Cassidy's Response...
...to that whole CB thing is great. Read it here!
posted by Kevan at
2/08/2006 04:38:00 PM
About Me
- Name: Kevan
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Small, spiky Welshman. Helps make animated feature films in exotic locations.
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I have to put it - all words and opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not represent those of the nice company that pays me money to move computer-generated characters around.
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11 Comments:
To me, I think you guys seem to take it just a tad too seriously. He isn't just talking about CG, but about most 2D features as well. The thing is... what's so great about all those tom and jerry or WB or Disney shorts, is that there weren't 60 animators working on a film, but only 4 or 5, with each their distinctive styles. This makes them far more recognizable. Also, because of the low number of real animators on those shorts, their different styles are much more well-known, as they can be recognized by outsiders, as opposed to only people who know you and how you animate. Add to that the fact that Tom and Jerry and Bugs and Daffy and alike all have numurous different versions, even in design and character, which creates room for those distinctive animation styles to take more of the foreground. It's not so much that you can't put yourself in a CG shot, or that other animators wouldn't be able to recognize you did it, it's that these different styles added a lot to the fun of the shorts, because the difference was much more clear.
By
Benjamin De Schrijver, at 6:19 PM
Hi Kevan - I don't want to speak for Jerry, but I'd hazard a guess that he was referring to animation in general, not just CG. He starts it out saying, "The saddest part about the slow demise of hand drawn (2-D) animation over the past 30 years, is the loss of the animator's individualistic personality." So there he's not even talking about CG and is referrring to hand-drawn animation—the meaningless stock gestures of so many '90s hand-drawn features and the formula movements and on-model fetish of most TV animation. I mean, just look at the drawing posted in the item on the Brew. Everything about that movement—the posing, the expression, the amazing graphic shapes that Scribner gets into his draawing—is unique. This is a level of art that's generally lacking from a lot of modern studio animation, whether it be hand-drawn or CG. Anyway just my two cents.
By
AMID, at 10:12 PM
Hi Ben and Amid,
I too was talking about animation in general, although my comments have a more CG-ish slant simply because of my profession. I contest that character continuity is so much more important than the evidence of an individual animator - it is not about us, it is about them! I'm afraid I don't understand why being able to see the individual hand of one particular person is a good thing if your goal is creating a gestalt entity that is to be a believeable personality in it's own right.
"One of the reasons the "Making of/Art of" books (especially Pixar's) are so fun is we get to see the individual styles of the artists behind the scenes. Rarely does this fun make it to the finished film".
The above relates to modern animated film-making in general, and CG films in particular, so I took the post at face value - the dearth of traditionally created content was Jerry's springboard to his point about the lack of indivdual expression in contemporary animation.
Maybe you're right. Perhaps I am taking things a little too seriously, but I strongly believe that the influence of the artist can reasonate through a scene through performance choices, rather than brush strokes.
Thanks for commenting,
K
By
Kevan, at 9:13 AM
How about Craig Kellman's work in Madagascar?
Doesn't that hit you as being totally his art direction, but animated for 90 minutes?
Hells yeah!
By
Kevan, at 9:26 AM
i think that making a character perform on their own no matter who is animating it makes for a real challenge. you don't want people to associate with you, but with the character, hence, the illusion of life. this is not to say that generality is what we should strive for, but to truly get inside the character and make them act the way THEY would, not the way WE would.
what we are seeing now (in good films that don't have "winked" in the title) is characters that take on a life of their own. when you watch films like the incredibles or madagascar or finding nemo, you get a sense of the character, not the animator. i think that it is easier to be detached from your character in CG than in traditional animation because you don't get attached to your drawings and are able to think more about performance.
good discussion, kevan
-drew
By
Drew, at 9:51 AM
Benjamin's probably right about us guys taking it too seriously... it just gets on my nerves when people make big sweeping generalizations based on prejudice. I did misinterpret that post as more specifically anti-CG, and I see now that Jerry was talking about more than that.
Still, Amid, I hope you can see how I may have gotten the impression that you guys at the Brew really hate CG in particular... little comments like the one Jerry made about the Oscar nominations, for example. It just comes off as rather mean-spirited and unfair.
By
cassidy, at 11:14 AM
Again, I don't want to speak for Jerry, but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that he has no problems with CG. Same goes for me. When the INCREDIBLES came out, I wrote on the Brew that it was the most entertaining animated feature I've ever seen, and it still is. I thought Chris Landreth's RYAN was terrific and many of the best films/commercials I see at festivals and beyond are CG. The backlash against CG doesn't have anything to do with the quality studios like Pixar, DreamWorks/PDI, Blue Sky, Disney, etc. You guys are all doing great things to push the medium forward in new directions. But at the management level, there is no doubt that a lot of poor decisions are being made.
For example, just yesterday somebody showed me a great concept that they'd developed for animation. It was developed as a hand-drawn Flash project, but the only way the studio would go forward is if they switched it to CG. No artistic reason, no real benefit to the production, simply because that's what they felt sells nowadays. Those type of decisions are what a lot of the backlash is against. So when Jerry says that he had a smile on his face because none of the nominees were CG, that isn't because he inherently dislikes CG, but because it's a validation to the art of animation. That despite this current trend where executives blindly insist on turning everything CG, you can have a whole slate of quality animated features that bucked the trend, and the Academy was able to recognize the films for their merits of storytelling and art, instead of being blinded by the technique like so many of today's executives.
PS - My dislike of the DreamWorks films also has nothing to do with the fact that they're CG. I have trouble watching all of the DW product, whether it's hand-drawn or CG, and in fact I prefer some of the CG films over fare like SINBAD and SPIRIT. I think the artists are doing a commendable job given the circumstances, but I strongly believe that the overall vision for the films is lacking. Every time I watch one of the DW films, I feel insulted, because they pander instead of asserting themselves creatively. I've always attributed this lukewarm creative approach to Katzenberg over any individual director as there is such a consistent voice from film to film. For example, MADAGASCAR, I think Kellman's designs were fantastic, but like I said in a recent interview for my 50s design book, "why did that film have to look that way? It really didn't. They imposed a very stylized look onto the film as a gimmick rather than an organic extension where design comes out of the needs of the story." Too many of the creative choices in DreamWorks films strike me as arbitrary rather than coming from the singular vision of a director. I don't think that's going to change as long as Katzenberg has a creative stranglehold on the crews. I'm going to duck and cover now.
By
Amid, at 3:26 AM
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
McGovernment, at 12:25 PM
wow, how'd you manage to get a wire-tap into Katzenbergs office? oh? you didnt? Well it sure sounds like you hear it all. Or maybe thats all an assumption. Either way, a wise man once told me, to assume only makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.
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McGovernment, at 12:26 PM
Thanks, Amid, for the thoughtful response. I agree with you, in general, about it being unwise for executives to reach in and mess up someone's vision that otherwise would have had some creative integrity. I've seen it happen many times at various places I've worked, and man, it really sucks when that happens.
But I do need to correct you on a point of fact: I never saw that happen with Madagascar. That stylized look was integral to the directors' vision from the very beginning, and the boldness and strength of that vision energized all of us who worked on the film. If anything, my only regret is that we weren't able to push the look further than we did. I'm sorry you got the impression that it was somehow slapped on at the last minute as a "gimmick". Nothing could be further from the truth.
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cassidy, at 12:43 PM
It worked for audiences too, because the shapes were organic enough to contrast with the orthogonals of New York, but angular and linear enough to not be as -totally- naturalistic as the jungle.
And they were all heavily distorted and wild. Say, like animals...wild animals.
By
Warren Peace, at 5:36 PM
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