The Great White Hope of Indy Animators: Part 1

Ad Revenue Sharing and You(Tube)
Over on Cartoon Brew Amid has some great incisive comments about the growing buzz over YouTube.com and other potential online revenue sharing models being touted as the great hope for independent content creators. You can get a whiff of some of that buzz here on AWN. As much as I wish it could be true, like Amid I just don’t see how it could be. At least not now.

Much of this ad revenue sharing schpiel is merely a redux if the same old saw that we heard from the dot-com boom 6 years ago. The core value of any content in an ad revenue sharing system is the number of eyeballs that watch a given item of content. The more eyeballs watching the content, the more value it has to an advertiser in drawing a crowd to market to. On the large scale of corporate Hollywood this still makes sense, but even there most folks can see the writing on the wall. With the widening of media choices and the diffusion of viewing tastes and habits in end consumer audiences the ability to draw enough viewers to pay for the content is generally on a downward trend. So what does that mean for indies? Some say it’s a good thing, a sign of the end of the age of the dinosaur. Which may be true, but will the indy rise up in this void?
The primary problem for independent producers of animation with online ad revenue sharing is essentially the same one they have had with the mainstream gatekeeper system: individual pieces of content just don’t draw enough eyeballs to be of much worth to an advertiser. The only difference is in how it plays out. The gatekeeper mainstream system won’t even show indy content that doesn’t have some assurance of drawing tens of millions of eyes. While online systems like YouTube are more polite in that they have no gatekeeper to keep your content off the bandwidth, generally nobody is willing to pay you to put it there, either. The end result is no money (or next to no money) for your content. The only difference is that in the online world at least you got the chance to show your stuff- which I suppose is a bit of a moral victory if nothing else. But it’s hard to pay the mortgage with moral victories. This, in my eyes, is the achilles heel of the ‘long tail’. Great for distributors, sucks for indy content producers. So tell me again how this is different from the current gatekeeper system? Heh.
Some may say “Well, the online video sites should pay more per viewing, then!” That’d be nice in utopia, but it doesn’t play well on Wall Street. YouTube.com could charge 10 times their current ad rates and then generously share that revenue with content creators. The only problem is no advertiser would buy an ad on YouTube if they upped their rates. I could charge $17,000 for a mixed breed puppy when I sell it on the street corner, but would you buy that puppy? So ad revenue sharing for online indy content is a zero-sum game. There’s only so much cash that can be earned from a given site (YouTube). And there are vast numbers of ways to spread that cash around (hundreds of thousands of content creators). In the end it comes out to next to nothing per viewing- just as proven by the numbers and succinctly pointed out by Amid. And YouTube won’t aribitraily raise their rates just to make content creators happy, especially not when they’ve found that they already have had hundreds of thousands of entries that have been put up with absolutely no promise of any kind of financial reward to start with. YouTube does not currently share any ad revenue. Folks think they may do so soon, but so far they haven’t. Yet they’re not starving for contributors of content, are they? So what does that tell YouTube about the value of the content they have on their servers if the creators of that content give it to YouTube for free? And by extension, what signal does that send to the advertisers about the value of that content? To YouTube and advertisers, the end goal is the cumulative effect of a million little matchsticks to boil their kettle. Whether the flames burn blur or orange is of no meaning to them- content in and of itself has no value. Only those who come to look at it have any value. And that is the sum of it all, regardless of distribution model: In the world of business, ultimately content has little or no value- only the crowd that watches content has value. Content is the worm, not the fish.

The next logical step in some minds is to skip the suits and advertisers and distributors altogether and go straight to John Q. Public with the content and let them pay for the content. After all, if they come to watch the content that must mean they value the content. So let’s go right to the end user audience- the people who value the content. Some have argued that. Basically we’d be talking about pay-per-view micro-payments directly from end user audiences. Assuming that an infrastructure exists to reliably collect such fees (it really doesn’t), and assuming that getting the news out to the public about your content is free and easy and effective (and it isn’t) would this be feasible? In other words, if some clever Jack or Jill came up with a system where getting the word out wasn’t a major hurdle and collecting payments wasn’t a hassle, could the indy content creator make a living from direct audience payments? I explore that in my next post.

Slow going… but with pictures!

Whew! Moving to a new country has its challenges. One of the biggest ones is finding time and energy to do everything tht needs to get done while still doing what you want to do. Isn’t that life, though? We have lots of social engagements with friends (good). Lots of meeting with lawyers and accountants about business stuff (good and necessary, but at times tedious). Language lessons every day (very good). Going to friend’s houses to watch World Cup games (very fun). Standing in long qeues in government buildings to pay various fees, obtain documents, etc. (not so good). Scuttling about town with my laptop borrowing high speed connections while I slog my way with the phone company to get DSL at the house (not fun at all). Borowing cars (ok) renting a car for a few more days (ok) buying a car from someone moving back to the US (good! It’s a nice car. Not flashy, but solid, dependable with good shocks- an absolute must on these streets!) Oh and we took a day to drive up into the chapada (a kind of low mountain plateau north of town) with some friends in from the States. (sweet!) Add to that the general sense of overall exhaustion from the past year of working on the film, keeping the VTS running, preparing for and then moving… all to say it’s been a challenge to get much “work” done.

Thanks to some great help from a good friend who is fluent in both English and Portuguese we have high speed at the house now, so that will help a bunch. So we plod forward, slowly. No animating at all, though. I’m kinda taking a break after feeling a bit burnt out from the last few years. My mind is tired. My body is tired. I can’t seem to stay up past 11pm. I can’t seem to get up before 9:30am. And it seems that I like naps. I’m hoping the love for animation comes back in another week or two. I can tell that while I’m enjoying not having any pressure to make anything, I’m starting to get a bit of an itch for it again. I fired open Maya the other day for like 10 minutes and actually enjoyed myself for a bit. This weekend has a lot of business stuff being done - working on the site and the kLango online store. So animating will need to wait a litle bit. Which is OK, it just gives me more time to come back to it with some enthusiasm. In the meantime, here are those pictures I promised.

Here’s a pic of the house we’re borrowing til we get our own quasi-permanent place. It’s in a nice quiet neighborhood, walking distance to a small supermercado and some other needed shops and such.

Here’s a street not far from our house. Obviously not all the streets are paved. 90% are, but on the outskirts of town sometimes not so much.

Some pretty waterfalls up in the mountains.

Me and my daughter Laura. She’s so proud of her dad. Heh. Oh, and the water was nice and warm, too!

This framing was just asking to be photo’d.

Even bigger waterfalls…

Here’s a nice balcony restaurant that overlooks the plain below. On a clear day you can see a hundred miles easily.

More views of natural beauty. I love how wonderful an artist God is.

Just in front of that distant hill are the cities of Varzea Grande and Cuiaba, our new home. That’s about 70km away.

And there’s beauty in even the small things.

VTS still alive…

I’ve recently had some folks write and ask

“Hey, is your VTS still alive and active?”

Wow, if that isn’t an indictment of my communication skills I don’t know what is. Heh. Yes, the VTS is still going. June saw the release of VTS16, the fifth installment in our acting and scene blocking discussion. If you want to join now is as good a time as any. And don’t worry if you missed any previous videos. Subscribers are given access to pick up any of the previous video they wish, in any order they want at any time they want. Back issue VTS videos aren’t available to the general public just yet, though. I’m working on a shopping cart solution that will make back issue videos that are more than 10 months old available to the non-subscriber public (added bonus- it will work with plain old credit cards as well as PayPal accounts. For those of you in non-PauPal nations this will be good news). That should be working soon- probably a couple weeks. So if you haven’t been able to subscribe for some reason in the past, soon you’ll be able to get back issue videos and start following the VTS on your own.

And while I’m talking about the VTS, thanks to Victor Escardo you can see an index of all previous videos in the VTS. This handy little document details how long each video is, what topics are covered and provides a few screen grabbed thumbnails of the video as well. So if you have ever wondered “Gee, I wonder what Keith has talked about in his VTS videos?” , well, wonder no more!
I realize I haven’t been able to keep the general public well informed on the VTS, but the coming weeks and months that will change. One of the primary benefits of working for myself now will be having the time to better promote and communicate about the VTS, as well as some other things developing. So expect to see more about the VTS as the days go by. And also exect to see the look of this site change a bit. I’m going to be merging the identities of my personal site (keithlango.com) as well as my studio site (klangoanimation.com). The redesign promises to make it much easier to find what you’re looking for-whether it’s about my personal adventures in Brazil, the VTS or tutorials, my short films or other developing services and products. I hope to have the site redesign working by mid July at the latest.

So yeah… it’s good to have time to do things that I want to do around here. Not having to work 6 days a week on a film crunch sure helps.

Brazil.. and other ramblings

Would you look at this? A fellow goes underground for a couple weeks to visit friends, family and move to another continent and all kinds of stuff breaks looose in the animation biz. So here’s a little catching up on my part. Let’s start with Cars…

Saw Cars with the kids on opening night. Sorry guys, but this one didn’t do it for me at all. I’m not a racing fan, I just don’t see much drama in racing. least not oval track racing. Road racing maybe, but left-turn-only-whoever-pits-last-loses-chewin’-tobacco-racing? No thanks. The Lightning McQueen character was so uncharming, so unappealing, so unlikeable as a person for the first half of the movie that I found myself not caring one bit that he’d straightened himself out. Audiences can put up with a jerk- if he’s astoundingly funny. Or if at the very least the situations and other things going on are funny and entertaining. (Groundhog Day, Scrooged- hey, why is Bill Murray so good at this kind of character? Huh). But this car character wasn’t funny. At all. He annoyed me. I have a hard time tuning in to an annoying personality. And the situations weren’t doing any backflips, either. I’m serious, I considered a nap during the film. Looked pretty, animation was OK (how deep can you go emotionally with a car anyhow? There was too much space between the mouth and the eyes, the golden emotional triangle was lost on most of the car designs). When you first find yourself enjoying the movie during the end credit gags, there’s a problem. Technically superb as usual. Entertainingly plodding and dull- definitely not at usual. You could tell there was oodles of skill and talent going on here, but it just didn’t click. All I could think of as I watched it was “I bet the licensing department loved this film.” But there’s hope….

The trailer for Ratatoullie looked fun and fresh and fantastic. The designs were right up my alley- wonderful flow to the lines. Very appealling, great shapes, fun acting, fabulous animation, pretty (if somewhat stock Pixar) visual style. Still, I’m already looking forward to it. So hopefully the good kids at Emeryville will bounce back from Cars and smash another home run with Ratatoullie. One fly in the ointment, though. We’re in for a flood of rat movies. Way to go Hollywood. *sigh*

As for Pixar’s short One Man Band? Ehh. It was OK. Some nice stuff, but it again felt kinda meh. Good to see Boo from Monsters Inc got some more work. Heh. Maybe I’m just uber-tired from the move and nothing tasted good. Who knows?

WB seems to be following their manual for marketing an animated film by basically not marketing it. Heh. But there’s a new trailer up for The Ant Bully. Regular readers here know I collected a paycheck for a year working on this film. Very good crew. Lots of talent. However as has been noted from the beginning by just about everybody who has ever written about it: it is another bug movie. Will audiences be up for another one of those? Aren’t ants so very… 1998? Anyhow I’ll reserve expressing my full unadulterated opinion until after it’s released. But I’ll puzzle you with this: WB has two animated films coming out this year. Happy Feet and The Ant Bully. Which one have you seen more ads for? And what does that tell you about WB’s opinions of each project?

My friends at the surviving remnant of Big Idea are busy working on pre-production on their next feature length project. Titled the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie. Here’s hoping it goes well for them. Don’t expect it to be a blockbuster, but if production and marketing costs are controlled better than the last time they made a movie (Jonah) then it should make some money for its masters. It’d be nice to see those guys set free from the shackles of singing veggies, though. Hopefully someday they’ll be allowed to branch out into some other end of the biosphere. Say something with limbs? Heck, I’m sure they’d settle for something in the animal kingdom, regardless of class or phyllum.
Garfield 2? Only one question need be asked: Why? And how much longer do you supose Billy Connolly will be happy taking roles that John Cleese turns down? I give him 3 more films before he snaps and goes postal on an unsuspecting Michael Palin.

Let’s see, what else is coming out in a little bit? Monster House. Hrmm. Interesting story idea, not so interesting designs. That mo-cap-imation thing still isn’t doing it for me. You’d think the human motion would be smoother with it, but it looks as stiff as anything put out yet. Open Season? Looks promising. Love the designs of the bear. Background and production syle are pretty and a nice deviation from the norm. Barnyard? You know that old saying that you mom used to tell you? If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all? Well, this is me not saying anything at all. Flushed Away. Based on the latest burp.. um… I mean trailer- it looks like Katzenberg is wearing an Aardman suit. (remember that from Men In Black? The first one that was good, not the impossibly bad sequel. Remember the “Edgar Suit”? That’s what I mean.)
As for me, after an adventurous runabout and 2+ days of solid travel and another day of sleep we’re safe and sound here in Brazil. We move into our temporary housing this weekend. The hammock will be installed immediately upon arrival and will enjoy it’s inaugural swing post-haste. In the meantime while I struggle to buttress my flagging Portuguese skills (Eo nao intendo mueto de Portuguese) we’re steadily preparing ourselves for the national frenzy which will take place Sunday afternoon as Brazil plays Australia in World Cup action. Every single person in every single line of retail business imaginable is wearing some sort of replica or knock off of the Brasilian national team soccer jersey. From car salesman to busboys to parking attendants to telephone repairmen to women selling shoes- they’re all sporting that insanely bright yellow and green. It’s really quite a fantastic site.

Next post- pictures!!

Funniest. Thing. Ever.

Behold the genius of Shatner.

I first saw this as a grainy dub on VHS shown by Pete Docter (director of Monsters Inc.) when he came to Big Idea back in 2001 to visit some old CalArts chums. I only wished I could have had a copy of his tape, but alas, ’twas not for sharing apparently. Back then I knew it to be the best comedic moment ever caught on tape. It remains such to this day. Enjoy!

Pictures for Patrik: Pixar!!!

OK, this picture doesn’t have anything to do with Pixar, but Patrik and his lovely and talented wife Amila do. They both got gigs as animators over at the house that Luxo built. So as a celebration here’s a sketch. Congrats, guys! It couldn’t happen to any nicer or more talented couple. My little Puhala’s are all grown up *sniff* I’m so proud. *sob*

Kick butt and have a blast, kids! I’ve got a ton of doodles to scan once I get to Brazil, so we’ll keep the Pictures for Patrick train rolling.

Half Way to Brazil!

Well, not quite. We don’t arrive in country until June 14th. In the meantime we’re travelling the eastern and southern US to visit friends and family. To all the kind folks we have come to know and meet in Dallas over the last two years, if we didn’t get a chance to say good bye, well, good bye. It has been a real pleasure working with you, knowing you and being a part of your life.

We had a great visit with some old friends from my Big Idea days in Nashville. Good buddy Tim Hodge (and his kind wife Sandy and their whole family) graciously housed our family for a couple of days. We got to see some of the nice folks I’ve missed for the last few years since Big Idea went bankrupt and was reborn in ownership of Classic Media, Inc. Tom Bancroft was so kind as to give me a copy of his excellent book Creating Characters With Personality. Great book on character design. You should go get a copy. Really. Like now. Tom knows his stuff and he has the resume’ to prove it. He and his biz partner Rob Corely are doing a brisk business at their Funnypages Productions in Nashville. It was good to see other folks like Mike Nawrocki, Kurt Heineke, Chuck Vollmer, John Trauscht, Andy Youssi, Joe Spadaford, Paul Conrad, Greg Hardin, Steve Fuller and others. I hadn’t seen them since the dark days of layoffs and it was great to have new memories to add to the mix.

I also got a chance to isit an old friend from elementary school that I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. Turns out my old school chum John Hamm is working as an animator in Nashville at a fun little studio called Magnetic Dreams. I got a chance to catch up with John and meet some of the really nice people over at MD. They’re doing some really fun work for Sesame Street. There’s good animation all over the place in Nashville. Who knew??
Then it was time to see my mom and brother for a bit, but that time has passed as well. So we’re back on the road to our next stop. We’re homeless, possessionless (save for 9 suitcases and some carry on baggage- we gave the rest away) and car-less. We’ve rented a minivan to lug all our baggage with us as we make our way from Dallas to Nashville to Knoxville to Rochester NY to Buffalo and then on to Cuiaba, Brazil. For those of you who are VTS subscribers, I will most likely have June’s video done sometime before we leave for Brazil next Tuesday. The challenge has been finding the time to edit the thing and upload it. I grossly underestimaneted the amount of work it would take to get all our stuff taken care of to get ready to leave. Oh well. Lesson learned. Thanks for the patience.

Reporting from the road somewhere outside of Roanoke, Virginia, til next time….

Over the Hedge….

I snuck in a quick late night solo viewing of OTH. Why? Well, because some slacker behind the counter at the ice-rink didn’t sign my name up for a goalie spot in pick up hockey like he was supposed to so that when I arrived they’d given my spot to somebody else. So, with a couple hours to burn (along with my ire) I decided to take in Dreamworks’ latest offering.

OK, full disclosure time: I’ve not been terribly excited about this film. The trailers just haven’t been ‘doing it’ for me. (I’m having a similar problem with Pixar’s Cars.) The production design just never grabbed me by the collar and said “Look!”. It suffered from a case of “Grass is Green/Skies Are Blue Syndrome”. It just felt kinda so-so artistically. But I’ve been hearing from folks inside DW that the story was solid and they were liking this film. So, with that in mind I went in hoping to find it a fun film.

The narrative structure was pretty solid. There were relatively decent motivations all around, nice set ups, a decent flow to the thing. It slowed down a bit early in the second act, but sheesh- which animated feature doesn’t anymore? It was certainly a stronger story than their last 2 shows (Madagascar and Sharktale). I give the production design on Mad much higher scores, though. Sharktale was a waste of my time and money all around. Lots of talented people worked on ST, but it watching it was hard. Sorry if that tweaks anybody the wrong way, but what can I say? Jeffrey K. didn’t bring his ‘A-game’ for that one.

The animation in OTH was quite nice, though. But then I went in expecting it to be solid. A lot of good animators work at DW, guys and gals who know their stuff. There were some very nice acting choices and I really enjoyed the different and unique styles of motion for each character. The porcupines had a nice waddle, Hammy was well done (Scrat on steroids), RJ and Verne had nice things going on as well. I think they were quite successful in giving each type of character their own motion sense that helped set them apart from the others- a good sign that somebody in animation has been asking the right questions and coming up with good answers. The water balloon head thing didn’t bug me as much as it did in earlier trailers- maybe it had been toned down in retakes? Dunno. The bear was a lot of fun. I liked Nick Nolte’s take on that character. The humans seemed to have that same problem all studios have with CG toon-humans. Outside of The Incredibles- and even many moments in that film- and some stuff in Nemo it’s been a bumpy ride. And I include my own work as well. We haven’t quite conquered that problem just yet (I think it’s a design issue, personally). But overall the animation was very nicely done with some very fun and unique character performances. It’ll be a good DVD to keep on hand for inspiration.
I enjoyed the movie. I’ll certainly take the kids to see it. The use of Ben Folds’ distinct musical vibe in the soundtrack didn’t feel tacked on and it fit the mood of the show. I’d say it was an overall solid effort, a good family flick. The opening weekend take of $37mil means it will be an OK money maker for DW, but it won’t be anything near Shrek-like in its presence. With Cars coming in just 3 weeks OTH might take a bit of a hit, so the overall domestic on OTH will probably settle somewhere between $110-150mil. Not shabby, certainly good enough to mean it’ll make money once it gets out in DVD, but nothing to make Wall Street go ga-ga over DWA stock.

Next up will be Cars. We’ll see if that one can overcome it’s weak trailers and blow my socks off. Here’s hoping the good kids at Pixar can keep the winning streak alive.

The Next Chapter

Introducing kLango Animation Studio. There’s not much up on the site yet, but it will fill in quickly over the coming weeks. This is what I’ll be spending my time doing after my journey at DNA comes to an end next week. There’s a lot more than meets the eye here. So what exactly is kLango? (and later on we address where is kLango?) Well, it’s a little bit of everything. Here’s the official-ish blurb…

kLango Animation Studio, LLC is dedicated to providing excellent & affordable animation services, training and creative development. For more info visit keithlango.com or klangoanimation.com.

After many years of working in a wide variety of production and managerial roles in larger studios I’m super excited to be taking this step out and establishing my own studio, putting into practice all the experience, skill and knowledge I’ve gained. kLango will have three primary areas of focus:

1) high end character animation

2) affordable animation training

3) high quality developed content.

The VTS service has been tremendously blessed since it’s inception, so I will continue to offer that, as well as expand upon it. I will also be announcing new training and teaching resources and services in the coming months, so keep your eyes peeled for news on that this summer. In addition I will be doing onsite conferences/seminars/workshops through out the year. On the creative side I will be focusing on developing my own properties and content, beginning with two short films. And yes, in time it is my goal to resurrect and complete the lost film “The Secret Joys of Myopia”.

But all of this is really to allow me the freedom and time to be more involved in a real passion of mine: helping those whom society has forgotten. Since last year my wife and I have been deeply involved in working with and supporting a wonderful mission of mercy and kindness to the poorest of people. We are involved with a medical mission boat named the Pantavida that travels the Pantanal region of Brazil, Bolivia & Paraguay. This is where my wife and I are focusing our efforts to bring medical help to the remote and forgotten people who live in the poor villages along the Paraguay and Cuiaba rivers. Here’s a great pic of the lovely Pantavida and some of the people she serves…

Thanks to the good Lord’s kindness and blessing of the VTS over the last year we’ve been able to help support the operations of this medical houseboat (complete with doctor’s offices and a dentist’s office).

So what do kLango Animation and the Pantavida have in common?

Location, location, location!!!

Yep. My family and I are moving to live and work in Brazil! We are set to arrive in Cuiaba, Matto Grosso, Brazil on June 14th to our new home and the next adventurous stage of our lives. Thanks to reliable high speed internet I will be able to run kLango Animation from there and be closer to the great life changing work of the Pantavida. To say I am excited is to put it very mildly.

So there ya have it. I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted on our adventures as they happen right here on this blog. Meanwhile this site’s theme will be slowly but surely merging with the kLango theme until the two sites all work together seamlessly. I also want to take a moment to thank all the great folks who have given me encouragement, support and have offered up prayers for me and my family. It means a lot to know that in as many ways as possible I am being useful in helping people. Whether it’s to help them become a better animator, tell better stories or something as vital as get acces to life saving medical services in the swamps and jungles of South America, it’s fantastic to know that I am a part of bringing joy to people’s lives.

Quick Update…

Sorry for the lag between posts. Things are happening quickly around here and I’ve been scrambling, which means the blog suffers a bit.

Friday was the last day for most of the animation crew at DNA. It was a maudlin kind of day. It’s never fun or easy to say good bye to friends. Even though I’ve been through plenty of layoffs before, it’s only a little bit easier to endure each time. But such is life. Thankfully this is a small industry and folks will see each other again as the years go by. All the best to the DNA animator folks left to blow upon the winds of change- a truly talented and friendly bunch of folks. May you land in a happy place that gives you much fulfillment and joy. Which reminds me, I need to add a bunch of ex-DNA animator links to my side bar here. Add that to the “To Do” list.
As for me, I have 2 more weeks here doing fixes, retakes and long lunches and then my time comes to an end at DNA. As for what’s next, I’m almost ready to broadcast the word here. Some of my friends already know, but for the rest of the world I’ll have some announcements later this week. So keep your eyes tuned here if you care.

As a peace offering, I give you this random image. Enjoy!

Toon Snap Tutorial Fix

I was recently notified that the AVI’s for my QuickTip Tutorial on Cartoon Snappy animation were corrupted. So I’ve restored fresh backups to fix the problem. So if you looked at the ToonSnap tute recently and the movies were muggled, well head back and see the corrected movies.

Makes total sense….

Warning: strong opinions ahead.

Steve Hulette over at The Animation Guild Blog just put up a post on the power of knowledge, specifically the power of knowledge as it relates to wages and earnings. To quote…>

When young, most people are taught that it’s impolite to ask or tell other people what you make. Maybe that’s dandy etiquette, but think a minute. If everyone is ignorant about what the guy in the next cubicle or office is making, the only entity that’s helped by that ignorance is your employer, who knows what everyone is making.

Indeedy-do. One thing that I have come to learn in recent years is that every one of us in this global economy are independent businessmen. We are all in business for ourselves. We are all perpetual free agents, especially in animation, which has become increasingly nomadic. Whether you like it or not, that’s how it is. Staff, contract- doesn’t matter. When it comes to the vertical relationships (up and down the command chain) it’s all about the bottom line in business. When the money’s coming in it’s all “we’re family“. When the money’s tight the captain has first dibs on the lifeboat. The modernistic notion of employer/employee loyalty is a long vanished ideal of nostalgia. Companies (in just about every industry- not just animation) aren’t playing by those modernist rules anymore. If you can be replaced for less, then you’re gone. Problem is, most ‘employees’ (ie: individuals) are still trying to play by those old modernistic rules. We still want to ‘do the right thing’, be the good guy, not let anyone down, not be greedy, not cause any strife or rock the boat, take one for the good of the team, help build something special, etc. It’s all the usual management/HR humdrum that’s shoveled so that people willingly take part in their own undervaluing. Having been involuntarily let go several times has taught me that when the chips are down, I’m out the door faster than you can say “we’re like family here”. Um. No, actually we’re not. I like you guys and all, and I really do appreciate the gig and the good vibes- but dude, you don’t dump your kids when they get sick and cause you to lose some money. Yet when the time comes for artists to put out the extra free hours of uncompensated overtime, or to pull all nighters, or to “take one for the team”, well… the guilt card comes on thick and heavy from management. Why? Because we’re not playing by the same rules and they know it, so they back us into a corner with emotional weapons. No wonder so many of us are getting are butts kicked in this game.
We are all independent businessmen in the global economy. Sadly this animation business is just that - business. As artists we tend to want validation so much that we too often surrender ourselves and undervalue our skill to get it. Or we suffer from the ubiquitous blight of self doubt. Now while an occasional good dose of humble self doubt is absolutely vital in improving as an artist, it’s career suicide in business. If you’re shopping for a car and you have enough money to buy a Kia I am in no way a bad person for refusing to give you a Mercedes S-class for your money. I’m a good person if I find a way to help you get a slightly better car for your money or if I am able to throw in some extras here or there as a way of saying thanks for your business. I am only a bad person if I sell you a lemon of a Kia, but generally that’s not the problem for artists in this business (although it does happen).

As a businessman it’s in my best interest to make my customers/clients (ie: employer) happy. So I give them a great value. I’m willing to give 110% of value on their money. Maybe even 115% if I’m feeling generous. But there’s no way I owe them 150, 170 or 200% of value for their money. That’s business suicide.
Know your value, believe in the value of what you do and work your darnedest to get it. Because believe me, no company is going to willingly give it to you out of the goodess of their charity. There are dudes making MILLIONS of dollars off of us working in the trenches of feature animation. It ain’t no crime to get your slice and you’re no worse a human being for trying.

Am I being cynical? Maybe a little. I prefer to see it as having my eyes open and seeing the world for what it really is. Folks who know me know I’m passionate about animation and storytelling, passionate about doing a great job, passionate about getting better and growing. That keeps me from being cynical I believe. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to willingly live in the land of fairy tales and sweet dreams to the detriment of my family. My experience, skill, knowledge, time and services have great value in this multi-billion dollar game of feature film animation. It’s not cynical to believe that and act accordingly.

ps: And it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyhow. Always, always, always treat your fellow artists with respect. Your bosses will always be changing, but spend any time in this business and you’ll be working with the same people around you over and over again. I’ve already worked with some of the same people at 3 different studios. To mistreat your fellow artists is also business suicide. More often than not they’re your lifeblood for referals for new work. So be good to each other and keep a wary eye when looking up toward the top of the org chart.

Pictures for Patrick:Hopeful

Thanks to a short break (commonly referred to as “vacation days”- since I’m getting laid off I gotta use ‘em or lose ‘em) this is the home version of the Pictures for Patrick Game. It describes how I’m feeling these days. Why? Well, you’ll have to wait and find out, now won’t you?

On a side note I finally played hockey with fellow DNA animator Scott Lemmer again tonight. Thing is it was totally by accident. His team just lost a 4-2 heartbreaker on the same rink we were scheduled to play a shinny* session. I ran into him going on the ice as he was coming off. So he decided to hang around and play. Dirty fink scored on me, too. Punk kids got no respect for their elders, I tell ya!
(*shinny is a euphemism for an informal non league game of hockey -also called rat/pick up/drop in, etc. The name comes from the low intensity, non contact nature of the gathering. Guys get together and play just for kicks, so most players just wear their gloves and shin pads and leave the elbow and shoulder pads in the bag. The shin pads are the root for shinny. Now you know some hockey lingo. Don’t you feel more Canadian now?)

Ice Age 2: Great work!

Nicely done, Blue Sky folks. Nicely done, indeed!

Since I’ve been on a bit of a rant lately about the blah-ness of most big budget CG production design, I have to say that Ice Age 2 is a wonderful piece of animation design in action. For my money this is the BEST looking production design in a CG feature film yet. The style is beautiful, it frames the characters great, the shapes are appealing and fun, the colors are imaginative- I just LOVE the look of this thing.

And the animation is just fantastic. I mean really, really sweet. Great timing, really fun poses and patterns, well done gags and the individual personalities of the primary characters show up in the motion. The style of motion maintains that fun cartoony feel that was established in the original Ice Age, but the execution shows an overall maturation of form that’s down right impressive. The animation in Ice Age 2 is easily among the best done in a CG animated film yet. Again, huge congrats to you kids up there in Whiteplains.

Sadly the story is nowhere near the same level of excellence as the artistry and craftsmanship of the production artists. It just didn’t really grab you and move you. The gags carried the film and the use of Scrat as a story mnemonic was wearing a bit thin by the end. As a character Diego felt tacked on, like they didn’t know what to do with him. The original Ice Age had that very touching and heartfelt scene where Manny reminisces about the loss of his family, but nothing in this film had that same level of heart and warmth. It seems like they tried, like they hit all the dots in an effort to make them connect and draw a picture for you, but somehow it just didn’t come together. That’s the one spot where Blue Sky needs to improve the most- overall story. As a studio they’ve made such impressive and great strides in just about every area of execution from their first film, but their stories remain watered down and meandering (pun definitely intended). How much of that is from executive meddling at Fox I can’t be sure.

But hey, who am I to say? I’m just some schmuck with a website and a willingness to stick my foot in my mouth. All the same, to the animators, technicians and artists at Blue Sky I say great job. You guys really nailed this one and you should be very proud.

Pictures for Patrick: Suspicious

Something smells funny. Is it me?

It’s not just me

In my previous post I lament my growing exasperation with the idea of realism being the driving factor in most big budget CG productions these days.

Seems I’m not alone in this (not that I ever thought I was). Andreas Dejas expresses similar thoughts in a recent interview with the Albequerque Tribune. To quote Mr. Dejas…

But while computer animation has become more realistic, he noted, the medium is due for a change. It needs “more of a vision than just realism.”

“In this industry, you have to constantly re-invent,” he said. “You have to surprise people; otherwise, they won’t come to the theater.”

He sees the future of animation as a “fusion” of cutting-edge computer animation and classic hand drawing. “I see big possibilities in the blending of the two mediums.”

While I don’t necessarily feel the need to have my opinions validated by others (I’m enough of a grump not to really give a rip if folks agree with me or not ), it’s nice to know that animators of far greater accomplishment, skill and talent than little ol’ me are thinking along the same lines. It bodes well for what we may see in the coming years, I think.

The grass is green… and the audience yawns.

Is it just me, or are we stuck in a rut?

I can’t help it, but I’m a sucker for bold, adventuresome design. I love Sleeping Beauty, not because the story is all that great, but those backgrounds make me smile! I think the animated feature film game is getting a wee bit boring to look at these days. The wonder of the Cg-ness has worn off for me. Seeing cool looking fur, or fantasic particle or fluid simulations has lost it’s lustre. 7 years ago that was like “Wow! Did you see that?”. But now… great realistic lighting, rich deep hyper real textures… it’s all so….ehh. Maybe that’s why despite it’s obvious story troubles I found Madagascar appealing. They at least tried to look at the world through the artist’s interpretive lense.
Are we losing our sense of artistic adventure? Have the pixels sucked them from us as we chase after the siren song of representing reality with a level of versimilitude that heretofore has eluded us? Where is this CG generation’s Mary Blair or Eyvind Earle? I hope we don’t lose our imagination in how to look at the world.
In CG it seems we love to show everything as it is on a normal noon day as captured by the cold snapshots of a digital camera. Thus the green grass lament. *yawn*

Maybe there will be some pleasant design surprises coming out this year. I sure hope so, before we calcify into this way of looking at things. And yes, I know I’m way oversimplifying things and there are specific examples of this artistic adventure still making it to the screen. But I guess it’s just an overall feeling I have about where things are.

Somewhere along the way here I think the next step in Cg is for us to have our own style revolution, the same way that UPA started pushing things in the 50’s after 15 years of growing “grass is green-ism” in animation. Something tells me it’s just around the corner and it’s gonna be pretty interesting to see.

Ant Bully Imax Trailer

This IMAX trailer for the Ant Bully is more trailer like than the first teaser. More trailer like in that it actually has real shots from the film and not just teaser fluff. Ahem.
Anyhow, it’s small, but it has some nice looking stuff in it. I don’t think I animated any of the shots in this trailer, but perhaps that’s just as well. They do want people to come see the movie, after all.

The end draws near…

Word has gotten out recently that DNA is going to do some rather significant (dare I say “massive”?) layoffs at the end of the Ant Bully production. Well, yeah, seems that is true. After a nice 5 or 6 year run with the Jimmy Neutron film, then the TV series and now Ant Bully, they’ve come up against the realities of the entertainment business. If you don’t have another project lined up & ready to go into production (and it seems they don’t) then you don’t have any money coming in and so everybody must go. It’s like the clearance sale at the furniture shop- everything must go! Heh.

By the looks of it this is as major a shutdown as I saw at Big Idea a few years ago- as in even supervisors and department leads in the studio will be going once the film is delivered in June. Those are the people you usually hold onto if you can because they’re considered your core team. Even when Fox slashed Blue Sky down after Ice Age they kept their core leadership and core competency people with the expectation that they’ll need them again. Your core team holds your institutional experience and knowledge on how to make shows. Production artists can be replaced (although not without difficulty), but leads, supervisors, the leadership of the “we know how to get it done” crew… that’s a tougher pill to swallow. Here’s hoping DNA can get another project going enough by June to keep their core team.
So lots of folks who have been at DNA for lots of years are now enjoying the singularly fun experience of looking for work and moving to chase their next gig. Ahh, the life of the digital nomad. Til just before the layoff news folks were being led to believe that just as years before they’d be retained as another project was due to roll in. Whether or not those messages were sent by management or were the flawed assumptions of hopeful minds is difficult for me to discern. Personally I learned a while ago not to believe such rhetoric. Yet the shoe has been dropped and now many people are suddenly thinking about updating their websites, dusting up their resume’s, checking into their visa status. For the first time in years some folks are dealing with how to put together a demo reel- one that can’t use their best footage because their best footage is for a film that hasn’t been released yet.

(side note: why can’t all the HR departments for the major studios in this business- what, there’s like 7 total?- get together and just sign a group NDA? That way people can use footage from their film for their demo reel so they can find work. The way it works now you usually have to find your next job before you can even use footage from your old job due to the delay in film release dates, etc. And a typical film gig lasts more than a year, so your reel has to rely on work that’s older and not truly indicative of your current skills. I dunno, seems to me that’s a bit of a pinch for folks. Thanks for helping us make our movie. Best of luck in getting your next job, but oh, by the way, you can’t use any of your footage on your reel. Sorry. Yet another reason to keep doing stuff at home, kids. Anyhow, end side note..)

So like I was saying. for many it is quite an adjustment to make after you have tried to make the dream come true for so long. I remember when we went through this at Big Idea. For many of us there it was quite the schock to realize that our hope of staying here in the midwest where raising a family, good public schools, low taxes and affordable housing are the norm will be lost as we end up having to give in and move to expensive, crappy school California to make our living while getting used to life in an apartment again after owning a home for so many years. So it’s a bit of a tough time for many folks here who are coming to terms with this reality.

I took the job at DNA last year knowing that it was a temporary gig. I had a “permanent” staff position, but I know enough to realize that the difference between staff and contract isn’t the permanency of the position so much as the nature of the benefit package during employment. When there’s no work and no money to pay you it doesn’t matter if you’re staff or contract, you’re gone. Heh. So for me this is all business as usual. I’m just reminded of the similarities between this deal and the stuff we went through at Big Idea a few years ago. It’s kinda sad to see others struggle in the same way again.
Anyhow, my last scheduled day at DNA is May 20th. Give or take. It’s been a fun project. In some ways I think folks will be a bit surprised with how the movie turns out. It’s not quite the Antz/Bugs Life rip off it’s been called. The folks here are great and this is a wonderful animation team. Tons of talent. It’ll be sad to see it all fall apart, but such is the way things go in this crazy animation business. Oh well. We’ll all land on our feet someplace. That’s usually how it goes, too.

As for me, I have my own plans. Some pretty exciting stuff, Lord willing. More on that as the day draws nearer…

Pictures for Patrick:Snooty

Pose to Pose Tutorial: Now in Dutch!

It started out as such a cute litte tutorial. Sweet and innocent, homebound and happy with being just a good ol’ American boy. Then he got ideas in his head. Wanted to see the world, he said. Wanted to expand his horizons, he said. Wanted to visit new lands, learn new languages, he said. Well, the cute little tutorial has grown up now and it just keeps learning new languages.

Thanks go out to Lars Johanson van Schagen for his fine work in translating the Pose to Pose tutorial into Dutch. As far as I can tell he did an excellent job. But then I admit that my dutch is a bit rusty. So all you dutchmen, flying or not, go check out the Pose to Pose toot in your native tongue and sing and dance and drink grog. Or something like that.

Goodbye, Blogger

Well, I finally did it. I’ve made the switch to Wordpress. I just wasn’t ever comfortable with the idea that half the content on my site was on Blogger’s servers and not my own. Plus WP just has some nifty features that I’ve been looking to add to my blog. So you know what this means….

Time to update your RSS feeds for my blog/site.

Yes, I know, it seems I do an RSS switch every 3 months. But this time it’s for good. I think. So point your aggregators and feeders to this new RSS link…

http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2

I hope you guys find the new-ish look suitable to your tastes. I kinda like the brighter, more airy feel of it.

Thanks for playing along. Upward and inward!

It feels good to move again..

Thanks to the urgings of fellow DNA animator and Animation Mentor Scott Lemmer, I've been playing hockey again (I play goalie. Yes, I like to get in front of objects moving at high velocity). Scott has been bugging me to get back out on the ice again For a good while I begged off, being woefully out of shape and probably 20lbs too heavy. Thankfully I eventually gave in and went out for a little shoot around (thanks, Scott!).
So far it's just been a few weeks of pick up games at the rink, but I can feel my game coming back a bit. I played tonight and I didn't utterly stink. I only mostly stunk. Heh. The last time I had played was over 3 years ago back in Chicago. That was 4 studios ago! I stopped playing when I got a deep bone bruise on my elbow from a wicked slapshot that this Czech player unloaded on me. After 3 years off the ice I'm a bit rusty (to say the least!). And at age 37 I know my best years are well behind me. But it's been great to move around again. Animation is a bad career to be in if you're genetically inclined to wear some extra pounds like I am. So the exercise is great and it's good to be playing again. I know there are a lot of hockey playing animators out there. It'd be cool if we could all have a pick up game during Siggraph or something. You know up in Boston (where Siggraph is being held this year) there will be plenty of rinks to choose from.

ps: No, that's not a picture of me. It's just a pic of my hometown team's goalie and I thought it looked good. I don't have any pics of me in my goalie gear. Plus I couldn't stretch out like that without breaking something anyhow.

Hosting Switch

Just a head's up... This site, my RSS feed and my email for keithlango.com might behave a bit flakey over the next couple days. For a variety of reasons I'll be switching my site host to a different service that has better pricing and more storage. Based on my previous experience that means that for some folks the site/email/RSS might come up as not valid until all the name servers around the globe are all updated with the new DNS addresses. The DNS name servers should be all updated in the next 3-4 days, so no worries. Everything should be all groovy by early next week.

I hope. *gulp*

After that's done I'll be working on my conversion to Word Press as my new blog service. Blogger is OK, but WP offers a bit more flexibility and does a better job of remote FTP blog hosting (a consistent problem for me while using Blogger). So hopefully that all goes smoothly as well. My goal is to be done with all the technical mumbo jumbo for my site by March 1st. We'll see how it goes.

"Life After Pose to Pose", Now in French!!

Thanks to Florent Perrin for his graceful translation of my article "Life After Pose to Pose" into French. Yay! So if you are of the French persuasion, or if you are a resident of Quebec, go and read the article in your native language and rejoice!

Pictures for Patrick

Why?
Why not?

Awesome!!

This stuff is too good to pass up! A gallery of 1950's uber-saturated advertising utilizing deranged children. Oh my.


Enjoy!

Confidence in blocking

Lately at work when I've been given a more acting oriented scene (ie: one that isn't a big action sequence with a dozen characters in it) I've been experimenting with really filling out my blocking. And I mean just throwing caution to the wind and packing it with info. It's been a lot of fun to start to see just how much I can put into the scene right from the start. Earlier on in the project I'd only block the major key pose hits, unsure of my process (since I hadn't been a fulltime animator in a number of years). Then after I got comfortable with what the director wanted and I figured out how to accomplish in my work what I wanted to do in my head I started adding in major breakdowns and other info. As time has gone by and I've gotten more comfortable with my process and what they're looking for, and as I know who the characters are more I find my first pass blocking is just packed to the rim. I'm thinking through the way I'm handling the scene and I'm putting what I know is needed in there. Major keys, major breakdowns, sub-breakdowns, ease in, ease out, overshoots, settles, anticipations, end of moving holds, facial expressions, even lipsync- it's all there, all in stepped/held tangents. For a simple 2 second dialog scene I'll put out a blocking pass that has 15-25 held frames for each character (I think of them as 'drawings', even though they're just renders of the puppet on the 'puter). And the best part is that it's been just about the most fun I've ever had animating. And from the standpoint of getting things bought off byu the director it's been working out really well, too.

While it sounds like a huge risk to do so much work in first pass blocking before ever showing it to the director, I have found that if anything it makes for less work in the end. I think it has a lot to do with confidence. The more time I put into that blocking the better my shots are overall. My buy off from the director comes far more frequently, too. I feel like I'm giving him the clearest possible insight into what I want to do with the scene. He doesn't have to guess and I don't have to explain with words what my blocking isn't showing (a fairly common thing that happens. "Yeah, I'm gonna add a head shake right there and he'll be swinging under for that move."). I research the scene, then I animate the shot in my head. I'll do a fair amount of sketching to break it down, to understand how to get through each part of the action. Then in the computer I simply seek to express these found ideas in held 'drawings'. For me it's all about finding something strong inside me that I can put into the scene. I have bannished the old wishy washy "I hope he likes this" kind of thinking when I block. Because I'm doing my homework before I show it to the director I go in believing that what I am showing is the best possible way to do the scene. I have the confidence to put this much work into it up front believing the director will see my vision for the scene and will buy into it. And you know, more often than not he does. Maybe it's just because I'm a cocky son-of-a-gun. I dunno. But to me this whole idea of having confidence in your choices, in believing that you are putting forward the best possible way to do the scene, it has a lot to do with it. If you come to dailies with a half baked blocking and you're kinda having to explain what you want to do with the scene with this sort of apologetic tone, man... it's no wonder why you would get notes like crazy!

Like many folks I've been digging through the history of other great animators. The notes and recordings from guys like Milt Kahl are a real inspiration,. Now if you want to talk about a confident fella you need look no further than Milt. I get the sense that Milt was pretty well convinced that he was the best animator on God's green earth. When it came to a scene Milt was persistent in thinking it through from all angles. And once he knew what he wanted to do, well dangit if he didn't believe down to the core of his soul that when he settled on a way to do a scene that was the best way on earth to do that scene. Period. And you know what? He was usually right. And he wasn't the only one who thought that way about his work. Sure he denegrated his own draughtsmanship, but that just shows he knew what his weaknesses were. Knowing your weaknesses and acknowledging them isn't a lack of confidence. If anything it allows you more confidence because you're dealing from a position of understanding rather than ignorance. Read notes and quotes from other great animators from the past as well. Thomas, Johnson, Jones, Avery, Clmapett... they almost all seem to have this innate confidence that the way they decided to do something was the best way possible at the time. They spend half their time thinking how to do it, then they did it, rarely looking back and wondering pensively "Gee, should I have done this here?"

For many of us who started off animating in CG we were kinda spoiled a bit. CG animation allows us to kinda 'find things along the way'. Since the whole thing is always right there and you can go anywhere in time and add things we didn't need to develop the disciplines of thinking things through first before we drew them. I knew I didn't and I see this discipline lacking in just about every young animator I've ever known. Traditional animation did not exist until the animator drew a few drawings first and then rolled them. And you can't draw anything useful for animation without first thinking and knowing what it is you want to draw. But the computer always had an endless supply of drawings for us, displayed in all its OpenGL glory. So we got used to working with sloppy ideas, ill defined concepts and we got used to making it up as we went along since we never were required to think about the image before it appeared. A far too common approach is to rough some really weak poses in, let the curves ride as splines, scrub and see how it looks, adjust, react, finesse. That kind of approach can be very comforting. If a scene's not working in blocking, well, no worries, I have 4 more days and I can fix it "in animation". Sometimes the results are inspired, amazing, loose and fresh. And sometimes the results are a half baked mish mash of a dozen different ideas which don't work well together. Often I'll see talented young animators get sucked down a rabbit's hole that just kills them when they come at things like this. With no confidence in the idea from the start, they're open to every shifting of the breeze. A bad night's sleep and they're doubting their approach to a scene. A few minor notes from the director and they think the whole thing needs to be trashed and started over. A co-worker's well intentioned (but not thought through) suggestion can send them off on a tangent for hours. With no solid foundation to build on the door for major changes stays open almost until the deadline for the shot- or beyond. Not having a plan they take perfectly good motion, actions, timing or poses and muddle them up with layered in fluff that waters down the original impact of the moment. Perfectly good choices that have been established early on are thrown out because they're not used to having success with a scene so early in the process. I know at one time or another I've struggled with this. In all of this waffling I see a certain lack of confidence.

Confidence best comes from a solid mixture of past success, open minded inquisitiveness, present effort and diligent forethought/planning. Look at your past success and know that you have the ability to make good stuff. Keep an open mind to see as many potentialities as you can. Put in the effort on your current assignment and don't cut corners when thinking about how to do a thing. And when you have settled on an approach, think it through, work out the details, understand how it can be done and how you will do it right down to the core. Putting all of this together allows you the ability to move forward with confidence. If you can honestly say you put in the effort and seriously thought through as many potential possibilities as you could think of, that you settled on the one approach that you believe to be the single best one and then dug down deep into how that one approach will will work from beginning to end then you are free to go and enjoy your work, walking with confidence. And when you bring that work to someone to get their buy off it's almost like they can sense your confidence and they trust that you're gonna bring it on home with flying colors.

And hey, why not?

The Hoodwinked Effect: Part II

In my last post I ran down some of the deleterious side effects of the arrival and success of the cheap CG feature film. The most noteworthy of these effects is the inevitable downward drag on production budgets for larger feature films. Many folks believe the result of that will likely be job cuts, wage losses, declining space for creativity & craftmanship and heightened work quotas. All things that would basically make this job not as fulfilling as it could be. The current lightning rod for this new breed of cheap CG animated film is the successful (and still rolling along) Hoodwinked from Weinstein Studio.

Some folks think it's a horrible travesty that the film is doing well. Others are pleased. Personally I'm more interested in the ancillary effects than the actual film itself. As a film, a story and as a piece of theatrical artistry Hoodwinked doesn't have much to offer me for my $8 movie ticket. But that's just me and my taste. I have felt the same way about a lot of films that others think are great. I certainly don't begrudge Hoodwink's success. And even though I personally am not interested in it, it's continued success in theaters is evidence that a strong audience exists for the film. And I think that's a good thing. A very good thing.

Let's face it. Aside from the occasional Incredibles or Wallace & Gromit, the big budget animated film business is stuck in a bit of a rut. To a certain degree it has been for 50 years. Due to the astronomical costs of making these films the investors demand a sizeable return on their money (and rightly so). To get a bigger return, you need a bigger audience. Thus you aim right down the middle of the road. The tried and true. The easiest way to get a bigger audience is to do what big audiences have responded to before. This editorial on Slate puts this reality in stark light. The economics of big budget animated films is a double edged sword. On one edge you have the money to pursue a higher level of craftsmanship in the final product. Good for those of us in the trenches making the thing. The other edge is more often than not you can't do anything even remotely capable of being misunderstood by a large audience made up of mainly suburban children and their parents. Dull for those of us in the trenches. Thus sophisticated storytelling, or premises, or themes or artistic styles that aren't as middle of the road & homogenized as a McDonald's Happy Meal rarely stand much of a chance of getting made with any kind of a budget.

So far so gloomy, right? That's where lower budgets can give animated filmmakers some freedom. A major studio backing an animated film that costs them $15-20mil isn't likely to nitpick the thing into downtown Dullsville. About the most they'll push for is which big name voice talent to enlist so they can promote the film in the US. A director can have a larger, freer creative voice. You can touch on themes that would be downright un-doable at higher budgets. You can explore different styles a bit. In other words, lower budgets can mean a degree of freedom that just doesn't exist in the world of films costing $80mil and up. There is such great leveling of the playing field with regard to the technology needed to accomplish a film production now that very good looking films can be made for a fraction of what they used to cost. And anybody who's worked on a big budget film knows that sometimes tens of millions of dollars are wasted on sheer stupidity, fickleness and hubris. Cut the layer of waste and you can shave 10, 20, sometimes 30 million dollars off of some films. The fact that Hoodwinked isn't much of a film to look at artistically (even by the director's own admission) doesn't negate the fact that a handsome looking film can be made on a low budget. I can cite successes. For $15-20mil Big Idea made a respectable looking Jonah. For $28mil DNA made Jimmy Neutron. Neither were earth shattering technical or artistic achievements, but both very solid, decent looking films with a degree of craftsmanship that belied their reduced budgets. More recently for $15-20mil Disney/Blur/Sparx made a nice looking Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. And most of Miyazaki's films cost no more than $30mil to make. Sylvain Chromet reportedly made The Triplettes of Belleville for under $15mil. The Weinstein's are bringing the quite decent looking Magical Roundabout over to the US market as Doogal. While the numbers haven't been released for this film, a typical European co-produced animated film is often made for well under $20mil.

Will you wow the world with spectacular new technological achievements like fluid dynamics, fancy cloth sims, giant crowd battle scenes or new hair shaders that are boffo realistic for that kind of money? No, not likely. But you can make a good looking animated film- one that is designed and executed to fit the budget and the story- for $15-20million. The key is to write and design within the budget constraints. Good character design is not much more expensive than poor character design. You just have to have an eye for what is good and what is junk- steer toward the good, avoid the junk. And be willing to pay a tiny bit extra for a good designer. It's such a small price to pay. And your designer will need to have some experience on how best to create a good 2d design that will play nice with the Cg world, should you go that direction. The same is true of good production design. With lower budgets you can't 'explore' as much 'inspirational' art as you might want to. So if your budget is tight you can't stroke your vanity as much as you'd like. So what? If you have a clear, unique vision (and that's the kicker: the director will need a vision) you can make an animated film look really quite good for your $20million. Al this assumes the story is decent and entertaining. Again, as a director you'll need to pull your weight here and not let an army of scriptwriters do the heavy lifting. But it is do-able. I have been convinced of this for years and I believe it's been proven. The question has always been “When will the studios & distributors realize there can be a sizeable market for these kinds of films?” Well, thanks to the Weinsteins and the success of Hoodwinked, I think they're starting to realize the market exists. And that's the very good side of the success of Hoodwinked.

For those of us who have the desire to take advantage of the open door the burden rests on our shoulders. It'll be incumbent upon the practitioners of the lower budget animated film to tell good stories and to work smartly (in design and execution) to function well within the parameters of these lower budgets. If you can do that, and you have a story that can appeal to enough of an audience (and remember, with the lower production numbers you don't have to pull in the masses like a Disney flick does) you can be in business. So all you directors in waiting out there, guys with unique stories, themes and styles that don't fit the bland brand that big budgets demand, it's time to pull a Shane Acker. Or a Nick Park. Get cracking on your short film, make it artistically solid, make it accessible to an audience, make it entertaining, get it into festivals like Sundance and see what shakes out. You know that producers are going to be scouring the world for projects like this to fill out the lower cost/lower risk niche's in the marketplace. Especially as we see the theater reign crumble under the weight of low cost “long tail” distribution models (Do yourself a favor and read up about the long tail. It is the future of media distribution). Will we animators and artists and storytellers just grouse about bad looking super low budget films like Hoodwinked and their impact on our jobs at big budget studios? Or will we see the opportunities here and make a move to do something more?

The Hoodwinked Effect: Part I

As of this writing, in 2006 there are well over a dozen animated CG feature films scheduled to be released in theaters. It is no surprise that the CG animated feature film market in the US is going to get very crowded in the next 2 years. And if you consider that we also have studios like Wild Brain, Blur, Laika and the Orphanage also gearing up to produce their first CG animated films, then things get even tighter. The big names are also working to crank up the animated engines- you have Sony Animation ramping up, Dreamworks hitting 2 per year, Pisnar (or is it Dixey?) with their 2 per year, Fox/Blue Sky with their one per year (plus Fox's outsourced efforts from IDT) and Warner Bros with their one or two per year (done by outsource studios). Now I'm not implying that any of these studios will make such cynically uber-low budget products like Hoodwinked. Most of these larger studios seem fairly committed to doing a decent job with their films. They're not shy about spending some money to make their films better. Now what they think actually makes a film "better" can be misguided and derivative at times, you still gotta give 'em credit for trying. But the fact remains, it's gonna get crowded. It feels like San Francisico in 1849 around here.

And if that wasn't enough, now the bottom end is open for business.

On to our topic: the recently released Hoodwinked. To the chagrin of many folks Hoodwinked didn't die a horrible "Valiant-like"death at the box office (more on Valiant later). In fact, this VERY cheaply made outsourced film has hit a resonant tone with movie going audiences. Like it or not, people are going to see this film and they are enjoying it. To the tune of over $40million in domestic box office so far. Granted those are not Shrek numbers, but for a film that reputedly cost well under $5million to make, them's very, very good numbers. It has what they call in the biz "legs". Say what you will about the artistic or story merit of the thing or the quality of the craftsmanship (or as many insist, the lack thereof), Hoodwinked has made it's mark on the business- a mark that is not going to go away. HW will turn a handsome profit for its masters, the Weinstein Studio. The true "C-cheap-I" (instead of "CGI") movie has been born. We can know this: more are coming. Today we see a report over at Cg-Char that the Weinsteins are ramping up their slate of low budget animated offerings. And why not? There's gold in them thar hills!

Here is the deflating reality facing feature film animation (all animation, not just CG or 2d): Typical American audiences can indeed distinguish the difference between poorly crafted animated fare and highly crafted animated fare. They just don't seem to value that difference.

Many artists and technicians in the business are experiencing a vaguely reminiscent uneasiness. I think we've seen this story before. The cat is indeed out of the bag- producers now know that a ridiculously low budget film made by an undeniably amateur crew in the far East can (if sufficently pop-culture in humor/nature) rake in enough box office success to justify doing more of the same. This will inevitably create a downward drag on higher budget CG animated films. Will the big name studios approve budgets that are above $40 or 50mil for feature films if they know in the back of their minds that audiences really don't value that added artistry? Even if the rumors prove true and we see the shut down of sequel factories like DisneyToon and Circle 7, there will be no shortage of other producers to jump in the water. With the Indian studios improving in capability & capacity and with Singapore getting into the act I don't think it's a stretch to see the number of animated feature films available for the American public approaching 20 films per year by 2008. The obvious question is whether the market can support that kind of saturation. It's hard to know. I don't think there's ever been anything close to that amount of feature film animation on the menu in theaters before. And this in a climate where overall theater attendance is dropping steadily. I think it's fairly safe to assume that more producers will split the same movie audience dollars. To a certain extent movie going is a zero sum game. That means the winners will be those willing to make their films for the least amount of money- given those cheapo films can garner an audience. And even box office failure is not guarantee of financial loss. For weeks now my local suburban Blockbuster has been sold out of copies of Disney's Valiant. Did you even know it was out on DVD? I didn't before I noticed it's space on the shelf. And yet it seems to be doing a fairly brisk business in DVD with next to zero marketing effort. It has the Disney name, that's enough aparently. So in the end, given that it was a fairly inexpensive film to make, it's conceivable that Valiant will be a money maker for Disney, despite its very lackluster box office. All of the various factors taken into consideration, we're not exactly looking at a recipe for prodcuing great, classic animated films. And for those of us who make a living doing this stuff it doesn't sound like a very fun job. How does 20-30 seconds of approved animation per week sound? For a feature? *gulp*

That's the bad side. But there's another side to this coin, one of opportunity. We'll discuss that next.

January 2006 is 1994 continued....

As we roll on toward the close of January 2006, I think it's safe to say that it will be remembered as one of the most pivotal and defining months in modern animated feature film history. But I think it's merely a continuation of events that occured way back in 1994. Let's review...

In the summer of 1994, feature film animation experienced a clear historical event with the release and subsequent monsterous success of The Lion King. The uber successful film set the expectations benchmark for all feature animated fare for the next 7 years. Everything was measured by how it ranked against TLK. The bar was set unreasonably high. Later that same year Jefferey Katzenberg left Disney with his nose permanently out of joint, which led to the eventual founding of Dreamworks SKG. Also in 1994 Disney released it's first DTV sequel adaptation of a recent feature film hit with Alladin2: Return of Jafar. The "Cheapquel" train left the station that year only to gain speed at an alarming rate. It's not a stretch to say that the landscape of feature animation was forever changed in 1994.

Shortly on the tails of 1994, the feature animaton biz experienced another bellweather. November of 1995 we saw the release and subsequent unexpected rave success of Toy Story. Made by some unknown little technology company named Pixar, the CGI animated film was born and a new era was ushered in.

By 2003 the consequences of the events of 1994/95 had reached a point of stasis. CG was king. Traditional feature animation had been bannished to the dungeons. The upheaval was monumental. Who knew in '94 that the perfect storm of coincidence would have born the fruit of misery in traditional feature animation that we have seen? Or that Cg would become the only form of animated feature film in the US? Oddly enough Hollywood still measures animated film success by comparing it's revenues to the wildly off the "bell curve" Lion King. Only now the idea is that only CG can hit those marks. Sooner or later the reality will settle in that you can't plan your entire business around a level of success that happens only once every 10 years. But that's material for another post, I think. :)

Now we sit in January 2006. First Hoodwinked carries forward the Alladin 2: Return of Jafar momentum, only this time in CG. It was only a matter of time before something like Hoodwinked - a very cheaply made film done overseas that does a respectable (and highly profitable) business with the animation buying public- was going to happen. Will Hoodwinked have the same downward pull on the CG feature market that Alladin 2 began in traditional? Time will tell, but the clock is running.

Then came the big news that Disney has bought Pixar. This is obviously a play out of the rest of the watershed events of 1994/95. I see Disney buying Pixar as the culmination of what was set in motion back then. What was that Lion King theme song again? Something about the circle of life? Indeed.

Pictures for Patrick: Snooty

This one's a little rougher around the edges. It started from a random few lines that I scribbled during dailies. Suddenly this character seemed to jump ut at me from the lins, so I filled in the rest. This one would be fun to color up in Photoshop someday. Don't we all know somebody who looks like this?

"End of the Spear" : Go see it!

This wonderful, powerful, moving film debuted at #10 in the US box office this weekend. There's absolutely no mainstream buzz about this movie, but that's to be expected. It's the true story about christian missionaries and their greatest of sacrifices. The central theme is how the power of forgiveness can break timeless cycles of violence.

The opening monologue of the film says this.

It has been said that we cannot ever find true peace because we have never found a way to change the human heart. The events of this story challenge that.

For more about the movie and the real events & people behind it, check out the movie webpage.

Funny thing is I worked on some of the FX animation for this film last year and I didn't even know what it was. I was sitting in the theater thinking "Hey, I worked on that shot!". All I knew at the time was that we were working on some movie with a yellow plane and indians in the jungle. If I'd have known what it was about (or even how good it was going to turn to be) I would have been hyping this thing like crazy! Anyhow, skip Hoodwinked this week (please) and go see End of the Spear. You won't be sorry.

Gopher Broke available online

Noticed this over at Sundance's website...



Blur's Academy Award nominated animated short film Gopher Broke is available for online viewing as a part of the Sundance festival.
I had the priviledge of helping Jeff Fowler get his story from idea to screen during the initial development of this film. After I left Blur for Texas Jeff took over as director and did a wonderful job making a really funny film. Go enjoy it!
-k

Before Pictures for Patrick, there was....

I've always loved Post-It-Note drawings. This is a snapshot of the wall over my desk when I worked at Big Idea. The arrayed collection of doodles was the product of three things.

1. Me & my partner in crime, Bryan Ballinger sitting together.
2. The ingenius creation of the 3M Corporation
3. Lots and lots of dull meetings.

Bryan and I would sometimes tear through a pad per meeting, often trying to get the other one to break out laughing in the middle of the meeting. That was the ultimate sign of success, to get people to look over the two of us wondering what the heck was so goshdarned funny. Good times. The doodles in this pic represent probably less than 25% of what we pumped out. This was the shrine to the boring meeting doodle. Bryan had a shrine to odd food called the Museum of Regretable Edibles. It had some real doozies. Tuna Jerky for you- and your pet! Cross species food items are always a winner in our book. I'm sure he has pics of it. Anyhow, to give a sense of scale, if I were sitting at my desk working (instead of taking this picture) my head would have barely broken the bottom of the frame. The pad doodle ran about 10 feet up the wall. It was a tall ceiling.
Anyhow, I thought some folks might get a kick out of this bit of nostalgia. And for more zany doodles of deceiving quality, check out Bryan's site. It's a treasure trove of ink that will move your inner chipmunk in ways you'd never imagined.

Quicktime 7 for older OS's

I got this cool tip from a VTS subscriber today. Check it out....

I'm still using Windows 98 but I've found that VLC media player can open
Quicktime 7 files on my operating system.
So if anyone has trouble opening the files due to an old OS just send
them over to http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ and hopefully that should sort
things out.

Thanks to Abe for that one. So all you old school OS users, you can use QT 7 files. And Quicktime 7 is really, really cool. H.264 codec. Mmmmmm. Tasty.

Cool animated commercial

Brecht Debaene sent me a link to a commercial that he recently completed at his job. Brecht works as an animator/TD at commercial shop Hoaxland in Belgium. Take a moment to check it out- it's very fun and well done. It has a great cartoon energy to it.

The cool part is that Brecht's only 19 years old! This is his first job as an animator. If he's this solid at his first job... dang! Brecht has been a subscriber to my VTS ever since it started last March. Seeing him do well makes me smile. It's neat to see folks get their break.

Anyhow, congrats, Brecht! Here's to many years of happy animating in your future.

VTS Special Offer

I hope you have had a great holiday season and that you are all rested up!
I haven't talked too much about my Video Tutorial Service here on my blog lately. I didn't want to bog things down with overt commercial stuff. But this month it took me by surprise- we're all the way up to VTS11 in our ongoing series of animation training videos. Can you believe it? We're almost a full year into the VTS already!

So to celebrate the New Year, I decided to have special offer for the month of January for the VTS.

All new subscribers who sign up for the VTS before the end of January 31st, 2006- will receive two FREE back issue videos!
So if you subscribe to the VTS in January, I'll toss in the VTS01 and VTS02 videos for free!

What's in VTS01 and VTS02? Well, I'm glad you asked...

VTS01 Topics Covered: Intro to poses, poses as 2d imagery, line of action, pose variety/focus, line of action reverses

VTS02 Topics Covered: Flow lines, head posing, watch me turn a slop pose into a decent pose!

Normally new subscribers would need to go and purchase these videos from the back issue store, but just cuz I'm in a festive mood, I'll spare ya the bother for these two. That's a $29.90 value for nuthin'!
To subscribe to the VTS, my monthly animation training video service, just click that fancy button to the left, the one below my happy character.

Wow, I sound like I should be selling K-Tel records on late night TV. Heh. OK, shameless commercial break is over. Thanks to all who have subscribed and to all who have expressed interest. May 2006 yield new treasures for all of us.

Pictures for Patrick: Stoic