Chuck Jones &Commentary 12 Jul 2007 09:03 am
Geckos, Bears and Harman Ising
- Any reader of this blog knows that I am not a fan of Motion Capture; hell, I’m not much of a fan of cgi animation. I’d prefer to watch animated puppets if I’m looking for 3D animation, and I don’t think cgi has reached the level of some of the 2D animation that’s been done.
However, if I have to give a good reason for Motion Capture’s existence I would pick the Geico Gecko commercials. I think that little guy transcends animation; I totally buy it as a real creature talking to me in his Cockney accent. I like it and don’t think the same feel could be done any other way.
I started wondering about who did these spots and decided to do a little research. The spots sort of feel like some of Aardman’s work, but I never quite believed Aardman would resort to Motion Capture (but then I never thought they’d use cgi either.)
It turns out the spots are done in New York by a company called Framestore, NY. They’ve done a lot of effects work and commercials in the past. Most notably they’ve been involved with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Walking With Dinosaurs done for the Discovery Channel. They also have a London based office.
The President of the company is Jon Collins and the lead animator on the spots is Dave Hulin. Sarah Dowland is the producer, and Andy Walker is another animator involved in the commercials.
The original voice of the Gecko was Kelsey Grammar, but only for the first spot. Then Brit actor, Dave Kelly took the part. Those spots were done by Rhythm & Hues.
The current incarnation of the Gecko done by Framestore NY is voiced by British actor, Jake Wood.
Three of these spots can be seen at the Framestore website.
A short break for a little news brief: Sean Penn and Iggy Pop have signed on to do voices for the US version of Persepolis. They join Catherine Deneuve and Gena Rowlands. The French film, which won a jury prize at Cannes, will be released in November.
– Last night I watched a show on Boomerang. Entertainingly enough, it’s called MGM. These are the non-Avery non-Tom & Jerry cartoons of MGM. That means a lot of Harman-Ising and a few other oddities.
These are for the most part the bulk of shorts that ran on TCM’s Cartoon Alley. All of the prints are Turner-beautiful, and a good way to catch some of these cartoons. The program appears to have only been on a couple of weeks, at most, so I’ve only caught it two or three times. They seem to put up the later films from this unit – they don’t want it to seem too dated. Since the scheduled has shifted half a dozen times already, I’m not sure it’s long for the world. The programs run at 6pm or 8pm or whenever in the evening are apparently repeated early morning (last night at 4:30am) if you want to tape the shows with your timer.
Last night they ran the Chuck Jones short The Bear That Wasn’t(1967). This is an adaptation of Frank Tashlin ‘s children’s book published in 1946. The film was produced by Tashlin and Jones and was directed by Maurice Noble and Jones.
One of Chuck Jones’ most apt and famous quotes was to have called Hanna-Barbera’s (and, indeed, most tv animation) work “illustrated radio.” That is the saying that is most appropriate for this short. Paul Frees does an excellent job of speaking all the voices including the narrator (although it doesn’t sound well recorded). The only female voices are done by a chorus of females that sings all their lines. Dean Elliott didn’t do his best score for this film. The music sounds like a bad-jazzy version of a James Bond/Pink Panther impersonation.
(Click any image to enlarge. )
I’m a big fan of Maurice Noble’s work, but he was working overtime for this short, and the film is overdesigned. Too much gets in the way of the simple animation – trying, in fact, to 
hide the limitations of the animation. Looking at Tashlin’s book, there’s a simplicity that could have been easily relayed by anyone who just adapted the book. There was too much ego at the top of the credits here, and the film suffers for it. The end result is boring.
This was the first time I’d ever seen the short, so I was glad to have caught via the back door of Boomerang. The show today is at 9am, 8pm and 4:30am. This is what’s on today’s schedule:
Hanna & Barbera’sGallopin’ Gals
Hugh Harman’sTom Turkey and His _-_ Harmonica Humdingers
Dick Lundy’s Cobs and Robbers
and Hugh Harman’s Blue Danube.
An odd mix. (An item for sale on ebay.)
on 12 Jul 2007 at 11:33 am 1.Kevin Langley said …
Dammit! I don’t get Boonerang. I would’ve loved to record some of the Harman/Ising shorts.
on 12 Jul 2007 at 1:29 pm 2.Tom Minton said …
Frank Tashlin himself was said to be rather unhappy with the Jones MGM short. Benny Washam told me “I think Tashlin took the money he got from them for using his book and bought a hamburger.” Yet Maurice Noble remained very proud of his work on “The Bear That Wasn’t”, and showed it to a group of writers, directors, layout artists and background designers at Warner Bros in 1990, at a point when it was regarded as something of a lost cartoon. In fact, Maurice had to ask MGM to send over a copy from their vault and the sole library print they had at that point was a very faded Metrocolor (private label Eastmancolor) 35mm example. Presumably the version running today has been restruck from original negative or otherwise digitally restored.
on 12 Jul 2007 at 2:02 pm 3.Michael said …
Thanks, Tom, for the information. I think the film isn’t well directed. It looks like they tried to make another run at the same success they had with The Dot & The Line. They were obviously trying something here, but the story just didn’t support all the fancy design work. (And believe me, I am a big believer in modern design in animation.) A better version of a similar story is Munro done by Gene Deitch who just followed Jules Feiffer, faithfully. The story is almost the same, but Munro is more poignant.
on 12 Jul 2007 at 2:11 pm 4.Tom Minton said …
You’re right, Michael, Deitch’s Munro film is a more successful example than “Bear”. Curiously, Jones followed Norton Juster’s book in “The Dot and the Line” short and won his last competitive Oscar. Yet he chose to personally rewrite Juster’s screenplay for his one feature effort “The Phantom Tollbooth”, with disastrous results. According to Washam, the original screenplay was fine as it came in. We’ll never know.
on 12 Jul 2007 at 4:52 pm 5.Keith Lango said …
That’s really interesting that you like the Gecko. I feel like they’re largely failures. Funny how tastes range so widely for individuals. I certainly do allow space for differing opinions on a thing, though. Yet to me these Geico spots have always been the worst kind of representation of the confusedly disjointed yet narrow box that CG tends to put things in– moreso than most other efforts. There is a major disconnect between the realism of the character in texture and material compared to it’s form and motion. I get that it’s composited onto live action photography, so the realism in surface appearance is appropriate (thougn not mandatory as other clever animators have shown). But to stick this realistic skin on something that doesn’t even try to have the movement or form of a gecko seems like the easy way to go. I can’t even think of how a gecko could ever stand on two legs. The ones around my house here never do. This dissonance always strikes me when I see the spots. What remains is basically a guy in a very fancy looking rubber suit. I certainly don’t advocate only a literal minded approach when it comes to animation, but if you’re gonna open the can of literalism, then be bold and try to make it all work for you, not just the easy parts.
The thing that’s frustrating about it is that there is a gold mine of opportunity here that’s never even explored. Why have a realistic Gecko walking on 2 legs and waving his arms and fingers about like a human in the first place? A cartoon gecko doing that? I’d understand. Bugs Bunny approach and all (although would it kill them to try and put some line of action into that reptile? If he were anymore consistently vertical and he’d be a flagpole). But seems to me these spots drop the ball in the animation performances. I think it’d be even better to see a realistically skinned gecko moving and structured in a manner that is more faithful to the gecko-ish nature, but still delivering the fun monologues. Observe one for a while and a good animator can see that there’s enough room in how a lizard does its thing to allow for an imaginative realm of character performance. The real fun in such animation would not be to stick an obviously bipedal human into a gecko suit but to transform a convincing looking gecko into a real gecko character who can talk while still maintaining much of its gecko-ness. Not pure literalness, but interpreted and expanded. Shere Kahn is very much tiger and very much upper crust stuffed shirt at the same time. The recent effort in this regard with Ratatouille (the grossness of rats aside) shows that it is more than possible to keep the better part of an animal’s nature without throwing out the baby with the anthropomorphic bathwater. For these reasons I always feel a twang of remorse at the lost opportunity the Gecio spots represent. They had such a chance to do something really special. But it’s easier to just have him act like some dude standing around.
Seeing as the gecko is nothing more than a company mascot I suppose it’s a bit much to ask for more than your typical sports team mascot approach in representing it. Still, one could hope. ;o)
But the voice acting is usually quite good and that does indeed cover a multitude of other sins so of course the spots deliver the goods in spite of themselves.
on 12 Jul 2007 at 8:18 pm 6.Sean Dooley said …
Tashlin definitely was unhappy with the result. In an interview with Michael Barrier, he explained exactly why it was ruined for him:
“Well, they destroyed the cartoon with one little thing. I saw that, I almost cried. I never talked to Chuck about it, I’ve never talked to him since. It was a terrible thing. This bear, he goes to sleep under a factory, when he wakes up they try to convince him he’s a [man], as you well know, and he keeps insisting he’s a bear, and that’s the point of it. Up front in the beginning of this thing, when they are telling him he is a man and he is insisting he’s a bear, they put a cigarette in his mouth. Now, the picture was destroyed there, because by the acceptance of a cigarette—you never saw where he got it—by putting a cigarette in his mouth, he was already a man. You know what I mean? Psychologically, the picture was ruined. It stopped working from that point on. So that was a terrible experience.”
The complete interview can be found here: http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Interviews/Tashlin/tashlin_interview.htm
Also, The Bear That Wasn’t is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3.
on 13 Jul 2007 at 12:17 am 7.Thad Komorowski said …
Gee, many of those Geico ads strike me as really mundane and unfunny. Which is odd, because they’ve managed to do some hilarious ads in the past.
Walt Kelly wasn’t happy with Chuck’s Pogo special either. FWIW.
on 13 Jul 2007 at 8:28 am 8.Michael said …
Sean, thanks for pointing to Michael Barrier’s interview. I remember reading that. It shows how deeply I’ve delved into some of those Looney Tunes dvds. I own all of the volumes but haven’t watched them all. I wouldn’t have made it completely through the dvd of The Bear That Wasn’t.
on 13 Jul 2007 at 2:40 pm 9.Nadia said …
Isa loves Tom and Jerry and the MGM show on Boomerang. And whenever we pass a billboard when we are driving on the highway…and it’s the Geico Lizard that is on it….she yells “GEICO!…It’s the GEICO Lizard!”
on 20 Jul 2007 at 3:56 pm 10.Jon Collins said …
Hi Michael,
Just for the record, the Geico spots weren’t actually done using motion capture techniques. They were done using the time consuming method of key frame animation.
But thank you anyway for your kind words.
Jon
on 20 Jul 2007 at 4:22 pm 11.Michael said …
I have to say, I find it hard to believe it isn’t Motion Capture, and I’m thrilled to hear it at the same time. The motion is very delicate and human, and I quite like it. Congratulations, so much the better from my point of view.
on 20 Jul 2007 at 5:07 pm 12.David Hulin said …
Thanks Micheal, the animation team here at Framestore NY are very flattered to hear that. We worked very hard on the rig and setting the style of the animation prior to production. It was very much a conscious decision not to motion capture, we wanted spend the time doing great animation as apposed to cleaning bad mo-cap data.
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