September 2013

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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The Animation Anomaly Podcast Episode 4

After a grief hiatus, I’m back with a packed podcast episode of animationy goodness.

This episode:

00:00 – Cartoon Network: Netflix is Hurting our TV Ratings

08:26 – The Little Mermaid tablet-tastic cinema screenings

13:40 – The Market for Idiocy

20:30 – The Psychology of a Fanboy

27:00 – UNPAID INTERNSHIPS!!!

Audio file link

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Why The Practise of ‘Pitching’ Ideas Has To End

Pitching as an exercise is found in many corners of life. From thesis ideas to why you need a bigger garage, there is always an element of selling involved in order to see an idea come to fruition. Within the animation industry, pitching has long been the route by which many ideas get turned into actual animation. TV shows and feature films are pitched constantly either to studios or by studios. it. It’s an annoying practice that hasn’t necessarily evolved much or kept pace with technology. Here’s why it should done away with.

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The Creative Commons Conundrum

Copyright is a concept that has, and continues to, perplex many people. The concept of Creative Commons is designed to help address many issues surrounding copyright that are often ignored to the peril of legal liability. In this new media landscape, where can Creative Commons fit into the animation industry and how can it do so while maintaining revenue sources.

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The Great Licensed Apparel Question

Licensed apparel (or clothing) has gained prominence in the merchandising puzzle as of late thanks to its simplicity, low cost/high margins and its customizability. Long gone are the days when clothing bearing your favourite cartoon character was only availably in a few, all-round safe choices. Today, thanks to on-demand production and the internet as a sales channel, it’s possible to create clothing with just about anything on it and in just about any batch size. So here’s the deal, given a choice, would consumers rather wear clothes that feature a character or rather replicas of the clothes the character wears?

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How an Animated GIF Can Become A Feature Film

A while back, I contributed a post to Jerry Beck’s Animation Scoop where I mused on the idea that it’s theoretically possible to create a feature film from the nucleus of an animated GIF. While I gave a brief summary of how that could be achieved in that post, it’s prompted a more comprehensive look at the theory and why it’s entirely achievable

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