Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- 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.

________________________________

– 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.

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