of New York animation and to make films that he felt a personal connection to.  The majority of N.Y. studios were content to do service work and satisfied if they could keep their doors open.  Michael, from the beginning, sought out projects that were off the beaten track and that he could invest in emotionally.  At the same time, Michael was always aware of the audience.  While many artists succumb to self-indulgence, Michael was always interested in being heard.  His films were always accessible.

Many of the New York studios were prejudiced against younger artists.  Many of them also ignored the better veteran animators who were available.  Michael embraced both.  He was constantly giving young artists opportunities, many of whom went on to productive careers in and out of animation.  Animation lovers owe Michael a debt of gratitude for keeping the late Tissa David busy and giving her opportunities like The Marzipan Pig, a half hour special she animated in its entirety for him.  Other veterans such as Dante Barbetta also found work with Michael.

Like many young animators, I left New York after a few years in search of work, but I always kept in touch with Michael and visited him whenever I was in New York.  Michael threw me a lifeline in 1989 for a few years as I worked on many of his TV specials from Toronto.  The one I contributed the most to was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, animating about a quarter of the film.  Looking back on my career, my work for Michael is easily some of my favorite.  He was a hands-off director, giving me more freedom as an animator than most other studios, and yet the resulting films always bore his stamp. 

Michael’s budgets were always low.  The animation I did for him had to be on three’s in order to stay within the budget.  Working for cable channels or PBS, it was a given that budgets would not be as high as those from the networks.  However, the freedom these outlets provided allowed Michael to make films that he cared about.  The Red Shoes, Happy to be Nappy and Whitewash all dealt with race.  The Little Match Girl dealt with urban poverty.  Abel’s Island, based on a book by William Steig, dealt with loneliness and the power of art.  That film and other Steig adaptations, Dr. Desoto and The Amazing Bone, are far more faithful to Steig’s work than DreamWorks was.

Michael always wanted to make a feature.  He came close several times.  His final project, based on Edgar Allen Poe, was plagued by problems; first the death of Tissa David and now Michael’s own.  It's ironic that Michael passed away on January 19, Poe's birthday.  At a time when animated features are proliferating, it’s a crime that Michael never had the opportunity to make one.  His uncanny ability to stretch a dollar meant that he could have made a feature for under $5 million, but because he stuck with drawn animation and because his taste was considered too different from typical animation, he never got the chance.

For all the box office and ratings success that animation has enjoyed recently in North America, I would not call this a fertile time.  Too many films and TV shows are imitating past successes.  Michael never gave in, though it probably would have been to his economic advantage to do so.  He managed to keep his studio going, always looking for projects he could love despite their tight budgets.  He stayed in New York, he stayed true to his own vision, and he provided opportunities for artists that nobody else would.  He took advantage of New York’s cultural scene by hiring actors and musicians from the theatre for his projects, tapping a talent pool that Hollywood has mostly ignored.  He made good films.  My favourite is Abel’s Island, though they all are worth watching.

Michael’s lack of profile with the general public will make his loss seem less than it is.  Make no mistake: we’ve lost a great film maker who managed to create art with the sparsest of resources.  Animation needs creators like Michael if it’s ever going to explore the full range of human experience. 

Those who knew and worked with him know what we’ve lost.  I’m sorry for those who aren’t aware of Michael’s work, but while they can correct that, they missed the chance to know a great animation artist and a generous friend.

Rest in Peace Michael Sporn

Michael Sporn has died.  Michael Barrier and John Canemaker have put together an obituary for him.  I've known Michael for close to 40 years and this is a great loss.  I'll write more when I can collect my thoughts.

The Simpsons do Miyazaki

In this Sunday's episode, The Simpsons reference a multiplicity of Miyazaki films.

Motion Capture for Home Use

I'm no expert when it comes to motion capture, but I'm aware of some of the technical challenges.  In the past, body suits with potentiometers at the joints sent angle information to rigged characters.  Later, multiple cameras were able to triangulate reference points pasted onto body suits to figure out where the points were in 3D space.  Facial capture usually meant wearing headgear with an attached camera pointed at the performer's face, which had dots drawn on it for reference points.

In each case, specialized hardware was necessary and somebody had to write software to translate the raw data into usable positions or angles that could drive a character.

All in all, not something the average person could do at home.

Technology has a habit of taking things that were once difficult and expensive and making them simple for anyone to use.  It's now happening to motion capture.

What you're seeing here is a home motion capture system to work with a webcam and allow a person to drive an animation-style character in real time.  I can't tell if the headphones are part of the necessary hardware or just headphones, but in any case, the system couldn't be much simpler for an average user.  Admittedly, it isn't perfect and the lip synch is probably the weakest part, but like all applications, it will improve in future versions.

This is being built by a team of Romanian software developers and they're raising money on Indiegogo.  The most basic package can be had for $5 U.S. and they've already reached their financial goal.

Technology has put a lot of people out of business and reduced the viability of various fields.  Good luck finding a typesetter and there are fewer graphic designers than there once were now that software has enabled anybody to do it.  True, a good designer brings experience and taste to a project that an amateur will not, but the tools are in reach for anyone who wants them.  And with templates available for blogs, websites, documents and presentations, the bread and butter work that used to cover a graphic designer's overhead has pretty much vanished.

I'm wondering if we're not witnessing something very similar happening to the role of the animator and possibly the role of the storyboard artist as well.

Motion capture isn't animation, but it can look like animation.  The general audience cares less about technique than about being entertained.  Knowing how to act for motion capture can be learned, the same way that comedians in silent films or mimes developed styles of movement that met their needs.  While undoubtedly there will be a lot of junk produced, the democratization of the tools will result in motion captured films that attempt to resemble animation from the major studios.

There's an indie film world where live action features are sometimes made for as little as $100,000.  The evolution of motion capture tools like FaceRig may make "animated" features possible at the same budget level.  Animators would not be necessary.

Possibly neither would storyboard artists.  The board exists to nail down the presentation of the visuals, but many live action directors don't use them.  If you can direct your characters in real time, boards are not as necessary.  In addition, once the performance exists in the virtual 3D world, you're free to direct the film after the performances are captured by placing the camera and deciding when to cut.  It will be easier than ever for people who know how to entertain an audience and communicate a story visually to create a film inexpensively.

Will this affect the animation industry as we know it or is it just a toy?  I don't know.  But I am amazed at how far motion capture has come technologically, when $5 can buy you a facial capture system and a bunch of avatars.  After seeing what happened to record companies and newspapers when technology upended them, the one thing I know is that we should not be complacent.

Richard Williams Documentary in Toronto

Kevin Schreck's documentary on the making of Richard Williams' The Cobbler and the Thief, Persistence of Vision, will be playing several times at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in January.  Schreck will be appearing at several screenings via Skype and two artists who worked on the film, Greg Duffell and Tara Donovan, will be present in person.

The film first screened in Toronto last August as part of TAAFI.  I reviewed it here.  I highly recommend the film and the opportunity to hear from Schreck, Duffell and Donovan, all of whom also accompanied the TAAFI screening. 

Here are the dates:

Fri, Jan 10 6:30 PM*
Sat, Jan 11 1:00 PM*
Sun, Jan 12 3:30 PM*
Mon, Jan 13 6:30 PM
Wed, Jan 15 4:00 PM
Thu, Jan 16 3:45 PM 

The asterisks indicate which screenings that Schreck, Duffell and Donovan will appear.

No Honour in His Own Country

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Frederic Back died on December 24.  I first heard of it on Jerry Beck's Animation Scoop website and then found an obituary in the L.A. Times.  Turning to Canada's media, there was nothing.  Eventually, CBC radio's As It Happens aired a segment with Normand Roger, composer for Back's best films, remembering Back.

Now, over one week later, the two national papers, The Globe and Mail and the National Post, have yet to run any kind of obituary for the two-time Oscar winner and member of the Order of Canada.  CTV and The Canadian Press have both done perfunctory obituaries.  Only the French language Le Devoir has any kind of lengthy coverage.

There is no question that Back was the greatest living Canadian animator.  Now that he is gone, I would be hard pressed to suggest a successor who is even close to Back's accomplishments.  Not only was Back a brilliant artist and animator, he was a dedicated environmentalist whose films celebrated Quebec's landscape and culture. It's a crime that no one who regularly writes about art or film in English-speaking Canada has seen fit to comment on Back's death or his accomplishments.

The Globe and Mail did publish an obituary for Al Goldstein on December 19.  It's disheartening to know that the paper feels that an American pornographer merits more coverage than an award winning Canadian animator.

Update: The Globe and Mail finally published an obituary one month and two days after Back's death. As of January 26, the National Post has still done nothing.

Composer Normand Roger Remembers Working with Frederic Back

Normand Roger, who composed the music for all of Frederic Back's films from 1975 on, remembers the late artist on the CBC radio show As It Happens.