Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I enjoyed last night’s Oscar ceremony. Ellen Degeneris brought an amiability to the procedings that made it entertaining. Despite my heated comments about the Animation nominees, I was, overall, generally pleased with the Live Action choices. The winners were a better mix for my taste.

The Lives of Others was certainly one of the best films of the year, and it was pleasing to see that win for Best Foreign Film over the overheated and, in my opinion, overrated Pans Labyrinth. If you have the opportunity seek out this German film; it’s intelligent, exciting and arresting.

I was pleased that Forest Whitaker had written such a noble speech after being so tongue-tied at the Golden Globes. Unfortunately, Helen Mirren rewrote her speech after winning so many, and the joke – if it was one – didn’t work. Alan Arkin is a treasure, so it was great seeing him win. Eddie Murphy can make Norbit II, and doesn’t lose much by not winning for his fine performance.

To animation: Happy Feet beat out Monster House and the only animated feature nominated, Cars. This is the first MoCap film to have won an Oscar for that “Special Effect.” It’s impossible now for them to separate this program driven “animation” out of the category, and before long all of the nominated films will be “Performance” capture rather than animation.

It is an effect, and we get to see a non-animator like George Miller accept his Oscar for “Animation.” Perhaps, Robert Zemeckis will win for Beowulf next year.

At least, Torill Kove won the award for Best Animated Short with The Danish Poet. When I first saw the film, I was pleased to hear Sigrid Undset’s name show up in animated cartoon! It gave me hope that literacy wasn’t completely dead; now, this film gives me hope that 2D isn’t completely gone – yet. Perhaps, the people at Disney in conjunction with Robert Zemeckis, can take care of that as they build their ultra-high-tech new facility to create “Performance” capture films. (Sorry, I’m being too sarcastic even for myself.)

Congratulations to Torill Kove and the NFB; I am very pleased that the best nominated film in this category won.

Like a breath of fresh air.

– Michael Barrier has an excellent essay on his site about Paul Hindemith‘s visit to the Disney Studio. The article was written by Don Draganski, and it’s a revealing piece of information. A letter by Hindemith discussing in depth his thoughts on Disney, Stokowski, and Fantasia which was in progress. Draganski, as Barrier informs us, is a composer in his own right.

I once saw an exhilerating ballet by the Joyce Trisler Danscompany. Trisler was a student of Jerome Robbins who was brilliant in her own right. They performed a piece by Hindemith called “The Four Temperaments.” I fell in love with the music as much as the ballet. I tried in vain, at the time, to buy a recording of the piece, but there were none available. Trisler’s was a privately recorded copy. I saw the dance several more times falling more and more in love with it.
Paul Hindemith

As a youngish animator, I couldn’t help seeing the world through my own medium. I devised an idea to combine the ballet with animation which, like the music and the ballet, would be abstract. Just when I screwed up the courage to contact Trisler she died. She was young, and I was so upset at the lost talent that I had only so recently discovered. I did meet with someone from the company who represented them. They were eager to get involved. Eventually, however, the idea frittered away, and we never did it. This was years before computers would have made the plan an easy and relatively inexpensive one to execute. It was also a time when there was little money for the arts (Headline, NYDaily News: Ford to NY: Drop Dead) and raising funds for something with so little commercial value was not easy.

As an animation enthusiast and a fan of film scoring, I’ve always been intrigued by articles by musicians that talk of the world of music as it relates to animation. Ross Care is one composer (he scored my first short film, Byron Blackbear & the Scientific Method) who has written extensively about animation and has provided commentary tracks for animation dvds. Years ago, he arranged one of my favorite ASIFA-East programs. Alexander Steinert, officially the conductor on Bambi, came to analyze the score for that film and showed how the April Showers sequence developed musically.

Thanks to Mike Barrier for such an informative essay.

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– There’s an excellent interview with Brad Bird at the Spline Doctors’ site. It’s nice to know how together this guy is; everything he articulates here is good for any young person in animation to hear – actually, it’s good for old people, too.

He has some thoughtful comments on the 2D vs 3D argument, on some of the Disney Masters, and it’s even interesing to hear how he pronounces the name of his new film – Ratatouille. (Not too surprisingly, this movie’s promotion comes with a pronunciation guide.)

Thanks to Mark Mayerson for leading me to the podcast.

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- The Oscar nominated shorts – Animated & Live Action – are being screened in the best possible way today at noon and 4PM at the Academy Lighthouse theater, 111 East 59th Street. It costs $5 general admission/ $2 with student ID.

You can also see them at the IFC Center at 323 Sixth Avenue. Check their schedules. It also includes a couple of the shorts which were on the short list.

Joanna Quinn‘s short Dreams And Desires: Family Ties is not among those included nor is Dan Hertzfeldt‘s Everything Will Be OK.

Bill Plympton‘s shorts preceed all Live Action films at this theater. Good for him.

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- In case you haven’t noticed, Hans Perk continues to post the Pinocchio drafts on his site A Film LA. What a resource this site is. I feel like I have my own little archive to go to. Thanks Hans.

- G. Michael Dobbs has just posted the second chapter of his book on The Fleischer studio. It can be read on his site Made of Pen and Ink.

For those unfamiliar with this site, Dobbs has been writing this bio/animation history book for the last forever. He’s writing and posting it on the site one chapter at a time. Thus far we’ve had the prologue and chapters 1 & 2, and it’s already hot.

- In New York, there’s a lot of aniticipation for the Popeye dvd that’s scheduled to come out later this year. This is the one to be released by Warner Home Video/King Features and Hearst Entertainment. A lot of the animation community in New York were interviewed for an accompanying documentary for the disk. The doc is being directed by historian/film maker, Greg Ford, and should be pretty exciting.
(Click images to enlarge.)

Until then, there’s the Popeye’s Original Classics dvd which was released last year from Steve Stanchfield‘s Thunderbean Animation. As an added plus, if you buy this dvd you can hear the child version of me (1978) interviewing Jack Mercer about his Popeye Voice Overs. You can probably also use it to blackmail me.

This was originally a record that came with an issue of Mike Barrier‘s Funnyworld Magazine. it was supposed to be an incentive to buy the magazine, but I’m not so sure it worked. Regardless, I had a lot of fun doing it. I purposely chose Hal Seeger‘s studio, Channel Sound, to record the disk. That’s where they’d recorded a lot of the later Popeyes, and there were photos everywhere. Jackson Beck (Bluto) often stopped by to say hello. It’s also where I started out as a messenger going on asst. film editor.

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– Yesterday the news was all over the blogs about Peter Ellenshaw‘s death. Ellenshaw did all those wonderful glass matte shots in the Disney canon of live action films. The ships in Treasure Island wouldn’t have looked quite so beautiful if the surroundings weren’t Ellenshaw’s invention, and the rooftops of London – including that beautiful church steeple in the “Feed The Birds” sequence – of Mary Poppins wouldn’t have been so noble without his help. Nor the glens of Rob Roy, the town in Thomasina (my favorite Disney live action film), or the New England of Pollyana.

In 1979, the Museum of Modern Art had a show of Ellenshaw’s work with a lot of his matte paintings displayed, and he talked around a screening of shots he worked on from many of the films. I was struck with how impressionist the paintings were up close, yet on screen they looked so absolutely real. I asked about this, and he said that he found that the paintings had to feel a bit out of focus to achieve the effect of reality. When he painted in a very realistic mode, the paintings didn’t work.

The man knew what he was doing and was a master craftsman. Too bad that part of the film business seems to have died off. All effects now are “computer,” and I’m always so damned wistful for the past as I type this on my computer.

I’m sad to know he’s gone.

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All this sniping going on between John Kricfalusi, Mike Barrier and Stephen Worth. Can’t we all just get along? It makes for entertaining reading, but it’s just getting too catty. Apparently the personalities don’t mix; I’m glad I’m not really involved. I notice the chat roooms are blistering with comments, but none of the sites seem to be discussing it.

- In these days of horrible animation, I find difficulty in getting inspired to do anything artistic. I want to work with more than a lackluster obeisance to duty. I need to feel excited about the work. So what I have to do is go searching. Fortunately, this has been going on for so long that I’ve found a couple of sure-fire sparks to do the job.

Today we were editing some documentary pieces which will accompany the two dvds I have coming out in May/June. The two will feature four half-hour shows I did of Andersen tales.
The Red Shoes/Little Match Girl on one.
The Emperor’s New Clothes/Nightingale on the second.

In talking with my editor, Paul Carrillo, I mentioned Mako‘s work as an actor and how I sought him to narrate the Nightingale back in 1992. (I set it in Japan rather than China, as in the original.) Mako, who died last year, was someone whose work I loved. He is best remembered, probably, for his role in The Sand Pebbles. Animation people probably are most familiar with his voice in Samurai Jack.

Back in 1976 I saw him in Pacific Overtures and was so impressed, I returned immediately to see the Sondheim musical a second time.

The beauty of this show, beyond Stephen Sondheim‘s music, was the amazing sets by Boris Aronson.

I went back to Frank Rich‘s book about his work.

I’ve talked about Aronson’s work before and probably will again. (First post here; second post here.)
Like Jiri Trnka’s artwork, Aronson’s designs inspire me beyond anything I see today. Boris Aronson
.

This guy gets my juices flowing. He was a true artist, and my respect for what he did in the theater inspires me beyond anything I can say here. There aren’t too many in designers in theater today who can compare. (Probably Bob Crowley and Tony Walton come close.)

Here are some of the setpieces that Aronson designed for Pacific Overtures on Browadway:

This is Mako within the show. He was the Reciter, the Shogun and the Emperor in it. He sang the opening lyrics I love so much; I only hear his voice and his intonations when thinking about this song:

“In the middle of the world we float
In the middle of the sea.
The realities remain remote
In the middle of the sea.”

This is the design of the tree that blossomed like a Japanese fan. A young man climbed into it. An old man at the bottom of the tree represented the child grown up, and a third man lay under the treatyhouse where the Japanese negotiated with Admiral Perry. The house was designed so that the barbarian Americans would never have to touch Japanese soil, but would walk on tatami mats.

This is a setting wherein the soon-to-be minister will trek home with the sailor who has been “Americanized” in Boston.

Above is the design for the ship that morphed out of a dragon as it approached Japan.
The actual set is pictured below.

I wonder if Stephen Sondheim would allow an animated version of this show? He and I once discussed animating the show Assassins, but the book’s writer, John Weidman, wouldn’t allow an animated version. Sondheim seemed keen on the idea, and Hugh Wheeler wrote this book.

- There has been a lot of good material, information and comment on other sites this past week. I’d like to highlight some of my favorite pieces, but first – the Award Shows.

- Congratulations to New Yorkers: Bill Plympton for winning the “Winsor McCay Award” at the Annies for “Recognition of lifetime or career contributions to the art of animation.”
Other kudos to Blue Sky for winning the Best Short film award for “Not Time For Nuts.”

- Last night, while everyone else was watching the Grammy’s, I was glued to my set to see the BAFTA awards. These are the British equivalent of the Oscars. Though their nominees were better or, in some cases, similar to the Oscars, their selections were as cockeyed and confused as the Oscars will be. They tried to give something to everyone and ended up not supporting anyone. See all nominees here.

Certainly animation didn’t get support with their winners:
Happy Feet was the only MoCap film nominated in their awards. It won over Cars and Flushed Away (the closest they had to a Brit film).

Then the animated shorts saw strong injustice (in my humble opinion.)
Joanna Quinn‘s brilliant short Dreams & Desires: Family Ties – beautifully drawn and animated – was passed up for the winner. Ian Gouldstone‘s Guy 101 is a Royal College of Art film that has a compelling story about a gay seduction and bashing, and it’s basically a non-animated film. See it here.
If they wanted something compelling why not nominate and choose Rabbit by Run Wracke? At least there were drawings in that one.

________________________________ Now onto my blogging:

- First and foremost, to me, was the material Hans Perk has recently been posting on his blog A Film LA. There have been a lot of comments recently (much of it instigated by me) placing a focus on the Motion Capture feature films nominated for the Oscar. Comparisons have been made to rotoscoping (I think this is a ridiculous comparison, but so be it.)
Hans posts some Action Analysis notes from the Disney studios wherein instructor Don Graham leads a discussion of the use of rotoscope. It starts thus:

…that brings up a very good point – that there is just one reason why the rotoscope is used – and that’s because the men in the Studio can’t draw well enough. . . Problems come up every day that are really too difficult for the animator to execut at present.
As a result the rotoscope is used as a crutch.

Those lines alone are enough to understand why MoCap is so popular today. People who can’t animate or don’t want to learn or take the time to animate use Motion Capture. Live Action directors who want to be animators the easy way use MoCap.
Read this bit of historic conversation that nails the discussion perfectly. Go here to start. Continue here. An enormous thanks to Hans for posting this particular set of notes to put the exclamation point at the end of the conversation.

I have original copies of the complete Action Analysis lectures. The unfortunate part is that I don’t read them often enough. There’s so much information there that I need to start rereading.

- Then there is Michael Barrier. What a site! His is very opinionated, yet he has good reason for the self-confidence.

Mike’s voice justifiably carries the weight of authority. For the most part – regarding the history of animation – his opinion is the correct one. He has done the work with hundreds of interviews, viewing of and evaluating most of the films and reading everything available. He has material to back up most of what he says.

His comments on February 8th took some of the “historians” to task for their sloppy writing – specifically regarding the notion that the Disney studio was built as a hospital in case it failed. (I may be wrong – I’ll have to look back, but I somehow remember that being stated in the Diane Disney Miller book as a way Walt had of defending the expense of the studio when he was giving his father a tour. Did anyone, at the time, ever say the statement was true?)

Mike’s anger seems equivalent to mine re the rudeness most people display on the streets of New York. Lots of bumping into and pushing aside everyone in the way. These days everyone has an air of self-importance and so few people merit it.

The blogs today are filled with folk claiming to boycott Mike’s books and blogs. Who cares? There aren’t enough animation readers and buyers to really make a difference.

Mike’s writing does make a difference, though. He takes pride in his history and has no patience for sloppiness. God bless him; his is one site I can and do trust.

- Another dependable site is Mark Mayerson‘s. Mark has become one of the foremost historians to read, and his site is invaluable in ways unique to his interests.

Take a look at his Sunday post. He revises and re-reviews his own analysis of Mickey’s Birthday Party.

To start with, his breakdowns of these classic Disney shorts (built from some of the drafts posted by Hans Perk) is invaluable. Mark takes the information, visualizes it and then returns with some in depth commentary which I usually find informative.

Yet he has the same passion for accuracy that Mike Barrier does. I love this site, and I love how all three of these sites overlap and comment on each other.

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– There are other sites I love and visit every day, but these three were the most effective for me last week. The big change at Cartoon Brew just happened today, so I’ll talk about that soon. But go check it out now.

- The 1977 Hubley film of Gary Trudeau‘s Doonesbury Special has just shown up on YouTube. It comes in five parts. This is the film that was the last started by John Hubley.

The Hubley Studio was an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was always crowded with beautiful, framed art: paintings by John and Faith, Backgrounds from their films, and the more attractive awards given to them.

Stepping into the apartment/studio was like stepping into an art gallery brimming with modern art. I always felt like I should be whispering.

Fresh off Raggedy Ann & Andy, I was brought on board the show to assist John. I had missed the prior 18 months while John was in London working on and getting over the Watership Down debacle. ***

(One of Tissa’s 24 drawing walk cycle. Someday I’ll
post them all with rougher preliminary sketches.)

Returning to the studio was both a joy and a shock. All that great art, had Doonesbury strips ripped out of the newspapers and taped over all the framed Hubley art. I found it embarrassing given how great the art was underneath those strips.

The show was just barely getting started. Actors had just started recording. John, Faith and Gary spent many of their days at the studio recording while I started development of the film’s art from the storyboards.

Kate Wodell, one of Hubley’s talented ex-students from Yale who had worked through Everybody Rides the Carousel, was the only other person on staff; I think she started a few days after me.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Gary and I didn’t really speak more than to say hello, but it was obvious that he and I didn’t really get along. John strongly held onto me, and wouldn’t alow me to leave or be left.

However, about a month into the work, he called me to his room. John told me that he had to lay me off for a couple of weeks. He was about to go into the hospital for an operation up at Yale, and would halt work until his return.

John Hubley didn’t return. He died on the operating table.

After a short period, Faith announced that they would finish the film in John’s honor, and she and Gary Trudeau would direct in tandem. I decided not to return. I took a job assisting R.O.Blechman direct his first one-hour special, Simple Gifts.

About a month into my work, I got a call from Tissa David. She was animating the class play in the Doonesbury Special, and she needed help. She couldn’t find an assistant who could keep up with her on the schedule she had to meet for them. About 100 feet a week of pretty full animation.

I agreed to work free lance on Tissa’s work for Faith. During the day I was an Asst. Director on one PBS Special; at night I was an Asst. Animator on another CBS Special. When I completed Tissa’s scenes – about a month’s work – I got a call from Kate Wodell. Ruth Kissane had animated a piano rotating 90 degrees with a character playing the piano on another level, but she’d left many of the drawings for an assistant. No one at the Hubley studio could do it, and they asked if I would help out. I did the scene which took about a week.

Unfortunately, that was the last time I worked for Faith, even though we remained close up to her death.

(This is Ruth Kissane‘s sequence. I have the original drawings somewhere and
I’ll eventually post them.)

*** (I’m sorry this was not written clearly. I do not think Watership Down, the film, was a debacle. John Hubley’s involvment with the film and his treatment by Producer, Martin Rosen, was. See my comment below.)

- Thanks to George Griffin for directing me to a couple of gallery shows in NYC that include animation work. They’re worth seeing for the rules they break, if nothing else. Though there are inspired moments in it. Like sitting through the recent films of Jean Luc Godard, I have a hard time staying awake, but I always walk away inspired, refreshed and excited by the thoughts on the screen.

- The Bellweather Gallery features Brent Green. This show features wildly mixed media in a number of pieces, the longest of which is “Paulina Hollers” at 12 minutes. Using everything from magic markers on glass to 3D stop-motion animation he creates films that have all to do with death.

Bellweather Gallery at 134 Tenth Avenue.
This show closes tomorrow, Feb. 3. See it right away.

These are capsule reviews in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Village Voice.

- The Marianne Boesky Gallery has an exhibition of work by Jacco Olivier. This show isn’t quite as impressive and far less inspiring, more like watching paintings progressing to their conclusion shot in stop-motion.

The gallery is located at 509 West 24th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Tues to Sat, 10am to 6pm. (212) 680-9889.

You can view some stills of the artwork at the Gallery’s site.

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– For those Mary Blair fans out there, story artist and animator, Fred Cline, has posted a commercial from the 50′s that uses designs Mary Blair created for a Little Golden Book called I Can Fly.

The commercial was done at TV Graphics, Inc. in New York and was supervised by Lee Blair, Mary’s husband. The commercial is for Milk, but Cline says he has a second for ice cream.

See the spot here.

The book can still be purchased through Random House.
Hardcover $12.95, Paperback $4.95.

(I first found this info on Drawn posted by Ward Jenkins.)

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If you’ve watched The Family Guy sequence which rips off the sequence from Anchors Aweigh, you owe it to yourself to go back and watch the original with Jerry the mouse. The original was animated by Ken Muse and Ray Patterson.

Both versions depended on rotoscoping. The original rotoscoped Gene Kelly’s dance to match it with Jerry; The Family Guy rotoscoped Jerry to cover him up with the same animation redone featuring their character, Stewie. More Happy Feet.

- Yesterday I pointed to some Casper shorts on line. I was amused to find two of my old Sesame Street spots on YouTube.

Chicken Crossing here.
Crocodile Smiles here.

I did both of these after just starting my company. These are two of the first three spots I produced for Sesame Street. I think they were done in 1982. Edith Zornow was the genius at Sesame Street who did magnificent work with all the different animators. For the longest time, I considered her my guardian angel. Just when business had gotten at its worst, she would call out of the blue with a half dozen spots to do. I had lots of freedom in all of them and really learned my business doing them. She died in 1991, and I still miss her.

Maxine Fisher wrote lyrics and stories for both of these spots (and about 30 more.)

Chicken Crossing has a funny soundtrack that Harrison Fisher put together for me.

Crocodile Smiles has a great score by Ernest Troost. He mimicked grand opera as if it were recorded in 1936, and it’s hilarious. Ernest and I have teamed up many times; I’m a big fan.

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- Animator, Larry Ruppel brought an interesting little find to me last week. When we met after the panel session at the Museum of the Moving Image, he showed me three dvd’s (one of them is pictured here.)

Apparently, some of the stores, called generically “99 cent stores,” have been selling some interesting video finds. I’m going to quote Larry who sent me a follow-up letter:

you have to be careful and only get either the “Cartoon Craze” series from Digiview Productions (these are the best – they have a great Superman series as well), or from East West Entertainment.

It’s quite a crappy minefield in the 99 cent DVD world, you really have to be careful. Felix and Popeye cartoons are most likely their 60′s TV incarnations – always check the titles.

I always treat my search as a treasure hunt. You never know what you’ll
find.

There are two links with information that Larry sent me, and they’re worth sharing. Accelerated Decripitude and Community Live Journal which gives titles.

If your local community doesn’t have a “99 cent store,” check out Walmart. Apparently a lot of these can also be found there.

Talk about Happy Feet. Here are some frame grabs from the first of the Van Buren shorts on this “Tom & Jerry” dvd:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- There’s a good British site called Skwigly which gives news from England & Europe. Its highlight is a good forum where they have live chats on Tuesday nights – 9-11pm GMT (check local times.)

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- A slew of Casper the Ghost cartoons are on line for those wacky folks out there who love Casper cartoons. (This same host, GUBA.com, also offers lots of other cartoons such as Popeye.)

I spent a lot of years watching Casper. In New York, before every channel was a national network, we got a lot of locally-made animation. Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse) or Paramount (Casper, Popeye and Baby Huey) were the predominant fare of the NYDaily News owned Channel 11 or the even lower-rent Channel 9. The Warner shorts were the B&W ones on Channel 5. The same was true of theaters. It was infrequent that a Warners or Disney short played on those Saturday morning marathons where 10 color cartoons played with Francis the Talking Mule.

(Click images to enlarge.)

I didn’t really choose Casper, and I never really liked the cartoons, but I was an animation addict and had to watch. Looking back at these shorts, it’s amazing how good they are in comparison to the nonsense we’re fed and make these days.

All that watching paid off years later when I worked alongside Johnny Gent, Izzy Klein, Marty Taras or Nick Tafuri. There are so many more: Bob Little, Cosmo Anzilotti, Gerry Dvorak, Jim Logan and others. I was able to talk intelligently about their work. I already knew their names before I met them.

Casper is also the focus of an upcoming book by Jerry Beck and Leslie Carbaga. This collects the Casper comic books in a 400 page tome. It’s available from Dark Horse comics and can be ordered in advance of its April 2007 publication date.

It’s amazing how many of these same artists did a good share of moonlighting on these comics. It was their night job.

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The comic strip I do love is Polly and Her Pals. Cliff Sterrett never failed me; I love everything about his strip. Once again the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive comes through with some more first rate images. From Kent Butterworth’s collection they have 5 beautiful Sunday pages newly posted.

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– Something else I love are the films of Japanese animator, Koji Yamamura. His short, Mt. Head, was nominated for the Oscar a couple of years back, and another, The Old Crocodile, was a hit on the festival circuit the past couple of years. Apparently, there’s a recently released video collection of his work. I found this interesting review on the Senses of Cinema site.

Incidentally, if you’re not familiar with this site, stay there and take a look around. It’s one of those high-minded, intellectual magazine sites with lots of well written reviews and information. I can’t get enough of them.

The nominees for the BAFTA Awards were announced last week. This is the British equivalent of the Academy Awards. Generally, a great winner emerges in the animated categories, particularly the shorts. This year is no exception:

Two of the nominees for Best Animated Feature match the Oscars: Cars, Happy Feet.. Flushed Away replaces Monster House on their list – appropriately, since it’s animated.

Nominees for Best Animated Short film are:

DREAMS AND DESIRES – FAMILY TIES – Les Mills/Joanna Quinn
GUY 101 – Ian Gouldstone
PETER AND THE WOLF – Hugh Welchman/Alan Dewhurst/Suzie Templeton

Peter and the Wolf by Suzie Templeton is a one hour animated film to the Prokofiev score. Click here to see a trailer.

Guy 101 by Ian Gouldstone is a short film about a man who hears a story about a hitchhiker from the other side of the Internet. The film was done as a student film for the Royal College of Art Animation. See it here.

Dreams and Desires: Family Ties by Joanna Quinn is a film about a woman and her home movies of a wedding. Brilliantly conceived and ridiculously skipped over by the US Oscar voters. It’s certainly the best animated short of the last year. The film is part of Don Hertzfelt & Mike Judge’s Animation Show which played in NY laste week.

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– A lot has been discussed in the past week about the validity of Motion Capture as a form of “Animation.” This conversation was instigated by the Oscar nominations. Two of the three nominations for the Best Animated Feature were created using MoCap.

Mark Mayerson questioned if we shouldn’t be deciding whether we’re officially going to call Motion Capture animation. And if we shouldn’t, then is Cars the only officially nominated animated feature?
Now, of course, Motion Capture animators feel slighted. But they would have to agree that the soul, the impetus behind the movement does not come from them, but rather from the live action actor that was originally “captured”?

The comparison has been made that
traditional animation has often used Roto- scoping in creating animation. In fact, Disney’s Cinderella became the first feature that was wholly filmed in live action prior to
animation.

However, I’d like to make the point that the two methods are unrelated except in that live actors are involved. The difference to me, is that one is inspiration and the other is the heart of the animation.

When an animator is given live action reference material – the rotoscoped/traced drawings from the live action acting – he/she refers to it but animates to what is necessary for the scene. the animator is the actor using the prerecorded voice, the physical rotoscoped reference, and anything available to help give the character a “soul.”

Even in Bakshi’s use of Rotoscoping in Lord of the Rings, the animators were allowed to push the drawings beyond the live action, alter the drawings to get them on character, and essentially produce the action.

When an “animator” gets the MoCap filmed live action, the actions are set. The actors have done the movement. What remains is the proper positioning of the characters within the created scene, cleaning up the characters and constructing the scene. There’s no real animation, as we’ve come to know it.

For years now, I’ve called this electronic puppetry, but that’s not really accurate. The site Digital Puppetry seems to have labelled it correctly.

Younger animators seem to have less a problem with all of this labelling and irritation accrued by older veterans. In fact, the problem really is a threat to the “animator.” Last week, I hyperbolically suggested that the days of the animator were a dead as the dodo. You see, animation has turned into a computer effect. Live Action directors are now directing “animated films” in greater numbers. Peter Jackson had his “Gollum,” Robert Zemeckis had his “Polar Express” (and produced “Monster House”), Ang Lee had (and in fact acted) The Hulk. The “animators” have become interchangeable and almost irrelevant.
You aren’t able to define anyone’s animation style behind any of Tom Hanks’ characters in Polar Express. You can only see Tom Hanks or Savion Glover in Happy Feet.

(All images except this one enlarge by clicking them.)

In Snow White, you can tell which scenes Grim Natwick animated; his style of animation comes across. It doesn’t matter how many rotoscoped drawings were given to him as reference. Grim animated the scenes.

In the big picture what really does all this quibbling matter? I enjoyed Happy Feet more than I did Cars. Cars was a better constructed film, both were riddled with cliches. I was entertained by all that dance. I like Savion Glover (though I would have preferred watching Savion Glover.) The film also seemed to have some sort of misguided representation of a message. I appreciated that. Cars, to me, had only a lot of loud noisy reverberation. From the first frame, the film came screaming. The artistry behind the imagery was astounding, as expected from Lasseter, but the film was boring.

Of course, this is only my opinion based on my biases. You have your opinions based on your biases. However, as an Academy voter, I’ll probably vote for Cars because I think technically it was a better “Animated” film. Isn’t that the category?

If you haven’t read Mark Mayerson or Keith Lango on this subject, you should.

Ward Jenkins reminded me that he had two interesting posts about Polar Express on his site. It gives an interesting look at how to correct the “Zombie Eyes” on the characters. #1 and #2. Check them out, if you haven’t seen them.