Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, has a new book called Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t.  It's a quick read and a master course in story construction.  Until June 30, 2016, it's free in a variety of digital formats, including .pdf.  You're not required to leave any personal information in order to get a copy.

Here are two quotes that jumped out at me that will give you the flavour of the book.

"Nobody wants to read your shit.

"What's the answer?

"1) Streamline your message.  Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.

"2) Make its expression fun.  Or sexy or interesting or scary or informative.  Make it so compelling that a person would have to be crazy NOT to read it.

"3) Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.

"When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated.  You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction.  The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities.  In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.

"When you understand that nobody wants to read our shit, you develop empathy.

"You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs -- the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer.  You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting?  Is it fun or challenging or inventive?  Am I giving the reader enough?  Is she bored?  Is she following where I want to lead her?"

And this:

"A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give.  She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to  be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.

"A fake writer (or artist or entrepreneur) is just trying to draw attention to himself.  The word "fake" may be too unkind.  Let's say "young" or "evolving."
...
"To get over it, the candidate must grow up."

Muhammad Ali and Darwyn Cooke

No doubt you're wondering what these two have in common and why I am writing about them in an animation blog.  I'll get to that.

2016 has been a tough year for celebrity deaths.  Two that have hit me hard are the recent deaths of boxer Muhammad Ali and comic book creator Darwyn Cooke.  Both of these men widened the frame of reference for their respective fields through their work and their words.

I have no idea when Ali became politically aware, though he may have been from birth.  In any case, after defeating Sonny Liston and winning the heavyweight championship, he changed his name from Cassius Clay, telling reporters, “I don’t have to be what you want me to be,  I’m free to be who I want.”  Later, he resisted induction into the U.S. military, refusing to fight in the Viet Nam war.

While there were certainly great African-American athletes before Ali -- Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson come to mind -- the times forced them to tolerate the racism they experienced and they confined themselves in word and action to their respective sports where they avoided controversy.  Ali refused to just be a boxer and with his religion, politics, and taking his bouts to other continents, was an example of how a person could define himself regardless of how a dominant society attempted to keep him in his place.  Ali was an outstanding athlete, but his impact owes as much to his life outside the ring as in it.

Darwyn Cooke grew up loving comics and managed at a young age to get a story published by DC.  In those days, before Fedex and the internet, the fact that he didn't live in New York City pretty much ended his comics career right there.  While he was no doubt disappointed, it ended up enriching his work.

Cooke spent time art directing music and fashion magazines as well as running a design studio.  In doing this, he gained experience in the commercial art field, dealing with clients and absorbing aesthetics from fields other than comics.  He then went into TV animation, working with Bruce Timm on the influential Batman: The Animated Series, a show that also brought in artistic influences from outside comics.  It was at this point, after a decade and a half outside the field, that Cooke finally made it into the comics world.

Like Ali, Cooke was determined to define himself.  He did so in terms of the design of his work and his treatment of the subject matter.  Too many of the people in comics had graduated from being fans directly into the industry, and had a very constricted view of what comics were supposed to be.  They had little to no experience in the wider business world.  Comics art of the period was overly detailed and fussy.  Fan-favourite art had a lot of lines in it.  Cooke had a cleaner, more direct style that was counter to what comics were doing artistically and he was comfortable with incorporating modern graphic design.  In terms of content, as former fans-turned-writers aged, they continued to write comics for themselves, taking characters intended for children into questionable areas of sex and violence.  Having worked in the real world where he did business with women, Cooke treated his female characters with far more respect than those in other comics from DC.  He also insisted on heroes being heroes, not psychopaths.

So what's this got to do with animation?  From my perspective (and you're free to disagree), animation in theatres and on TV has gone stale.  Too much of it is the same.  The insularity is due to producers who imitate successes to line their pockets and artists who immerse themselves in animation while growing up and then graduate into the field.  Ali and Cooke each brought some of the wider world into their professions.  They enlarged their fields with their life experience.  Animation needs that.  Though the cost of production discourages it, animation needs to open up to more points of view.  It's not just a question of a more diverse workforce or adding characters of colour or varying sexual orientations to the films.  Animation needs to challenge what the audience thinks an animated film or TV show is supposed to be, the same way that Ali challenged how people looked at athletes and Cooke challenged how comics should be done.

In 2016, giants are passing on and leaving holes in our lives.  While celebrating their accomplishments is appropriate, we should build on their lessons to create accomplishments of our own.

Startoon

The greatest danger in pitching ideas is not rejection.  While rejection is common, the one benefit to rejection is that your idea remains your property.  The greatest danger is finding a buyer, and that's dangerous because in exchange for getting your idea produced, you will generally lose ownership and control of the very thing you created.

Mike Valiquette of Canadian Animation Resources is now associated with Startoon, a competition to find an animated property worth producing.  This competition is different, because they make no claim to your ideas if you don't win.  This is in direct contrast to most other competitions, where the contest runners have the right to use your work forever in any medium simply because you entered.

It's too soon to know if this will result in a successful project or if the winning creator will feel satisfied at how he or she is treated, but it is encouraging that someone is willing to do business in a more creator-friendly way.  Watch Mike's pitch below and find the complete details here.

Canadian Content, Regulations, and Audiences

Canada's federal government is interested in revisiting rules and funding regarding Canadian culture.  In the TV business, broadcasters and cable channels are required to play a certain percentage of Canadian content daily in order to guarantee local producers access to audiences and give audiences access to local content.

As broadcast and cable were the only ways to get a show into homes, the old regulations focused on distribution.  A producer needed a letter from a broadcaster or cable channel in order to qualify for money from various funding bodies.

These days, broadcast and cable have become less relevant with streaming and torrents.  In effect, the audience has left the building and advertisers are going with them, leaving the broadcasters and cable channels with shrinking markets and dubious futures.

The question is whether the government will be smart enough to understand this and resist vested interests who will fight to preserve their positions. 

With distribution available to everyone now, through Netlix, YouTube, etc, the focus should turn to creators.  The problems creators face are financing production, earning enough to live on, and making the audience aware of their work.

While I am obviously biased in favour of creators, I'd be the first to say that those who can successfully engage the audience are a rare breed.  Many can write, draw, direct or act, but only a few can hold an audience's attention. 

Everybody can sing.  No doubt with lessons and practice, everybody could sing better.  But only some people sing well enough to sell tickets.  I teach around 150 animation students a year.  While there are usually a dozen who are genuinely good animators, there are rarely more than one or two with the ability to engage an audience.

The challenge for the government is setting up a system where those creators with the ability to engage an audience can survive economically, and the audience can be made aware of their work.

If creators succeed, government support should be withdrawn and the money and resources put towards discovering other people.  If people fail, they should be barred from reapplying for a period of time.  Too often in the past, people succeeded by working the government's system rather than creating successful products.   That ends up being a wealth transfer from tax payers to mediocrities.  Avoiding that and discovering new talent should be the focus of any revised set of cultural regulations.  It's a big challenge and I hope that the government gets it right.

New Ghibli Commercial

Details here.

TAAFI - The Toronto Animated Arts Festival International

 After a one year hiatus, the Toronto Animated Arts Festival International (TAAFI) will resume on April 22 and run through April 24.  The Friday and Monday will feature workshops with industry veterans such as Eric Goldberg, Samantha Youssef, Michel Gagné and others.  The weekend is dedicated to screenings from around the world, including the world premieres of the features Spark and Nova Seed.  Other guests include Marv Newland, Audu Paden, Michael Rianda, Stevie Vallance, Willie Ito, Jerry Eisenberg and Tony Benedict.

Early Bird discount passes are available until March 22.  The website, with more complete details, is here.

Irish Animation in Toronto

As part of the sixth annual Toronto Irish Film Festival, there will be a program of Irish animation on Sunday, March 6 at 1 p.m.  at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.  Some of the most interesting animation being done today is coming from Europe, and the program includes films from Cartoon Saloon, maker of Song of the Sea, and Brown Bag films.  There are also some student animated films.

The list of films for all programs can be found here.

2016 Sheridan Industry Day Promo

We're rapidly approaching the end of another school year, and the animation students of Sheridan's class of 2016 have created a promo to showcase their films.  As always, there is a variety of design styles and techniques used.  I look forward to seeing these films on Industry Day, when Sheridan invites studio personnel to view the work of the newest members of the animation industry.

Sheridan College Industry Day Commercial 2016 from Jessica Mao on Vimeo.

Anomalisa

Michael and Lisa

(Spoilers below.)

Anomalisa, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson, is a film that I respect but don't love.

I respect it because its ideas have been rigorously worked out in the script, cinematography, animation and soundtrack.  It's a film that is extremely clever in revealing the nature of the main character and uses animation in original ways.  My problem is that for all its excellence, it is a cold film.  Michael, the main character voiced by David Thewlis, is stuck in a depressed state and by the film's end, does not understand himself any better than he did at the start.  He's needy, presumptuous, impatient, selfish and ultimately clueless as to his own nature.  It was difficult for me to spend time with him or to care what happened to him.

Michael is an expert in customer service traveling to Cincinnati to give a talk at a conference.   By the time we learn this, we've seen him interact with many people in the hospitality industry, all of whom behave in ways that Michael would endorse.  However, he's so wrapped up in his own head that he can't appreciate the service he's being offered and is so distracted that he comes off as brusque. 

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that every character except for Michael has the voice of actor Tom Noonan and all have identical faces, whether they are male or female.  While Michael's speech to the conference emphasizes treating customers as individuals, he himself is incapable of seeing people that way.  The only person that looks and sounds different to him is Lisa, voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is there for the conference and is damaged in her own way.

Lisa has a scarred face and crippling self esteem problems.  When Michael invites her to his room, she assumes that he would be happier with her friend.  After spending the night together, Michael wants to run away with her.  Her life is so empty that she agrees, but when they breakfast together, Michael finds flaws in her and her voice transforms into the the generic voice all the other characters have.  Michael can't accept people as they are, which is why all his relationships end with him unhappy and isolated.

At the end of the film, Michael returns home to his wife, child and a house full of guests, but the final image of Michael is him staring at a mechanical doll, unable to relate to any of the people around him.  By contrast, Lisa seems grateful for the attention she received and seems renewed by the tryst.

While this film looks like it could have been done in live action, stop motion is used to distance the characters from reality enough to make the audience aware of the difference.  The puppets are about five heads high, proportioned with slightly larger heads than real people.  There is no attempt to hide the seams on their faces that separate the parts that are replaced frame by frame. 

The animation successfully communicates the characters' emotional states.  That's what animation is supposed to do.  The facial and hand movements are subtle.  Michael and Lisa are individualized through their movement.  The acting avoids animation clichés and grounds the characters in understandable human emotions.

The direction, cinematography and art direction are impressive. Michael's hotel room and the corridor outside it successfully capture the generic look familiar to anyone who has stayed in a North American hotel.  The lighting of the characters and sets is exceptional.  While lighting in cgi has advanced tremendously, it still can't match the beauty of live action lighting.  The camera moves are fluid and generally unobtrusive until they need to add emphasis.  The sound effects bolster the reality of the world that the puppets move through.

For all of this film's accomplishments, it's difficult to do a story about a character who can't change and who ends up where he began.  The audience learns more about the character over the course of the film, but as the character is not very appealing, it's hard to engage with him.  The central character, while fully realized, is the film's weakest point.

While I don't care about the Academy Awards, this film and Inside Out are both nominated in the Best Animated Feature category and I suspect that one of them will win.   They are opposite in many respects.  One is cold and the other is warm.  This film is tightly structured while Inside Out is a bit of a mess.  I suspect that the Academy will go with the feel-good film, but there is no question that Anomalisa, in spite of its coldness, has taken animation in a new direction in terms of subject matter and technique.  It presents possibilities, something that Pixar hasn't done in years.  While I can't say I enjoyed watching this film, I'm glad that I saw it and glad that it exists.  Anomalisa is a direction worth pursuing.

Can You Imagine?

Can you imagine an election where a winner is declared but the vote totals are kept secret?

Can you imagine a lottery where someone wins, but they won't tell you the winning number?

Can you imagine a Superbowl where one team gets the glory, but nobody knows the final score?

Welcome to the Academy Awards!

The Corruption of Copyright

What is copyright?  It's a privilege granted by law.  Like many things determined by people, as opposed to nature, there's a certain arbitrariness to it.  Why is the speed limit 60?  Why is the voting age 18?  Why are certain days holidays?  It's important to remember that at various times and places, the answer to the preceding questions were different than they are now.  So it is with copyright.

Why was copyright created?  Why was this privilege granted to people who create new works?  It was invented to provide an incentive to create, balanced with a social need to enhance the culture.  If someone wrote a novel, or a play, or painted a picture and anyone could make copies to sell, what would be the incentive to invest the time and effort to create?  Why work hard so that others, who had nothing to do with the creation, could profit?  Creators needed protection to make their investment of time and effort worthwhile, so they were given a temporary monopoly on their creations, allowing them to be the sole financial beneficiaries of their work.

The fact that this monopoly is temporary is the price creators pay for their exclusive rights.  Yes, the law will protect a creator so that they can profit from their work, but only for a fixed period.  Why?  So that society as a whole can be enriched by that work after a time.  When a copyright expires, anyone can republish the work or use it as the basis for something new.  Today, anyone can use the work of Charles Dickens or Mark Twain and culture is richer for that.  You can profit from the work of others but only after they have had the chance to profit from it themselves. 

In principle, copyright works.  However, just as a speed limit or the voting age can be changed, the length of the monopoly can be changed.  Unfortunately, it has only been changed in a single direction.  While the original copyright law in the United States was for 14 years, the current copyright law is for life plus 70 years for individuals and 95 years for corporations.  Until 1976, not all that long ago, copyright lasted a maximum of 56 years.  If that were still true, anything created in 1959 or earlier would be in the public domain.  That includes a lot of Disney films and other Hollywood product.  It includes most or all of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Norman Rockwell, and works starring Superman, Batman, Captain America, Conan, Flash Gordon, Little Orphan Annie, etc.

The Trans Pacific Partnership, a 12 nation trade deal that has yet to be signed and ratified as of this writing, would extend copyright in countries, such as Canada, to match the current U.S. standard.  In Canada, the law is currently life plus 50 years.  What would happen to the 20 years worth of material considered public domain in Canada if Canada ratifies the TPP?  Would publishers be forced to negotiate licenses after the fact with the once and future copyright holders or withdraw the material?  Would they be compensated for losses?  Nobody knows.

Another arbitrary aspect of copyright law is enforcement.  Technically, any fan fiction or art that is made publicly available, even if there is no money involved, is a copyright violation.  Often, copyright holders don't enforce their rights, either because they don't think the violators are enough of a threat to bother with or they are unaware of the violation.  At comics conventions, there are some characters that are understood to be off limits for fan art and others that are not. There are all sorts of films on YouTube that are a violation of copyright.  Some have been there for years.

Where's the line between being beneath a copyright holder's notice and provoking legal action? The problem is that there is no line.  Or rather, the line comes and goes on a case by case basis.  For instance, Paramount and CBS have instituted legal action against a Star Trek fan film, financed on Kickstarter to the tune of $1 million.  Apparently there have been earlier Star Trek fan films made without incident, but this one is a target.  Where's the line?  Was it the money involved?  The high profile?   Or did a lawyer wake up grumpy?

Even under the old copyright term of 56 years, the original Star Trek would still be protected.  But Gene Roddenberry is dead.  Many of the writers, directors and performers of the show are dead.  The executives who put the series into production are no longer with Paramount even if they are alive.  And Paramount is now owned by Viacom, which had nothing to do with Star Trek as it didn't exist until years after the series was cancelled.  I am very much in favour of creator rights, but I find it hard to see a link between Gene Roddenberry and Viacom stockholders

In the U.S., if some entity creates a cure for cancer, they get only a maximum of 20 years to benefit (and some of that time is often used up before the government approves a drug for sale).  After that, other companies can create generic versions without the expenses associated with developing a drug.  But Paramount gets to protect Star Trek for 95 years.  What kind of society values the inventors of entertainment more than the inventors of life saving drugs?  Probably the society you live in.

In the past, culture was something that emerged from a group of people sharing a time and space.  No one owns styles of language, architecture, painting, fashion, design or cuisine.  If you want to make crêpes Suzette, you don't need permission or have to pay a royalty to Suzette.  But since the invention of mass media, culture is manufactured for a profit.  The music, books, movies and TV shows that are discussed are owned and the owners restrict their use.  Even the media we use to communicate our thoughts about culture, such as this blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are owned.  Government owns the post office, but nobody needs permission to write a letter.  Try saying no to a terms of use software agreement and see where it gets you.

Copyright has value.  I would never dispute that.  But when it is used to lock up culture, instead of enrich culture, it has gone too far.  Yes, the makers of the Star Trek fan film do not have the law on their side.  But no one should confuse that with whether the law is just or functional.  Today, copyright is neither.

Is There an Animated Feature Bubble?

Cartoon Brew has a list of 47 animated features that will potentially be released in 2016.  Some have already been released outside North America, others are still in production.

There have been articles in the past about whether animation is wearing out its welcome or not, but now we are reaching a saturation point that is constrained by the calendar.  With only 52 weeks in a year, next year could potentially see a new animated feature released almost every week.  Is it possible for the box office to sustain that many animated films?  Even if half of them don't get a North American release, that's still a new feature every two weeks.

With few exceptions, they are aimed at the family audience.  That audience is now being courted by two other major franchises, Marvel and Star Wars, that will compete for box office dollars.  While many animated features have budgets significantly lower than those from the big studios, they still need to earn enough to make their releases worthwhile.

With so many films hitting theatres so frequently, marketing is going to be extremely important.  Films that have poor opening weekends are toast.  There will be no time for word of mouth to build before the next animated feature arrives.

Many who have jumped into producing animated features are destined to be disappointed.  That's when this bubble is going to pop.  Audiences may not care.  A dozen high profile animated features a year may be more than enough to satisfy the family audience.  But what is this going to do to employment?

People who have been in animation for the last 20 years (except for those who worked in hand drawn animated features) have not seen lean times.  The increase in TV animation, videogames and animated features has mostly been a continuous upward curve.  Those who have been around longer remember that the animation industry was not always so robust.  I can't believe that all these features are going to be profitable enough to keep their producers starting new projects.  Should producers walk away, there are going to be people looking for work.  Maybe TV and games can absorb them, but TV is experiencing its own potential bubble, with streaming being added to broadcast and cable.  Is there enough money in that system to keep everything going?

The Disneys, DreamWorks, Blue Skys and Sonys have deep enough pockets to stay in the market for animated features, but they're a minority of those 47 films.  There will always be features made for local markets in Europe, Asia and South America, but getting a North American release may become harder in the future.  Even the Ghibli films have not pulled major box office in North America, which casts doubts that many of the freshman features coming will be successful.

I could be wrong, but how many animated features a year can the market sustain?

GKIDS

Here's an interesting article on GKIDS, for my money the most interesting distributor of feature animation right now.  They've been unafraid to release hand drawn features and they have brought some of the best international animated features to North America.  They've had six of their films nominated for Academy Awards, and I've seen them all.  I look forward to their future releases and hope they continue to flourish.

"Nothing begins good, but everything good begins."

I've recently read How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery by Kevin Ashton.  It contains many insights on creation, more than I could do justice to in a review, but I do want to share a few quotes from the book.

Creators must expect rejection.  The only way to avoid rejection is avoid making anything new.  Rejection is not a ticket to quit.  It does not mean the work is bad.  It does not mean we are bad.  Rejection is about as personal as gravity.

At its best, rejection is information  It shows us what to do next....Rejection is not persecution.  Drain it of its poison and what remains may be useful.

...

Great creators know that the best step forward is often a step back -- to scrutinize, analyze, and assess, to find faults and flaws, to challenge and to change.  You cannot escape a maze if you only move forward.  Sometimes, the path ahead is behind.

Rejection educates.  Failure teaches.  Both hurt.  Only distraction comforts.  And of these, only distraction can lead to destruction.  Rejection and failure can nourish us, but wasted time is a tiny death.  What determines whether we will succeed as creators is not how intelligent we are, how talented we are, or how hard we work, but how we respond to the adversity of creation.

Why is changing the world so hard?  Because the world does not want to change.

...

Nothing begins good, but everything good begins.  Everything can be revised, erased, or rearranged later.  The courage of creation is making bad beginnings.

101 Dalmatians: Give the Lady a Hand

Above is an early section of 101 Dalmatians that I regularly show my students when talking about walks.  The three women are great contrasts in design and movement and we analyze how the visuals form our impressions of these characters.

There are variations in timing.  The first woman walks at 15 frames per step, which is a relaxed gait.  The second at 10 frames per step, showing more urgency and the third woman walks at 8 frames per step and is clearly in a hurry.  There are variations in body shape.  The first woman is gangly, the second stout and the third svelte.  There are variations in dress which imply what class the women belong to.  The first woman wears an ill-fitting coat and is bohemian, the second woman wears a smartly tailored outfit and is middle class and the third woman wears fur and is upper class.

While I've seen the film many times and I've shown this clip easily dozens of times to students, there was something I didn't notice until this week: the way each woman holds her leash.

The first woman is the most casual of the three.  Her hand is in her pocket.  The second woman is quite rigid in her arm motions and she holds the leash in a fist.  This implies that she's very guarded and not willing to take chances.  The third woman holds the leash with an open hand.  That shows her confidence that nothing will go wrong.

Then there's Anita, the woman who Roger will eventually marry.

She holds the leash in a fist, but isn't holding the leash by the loop.  She's not as rigid as the second woman, but not as confident as the third.  Also notice what she's carrying.  The first woman, we see later, is a painter.  She's carrying her supplies.  The second two women are carrying purses.  Anita is carrying a book, implying intelligence.

At this point in the film, the women, including Anita, are just vignettes.  The audience is only given brief glimpses of them.  Yet it's clear that the artists have worked hard to visually differentiate the women and to give the audience clues as to who these women are.  Even something as potentially trivial as how someone holds a leash has been thought out to be consistent with what the artists want to communicate.

The credited animators for the walks are Frank Thomas and Blaine Gibson.  It's impossible to know what came from the designs and what was added in animation, but these walks are a testament to how much information can be compressed into a short amount of time.  That's the power of good design and expressive movement.

Some Thoughts on VR Storytelling

I am not an expert in virtual reality and frankly haven't been following it that closely.  However, it's beginning to pop up more and more, so I've started to think about how it might affect animated storytelling.

You've probably seen the video of Glen Keane drawing in three dimensions.  I've just seen a video from Occulus Medium about sculpting in a virtual reality.  I don't doubt that video games will take advantage of VR before any other form of animated storytelling, but how will stories that are not interactive accommodate themselves to VR?

The simplest approach will probably be to let the viewer wander through a scene, looking wherever he or she wants to at any given moment.  This is the closest to what now occurs on the stage.  When watching a play, you are free to look where you wish.  There are many directorial tricks to influence where the audience is looking, but there's nothing to stop an audience member from staring at a performer's shoe for the entire play.

(Will the hardware will track head or eye positions?  We move our eyes much faster than we turn our heads.  Besides speeding up the audience experience, tracking eyes will prevent the feeling of vertigo when the entire world spins while you turn your head.  Will the viewer glide through the scene like a film camera or will the viewer have to walk or run to keep up with the action?  Both have emotional validity, but will the action scale itself to the viewer's ability to keep up with it?)

There are two issues with giving the viewer the freedom to wander through a scene that I see.  The job of director exists specifically to shape a story visually and direct the audience to what is important at any given moment.  If you give the audience the freedom to look where they please without strategies to influence where they look, you could end up with stories that are less dramatic or comic than intended, simply because the audience is not catching the important action.

The other issue, and one that will be common to all forms of VR, has to do with increased production demands.  Right now, if you cut from character A to character B, character A does not have to be animated so long as he is off-screen.  With VR giving the viewer the ability to look where he pleases, character A must always be alive in case the viewer is looking in his direction.  This will require more animation for each character in a scene and may also require more background animation (wind, water, etc.)  If the characters will truly be present in the story, and not just on some kind of breathing cycle or other nondescript movement, this will require more work and larger budgets.  It will also force animators to learn how to have characters listen, something live actors learn early on, but that animated films typically avoid except for reaction shots.

Another alternative to this would be something similar to directing live action TV dramas from the 1950s.  Imagine that every character has a virtual camera focused on her as well as a camera that covers the master shot.  The viewer could switch between cameras, choosing who to look at.  The danger here, as above, is that on a first viewing the viewer doesn't know where the story is headed. She might miss important details or emotional moments.  Will a story have to be viewed multiple times in order to fully understand its dynamics?  And once understood, will the viewer have evolved a preferred way of experiencing a particular story that will be different from other viewers' approach to the same material?  Imagine a shared VR experience where you are looking through the eyes of the person next to you, experiencing how they experience a story.  Then you switch places.

Another possibility is the subjective camera where the viewer is in the story.  This edges more into an interactive approach, where characters would address the viewer, even if the viewer's responses were prerecorded audio.  In this way, it would be possible to be in the film as whatever character you desired and see the story through their eyes.  On additional viewings, you could take the part of another character.  Would Star Wars be more or less interesting if you could take the part of any of the characters and see the film through that character's eyes?

While videogames have been around for decades, there is still a separation between games and narrative media.  With VR, will they bleed into each other more?  Besides playing a character, will the viewer have hands to interact with the environment?  And if so, will the viewer be able to influence the story based on actions taken?  A hit or a miss with a weapon could have a major impact for how a story unfolds.  With each action taken, a parallel story possibility exists, perhaps making this approach far too expensive to produce.  If it turns out "these ARE the droids we're looking for," or the trash compactor kills one or more characters or the death star doesn't blow up, you have three other movies.  Multiply that by every fork in the story and how long would it take to produce the film?

Eventually, conventions will develop.  There's no reason that red means stop and green means go except that we all agree on it.  There's no reason that a right mouse click does certain things compared to a left mouse click except that we've been trained across various software packages to accept this.  Just as there are storytelling conventions in film, such as the cut and the dissolve, VR will inevitably develop its own conventions so that audiences feel confident as to the best way to experience a story.  What those conventions will be and how long they will take to develop is unknown at this point, but that's the next frontier.  People look back in wonder at the development of animation in the 1930s and the development of cgi in the '80s and '90s.  The next explosion of creativity in the animation field is going to be the development of VR as a storytelling medium.

Pete Williams and Undergrads

In August, Pete Williams, the creator of the MTV and Teletoon series Undergrads, gave a fabulous talk at Animatic T.O. relating the history of creating the show and getting it on the air.  It was a warts-and-all presentation, where Williams was forthcoming about the mistakes he made.

He has a lot to teach anyone interested in selling a TV series.  Until you've done it, you don't really know all the pitfalls and gotchas, so take advantage of the his experience and watch the presentation.

Tulips Shall Grow: George Pal vs. the Nazis

The Library of Congress National Film Registry invited me to write about the George Pal Puppetoon Tulips Shall Grow.  It is one of the most dramatic of Pal's animated films and the first American animated cartoon to be explicitly anti-Nazi.  The historical circumstances behind its creation include Pal's history as well as Hollywood's dealings with the German market in the 1930s.

If you're unfamiliar with the film, you can watch it below.

Jack Kirby's 98th Birthday

August 28 would have been Jack Kirby's 98th birthday.  While Kirby has been gone since 1994, it's still a day to celebrate for a variety of reasons.  First, Kirby's influence on popular culture is probably larger than it's ever been.  The Daily Herald reports that movies featuring characters created or co-created by Kirby have grossed $6.7 billion world-wide.  That doesn't count TV shows, toys and comics that are still being made based on his work.

Another reason to celebrate is that this is his first birthday since his estate received a settlement from Marvel and Disney for his creations.  While the amount is unknown, one hopes that it was significant given the earning power that Kirby's creations are still showing.  Marvel, which for years downplayed Kirby's role, is once again celebrating him now that the legal battles are over.

Charles Hatfield, author of Hand of Fire, an analysis of Kirby's work, has curated an exhibit of Kirby originals at the California  State University Northridge Art Galleries that runs until October 10 entitled Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby.  If you're in the area, I would urge you to see it.  As powerful as Kirby's work is in print, the originals are more forceful.  Hatfield says, "The catalog is a monster: 20 essays on Kirby, most of them short and punchy, interleaved with more than a hundred images, most shot from original art. It's a joint publishing venture between the CSUN Art Galleries and IDW, under Scott Dunbier's eye and with design by Randall Dahlk, who designed IDW's incredible Kirby Artist's Editions. It's in production even now."

If you are in the mood to immerse yourself in Kirby's drawings, Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter has put together an online gallery of his work that spans a good portion of his career.  And if you're looking for a more personal reminiscence, you can't go wrong reading Mark Evanier, who had the great fortune to work with Kirby and know him for around 25 years.

As powerful as Kirby's images are, single images don't address his strength as a storyteller.  I've just finished reading Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate by Brian McDonald.  It's an excellent book on story structure and one of the best books on story creation I've ever read.  In his first chapter, he talks about structure in a way that illuminates Kirby as a writer.

Often when I listen to how people evaluate stories, I hear them talk about dialogue.  When they talk about "the script" for a film, they are often talking about the dialogue.  Or when they mention how well a book is written, they most often mean the way the words are put together -- the beauty of a sentence.

When people speak of Shakespeare's work, they almost always talk about the beauty of the language.

These are all forms of "visible ink."  This term refers to writing that is readily "seen" by the reader or viewer, who often mistakes these words on the page as the only writing the storyteller is doing.

But how events in a story are ordered is also writing.  What events should occur in a story to make the teller's point is also writing.  Why a character behaves in a particular way is also writing.

These are all forms of "invisible ink," so called because they are not easily spotted by a reader, viewer or listener of a story.  Invisible ink does, however, have a profound impact on a story.  More to the point, it is the story.  Invisible ink is the writing below the surface of the words.  Most people will never see or notice it, but they will feel it.

Kirby often worked with collaborators, sometimes by choice and sometimes not.  However, in telling the story pictorially, he was writing the story.  The contents of each panel, the continuity from panel to panel, the choice of "camera" distance and angle, the composition, the character poses, the facial expressions, the use of black ink, etc. all told the story before the dialogue was added.  As McDonald would say, it was the story.  As distinctive as Kirby's images are, it is also his imagination and his storytelling that make him worth remembering and studying.

R.I.P. Richard Cohen

Feb. 3, 1952 - Aug. 20, 2015

Richard Cohen, an artist who contributed to the early days of computer animation and digital visual effects, passed away on August 20 from a cardiac arrest.

I first met Richard in the summer of 1984 at Sheridan College.  At the time, they had a 14 week summer course in computer graphics.  Richard was already an established illustrator, having done covers for Heavy Metal magazine.  He had also hung around Ohio State University, one of the hotbeds of cgi development at the time.

One of Richard's illustrations

Richard and I stayed in touch after the course and he was hired almost immediately by Pacific Data Images in San Francisco.  Later, he worked for ILM on films like Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Death Becomes Her.  Other work included matte paintings on The Hudsucker Proxy, Starship Troopers and The Santa Claus 2.  His IMDB listing is woefully incomplete, as so much of the early days of cgi were spent on company logos and TV commercials, work that IMDB doesn't track.

By 1999, Richard was teaching visual effects at Sheridan College, the same program that he had taken 15 years before.  He also taught painting in the Art Fundamentals program.

Richard had amazing taste and a strong sense of design.  He and his wife Ria bought a house on the Niagara escarpment in Grimsby, Ontario, that was something out of an architectural magazine.  It was the kind of house you'd see pictures of but never expected to see in person.  It was also exquisitely furnished.

In addition to art, Richard was heavily involved with woodworking, making guitars and furniture that were professional quality.  He was intensely focused when he found something he was interested in and stopped at nothing to get the results he wanted.

Richard in his workshop with a guitar in progress

In December of 2009, Richard had a stroke which resulted in a limp and losing the use of his left arm.  As you can imagine, that was a major blow for someone so interested in creating both digital and physical things.  In more recent years, as a result of the stroke, he developed chronic pain which no medication seemed to control.

He was an outgoing, boisterous guy who, as I said, could be intensely focused.  My wife and I shared many dinners with him and Ria and it's hard to believe that he's gone.  I'm going to miss his booming voice.  He's survived by his mother; five younger brothers; a daughter, Mara, from a previous marriage; and his wife Ria.  He's to be buried in San Francisco.

In 2001, Richard's special effects students collaborated on a film called The Artist of the Beautiful.  Richard was the artist in the film and it's the way I prefer to remember him.
THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL from Noel Hooper on Vimeo.