A Clay Animated Batman?

Those of you interested in what's happening with the Looney Tunes characters, Thundercats and the animated version of Green Lantern should read coverage of Sam Register's keynote speech to MIP Jr, a European TV market for children's programming.

One of the revelations in the article is that Warner Bros. is teaming up with Aardman Animation to make clay animated Batman shorts. There's also a cgi Batman series coming in 2013.

Some Ottawa Festival Thoughts

Everyone who attends the Ottawa Festival (or any other large event for that matter) is going to have an individual opinion. It's impossible at Ottawa to see every screening and attend every presentation, so opinions will vary based on what a person experienced. What follows are my thoughts, based on being there for just the weekend and the programs I chose to attend.

It's a shame that the animator picnic is not included in the weekend pass, as it is now the only venue at the festival where everyone is together. When the festival used the National Arts Centre, it was a central place for everyone to meet. This is my second year attending since the National Arts Centre is no longer used, and my feeling that the festival is spread over too great a distance remains. The individual venues are nice, but the lack of a real hub makes it tougher to find people and lessens word of mouth for any hot films.

I saw The Bug Trainer, a European documentary on Ladislas Starewitch, the stop motion animator. I didn't know much about him personally, so I was grateful to the film for filling me in, but I wish that the film, which only ran an hour and was most likely made for TV, had showcased more of his animation. Perhaps Europeans are more familiar with his films and didn't need to be reminded, but I've seen only a few Starewitch works and would have liked to see more.

John Canemaker

John Canemaker's presentation on Joe Ranft and Joe Grant was a highlight for me. Canemaker knew both men, so there was a personal dimension to the talk, which included artwork that isn't in his book Two Guys Named Joe. The Joe's emphasis on entertainment value was a contrast to much of what is screened at Ottawa. Canemaker mentioned that his next book was on Herman Schultheiss, an effects animator at Disney, who kept an extensive notebook about how the effects of the time were achieved, such as the snowflakes in "The Nutcracker Suite" section of Fantasia.

I always attend the screenings of children's films as I find them to be more satisfying than the films in competition. This year, my favorite was Princess' Painting, a German short by Johannes Weiland and Klaus Morschheuser about a Princess who receives automatic praise for superficial work and how she discovers that her priorities are wrong.

Saturday had several panel discussions set up by Tom Knott to give guidance to aspiring animation artists. I was on a panel about web portfolios chaired by Richard O'Connor of Ace and Son Moving Picture Company that also featured Knott, Brooke Keesling of The Cartoon Network, and Cal Arts instructor Fran Krause. Some solid information was passed along during this panel. The following panel, which I stayed for, was a collection of directors including Jan Pinkava, Marv Newland, Joanna Priestly, Isaac King and Jessica Borutski.

Left to right: Marv Newland, Jan Pinkava

Saturday night, I attended two competition screenings. The only film that I'd like to see again is Joost Lieuwma's Things You'd Better Not Mix Up from the Netherlands. The film was funny, something you'd think wouldn't be in short supply at an animation festival, but you'd be wrong.

Sunday, I saw two presentations from Disney-Pixar. The first was Enrico Casarosa screening the Pixar short La Luna, which will be released next year with Brave. The film is charming and clearly comes from a personal place for Casarosa. That personal connection is what separates the film from some other Pixar shorts and too much Disney these days.

The second presentation was of the Winnie the Pooh feature and the short The Ballad of Nessie. Pooh directors Steve Anderson and Don Hall were there to talk about the film after the screening. While they made it a point to go back to the original shorts for the design of the film, they talked about reworking the characters of Owl and Rabbit to make them carry more of the comedy. Personally, I felt that those characters were pushed too much, to the detriment of Tigger. Originally, Tigger's hyperactivity and wackiness was a strong contrast to the staid nature of the other characters. Now Tigger is only one of many broad characters. I also thought that the animators on Tigger (Andreas Deja) and Rabbit (Eric Goldberg) were miscast. Goldberg should have been given Tigger and Deja Rabbit.

Nessie also looked backwards to the Disney design of the 1940s and '50s. Johnny Appleseed was referenced for design.

Both the feature and short lacked the personal connection of La Luna. They were well crafted, but seemed to me to be imitation Disney rather than stories that needed to be told. By coincidence, the day after I returned from the festival, I was reading Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland and came across this quote:

In the first third of [the twentieth] century, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and a few fellow travelers turned the then-prevailing world of soft focus photographic art upside down. They did so by developing a visual philosophy that justified sharply-focused images, and introduced the natural landscape as a subject for photographic art. It took decades for their viewpoint to filter into the public consciousness, but it sure has now: pictures appearing in anything from cigarette ads to Sierra Club books owe their current acceptance to those once-controversial images. Indeed, that vision has so pervasively become ours that people photographic vacation scenery today often do so with the hope that if everything turns out just right, the result will not simply look like a landscape, it will look like an Ansel Adams photograph of the landscape.

This too will pass, of course. In face, artistically speaking, it has passed. The unfolding over time of a great idea is like the growth of a fractal crystal, allowing details and refinements to multiply endlessly -- but only in ever-decreasing scale. Eventually (perhaps by the early 1960's) those who stepped forward to carry the West Coast Landscape Photography banner were not producing art, so much as re-producing the history of art. Separated two or three generations from the forces that spawned the vision they championed, they were left making images of experiences they never quite had. If you find yourself caught in similar circumstances, we modestly offer this bit of cowboy wisdom: When your horse dies, get off.

If drawn Disney animation is to survive, the artists are going to have to find their own voices, not "making images of experiences they never quite had." Time to find another mount.

As I said above, this is only my experience of the festival. For other viewpoints, see Jerry Beck, Richard O'Connor (1, 2, 3 and 4) and Michael Valiquette.

Animation Insider

Animation Insider is a site whose mission is to "focus on the real people in the trenches who make the award winning stuff we love. " The good news is that there are a great many interviews on the site, focusing on people who don't normally get coverage. The bad news is that the questions are standardized, so all kinds of opportunities for follow up questions are missed. Still, the site is a good place to discover the varied backgrounds and sensibilities of the people who earn their livings in animation.

Here's a link to an alphabetical listing of interview subjects.

Gil Alkabetz in Toronto

Fresh from his appearance at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

(click to enlarge.)

At the Ottawa Festival

I will be at the Ottawa Animation Festival from sometime Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. On Saturday at 1:00, I'll be on a panel called Web Portfolios with Richard O'Connor of Ace and Son Moving Picture Company and Brooke Keesling of The Cartoon Network.

Stop by and say hello if you're there.

Invitation to the Dance

Most animation fans are familiar with the sequence in Anchors Aweigh where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry, the mouse from Tom and Jerry cartoons. Fewer fans have seen Invitation to the Dance, a feature spearheaded by star Gene Kelly which consists entirely of three dance sequences. The last sequence is "Sinbad the Sailor" and features Kelly dancing with animated characters produced by Hanna Barbera while they were still at MGM.

The film will be showing on Turner Classic Movies early in the morning of Tuesday Sept. 20 at 12:15 a.m. Eastern Time. Or if you prefer, late Monday night. In any case, TCM only runs the film every few years, so you might want to catch it if you're interested.

Below is an excerpt from the animated sequence.

I Have An Idea for an Animated Film. Can You Make It For Me?

Steve Bissette, a comics artist who also writes and publishes, has posted a great piece on issues surrounding collaborating on a graphic novel.

The piece is relevant because the requests that Bissette is addressing are similar to those that I regularly address as the coordinator of Sheridan College's animation program. I am constantly fielding phone calls and emails requesting that students create films for individuals and organizations. As Bissette points out, like it or not, drawing takes longer than writing. And animating most certainly takes longer than writing.

My first question when I get these requests is to ask if this is a paying project. Most times it isn't. In that case, my response is that we have a highly structured curriculum and we're not able to accommodate the request. If the job is paying, I try to connect a recent graduate with the project.

I don't doubt that many animation artists get requests like this. I remember somebody who wanted an animation done for her daughter's birthday party with a caricature of the mother as the main character. I think the fee on that was as high as $100, but when I quoted industry rates, that ended the discussion quickly.

People generally don't understand how labour intensive drawing and animating are. They also assume, as Bissette points out, that artists are devoid of ideas, just sitting around waiting for somebody to give them one. The problem is never finding an idea, it's finding the time and money to work on an idea.

Bissette raises a lot of issues concerning ownership, royalties, etc. which are food for thought for anybody who is hired to collaborate, as opposed to simply being hired to execute. While the issues surrounding graphic novels and animation don't match exactly, there are enough in common to make the piece worth reading.

Kim Deitch

Kim Deitch, son of animator Gene Deitch, has been writing an autobiography of sorts at The Comics Journal site. This installment mixes comix, music and animation into a gumbo that features animators Sally Cruikshank, Tony Eastman, Gene Deitch, and comix artist R. Crumb.

Who Owns Our Modern Myths and Legends?

(Click to enlarge. It's a big one.)

Charlie Jane Anders at io9 has put together this chart showing how six large corporations essentially control the pop culture franchises that make up our common experience.

The chart doesn't really represent ownership as much as it represents control. New Line Cinema doesn't own The Lord of the Rings, only the film version. And Harper Collins doesn't own Tolkien's novels, only the publishing rights. But when you see how much these six companies control, it's clear why copyright and digital rights management have become major issues and why the United States is leaning heavily on other countries, including Canada, to write legislation to protect U.S. corporate assets.

The chart is also incomplete. Notice that while Disney is listed, none of the drawn animated characters are on this chart. Neither is Nickelodeon or CBS (both Viacom companies), though Cartoon Network makes it. That just shows that what's here is only the tip of the iceberg. The odds are that if you've bought a book, seen a movie, bought a DVD or watched TV, you've been feeding these corporate behemoths.

Fred Moore's 100th Birthday

Cartoon Brew has a photo of Moore I've never seen, Jenny Lerew posts a lovely photo of Moore with his wife Virginia and their infant daughter, and Andreas Deja posts a large sampling of Moore's work. The above is the one Moore from my own collection.

Moore is practically a mythical character. His influence is ubiquitous, not only in animation but also in greeting card art of a certain vintage. Because he died before fans and historians could interview him, he's a mystery compared to other Disney artists. His death, often falsely attributed to his alcoholism, has spawned more versions than I can count. He's the Bix Beiderbecke of animation: the flawed boy prince, bursting with a unique talent, who left us too soon.

What would we give to have known him?

She Was the One

Another Storycorps film from the Rauch Brothers.

Early Computer Animation

Ed Catmull, currently the president of the Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios, was one of the key people in the development of computer animation. Catmull was and is a software engineer, somebody who developed the nuts and bolts of making animation work with computers.

A couple of his early pieces have surfaced. The first, reported on Cartoon Brew, is a film from the University of Utah in 1972.

After the University of Utah, Catmull went to the New York Institute of Technology, located on Long Island, where he was involved with trying to find ways of joining the computer with drawn animation. John Celestri has reprinted a paper Catmull wrote called "The Problems of Computer-Assisted Animation."

Computer animation has reached a high level of sophistication but it wasn't that long ago that it was struggling to establish itself as a practical medium. These pieces show how far it has come in less than 40 years, all within the working lifetime of Ed Catmull.

Guys with Pencils Podcast

Andrew Murray and Adam Hines are two Sheridan graduates who have a podcast talking about what it's like to be starting out in the animation business. You can find all their podcasts here.

I'm their guest in episode 22, talking a bit about my career and a whole lot about creator rights.

Jack Kirby's 94th Birthday

August 28 would have been Jack Kirby's 94th birthday. Mark Evanier, who worked with Kirby, has his birthday tribute here, including an embedded documentary on Kirby made for the DVD release of one of the Fantastic Four movies. Tom Spurgeon prints a great gallery of Kirby artwork and Mark Seifert has a gallery of Kirby originals to enjoy.

I wish that we could be celebrating the success of the Kirby estate's attempt to recover copyrights, but the recent court decision that went against the Kirby estate is now being appealed. Perhaps there will be better news for Kirby's next birthday.

Miss Devine

The Rauch Brothers' latest short combines documentary audio of grown children remembering their Sunday school teacher with animation designed by Bill Wray.

I love this kind of work, mixing real life events with animation. All of the Rauch Brothers' work for Storycorps can be seen here and all of it is worth watching.

Bill Plympton Interview

Salon has an interview with Bill Plympton.

That Famous Film Comment Animation Issue

Courtesy of Tom Knott, here's the complete contents of that 1975 Film Comment issue on animation. Get it quickly as Tom has indicated that it won't be up for long.

Disney Animators Who Sculpt

I've been on the road for the last ten days: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley (second time!) and now Loveland, Colorado. I'm guessing that readers are scratching their heads over the final location, but this weekend was the occasion for two annual shows that attract hundreds of sculptors who display their work. As I've been sculpting for the last two years, I wanted to see what was being done.

Sun Dog by Ellen Woodbury

I knew that I'd see Ellen Woodbury at Sculpture in the Park. I met Ellen a year or so ago when she visited Sheridan College and I learned that she's now living in Loveland and sculpting full time. Ellen works in stone and her subject is animals, not a surprise given her animal animation at Disney on characters like Pegasus in Hercules.

Reviewing the Troops by Mark Henn

I did not expect to see Mark Henn, who participated in the Loveland Sculpture Invitational Show. Mark is still at Disney, having recently completed work on the Winnie the Pooh film, but sculpts subjects from American history as a hobby and casts the work in bronze.

The link between animation and sculpture is a strong one. I know that Bill Tytla, Blaine Gibson, Milt Kahl and Andreas Deja, all associated with Disney, have done both. As Disney-style animation requires drawings that are structured and dimensional, it's only logical that animators can transfer their knowledge into a three-dimensional medium.

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Walt Disney and Tex Avery

In early 1975, Film Comment magazine devoted an entire, oversize issue to Hollywood cartoons. It's well worth finding in a library or through an online service, as it contains a comprehensive interview with Chuck Jones as well as an interview with Grim Natwick and articles by Greg Ford and Mark Langer.

One piece was an essay on Walt Disney by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum has now posted the first part of that essay on his website with the second part to follow shortly. As Thad has pointed out in the comments, part 2 is now up.

And here is Rosenbaum on Tex Avery.

Animated Leo the Lion

Here's an oddity. The trailer for MGM's 1935 feature No More Ladies starts and ends with an animated Leo the Lion. According to Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation, the animator is Bill Nolan, a veteran of the silent era whose previous job was at the Lantz studio in the early '30s. The voice, of course, is by Billy Bletcher, who voiced the Big Bad Wolf in Disney's The Three Little Pigs and also did cartoon voices for Warner Bros. (Little Red Riding Rabbit).

(Link via The Golden Age Cartoon Forum.)