Animation

Animating Dumbing of Age

A while back, I attended the first-rate comic event that is the Small Press Expo (SPX) here in Maryland. It was a blast of a time even if I had to literally run around every single table and still manage to miss Alissa Harris in the process. Afterward, I wrote this blog post analysing why certain comics that I saw and/or read on the day and later were worthy of being animated. Here’s one I missed

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I Know That Voice and You Can Too

Voice acting is one of the more mysterious parts of the animation production process and while luminaries like Mel Blanc managed to garner a high degree of public awareness, there is a legion of talented actors working away behind the microphone that most members of the public would never recognise. One of them, John DiMaggio, decided to change that and went about creating the documentary ‘I Know That Voice’ to highlight the job and the players that take part.

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Why Is Common Sense Being Ignored in Animated Features?

Budgets for animated features have been rising consistently for the past decade or so. While large blockbusters at the end of the 20th century struggled to top $100 million, today’s efforts often top 3.5 times that! This rapid rise has been accomplished mainly thanks to the superb commercial performance of animated features at the box office. So why then is common sense missing from the production process of such films?

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Finding the Animation Diamond in the Rough

No, we’re not talking about Aladdin, but rather trying to pick winners. You see, animation as an industry is still heavily based on sales; that is, between studios and networks. Annual conventions like MIPCOM continue to drive large portions of the industry and feed a lot of revenue into it. Here’s a look at why it’s tough to navigate and even tougher to win in.

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Week Links 38-2013

I’m not gonna lie: this is probably about the height of blog activity for this week and next. Because thus begins an insane schedule that includes weddings, an 8-hour professional exam, a trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and of course a full-time job to hold down at the same time.

However, November is currently shaping up quite nicely with a trip to the CTN Expo on the cards. Drop me a line if you’ll be there!

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DreamWorks Are About Much More Than Their Features

Scott Mendelson is quite prolific on the animation front this weather. First he qualified his statement that American feature animation is, for all intents and purposes, a genre. Secondly, he’s written a rather substantive piece (again for Forbes) on DreamWorks Animation and their “complicated legacy”. Is he right though? Here’s a look at why DreamWorks legacy is actually about much more than their films.

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The Law of Proportional Effort

Here’s something that you don’t often hear discussed: just how many of an animated thing do you have to make? The question may seem confusing, but consider it for a second. When you make an animated feature, you can be successful with just one. A TV series requires at least a few episodes in order to become a success. Are the two linked, and what does it mean for web series if they are?

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As it Turns Out, Boys DO Watch Female Characters on TV

It’s oft rumoured that boys have a certain amount of disdain for shows with female leads. The reasons are vague and revolve around concepts of masculinity and accepted social norms. However, such rumours are exactly that: rumours. As it turns out, boys do watch shows with a female lead, and they’re doing it in greater numbers than you would believe.

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Animation By-Products

‘By-products’ is a word that instantly conjurers up images of dodgy hotdogs and ‘mystery meat’. It’s got a bad rap alright, but the word’s actual/original meaning is used to describe things that were created during the production of other things and that turned out to be valuable. Hence a by-product of sugar refining gets turned into something useful like molasses. The point is that by-products can be useful and profitable, and present within the animation industry too. Here’s a few existing animation by-products and a few potential ones yet to come.

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Five Comics From SPX With Animated Potential

This is the companion piece to last week’s post about pitching and how comics could play a bigger role for animation studios looking for new ideas. SPX from the previous weekend was a great experience and although I had to whoosh by everything in one day, it proved a productive and rewarding test of my theory. To prove it, here’s five comics (and a few honourable mentions) by independent artists that contain plenty of animated potential given the right resources and effort.

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