Turning 27 Isn’t So Bad
Especially if you get presents like this from your significant other
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Animation
These Videos Are making Me Feel Old Today
All released or first broadcast back in 1985.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM9fRjRPKEo
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Let’s Talk Tax Credits
OK, taxes, boring I know, but it’s a pressing matter for animators in the UK. It’s also a topic that’s come up from time to time over here in the States, as places like next door neighbour Canada create incentives to get studios to move up north.
So the reason for this latest round of noise-making is that the British government is considering a tax break for “drama productions” that cost a certain minimum per hour of screen time. The thinking goes that with such a break, more productions will begin shooting in the UK thus contributing to the economy.
Animators contend that their industry would be more effective at keeping jobs in the country and, according to the Guardian article, would keep content on a more local level.
There’s nothing wrong with this, except that the reasoning is a bit flawed.
Basically, Ireland, the UK’s neighbour, offers tax incentives for animation production. The reasoning is is simple for this one: Ireland didn’t have an animation industry, so in order to get one jump-started, the government offered companies a tax break in return for taking the risk of setting up in a relatively unknown country (animation-wise).
The UK already has an established animation industry. It doesn’t need to effectively subsidies companies’ risk in setting up production there.
So what’s the real issue here?
Well, why set up shop in the UK, when you can go next door to Ireland, write off some taxes and get you series done for less. Right?
Will tax incentives in the UK change this scenario?
The answer is maybe.
Tax incentives will bring the cost of production in the UK down, but that is not a guarantee that productions will move there. It also creates another problem in that it hides the real issue: costs.
Naturally with their tax incentive, Ireland can operate on a lower cost basis, but, can you continue to operate on an incentive-based structure forever?
NO!
Incentives are meant to be temporary, or rather, short term. Long term reliance on tax-breaks and incentives can defeat the purpose. For example, let’s say you introduce a tax break for animation. After a while, another country introduces a tax break that brings their costs below yours. Now what do you do? Another tax break? Suffer the consequences? Give up?
Tax incentives mask the real cost of doing business. Yes, taxes may be higher here or there, but at the end of the day, they should be factored into the cost of doing business in the first place. Exchange rates will also factor into the equation, and depending on where you go, they may have a bigger bearing on costs than taxes.
If costs are your problem, then perhaps it is wiser to try and bring them down first, no? By doing so you will increase your competitiveness and not have to worry about it running out.
Besides, if you operate as a low-cost producer, you will always have to be the low-cost producer. Ireland has shown that they can move beyond low-cost with through their superb, home-grown content. Britain has a great track record in creating content. Perhaps they need to rediscover that talent.
What do you think? IS the UK really in need of a tax credit, or should it try other things first?
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Illumination Goes After The Cat in the Hat
So it comes as no surprise whatsoever to learn that Illumination Entertainment is working on a CGI version of the Cat in the Hat. They’ve done quite well with The Lorax, and Illumination’s Chris Melendandri also oversaw Horton Hears A Who while previously at FOX.
This is good news and bad news all rolled into one. Yes, Illumination has done a great job on its recent films, but is really necessary to have another go at The Cat in the Hat?
OK, in fairness, there was that terrible effort with Mike Myers from a few years ago that you knew was doomed to fail the second you saw how all the vehicles were thinly disguised Fords. If such blatant paid product placement isn’t a dead ringer for a wonky movie, I don’t know what is.
Back to the point, yes, Dr. Seuss’ films make great animated films, but are they just getting rehashed at this point? Illumination have proven themselves with not one but two really good original films that they’ve been able to crank out for much less than Pixar or even DreamWorks could ever hope to.
So is it simply a case of certainty? Of going with what you know? Or is it that they really want to make a good Cat in the Hat move.
I’m going to go with the former. If the Deadline Hollywood is anything to go by (and to be honest, I take it with a pinch of salt myself), we’ll see Dr. Seuss films from now until the end of time. I just wish more emphasis was placed on original ideas. I mean, if you’re risking $70 million on a film you might as well go original. It’s not like you’re dumping $250 million and the kid’s college fund on an unknown entity. If you can find a great idea and a good team with a great track record, you should have no problems with an original idea.
Keep Dr. Seuss alive, but don’t turn him into a horse to flog for the sake of flogging.
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The 6 Most Obscure Animation on Netflix
Netflix has been a boon for fans of obscure content ever since they launched. But now, with instant streaming, what are the more obscure pieces of animation that you can watch. Here’s a list of six of them.
Via: IMDB
Labarynth of Darkness: Jiri Barta
Via: The Classic Nickelodeon Blog
Via: Wikipedia
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The State of Irish Animation in 2012
First of all, a Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all. Remember, Guinness is Irish; corned beef and cabbage is not.
Irish animation has been on a roll the last few years as the combination of a strong talent pool. entrepreneurs willing to take a risk, continuous production demand, excellent products and a little help from the government in the form of tax incentives has made the country a very favourable one to do business in. In other words, the hard work continues to pay off.
Production now extends across the entire content landscape, from shorts through TV all the way to feature films. This growth has caused the industry to continue its expansions and growth at a time when the Irish economy as a whole has been struggling (to put it lightly).
No one studio seems to have eked out a significant lead as the larger ones have managed to succeed by going in different directions. Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon hit it right out of the park a few years ago with The Secret of Kells. As of 2012, development continues on their much-anticipated next feature, Song of the Sea.
Brown Bag Films has cemented their position as the studio to watch on the international stage. Besides announcing the sale of their first original series, Happy Hugglemonsters, they’ve also maintained their production series The Octonauts. Now employing over 100 people, Brown Bag have seem poised to continue their growth for the coming year.
Besides these two well-known outfits, other studios such as Jam Media, Kavaleer Productions (which recently celebrated 10 years in business), Boulder Media (currently winning accolades for their work on the Amazing World of Gumball), Telegael, Monster Animation and Caboom all continue to propel the industry to worldwide attention and admiration.
Noted newcomers this year include Giant Creative which has marked themselves out as a crowd to keep an eye on over the coming years.
Perhaps the largest sign that Ireland is making waves in the animated seas is the fact that this year’s Annecy festival will have a central focus on the country and what it can offer. Big things are expected to be announced come June.
Overall, the outlook for Irish animation is extremely positive for 2012 and beyond. Here’s hoping next year’s post will have even more good things to say.
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Yes, Animation Still Has A Stigma Once You Reach A Certain Age
Fred Seibert re-blogged a post by Megan, a.k.a. animationbits over on tumblr in which she goes into detail about how much she loves animation and how she’s hard at work on becoming a fully-fledged animator.
As inspirational as that post is (and you should definitely read it), what struck me was that while she drew and doodled from a very young age, something happened:
Then, like some of you, I hit an age where suddenly it wasn’t appropriate anymore. At this point I was living with my father and stepmother and suddenly im in a world where it was weird for me to create fantasy worlds and draw cartoons.
She was 18 at that point, and as she mentions, at one point, her father had something taped to the table which read the following:
THIS , this is whats keeping you from growing up – all these cartoons
Thankfully, Megan overcame all of this, but the fact remains that moreso than being a professional stigma for a lot of people; the old “all artists are starving” and “you’re not famous till you’re dead” notions continue to proliferate among society unfortunately. As Megan herself says:
Most of the time this talk comes from people who don’t KNOW of the art industry but base things on very surface conversations or stigmas like ‘starving artist’ .
The fact that this seemed to happen when she reached a certain age is exemplary of the continued stigma that grown-up animation fans continue to encounter here and there. Oh sure, it is much more acceptable now than in the past, but you could say that outside of conventions and industry circles, my Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends T-shirt is not nearly as appreciated.
The thing is though, the whole reason my passion for animation was re-ignited was because I realised that it is grown-ups who are making it and that they are people with real jobs, a real education and life-goals. Until that point I’d always thought of animated studios like Bart thought of the offices of MAD Magazine; a fun-house kind of scenario. Of course that was partly me being, like my father says, a stupid kid. A dose of the real world changed that mindset substantially.
Far from peer-pressure being the enemy of teenage animation fans, it is people who think it’s a profession for perpetual children. Nothing could be farther from the truth and here’s hoping that the stigma will someday be a footnote in history.
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Can “The Chase” By Philippe Gamer Be Considered ‘True’ Animation?
I caught this video over on Cartoon Brew the other day and disregarding the plot and characters for a minute, can it be considered a truly animated video?
Obviously a lot of skill and talent went into creating it, but I felt suitably cheated once the video actually started. You see, the screenshot on the Vimeo emebed below suggests a certain kind of CGI animation, but once you start watching (and this isn’t a spoiler), you realise that the characters are vastly different to the rest of the environment.
Photo-realism is the rule for backgrounds, cars and roads. Even the FX shots appear to ape their live-action counterparts.
Bear in mind this isn’t a rant against this kind of filmmaking, it’s just that if a film like this appears to be so realistic, can it be considered animation, or is it simply an extended FX shot?
Animation encompasses a wide, wide range of styles and simulating reality has been the goal ever since Snow White. Of course anything that simulates motion is animated, but I’m wondering, is it time to draw a line in the sand? Should animation that aims for photo-realism be given its own category?
What do you think?
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Comparing Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton’s Risk Tolerance
Mark Mayerson recently posted (with apologies for the delay, I’ve been without my RSS reader for the past fortnight) about the contrast between he efforts of two first-time live-action Pixarian directors. While the post does not go into much detail, the comments which follow raise a number of points in regards to risk and the nature of it.
As Mark points out, Brad Bird went with a familiar face and an existing franchise in stark contrast to Stanton who went for an unfilmed, 100 year-old book. Were either one of them right, or wrong?
No. Both took on a level of risk that they were comfortable with. Bird clearly wanted to have more certainty whereas Stanton was clearly comfortable loading all his reputation eggs in one basket.
That risk was of course shared by the studios. FOX (or whoever it was) that did Mission Impossible were clearly risk-averse. I mean, why else would they greenlight the fourth film in a series that has had the same star for dangerously close to 20 years. Disney on the other hand thought they had the man with the golden touch in Stanton, previous director of cash cows Wall-E and Finding Nemo. Both studios’ decisions are evidence of their relative tolerance of risk.
Animated films are just as susceptible to such risk, perhaps even more so, given their long lead times and inability to simply “do another take”. Both Bird and Stanton have proven themselves with multiple successful animated films. A switch to live-action was obviously going to contain a certain amount of risk for both of them. It’s probably safe to say that one had a better idea than the other about what they were getting into; I don’t have to tell you who that is.
The only problem with all of this is that the public and critics constantly complain about repetition in Hollywood movies but at the same time clamour to strike down an effort to do something else. Is John Carter a terrible movie? I don’t know as I haven’t seen it. But for his efforts I would give Stanton the benefit of the doubt, for now.
Brand Bird on the other hand, received a gimme in Mission Impossible. Now that he has proven himself to Hollywood and the public/critics, he will hopefully advance to more innovative live-action features, or return to animation. Either way, he is the one to keep and eye on.
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Derivative Animated TV Shows
You may have read the LA Times article from the other day that talks about a shift that’s currently underway at the Disney Channel. The interesting thing is that it included (all the way at the end) this quote from Jerry Beck:
“Before Eric got there, [Disney Channel] had a couple of mild hits, like ‘Kim Possible.’ They were doing derivative things. They were following trends,” Beck said. “Now, they’re leading trends.”
Now I don’t necessarily agree that Kim Possible was derivative, perhaps as a kind of show it was, but there’s been nothing like it since, and it still remains a rare, female-protagonist, show.
That notwithstanding, Jerry hits the bullseye with his point that creating derivative shows will not get you very far. We’ve seen it time and time again when a show get big and a whole host of imitators follow. It happened with The Simpsons and the only shows to last more than a season or two were FOX’s own.
So when it comes to animated TV, do networks tend to follow trends rather than make them? The answer is emphatically, yes. That is by far the less risk option. However, as SpongeBob SquarePants proves, creating a trend can lead to a very long (and insanely profitable) property.
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Animation: Knowledge or Trade?
In lieu of the usual Monday list post, I thought it would be interesting to debate whether or not animation is a knowledge or trade-based form of education.
What I mean is, in life you generally have two forms of education: knowledge-based and the more vocational trade-based. The difference between the two is that one is taught primarily in a classroom and based on theory whereas the other one favours a more hands-on approach and acquiring knowledge through practice.
- Does animation fall primarily into one or the other?
- Do different types of animation fall into either one?
- Is there an emphasis on one to the detriment of the other?
- Would animation education improve if things were changed?
I’m curious to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment below! 🙂
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