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.
3 Responses to “animators vs. “producers” & “writers””
There’s no reason why anyone should be beholden to corporate interests anymore. We can all make art on the run and post it to youtube.
As much as I like John Kricfalusi, and his work, it’s hard listening to someone so pretentious go on about how great he is at fellating himself.
Sex Mahoney for President
“As much as I like John Kricfalusi, and his work, it’s hard listening to someone so pretentious go on about how great he is at fellating himself.”
I know exactly how you feel. Unfortunately, the role of animation director seems to attract egomaniacs and the assorted deranged.
The trick with John is to skip the parts where he’s telling teenagers to “Draw Like ME”, and move to the ones where he’s dealing with the subject of animation in general.
There’s a lot of wheat, and an amount of chaff. Luckily, it’s easier to separate the signal from the noise!
Mixing metaphors. Oh well.
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