Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Six

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.  Part 3 is here.  Part 4 is here.  Part 5 is here.

What do you love more, your idea or animation?  This is not an idle question.  When it comes to producing something fast and cheap, animation isn't high on the list.  It takes time, and in the current media environment, the audience wants a steady stream of new material or it will lose interest and move on.

The skills used to make animated films -- the ability to write, design, draw and stage situations -- can be applied to other things.  When animation professionals do personal work, it is often in some other medium.

When Bob Clampett left Warner Bros. animation to work in television in the early years, he knew that he could not produce animation fast and cheap enough to keep up with a television schedule.  Instead, he took his sensibility and gave it to the audience in the form of a puppet show, Time for Beany.

Animator Mike Kunkel took his ideas and turned them into a comic book series called Herobear and the Kid.

Storyboard artist Katie Rice does a webcomic called Camp Weedonwantcha.  Her site is a good example of how to interact with fans and earn money. 

Storyboard artist Vera Brosgal created a graphic novel called Anya's Ghost.

Chris Sanders and Dean Yeagle, both directors and animators, have published sketchbooks of their work.

Character designer and animator Tony Fucile does children's books.

Designers Bobby Chiu and Kay Acedera sell prints and have also created a motion comic called Niko and the Sword of Light.

Should an idea prove successful, it can always be done as animation at a later date.  Former Disney animator Cyril Pedrosa just sold the film rights to his graphic novel Three Shadows.  There's also Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

There are more opportunities available now to reach an audience and generate income than have ever existed.  That's not to say it is easy.  Creating work that is popular is hard.  Most creations simply don't generate much interest.

However, having experienced pitching to business people and having sold a series that lasted for 52 episodes, I felt that my vision for Monster By Mistake was compromised.  Having lost ownership in exchange for getting the show produced, my connection to my creation was severed.  While Monster By Mistake is probably still running somewhere in the world, the story for me and the characters is over.

Some may feel that my experience has put too much of a negative outlook on pitching to studios or broadcasters.  If there's someone out there who sold a show, got it to an audience, and still feels creatively and financially satisfied, I'd be happy to give them space here to provide an alternate viewpoint.

I'm not naive enough (or egotistical enough) to think that this series of articles will change anything.  People will still continue to pitch.  However, if you are someone with ideas that you'd like to bring to audiences, think about my advice.

Keep ownership of your work.  Nobody will care about it as much as you, so you're the only one who can protect the heart and soul of your idea.  Get it to an audience as quickly and cheaply as possible and take audience feedback seriously, even if the feedback is negative or indifferent.  Like it or not, success depends on the audience.

If you can satisfy an audience, monetize it.  Even if you can't earn enough to live on, it's a nice supplement to your day job and will prevent your income from ever dropping to zero if you are unemployed.

Until an audience has passed judgment on your work, the value of your idea is unknown.  If you choose to do business with a larger company without proof of value, that puts you at a great disadvantage.  You never want to be negotiating from a position of weakness.  That will lead to creative and financial unhappiness.

The history of film, animation, comics and music are littered with stories of creators who were taken advantage of.  It will continue to happen as long as creators let it happen.  If you are a creator, educate yourself.  If you're going to pitch to companies, get yourself a good entertainment lawyer and don't let your desire for a sale blind you to what's in your long-term interest.

Companies don't create hits, people do.  Don't ever forget that, even if many companies have.

(Thanks to readers, there's an addendum.  And another addendum.)

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Five

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.  Part 3 is here.  Part 4 is here.

Simon's Cat was an accident.  Simon Tofield created the initial short as a way of learning a software package.  When he was done, he put it on his reel.  Somebody saw it on his reel and uploaded it to YouTube.  While it is a horrible thing to use an artist's work without permission, in this case it turned into a blessing.

After six years, that initial short has now been viewed more than 48 million times.  The Simon's Cat channel on YouTube has almost 3 million subscribers.   There are now dozens of Simon's Cat shorts available for free.  How is Tofield making money from this?

First, there is advertising.  YouTube is owned by Google and Google places ads and splits the revenue with Tofield.  Then there is merchandise.  Simonscat.com has a shop where you will find all sorts of merchandise for sale, including books, calendars, cat products, T-shirts, fine art prints, ceramics and kitchen items.  There are mobile games available through the iTunes app store.  The books are also available through Amazon.  The site has room for fans to upload pictures of their own cats, so there's user generated content helping to keep the site fresh.

Simon Tofield is doing many of the things mentioned in these articles.  He's built the films around a continuing character.  The shorts are comparatively fast and cheap to produce.  There is no colour.  There is no dialogue, so the films can be understood internationally without subtitles or dubbing.  There is no music except over the main title and that gets re-used.  The films are short, usually less than three minutes and sometimes less than two.

He uses Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest to stay connected to his audience and let them know when something new is available.

Tofield has taken advantage of another thing: an existing community.  Millions of people have cats as pets.  They are a ready-made audience for these cartoons.  It is far easier to aim a work at an already existing audience than it is to try to build an audience from scratch.  Creators should examine their own lives and see if they are part of some community besides art and animation.  Does a creator play a sport, collect something, have worked in a particular business, etc?  If so, the knowledge and experience in this area makes a creator qualified to talk to an audience of people with similar experiences.  That audience may be large enough to provide a living.

These articles conclude here.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Four

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.  Part 3 is here.

Younger people don't realize what an opportunity the internet represents.  Yes, everyone is using Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, etc. to share things with friends, but the internet is the largest audience ever assembled.  It dwarfs network television at its peak.

Before the internet, there were many gatekeepers between creators and the audience.  Those gatekeepers controlled infrastructures that were necessary to get work to the public.  Because those infrastructures were expensive and because they had limited bandwidth, the gatekeepers were picky.  Only ideas that would appeal to a wide audience and had the largest profit potential were accepted.

If you wanted the world to read your writing, you had to find somebody to publish it.  That meant printing copies and distributing them to retail outlets, which required presses, trucks, and affiliations with retailers who were willing to take your product.

If you wanted the world to see your movie, assuming you had the money to produce it, you needed a distributor to make prints, ship them to theatres, collect the money and return the prints when the screenings were over. 

If you wanted the world to see your TV show, you had to find a network with millions of dollars of equipment willing to broadcast your work nationally or a distributor who would sell your show to individual TV stations.

Those things are no longer necessary.  This week, my blog has been read in over 15 countries and it cost me nothing.  The internet infrastructure is more far-reaching than any that's existed in history and is also less expensive.  There's never been an easier time to get your work in front of the audience.

Of course, the audience has to know about it.  Marketing and monetizing your work are the great challenges, but the distribution challenge no longer exists.  Computers and software have also greatly reduced production costs.  No one can stop you from making your work public.  That wasn't true 20 years ago.

It takes time to build an audience, but everyone with internet access has a network of friends, no matter how small, and that's a starting point.  Building that audience takes patience and persistence, but you'll need those two qualities even if you're pitching to buyers.

From the first day you bring your work to the audience, you should have something to sell.  The difference between a hobby and a business is income.  There's nothing wrong with hobbies; they bring great satisfaction.  However, if you've considered pitching, then you've been looking for income and you might as well be looking for income on the net.

Maybe you'll charge for your work.  Maybe you'll finance by selling advertising.  Maybe you'll give the work away and sell merchandise based on the work.  Maybe you'll charge for special access to you or to your work in progress.  There are multiple potential revenue streams.

The internet is full of companies looking to service creators.  Topatoco.com serves successful webcomics creators by taking care of their merchandise creation and sales.  There are suppliers that will make custom T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, etc. in small quantities for you.  There are online stores like etsy or ebay that will host your merchandise.

Here's a Frazetta image on a phone cover.  It sells for $18 U.S.  The image is over 40 years old but is still generating revenue for the Frazetta estate.  That's the benefit of retaining ownership.

There are fundraising sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo or Patreon that are places to raise money for specific projects or for ongoing support.  These sites are best used to monetize an existing audience rather than build an audience.  For example, Dick Figures, an existing animated web series, raised $313,412 on Kickstarter to make a longer version.

 Just as there are companies that will create merchandise and sell it for you, there are now companies that will help to service Kickstarter pitches.

Building and monetizing an audience are not simple things and they have no instant solutions.  Two books that I would recommend are The $100 Startup and How to Make Webcomics.  While neither applies directly to animation, both books are very practical about how to get started with limited resources.  The webcomics book is an excellent guide to using the web for marketing, distribution and sales and is written by four cartoonists who are making their living from their creations.

Their webcomics model is being used in animation.  I'll cover that when this is continued.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Three

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.

If the audience is the only thing that can create a success, creators have to pitch to the audience.  That means taking risks.

Seth Godin is a best selling author who writes and blogs about marketing.  He asks, "But what if I fail?"  His response is, "You will.  The answer to the what if question is you will. A better question might be 'after I fail, what then?'  Well, if you've chosen well, after you fail you will be one step closer to succeeding and you will be wiser and stronger and you almost certainly will be more respected by all of those that are afraid to try."

Aza Raskin, a designer at Firefox says, "Your first try will be wrong.  Budget and design for it."  That quote comes from a book called Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure.

Most ideas fail.  Most books are not best sellers.  Most movies don't gross $100 million.  Most TV shows don't last beyond one season.  With odds like this, what's the best way forward?  The answer is to fail fast and cheap.

If you spend years on something and the audience doesn't like it, you've wasted years.  If you spend a lot of money on something and the audience doesn't like it, it's cost you a lot.  The faster and cheaper you can get your idea in front of an audience, the more likely you are to survive the failure and come back with something better.  It may be a revision of your original idea or it may be something wholly new, but it will be closer to what the audience wants.

This goes against the grain of our fantasies.  The dream is that the idea is hailed as brilliant and is embraced by the audience, catapulting the creator to fame and fortune.  While that's a lovely thought, the reality is different.

Everyone reading this has heard of Walt Disney, Jim Henson and Steve Jobs.

Compare the quality of the Laugh-O-Grams, Disney's earliest work, to his acknowledged classics.

Jim Henson began on local TV and did 10 second commercials for coffee that were primitive compared to The Muppet Show or The Dark Crystal.

The Apple II computer was large and slow.  Certainly it could not compete with the smart phone that you may be using to read this.

In each case, these creators started with something basic and kept tuning it and improving it through audience feedback.  Each of them had failures along the way and their best work took decades to develop. It would not have been possible without satisfying an audience from the start and growing their audience as their work became more sophisticated.

None of us may ever equal Disney, Henson or Jobs, but their path is far more typical than the overnight success.  The fact is that creating something that an audience likes is hard.  Sustaining it while you grow a business around it is at least as hard and is going to take time.

Pitching to a buyer also takes time.  Companies are famously slow for making decisions.  Even with a sale, it sometimes takes years to complete financing for a film or TV series.   While you wait for the money, there is still no proof that the audience will like your idea.  Furthermore, in selling the idea, you've lost control of your creation and each additional investor may push the idea farther from what you want.

Neither path is simple or easy, but only one of them leaves you in charge.

To be continued.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Two

Part 1 is here.

Screenwriter and novelist William Goldman says, "In Hollywood, nobody knows anything."  By this he means that nobody knows what's good until the audience has its say.  Comedian Jerry Seinfeld says, "Audiences will teach you what's funny about you."

While business people will judge your ideas, their judgment is just a guess until the audience gets a look.  While a creator may feel strongly about an idea, that feeling is no better than a guess as well.  The success or failure of an idea rests with the audience and until its judgment is known, the outcome is just speculation.

Creators should  focus on pleasing audiences rather than focus on pleasing buyers.  If you want to date someone, approach the person you want to date.  Why spend time romancing the person's parents?  They may love you, but they can't force their son or daughter to love you.

What engages the audience and what do they remember?  Characters.  People are still creating stories about Hercules and Robin Hood.  Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan are now more than a hundred years old, yet they still have name value and are the basis for movies and TV shows.  Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, Homer Simpson, and Spongebob Squarepants are characters created for animation that are recognizable to the average person.

Chris Meledandri, producer of Ice Age and the Despicable Me films says, "We start with strong characters and build the movie from there."

At the talk I gave at Animatic T.O, I showed stills from four films that won Best Animated Short at the Oscars since the year 2000.  Nobody in an audience made up of animation professionals and students recognized all four films.  There's no chance that a person on the street would.  While these films tell engaging stories, none of them create characters that are meant to live beyond the film.  Characters are more memorable than stories.  (For the record, the films were Father and Daughter, The Moon and the Son, The House of Small Cubes and The Lost Thing.)

It's important to understand that just as creators and business people see the world differently, so do artists and the average audience.  Artists love looking at art.  Every artist has a shelf full of books whose images serve as inspiration and that provide hours of browsing pleasure.  It's a hard truth, but audiences don't care about art or animation.  They want characters that entertain them.  Want proof?

Even beginning artists can draw and animate as well as South Park.  The majority of professionals can draw and animate better.  But audiences are not interested in a high level of craft unless it is accompanied by something that entertains them.  Given a choice between art and entertainment, entertainment wins.

To be continued.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part One

(Update:  The video of the talk is now online here.)

In March, I gave a talk at Animatic T.O, a monthly lecture series about animation started by Barry Sanders and now continued by Andrew Murray as Barry has moved to Halifax.  What follows is an expansion of that talk with the opportunity to offer links.

The whole notion of pitching is an odd one that only exists due to economic circumstances.  People working in media that are inexpensive can go straight to the finished product.  A painter doesn't have to describe the colour palette and the composition of a work, he or she just paints it and shows the final image.  A singer doesn't describe how a song will sound, he or she just sings it.  Animation and other film creators are stuck pitching because creating the finished work is too expensive and time consuming to allow a person to make it without help.

Unfortunately, a pitch is a poor substitute for the finished product for a variety of reasons.  The ability to pitch is a wholly separate skill from the creation of ideas.  Extraverts have an advantage in pitching over introverts, but either type of person can have good ideas.  Furthermore, there are so many variables between an idea and the finished product that a great idea can result in disappointment.  Too much depends on the budget, the schedule, the crew, input from investors and chance.  We are all familiar with movies that look like they will be great before they're released but end up as failures.

There is another odd aspect to pitching.  The person with the ideas doesn't get paid to pitch, but the person without ideas gets paid to listen.  Yet without people willing to pitch for free, the listener has no job.  It's sort of backwards.

Often, the people taking pitches have no history of creating anything.  They have never written, drawn, performed or directed anything for an audience, yet they are the ones sitting in judgment of someone who most likely has.  If the people taking pitches were genuinely creative, they would be creating their own projects for the company and would not have to listen to ideas from anyone else.

Most ideas never reach an audience because the potential buyer says no.   Anyone who has pitched knows that rejections vastly outnumber positive responses.  Should an idea be accepted, it rarely goes into full production.  Usually there is the interim step of development, where the buyer pays the creator a small sum to refine the project further.  The money is not enough to live on, so the creator has to split his or her attention between a day job to pay the bills and refining the idea.

Should an idea go into production, the creator will most likely lose ownership of it and will have to negotiate screen credit, a role in the production, and financial compensation.  This is all complicated by what's known as Hollywood accounting, where projects that are earning money never seem to make a profit.

With the exception of Hollywood accounting, which is a legal form of theft, there aren't any bad guys.  While a creator sees a work as polished and developed, the buyers see it as raw material to be shaped to their own needs.  Buyers have no reservations about changing a work in ways that they think will make it more successful.  As animation requires a hefty investment, they are simply trying to reduce their risk and increase their profits.  Unfortunately, this usually means bending a work towards something that is already successful, meaning that it imitates something else, and the changes are possibly ones that the creator disagrees with.

Steven Pressfield is the author of the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance.  He was hired to write the screenplay, but when Robert Redford got involved with the film, Pressfield was fired so that another screenwriter could be brought in.  Pressfield understood.  In his book, The Authentic Swing, he writes, "The original writer is a pain in the ass.  He has ideas.  He has a point of view.  And the worst part is he believes he possess the moral authority to give voice to these ideas.  You have to get rid of the original writer."

Furthermore, "The writer is not allowed to complain.  You made the deal, dude.  You cashed the check.  Be grateful and shut up."

The key phrase here is "moral authority."  Creators feel that they, more than anyone else, have the right to shape the material.  After all, they created it.  Business people, having taken ownership and invested money, feel that they should be in control.  By selling the rights, the seller has given up the legal right to have a say.  We may agree that the creator has "moral authority," but the owners and the legal system recognize no such thing.

Once a creator gives up ownership, there's more at stake than "moral authority."  When a project is finished, the creator can't continue to work with the characters or other elements without permission from the owners.  I heard an interview with Pete Williams, the creator of the animated MTV series Undergrads, on the Guys with Pencils podcast.  Williams is attempting to revive the series, but because MTV owns it, he has to negotiate to get permission.  Even though the show was his idea, MTV has the right to charge Williams a license fee for trying to revive something he created but they own.  It's strange when you need permission and have to pay to work on something that was your idea to begin with.

If the owners decide to revive a project in the future, they're under no obligation to get the creator involved.  While I don't know specifics, Van Partible, the creator of Johnny Bravo, was not involved with seasons 2 or 3 of the show he created.  In superhero comics, it's fairly standard for the creators of a series to be replaced by new writers and artists in order to maintain sales.

While a creator may have a good personal relationship with the buyer, there's no guarantee that the buyer will remain in place.  Company managements change, companies merge or get sold.  It's possible that nobody involved with the original purchase will be around by the time a project is completed.  This is why it is so important to negotiate a creator's legal relationship with the buyer.  As Sam Goldwyn said, a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Does pitching have an upside?  Yes it does.  Pitching gives you the opportunity to meet people in positions of authority.  While a creator is probably surrounded by a community of other writers or artists, they're less likely to have relationships with business people.  Enlarging your network is always a positive thing.  Pitching may lead to job opportunities if the people you are pitching to are impressed by you, even if they don't like your idea.

But if you really care about your idea, I believe you shouldn't pitch it to buyers.  If you get someone interested, it will be altered beyond your control and at best, you will have to share ownership and will most likely lose it completely,

To be continued.

Sheridan Summer Workshop

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.

Frederic Back Has Died

There is nothing to say except that a giant of Canadian animation has passed.

Holiday Screenings in Toronto

There are several animation screenings in Toronto over the next few weeks.

Once again, the TIFF Bell Lightbox is running a retrospective of Studio Ghibli.  The films and times can be found here.

In addition to the well-known Miyazaki classics such as Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Ponyo, they are also showing lesser known Ghibli films such as Pom Poko, Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Ocean Waves, My Neighbors the Yamadas, The Secret World of Arrietty, Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns.  Miyazaki's collaboration with his son Goro, From Up on Poppy Hill will also screen.

At the Royal, located on College Street 5 blocks west of Bathurst, there will two screenings of the French animated feature Ernest and Celestine on December 27 at 7 p.m. and the 28th at 2 p.m.  Information about the Royal can be found here.

Of course, Disney's Frozen is still in release and as of today, you can still see The Croods or Despicable Me 2 playing somewhere around the city.

Fuzzy Job Boundaries

Canadian Animation Resources points out the changing demands on storyboard artists.  Where once a board artist's job was to visualize the script through drawings, studios are now often requesting that board artists also time the boards or cut animatics including dialogue and sound effects.  It should be noted that studios are offering no additional money for these tasks.

Software is what makes this possible.  When boards were done on paper, the board artist didn't have the tools to create an animatic.  Now, with applications like Storyboard Pro, the same software that a board artist draws into can also output a finished animatic.  While there is no question that this is convenient, it also allows studios to make requests that were logistically impossible in the past.

Just because board artists can create full animatics, should they?

Television animation is a strange beast.  The person who is the director really isn't the director if you compare the job to the one Chuck Jones had.  Jones would have input into the story and design.  He would design the characters himself, do all the character layouts, time the animation, supervise the voice recording, work with the composer and have approval of everyone's efforts.  This is why a Jones cartoon (and the cartoons of his contemporaries like Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Bob Cannon, John Hubley, and Hanna & Barbera) are so instantly recognizeable.  Their personal stamp is on every frame of the film.

A director of an animated TV series may have approval over everything, but has no time to do any of the jobs that Jones did.  Maybe the director supervises the voice recording, but beyond that, it's mostly giving notes on other people's work.

In many ways, the board artist is the de facto director.  The board artist is choosing the camera angles and the cutting continuity, two of the main jobs of a live action director.  These days, board artists are asked to provide more poses for each shot, so in effect, they are doing the character layouts.  If a board artist is also timing the cartoon and placing the dialogue and the sound effects, so far as I can see, that makes the board artist the director of the show.  What's left for the director to do except for passing judgment?

While the current studio perspective is that editors can be eliminated, why not go a step farther and eliminate the director as well?  Doubling the board artist's fee would probably still be cheaper than paying the editor and director.  It might also lead to work that has more individuality. Most episodes of an animated series rival the monotony of McDonald's hamburgers.

If studios thought more about the content of the work they produce rather than the cost, this might happen.  Instead, the focus is on saving money and the place to save it isn't on producer's fees or middle management, it's on the backs of freelancers.  In the Canadian industry, with no union and where the sellers (meaning animation artists) vastly outnumber the buyers (the studios), the leverage is all on the side of the studios.  There's no agreement as to what a board artist's duties are exactly.  The studios are free to ask for anything, and artists are aware that with a limited number of places to work, they don't dare be uncooperative if they hope to keep earning a living.

Unfortunately, this is a race to the bottom.  How much more will board artists be asked to do for the same old fee?  The only possible way for board artists to stem this tide is to say "No."  That's a definite risk, but the studios have shown that so long as they are hearing "Yes," they will keep asking for more.  If board artists are bleeding now, at what point does it become fatal?  Each board artist will have to make that decision, but that decision will affect all board artists.  If a few decide to go along and create full animatics, the job of board artist will be redefined.  If board artists don't get paid more for doing it, then that becomes the new normal.  Proceed with caution.

Ghibli's Pippi Pitch

In 1971,Studio Ghibli attempted to get the rights to adapt Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking stories.  Hayao Miyazaki did a series of watercolours as part of the pitch.  Unfortunately, they didn't get the rights and now we'll never see a Miyazaki Pippi beyond these lovely paintings.

(link via Comics Alliance)

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.