On Story: No reason to sacrifice character to plot

This is a reposting of a Diaries entry from March 2006 that I think bears revisiting.

Michael Sporn posted this still of Bill Peet-taken from the Sword in the Stone DVD-on his blog in 2008



Michael Barrier makes some sharp--and challenging--comments about the point of great character animation in his most recent post. He describes his friend, animator Milt Gray, flipping some of Ollie Johnston's animation of "Jock" from Lady and the Tramp, and being startled by the amazingly lifelike performance that sprung off the pages. Barrier continues:

The great virtue of Disney films like Lady and the Tramp was that they showed that such animation is possible. Their great vice was that they seemed to say, in a louder voice over time, that such animation is possible only in children's films.

As a result, the temptation, if you're making more "adult" films, is surely to shrug off the Disney animators' lessons; but there's no way, if you're doing that, to achieve the emotional strength of their best work. A lot of animated filmmakers seem to think that they can work around that problem by making "story" their mantra, or by simply ignoring the question of how to give animated characters a vivid presence on the screen. But such dodges never succeed. It's only by meeting head-on the challenge of making the characters in their films as real as the best live actors that animated filmmakers will ever escape from the ghetto to which they have been, so far, rightly assigned.

Tough words...but I know what he's talking about, and I suspect most of my colleagues do, too.

To turn Barrier's premise inside-out, though, there have been some Disney films where "story" took a backseat to characters. In that category I'd put "Sword in the Stone" and "Jungle Book", both films I saw and loved as a kid and still love--but mainly for the performances of such as Shere Khan, Archimedes, Merlin and King Louis--not for the relatively weak story/plot and the corniest gags that are in them. Were the characters in those films not as entertaining and real as they are, there'd be pretty much nothing there but color and movement.

It's been said by wiser heads than mine that in the latter days of the nine old men, they were actors without a worthy stage, much like Laurence Olivier giving it his all in "Boys From Brazil" or "The Betsy". Feature animation was in a general doldrums; the kidvid ghetto was going full bore on TV, and there was no guiding hand at the world's most sophisticated animation company. It seemed to operate on the inertia of a more energetic time.

I think there are definitely pitfalls in having a story "mantra" that ignores just who's doing what in a film, though it's never intentional to sacrifice personality for plot--the aim is almost always the opposite, in fact.

Maybe there's a perception among non-artists of animation as having some sort of special needs, since our characters aren't seen in early development as castable flesh and blood actors, but are drawings and designs.

Of course the very, very early, embryonic beginnings of a feature film are a story's premise. If there isn't any story there to tell, well, that's trouble. It needn't be at as big as an epic, it can be small and even personal--but in the end it has to connect with a wide audience, and more than plot it's characters who carry that burden.

So to continue and develop that premise, assuming the story has something to work with it really does depend on the characters(that goes for the great shorts as well: Bugs Bunny trapped on a desert island is a hell of lot more interesting than Barney Bear trapped on a desert island or a Genericized Rabbit in that situation).

The story of a father fish looking for his lost son...okay. The story of a terribly neurotic, xenophobic, keep-to-the-reef father fish forced to plunge into deep seas, teamed up with various creatures he'd never want to deal with, but does it anyway, struggling all the while? Much better.

One doesn't want the plot running the characters, one wants the characters to be the plot--to make it their own one of a kind story, if you will. But(remembering "Sword in the Stone")they still need something worthwhile to do, and in a long-form story it probably can't be a one-set premise(never say never, but to generalize). No "Waiting For Godot"s. Pinocchio should get out of Gepetto's workshop. But personally I don't see any way forward in any story without nailing down the characters first. I have to know this person if I'm going to make drawings of them, and especially if I have to have them do or say anything.

Ideas come from drawing; good drawings--great drawings--come out of acting, the old "acting with a pencil" canard. It's really true. The more you know and love the characters, the more options for entertainment you'll have. They'll take over a scene in the same way novelists describe, with their characters. If you're taken in an entirely new direction, and it's going to work, it might be a very good thing when strong characters hijack you.

"EVERYTHING old is new again"(and again and again and again)

The title of this entry has quotes around it because it's an old, old aphorism.
[aph·o·rism [af-uh-riz-uhm]: a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”]

A cursory scan of a few reviews of a certain just-released animated film forced me to the laptop for this brief post. One of the more positive ones is sub-headlined, "Though impressive, the 3-D retro-futurist look and time-travel plot feel almost old-fashioned."

The first thing I think--instantly--is, "what exactly is "wrong" with "old-fashioned"? The reviewer is apparently implying that certain large elements are tired, been-there, seen-that--but when those elements are a lonely boy, or a beautifully-moderne design of the future...what the heck? I'm sincerely baffled with the problem.

See, as far as I can tell, every element of storytelling was "done" by the time those cave paintings were drying in France.
My previous post was a nod to a film from 1959, an "old" movie--a black and white movie, for heaven's sake--and moreover a film that was set in the jazz age of gangsters and flappers...old-fashioned stuff even then, 50 years ago. Describe any of the plot contrivances and see if someone doesn't say "but they did that in The Untouchables/Road To Perdition/Gloria/The Professional!" It neither takes away from or diminshes any of the subsequent movies that they share situations and themes. And I'm not even adressing the drag aspect.

Anyway, I haven't yet seen the film in question. In a few hours I will have. I'm looking forward to it.

But not having seen it, I can't defend anyone's take one way or the other. What I can do is protest the lazy fallback of too many film writers vis a vis animation these day--these reviews where the reviewer is bored to tears not because the movie is slow, or lousy, or stupid, or poorly-done(in fact, I've noticed that increasingly animation's artistry is virtually--gah! no pun intended --ignored as almost irrelevant...and when it is criticized, it's done from what often seems a very uninformed observer).

No, the reviewer is bored, or jaded, and why? A sighing plaint of "but...this is all so old fashioned. We've seen orphans before(really? Where lately?), singing frogs before (as if the existence of the short "One Froggy Evening" meant that 60 years later a filmmaker is risking ridicule if he uses a frog in an animated film, no matter the context? You've got to be kidding--yet a writer made just that beef in his review)".

And to them I say, well, [see post below]: did any of the characters come alive for you? Did you settle down and believe in any of it for any amount of time? Were you entertained, or is this all an intellectual reporter's excercise in animation overload?

There's no percentage in arguing reviews, none. But I do mind, and am bothered, when the reviews seem so disconnected from the actual film itself, and more a general indictment of my profession.
It's unfair and anti-film to look at ANY film and review it as if it owes its impact to any other film. This is where I guess a writer has to pretend as hard as he or she can that they haven't seen every. single. film. released in the last 10 years, and compare them to one another. Because each is made to be seen for the first time, and especially in the case of family audiences, many of the viewers will have seen none of the preceding movies that a new one is "too much like". When they do each and every individual film will stand--or fall--on its own merits.

And personally I suspect good movies are good not because everything in them is new! but because the things in them are old: warmth, humor, wit, friendship, awe, drama.

I hope this little screed makes some sense.

In a story, it's the little things that count-a sort of manifesto

If anything from my experience of the last 15 years or so has made itself clear to me as a story truism, it's that the importance of the smallest details matter.

It's that the difference between a dull scene or a stock character and one that breathes, that thinks, is in the details. Details spring out and suggest themselves when the story artist believes in a character's reality no matter how superficially unlikely the scenario they're placed in might be.

There are times when a story artist is given a sequence that's already laid out pretty extensively: the characters must say this or that, do this, that and the other thing, get from here to there. Now, you might think that that would be a boring sort of sequence to work on--not necessarily.

Of course one wants to be as creative as one can, but in putting a feature film together there's not always an opportunity to start from scratch(and if there always is, the film's probably in trouble). Does that mean there's no room for the story guy to have fun, to make an impression, to enhance or "create" the scene? Far from it. But you'd better believe in the characters you're working with.

If you do, wonderful things can happen. Some of it might wander off in a direction that will result in the kibosh being put on the sequence in whole or in part--a great big old redo. But sometimes (often enough of you're both lucky and inspired)a sudden, truthful idea will pop up seemingly out of nowhere and work so well it's just got to go in. No one planned for it until it struck--you didn't see it until you were least expecting it, surrounded at your desk by crumpled paper and worn down stubs. Suddenly it's there, and it seems exactly the thing the character should say or do at that moment. If it really is as right as it feels, it'll make it into the film. You'd be surprised how often that happens, in spite of any and all obstacles.

This to me is the most exciting, rewarding part of my job, but it's not a daily occurance--it couldn't be. Films just don't play with too much going on at every second, all the time. They flow in a narrative dance in any of a million permutations, all with one commonly understood goal: to tell you a story.

And I should mention that the function of your storyboards is twofold: not only are you designing the action withon the frame, but most importantly you're responsible for setting the mood and emotion of the scene--that's how it's supposed to be, anyway. This really can't be stressed too strongly. The times that a completely flat, emotionless story sequence didn't work in boards but came to life in animation, out of nowhere is exactly zero. Can sequences be plussed by animation? You bet, and they almost always are--hugely. The medium is about moving drawings/characters, after all. But plussing has to start from something. The drawings needn't necessarily be fancy, but they must certainly read, and communicate. The more direct and meaningful the better. Otherwise the animator really is left with nothing to work with.

We in animation have a big hurdle, a doozy: we have to take a two-dimensional, stylized design of a character and entice the audience into caring about it. I believe the key to doing that is to lend the characters your faith while you board them--to invest them with little parts of your life in the form of those little details.

All of this comes from you, from your own real personal experience and your unique observation. To have to squeeze the wonky story-peg into a predetermined hole doesn't always work--often these characters take over, just a bit. Or a bit more than a bit. To know when and how to apply your observation and build each character a soul--that's where your day to day story experience hopefully takes you.

It's why I do this job, why I love it; it's like climbing a mountain that grows as I grow. The mountain is impossibly huge but it can be conquered at the most unpredictable times, if you keep your imagination open and remember to find truth and realness in the little details of life.

Tips for story sketching...

...and all dynamic composition in a new post from Dave Pimentel.
He was reading through Bill Peet's autobiography again, and worked out a lesson plan for his students at Calarts based on Peet's incomparable design and staging. Mark Kennedy has also used Peet for such examples in his blog--and anyone interested in the art of animation storytelling would be well advised to check out both these veteran's posts on a regular basis.
Dave will be no doubt be putting up more of his ideas and handouts for his students as the semester goes on. A great opportunity to learn from these grads and teachers.


illustration courtesy of the Drawings From A Mexican blog

The Myth of 'Pretty'

For the fresh, aspiring animation artist story is a mystery, loaded with questions. How should the panels look? How finished off and detailed must they be? And--here's one I've been asked many times, and wondered myself as a kid--how long is it supposed to take to draw each panel? It's as if there's a set average all professionals meet. Who knew?

The answers to those questions can be surprising. You start out, stumbling, learning as you go, picking up what you need, hoping you're doing it "right"--and even after some time in the business, you can still have an epiphany about the craft. I had one a long time ago, about what I'll call pretty drawings.

I was walking down the hall at work, and passed by a recently pitched story sequence. The drawings were pinned to the board, leaning against the wall waiting to be sent to the editorial department. I stopped and looked it over. The ideas were funny, but I was surprised by how raw some of the drawings looked. They weren't what anyone would call "pretty"; they had no background to speak of, seemed a mass of lines, and were hardly recognizable as the characters. At first look, nothing slick or attractive or special about them. This stood out to me at that moment in stark contrast to many of the boards I'd seen up til then.

Keep in mind that the walls of any story department are lined end to end with boards covered in drawings, many with really gorgeous displays of draughtsmanship--rendered volumetrically, loaded with mood, eye-popping. Stuff you stand in awe of and gape at. I was immediately attracted to these panels. I envied them and admired them and felt challenged and crestfallen and inspired by them. I'd sneakily pull them down and xerox them. I'd think of them as gauntlets at my feet. I'd ponder the technique used by this or that artist--should I stay with the prismacolor? Go for that brush pen? Color somewhere? No? What? If I was especially stuck, I'd think grimly that the story about Fred Moore needing his special particular pencil before he could start a scene and think it wasn't so cute and hilarious as all that, after all.

So upon looking at these particular drawings on this board, seemingly tossed off with a marker, I was somewhat dismissive. The thought likely crossed my mind that it could have been drawn better. It wasn't too long afterwards that I saw the same drawings on the story reel. And I really learned something.

What I learned seeing the drawings up on the screen in sequence was this: the un-pretty "mass of lines" worked unerringly from shot to shot; the acting and attitude was clear and the gags--which sprung from personality, always a huge plus--landed pow! right on the nose. It was clever, fast-moving and there wasn't a damn thing I'd want to change. Anyone would have been nuts to change it. Redrawing the panels would have been the very definition of gilding a lily: pointless. I should "toss off" a neat little sequence that read that well! I'd completely misjudged the artwork.

This may all seem obvious, but the impression this realization made on me then has stayed with me. Those boards proved to me that I was sometimes missing the forest for the individual twig. I had, without thinking, often been judging the panels I saw based on how "well" they were drawn, in a conventional sense, not always(as I should have)as a tiny bit of a scene, a moment from here to there with its own set of problems that might be solved without the use of anything remotely fancy.
I'm most definitely not saying that the drawing skill doesn't matter--far from it. Every artist handles things differently, but they aim to always improve because just as it matters for an animator, the better your drawing chops=the better your ability to do anything your imagination requires you to do in a storyboard.
I still swoon over the sheer graphic beauty--but I'm cured, forever I think, of being a bit of an unconscious snob as regards how a panel is "supposed" to look. Prettiness alone means nothing. Getting hung up on the bark of a tree or the slickness of a line may not help get the sequence over to the audience, and if it doesn't, it's a bomb. With some exceptions, it's secondary at best, and always the means to an end.

Story artists, as has been said over and over, can't afford to get precious with their individual work anyway--often as not it ends up in a box or a wastebasket, and it's virtually never seen by the public we are trying to entertain...that's the task of the animators. But we are trying to get the story up there, and it never hurts to remember there are a hundred thousand ways to do it, but the best way is the way that works. The most important thing, usually, is: is it clear? Is it funny/sad/moving/mysterious/alive? The great advantage feature animation has over television is the comittment of time, money (which is what time requires) and the freedom of artists to tell stories without being required to make each story panel a mini-layout or cel setup. That's the mark of a project set in stone, not the sort of film that usually has a chance to evolve and develop and be plussed and added to over time. When I look at any board now, I look at the flow of the story first, and it's been a great thing to have my mind opened as to what a drawing "is" or "should be". Bill Peet drew beautifully, sure--but he wasn't shooting for pretty. He was a hell of an artist and storyteller who worked like a dog at his craft and couldn't do it any other way than the way he did. That his drawings are also individually beautiful is a happy by-product of his knowledge and skill.

So try to draw your boards as well as you possibly can. As if your life depended on it, for the fun of it--but most of all for the betterment of your story. Don't look at the drawings as illustrations, but as story points. And keep your mind open, too. There's a lot of ways to peel that onion. You might invent some yourself.

tags technorati : drawing, storyboarding, story, sketch, animation, cartoons, film

Again, about Joe

Joe Ranft, from 'skribbl"'s video circa Disney 1985

Two lovely posts in other blogs have come to my attention in the last few minutes, Story Boredom and Mark Kennedy have both posted tributes to Joe Ranft, whose death occured one year ago last week near Mendocino, California.
The Story Boredom post is wonderful--and of all things, it includes a video of Joe himself performing a bit of magic, circa 1985--two years before he taught at CalArts--a time when he'd just left Disney to do his own thing and a few short years before he settled into his incredibly productive work at the young Pixar studio. It's silent footage, but it's all Joe, and wonderful to see.

Mark's contains a doozy--Joe's just been rightfully honored in a special way at Disney Feature Animation--go see his photograph to find out how. And the previous post of Mark's has some of his own thoughts about knowing Joe as a teacher and friend. Mark's is an intensely valuable, professional blog concerning storytelling and filmmaking, and he rarely(if ever)alludes to anything personal, save for how it affects his art. Joe was certainly a personal influence on and friend to Mark, and as for his influence on the continuing art of his students and colleagues--well, go read what Mark has to say.

Animation and Magic

I saw a movie last night I highly recommend, "The Illusionist".
It's the sort of film that makes me feel viscerally why it is I love movies, and why I want to make them. It also happens to be a very low-budget production by typical standards(the average of a studio release now hovering somewhere around 60 million), I believe "The Illusionist" was made for under 20 million--an amazing accomplishment.
But imagination and intelligence are there in abundance, and the very mixed, date-night audience was held in rapt attention, the kind of vibe that you seldom get: a room filled with people all paying total attention to the screen. It was sold out too, a good sign...although that owed something to the fact that it's playing in a very limited release this weekend.

Your mileage, as they say, may vary, but if you want to see or love underplayed acting, mystery, restraint as a form of tension, and old-style wonderful make-believe--and if you love animation the odds are you do--I'll have to think you'd enjoy this. If you don't, that's okay too, mind you--I can also understand if it simply isn't someone's cup, but in any case, give it a chance. It'll probably open wider soon.

Why am I bringing this up in an animation blog? Well, some of the most delightful bits in "The Illusionist" are the humblest--the sleight of hand performed in real time in front of the camera(the magic performances advised and no doubt staged in some instances by the incomparable Ricky Jay). And animation has a sort of bond with magic, stage magic. Some of the earliest forms of animation were put to use in magic acts of the last and previous centuries, via magic lanterns and other effects. And all magic depends upon--can't in fact work without--the audiences' suspension of disbelief, a delight in experiencing something that can't be and believing it to be real. That's a fair definition of film animation, too.

It's perhaps not so odd, then, to discover how many animation artists are interested in magic, or are magicians themselves.
The first one I met was Joe Ranft.

Joe on the road--Route 66, in fact, as part of "Cars" research--getting a barber's once-over. From pixarroom.free.fr

Joe was our story teacher at Calarts--it was both his first teaching experience and our first as students in such a class. He taught us from 1st year through 2nd. Joe's gifts as a story guy and teacher are worthy of an entire post dedicated to that subject alone, but apropos of magic there's one particularly wonderful memory I have of him.

One night after the evening class had ended, a few of us TAs and others had been mixing cocktails and had a pleasantly tipsy buzz on when it came up that Joe (who was hanging out as he did before making his drive back south from Valencia) knew magic.
All over that like a seagull on a potato chip, I begged and begged Joe to please, please do some magic--and he agreed.
I believe he had a half-dollar on him(what self-respecting magician wouldn't?), someone produced some cards, and I have never had such fun watching magic done. Close-up magic is just that: we were all leaning over the table in the design room, crowding around him, staring directly at his hands while he produced the most deft effects I've ever seen. I remember the frisson of amazement and sheer joy I had, the back of my neck tingling watching him do impossible things.

What I remember too as specially impressive was how once he'd agreed to do magic, his demeanor changed. Always affable and sometimes just the tiniest bit shy in his manner, he transformed himself into a Joe that was completely different. His professional magician's persona was put on, and we got a real performance, very serious. His little audience (about 3 or 4 of us) was utterly in his thrall.
Upon finishing he just as quickly became just Joe again. Also magic!

Since then I've met other animation artists who grew up amateur magicians. There's a very strong corollary there, especially for animators and story artists, as Joe was: the art demands a strong performance ethic, an understanding of exactly how to direct the audience's attention where you want it at all times(or risk losing the joke/moment/trick), and a desire to delight and hypnotize your audience. Joe was a natural teacher; He had the furthest thing from a bombastic personality, but he was totally committed to his craft and that shone through brightly and clearly. He also had a genuine enthusiasm to see anything grow: a student's talent, an idea or a sequence--same thing. He'd give anyone's questions serious attention.
He'd say "this doesn't work at all--here's why". He'd laugh loudly and infectiously if he liked something--or loved it. if you were lucky. He was one of the most lovable personalities I've ever known, and surely ever will.

Of course I've nothing like the years upon years of close contact with him that his friends at Disney and later Pixar had; I hadn't seen him in at least 12 years when he died. But I'd thought about him often (which says everything about him, nothing in particular about me).
I always looked forward to seeing him somewhere soon, at any time...at some function up north or down here--and I knew that if we did run across each other I'd greet him with a running jump and a hug. Not because I do that to everybody(I'm shy, too), but because he was just that sort of person. I wanted to tell him what I was doing now, thank him for all he did for me, ask about his kids and wife and his life up there, all sorts of things.
He might well have been embarrassed, but I wouldn't have been, because after all these years I still have huge wells of affection and gratitude for him and I am sure he'd have understood that. Because I was just one of hundreds of people who felt exactly the same way. And embarrassed or not he'd have gone out of his way to be kind to me as he did with everyone else. I'm sure I'll continue to be inspired by his example for the rest of my life.

That's magic.

tags technorati : ranft, animation, movies, magic, story, illusionist

Golden info

If you haven't been by Mark Kennedy's blog lately, you're missing out on some truly great stuff:

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Design and Drawing

Must-read material. Stuff like this makes me lunge for a good pencil--or at least feel like lunging for one.

Bob Winquist would be very proud(and that's saying something).


a Ronald Searle sketchbook page Mark uses for discussion in his notes on drawing and design

A short rant on mediocrity

NOT mediocre

I don't watch much television on a regularly scheduled basis, and almost no animated television at all.
Just a moment ago I happened to channel surf past an apparently new cartoon show. It looked astonishingly ugly, but art direction aside, what really struck me and had me zap the TV off in disgust was the scenario I was presented with: a dinner table scene. Yes, another one. Mom, Dad and sons are sitting at the table, having that sort of family time that makes me wonder who the writers and "creators" are. Did they grow up in the 1930s? Because the idea of presenting a modern "dad" in a tie at dinner, and "mom" in a flowery dress, batting her eyelashes, sporting a hairdo from approximately 1953 is so old it's dead, edges molding and about as funny as current events in the middle east.

When Brad Bird spoofed the nuclear family in the early 1980s with his "Family Dog", it was fresh and inventive, and most importantly it was funny. The audience--mere laymen along with we, the animation folk of the world, cheered and laughed our keesters off because it was so well observed. I'm not saying that it's impossible to continue to make comedy-animation hay out of the old paradigm of The American Family, but man, by now, 2006, it's got to be clever, it's got to be good--it's got to be real on some level. These aren't real in any way, shape or form, and they don't supply anything to fill the resulting gaps; no flights of weirdness that stems from anything approaching originality. Only a retread of a fantasy of a family experience that none of the creators actually had.

These shows, dozens of them, repeat and recycle the same dull old stereotypes, barely tweaking the "edgy" and utterly superficial design of the ciphers that stand in for characters. Watching it makes me feel faintly queasy--for the wasted talent I know is involved on the roster; for the disposability of such fare, filling up commercial time on the airwaves, all with a feeling of the old linguini-on-the-wall approach: let's see what sticks. Virtually none of it does.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows I love good design and ideas, just like everyone else---and I'm no snob when it comes to where and how it presents itself. I've always believed a good show could be achieved with tongue depressors--those flat wooden sticks--as characters, with the right story and execution.
But why do so few animated TV shows of the last 3 decades have any staying power? Why has our generation so far produced not a single inarguable classic along the lines of those that crowded the holiday schedules of the early-to-mid 1960s? "The Grinch", "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "Rudolph", any of the Rankin-Bass output in 2D and 3D--hell, even the original "Fat Albert", which I remember watching with my mouth hanging open. That was something else again.

And in the last 25 years we've seen...."Family Dog". One producer took a chance on a relatively unknown team of artists...Spielberg. It was a cause celebre.

With the range of talent that's now at the peak of their game and experience there's really no excuse for yet more shows that reflect a supposed "parody" of a never-never land of 1950s family life. It's OVER. Dead! We're ALL hep to it now, people! Even the tiny little kids! It's lame, it doesn't reflect anyone's real lives and it's meaningless.

I don't blame artists for this. They don't wield the checkbook. I simply feel sad and(obviously) a little perturbed that there aren't people in charge with...different tastes. Perhaps it's the overall corporatization of all media that makes taking a flying chance on an individual's unique idea for a show impossible.

still aired and loved after 40 years

I did see a HBO special made for the holiday season some years back--a compilation of short musical pieces done by animation studios all over the world(it may have been titled "'Twas the Night")...it was beautiful, funny in the right places, and honest. There's one segment that has a rabbit sailing a boat in side a snowglobe, gorgeous animation done to the old soundtrack of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"; the damn thing made me cry. Obviously all shows can't be like that, certainly not all series television, but my god, let's please try for some change. Things have sailed so far over the edge of genuine, heartfelt, new ideas that it'll require a herculean effort to pull them back.

And someone with lots of cash.

tags technorati : television, animation, cartoons, media

Real live boards

Tom Owens' work, from one of his storyboards for "Over the Hedge". Just as a geek production note: the numbers at lower right represent the sequence and the individual panel; i.e., this is from sequence 1831, drawing 1259

Dreamworks has done something interesting in conjunction with the release of "Over The Hedge": they've actually posted a bit of visual development and a few storyboard examples, which you can see here. And the art is attributed, which little detail has me grinning broadly in the general direction of the publicity department. I wish the boards were more than the few panels they are, but hey--small caveat; it's as far as I know fairly unprecedented to release this sort of thing before the DVD comes out(if then). It's a good thing.

tags technorati : dreamworks animation, animation, storyboard, story, cartoon, drawing, tom owens, art

What do Story Artists Do?

Bill Peet succeeds with his interpretations of "Song of the South"(from billpeet.net)
I've been asked this question several times lately--and it's also come up unbidden from the recesses of my noggin in response to various recent events.

So, what's the job? What is it, ideally? What is it that we all hope to do when we start out in this business?
I'm thinking of feature films, by which I mean a long format narrative; a short, whether for television or something else, is a special and different nut to crack, taking no less skill, but often using different storytelling techniques.

So, what is the job we do?
Obviously it involves drawing--lots and lots of sequential drawing. To draw clearly is paramount to get ideas across. We want and strive to draw well, even beautifully, to be really strong draughtsmen. We sweat and we grind down pencils and felt tips getting the panel exactly as we want it.
There's plenty to say about the pursuit of good drawings to make great sequences, but what being a story person really means is something that's not hostage to drawing alone at all: it means to be a storyteller. That's something that each one of us can do dynamically, even without making any drawings at all.

Too often, looked upon as "artists", we are somehow lost in the filmmaking stew as writers--and make no mistake, the best story people are writers, first and last. We write dialogue as well as draw, but most importantly we write the sequence. That's part of the job, as it's best performed.

It doesn't always work that way, just 99% of the time; when an animated film is pre-scripted, obviously a story crew then interprets the script, rather than having a looser outline to construct from. There are specific examples I've cited before where such approaches have resulted in excellent films.
I should also say here that I have the highest respect for screenwriters--all my seminal influences in film, from the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to Preston Sturges to Billy Wilder(with Brackett and Diamond) to Ben Hecht and Leigh Brackett(she of the great collaborations with Howard Hawks), are paragons of elegant and exciting screenwriting.
It's a ineffably special craft--but the point I'd like to emphasize is that so is the job of the animation story artist; no less important, no less crucial--and distinct from the particular challenges of live action.

I think that generally story people aren't perceived as writers, but the fact is that when they have been in the business for years, they learn how to tell a film story(or sink trying), and the rhythm of what's called the film language gets into their unconscious as insidiously and firmly as in any director's or live action screenwriter's. Story artists see and think in scenes, in the bits and glimpses of a greater narrative, always keeping in mind(as they must)where the story is coming from and where it's going.

It's an interesting peculiarity of our craft that we story artists live our characters probably to an even greater extent than many other types of writers, as we have to draw their emotions and actions on the screen. We manipulate our actors as a live action director could only dream of doing. It's total control, and it's a huge responsibility. That's the excitement as well as the burden of it--and when it pays off, it's fantastic.

All of us in animation have much to learn about our business, filmmaking. More than is probably possible in a lifetime--even if the medium is barely a hundred years old. But as even the most newly-minted story artist is in fact creating the film, shot by shot, we also have much to offer the rest of the filmmaking world from our experience. Is there anyone who'd doubt that, say Ward Kimball could have taught a thing or two about filmmaking to Hawks, or Sturges, or Wilder? Not me. maybe John Ford wouldn't sit still for it, but he gets a pass. I'm sure Orson Welles would have been happy to have sat at the feet of Bob Clampett for an hour as well as at the side of the great producer(and fellow RKO associate) Walt Disney himself. There's a reason Frank Tashlin was able to direct a great feature comedy so easily; he'd already done animation.

It's far from a job where we "just draw". That's not it at all...or it shouldn't be. Bill Peet, Joe Ranft, Brenda Chapman, Gary Trousdale, Dave Smith, Conrad Vernon, Dick Huemer, Ed Gombert, Teddy Newton, Mark Andrews, Mark Kennedy, Ted Sears, Jill Culton, Kelly Asbury, and a host of others did and do have an arsenal of which drawing is but one part. All of them used (and continue to use) their minds as well, and not just in composing pictures. That's the best, most fruitful expression of the job and the person who fills it.

A friend who was on the de riguer CalArts tour of Disney feature animation with me and the rest of the class remembered a moment where we were all crowded into a room with a veteran story artist. He held up a sheaf of paper: "This is the script. We get it, we read it, and then we--"

He tossed it into the round file nearby.

"It's just a starting point. Then the real work starts".

tags technorati : storyboarding, feature animation, story artist, screenwriting, animation

On Story: True Characters

Fred Moore's Lampwick, from "Pinochio". A likeable bad guy.

A long time ago at a studio a few miles away, there once was a script that I and a half dozen others storyboarded. The main character was a little guy, meant to be cute, who was also presented as a tremendous pain in the ass. Really. That was intentional; the entire plot demanded that he hate everything about his warm, comfortable, upper-class life and want to go out and "see the world". He wasn't micromanaged like the famous clownfish Nemo, he only had the most basic kinds of parental attention and discipline to deal with--but for the purposes of the story he just plain hated...everything.

Now, I had a few problems with this.

First, I didn't see any reason given why this adolescent animal character would have developed a distaste for the things I see my pets crave: affection, interaction with their pals (both animal and human), warmth, shelter, and especially food. It still might have been possible to make a better case for wanderlust, if it had been shown rather than stated: "I want adventure!".
But the main problem was a very obvious and basic one: the character as presented in the story was unlikeable. He was selfish, rude--and selfishly rude, and a dozen other tiresome variations on selfish and rude. Apparently it was more important to the writers that we follow the adventures of a truly unpleasant character, supposedly identifying with him for 80 minutes, just so his story arc could have him redeemed at the end.

I don't know about you, but when I watch an animated film, especially one with rich potential for fun and high spirits and comedy, I don't want to be forced to either sit through a therapy session with a mediocre analyst, nor do I want to spend most of that time with a jerk. That doesn't mean that a character has to be perfect, or perfectly happy, or have no troubles. But there's been a trend in all types of film to insist that the character can't just face a conflict, he or she has to be terribly flawed and conflicted himself. It used to denote depth in a character. It's become a formula and it's an approach that needs to be handled with incredible finesse to work. Think that happens regularly?

It can work: "The Incredibles" is filled with scenes that usually make me check my watch or wish I had brought a penlight and a book, or earplugs: a screaming family argument at the dinner table; a brother and sister snarking and screaming at each other; more nagging and/or arguing between the parents...everyone knows those scenes. Millions of people, in fact. The difference--and it's crucial--is that the characters were introduced with great delicacy, with humor, with humanity. We liked them--a lot. So that by the time they begin to break down, instead of a turn off, the drama is really that--dramatic. I, who hate typical movie argument scenes, happened to turn on HBO the other night; "Incredibles" was on, in the middle of the "total chaos" dinner scene. Instead of turning it off(and even though I've seen it numerous times)I found myself sitting down and enjoying it again--for the timing, the performances, the master juggling act of the director/writer, animators and art direction, the story--the whole enchilada. Great and honest filmmaking, with real characters. All animated. You can't look away!

Another film where the use of sometimes unpleasant characters works, almost invisibly, is "Lilo & Stitch". There we really have what might be described as a disturbed kid. A disturbed, unhappy, occasionally downright bratty animated kid--usually the kind of thing that spells nails on a blackboard for me. But though it sometimes seems like it might tip over, it never does descend into the Land Of No Return for Lilo. I think it's because that while she acts up, throws tantrums, is just terribly awful to her poor sister(who really is trying), she also clearly doesn't want to be a brat. She loves life, is filled with energy and imagination and is always trying to invent her own better world--which makes for the entertainment, the pathos and the comedy of her Elvis adoration, her photograph collection, her always-hatching plans for Stitch, whether he agrees or not. She's an inexorable, contradictory force of nature--in other words, a bit of a real little girl. A rare thing to find in the last 15 years of animation, unfortunately.

Show the audience "real" in some form and you will win their sympathy(and it won't matter a damn how extreme the characters look, either; they could be as designy as a MOMA exhibit, so to speak). Construct characters whose actions are dictated by plot demands and neuroses that presumably give them something to "change" from or shuck off unconvincingly in Act 3 and the unreality tells.
Story artists get very close to their characters. As I've written before, whatever the situation, when we have a scene we've got to work out, depending upon the amount of freedom in the scene to add or improvise, it's almost impossible not to become the characters and once you've taken them on, to find that they surprise you with bits of business or a new idea that you didn't have when you started. That's a good thing. If, however, you start with a character who's motivation is indecipherable or who you just plain don't like... The scene has to be done in any case, but where feeling is lacking--through no fault of the artist--it shows. In the best of times those scenes get tossed out; it becomes evident that there's a lack of sympathy there and your audience at work is expected to be frank. But often these roadblocks could be avoided if the essence of the character--if his "character"--weren't forced into an off-putting attitude at the story's conception. These are really important things to consider. It may seem a fine line between a character who has a problem and one who is a problem, but the line is there and once crossed it results in a disconnect that takes a hell of a lot of work to fix.

Starting out with good, likeable protagonists isn't hard; we make our own casting decisions every day--and art imitates life. Who would you rather have lunch with: the person who sits down already griping and irritable, totally self-absorbed and uninterested in you, or the one who smiles, is glad to see you, maybe cracks a joke and asks how you're doing before settling down to griping about the lousy job the mechanic did on his car yesterday? That second guy will have you with him all the way, won't he? The first one? You'd be checked out by the time he gets around to telling you why he's so dissatisfied with his life. Characters can have struggles and problems and hey--quirks! But leaven them with the things we respond to in our friends, in the person that attacts us on the train with their smiling face or the bizarre choice in reading material they're holding that suggests a totally different inner life. Whatever. It is possible to come up with layered characters for animation. In fact, it's easier to do than to struggle with guys who have something they have to "do" but no real reason why the audience should be watching them do it.

Just so you know we do think about these things.

On Story: no reason to sacrifice characters to a pile of pages or plot

Michael Barrier makes some sharp--and challenging--comments about the point of great character animation in his most recent post. He describes his friend, animator Milt Gray, flipping some of Ollie Johnston's animation of "Jock" from Lady and the Tramp, and being startled by the amazingly lifelike performance that sprung off the pages. Barrier continues:

"The great virtue of Disney films like Lady and the Tramp was that they showed that such animation is possible. Their great vice was that they seemed to say, in a louder voice over time, that such animation is possible only in children's films.
As a result, the temptation, if you're making more "adult" films, is surely to shrug off the Disney animators' lessons; but there's no way, if you're doing that, to achieve the emotional strength of their best work. A lot of animated filmmakers seem to think that they can work around that problem by making "story" their mantra, or by simply ignoring the question of how to give animated characters a vivid presence on the screen. But such dodges never succeed. It's only by meeting head-on the challenge of making the characters in their films as real as the best live actors that animated filmmakers will ever escape from the ghetto to which they have been, so far, rightly assigned."

Tough words...but I know what he's talking about, and I suspect most of my colleagues do, too.
To turn Barrier's premise inside-out, though, there have been some Disney films where "story" took a backseat to characters. In that category I'd put "Sword in the Stone" and "Jungle Book", both films I saw and loved as a kid and still love--but mainly for the performances of such as Shere Khan, Archimedes, Merlin and King Louis--not for the relatively weak story/plot and the corniest gags that are in them. Were the characters in those films not as entertaining and real as they are, there'd be pretty much nothing there but color and movement.

It's been said by wiser heads than mine that in the latter days of the nine old men, they were actors without a worthy stage, much like Laurence Olivier giving it his all in "Boys From Brazil" or "The Betsy". Feature animation was in a general doldrums; the kidvid ghetto was going full bore on TV, and there was no guiding hand at the world's most sophisticated animation company. It seemed to operate on the inertia of a more energetic time.

I think there are definitely pitfalls in having a story "mantra" that ignores just who's doing what in a film, though it's never intentional to sacrifice personality for plot--the aim is almost always the opposite, in fact.
Maybe there's a perception among non-artists of animation as having some sort of special needs, since our characters aren't seen in early development as castable flesh and blood actors, but are drawings and designs.
Of course the very, very early, embryonic beginnings of a feature film are a story's premise. If there isn't any story there to tell, well, that's trouble. It needn't be at as big as an epic, it can be small and even personal--but in the end it has to connect with a wide audience, and more than plot it's characters who carry that burden.
So to continue and develop that premise, assuming the story has something to work with it really does depend on the characters(that goes for the great shorts as well: Bugs Bunny trapped on a desert island is a hell of lot more interesting than Barney Bear trapped on a desert island or a Genericized Rabbit in that situation).

The story of a father fish looking for his lost son...okay. The story of a terribly neurotic, xenophobic, keep-to-the-reef father fish forced to plunge into deep seas, teamed up with various creatures he'd never want to deal with, but does it anyway, struggling all the while? Much better.
One doesn't want the plot running the characters, one wants the characters to be the plot--to make it their own one of a kind story, if you will. But(remembering "Sword in the Stone")they still need something worthwhile to do, and in a long-form story it probably can't be a one-set premise(never say never, but to generalize). No "Waiting For Godot"s. Pinocchio should get out of Gepetto's workshop. But personally I don't see any way forward in any story without nailing down the characters first. I have to know this person if I'm going to make drawings of them, and especially if I have to have them do or say anything.
Ideas come from drawing; good drawings--great drawings--come out of acting, the old "acting with a pencil" canard. It's really true. The more you know and love the characters, the more options for entertainment you'll have. They'll take over a scene in the same way novelists describe, with their characters. If you're taken in an entirely new direction, and it's going to work, it might be a very good thing when strong characters hijack you.

tags technorati : blogging, animation, disney, pixar, dreamworks, storyboard, screenwriting, animator

From the horse's mouth

Last week I was happy to finally find the restored DVD of "Lady and the Tramp" waiting for me in my mailbox(the same version I saw last month at the El Capitan).

Of course it's a must-have, with some very interesting extras--we plunged right into Disc 2, sampling such things as original boards from a 1943 version of the film that was leagues apart from its eventual incarnation; most of an episode of the "Disneyland" television show with Walt introducing his new film, and giving a not-bad description of the production process that for once didn't short the story department. One minor peeve I had was the completely unnecessary "juicing up" digitally of the old story panels: while the story sketches was pitched offscreen, the decision was made to "animate" characters to simulate movement during pans, and there was an overuse of the Ken Burns effect: constantly drifting or zooming into and across the panels, some of which might have worked but in the main was(for me, anyway)distracting, giving the thing a slightly seasick presentation. There was also some head-scratching material featuring Kevin Costner talking about how important storyboards are to his projects. That's great, but I would have liked less of a live action focus and much more material about the specific artists who did story on "Lady and the Tramp".
I also wondered why, apart from a few fleeting shots that are already years old of various recent Disney story crews engaged in pitching(no one identified), more time couldn't have been spent with the present-day story artists I know are over there, with plenty of hard-won experience and I'm sure plenty to say re "Tramp" or just story in general. Maybe next time?

Anyway, there was one wonderful moment where Walt, about to describe the storyboarding phase of the film, looked straight into the camera and told us what it's all about.

"At the Disney studio, we don't write our films; we draw them".

Allow me a brief moment here while I get up off the floor and back into my chair.
Seldom has the essential difference between the live action and animated film production process been put so plainly and directly. Keep in mind that the Disney studio certainly used written material--Bambi, Pinocchio, Alice--even "Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog", one of the sources "Tramp" sprung from--was a written story first. But the job of making the story work for animation was best served by the storyboard process.
So go check out this film again, and those extras, and see what you think.

tags technorati : storyboarding, animation, walt disney, story, drawing

On story: Pitching

Grab yourself a pointer and step right up...

The story artist presents his work standing alone in front of a room filled with people, armed with only a pointer. This is it, the big moment: finally you get to present your version of a sequence to your peers, directors and everyone else there that's concerned with the production. You've been working more or less alone up to this point, and no one but you is responsible for how you're going to pitch this scene and get it over to your audience.
It can be nerve-wracking, but often as not it's exhilarating--the big payoff for hours of work done in solitude. A chance to flex your showmanship as you try and forget any self-consciousness about the drawings you've done and whether this thing works or not. Of course, you hope it does--you believe it does, and you're going to prove it as you pitch it.

The pitch is crucially important to the process of animated filmmaking. This process of working out the kinks and finding the gems in a story was pioneered by--who else?--Walt Disney, to make his shorts better, and eventually to tell long-form, feature length stories, beginning with "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Walt himself must have been one of the best pitch artists that ever was, according to eyewitnesses the night he held a core group spellbound with his one-man presentation of the Snow White story--sans drawings. But the artists he worked with weren't there to take notes only--they were expected and encouraged to give Walt back big returns on his initial inspiration. The drawings they did, sequence by sequence, were pinned up and held to the most severe scrutiny--of Walt, but also of everyone else who might have a better idea, or a thought on why something wasn't working. Other studios, one by one (often as the result of artists leaving Disney's to go elsewhere, like Shamus Culhane) picked up on the Disney system of working out the story on boards. But that's all decades ago. Are pitches still necessary? Don't we have everything worked out so smoothly by this age that we can skip or skimp on that step completely?
No.

Even armed with all the bells and whistles of current animation technology, those tools can't do anything on their own. They sit, inanimate, waiting not only for skilled artists to operate them, but more importantly for good ideas worth doing. The story crew's function isn't just illustrating, it's conceiving, and each and every scene must be forced in turn to run the gauntlet, sink or swim, live or die on the reactions of people whose job is to know what's needed. The essential process of story remains the same today as it was over 70 years ago, yes. That's for no other reason than that it works so well. It isn't nostalgia--it's just a great system. And at its best, it's also the perfect meritocracy. A great idea is a great idea, and the stronger the crew, the more welcome those ideas are, from everyone in the room. It's amazing how well a group can work together when things gel and everyone's more or less in sync; I've been in situations where my own work was slowly being rethought in front of me(meaning I'd soon be ditching a few hundred panels I'd just sweated over), while I stood in front of it, still clutching my pointer as Lady MacBeth does her washcloth--but rather than fainting, I'd find myself getting truly excited about the possibilities for an even better scene that was possible.
That's how it's all supposed to work, mind you. Naturally all artists have healthy egos, take pride in their work and ideas, and want them to succeed rather than otherwise. I and every story artist I know have also had plenty of those times where a quick trip out the window without benefit of parachute seemed a happy alternative to remaining in the room one second longer--that's only normal, too.
But the weird, virtually magical thing often happens where suddenly the individual drawings don't matter quite so much, because the new idea or gag or business is so good, and you feel that--that's right! It has to be more like that! If you're still thinking mournfully of what a waste the now obsolete drawings are, you're missing the point--or the boat. It often seems our jobs as story artists is to produce reams of recyclables, and wear down a thousand prismacolors, all in the pursuit of something not fully tangible to any one of us alone, but very possible for the group: an entire film, start to finish, with a good story and characters that we care about, that make some sense, that just plain entertains.
The pitch is a vaudeville show, a shooting gallery, a juggling act, a ghost story around a campfire--with drawings. It's the ultimate low-tech, interactive experience, with roots that go back to most of us sitting in bed listening to out parents read us Dr. Seuss or Goodnight Moon. If we can conjure a movie for a few minutes with our 2D drawings and our voices--the fluorescent lights of a conference room notwithstanding--and get whatever we've come up with past all our colleagues and meet with their approval--all gimlet-eyed pros, well, then we might have accomplished something. But whether by critical comments from the rest of the crew, or by their tacit approval in the form of laughs or smiles, it's never accomplished alone. The listener has as much sway as the speaker. The audience in the person of the crew talks back to the screen, and questions, complains, approves, or challenges--and the screen in the person of the story artist has to reply. Everyone has the same goal: to make the story a movie, and to make it better.
That's why it's such a great system, and why it still works.

tags technorati : animation, storyboard, story, story artist, disney

On story: simplicity

From the book "Paper Dreams": an unattributed story panel for "Lady and the Tramp"

Last night I went to see the restored, remastered, generally-spiffed-up rerelease of "Lady and the Tramp" at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood. I've seen it at least once before theatrically, but never in Cinemascope, the widescreen process it was originally designed for. Watching this film again under optimum conditions is a terrific experience.

It would be difficult to sell a story as simple as "Tramp" is today. Even among Disney features it's remarkable for how little happens, plotwise: A puppy starts life with a middle class young couple; the couple has a baby, the dog feels briefly unwanted; she meets a dog from "the wrong side of the tracks"(literally); they have a romance, some misunderstandings, and the story ends with them both as happy members of the family circle with pups of their own.

That's it.

And it's about as far as one can get from high concept. Not that there's anything wrong with high concept per se; "The Incredibles" is a great example of such a premise that adds up to a lot more than a one-line pitch: "retired, incognito superheroes with a suburban family lifestyle are jolted into action once more, with kids". In fact, a story as seemingly postmodern and slick as "Incredibles" actually has a lot in common with "Tramp"--more on that in a minute.

Where "Lady and the Tramp" succeeds is in taking a simple story and making absolutely sure that every character and every scene makes an impact on the audience. As leisurely as some of the pacing is, it's deliberate and crucial to establishing the mood--either of the time period, the time of day, or the characters' emotions. And there is very little dialogue--as well as the fact that it's not so much what the characters say, but how they act while saying it. The humor comes from context and expression, not from verbal jokes. When old bloodhound Trusty offers to launch into another rambling story and asks rhetorically if he's told this one before, and Jock the Scotty replies "Aye, ye have, laddie", the remark gets a big laugh--not because of any reference other than the familiar expression of friendly, slightly chagrined resignation on Jock's face. Which brings up another neat trick of "Tramp": it manages to tell the story of a dog, from a dog's point of view, anthropomorphizing dogs so that we recognize ourselves in them while at the same time keeping their essential dogginess front and center.

That sounds pretty simple, and yet with some films it can seem that it wouldn't matter if the characters were dogs--or whether they were birds or pillbugs. And it should matter. Admittedly there are different kinds of films where the humor and approach is slanted a different way and there's a different kind of story being told.
But speaking as a story person, the fun of using animals is partly in things like imagining how a cat might walk into a room versus a dog(as beautifully illustrated in "Tramp" with the siamese cats scene). And the fun for an audience is in recognizing those details. Even if the character is a human stand-in a la Disney's Brer Rabbit, his rabbity body can suggest poses and behavior he wouldn't do if he were a stork. Some things fall into the purview of the animator, but when story artists think like animators--imagining the scene playing out in their heads--gags, action and completely new ideas come out of the blue. Have a strong basic structure, a story that can be told well and clearly, and most of all, strong characters that one cares about, and they dictate to you what they're going to do next--you have the fun of reining them in. What often happens with this approach is that there's an excess of--you hope--riches; many scenes get cut, all sorts of things are changed...but if the characters are well defined and real, it'll be hard for the scene to go wrong. That's the ideal, anyway.

So getting back to "The Incredibles": on the surface it's a much more sophisticated and complicated film than the gentle, easygoing "Lady and the Tramp"--but the story principles are exactly the same, and what make both films work so well each in their own way. It all boils down to "what is this scene about?" Dialogue might get important points across, but more often it's there to express the characters' emotions, not describe what we're already seeing--and sometimes outright contradicting it to great effect. The basic plot was carefully constructed--really iron-clad; any number of various, interchangeable adventures could have followed Mr. Incredible arriving on the mysterious island, but what matters is how he, his wife and his kids will handle getting involved in whatever ensues.
The director of that film was also the writer, and had plenty of professional experience writing specifically for animation(one of his trump cards as a writer is knowing what to leave out of his scripts), but I would bet that he also anticipated and consciously left enough room to allow for alterations in the storyboard process to further the characters and story where necessary. The director/writer thought up loads of cool scenes, created opportunites for fantastic production design and certainly laid on the action, but he never lost the basic--and super simple--family dynamic and vivid personalities that made the action and the cool designs mean anything. Some people will watch nifty graphics and be satified with that alone; most will get plenty bored and never be tempted to watch a film twice, unless it puts across that X factor of simplicity and sincerity that will hold up whether its a sci-fi or an edwardian setting.

Animation feature production is by necessity a group endeavor, with the end result--or goal--being a single vision and cohesive piece of entertainment. It's organic and often unwieldy. Scenes are commonly tried, boarded, written and rewritten, and restaged by many different artists. Naturally enough, sometimes the story person finds that a scene has lost its meaning through these multiple versions and reboardings and edits...and so it always comes back to the most basic, simple question: what is this supposed to be about? It's a strikingly simple question, and the answer should be simple as well. Answering that honestly can mean taking a wild leap beyond what's already been done, but it can pay huge dividends.

tags technorati : animation, storyboard, disney, dreamworks pixar

Ah, blogging

It seems "Blogger, Inc." was down for over 5 hours yesterday. A bit of a drag, as not only was I unable to access or edit my own posts, but more importantly I was denied the fun of looking at other blogs to my heart's content--when I actually had some time. Figures.

I am mindful that these pages are advertised as written by "a story artist", and so I intend to post on topics near and dear to the story person: pitching; drawing; thinking story; the value of watching films, observing life, reading. I hope this will be interesting. Obviously I can't be at all specific about my current or recent projects, but the details of various productions really don't matter--the principles are always the same.

I also mean to write about certain people who have inspired and helped me--as it happens, in story. Not that any of them lack tribute: Joe Ranft and Maurice Noble. There are others, but these two have as special a place in my heart as they do in hundreds of others. As for Maurice, if I had to call it all quits tomorrow working alongside him and knowing him a little would have made it all worthwhile.

Maurice waxes expansive as only he could do. c. 1997
So, that's my plan.
That, and to post some more funny old ephemera. There's a great big folder full of Disney strike handouts.

storyboarding, drawing, animation, blogging

Man Alive! a story panel, for a change...

I just bought this storyboard panel from a 1952 UPA production, "Man Alive!", directed by Bill Hurtz(according to the Internet Movie database, that is--someone correct me if it's wrong). Nominated for an Oscar for best documentary short--this was apparently done for the American Cancer Society. I haven't seen the film so I don't know if it was a brief cartoon segment or simply part of a board done for the live action; if so, it certainly is a stylized couple.
Edited to add: Amid Amidi added some information on "Man Alive!" in his comments, including news of a screening of this obscure film in Hollywood in March--worth looking at-click the "comments" link.

UPA, storyboard, animation