Stepped Keys

Ask the Audience: How Can You Tell if Animation Is Good?

2011-02-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

*This post contains clips (and spoilers) from Toy Story 2, How to Train Your Dragon, and Up

Wow, I haven't made a new post in... 2 weeks, it looks like. I've been crunching a lot on my last few assignments and just couldn't pull myself away from them long enough to write a post. But, I've still been getting comments in all that time, so thanks to all you guys for continuing to read this sparsely-updated blog. And I promise that I'll be making more frequent updates soon :)

Today's post will be short, because it's mostly a set-up and asking of a question. So get your notebooks handy; you'll be quizzed at the end of this.

I want to start by sharing a few clips for you.

First, here's a sequence from Toy Story 2 in which Buzz, Ham, Rex, Potato Head, and Slinky are trying to make it to the top floor of an apartment building. But the toys don't realize that this Buzz is actually a new one from the toy store. So he still has all the mannerisms of something like a cop who takes himself far too seriously. And, I think that the stuff he does in this sequence is some of the best animation ever.

Continued here

The relevant stuff (for now) ends at 2:50.

I mean, from an animation standpoint, this whole sequence is just fucking brilliant. Aside from the dialogue which is also hilarious ("Help me prop up Vegetable Man or we're done for," is the motto I live my life by), but Buzz's animation is fantastic. I'll elaborate in a second, but look back at that second Youtube clip. Watch from 2:50 to 3:45. (By the way, 3:07 to 3:22 just might be my favorite shot in the movie. It's phenomenal work by Doug Sweetland)

Completely different character style, right? I mean, the contrast here is amazing. Buzz was hitting very over-the-top and staccato poses (he takes himself so seriously that if he tries to point in one direction, he can't just use his finger; he uses both arms, all 10 fingers, and his entire upper body). Contrast that with Woody coming out of the box. It's so fluid and subdued. he's still hitting over-the-top poses because he's sort of playing an egotistical character in this moment, but they're over-the-top in a completely different way. Whereas Buzz's poses had a lot of sharp angles, Woody's poses here are very relaxed and curved, and his transitions between them have way more arcs and fluidity.

Pulling away from that very cartoony sequence, here's a clip from one of the best scenes in How To Train Your Dragon (I tried to find the entire scene but I couldn't :( However, the actual shot I was looking for IS in this clip, so it'll work).

Wow. Fucking wow. The shot from 1:30 until the end would be high on my list of best acting in animation. The subtlety here is just breathtaking. When I saw HTTYD in theaters, this shot completely blew me away. Watch Toothless at 1:44. His eyelids close for a half a second. He completely wants to touch Hiccup's hand, but his pride won't let him. He moves in a few inches, considering it some more. And then he finally humbles himself and touches his hand.

Moreover, watch Hiccup's equally amazing performance from 1:30 on. He knows that dragons are supposed to kill humans, but he wants to trust Toothless. He holds out his arm and he's clearly scared shitless. He's not moving at all but you know exactly what he's thinking. Toothless touches him, and it hits him that he's still alive, and he exhales and lets go of his tension. I mean, fuck, you can feel his relief. When I saw this in the theater, I exhaled with him. Incredible.

Continuing the subtle animation, here's a clip from Up (my favorite animated movie of all time). In this clip, Carl has managed to make it to Paradise Falls (and fulfill the lifelong dream he and his late wife had), but in the process he has also alienated the boy and dog who were helping him. He goes inside to look through his late wife's childhood scrapbook, which he's never looked at entirely, knowing that the last few pages were blank.

I just can't even say anything about this sequence. You want to talk about subtlety? This is the sequence. There's so much here, and it's so minimalistic at the same time. Just mindblowingly beautiful. It gets me every single time, without fail. And without dialogue. It's pure character animation.

Wipe off your tears, time for the pop quiz. Pixar has always generally been considered as having the best animation, and Dreamworks (especially since HTTYD) has been quickly becoming equals. Within the animation industry, movies like most of Pixar's library, HTTYD, anything Glen Keane or James Baxter or Doug Sweetland worked on, stuff from the old Disney-era, etc, these are considered some of the finest animations ever made. What we don't ever tend to include on that list are TV shows, or Dreamworks's old CG movies, or Disney straight-to-video movies, or even the old old short films from Pixar (pre-Toy Story; which actually wasn't due to bad animators, but more to the limitations of the brand new technology).

But, when I read movie reviews for animated films (from the general public; not animators), in movies that i consider having great animation, it always seems that the reviewer also says it has great animation. And this makes me wonder, and it's why I'm asking this question (to those of my readers who are not also animators):

Are you able to tell that a movie like How to Train Your Dragon has better animation than a movie like Shrek? And if you can, how do you know it?

Clearly, you don't need to be an actor to know what's good acting or bad acting. But there are a lot of nuances that are exclusive to animation, and I wonder if the general public are consciously aware of them. So, I'd love it if you guys left a comment with an answer (doesn't have to be about HTTYD or Shrek; I was just using those as examples). Or, if you want, I also would love hearing what movie or TV show or short film, etc, you think has great animation and why you think that.

When I get enough responses, I'll make a follow-up post and I'll go a little bit more into detail the kinds of things we, as animators, think makes great animation. I'm curious to see how much you guys can pick up on.

Oscar Nominations of Feature Animation

2011-01-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

I've been crunching an assload this week, so sorry for the lack of posts. So I'll try to keep this one short (although that never works out) and just talk about yesterday's nominee announcements for the 83rd Academy Awards.

First off, I should admit that while I don't have much respect for the Academy Awards, I still get excited when movies I like are nominated or win. It feels more like affirmation that the things I like are liked by other people. However, there's a lot of politics in the Oscars that I just don't like, and sometimes it can feel like the awards are awarded for sentimentality, not for pure quality. But that is neither here nor there and this post is not a criticism of the Oscars. For the sake of brevity, I'll just be mentioning categories where animated films were nominated (starred with an asterisk indicates an animated film)

Best Picture

Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech

127 Hours
The Social Network
*Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

So, to start things off, I should mention that Toy Story 3 was nominated for Best Picture! I absolutely think it's deserving of a nomination, but I highly doubt it's ability to win. OK, some small Oscar criticism: There have only been 3 animated movies in the history of the Oscars to get nominated for Best Picture. Beauty and the Beast in 1992, Up last year, and Toy Story 3 this year. I feel like there have been many more movies that should have been nominated that weren't. I definitely think animation still doesn't get taken that seriously as a legitimate art form, but having two years in a row where an animated film is nominated for Best Picture (albeit, the same years where there were 10 nominees instead of 5) looks like a good sign. But Toy Story 3 has some excellent competition. Christopher Nolan is my favorite director, and I'm a big fan of Darren Aronofsky and Danny Boyle, and an even bigger fan of the Coen Brothers. So, personally, I wouldn't mind Inception, Black Swan, 127 Hours, or True Grit winning either. Though, seeing the competition they have, you can't really go wrong this year. But if Toy Story 3 wins, I will poop right in my pants.

Best Adapted Screenplay

127 Hours
The Social Network
*Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

This one is actually kind of confusing to me, but apparently it's a legit thing that I just didn't know about: All sequels are automatically considered adaptations, because it has to be based on the original movie. Was totally unaware.

But whatever the case, I have no idea if Toy Story 3 will even have a chance here. Like I said, True Grit or 127 Hours could easily win, and The Social Network also looks promising.

Best Animated Feature

*How to Train Your Dragon
*The Illusionist
*Toy Story 3

You know, I was actually very surprised to not see Tangled get nominated. OK, let's be honest, it was a very good movie, but a little standard-Disney. Even so, I preferred it to The Princess and the Frog and that got nominated last year. Plus, there were only 3 nominees. Might as well throw Tangled in for the sake of it.

Anyway, I have to start by admitting that I, embarassingly, had not even heard of The Illusionist until I saw it was nominated. As for HTTYD and Toy Story 3, they are both no-brainer excellent choices for the category. And finally, finally, Pixar has some legitimate competition from Dreamworks with HTTYD (and I'll never forgive the Academy for passing up Monster's, Inc. in favor of Shrek, but that's another post). I fucking loved both of these movies. And, listen, if it were almost any other year, I would think that HTTYD could win against a Pixar movie. But, Toy Story 3 is just such a perfect and poignant end to a perfect and poignant trilogy that I just can't put my money on anything else.

Best Animated Short

*Day & Night
*The Gruffalo
*Let's Pollute
*The Lost Thing
*Madagascar, a Journey Diary

Again, embarrassingly, I tried and tried but could not find any of these (besides Day & Night) on the Internet. So, really, I can only comment on Day and Night. My view might be unpopular but I actually thought it was one of Pixar's weakest shorts. I absolutely loved the 2D animation, don't get me wrong. And Teddy Newton is really hilarious. But I just was not that into it. Maybe in a few years I'll grow to appreciate it more but, yeah, I just wasn't blown away like I thought I'd be.

Best Original Score

127 Hours – A.R. Rahman
*How to Train Your Dragon – John Powell
Inception – Hans Zimmer
The King's Speech – Alexandre Desplat
The Social Network – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Back to HTTYD, I really loved this score immensely. I think John Powell absolutely captured the feeling of the movie in the score. I don't really have anything else to say about that. Loved the score.

Best Original Song

"Coming Home" from Country Strong – Bob DiPiero, Tom Douglas, Hillary Lindsey and Troy Verges
"If I Rise" from 127 Hours – A.R. Rahman, Rollo Armstrong and Dido
* "I See the Light" from Tangled – Alan Menken and Glenn Slater
* "We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3 – Randy Newman

This one also surprised me. Half of the category are animated films, which you don't tend to see. Anyway, all of these are great choices. Though my money has to be on "I See the Light." I mean, Randy Newman is a brilliant song composer (though maybe not one of the best film composers), and "If I Rise" is also great. But, man, Alan Menken can't go wrong. He's won 4 Oscars and has been nominated for 14.

Best Sound Editing

Inception – Richard King
*Toy Story 3 – Tom Myers and Michael Silvers
Tron: Legacy – Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague
True Grit – Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey
Unstoppable – Mark P. Stoeckinger

OK, I won't pretend to know anything about sound editing. But, I think by default, I can hope Toy Story 3 wins. And, just going by memory, Inception had an amazing aural atmosphere. I just don't really know enough about sound editing to be conscious of what makes it good and what makes it bad, so I'll just leave this one here.

So, all in all, Toy Story 3 is up for 5 nominations and How to Train Your Dragon. Last year, Up also had 5 nominations. In 2009, Wall-E had 6. In 2008, Ratatouille had 5. But before then, it seemed to average around 2 or 3 nominations for an animated film per year. Is the quality of animated films improving? Overall, sure. But Pixar has been pretty consistent with quality even since Toy Story. Maybe the more important factor is that animation is starting to be taken more seriously. Is that true? I really don't know, but I certainly hope so.

Is a Degree in Animation Important?

2011-01-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

Nope.

Oh, I guess I should elaborate on that.

A few weeks ago I made a post about art degrees in a forum I visit. If you're looking to become an artist, I think it's very important that you give this blog post a read. Much of it will be a rehash from the forum post I made, but I want to be as sincere and as frank as possible here, because I hate to see art students make the same pitfalls over and over. I'm making this post specifically about animation degrees, but it applies to pretty much any artist wanting to get into the industry.

So, back to the question. Is an animation degree important? Short answer: No. Long answer: Not at all.

Longer answer:

Like I said, I'm going to be harsh in this post. Let's clear something up right away.

An art degree will not help get you a job in the industry

I see this a lot, and I've been there, too. You find a college art program that looks interesting, and it promises a degree. In the classes, the instructors will keep telling you that getting an art degree will significantly improve your chances of getting a job in the field. What they fail to tell you is that that is a dirty, dirty lie. You aren't hired as an artist because a piece of paper from a college says you can animate. All the degree says is that you were able to complete the course. It says nothing about your skill, which is the most important thing to employers.

So what is important to employers?

Your portfolio

Your portfolio is your most important asset when getting a job. It shows the studio what kind of work you can produce. But there's another factor that is taken into account in the hiring process:

Your personality

My school uses the phrase, "practice, perseverance, and personality" to know what a studio wants. The first two get you the skills to get an interview, and your personality gets you the job. I definitely know of cases where a studio has hired someone who wasn't necessarily the best applicant skill-wise, but who meshed really well with the rest of the studio.

But now on to my real criticisms

College/University art programs are pretty much considered a joke in the industry

I've never in my life seen an art degree posted as a requirement in an art job. The reason is that art programs that offer degrees tend to completely miss the point entirely. For one, since you're getting a degree, you're forced to take many general education courses which are completely irrelevant to art in every single way. (Example, when I was still in college trying to become an animator, one of my required classes was geography. If there's one thing that's the least relevant to animation, it's gotta be geography.) Now, I'm not saying that being knowledgeable in a wide range of subjects is bad. But I am saying that, when you're an art student, you're trying to grow as an artist. And these gen-ed courses hinder your growth because they distract you from honing your craft.

College/University art programs tend to not be about art

This one dumbfounds me profoundly. In college, I took 2 modeling courses, a lighting/rendering course, and an animation course. And the nice thing about them is that they were all content-free.

Imagine that you want to be a draftsman and you get into art school. Years later, you've gone through the course, gotten your certificate of completion, and it turns out that all you know how to do is use a pencil. Oh, you'll be able to draw a good enough cube, but mostly you'll know the difference between a #2 pencil and a #3. You'll know the composition of the graphite, and exactly how long it takes to sharpen a fresh pencil. But try to draw a human, and you realize that you still can't draw.

That's what these college programs tend to be. In the animation program, for instance, I learned how to use the Trax editor and the graph editor, and how to move keyframes around. But we never once heard mention of the 12 animation principles, and we never once had to do a bouncing ball. But, hey! We learned how to do cloth simulations! Well, rather, we learned how to apply a preset cloth material to an object and then hit play... but at least we didn't have to worry about whether or not it looked good because...

Colleges and Universities are hesitant to criticize your work

This is a biggie, and it might be the thing that makes attending a college art program stand out among the worst things an artist can do. Let's dispel another myth right now: natural talent does not determine how good an artist you will be. Talent can only get you so far, but you need to always practice and try to get better. If you're not constantly reminded how badly you suck, you will never improve.

But this is what college professors do (except in a few cases with mind-numbingly stupid results). I'll give you another example from personal experience, though I've read countless other stories just like this from other people.

In those CG classes I took, there was this guy who really sucked. I mean, let's face it, we all sucked, but this guy took the cake and had no intention of giving it back. And thinking back on it, it's sad, but of course I didn't see it at the time. Whenever we'd show our work in class to the instructor, when this guy's came up, he'd only say reassuring things. "Yeah, man, that's a cool model." Or, "That's a cool effect." But that's what he said to all of us, no matter how good or bad it was. And that is a serious, serious problem.

And here's the mind-numbingly stupid part. I've also read stories of professors who legit have tried to criticize their students' work, the same way they'd be criticized in the industry. What happens to these instructors? They get reprimanded because the student called and complained that he was being too harsh. Well, dumbass, if you can't take criticism, you need to find another career.

Criticism is NECESSARY to an artist. You can't grow if the only criticism you get are pats on the head. And I keep seeing this happen. Friends I had in those college courses are graduating and can't find work. They have degrees, but their portfolios are awful. Art is a skill-based field and if you don't have the skillz to pay the billz, then no amount of degrees will make up for that.

To wrap this whole thing up, I'll talk about what you as a wide-eyed prospective artist should be doing.

Say "fuck you" to degrees

I've covered this enough, but I want to pound it into you (no homo). Don't be lured in with promises of a job. You'll get out of school with tens of thousands of dollars of student loans and you can't get work because your portfolio sucks. Although, don't take this to mean that a program that offers a degree is inherently bad; just that degrees themselves are not important, and you shouldn't worry about what kind of degree you're going to get.

A school is only as good as the portfolios its students produce

Shop around for a school. It's an important, life-changing decision. When you find a school you think is good, find some of the student's portfolios. If you're into animation, go to Youtube and type in "animation demo reel." A lot of them are shit but if you find a student's reel that looks really good, try to find out where they went to school. Here are probably the two best animation schools in the world:

CalArts - Walt Disney founded this school in the '60s to train a new generation of animators. Quite a lot of the most well-known animators and animation directors went to CalArts.

Animation Mentor - AM is an online character animation school. They produce the most consistently best student work, even when compared to CalArts.

And last but not least, here's probably the important thing to keep in mind, and it actually might be the dealbreaker for some.

Be brutally honest with yourself and be your own worst critic

Here's a harsh reality. There are millions of artists in this country. Hell, there are at least a hundred thousand in California alone. But there are only a handful of great ones. And YOU have to compete with them. But you won't stand a chance unless you constantly push yourself to do the best you can do. As I've said, colleges and universities almost never push you like this. It's up to you to heed all the criticism you get and not to take it personally. It's there to make you grow as an artist. It's not there to hurt your feelings. And I know it's hard to hear someone tearing apart something you put your heart and soul into, but it's the reality of being a good artist.

Another thing to think about is that art is really hard. Great animation, in particular, takes a long time and a lot of really hard work to produce. And some people can't handle that. So it's also important to try to stay inspired and motivated and to disconnect yourself from your work every now and then.

The conclusion of this post is to remember that studios look for people who make great art. And it takes an artist years and years of constant self-doubt and self-criticism and really, really hard work to become great. But the worst thing you can do as an artist is to become complacent and then lie to yourself that, because you have a piece of paper saying you completed a course, you'll easily get a job.

From my experience, and from the experiences of loads of people I know, what you learn in most colleges or universities amounts to what you'd learn from a software manual. But learning Maya or Photoshop or Zbrush cannot replace just simply being self-critical and wanting to do better. The software is only a tool. Maya is only a very, very intricate pencil. YOU are the one holding the pencil. You can tell me everything there is to know about that pencil, but it is wholly irrelevant if you can't draw. Don't ever forget that.

It isn't the degree you have, or even your natural talent. It's about your passion and how far you're willing to go to be great.

And, one last thing.

Practice, practice, practice

There's an old saying that every artist has 10,000 bad drawings in him before he makes a good one. So try to get them out of the way as soon as possible. And. Never. Stop. Learning.

ShapeShifter by Charlex Films

2011-01-21T09:46:00.000-08:00

Hey, folks! I'm very busy crunching away at my shot, but I wish I could make a longer post.

Until then, I'll leave you with a beautiful, beautiful short film from Charlex Films called ShapeShifter.

ShapeShifter from Charlex on Vimeo.

Why Animate? And the Uncanny Valley

2011-01-18T18:57:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of work to do on my shot, and especially after the giant posts I made yesterday, I'll try to keep this one a bit more brief and a bit more lighthearted.

What I want to talk about first is animation and, in my mind, what the philosophy behind it is.

I mentioned in my last post that animation is caricatured motion, and I'd like to delve into that a little bit. The goal of animation is not to show reality, but to distill reality and find what makes something appealing. You hear a lot about how "realistic" good animation is. And it is in some cases (such as when it has to integrate with live action). But in most cases you think of when you think of animation, it is hardly realistic. However, it is believable.

Let's take a look at this scene from The Incredibles

Now, first of all, the character designs are extremely caricatured. Nobody really looks like Huph, Bob's boss. And Bob's proportions are completely unrealistic. What's more, especially the business after 2:30, the animation is not "realistic." But it is believable and that is the word of the day. It's not about realism. It's about what FEELS real. It's about the essence of an action. Caricature, in my mind, is stripping something down to its bare bones, exaggerating that, and then carefully building on top of that. It's about getting rid of what's unnecessary and leaving only what tells a story.

And just when I thought I wouldn't rant for this post, I'm brought to a topic which almost requires it: mocap.
If you've ever seen, say, in behind-the-scenes features for video games, and there's a guy wearing a suit covered in silver balls, running and jumping around, that's mocap. It's taking someone's movements and directly copying them into a 3D rig. In 2D animation, there's a word, rotoscoping, which refers to literally tracing frames of film to produce an animation. Mocap would be the CG version of rotoscoping. And, boy, is it bad.

Now, a quick disclaimer. I think mocap works in very rare cases. In games, when you're going for ultra-realistic animation, it tends to be faster to use mocap. And in Avatar, the technical advancements in mocap and need to integrate CG characters with live action actually made mocap work very well. However, not before being touched by an animator. More on that later.

But think back to 2001's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Ignore how bad of a movie it was for a second and try to remember how it looked. Here's the trailer.

Pay particular attention to the human characters. At first glance, they look pretty realistic, right? But look closer and doesn't something seem a little... off? You can't quite put your finger on it but doesn't something about it kind of make it hard to look at for some reason? Welcome to the uncanny valley.

The "uncanny valley" is a term coined back in 1970 to refer to a phenomenon in the field of robotics. The hypothesis is that, as a robot's appearance approaches a human's likeness, you feel more empathy for it. But, if you keep approaching human likeness, it starts to feel creepy and then downright scary. If you get even CLOSER to human likeness, suddenly it feels like a real human. The "valley" is the dip on this graph.

Now, I won't go into WHY the uncanny valley exists, because no one is really sure. It's almost definitely evolutionary and probably has to do with naturally feeling uneasy about people who look sick. But what's important here is that the uncanny valley definitely exists in some form or another. Here's a video from Popular Science demonstrating the phenomenon:

The thing is that humans are practically designed to recognize other humans. And if we see a human who doesn't QUITE look human, it makes us uncomfortable. And here's where mocap comes in.

Robert Zemeckis, probably most famous for directing the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, decided to start making CG films starting with The Polar Express in 2004. He followed that up with Beowulf in 2007 and A Christmas Carol in 2009. And now he's producing Mars Needs Moms. Here's the trailer:

Eeeeeuuughhhhh, right? Ignore the subject matter for a second and focus on how it looks. Like the Final Fantasy trailer, isn't something about it just... wrong?

If you didn't guess it by now, Robert Zemeckis has a sudden hard-on for mocap and nobody can explain why. First off, if you want to make a photorealistic movie, why do it in CG? Second of all, if you want to do animation, why not do animation?

Mocap is not animation

If mocap is animation, then a Photoshop filter applied to a photograph is a drawing.
I'm sure I'll make another post about mocap in the near future, so I don't want to go into this too much. Suffice it to say that something about mocap makes it look vaguely weird, right?

This is where animators come in. See, if you take raw mocap data and apply it to a character rig, it just looks even worse. So, you need to have an animator come in and "fix" it. And almost always it's a thankless task and ends up being busy work. There are certainly rare cases, like Avatar, where the animators and the mocap worked together in a very successful way, but they are few and far between.

But the point is simple: if either your mocap data is not spot-on perfect, or if your characters do not look absolutely photorealistic, you will fall into the uncanny valley. Which begs the question, why use mocap?

The answer is... ¯\(°_o)/¯

Ok, ok. Mocap is quick and dirty, and it's useful in games when you need realistic character movement but don't have the time to invest in hand-animation. I get that. But for anything else, if you have the choice between an animator and using mocap, why choose mocap? But that's another post for another day. This post is about the caricature of motion and avoiding the uncanny valley.

Let's go back to The Incredibles. Suddenly, these characters who don't move like you're used to seeing and don't look at all like real humans actually feel infinitely more real than all of Zemeckis' CG characters combined. How do movies like The Incredibles avoid the uncanny valley so well?

Because they know it exists and they purposefully pull back from it.
And this is where we come full circle when it comes to caricature. The reason we caricature is because caricature is more appealing than real life. I like to think about Al Hirschfeld who was a true master of caricature. What is mind-blowing and is the key to all of this is that his drawings often look more like the people they represent than photographs of the person they represent. Let this sink in.

This looks more like Sammy Davis Jr...

Than this does

And it's because caricature is about exaggerating the things you recognize about something. Al's drawing is more like how you'd remember Sammy Davis Jr., rather than what he techincally looks like.

This is the art of caricature and why it's appealing. And when it's applied to motion, we call it animation.

The State of Animation, Part 2

2011-01-18T03:19:00.000-08:00

When I last left off I was ranting about Disney wannabes in the '90s that were running 2D animation into the ground. The reasoning was that the Disney model was the only model for making animated movies. The future was bleak as more and more companies started making terrible movies based on the Disney model, and things were about to get worse.

In the late '70s, George Lucas started looking into using computers to achieve his special effects. Lucasfilm created the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project. It was made up of Ed Catmull, Ralph Guggenheim, and Alvy Ray Smith. Together, they pretty much invented modern computer graphics. But what they really wanted to do was make movies. So in the early '80s they brought in young, but successful animator, John Lasseter. Together, along with some more hires, they produced The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. It was the first computer-animated short film. Eleven years later, the group - which had now spun off from Lucasfilm and called themselves Pixar - released Toy Story in 1995.

But Toy Story wasn't the Disney model. In fact, it was a contemporary story and wasn't a musical. But it was animated. And it was a huge hit. Well, well, well. It looks like the executives of those startup 2D studios were wrong! Not only did a non-Disney animated film become a hit, it was nothing like the Disney model! The Disney model was not the be-all end-all of animation, right? Right? Right?

Of course not!

Exec #1: Toy Story is a hit. What do we do?
Exec #2: Isn't it obvious? We open a CG studio and make a movie with wise cracking characters!
Exec #1: Brilliant! Say, could you pass the asbestos?

So Dreamworks starts production on Antz.

*This is an aside, and this story could fill another post, but here's the controversy surrounding this: Right before Toy Story was released, Pixar realized they needed to start production on another movie. John Lasseter went to Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was the CEO of Disney at the time, to pitch a movie called Bugz. On that same day in August 1994, Katzenberg resigned from the studio (albeit, for in-studio political reasons). Later in 1994, he opens Dreamworks Animation. And a few years later, they announce their new movie, Antz, set to release in March 1999. By this time, Bugz was already well into production, and set to release in November 1998. Katzenberg offered to stop production on Antz if Pixar agreed to push Bugz back because the release date conflicted with Dreamworks' The Prince of Egypt. Pixar refused and Dreamworks moved the release of Antz to October of 1998, a month before Bugz (now called A Bug's Life) was to be released. But that is neither here nor there, I just felt like ranting about that, too.

Anyway, Dreamworks starts making Antz and it turns out to not follow the Disney model either. But it didn't do nearly as well as A Bug's Life. Both were made for $60 million, and both were released within a month of each other. But A Bug's Life made nearly $200 million more than Antz. They were both very successful, sure. But why did A Bug's Life do so much better? What was going on?

And here, dear friends, is complaint numero dos.

Complaint #2
It's about the story, you dumbasses

It was Disney all over again. Pixar hit it big and numerous studios started popping up and trying to copy their success, but they forget to copy the most important thing, and that's the story.

Heading into the early 2000s, there seemed to be a thinking as Disney started to produce bad movies again, and as Pixar kept hitting it big, that audiences were tired of 2D and that 3D was the future. Correlating with this thinking, studios started switching their 2D productions to 3D. As if the computer somehow magically made a worthless story good. No, the reason 2D was doing bad and 3D was doing great is simple.

1. All 2D feature films (including Disney's by this point) were mediocre at best and awful at worst.
2. CG was new and, for the most part, the only people doing 3D films were Pixar, and they knew how to construct compelling stories and characters.

First of all, thank God that Pixar was the first to release a CG movie. Had it been almost anyone else, and it had failed, the thinking obviously would have been that people just won't watch CG for 70 minutes (which is funny because that's exactly what people told Walt during the making of Snow White - that people wouldn't watch 70 minutes of animation).

Second of all, are execs really that stupid? I mean, I know most of them aren't actually filmmakers, but seriously. Come on. Just come on. The reason Buzz and Woody feel more real than the guys from The Road to El Dorado was because their shading was calculated by a computer? The reason Finding Nemo can make you laugh and cry whereas you watch Titanic: The Animated Movie constantly wondering why you're watching such bullshit was because the water physics were realistic in Nemo?

Why don't you make like a tree and fuck off?

But, c'est la vie. Executive decisions.

And what's heartbreaking about this is that a lot of the Pixar guys came from 2D. They love 2D. And to be used as an excuse why 2D was no longer being produced just kills them.

Complaint #3
Animation is not a genre

This one boggles my mind and it sort of mirrors what's gone on with Disney and Pixar. Their movies hit big and they've been "family friendly." I'll give you 3 guesses as to what execs now think is important in animation.

Give up?
Yeah, me too.

Hold on, wait. I just got something in the mail.
Oh, it's a rulebook for making animated films. Cool, let's look at it.

Rule #1
It has to be appropriate for kids, because animation is for kids.

Cool advice! I'll keep it in mind.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Seriously, is anyone else bothered by this? Back in 2007, Brad Bird gave an interview for EW, and he was asked if Pixar could ever "get away from what [Brad Bird] and Andrew Stanton ... call 'the kids' table'?" Brad's answer was:

I don't know. I mean, that's kind of up to a lot of forces we don't have any control over. I know that I bristle at it. I don't want to complain too much, because I'm really happy getting to make films and I'm grateful to anybody that wants to see them. But I can't tell you how many times somebody will come to me and say, ''My kids really love your work.'' And then you go, ''But you like it too, right?'' And they go, ''Oh, I love it.'' But they don't ever lead with that. It's like the kids are their beard to get them into the theater. Or people will say, ''I'm happy about this film because I have a 5-year-old.'' And I'm like, Well, congratulations, but I didn't make this for the 5-year-old. I made it for me, and I'm not 5. I can't think of one other art form that has its audience so narrowly defined. If you work in animation, people tell you, ''Oh, it must be wonderful to entertain children.'' Yes it is. But that's 10 percent of the audience I'm going for.

(whole interview here)

Walt Disney had a famous quote that, honestly, makes my eyes well up when I think about it

When planning a new picture, we don't think of grown ups and we don't think of children but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that maybe the world has made us forget, and that maybe our pictures can help recall.

I've thought and thought about this. The only reason I can come up with that animation has been seen as kid-specific is that the medium allows for extreme slapstick, and that maybe slapstick is regarded as the least cognitive form of comedy. And, yes, the core of great animation is pantomime. Telling the story through movement is the basis of animation. But Marcel Marceau was never considered in the same vein as clowns that work birthday gigs.

The problem is compounded by studios who also subscribe this incredibly misguided way of thinking. But Ed Catmull, Pixar's CEO, gave a talk at Stanford Business School a couple years ago and summed it up like this. (Relevant part ends at 43:45)

One of my favorite films of all time (not just animated films, either) is Up, because it really is, I think, a huge step in the right direction. The truth is that any story can be told in animation. Comedy works well in animation, yes, but you could tell horror or drama or thriller or sci-fi or any other genre you can think of. It's the story; not the medium.

I'm a huge Charlie Kaufman nut and what I'm interested in seeing in the future is an animated Kaufmanesque movie. The bottom line is that a Kaufman movie could easily work in animation, but studios are afraid to move too far from what seems to work.

Animation is really a brand new artistic medium. Its goal is to caricature motion in the way sculpture caricatures form and drawing caricatures the line. It's had its share of masterpieces by now, but it still is seen as a very narrow art form, if the general public consider it an art at all.

I'm glad to see John Lasseter take over as chief creative officer at Disney, and I love seeing that a movie like The Princess and the Frog was able to get made. You can argue about the story or whatever. But the fact that it got funded is another step in the right direction. And I feel like any day now someone is going to make animation's Citizen Kane and break it away from the kid's table. And until they do, I'll be waiting. Patiently.

The State of Animation, Part 1

2011-01-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a very broad post, and I'm assuming it will have a lot of ranting, so bear with me. But it's been on my mind for months and I'd like to write a primer on what I see as the downfalls of mainstream animation.

A week or so ago, I finally saw Disney's Tangled

Now, this won't be a review of Tangled, suffice it to say that I was very impressed by it. And not just the animation; that's a given. I mean, it's Disney and, even in Disney's darkest days, the animation has always been ahead of almost anyone else. Tangled had some of the best animation I've seen in the last few decades, but I digress.

No, what impressed me, though, at the same time it frustrated me, was the story. We've all heard the Rapunzal fairy tale and, if we haven't, we can at least name certain plot points. I'm not going to say Tangled "took the story we know and turned it on its head" like a lot of fairy tale adaptations try to do (and fall flat doing). What I will say is that it was told very well. And that's it. It was aware of what kind of movie it was, and didn't try to be anything else. Which is good. More on this later, but these days, you see animated movies that don't exactly know what they are (candidly, Dreamworks and Blue Sky tend to be examples of studios that make such movies).

Tangled is a musical, and that's kind of to be expected from Disney. Not that that's at all bad. I don't think it's a gimmick. If musicals can be considered legit works of art in general, then animated musicals should be treated with equal respect. But here's where things start to get a little frustrating for me.

Complaint #1
Copying Disney does not a good movie make

Let me take you back to the Disney Renaissance. It's the mid '80s and Disney has been producing some, let's face it, terrible films, and had begun working in television, a medium that almost requires a lack of quality in order to make deadline on budget. And let's not fault the wrong people. It wasn't necessarily the creative minds at Disney; much of it had to do with those pesky executive decisions with a side of studio politics. Well, some time in the mid '80s, the Disney execs wised up and hired Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, to supervise the animation department. Roy's goal was to not let his uncle's magic die with the rest of the studio's quality.

In 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released, and was a hit. It was produced by Steven Spielberg and Disney, and it showed audiences that animation could still tell stories. After Roger Rabbit proved to be a success, Disney decided that a film they'd been toying with since the '30s would be turned into a full-on animated Broadway musical. The film was released in 1989 and was called The Little Mermaid.

Enter a few years later, in 1991, and arguably one of the best animated films of all time was released - Beauty and the Beast, also a musical. Over the next decade or so, Disney continued to produce critically acclaimed animated musicals, almost all of which were based on fairy-tales or other older, common stories.

And it was during this beautiful period of animation rediscovery that the first cancer cells formed which led to 2D animation's very, very untimely death.

Suddenly, animation studios started popping up all over, and new animated films were being released all the time. The animation was hardly Disney quality, but if you had asked lay audience members who had produced these movies, they would probably respond with "Disney." Well, sure. Disney were the big players, and nobody else really produced animation in those days. By default, people assumed Disney made every animated movie of the day. But there was another, more heartbreaking contributing factor to the Disney-esque features of these new non-Disney movies. And I imagine the conversations between studio execs went something like this:

Exec #1: Let's make an animation division. Animation is popular again.
Exec #2: What kind of movie should we make?
Exec #1: Well, Disney's been hitting it big with these musical fairy-tales.
Exec #2: So, if we make a musical fairy-tale, it will be a hit, right?
Exec #1: Yeah, that sounds about right. Listen, I'm gonna go play with some more mercury. I'll talk to you later.
Exec #2: Hurrrrr

And without warning, animation was shoehorned into its own genre - musical fairy-tales. All of a sudden, if you made an animated movie, it had to be a fairy-tale, and it had to have musical numbers, because that's what audiences really liked about Disney, right? Not the characters or the actual story content, or the storytelling. No, in the studio execs' minds, Beauty and the Beast was a brilliant movie because it had an enchanted castle with a singing teapot. And what's more, you couldn't even convince distribution studios to get an animated movie funded unless it was a fairy-tale musical. Let that soak in and piss you off really hard.

I mean, sure, you had Brad Bird's The Iron Giant in 1999 which is still an animation cult classic. And you have Miyazaki's great anime films. But Miyazaki's films are released primarily in Japan. And The Iron Giant, which should have immediately been a hit, bombed because advertisers had no idea how to market it. Watch the trailers. They give you no sense at all to what the movie actually is. You just couldn't sell a 2D movie unless it followed the Disney formula. It meant that people started thinking of animation as a genre, which is by far one of the stupidest things you could say. If animation is a genre, then so is live-action. But, far more irritatingly, it also meant that 2D animation was about to die from over saturation.

And if that doesn't make your blood boil, it soon will.

This is running really long, so in the next part, I'll talk about the rise Pixar and the subesequent (and completely misguided) death of 2D animation in America.

Stepped Keys

2011-01-17T19:52:00.000-08:00

First off, welcome to my new blog, though I won't say who I am. I'm an animation student, though I won't say where, and I won't be posting any of my work here. The reason is that I'll probably tend to rant, maybe about studios or people I'm affiliated with. In this blog, I will try to get across my passion for animation, and pontificate about the current situation of animation, film, and other media.

Hopefully my snobbishness won't be off-putting, and hopefully what I write will be interesting. See you around, folks!