growth
Posted by dermot on September 20, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Here’s a clip from my in-progress animated documentary. This sequence deals with the implications of exponential growth on a finite planet:
The voice is temporary, and will be replaced with a human narrator when the script is finalised.
The animation was done in Flash, with the exception of the spherical scene, where the doubling square is mapped onto the globe - that was done in After Effects.
the age of stupid
Posted by dermot on September 18, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Here’s a nice scene from the soon to be released film “The Age of Stupid”:
It looks like they used After Effects for a lot of the character animation, as best as I can tell. Not sure if I see any Flash here. And a lot of 3D for the final spot.
lego animation: 8-bit
Posted by dermot on August 25, 2009 at 6:26 pmThis is mind-boggling: a stop motion animation, all done with Lego blocks:
john k: wheat from chaff
Posted by dermot on April 25, 2009 at 2:46 pm
In my previous post, I cited some excellent posts by John Kricfalusi on the subject of writing in animation. The problem with JK’s posts is separating the wheat from the chaff. In the comments to that piece, I mentioned the issue of “signal to noise” on his blog.
Here’s an exampe. John makes the assertion that “everything went to Hell after the hippie revolution. Even bad taste.”
Ignore for the moment that Correlation does not imply Causation, or that an LSD fueled show such as John’s “Ren and Stimpy” wouldn’t have gotten off the ground in the “Golden Age”. One also has to wonder how long a temperament such as John’s would have lasted in the pre-hippie, highly disciplined, deadline oriented workplace of the WB/Tom & Jerry shorts.
Not very long, I’d hazard to guess.
John isn’t alone in suffering from the delusion that the era prior to 1960 was the high point of design taste, and that everything went to hell subsequently. I’ve seen this in other animation studios, and it’s a goddam tragedy. Look at the work of the designers/cartoonists of the 1920s if you want to see real talent. See Winsor McCay et al. Compared to their work, it’s been downhill all the way.
Why this fetish for the fifties? I suspect it’s childhood nostalgia. I can wallow in 1970s nostalgia, those being the years of my childhood. I don’t fool myself though - that was a horrible era by any standard. Sufferers of 50-itis wallow in the faux future of flying cars, cities on Mars, and the assorted pop culture of that age. They also manage to ignore the racism, bigotry, casual sexism and the McCarthy witch-hunts.
Cherry-picking. We’re all vulnerable.
No. Any understanding of the decay of the collapse in design standards will be incomplete unless you back further than “the hippies”…unless you’re turning into an old reactionary. The rot began with the mass production process of the Industrial Revolution.
For more information, read about William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement:
Willam Morris & Arts & Crafts google search.
Now, before I go off on a tirade that nobody will read, let me articulate why John’s post is so irritating. It’s all too typical of animators to be myopic - so focused on the trade that they forget about the bigger picture. Not to be snide, but too many cartoonists spend all their time watching and reading - cartoons. More time should be spent reading about history; architecture; politics; economics (the Khazzoom-Brookes is a hoot!); music (classical, folk, etc); archaeology; ad nauseum.
The animation world would produce far meatier fare if more animators broadened their horizons. That said, back to decline.
What followed the industrial revolution was a slow decline in standards of design and craftsmanship as manufacturing went from a hand-made craft to a machine made production line. The pre Industrial Revolution was similar to the Medieval Guilds, where apprentices learnt from Masters, on the job. Traditions were passed down hand to mouth - skills painfully acquired over many centuries. With the advent of Industrialisation, this would slowly fade, eventually to be replaced by Henry Ford’s mindless production lines, and later, even more mindless robotic production lines.
Even the modern educational system was tailored around the production line - the prime motive of which is to train children to sit still for eight hours and obey orders - thereby qualifying them as production line cogs and docile “consumers”.
The decline in standards in trades didn’t happen overnight or equally. Some held out longer than others, and some staged reactions - such as William Morris. In architecture, a final stand was made in the homes of the Arts and Crafts movement, exquisite homes that could be afforded by everyday people, not just the rich. Here are three typical Craftsman Houses (note the human scale; small windows to maximise cooling in summer and heat in winter; elegant proportions; attention to detail; the wide porch, allowing shade and seating to residents; and finally, harmony):
In contrast, here are some typical McMansions - many of which have been abandoned by their hapless and tasteless owners, due to the economic crisis. (Note the inhuman scale; enormous windows, which will make cooling in summer and heating in winter expensive or impossible; the huge garage doors - a sign that the buildings are built for machines, not people; shoddy construction - unlike the Craftsman homes, these won’t be around 100 years from now; the arbitrary placement of windows and doors; ugly colours; ugly materials with no tactile appeal; tatty asphalt roofs with a 20 year lifespan; instead of harmony there is meaningless, unlovable noise):
When did the rot in architecture set in? You can’t blame it on “the hippies”. The rot really set in after WW2, when the Modernist school of architecture was adopted as the de facto face of Western Architecture. An early example was the Seagram Building by Miles van der Rohe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram_Building
See also Walter Gropius and Bauhaus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gropius
Ironically, the Bauhaus was a socialist movement. Strange, isn’t it, that a socialist school of architecture should come to be equated with the pillars of free market capitalism?
A more recent (1950s-1970s) school of architecture proudly called itself “brutalism”! These are architects with no respect for the human scale:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture
So much for the degeneration of architecture into the current glass box banality.
I was fortunate to enter the animation industry not through a school, but through an entry level job in a feature animation studio in 1988 (Don Bluth’s animation studio in Dublin, Ireland). My training was, effectively, the same as that of a stonemason in a Guild building a 12th century cathedral - beginning on simple tasks, and learning from experts, week by week, until finally able to animate by myself. This is a more elegant way to learn a trade/craft. The trainee is also paid, as opposed to the student - who will ‘graduate’ with thousands of dollars of student loans - a burden that can last for decades.
The guild/apprentice system has all but died. It managed to hold out in some form into the 1990s, but I see precious little left of it today. It’s a lucky soul who can learn in a Guild-like environment. It seems destined to be replaced by expensive animation schools. Little wonder that we don’t produce animators or designers like those of the 40s and 50s when we no longer have the system that produced them. Mass production wins out again.
Read “The Animator’s Survival Kit” by Richard Williams (director of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”). In it, he describes how he hired animation luminaries such as Art Babbitt and Milt Kahl in order to be trained by them! He had missed out on the training that he might have received were he in the US, but he managed to acquire it - at great expense.
There are a few notable modern products where high quality Industrial Design is applied - and the results speak for themselves. Look at Apple and Google for elegant, simple, functional design that is also visually appealing. They are in the minority though - oases in a sea of beige boxes, SUVs and denim pants. Nevertheless, they offer a glimpse of what the world might look like, were we to apply the standards and attention to detail of the pre-industrial age to our own.
Between the standards of the 19th century and the dreary buildings, fashions and standards of our age lies the Industrial Revolution, Two World Wars, at least one Great Depression (more likely two if you count 1870) and a Cold War which threatened global nuclear annihilation for ~40 years.
It’s more than plausible that the decline in quality (not just of cereal box design, but almost everything) has more to do with the 200 year long process following the Industrial Revolution than a bunch of harmless middle class hippies in the 1960s looking for some pot and a quick shag.
animators vs. “producers” & “writers”
Posted by dermot on April 20, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Over the years, animators have increasingly come to be seen as “wrists”. Monkeys chained to their desks, tap tap tapping away for their superiors - the writers and producers who deem themselves the true “creatives”.
Newsflash: holding a bag of money or a position of power on the greasy pole makes you many things. Creative, alas, is not one of them.
I’ve been fortunate to avoid some of the worst cases, but nobody escapes the industry totally unscathed. There’s a cornucopia of talentless bottom-feeders who will be more than happy to “direct” animators - people with decades of expertise and skill, who have forgotten more about the craft than the upstarts will ever know.
From the “My Medicated Cartoon Life” blog:
…here, if you want to get anything off the ground, be it a show, film, whatever, you will be expected to sign away all rights to a producer. All rights, according to contracts, across the entire universe and for all forms ‘yet to be invented’.
You will likely get paid cack all for that. Like, taking feature films as an example, a feature writer or director or writer/director simply could not live on the amount of money they would make. It can’t happen. The only reason to make a film is the challenge or for it to be a labour of love. And that’s why there are so many first-time directors. Almost nobody can actually make a career out of it. Those who do have to move to Hollywood and get a gig remaking a film that shouldn’t ever be touched.
And yet a producer can buy the rights to an entire film and all of its exploitation for pretty much nothing. I was offered an option agreement recently for five hundred Euros. Five hundred. Oh, and another five hundred if it got into production.
That is not all that unusual. At least, over here.
John K. has written about the disease of animation “writing”. Forgive me for using so many quotes, but there’s no way around it. The rot is deep. I’d caution younger animators from worshipping too much at the altar of John K.; one of the saddest things to see is talented artists aping the Ren & Stimpy stylebook. Find your own style - you won’t last long if all you can do is sub-par Kricfalusi mannerisms.
That said, JK recently wrote a series of articles on the subject of animation writing - or more accurately, what passes for writing. It’s a horror movie. Take your time to read through these posts - especially the examples of bad TV scripts. Then remember that this is the norm. 99% of all animated projects are trite, awful, banal. You’ll be lucky if you work on one decent project in your life.
Don’t like that fact? Make your own show. Stick it on youtube…because you sure as Hell aren’t going to get in on the Cartoon Network or Nickolodeon any time soon.
Misconceptions of animation “writers”:
Animation writing should be short, because you have artists to fill out the visual details. Animation scripts are always too long and storyboard artists have to draw hundreds of extra scenes just to have them all cut out by the studio when they figure out that the show is too long.
Sometimes the whole show gets animated before the producers figure out they have wasted a hundred thousand dollars animating 10 minutes that doesn’t fit into the half hour. This happens all the time and it seems no one will tell the writers to write shorter scripts. (I’ve done it myself and learned my lesson now!)
Great Quotes From Uncle Walt - cartoons are written by artists on storyboards:
The storyboard is ideally suited to cartoon making. It tells the story graphically, exactly as the camera’s eye will see it, and is also flexible.
Changes in the storyboard can be made by merely unpinning sketches and substituting others or even changing the sequence of the boards. The boards show pace, movement, excitement.
Real Dialogue versus Cartoon Writer Dialogue -On Dangerous Ground:
Only animators should write animated cartoons:
“I firmly believed that cartoonists should write cartoons and had convinced Nickelodeon of it. Not every cartoonist can write of course, but only cartoonists should write cartoons - just as only dancers can “write” (choreograph) dances, musicians can write music and sculptors can “write” sculptures.”
Writing for Cartoons 1: Introduction
Today, phony “writers” make the creative decisions in the visual medium of cartoons. That makes them the bosses. That makes as much sense as putting the sound effects editors in charge of the artists.
First, why don’t we get some definitions clear. Writing and story are different things. A story is a sequence of related events. Period. A good story is a story that keeps people’s attention. Not many stories are so interesting in their raw ingredients, that a mere reading of them adds up to good entertainment. You need a good storyteller to make a story interesting. You can have a bad story told by a good storyteller and it will still keep people’s attention. It’s much harder to keep people’s attention with a good raw story and a weak storyteller.
Writing for Cartoons 2: Skills You Need: Be a Cartoonist First
You shouldn’t write for any medium that you don’t understand, because the people who have to actually make the medium will think you’re an idiot and will waste their abilities trying make your awkward “ideas” seem smooth by patching them together with bandaids. That’s the basic system the studios use today.
Writing for Cartoons 3: P.O.V., Ideas, Sincerity
The animated features today and most TV cartoons are written by comittees of people who try to figure out what entertains an audience…They should instead be written by entertaining people who already know because they entertain people everywhere they go in real life.
That’s why we have so much insincere non-entertainment crap like “Character-arcs”, bad puns, ripoffs of famous movies in the guise of “parody”, contrived pathos, characters who try to find themselves, bland protagonists, one-shaded villains, broadway style tuneless songs that “move the plot forward”, in every damn feature. Another amazing lie you see in many animated features is when they make fun of corporations or try to teach the audience ethics-even though the movie is being made by evil corporate executives who have no morals at all - people who stop the actual entertainers from entertaining you so they can pretend to be creative themselves.
Writing for Cartoons 4: Ideas: The Origin Of Cecils
The show came out and had cartoonist humor all over it. And all kinds of “plots” that didn’t follow the 12 legal ones all the regular cartoon writers had memorized. No skate boards, no celebrity cameos, no “parodies” of Spielberg movies. We did have a cheesy kid character and we made Pearl Pureheart feisty and liberal, I guess to appease the Network, but we made fun of these contrived elements all the time.
Cartoonists are basically artists with a sense of humor. We make fun of everything and everyone all the time.
Writing for Cartoons 5: Humor, Structure: Nurse Stimpy Outline
You should be funny if you are going to write cartoons. I have yet to meet a cartoon writer (who isn’t also an artist) who cracks up all the other folks at the studio every day with his funny stories and acting.
an etiquette guide for animation clients
Posted by dermot on April 14, 2009 at 10:01 pm
OK; you need to hire an animation studio to bring your animated property to life. Before you start, there are some basic suggestions that you may need to consider:
1. If you’re going to design fully realistic detailed human characters for a Flash project, don’t be surprised when the final animation doesn’t look like the Esurance commercials. Adapt your designs for the medium in which you work, or prepare for bitter tears of disappointment.
2. When the animators ask for things - such as backgrounds, character designs, and artwork - it is advisable to deliver them promptly. Waiting two weeks to deliver reference material is not advised. Not delivering the elements at all is even less advised.
3. If you want the characters’ lines to be separate from the characters’ colours and for both to move independently, it is wise to inform the animators of this before they have animated the entire project.
4. When you tell your animators “Don’t change a THING in our crapulent character design” don’t be shocked when the final product looks exactly like your crapulent character design.
5. Sending your wife to the animation studio to critique minute design “defects” that can be seen by nobody else is rarely conducive to productivity. She may be a graphic designer, but a career in static design does not necessarily qualify one to make sweeping critiques of an animated project. Repeated statements by your wife, such as “I don’t know anything about animation, so I’m not qualified to say why I don’t like your work, but…” are to be avoided.
6. When animation scenes are delivered to the client (you), it is the client’s job (that’s still you) to review them and to suggest changes as the scenes arrive. This is called “feedback”. You would be ill-advised to wait until ALL the animation is complete and THEN demand revisions.
7. When you deliver detailed storyboards to the animators, please bear in mind that those storyboards will not be regarded as mere suggestions (especially when the client is an arrogant OCD Narcissistic son-of-a-bitch). We will follow those boards, to the letter. Comments such as “We thought you’d change everything and not follow the boards” only serve to make you appear like a pissant.
8. It is not advisable to make changes to the character designs AFTER final delivery of all the animation. Perhaps this is the custom on your homeworld, but on Planet Earth it tends to complicate affairs.
9. When, in panic mode, you make the animators visit your studio for an emergency meeting, please provide refreshments. If the meeting runs late - until 8pm for example, it is considered good manners to apologise, and ask whether or not anyone needs food. Pizza is an economical option. So is water. Animators are not your slaves - they are human beings, and some even have homes to go to.
10. When talking to the visiting animators, it is advisable to take a stiff drink before speaking; do whatever necessary to steady your nerves. A grown man should not be on the verge of tears when speaking to the crew.
11. When showing the animators six weeks worth of mysteriously withheld revisions, it is considered a social faux-pas to blame said animators for the withholding of said revisions.
12. Suggesting a series of unnecessary revisions to fifteen scenes, to be followed by yet another series of revisions at an unspecified future date, is the mark of an incompetent. Doing so when the drop-dead deadline is two weeks away compounds the sin.
13. When criticising character rigs that you were shown eight weeks previously, attempting to pretend that you haven’t seen them already only makes you look foolish.
14. When the lead animator is watching the screen, it is indefensible for one of your employees to sit in front of him wearing a large hat, preventing him from seeing the screen. This is even moreso when the hat-wearer contributes nothing to the meeting, spending their time surfing the internet on her laptop. Surely she could be better occupied? Perhaps fetching water, snacks or Pizza for the innocent animators?
Please accept my humble suggestions in the spirit in which they are intended.