Pinocchio Storyboard

Michael Sporn has started posting the storyboard to Pinocchio, supplied to him by animation historian (and Oscar winning animator) John Canemaker. There is no question that Pinocchio is one of the most important animated features ever made, so the attention it's now getting from bloggers like Hans Perk, Sporn and myself is very welcome.

In a previous comments section, the spectre asked what the Pinocchio layout artists did. Comparing the board to the finished film is the best way to understand it. The boards do not contain the same level of design and detail in the backgrounds and the camera angles are only approximate. The layout artists are responsible for nailing down the camera angles, composing the shots and designing the backgrounds. My assumption is that the credited layout artist for a sequence was drawing as well as supervising the work of other artists.

Clash of the Morons

Viacom is suing YouTube for $1 billion dollars for copyright infringement. This lawsuit demonstrates stupidity on both sides.

YouTube is not funneling any of the revenue it makes back to the people posting videos or the copyright holders. Many other video sites already have functioning payment plans. Scott Kirsner has put together a list available here. It's not like YouTube has to invent things from scratch. They can easily see what's available in the marketplace and craft a plan based on what others have done.

Viacom is trying to hold back the future. The Hollywood studios tried to strangle TV and home video in the cradle. Not only did they fail, they soon turned around and embraced both of them as major revenue streams.

And Viacom is hurting itself. With no Viacom content on YouTube, people watching online video will be satisfied to watch somebody else's content. What kind of business model withholds a product from customers and encourages them to move to the competition?

I support the idea of copyright. I believe that a creator (or the company that finances a creator) has the right to profit from work. No argument there. However, I see copyright in different terms than it currently exists.

In a digital world, you cannot control copying. Why devote time and money to fighting it? Better to acknowledge that copying will occur and figure out a system where every time content is copied or viewed, the copyright holder makes money. That way, rather than fight copying you can encourage it and profit from it at the same time.

The only way to protect a secret is to not tell anyone. Once one other person knows it, you've lost control of the content. You cannot guarantee that the other person won't spread the information around. That's how it is now with digital copying. Once you've made your work available to the public, you cannot stop it from spreading around. You can copy a file with as little effort as whispering to a friend. When the cost to reproduce something is that low, there's no effective barrier to prevent it.

It's not going to be easy to set up a compensation system and I suspect that initially there's going to be disappointment over the amount of money that digital copying generates. Rather than these two giant companies wasting resources fighting over an antiquated law, they should be lobbying the government to adapt the copyright law to unlimited copying for the digital age.

Just like the studios eventually made peace with TV and the VCR, they're going to make peace with online video. Even a moron can see that. Why not skip the lawsuits and just get on with it?

Marketing Tips

Scott Kirsner has a list of marketing tips that have come up at the South By Southwest Film Festival that are worth reading.

Pinocchio Part 3A

The Blue Fairy is a Deus ex Machina, or machine of the gods. Gepetto has expressed his wish for Pinocchio to be a real boy, but the only way the story can move forward is through supernatural intervention.

The fairy says, "Good Gepetto, you have given so much happiness to others, you deserve to have your wish come true." Throughout the film, however, we never see Gepetto interact with a single human being until Pinocchio is made flesh and blood. We don't know it yet, but Gepetto is a recluse and I can only assume that his carvings are what have given others happiness.

This sequence is almost completely exposition. The conditions for success are laid down ("Prove yourself brave, truthful and unselfish...") and Pinocchio accepts them. Jiminy is bound to Pinocchio. The sequence is more necessity than entertainment.

It's no surprise that this sequence was directed by Ham Luske, who supervised the live action for the character of Snow White, and that the Blue Fairy was animated by Jack Campbell, who animated Snow White under Luske's direction. Where Snow White was about 5 heads high, necessitating redrawing the character over the live action, the Blue Fairy is completely human in her proportions. She looks traced from live action. Marge Belcher, who played Snow White for the camera, here plays the fairy. Given how little screen time the fairy has and given how unchallenging the acting is, one can only wonder why Disney decided to go with this design and with rotoscoping for the character.

Jiminy is mainly handled by Bernie Wolf in this sequence. Many of the shots are simply reactions where Jiminy comments to the audience. However, there are two stand-out scenes. The first is 37, where Jiminy gets so exasperated with Pinocchio's ignorance that he breaks out of hiding and interrupts. You can clearly see Jiminy's rising impatience. The other scene is 50 where Jiminy bargains for a badge. His excitement and enthusiasm are palpable.

Ollie Johnston and Milt Kahl handle Pinocchio. Johnston gets the scene of Pinocchio coming to life. The pose where he covers his mouth with his hands emphasizes the fleshiness of Pinocchio's cheeks, a sharp contrast to the inflexible shapes of his puppet self.
Pinocchio comes across as naive and pleasant in this sequence, but he really has nothing to do except ask questions. Certainly Johnston and Kahl make the character visually appealing, but there are limited acting opportunities here.

One name conspicuously absent from the draft is Oskar Fischinger's. Reportedly, he was responsible for the squiggley line effect that emanates from the fairy's wand when she appears and disappears and when she taps Pinocchio and Pinocchio comes to life. George Rowley is credited for the effects in all those scenes. Perhaps Fischinger's name was removed when he left the studio or perhaps he only developed the effect and Rowley is the one who did the scene-specific drawings.

Pinocchio Part 3

I strongly suspect that there are inaccuracies in the draft for this sequence. It surprises me that Art Babbitt would be credited with the Blue Fairy for scene 21 and that Berny Wolf would be credited for her in scene 45. I would guess those scenes would be by Campbell, but maybe I'm wrong.

The scene between 26 and 26-10 isn't in the draft and Jiminy in scene 26-10 is credited to Jack Campbell, whose only animation in this sequence so far has been on the Blue Fairy. It's far more likely that Campbell did the unnumbered scene and that Ollie Johnston did 26-10, though it's possible that 26-10 is by Kahl.

More commentary on this section to follow.

Jones Against the Tide

Courtesy of Paul Spector (son of animator Irv Spector), here is a really interesting article by Chuck Jones from 1964. I don't believe it's ever been reprinted. Certainly, it was unknown to me. The article comes from program notes for a screening sponsored by ASIFA.




The article is worth reading for Jones' view on the state of the industry during a major transition. This was the second big industrial transition for the business (the first being the introduction of sound) and for most of the veteran animation personnel of the time, it was the first big shift in the business since they joined it.

We've been through a lot of transitions in the last 15 years (the collapse of drawn animation, the growth of cgi, the introduction of 2D software like Flash, increased globalization, etc.), so it's interesting to see how Jones viewed 1964. He fought a losing battle, first trying to reinvigorate theatrical shorts at MGM and then retreating to TV, but fighting to work for prime time with its higher budgets rather than for Saturday mornings.

While he justifiably casts stones at UPA and Hanna-Barbera, the irony is that Jones didn't do much with the opportunities that he found for himself. His timing and posing became increasingly mannered and his TV work became dominated by dialogue. While he cursed the darkness, the candles he lit didn't burn very brightly. He obviously had hopes for the future, but the truth is that his best films were already behind him, just as they were for UPA and Hanna-Barbera.

Pinocchio Part 2A

This sequence, on the surface, is fairly mundane. But it is a critical sequence in that it introduces the main characters and gives us a chance to get to know them in a relaxed way. It's also a very complicated sequence in terms of staging. There are many shots with three characters done by three separate animators. Getting them to work together and not upstage each other is a major logistical problem.

It's no surprise that this sequence was given to Wilfred Jackson. The Disney directors of the 1930's and of the features are not discussed much. That's probably because they served Walt Disney's point of view more than their own, so their personalities are never allowed to dominate. Still, Jackson was known for his meticulous attention to detail, including timing. He was the director of The Band Concert, a short that had to match an intricate musical score and also had many threads to be woven together.

Here, Jackson makes the sequence look effortless. We never lose track of where the characters are or what they're feeling about the various events. Figaro and Cleo are successful comic relief characters, but Gepetto is critical to the success of the film as the relationship between him and Pinocchio is the centerpiece of the story. That relationship is what allows both characters to grow.

Jackson also juggles a large crew: Gepetto is animated by Babbitt, Moore and Thomas; Jiminy by Towsley, Anthony and Elliotte; Figaro by Larson, Bradbury and Calonious; Cleo by Larson, Lusk, and Karp. The animators are mostly cast by character, but there are still several animators per character whose work has to be coordinated and the resulting performances are seamless. You can see subtle differences when you know who animated a particular scene, but without the draft I'd never have noticed.

I think that Babbitt's Gepetto is his masterpiece, but that's probably because I prefer warmer characters. to cold ones like Babbitt's Queen in Snow White. Christian Rub's voice for Gepetto is great and Babbitt builds on it to make Gepetto a very grandfatherly figure, full of enthusiasm and a sense of fun. Moore's two Gepetto scenes are somewhat livelier than Babbitt's and are well placed in the sequence. Frank Thomas's Gepetto is an afterthought in his scenes, which are all about introducing Pinocchio as a puppet. Thomas has the unenviable task of animating a dead character and still make the motion appealing, something that he succeeds in doing. However, I think that the film missed a bet here. Gepetto is literally an animator, bringing Pinocchio to life, and rather than focus on Pinocchio it would have been nice to see Gepetto’s pleasure at watching Pinocchio move. Perhaps that was a little too self-referential for the studio.

One of the most impressive things about this sequence is Disney's bench strength. Don Towsley is not talked about much, but his handling of Jiminy here is excellent. He retains the character's charm from the first sequence and the reaction shots keep him in the picture even though he's reduced to an observer for most of the time. Scene 3.1 is a beautiful piece of action animation as Jiminy launches himself away from Pinocchio. The gag in 33.1, where Jiminy pretends to be a mechanical figure on the music box to escape detection is lifted from Chaplin's The Circus, if anyone cares. Towsley's no slouch in the acting department, either. His reaction shots and shots commenting on the action are all convincingly in character.

The Jiminy scenes taken by Dick Anthony or John Elliotte are equally well done. Anthony's gag with Jiminy's hand on a woman figurine's rump has very strong poses. Elliotte's animation in 19.1, reacting to the stern-looking pipe, contains wonderful contrast in facial expressions. We always associate Jiminy with Ward Kimball, but Kimball is completely absent from this sequence and we don't feel his loss.

Eric Larson creates a great character in Figaro. The cat is cute, but has definite dislikes and is easily annoyed, giving him a well-rounded personality. Frank Thomas contributes some good scenes of Figaro interacting with the Pinocchio puppet.

Jack Bradbury is another unsung animator who is probably better known for his comic book work than for his animation. Yet scene 81, where Figaro opens the window, is by Bradbury and it's a great piece of physical action that's completely believable with no cheats.

Don Patterson does all the clocks and their gags. It's one of the few times you'd be complimenting an animator by describing his work as mechanical.

I'm not qualified to talk about colour and backgrounds, but I do want to point out how theatrical the set lighting is. Looking at a scene like 2.1, 25 or 85, you can see how the backgrounds have been lit as if with spotlights, creating staging areas for the characters to operate in.

From the standpoint of story, Pinocchio is without life in this sequence except for what Gepetto imparts. We care about him due to his design, courtesy of Milt Kahl, but also due to the care that Gepetto takes in crafting Pinocchio. Gepetto's clocks are more evidence of his abilities and played for laughs, but remember them because they're a key to his character and I'll be saying more about them in the future.

Note also that Gepetto uses Pinocchio to kick the cat. That small piece of vicarious cruelty never reoccurs, but it's another clue to Gepetto's background.

There's an expressionistic shot where a camera move links up the wishing star outside Gepetto's window and Gepetto in bed (scene 83), reinforcing the scene from the first sequence where the camera cranes down from the star to Gepetto's workshop. As the blue fairy will soon arrive, this reminder of the connection of heavenly power and Gepetto sets up what will follow in the next sequence.

Pinocchio Part 2

Commentary to follow.

ToonBreak

Scott Kirsner has an article about ToonBreak, a new video website that's set up to feature animation and share revenue with contributors. This is a long tail type of aggregation, where Shawn McInerny is attempting to create a destination for people seeking out animation. Individual contributors may not experience financial success, but the site is non-exclusive. If you've got a film, you've got nothing to lose by posting there. Should the site be successful, the entire animation community would benefit from a high traffic location that shares revenue.

Disney Exhibit Contest

Once Upon a Time Walt Disney, the exhibit which ran in Paris, will open at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on March 8 and run until June 24. fps has two double passes to give away and is running a contest that ends on March 2. You've still got time to enter.

The Danish Poet Online

This year's Oscar winner for best animated short, The Danish Poet by Torill Kove, can be seen free online here. A tip of the hat to Alan Cook for pointing out the link.

Pinocchio Part 1

Click on any of the above to enlarge.

I have no idea how long it's going to take to complete this, but it certainly seems to me to be worthwhile to do. Here's the first sequence from Pinocchio. You've probably noticed that I've started using tags with these entries. The tag 'Mosaics' will call up all the mosaics I've done as well as the related commentaries. I'm reserving the 'Pinocchio' tag for just the Pinocchio mosaics, so it should be convenient for you to call them up as we go.

(I note that the 'Mosaics' tag does not bring up entries all the way back to the beginning of this blog. I'll see if I can make this work better.)

Thanks go to Hans Perk and Michael Sporn for posting the animator drafts on which this is based. Thanks also to Alberto Becattini, whose list of animator credits has been a huge help in identifying lesser-known animators for these mosaics.

Because of Pinocchio's length, I'm going to post whatever I have to say about a sequence at the same time I put up the mosaics.

When I first saw these drafts, I was surprised at how many other animators handled Jiminy in this sequence. Looking at the animation carefully (and these mosaics don't do them justice; they're just a reference), it's clear that Kimball's cricket has a larger head, hands and feet than those of Luske, Wolf or Towsley. Towsley's proportions are more traditional cartoon than Kimball's, which are close to Dick Huemer's approach to the early Scrappy.

Kimball uses a hold for the word "true" at the end of the opening song. It isn't Kimball's fault, but you can see the cel scratches and dust stop moving during the hold and the whole screen goes dead. It was more obvious in 35mm than on video or DVD, but it always bugged me. I wish that he'd used a moving hold.

Kimball's poses in scene 2 are amazing. Every one of them has a beautiful line of action and drips appeal. The dialogue is not particularly juicy from a content or emotional standpoint, but we instantly like this cricket because he exudes charm and friendliness. The drawing and motion add enormously to what's in the voice track here.

The crane shot from the wishing star to Gepetto's workshop is straight out of German Expressionist film of the 1920's, using spatial continuity to imply a connection between things. Here, the two brightest spots on the screen are the star and Gepetto's window and the camera has told us that one will have an affect on the other.

In general, the use of the multiplane and other camera moves in this sequence makes the world feel large. The camera and we are exploring the space along with Jiminy. This sense of scale wasn't common in short cartoons and it literally took the creation of oversized artwork to make it work.

The effects animation is very rich. Shadows, dust, heat distortion and glows are present. The backgrounds are very detailed and Gepetto's workshop is stuffed with visual interest.

In the first five minutes of the film (including credits), we've been introduced to a character we like and a world that charms us visually. These days, many films feel the need to start off with an action sequence so that the audience doesn't get bored. In 1940, there was time to seduce the audience, letting us get to know a character before the plot kicks in. If nothing else, we know that Jiminy is important and someone we have to pay attention to.

UPDATE: In comments, the spectre pointed out that I had mis-identified effects animator John McManus as Dan MacManus. The correction has been made in the mosaic.

Disney and Pixar

There's an article in Variety worth reading called "Disney animation gets Pixar-ization."

Machinima

I've been aware of the existence of Machinima for a while, but as I'm not into video games, I haven't bothered to search any out. If you're not aware, Machinima are films where the visuals have been created using videogame graphics.

Slate.com has story on Machinima that includes several samples. It's a good, quick, primer as to what it's all about. Personally, I found the music videos based on songs from Avenue Q and by Avril Lavigne to be the most satisfying pieces, mainly because the music created a structured narrative for the visuals.

The most interesting thing about Machinima to me is the democratic nature of it. Not everyone can draw or create cgi characters and environments, which in the past prevented many people at trying their hands at animated films. Machinima provides people with ready-made characters and sets and game play educates them as to how to get visual results on the screen.

I don't want to re-open a can of worms, but I have to add that in their way, these films are motion-captured. They're definitely not created by keyframes. While the Machinima creators are not wearing body suits with tracking markers, their real-time manipulation of controlling devices puts these films in the mocap category.

It's only a matter of time, if it hasn't happened already, before there's a TV series or low budget feature created using this approach.

Guerilla Marketing

Steve Schnier has a blog entry on how he got coverage for his forthcoming movie, Pubic Lice: The Motion Picture, in the Toronto Star.

Marketing is an area that most studio-based animation artists never get near. There are too many layers of management between artists and marketing departments. However, independents are forced to do it all themselves, so if you have plans to create anything independently, Steve's advice is worth reading.

Why Niche Brands Win

There's a very interesting article over at Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog about large companies that work hard not to be associated with some of their own brands. Needless to say, I think that there's a lesson for animation studios here. I've thought for a long time that there's a market for animated features that aren't aimed at the family audience and are made for relatively low budgets. If Hershey, Nike and Black & Decker can make this work, there's no reason an animation studio can't.

Television and Children's Health

I wrote about a Cornell University study that linked autism and the amount of TV watched by young children. Now there is a British study that not only suggests the same link, it also suggests that TV interferes with the production of the hormone melatonin. The study claims that this affects the immune system, the sleep cycle, and the onset of puberty.

I have no way of judging the validity of the study and I'm sure that there will be follow-up studies that will test these results. However, if true, there's no question that this will have an impact on the animation industry.

Canada has specialized in production for the pre-school TV niche. World-wide, there are many cable channels that are aimed at pre-schoolers and many media conglomerates that make a measurable portion of their profits from that audience.

I'll be watching for further studies and the media responses to this issue. As I mentioned previously, I'm curious to see if the children's television industry starts to behave like the tobacco companies or the oil industry. I'm sure that nobody ever expected cartoons to present the same health threat as lung cancer and global warming.

The Films I Return To...

In my entry called Criticism, I mentioned "the films I constantly return to." In the comments, Sean LeBlanc asked me what those films are. I've been thinking about it and I've come to a disturbing conclusion. Few of them are animated.

I mention this because over at John K's blog, there's a discussion going on about whether the only people who can write for animation are cartoonists. I'll let you read it and come to your own conclusions, but when I think about animation vs. live action in terms of their effect on me, my conclusion is that the content in animated films is rarely complex enough.

I know that theatrical shorts were handicapped by their length and by having to generate laughs. Certainly, there are several that manage to transcend these limitations. Bad Luck Blackie and Duck Amuck are two that succeed as entertainment while leaving you with something more to think about. Independent animation like Hubley's Moonbird and Ring's Anna and Bella evoke emotions that most other cartoons ignore. Mike Sporn has tackled themes that other animated film makers haven't touched.

And I know that the majority of animated features have been child-friendly, which limits the type of content that's acceptable. There are a handful that speak to larger concerns for me. Pinocchio and The Iron Giant are two that dwell on personal responsibility, a theme I respond to. Spirited Away deals with issues of maturity and opening yourself up to the world.

However, I can name a dozen films by John Ford that I'd rather watch than any of the above. And there are films by Chaplin, Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, Frank Capra, Frank Borzage, John Huston, etc. that are also more attractive to me.

I'm not implying that my taste is better than anyone else's. We all respond to different things. I certainly admire the craft of the best animated films. I enjoy studying the work of animators and animation directors. But from a content standpoint, the number of films that I would defend against live action is relatively (maybe pitifully) small.

I don't doubt that the writers John K. has been forced to work with have been less than the best. The economics of Hollywood being what they are, anybody capable of writing for movies or live TV does so because it pays better and carries more prestige than writing for animation. But maybe the problem with animation is that cartoonists write it. That's not to imply that bad writers are preferable, but what would animation look like if it was written by Samson Raphaelson, Robert Riskin, Dudley Nichols, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Frank Nugent, Paddy Chayefsky, Robert Towne, William Goldman, Francis Ford Coppola, or Charlie Kaufman? And what about TV writers like Steven Bochco, David E. Kelly, Aaron Sorkin, Phil Rosenthal, and Larry David? I can name works written by them that are at least as good as any animated film I'd champion.

Whoever ends up writing animated films, the bar has to be set higher.

Ryan Larkin Has Died

Ryan Larkin, the Oscar-nominated animator, died on Feb. 14 from cancer. He was best known for his films for the National Film Board, including Walking and Street Musique. Recently, he created three five second bumpers for MTV. At the time of his death, he was working on a film entitled Spare Change. According to a CBC radio report I heard, the film will be completed and released this coming Fall.

The Toronto Star obituary is here and The Globe and Mail obituary is here.

Steve Schnier's Movie

It isn't animated, but it's an example of somebody from the animation business generating their own opportunity. The Toronto Star has an article about the creation and progress of Pubic Lice: The Motion Picture.