Listening is an Act of Love

Storycorps presents it's first half hour special, animated by the Rauch brothers.  It will air on PBS stations on Thanksgiving night, but check your local listings.  From what I can see, the Buffalo affiliate, WNED, will not be running this, so Toronto is out of luck.

Greg Kelly has pointed out to me that starting November 29 until December 28, the special will be online at PBS, so everyone will get a chance to see it.  Thanks Greg.

Miyazaki Manga

While he has seemingly retired from directing animation, Hayao Miyazaki has returned to creating manga. Above are two photos of many from a recent Japanese documentary on Miyazaki, as reported by Crunchyroll.

The manga is a period piece dealing with samurai during the Warring States period of Japanese history.

Miyazaki already created one major manga work, Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind.  Having read and admired that, I look forward to reading more Miyazaki when this is completed.

Milt Kahl Before Disney

The always interesting film blog Greenbriar Picture Shows has an entry on the work that Milt Kahl did prior to starting at Disney.  He did advertising art for the Fox cinemas on the west coast of the U.S.  One of the ads pictured has a 'K' signature in the corner, making it highly likely it's Kahl's work.

Somebody tell Andreas Deja about this.

Uh Oh Pocoyo

My admiration for Pocoyo, especially the first season, is a matter of record.  I was sorry to hear that Zinkia, the company that produces Pocoyo, is now seeking bankruptcy protection.  I have no idea if this was due to circumstances beyond the company's control or if there was mismanagement involved, but in any case it's a shame.  I hope the company is able to restructure and survive.

A New StoryCorps Short by the Rauch Brothers

There's not a lot of contemporary animation that I look forward to, but I'm always excited to see a new short by the Rauch brothers.  So much of contemporary animation is devoid of real human feeling and emotion.  It relies on dramatic and comic clichés and the dialogue is straight from sitcoms.   It is refreshing to see some animation, like the above, built on genuine human experience.

I have no idea if these shorts are creating any ripples within the animation community, but they should be.  The Rauch brothers are pointing in a direction that animation needs to go, and it doesn't need $150 million budgets to get there.  All it needs is truth and taste, two things that should be in good supply and that won't break the bank.

This short is one of four new Rauch brothers shorts that will be included in the November 28 POV special on PBS.  I look forward to them all.

You can see all of the Rauch brothers shorts for StoryCorps here.

On Working for Free

In the New York Times, Tim Kreider writes a terrific essay on working for free.

"People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, whether you wouldn’t be willing to write an essay or draw an illustration for them for nothing. They often start by telling you how much they admire your work, although not enough, evidently, to pay one cent for it.  “Unfortunately we don’t have the budget to offer compensation to our contributors...” is how the pertinent line usually starts. But just as often, they simply omit any mention of payment.

"A familiar figure in one’s 20s is the club owner or event promoter who explains to your band that they won’t be paying you in money, man, because you’re getting paid in the far more valuable currency of exposure. This same figure reappears over the years, like the devil, in different guises — with shorter hair, a better suit — as the editor of a Web site or magazine, dismissing the issue of payment as an irrelevant quibble and impressing upon you how many hits they get per day, how many eyeballs, what great exposure it’ll offer. “Artist Dies of Exposure” goes the rueful joke."

The Coming Copyright Battle

Timothy B. Lee, writing in the Washington Post, has an excellent summary of the evolution of copyright in the United States.  In a little over 5 years from now, assuming the copyright law isn't changed, works will once again begin to fall into the public domain.  However, it is likely that major corporations such as Disney will be heavily lobbying to extend the length of copyright once again.  Lee suggests that the existence of the internet, which rallied to kill the Stop Online Piracy Act, may be a countervailing force.

"The big question now is whether incumbent copyright holders will try to get yet another extension of copyright terms before works begin falling into the public domain again on January 1, 2019.

"For now, Hollywood is staying mum; a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America declined to comment on its plans. We weren't able to find any sign the topic has come up on Capitol Hill. But most of the experts we spoke to said the stakes are so high that a renewed lobbying push is almost inevitable.

"'If Hollywood and their allies want to do this, they're going to have to start doing it now,' says Chris Sprigman, a legal scholar at New York University. "I would imagine there are discussions going on." Sprigman predicts a debate over term extension over the next five years will look very different than it did in the 1990s. "People are paying attention," he says. "There's a coalition now" that's likely to oppose longer terms."

(Link via Mark Evanier)

Pixar Canada and Money

I don't for a minute buy the official reason for shutting Pixar Canada down.  No other part of the Disney empire is concerned about having everything under one roof.  Certainly, Disney TV animation had no problem having Planes produced overseas, and if Pixar was having problems with the Vancouver facility, there are people within Disney who could easily troubleshoot any problems.

There are several potential reasons why the facility is shutting down, and they all relate to money.  As Disney is a public company, it reports its earnings quarterly.  It always makes a profit, the only question is how much?  If there are money losers for a quarter, the only way to compensate for that is to be making profits elsewhere in the company or to cut costs.

It's possible that the failure of The Lone Ranger, forcing Disney to write off up to $190 million,  may be one of the things motivating Pixar Canada's closure.  That money has to be made up somewhere, and closing a studio will certainly cut costs.

Another possibility is the delay of The Good Dinosaur.  Having replaced the director, the film is now delayed from it's original release date.  That means that Pixar's revenues will be less than expected due to the delay.  Again, a way to compensate for that is to cut costs.

Variety claims that that British Columbia's tax credits are not as lucrative as those offered by Ontario and Quebec.  While British Columbia may no longer seem lucrative enough to warrant Disney's presence, their tax credits have not changed so far as I know.  Whatever discount Disney was receiving before is still in place, so I doubt that tax credits were a big part of the decision.

Finally, there is the difficulty of putting a revenue figure on the short films that Pixar's Canadian studio made.  If a short is in front of a feature, how much of the box office can be attributed to the presence of the short?  If a short is an extra on a Blu-ray, how many more units are sold due to the inclusion of the short?  When the short shows up on TV, what part of the ratings can be credited to the short?  What percentage of sales of Toy Story merchandise can be attributed directly to the existence of the shorts?

When costs can be figured precisely but revenue cannot,  the costs carry more weight on a balance sheet. 

Note that none of the above reasons have anything to do with the work produced by the studio or the competence of the staff.  That's the tragedy of it.  A bean counter, charged with projecting profits for the quarter, decided that closing the studio was a good way to goose the numbers.  The layoffs are just collateral damage.  Robert Iger's job is to maintain the profits and the stock price.  Animation is just a means to that end and not necessarily the best one either.  A hundred artists are a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of people who work for Disney, and their livelihoods pale beside the needs of shareholders and executives. 

Disney marches on.  Just don't get in the way.

Pixar Canada Shuts Down

Adios, Amigos

The Province is reporting that Pixar Canada has shut its doors and laid off its staff.

 Close to 100 employees at Pixar Canada’s Gastown animation studio lost their jobs Tuesday as the company decided to pack up the three-year-old operation and concentrate its operations in Emeryville, California.

 “A decision was made to refocus operations and resources under the one roof,” Barb Matheson, a spokesman for Pixar parent company Disney, said from Toronto. “Staff were just told today. Not great news, obviously. It was just a refocussing of efforts and resources to the one facility.”

The facility opened in the Spring of 2010.  This is the third studio that Disney has opened and closed in Canada and the second in Vancouver.  As recently as August 20, Pixar Canada was advertising for a layout artist and animators, so it appears that this decision was fairly sudden.

 It is important for animation artists and students to realize that while companies like Disney/Pixar appeal to a person's love for their characters and the status of joining a winning team, that branch plants are nothing more than economic calculations.  At the time it opened, Pixar Vancouver made economic sense; now, for some reason, it doesn't.  The Pixar dust that was liberally spread throughout Canada was a marketing opportunity to gain the company good will and bait for prospective employees.

It wouldn't surprise me if in five or ten years Disney/Pixar opens yet another studio in Canada.  I hope that people wake up to the fact that a job in a branch plant is just a job.  It might be a good job in terms of pay or opportunity, but in fundamental ways, it is no different than any other kind of job.  If they no longer want you, you're gone.

(If anyone from Pixar Canada would care to comment, I'd be interested in an employee's view of the shut down.  Did employees receive notice or severance?  What happens to projects that are still in progress?)

Boats!

You knew it was coming, didn't you?

Thanks to my student Ali for bringing this to my attention.

Animating Your Career

I review Steve Hickner's book Animating Your Career at Cartoon Brew.

A Medium? A Genre? Does it Matter?

Scott Mendelson in Forbes takes a view I've long held.  Animation may be a medium, but Hollywood treats it like a genre.

"It can be argued, and has been argued by the likes of Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille) among others that one shouldn’t discuss animated films as if they are all to be lumped together, since technically the only thing they should have in common is the fact that they are not produced via live-action.  I wish that were wholly true. But when it comes to discussing mainstream animated films in America, it is unfortunately a question of genre. Artistically and especially financially speaking, films like Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 and Turbo are indeed cut from similar cloth in that they are basically targeting the same audience. We might decry this fact, but American animated films are still considered child’s play, a notion that heavily influences who they are aimed at and how they are made."

Unfortunately, when we get something animated aimed at adults, it's because it's unsuitable for children, not because it should be taken seriously by anyone mature.  Today's announcement of Sausage Party, an R-rated animated feature by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, does nothing to advance the cause of animation for adults.

We can argue over the terminology, but it doesn't change the facts.  North American animation is kid stuff.

Grant Campbell R.I.P.

I've just learned that Grant Campbell passed away from lung cancer on September 4, 2013.  Grant worked in the Ottawa animation industry for several decades.  He was a graduate of Sheridan College in 1981 and he worked on Rock and Rule at Nelvana in Toronto before relocating to Ottawa.  His sister Kathleen would like to be in touch with those who knew him.  Her email is kathleen1133(at)sympatico(dot)ca.

The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises, viewed at the Toronto International Film Festival, is most likely Miyazaki's last feature film.  It departs from his previous work in many ways.  It is a film of contemplation more than action.  The fantasy elements that Miyazaki has used so effectively are present only in the main character's dreams.    The dreams themselves have ties to the real world, as Jiro Hirokoshi converses with Caproni, an Italian aircraft designer that Jiro has only read about.  Jiro's waking life is our world, with all its problems, and his dreams are related to his real world concerns.

The young Jiro meets Caproni in a dream

While flying is Jiro's ambition, he is too nearsighted to become a pilot.  His compromise is to become an aeronautical engineer and design the planes that he is unable to fly.  While he is interested in planes for their beauty, his work is financed by the Japanese military establishment that has other plans for the machines.

Just as Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima is the Japanese perspective on events depicted in his movie Flags of our Fathers, Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises is in some way a Japanese perspective on William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives.  In both films, ordinary people pursue their goals but are caught up in World War II.  Both films have a similar image near their conclusions: a graveyard of ruined aircraft.

Two events early in the film are the story in miniature.  The first is the Tokyo earthquake and fire of 1923.  While a disaster overall, it prompts heroic action and the rebirth of the city.  Then there is Caproni's dream plane, built after World War I, which crashes on its test flight.  The first disaster is beyond human control and the second is the result of human failure.  In each case, there is disappointment and tragedy, yet people persevere and continue to pursue their goals.  In a dream, Caproni asks Jiro if he would prefer a world with or without pyramids.  The implication is that their construction created both human suffering and beauty.  Both Jiro and Caproni prefer a world with pyramids, a statement that creation is worth suffering for.  As the earthquake shows, there will be suffering in any case, creation or no.

The Wind Rises is both profoundly realistic, unafraid to recognize the disasters and suffering (both natural and man-made) that people must endure, and also profoundly optimistic, in that people continue to follow dreams despite their troubles.  It is a film made by an old man, one who understands that there are no unequivocal happy endings.  Tragedy and disappointment are inevitable in each life.  The pursuit of creating something beautiful stands in opposition to that, the only thing that elevates people beyond mere survival.  

It is not a film for children, not because there is anything objectionable in it but because I suspect it would bore most children.  The film is about adult concerns: the workplace, marriage, politics and death.

I'm curious as to why Disney has decided to distribute this film and also curious as to how they will market it.  Given how hard they worked to shield children from seeing Pecos Bill smoking, Disney can't be happy that several characters in The Wind Rises are chain smokers.  Advertising this as "from the director of Spirited Away" may be literally true but will not represent this film accurately to the family audience.  I doubt it's going to appeal much to weekend moviegoers at the mall as this is not what general audiences have been trained to expect from animated entertainment.

Miyazaki has broken new ground for himself here, stepping away from fantasy to offer a perspective on Japan's past and the value of creativity to human existence.  This film will not please all his fans but he knew that this film would be his final statement. He chose to address his society about the things that he values and those he disdains.  That the film has provoked some controversy in Japan is evidence of Miyazaki's decision to take risks.

I don't know if I'd consider the film a masterpiece.  Is it as good as Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away or Ponyo?  I'll need more viewings to solidify my thoughts.  However, it is an important film, both as part of Miyazaki's body of work and as another advance for mature animated films.

Miyazaki's retirement, while inevitable, is a tragedy for animation as a whole.  His exit will leave a gaping hole in the animation landscape.  We've been blessed to have so many films from him and his compatriots at Studio Ghibli.  The Wind Rises might not be Miyazaki's best film, but it might be his most important.

We May Have Lost Another One

Sylvain Chomet, director of The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist premieres his first live action feature, Attila Marcel, at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6.

“There is something really nice about live action,” Chomet said, having previously made a live-action short as part of the “Paris, je t’aime” omnibus. “I really discovered it while I was shooting, the relationship between a director and the actors. They really bring so much to the film.”

“I was always thinking of live action but came to live action through animation. That was a way for me to get into live action. Animation is filmmaking, it’s the same thing. And you really train as a director when you do animation. You get the eye, the sense of composition and timing.”

“Live action is very similar to animation,” he said, “apart from animation takes ages and live action goes really fast.”

The above quotes come from an article in the L.A. Times.

Toronto's two weeklies, Now and The Grid, both review the film in advance and find it lacking.

Miyazaki Retires

What's below is an awkward Google translation of this Japanese press release:

" Miyazaki is to retire " Studio Ghibli12 minutes 0:02 September
Studio Ghibli production company has announced that the master of animated film known in the world , Hayao Miyazaki to retire supervision.Miyazaki is with a press conference in Tokyo on the 6th this month , and that talk and reason of retirement.
Koji Hoshino is president of Studio Ghibli , held a press conference at the Venice Film Festival in Italy , which has been nominated the " Tachinu Wind" movie , this was revealed. 

The said, " Hayao Miyazaki has decided to retire supervision last " Tachinu " wind " and, Hoshino president has announced that it will withdraw the director in this.Miyazaki 72 -year-old from Tokyo.

It becomes animator after graduating from college , and has been expanding the area of representation of the animated film in a unique view of the world and delicate movement. 

Successive box office film was screened in Japan, "Spirited Away," which is known for its hit "My Neighbor Totoro" and " Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," and "Princess Mononoke", was published in 2001, among others the number 1 in the revenue, the record is not broken now."Spirited Away" such as winning animated feature film award of the Academy Award in the United States, received a high reputation abroad, from the achievement of these many years, last year, Miyazaki has been elected a cultural contributor.

Retirement announcement of supervision work is nominated in the three major film festivals the world is exceptional.

In feature films first time in five years since "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea " which was published in 2008, therefore, Horikoshi Jiro, who hit the design fighter of the Imperial Japanese Army "Zero fighter" and "Tachinu Wind" movie it is the work which in the model, depicting the figure of a man who lived hard, such as war or earthquake, the difficult times.

In this, including the latest, in July this year, Miyazaki, feature film that Miyazaki made ​​it . Feature that you 've worked hard so as not to disturb the physical condition because there is no "daily time for an interview with NHK I've been," said has been doing think of it is, 's last work at any time.

Miyazaki is that you talk about as the reason of the retired press conference in Tokyo on the 6th this month.

40 Years Ago Today...

...John Ford passed away. His films and the man are endlessly fascinating to me. And truth be told, if I had to choose between never watching another Ford film or never watching another animated film, animation would be gone. With the possible exception of Disney in his early features and some of Miyazaki, no animated feature director comes within hailing distance of Ford. That's both a comment on Ford's greatness and on animation's failure to engage with the complexities of human life.

Jack Kirby's 96th

Jack Kirby, 1946

Jack Kirby, who passed away in 1994, would have been 96 years old today.  Here are a selection of links to celebrate Kirby's life and work.
Mark Evanier, who knew and worked with Kirby, reminisces.
Tom Spurgeon prints a large variety of Kirby artwork.
WhatifKirby.com has a gallery of over 1000 pages to see.
Kirby's granddaughter, Jillian, has a photo album on Facebook that includes many family photos.
Rob Steibel examines a Kirby page from Thor.
And here are tumblr posts tagged Jack Kirby.

100 Years of Walt Kelly

(Click any of the images to enlarge.)

August 25, 2013 marks the 100th birthday of Walt Kelly, one of the most important and influential cartoonists of the 20th century.

Kelly grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticutt, and started drawing at a young age.  In the mid-1930s, he contributed to the earliest years of the comic book industry, working for the company that eventually became DC comics.

More Fun Comics, 1936

From there, Kelly went to work for Walt Disney, first as a story artist and then as an animator in Ward Kimball's unit.  Kelly's animation can be seen in shorts like The Nifty Nineties and the features Pinocchio, Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon.  Truthfully, Kelly gained more from Disney than Disney gained from Kelly.  There were many animators at Disney who were Kelly's superior, but Kelly's time at the studio working with Kimball and Fred Moore had an enormous impact on the quality of his art.

At the time of the Disney strike, Kelly left the studio and returned to the east coast.  Exempt from the World War II draft for health reasons, Kelly returned to comic books where he did a variety of material that showed off his versatility.  He did fairy tale material aimed at young children.  He did the comic book version of Our Gang (later known to baby boomers as The Little Rascals when the films reached TV) and made a conscious effort to draw the Buckwheat character (whose name Kelly shortened to Bucky) in a non-stereotypical manner.  There are four volumes reprinting Kelly's work on this strip.  Finally, he created the cast of Pogo for Animal Comics.

In the late '40s, Kelly went to work for the New York Star, a liberal daily newspaper that only lasted a few years.  He was the art director of the paper, doing editorial cartoons and putting Pogo into comic strip form.  When the paper folded after just a few years, Pogo was syndicated nationally in 1949 and by the early 1950s became a hit, especially with college students.  He continued to work on Pogo until his death in 1973.  In the interim, the strip was the subject of a network animated TV special The Pogo Special Birthday Special, directed by Chuck Jones and a 15 minute animated film, We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us, made by Kelly himself and his third wife Selby.  The strip was collected in a series of trade paperbacks that often included original material.

With all of this, Kelly additionally did a comic book series The Adventures of Peter Wheat, a giveaway comic for Krug's Bakeries and illustrated several books including The Glob by John O'Reilly and I'd Rather Be President by Charles Ellis and Frank Weir.

Kelly illustration from The Glob

Kelly had a fondness for drink and did not look after his health.  He developed diabetes and had a leg amputated as a result of the disease.  When he died in 1973, Pogo was continued by his widow Selby.  Later, it was revived by Doyle and Sternecky and finally by Kelly's daughter Carolyn.  Pogo is currently being reprinted in handsome volumes by Fantagraphics.

Kelly's work was typified by several things.  He created gentle fantasies aimed at children in his comic book work, where children and talking animals engaged in adventures that were free of the violence that dominated many comic books of the time.

He did raucous slapstick in the Our Gang and Pogo comics.

Sarcophagus MacAbre, undertaker

He loved playing with language, mangling words for comic effect and used different lettering styles to indicate the personality of his characters.  He was a poet who alternated between nonsense rhymes and wistfulness. 

Kelly caricatures Truman

Finally, he was an ace caricaturist and political satirist, taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s over his anti-communist witch hunting, and Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew, J. Edgar Hoover, Nikita Khruschev and Fidel Castro in the 1960s.

Kelly's art was heavily influenced by his time in animation.  His designs were of the Disney school in their construction.

His characters acted; their body language explicitly communicated their emotional states.  They stretched and squashed freely.  This came from his knowledge of posing characters for animation.  Animation also influenced his slapstick gags.

Kelly's brush work is awe inspiring

 Finally, his use of the brush for inking is legendary and was the envy of every cartoonist who saw it.  His brush line was lush, supple and expressive, contributing a solidity and dimensionality to his drawings.

What's here is only a tiny sampling of Kelly's output.  If you want to see more images, check here.  If you want to know what Kelly material is available for sale, Ebay has a wide selection.

Illustrator Thomas Haller Buchanan has gone into much greater depth than I have here by putting together a whole online publication dedicated to Kelly on his 100th birthday.

Having gotten to the end of this brief survey of Walt Kelly's career, I realize that I've yet to include a drawing of Pogo himself, the character that Kelly is most known for.  So to end, here he is.

A 1963 Sunday page

Controversial Miyazaki II

Updated below.

“My wife and staff would ask me, ‘Why make a story about a man who made weapons of war?’” Miyazaki said in a 2011 interview with Japan’s Cut magazine. “And I thought they were right. But one day, I heard that Horikoshi had once murmured, ‘All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.’ And then I knew I’d found my subject… Horikoshi was the most gifted man of his time in Japan. He wasn’t thinking about weapons… Really all he desired was to make exquisite planes.”

More on the controversy surrounding Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, The Wind Rises.  For an earlier post about this, go here.

Here's the trailer with English subtitles.  For those of you in Toronto, the film will be playing at the Toronto International Film Festival.