Animation

How the Internet has Improved Access to Animation

Animation /

Animation is not the only artform to benefit from the best invention ever, in fact, all forms of audio-visual entertainment have benefited from it. What has brought this to my attention was the Chapter 11 filing of Blockbuster Video (click through to see the headline of the Chicago Sun Times that I can only hope was known to be satirical before it was published).

The store near us closed a couple of months ago, and I dutifully paid them a visit to see what I could salvage. I found an Irish film, the Teen Titans movie, Spirited Away and Beavis & Butthead Do America (ah , my teenage years). There was also some even more random items that I passed up on, namely some older children’s stuff and a couple of volumes of Sailor Moon.

The main reason I passed them up (besides not being interested) was that I couldn’t justify the cost nor the loss of space on my shelf. I suppose I subconsciously realized that if I really wanted, I could find them again through other means.

The growth of Netflix and Hulu has meant that for animation fans, finding older or more alternative TV shows and films is not near as difficult as it used to be. In times gone past you had to visit the Goodwill stores and car boot sales (also known as flea markets) to find them. For the slightly sketchy stuff, you might need to visit a speciality shop, or know a place with some items under the counter.

The greatest asset to all of this has, of course, been YouTube. Just on a casual search from memory, I found Astronomeus (a Felix the Cat short) from 1929, Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s Galaxy High (with character designs by John K.) and an obscure English film animated in Poland during the Cold War.

The downside to all of this is that the vast majority of stuff posted on YouTube is illegal against copyright, so there is a good chance that if you’re reading this post in a couple of months those links will be broken. Happily, folks are always re-posting things so it should just be matter of searching a bit harder or by trying another video site.

What’s the upside, well for one if people are looking for this stuff it indicates that a demand does exist. What’s even better is that said demand can be satisfied relatively easily and cheaply by using the Internet in the same way that the pirates loyal fans have done. Older, more obscure content should not be left to rot away in the archives. It would be much better to digitize them and allow anyone to view them. Despite what the detractors say, it is always possible to use free content to turn a profit.

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Thoughts on The Hub

Animation, TV /

There has been much talk and debate in recent times about the upcoming launch of the newest TV channel aimed at kids, that’s right, The Hub. Co-owned by Hasbro and Discovery Networks. Anyone over the age of 20 will immediately recognize there is more than one show of that classic 80s vintage, the toy line.

What has proven to be the most surprising developments of the channels launch has been the heated debate about the nature of the shows, namely that fact that the three in question: G. I. Joe, My Little Pony and Pound Puppies are all based on the existing Hasbro toy lines of the same name. This parallels a separate show based on the popular Sketchers line of shoes, which is currently being investigated by the FCC after a complaint by a campaign group.

The new network seems to have escaped this group’s attention for the moment although I suspect that it is because: a) it hasn’t launched yet and b) there were previous cartoon incarnations that have caused them to fly under the radar for the moment.

I have somewhat average hopes for the network, much will depend on the quality of the content. In times gone past you simply knocked a show together based on the toys and Bob’s your uncle. DIC became masters of the art before getting swallowed up by Cookie Jar. In this day and age, The Hub may find this audience a tougher nut to crack than in the past.

The reason, for one, is the quality of shows on other networks. The rampaging juggernaut that is SpongeBob Squarepants has single-handedly ruled that cartoon merchandising empire for more than a decade. Despite their storied past, any of the Hub’s shows are unlikely to overthrow the king.

As noted on Cartoon Brew, the network that may have to watch its back is Cartoon Network. While it is true that they are (somewhat) engaged in the true model of using creator-driven content, they also suffer from a severely deficient marketing strategy that has so-far yielded next to nothing for the vast majority of their shows. The sole exemption being Ben 10, which has been rather successful at hawking a line of toys and ancillary merchandise.

The network doesn’t launch for another bit, but I think I can safely say that with Lauren Faust in the driving seat, My Little Pony may well be making a big-time comeback.

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Bill Plympton Talks Idiots and Angels

Animation, Film, Independents /

Yes, I mentioned it last week, but in the meantime, Katie Cropper has conducted a great interview with Bill over on ASIFA-East’s Exposure Sheet blog where he gets into some detail about how he eventually came to the conclusion that he had to distribute it himself.

It’s a great interview and I highly encourge you to head over and read it right now!

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The Differences Between The US and UK Trailers for Tangled

Animation, Disney, Film /

It’s pretty much a given that the opposing sides of the Atlantic have different cultures. Ask any one from either side which version of The Office they prefer and invariably, the local version is the one that is chosen. This is an obvious choice: American like blatant jokes whereas the British are much more for sly, under the radar humour.

The differences extend to pretty much all aspects of entertainment that happen to cross the pond. Take for instance Harry Potter, the first book/movie in the series was called the Philosopher’s Stone in Britain but the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US. The movie even had scenes where the stone in question is spoken filmed twice, just to be consistent.

Since films are not excepted, neither are film trailers. Take for instance the upcoming Disney feature, Tangled. The trailers for both are embedded below for your viewing pleasure. Watch them both and then continue below.

The US version:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxY35VkI0NI&feature=player_embedded]

The British version

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycoY201RTRo]

In light of the two, which is better? Well neither really. A trailer is supposed to give you the best idea of the plot without giving away the ending or any important plot details. A classic failure is the one for The Simpsons Movie, which pretty much gave away the entire plot, minus Lisa’s love interest.

About these two, well, for starters nether one gives the entire plot away and if I had to choose which one I prefer on that front, it is the American one, which only hints at what makes Rapunzel so special. The British version on the other hand, seems to focus much less on Flynn. I suppose it’s in Americans nature to see a movie about the struggle of one, rugged individualist fighting against oppression. That’s why their trailer is cut as such. The British one focuses much more on Rapunzel and what she gets up to. In other words, it’s much more cryptic as to how the two came together.

While both trailers are good at doing their job, it is clear that in the US, there is much more of an emphasis on trying to hook the audience. The British one is more direct in what the film appears to be about. From poking my nose around the web, there seems to be plenty of assurances from those on the inside that Rapunzel does play a greater role in the film than the US version leads us to believe.

Having said that, trailers can be fantastically misleading. Don’t believe me, check out this one for the romantic comedy that is The Shining. Another example is the one for Fight Club, a film I avoided until one day, when I was shocked to learn that the film is barely about underground bare-knuckle boxing.

Overall, the differences between these two trailers do not make that much of a difference. Personally, I prefer the British one because it reveals a story and characters who are much more complex than the American one suggests. Being a guy who likes complex, strong characters, that makes it a winner.

Now I just need to figure out if there’ll be a late-night screening that I and my better half can sneak off to without having to deal with hoards of pimply teenagers.

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Keeping Yourself Motivated

Animation /

Sometimes life can be tough, there’s no doubt about it. Right now I know more than a few people who’ve been laid-off from work and are finding it harder than they thought to get back on track. A few other people I know think they are having trouble getting started in the first place.

If this sounds like you, the important thing to remember is not to give up. We all have hopes and dreams both realistic and non-realistic, I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t want to own their own tropical island complete with a mountain layer nestled inside a volcano?

The point is that you can’t let apparent setbacks get in the way of what you want to achieve. Take for example the animation industry, unemployment seems to be a pretty big factor in a lot of animators lives at the moment. Animation being what it is, this is part and parcel of the job. However, it is not a hindrance to success.

That is what is so great about animation, it’s a career where you can be your own boss. I’m an engineer, do you think I can do some design work on the side when I get home, or make my own, independent road? Not a chance. I suppose this has its advantages, but it discourages passion for the job. I would love to be able to work on something all day every day if given half the chance and if you’re an animator, then you’ve already been given it!

In the past, there were plenty of barriers to creating independent work, namely money, but today, the cost of doing almost anything has dropped to the point that nearly everyone should be able to take advantage of them. The Internet has made numerous tools available that can help advertise yourself and your skills. It can also provide countless sources of inspiration.

The biggest favour you can do when motivating yourself is to manage your time effectively. If you’re into writing, set aside even half an hour a day to do some writing. That’s all I budget for this blog. Between school, work, dinner, the dog and some personal entertainment, that’s just about all I can spare on a weekday. The good thing is, it’s all I need!

The want to do something is another big motivator in that if you have no interest in doing something, you’ll likely never do it. For example, some people were dying to see Avatar, and plenty did. It’s been in the cinema and is now out on DVD and I’ve still not got around to watching it. I could do it right now if I wanted to, but I’m not motivated enough to do it. The same goes for personal projects. For a long time this blog sort of languished with infrequent and random topics until one day, I decided that it was something I could focus my energies on. Suddenly, I was motivated to write every day, and so far, so good. 🙂

The key point of motivation is how you measure your success. If you became a millionaire, that could be considered fairly successful, but what if you were an animator who shunned the opportunity of working on some modern classics? Is that a failure? Bill Plympton doesn’t seem to think so and he has carved out his own, unique market for himself that puts shoes on his feet and roof over his head.

My point is that only you can determine whether your efforts are successful or not. For me, writing a short script or drawing three panels of a storyboard would be a mighty big success, seeing as I’m pretty poor at doing either. My advice is to measure your performance not in the form of big milestones, such as, say, finishing an entire short film, but rather to break it down into smaller pieces, like say the script, or going even further and figuring out what colour clothes the character’s wear. Make a list, and every day, cross off what you’ve achieved. You’d be surprised how quickly things disappear.

The best motivation you can receive is from others. Plenty of people will gladly give you a thumbs up and a few will even give you helpful pointers or critique. Of course you can’t receive any of this if people can’t see what it is you’re doing, so share it with them!

Still in doubt? Then head over to GorkGakk.com, where cartoonist Mark Mariano made an entire comic out of comments left on the site. He drew the comic, but all the story ideas came from readers. Your work could be something similar, if on a slightly different note.

The most important lesson is: never let negative comments or situations get in the way. Stay positive, think of the end goal and what it is you want to achieve. If you keep that in mind, and work towards it, you’ll be successful, just like Stephen M. Levinson.

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The Day I Realized the Care Bears Were Not Real

Animation /

…was a sad day for me. Growing up as a kid, I had a vivid imagination that would lead me on all sorts of adventures. I would relentlessly watch pretty much any and every cartoon and/or kids show that came my way. If it was around in the late-80s to mid 90s in Ireland, you can be sure I watched it.

The Care Bears were one of my favourites. We had the movie (taped from the TV of course, complete with an ad for Economy 7 featuring the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White) and I watched it fairly frequently, so much so, that I probably could still spout it word for word. As well as the movie, there was also the TV shows. Funnily enough neither I nor any of my siblings ever had an actual Care Bear and I’ve never really learned why.

I enjoyed the Care Bears a lot. The large cast of characters probably had a lot to do with it as I could easily identify with a few of them, especially as they all had their own unique characteristic. In fact I distinstly remember telling my mother that someday I wanted to turn into a Care Bear. I can admit this now because I’m an adult who can grow a moustache and drive a car.

Being the trusting kid that I was, it never occurred to me that the Care Bears were actually created by American Greetings in order to sell cards. The day I discovered that, I was pretty disappointed. I could accept if they were a cartoon first and then a card, but the other way around had me feeling a bit left down. I can’t think of the exact reason, but it was probably something to so with the fact that it was a corporation, rather than a single person who was repsonsible.

Like any other kid, I could tell the difference between what was and wasn’t real, that was easy. The Care Bears, unlike other cartoons, seemed to stand on a higher moral ground, and this I seemed to like (must be the Catholic upbringing or something). There were plenty of other shows around doing the same. Heck, it seems like every TV show made between 1970 and 1985 had some sort of moral to it but those were blatantly obvious in comparison.

Perhaps I was a bit gullible. Perhaps other kids felt the same about other shows, I don’t know. Did the realization scar me for life? Nah, it wasn’t near as bad as they day I realized Disney World was just another theme park, but that’s a story for another day.

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How Come Chowder Never Spawned a Line of Cookbooks?

Animation, Cartoon Network /

Chowder, the loveable little scamp of an apprentice who someday wants to be the best chef in all of Marzipan City had an altogether awesome show, which has been one of the most popular shows on Cartoon Network in recent years and sadly ended last month. It has always bothered me that we never got a cookbook from the little fellow. I bet we would have seen a few really amazing dishes that we could actually make as opposed to just salivating at the thought.

I am not one to say why we never got one because I, as of today, don’t call that shots on such things. Since Chowder launched way back when Ratatouille was still being talked about, and that mouse did get his own book.

With many more shows (and indeed, recipes) to his name, you would think that it would be a forgone conclusion that a lightbulb would have gone off in someone’s head. Unfortunately if one did, we never saw the final product.

Such a piece of merchandise would have sold well, good children’s books always do and one based on a show as unique and popular as Chowder could certainly have been successful. Besides, the show was also pretty popular with older kids, you know, the ones that actually could cook for themselves without needing adult help.

A Chowder cookbook was an opportunity that was sorely missed. Indeed, a series of cookbooks on different themes was sorely missed as they would have extended the show’s lifespan far beyond its time on the air, which is of course, the holy grail of successful marketing campaigns, look at all the Flinstones stuff still floating about, and I’m pretty sure we’ll see Simpsons merchandising until the end of time.

Perhaps in a few more years we’ll see another show along similar lines that will brighten up the presence of cartoons in the kitchen.

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Animators and VFX artists: The Differences And Similarities That Should Be Celebrated

2 Comments / Animation, Opinion /

There has been some talk over recent years as to whether visual effects artists are really animators by another name. They certainly share a lot of common skills and traits, but there remains a gulf between the two professions.

For starters, visual effects has traditionally been concerned with adding bits and pieces to traditional, live-action films, whereas animation has always been about creating everything from scratch. These classifications were fine until a few years ago, when the likes of Robert Zemeckis’ The Arctic Express began to really blur the lines at which VFX ended and animation began.

Fast forward to this year, and you had Richard winnning an Academy Award for best visual effects. There is nothing really notable here until you realise that Richie actually trained as an animtor in Dublin!

There are still many differences that, at least in my opinion, mean that although there will continue to be a convergance of professions in the areas of technology, looks and skills, there will remain a few fundamental differences.

Animators and VFX artists should realise that they can work together in harmony, complementing each other. It would be a shame to see the two camps descend into petty rivalry, especially around awards season, when the issue is most likely to crop up.

Apologies for the short post. The topic merits more discussion, which by all means can be done in the comments below.

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Animation and the 2011 Academy Awards

Animation /

It is a wee bit early, I know, and apparently that is something not lost on Steve Hullett over at the Animation Guild Blog either, as he notes how Dreamworks is already sending out the consideration mailers for How to Train Your Dragon.

The interesting thing is that DW is putting the film up in both the animation and best feature category, which is certainly an interesting development. It has been shown again and again that animation is not treated as seriously in Hollywood as it should be (hint: animation is a lot more profitable) but in recent times, in spite of the Academy’s addition of a ‘Best Animated Feature’ category, there have been some inroads made by the artform into more prestigious categories.

It all kicked off with Wall-E and it’s supposed deservedness of inclusion in the best feature category. That didn’t materialise (put it down to Wall-E being a robot), but surprisingly, that was not the end of the story. More than one eyebrow was raised last year when UP managed to bag one of the coveted best feature nomination slots. In the end it lost out to The Hurt Locker.

So it is perhaps not much of a surprise to hear that DW is waving the flag for Dragon. Personally, I think it is the best animated film released this year (thus far and from a Hollywood studio). Many will argue the case for Toy Story 3, but that is a sequel, if the first, two, superior films didn’t pass muster, I can’t see it doing so either.

I don’t think this means that we will see an animated films in the running for best feature every year. It is certainly safe to say that the best film released would not necessarily get the nod. Persepolis is a shining example of an animated film that is more than worthy of a best picture Oscar only for it to get the shaft.

Of course, it would be fantastic if we saw a few more animated features specifically aimed at adults rather than children. Walt Disney certainly felt (albeit with much anxiety) that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was good enough for adults.

If there was a serious market for adult animation, then there are plenty of reasons why we should see an animated film in the running for best feature. For now, let’s hope that How to Train Your Dragon makes a good show of it while it can.

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Negative Disney Publicity Circa. 1989

Animation, Disney, TV /

There’s a fantastic post over on Cartoon Brew today that details the pitch material sent out by Disney in 1989 or thereabouts to various TV stations around the country who they hoped would air their afternoon block of shows in syndication.

The pages posted are great to read some 20 years after the fact. The present perhaps the worst aspect of some marketing departments: pointing out all the bad aspects of your competitors in the hope that no-one don’t notice your own.

The papers are full of non-comparisons and desriptions so vague, they barely even make sense. Here’s a sample quote:

Warner Brothers has the dubious task of competing with Disney’s superior aniamtion.

Boasting that your shows are better is nothing new, in fact it goes all the way back to the beginnings of entertainment, when you had to convince the public that your show was better than that of the guy next door. The difference here is that there is hardly, nay, anything in the material posted that says exactly, why, Disney’s shows are better.

OK, maybe they do get better ratings because they’re on in the afternoons, but they are also new shows, not re-runs of classics. Perhaps they’re more expensive to broadcast. That’s my best guess. “Disney crushes Alvin”, that’s comparing apples to oranges. You can’t expect to get parity among the results between individual shows and entire blocks.

Frankly, the entire thing has a whiff of dishonesty about it, as if Disney has something to hide about its shows. Content speaks for itself and if your shows really are as good as you say they are, then you should point out how much better they are than all these other, great, shows. Of course, this would prove to be the case with Tiny Toons, wich Disney calls “a pale comparison to the Disney Afternoon”. Hindsight is always 20/20, and the quality of Tiny Toons was all that Warner Bros. needed to prove that they were actually ahead of the game.

It would be really intersting to see the pitch booklets from the subsequent years. Did they contain similar language or was Disney left stuck for words? Either way, we know how things turned out in the end of the afternoon cartoon battles of the 1990s.

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Bill Plympton’s Adventures in Cinema

Animation, Film /

Billy Plympton (perhaps the greatest indie animator ever) is currently posting about the trials and tribulations he is undertaking in order to get his first animated feature into theatres.

I highly, nay, absolutely, recommend you read the current triplet of posts, just to see what he’s up against. The film has been booked for the IFC Center in October, to put his posts in persepctive.

Bill’s a fantastic guy who deserves all the success his hard work will bring him.

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