Real Emotion Reference

Hey

This is getting past around work so I thought I would share it with the rest of you animators. What great reference this is. You cannot get more real than this.

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Enjoy

Color!

Finally got around to the color for the sketch below, I hope she digs it!

Pencil Test Depot

Jamaal Bradley has set up a blog that collects pencil tests from all around the web. Right now there are pencil tests from Tarzan, Treasure Planet, Curious George, The Aristocats, The Jungle Book, Nocturna, Sinbad and Lady and the Tramp. Consider it your one stop shopping destination for pencil tests.

Slurp!

Happy Friday!
Here's a initial sketch for a little illo I'm doing as a gift for my good friend Barbra. She owns a little Yorkshire Terrier named Milo. Check back soon for some color! This thing will probably change a ton as it goes along.

While you're here, allow me to point you in the direction of an awesome blogsite my good buddy Jamaal Bradley started up this week. Pencil Test Depot is a killer repository for some pretty amazing animation pencil tests from various films. GAHH! Sooo good!

Miyazaki's Starting Point

This book, a collection of articles and speeches by director Hayao Miyazaki as well as interviews with him, is one of the most important books on animation ever published. It contains almost no pictures; instead it is a book of philosophy and observations that reveal Miyazaki to be as perceptive and articulate as anyone who has worked in animation.

It isn't necessary that creators be able to write or speak intelligently about their work. I greatly admire director John Ford, who actively disliked interviews; he would take sadistic pleasure in abusing interviewers and left no writings of any consequence. Anything Ford wanted to say he put on the screen and that was more than enough to earn him respect.

However, when a director reveals himself in words as well as films, it can lead to an enhanced appreciation of the person and the work. I have admired Miyazaki for quite some time, but I have to say that my respect for him increased enormously after reading this book.

Miyazaki has a broad range of interests. Of course, he talks about animation (with interesting perspectives on Disney, Dave Fleischer and Tezuka), but he also talks about politics (Marxism and Yugoslavia), history (particularly Japanese history), technology, children, audiences, mentors, economics and the environment.

I can't do better than to extensively quote Miyazaki to give you a flavour of the thoughts that this book contains. Here he is on the relative importance of content and technique:

Having said all this, if someone were to ask me what the most important thing is when creating a new animated work, my answer would be that you first have to know what you want to say with it. In other words, you have to have a theme. Surprisingly, perhaps, people sometimes overlook this basic fact of filmmaking and overemphasize technique instead. There are innumerable examples of people making films with a very high level of technique, but only a very fuzzy idea of what they really want to say. And after watching their films, viewers are usually completely befuddled. Yet when people who know what they want to say make films with a low level of technique, we still greatly appreciate the films because there is really something to them.

I was particularly taken with this paragraph on running. There are many animation textbooks that will explain how to do a run, but this single paragraph says more about why you would have a character run than any animation book I've read.

The running of surging masses on fire with anger, the running of a child doing his best to hold back tears until he reaches his house, the running of a heroine who has forsaken everything but the desire to flee -- being able to show wonderful ways of running, running that expresses the very act of living, the pulse of life, across the screen would give me enormous delight. I dream of someday coming across a work that requires that kind of running.

What Miyazaki is talking about here is the emotional heart of animation -- the emotions that literally animate a character -- not simply the path of action of a foot or the spacing between drawings.

Miyazaki takes a dim view of the production conditions for television.

What does seem to be a big problem to me, however, is that both the film and TV worlds are always desperately running after whatever carrots are dangled in front of them. The carrots for the TV world are particularly small, truly piddling overall, and for both TV and film projects that pass muster tend to be low risk and highly disposable. For TV today, the biggest problem is the huge increase in the number of shows being made. Everyone's confused about what is being done. No one knows who is making what, or where. And no one is watching what others are making. If you watch something for three minutes, you feel like you know everything about it, even what went on backstage, and then you don't feel like watching the rest.

In reality, it's impossible for creators to keep working at the same pace year in and year out. The harder it is to try to make one good program, the more difficult it is to achieve that same level of quality over and over again. If you really want to create good shows year in and year out, you have to create an organization or system that makes this possible. But in the world of TV animation, it's physically impossible to create a series where each episode is like a theatrical feature. Since we have to cram shows into a system of mass production and mass marketing -- and keep pumping episodes out in such a tight cycle -- it's only natural that the works eventually become anemic. I think that's the point where the industry is now.

Miyazaki considers the appeal of animated films.

I like the expression "lost possibilities." To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, and a life. To exist here, now, means to lose the possibility of being countless other potential selves. For example, I might have been the captain of a pirate ship, sailing with a lovely princess by my side. It means giving up this universe, giving up other potential selves. There are selves which are lost possibilities, and selves that could have been, and this is not limited just to us but to the people around us and even to Japan itself.

Yet once born,there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us. And in this sense I think that the animation we see today often lacks the vitality of older cartoon movies. Economic constraints in production are often said to be the main reason, but it seems to me that something spiritual is also missing. It would be stupid to turn my back on the times in which we live and act arrogrant about it all, but I always find myself thinking that the old cartoon movies were indeed more interesting and exciting that we have today.

But while animation can serve a spiritual purpose, it's also tainted by commercialism.

After working in cel animation for so many years, I've recently become more away of the things I have been unable to do, rather than the things I have been able to do. I still think that encountering wonderful animation as a child is not a bad thing. Yet I'm also acutely aware that this profession is actually a business, targeting children's purchasing power. No matter how much we pride ourselves in being conscientious, we produce visual works that stimulate children's visual and auditory senses, and whatever experiences we provide them are in a sense stealing time from them that otherwise might be spent in a world where they go out and make their own discoveries or have their personal experiences. In the society in which we live today, the sheer volume of material being produced can potentially distort everything.

Miyazaki's view of life is nuanced.

I think there is is no way we can live and "not cause difficulties for others," as the saying exhorts us. I have come to think that even when we are overflowing with love and goodness, the world of human beings is one in which we cast our shadows onto each other, giving each other troubles as we grow and live.

The question then becomes, what it is hope? And the conclusion I'd have to venture is that hope involves working and struggling along with people who are important to you. In fact, I've gotten to the point where I think this is what it means to be alive.

As I said above, it isn't necessary for a director to say anything beyond what's on the screen, but reading Miyazaki, I'm convinced of the intelligence behind his films. I wish that intelligence was more widespread in animation today.

Quick Reminder

Just wanted to throw a quick reminder out there to let everyone know that doesn't already. The resources on this site are constantly being updated as I encounter more and more of them out there. I am always trying to find new content in the form of good animators, resources and shorts to upload. So each time you come back there could be something that you haven't seen before under one of the tabs. Any suggestions that you have or something that is not here that you know of please feel free to contact me or leave a comment. Thanks again!

Disney and Marvel: Two Creative Failures

Disney's purchase of Marvel has generated a lot of discussion about the specifics of the business deal and the potential synergies, but what I see is one creatively bankrupt company buying another.

This is Robert Iger's second major purchase for Disney. The first was Pixar at a cost of $7 billion. Marvel went for "only" $4 billion. These purchases have defined Iger's tenure as head of Disney, but not in a way that speaks well for him. While business writers are taken with Iger's boldness, what we have here is someone who doesn't believe that his company is able to compete.

When Walt Disney moved into live action, he didn't buy an existing studio. When he went into television, he didn't buy an existing production company. When he went into distribution, he didn't buy a distribution company. When he went into theme parks, he didn't buy an amusement park. In each case, Walt Disney grew his own company and built its expertise in these areas until the company could compete, and in some cases lead, the particular industry. When Walt Disney was interested in accomplishing something, he did it from the ground up.

By contrast, when Robert Iger needs to compete in computer animated features or to capture a larger share of the young boys audience, he pulls out the corporate wallet and buys what he needs.

Consider the numbers involved. Let's say that it costs $250 million to make and market a cgi family feature. For the $7 billion Iger spent on Pixar, he could have made 28 feature films. With 28 kicks at the can, a company could try a wide variety of approaches and techniques in trying to succeed with audiences.

One of the areas that the Marvel deal is supposed to help is the Disney XD cable channel. Let's say it's going to cost $15 million to create 13 episodes of a TV series (a very generous budget for cable). For $4 billion, Disney could create 266 TV series in an attempt to attract the boy's audience.

With those kind of resources, it's appalling that the company never made a serious attempt.

And what exactly has Disney bought in buying Marvel?

While Marvel recently celebrated it's 70th anniversary, the truth is that the company was creative for approximately 10 years of that time (1939-40 and 1961-68). If you were to remove six people from Marvel's history -- Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko -- you would remove the majority of the characters that define Marvel and the ones that are left are based on examples created by these six.

Marvel has had success recently in creating films based on its characters, but the characters are all more than 30 years old. The company's attitude towards creators guarantees that no new characters will be forthcoming. Marvel took ownership of the work of its writers and artists (even when those people were independent contractors and not employees), but the bigger blunder was to withhold profits or royalties from those creators. As the characters gained popularity and began to generate real money, the creators finally figured out that they would see none of the wealth they created, so they stopped coming up with new ideas.

Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko both left the company as a result of broken promises for compensation. Steve Gerber and Marv Wolfman both sued the company to regain ownership of Howard the Duck and Blade, respectively (and lost). In the '90s, a group of artists split from Marvel to form Image Comics precisely because they realized that they would never receive a fair deal there. Marvel's history of dealing with creators has guaranteed that the very characters that Disney covets are finite in number.

When Disney bought Pixar, they were buying a future: Pixar was still generating new films and characters. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, two people responsible for Pixar's success, were still with the company and still attracting audiences. By contrast, buying Marvel is buying the past. The characters are already decades old and the people who created them are no longer with the company. In this sense, the purchase of Marvel is closer to the purchase of the Muppets than the purchase of Pixar.

Time will determine if the purchase of Marvel was a good one or not. However, the pattern that Iger has established doesn't speak well for Disney's future. Creators need places where they can try things free from a corporate bureaucracy and where they can share in the wealth that they create. Disney would prefer to let those things happen elsewhere and then buy them after the fact.