This post was inspired by a few questions from Alonso in the comments section:
How much time is typically devoted to the story making/boarding/animatic phase of a movie? How well can you tell if the film will work when it’s in animatic form? . . . do stories come out weakly because they didn’t have enough time to keep tightening them, or because you can’t get a good enough idea of the final product from just the boards?
The story building process typically lasts two or three full years for an animated feature, but there’s a lot of variation, and in some cases it stretches out much, much longer. That’s 2-3 years of dedicated work by a team that usually involves a director or two, a few writers, a team of story artists, and several visual development artists and character designers (at least at the big studios). Often that several-year period of intense development work is preceded by more years of development by one person or a few people who either originated the concept or are trying to make the concept salable or ready for full development.
Prior to seeing Up* last weekend, there were two pieces of animation that impressed me a lot.
The most impressive was Partly Cloudy. This Pixar short seems to have gotten a lot less attention than previous Pixar shorts. Maybe it’s because Partly Cloudy hearkens back to Dumbo and a seemingly simpler and gentler style. If you ignore the technical accomplishments, it is a lot less showy than most short-form animation these days. But that’s what blew me away — the submersion of very difficult and impressive technological accomplishments into a beautiful, evocative piece that never showed off its technical merits for their own sake, but instead told a layered, heartfelt story. Read the rest of this entry »
It might seem odd to be musing about Wall-E on the weekend that Up is tearing up the box office, but I like to look back at films after all the initial hoopla has died down. In the next few weeks I’ll also have some observations about some of the other animated films of last year, but let’s start with a film that many called the best film of 2008. It was not only glowingly reviewed, but it won the Oscar for Best Animated Picture, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. I enjoyed the film, but found it flawed. Given the reviews and success, I’m clearly seeing a problem where most others don’t, but bear with me.
Battle for Terra, an independent CG-animated feature, opened last weekend to little fanfare. It got some glowing reviews and some scathing reviews, but mostly didn’t get watched by the movie-going public (the opening weekend was just over a million dollars). I understand that — it’s an independent science fiction film that takes itself pretty seriously, with odd alien designs, clunky humans, some questionable dialog and story points, and didn’t get much marketing.
That said, I think most people in the animation community miss the significance of the film. For years I’ve been hearing the mantra that we now have the tools and capability for an individual filmmaker to make an entire animated feature for a fraction of what the big studios spend. Yet the few low-budget features that have been made have almost all relied on outsourced production, with all the loss of economy and quality that goes with that arrangement.
I just read the following comment in Michael Barrier’s review of Monsters vs. Aliens:
Like many other CGI films, Monsters feels unfocused; the technology has absorbed so much of the filmmakers’ attention that more important matters, like the story, have been neglected.
Comments like this bug me, as they do many people who work in the field. I don’t mean to pick on Barrier here — I like reading Barrier’s thought’s on animation, as his ideas are usually thoughtful and well articulated. I’ve read comments like this made by many other people, about any number of animated films — this comment is just the latest. Critics and passionate fans are often quick to make assumptions, based on their reaction to what they see on the screen, about what the filmmakers thought or did. Read the rest of this entry »
Funny thing about blogging, once you take a few weeks off, it gets hard to get back into it. Especially when one is (pleasantly) too busy for any kind of thoughtful writing. But after the high of the Milt Kahl: The Animation Michaelangelo program at the Academy last night, it’s time to get back into it.
I’m talking about the 13th Marc Davis Celebration of Animation, which has gotten lots of discussion at Cartoon Brew, among other places. I’m sorry to say I don’t have any summary of the event to add — how do you summarize Andreas Deja showing and discussing scores and scores of Milt’s originals, or Alice Davis and Sybil Byrnes (Milt’s daughter) sharing great personal anecdotes, or Brad Bird and other bright lights in the animation firmament discussing the great man’s work? Let me just link to the pencil test of Milt’s Jungle Book scene of Mowgli climbing a tree — Brad Bird described this scene as the most mind-blowing of all of Milt’s scenes, one he studied in the animation morgue at Disney many times and still couldn’t fully grasp (thanks to Victor Ens for putting it up, and to Jim Hull for linking it at Seward Street, where I found it).
That’s it for now. I’m going to try to be a little more regular about posting here, and sorry for staying away so long.
Add On: Hans Perk has posted scans of the program for the Milt Kahl event. Check it out here.
Yes, it’s been a ridiculously long time since I’ve posted. My apologies. But the good news is that I’m here to show off the major reason I’ve been too busy to blog — I’ve been working crazy hard on five new Warner Brothers short cartoons, and they’re now online here.
Music is a crucial part of most great animation, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is hosting a program this Sunday evening (August 10, 7:30 pm) on the subject. As I write, tickets are still available, and at $5 there can’t be a better bargain if you love great animation and you’re anywhere near Los Angeles.
Amidst a long-overdue vacation to the east coast, some freelance work, and an exhausting trek down to Comicon, I’ve managed to do a little personal animation. My Animation Mentor students usually ask about my workflow and methods, which I have a hard time explaining, so I thought I’d show the result, and then a progressive series of earlier versions. Here’s the preliminary version, sans sound-track tweaks, lighting, and texturing I plan to add:
I mentioned in the comments previously that Sinbad - Sailor of the Seven Seas might be my least favorite film among those I worked on. I’ve always been pretty good at separating the work from the product — I loved working on Sinbad, and the production was a great experience. I’d been promoted, I was assisting amazing animators (James Baxter and Jakob Jensen), I was getting scenes of my own, the directors and production staff were cool, I was hanging with a great posse of junior animators, the food was free and tasty, life was good all around. But the film? Not so much.
