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Commentary &Puppet Animation 14 Aug 2012 03:48 am

ParaNorman Screening and Talkback

- This past Sunday at 10am there was an industry screening of ParaNorman at a theater two blocks away from my home. I’d planned to go. I was asked to moderate the talkback, a Q&A with the directors of the film: Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Naturally, I said yes.

– Heidi and I arrived at 9:30; there was a bit of a line outside the theater. I was told to ask for Kia Muhammed of Focus Pictures. The doors to the theater were locked, so we had to wait until someone arrived to let me in and bring me to the Focus front desk. No other films were screening this early, so there weren’t many other places to go.

I wanted to be prepared to find out how long the talkback would be; would there be mikes for the three of us as well as for audience members who were going to ask questions. I learned that they’d planned for a smaller theater but were given the one we got. That meant they cut off the front section and planned to put three tall stools there for us to sit and for me to ask questions. Easy. I’d planned on getting a bit of background information from the two directors about the genesis of the film as well as their backgrounds. Then I’d open it up to the audience’s questions.

But first the film.


The Babcock Family
Grandma, Mom, Dad, Norman and Courtney

Laika, the producers of this 3D stop-motion film had first done Coraline under the direction of Henry Selick. Amusing that Coraline was on cable tv this morning just prior to the screening. I stopped and watched a couple of minutes. There’s some beautiful animation in that film, but in some ways it also felt limited in its animation.

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I’m not sure if there was a bit of a projection problem, but we had no picture at first, just triumphant logo music. It then cut into a smaller screen mock-low-budget zombie flick. It didn’t take long to realize that Norman was watching it on tv with his grandmother – his dead grandmother. Apparently Norman could see dead people. We learn that he gives more attention to them on his walk to school than he does to the real people on the street who just stare at the strange child.

Norman, it turns out, is being bullied at school for being a bit strange, and he has only one friend. The fat kid, Neil. These characters are beautifully developed as are many of them in the film. I also liked the voices quite a bit. Just looking over the cast, I was surprised to see John Goodman’s voice on the list. He does a bit of acting this time out, so that’s a pleasure to hear his character. I recognized Jeff Garland’s great voice as Norman’s father, but I didn’t recognize Elaine Stritch as his grandmother. I’m not the biggest fan of her work. She normally chews the scenery in overacting everything she does, but I think she did a great job here.


Norman with the John Goodman character

The animation was superb. Everything seemed to be on ones and beautifully fluid. There were a lot of peculiar and erratic moves that seemed totally natural to the characters on screen. The directors told us there were a number of scenes, particularly crowd shots that had some cg characters added since it would make the FX work much easier.

The climax of the film involves a lot of FX as the witch’s curse is brought to a close so that the dead, seen by Norman, can go back to rest. Very arresting imagery here makes it strong visually.

My only problems with the film had to do with the story. I found it sagging quite a bit midway. The emotional wallop isn’t strong enough because everything for some time seems to be at an even pace. I would have liked to see it vary a bit more, heightening and lightening throughout. This is the hardest part of filmmaking; it’s something I have my own problems with, and I think it changes with experience.

I enjoyed this film more than Coraline, and I think they’re onto something with the stop-motion animation. There’s a tactile sense to the film that you never get with cg. I’d recommend it, and I think it’ll do well.

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As the credits started to roll, I went outside to meet the two directors. I told them basically what I would be asking about and asked if there was anything they wanted to get across. From there we went inside to our appointed seats and microphones. The microphones, of course, turned on but didn’t work. We just spoke loudly, and I instructed the audience to do the same when they asked a question.


Half the audience in that kind of uncomfortable theater

They kept the lights on the audience down low, and the lights up front, where we were, a bit brighter, though I learned we were basically in the dark.

We got into it. Midway through the conversation the house lights went on, and I knew we’d soon hear our voices booming. Sure enough, the mics turned on, squealing across the theater. We just shut off the mics and resumed talking in our natural voices.


(L to R) me, Sam Fell, Chris Butler

Chris Butler was the sole credited writer, so I asked about the script. He, apparently, had started it while he was working in the story department on Coraline. He got the chance to show it to Travis Knight and sold the script as their next film. From his vantage point there was no break between the two features. Sam Fell, who’d started animating for Aardman got to direct Flushed Away and The Tale of Despereaux. From there he met with Chris Butler. The two hit it off, and they got to work together on ParaNorman.


(L to R) me, Sam Fell, Chris Butler

I asked what differences had happened to stop-motion animation in the recent past since we’re no longer doing the clunky animation of Alice in Wonderland anymore. He talked about playback, photography, replacement faces (which are printed out from computers so that the animation is much smoother) and apparently, they do rehearsed versions of the scenes, whether on 2s or 10s, sort of an animatic rough of the scene, so that the director will know exactly where they’re going. Digital was the magic word to make the stop-motion animation better,.


the other half of the audience

The questions from the audience typically ranged from good to dumb. Bill Plympton asked what it was like directing animation from Travis Knight, their boss. They said they didn’t have to be critical since he was a very talented animator who usually did his rehearsals on 2s. Someone else asked the budget, and they said they really had no knowledge of that aspect. (What else should they have said?) There were a number of questions about the replacement faces that were printed by computer, and other questions asked about the sets – how many and how large.

Basically, the directors were friendly, courteous and pleased to be able to talk about their work. I think they’ll have something of a hit on their hands.

Aside from all the other press material available on line, there’s a nice slide show on the NYTimes site as well as an article about the making of the film.

There were many others from our local talent at the screening. Admittedly I wasn’t paying much attention since I had the talkback on mind. Here are a few of those there that I can roll of the top of my head; they included Candy Kugel and husband, Chuck; John Dilworth and girlfriend, Marie; Bill Plympton and wife, Sandrine; Signe Baumane with a couple of her interns; and Jaime Ekkens.

Commentary &Puppet Animation 11 Aug 2012 06:16 am

Puppet Animation

This has been the week of puppet animation

- When I was young I was into puppets. All kinds of puppets. I made puppets, all different type of puppet. Marionettes were made of wood and string or muslin and string. Hand puppets were made of muslin and other types of cloth. I never really went into sock puppets; they were too easy. But I did buy puppets. There was a whole line of marionettes made of a wood-like resin of the Disney characters I had the Tramp and Lady. I had Mickey Mouse and Donald. I had a puppet theater in the back yard, and the kids of the neighborhood would pay to see shows I put on with a couple of siblings. The candy counter made a lot more money for us.

Even more interested in animation, I spent most of my time trying to teach myself everything about film. Naturally, puppet animation was something I worked a lot. It’d take time to animate drawings and then more time to color them and shoot them. It was faster to animate puppets. Once you had the model, you could just keep going. I have all this 8mm film of different types of puppets animated. For some reason a “Twist-o-flex” Goofy running from a Lionel train chasing him down a track stands out. It was fun.

I was in love with Georg Pal‘s films and watched all that I could get my eyes on. I watched a lot of European animation on some of NY’s local channels. They’d infrequently have stop-motion Eastern European films. Once in a while some local channel wold run Lou Bunin‘s feature, Alice in Wonderland, or I remember watching Jiri Trnka‘s feature version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard Burton narrated it and did all the voices. That Sunday afternoon was heaven. I’m not sure if it was the film or the fact that I had some alone time in my house. (When you have a family of seven, you appreciate those quiet moments.) It didn’t take much for me to become a fan of Trnka’s work; his work sang to me. The more I looked into it, the greater he became.

This was just when Jim Henson was breaking on the scene. The muppets didn’t exist yet. I give this all as introduction to what this past week has meant to me. It was a week of puppet animation in New York.

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Alice

Monday night, the Museum of Modern Art had a screening of Lou Bunin‘s 1950 feature film, Alice in Wonderland. Heidi and I went to the screening that had about half of the seats filled. I’d forgotten that the film was shot in AnscoColor. This was post WWII, and England didn’t have access to the three strip Technicolor. The film was limited to red and green colors, so everything looked chartreuse or orange. In other words, ugly.
The brown mixture grew more and more annoying as the 90 minute feature progressed. The costumes were designed to exploit the two strip color hues, and this might have been a mistake. Alice was dressed in a chartreuse and orange dress, and she might have stood out more attractively had she been wearing white. In fact, the film looks much better when shown in B&W.

The state of puppet animation wasn’t quite so sophisticated in 1950, at least as it would seem from this feature. Many clunky character moves revealed the budget constraints of the film. The magic and grace of the George Pal shorts felt missed on Lou Bunin’s film, but there, again, the disparity of the budgets had to have been noticed.

I briefly met and worked with Lou Bunin in the early days of my career. John Gati, a stop motion animator in New York hired me to work on a Care Free Sugarless Gum commercial. Care Free and Trident gums undressed and jumped onto a scale with Care Free weighing more for your money. It took a week to do the 20 secs. of animation in the spot. But just as we were completing animation, we learned that Trident had changed their packaging, and we had to redo the entire spot. At the end of the second week, and the second version of the spot, we learned that Care Free would update their packaging, as well, and we had to do the spot a third time. One week’s work stretched to three, but the work was getting redundant and irritating.

In the middle of that third week, Lou Bunin moved into a corner of the studio. I learned that he was doing a test spot. He was doing a version of the Lucky Charms elf as a puppet and animating it. The puppet was a beauty, and I convinced Lou to allow me to work for him (for free) to assist in the spot. I enjoyed myself for a few more days, and got to meet the man who’d made the only stop motion animated feature.


A news item during the making of Lou Bunin’s Alice.
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Quay Brothers

- Just 12 hours later, at 10am on Tuesday, there was a Press showing of the Quay Brothers exhibit at MoMA. I was invited, and I took the opportunity to see the show with the fewest numbers of people who would gather around the smallish artwork. They told us where to go in the Museum (which had another hour before opening) and left us on our own. I went back in the evening to the opening party. Go here to read my review.

I reviewed this in detail this past Thursday. The show was exhilarating for me. Since getting the first taste of the Quay brothers back in 1980 when I saw their early film Nocturna Artificialia at the Ottawa Animation Festival. A good half of the audience didn’t know what to make of the movie and were impatient. The other half were completely taken by the film and knew it was one of the best of the films we’d seen. The jury at that festival deservedly gave top prize to Tale of Tales. That was the same year that Yurij Norshtein took the world with his masterwork of a film. Indeed, Tale of Tales was (and still is) a greater film than Nocturna Artificialia. (Interesting that Tale of Tales is a cut out animation film – essentially also stop motion.)

Of course, the brothers Quay are more than stop-motion filmmakers. They’ve done live action as well as documentary films; they’ve designed theater sets and books and record albums. The Blood Sweat and Tears first album cover is theirs. They were asked to design the cover without heads on the musician’s bodies. According to the brothers, the record company didn’t trust them to do the heads correctly; so the producers pasted hi-contrast images on the heads of the bodies, and they didn’t match the graphics the brothers had done. (Actually, the story isn’t properly told on the museum’s wall note; they make it sound as if the brothers had decided to leave the musicians headless, and the record company had to correct the situation. At the very least, it’s ambiguous and led to someone questioning the brothers during the museum’s Q&A.)

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ParaNorman

- Then there’s ParaNorman. This film is scheduled to open next week. It’s a stop-motion animated feature from Laika, the company that backed Henry Selick in the making of Coraline. They got rid of Mr. Selick, and made a follow-up feature about zombies called ParaNorman. I’m scheduled to see that film tomorrow morning in an industry screening. In fact, I’ve been asked to lead the talkback, a Q&A with the directors: Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Mr. Butler had been the storyboard supervisor on Coraline, and Mr. Fell had been a director of the cgi features, Flushed Away, the first non-puppet feature from Aardman, & The Tale of Despereaux.

I’ll report on the event and review that film on Tuesday.

By the way, when I last spoke to them yesterday, I was told there’d be some extra seats. So if you’d like to see ParaNorman on Sunday at a 10am show try going to this link: ParaNorman. Note that they say that RSVPing doesn’t necessarily guarantee a seat. At the moment, I know there are seats available; hopefully everyone will be able to get in.

RSVPs.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 12TH
10:00 AM
AMC Loews Kips Bay 15
570 Second Avenue (@ East 32nd Street)

The NYTimes today has an article about ParaNorman and puppet animation.

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Some After Thoughts

Gene Deitch‘s birthday was this week (he likes to point out that his birthday was 8/8 (August 8th when he turned 88.) He’s still keeping the blog up and he’s writing a new book. (If you haven’t read his book, How to Succeed in Animation, on AWN, go get it now – it’s free.

There are a couple of key things about puppet animation on his site, Roll the Credits. The information about his firendship with Jiri Trnka is worth the price of admission.It’s just great reading with lots of key photos.

Gene also has a video tour of the Kratky Puppet Studio, a walk-through with Bretislav Pojar. This is a handy llittle treasure of a video. Thanks to Gene from all of us who love puppet animation.

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Commentary 04 Aug 2012 06:21 am

Kenyan Notes and Other Stuff

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The Kenyan Animation Industry

- Fraser MacLean, the author of the brilliant and beautifully illustrated book, Setting the Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout, contacted me a couple of weeks ago to introduce me to a young animator from Nairobi called Daniel Muli. Daniel is currently in New York for a short visit – he’s also a musician recording with his group – and Fraser was hoping to set up a meeting.

I’ve decided to give you a bit of that letter from Fraser and Daniel for you to get an idea of what was happening in Africa.

Daniel writes:

    “The Kenyan animation industry… It’s not the most active, sadly. It’s still in those early stages where everyone who’s trying to make it work is a crazy enthusiast, so I guess it makes for cool vibes when people get together, you get a lot of people trading information and stuff they’ve been watching, comic books they’ve been reading or whatever. Manga/anime’s pretty popular. And there’s a lot of people experimenting with what African art would be like translated into the animation medium.
    I guess another reason you find that most of the animators working right now are coming from a fan perspective is because the schools here are kind of uninspiring. I taught a couple of classes at one of them when I was in uni, and it was a difficult situation, the facilities, and students who were sent there more because they didn’t have much else to do rather than because they like the work… It was kind of exhausting. But the college I was at did a short intense course in collaboration with Truemax, a European 3D animation school, which seems to have gone well. (That was after I left.) There aren’t big employers of animators at the moment; the first and biggest so far was the Tinga Tinga Tales project that was done with Disney and the BBC.


Opening song from Tinga Tinga Tales.

See episodes of Tinga Tinga Tales here.

Fraser Maclean continues writing:

    Since that project wrapped, all the animators kind of just went back into the random freelance lifestyle. Some of them find less work in animation and more in design and advertising, or such things. I guess the best thing would be if we had more projects that were based here, and were a bit more sustainable, and I’m sure that’ll happen soon, but so far the attempts to start something, from u-nions to big film projects, are brought down by infighting and politics or whatever…

    Does all this sound bleak?”

I did get to meet with Daniel this past week, and “bleak” is certainly not the word. We talked a bit about New York, a bit about Kenya. We met at Candy Kugel’s studio, Buzzco, and their EMMY on display got Daniel to tell me about Well Told Story a project he was involved with which won the first International EMMY for Africa. Much of his free-lance stories sound very much like freelancing in New York. In ways, animation is probably he same the world over.

Daniel Muli has made the most of his two week stay in New York recording for several days and performing for others. He’d also spoken at Bard College and today, Saturday, at 3pm he’ll perform in Central Park as part of their Summer Stage series. I’m looking to go and listen to his music. If it’s at all as vibrant as he, it’ll make for a great show.

Here are two of the creative (and community) projects that Daniel is currently involved in: go here and here.

    Summer Stage
    Saturday, August 4, 2012 | 3 p.m.
    Amadou & Mariam / Theophilus London / Just a Band
    Presented in Association with: Museum for African Art
    Free!

    SummerStage is located at Rumsey Playfield near the 5th Avenue and 69th Street entrance to Central Park.

Take a look at Just a Band‘s music video samples below:


This one uses puppets.


Here’s one that uses flash animation.

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A Couple of New Animated Features

- Toys In the Attic is a multimedia animated film combining 3D stop motion, 2D animation, pixillation and live action. The film stars the voices of Forest Whitaker, Joan Cusack and Cary Elwes in their English language version. The film was directed by Jiri Barta, who is sometimes called the Tim Burton of the Czech Republic. The English version is being released to theaters on September 7th.

However, if you want to see the film sooner than that, it’s playing as part of the International Children’s Film Festival. That will take place on:
Saturday & Sunday, August 25-26, 11:00am
at the IFC Center.

May I also remind you that Cat in Paris (the Oscar nominated 2D animated feature from France) continues to play at the Cinema Village on 12th St & University Pl. This film has been playing in NY for three consecutive months. The film’s only an hour long, but it’s good. Go here for the schedule.
By the way Brave is also playing at the theater, and I’m not sure if it’s on the same bill – one price for both films. From the schedule it looks like it is.

Toys In the Attic is another of many 3D stop motion films being released this year, including one from Tim Burton, the American Tim Burton. That one is Frankenweenie. Paranormal will be released within the next month. That’s a big budget stop motion feature that comes from Laika, the Oregon company that financed Henry Selick‘s last film, Coraline. They apparently felt they could get along well without Mr. Selick. It’ll be curious to see what they do without him: it’ll be fun to see if they did.


Lou Bunin behind the camera on Alice

- A 3D puppet animated feature from 1950 will have it’s last theatrical showing of the season this coming week. The Museum of Modern Art is screening Lou Bunin‘s Alice in Wonderland this Monday at 8pm. This film gave Disney agita when it was released at the very same time as his Alice feature. He tried to stop the American release of Bunin’s film, but lost that contention.

I previously wrote about this Bunin film here and here and here and included the NYTimes press clipping about the Disney vs Bunin trial.

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Dreamworks Sets Their Schedule

- DreamWorks Animation has announced its release calendar through 2014, setting dates for seven animated features.

    Madagascar 3 opened on June 8
    Rise of the Guardians will open in theaters Nov. 21, 2012.
    The Croods goes out on March 1, 2013.
    Turbo bows on June 7, 2013.
    Me and My Shadow, combining traditional animation with CGI, opens Nov. 8, 2013.
    Mr. Peabody & Sherman goes out in theaters March 21, 2014.
    How To Train Your Dragon 2 opens June 20, 2014.

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Art Meets Animation

- Richard O’Connor (Ace and Son) directed me to a gallery showing in New York currently on display. Suzan Pitt‘s film, Asparagus is on display at the Harris Lieberman gallery at 508 West 26th Street, in Chelsea, through Aug. 17th. It’s quite amazing that a 33 year old film is still circling the art galleries and getting the lead attention in the NYTimes art reviews. Congratulations to Suzan Pitt, proof positive that animation can be art.

- Richard also noted that Natalie Djurberg has a show at the New Museum.
Art News reports: The Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg works with animation films which are inhabited by clay figures in a strange universe. The short films are often no longer than five minutes but they manage however to tell stories about the human condition mixed both with black humour and seriousness.
Art and animation mix in NYC.

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MoCCA Moves

- A couple of weeks ago a small article in the NYTImes (July 10th, to be exact) reported with this headline: Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Says That’s All, Folks – for Now. The article read; “The MoCCA, in SoHo, announced, without elaboration, on its Web site on Monday that it was closing its “physical location,” effective immediately.”
It continued: “’Plans are afoot to continue MoCCA in a new and exciting incarnation,’ according to a statement on the Web site.”

Then yesterday I received an email from MoCCA. This one stated: The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) and the Society of Illustrators have announced plans for MoCCA to transfer its assets to the Society, creating a single cultural institution supporting and celebrating illustration, comics, and animation. This will give MoCCA a long-desired street-level location, in the Society’s building at 128 E. 63rd Street.

So there you have it; life goes on.

Commentary 21 Jul 2012 06:37 am

Passing Week

Passing

Two people who I respected enormously died this past week. They’d both touched my life, however briefly, and I had to comment on them.

I worked with Celeste Holm when she did a VO narration for me for a five picture set I did for the United Nations.
Ms. Holm was a star, one of the big ones from the era just before mine. My mother was very impressed that I was meeting her (so was I.) Take a look at her NYTimes Obituary for information about her great Oscar-winning career.

Things started off a little rocky when she arrived late with the UN representative who went to meet her and accompany her to the studio. There was some difficulty
with traffic. I had no problem with the late start, but my recording engineer – who had never heard of Celeste Holm – asked, “Is this the talent?” as she entered the room.

There was a long introductory narration for her to read, and I suggested we try going through it once so she would get familiar with it. Ms. Holm read it with many halts and huffs and stops and starts. But her expressions were basically right on the mark. I asked her for another take. With that she said she’d worked with William Wyler on her first film, and she’d done her first scene, she felt, perfectly. However, he continued asking for take after take finally ending with take 100. He used the first take. I listened and understood she wanted to read it only the one time. I responded by saying that William Wyler deserved 100 takes, but would it be possible for me to just get two? She did it perfectly on the second take. (It WAS a hard read, written by someone at the UN, not a script writer.)

By the way, I’ve never been able to find any film she did with Wyler, yet I’m sure he’s the director she’d named.

Richard Zanuck is a producer whose work I followed for ages. From Jaws to Driving Miss Daisy; Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland he was my idea of the consummate producer. Someone who put good films together and nurtured great talent.

At one screening, I recognized him sitting in the row behind me at the Academy theater and cautiously approached to say hello. After that brief meeting we always said casual greetings whenever we saw each other. I’ll miss seeing him in the world and so will Hollywood.

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Emily Hubley’s Film


Artist and muse

I was completely under the spell of Emily Hubley’s latest film and/or, a 5½ min short poetic meditation on creativity. The film plays in a semi-abstract mode as it animates from scene to scene always moving in beautifully colorful transitions. The music, while always melodic, doesn’t hit on a theme until the old piano kicks in behind the finalized work of art. A coda of sweet animation playing out on the blank slate we’d seen at the film’s start. This is a wonderful movie with constantly repeating images and symbols. The voices change from male to female – before the idea gels and after, while a muse (female) whispers to the artist. I sat through the film three times, and it continued to grow with each viewing, and I’m sure it’ll get bigger the next time I see it.

Look for this movie on the festival circuit. It’s one of Emily’s finest, a fully developed, visually exciting movie.

music – Yo La Tengo
voices – Kevin Corrigan, Emily Hubley and Tiprin Manday
compositing – Jeremiah Dickey
sound design – Eliza Paley

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Films I’ve Seen

This past week was a good one for movies, from my point of view. I saw what I thought were three of the best so far. Two docs and one French.

The French film, on Tuesday, was Farewell My Queen by Benoît Jacquot. It was the story of Marie Antoinette in the last days before the storming of the Bastille, as told by a young woman servant who acted as a “reader.” She read to her Queen and, therefore, had limited access to Royalty with a bit of knowledge about the politics surrounding both the King and Queen. The film was quite entertaining, seriously thoughtful about the period and certainly more illuminating than a couple of other recent films about the subject. Well acted, directed and scripted (an adaptation of the book by Chantal Thomas.

Thursday night the Academy offered a documentary double feature. I didn’t really feel up to going but pushed myself and was glad I did.

The Queen of Versailles by Lauren Greenfield told the story of a billionaire couple as they attempt to build the largest private home in the world. Construction of the private home is just a symbol for the problems this couple face as they build their house on sticks assembled on easy money with loose mortgages which collapsed with the recession in 2008. All their money collapses as well and while the husband tries to regroup the wife, acting as if she understands, continues to spend wildly and unnecessarily. The husband who works, as he says, 24/7 to rebuild his company – which is also his private funds. It’s a struggle, and the film – which starts out like a reality TV show – turns into serious questions about affluence and waste. It’s a wonderful film.

Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry is a film by Alison Klayman which focuses on the Chinese artist/activist and dissident. The film offers a sympathetic but rounded picture of this admirable artist. The artist is all about communication, and his primary theme is about the political situation within his own country. His work is well known internationally (probably more so outside of China), and we get a very intimate portrait of the man, his work and his views. While being thoroughly informative, the film reveals a lot about the society in Beijing and we get to see how changes have developed quietly over the years. Ai WeiWei, himself, says that his not being imprisoned is enough of a proof that things are changing. (He does disappear for months and is obviously affected by the arrest once he’s been released – it takes him a number of months before going back to his constant twittering.) The film could have gone much deeper than it does, but the filmmaker is obviously trying to tell the story to an audience who doesn’t know who Ai WeiWei is. It’s a primer, and a bigger film is deserving, but we do get into the human side of the artist, which is well appreciated.

I’d heartily recommend all three films to anyone looking for something intelligent and adult. They’re all three very different from each other and offer what ever mood you’re looking for at the theater. Unless, of course, you yearn for Batman rising again.

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How Cheap Can You Go?

Something has hapened to animation in the past few years. The budgets keep getting lower and lower and lower. Clients have no qualms about asking you to produce a project for free. Another, producing a series of short films, asks you to do a five minute film for $2000. That’s $400 for a minute of film. And the worst part is that you not only think hard about taking it (if you don’t), but you try to calculate how much more work you’ll get from the same producer when you do a brilliant film for them.

Naturally enough, after you’ve done the job you don’t get more from them, and you have to wonder why they don’t love you any more – even though you’ve done a great job.

It’s a horrible situation we’re in. The small studios are being squeezed to death by these low budget backers and times are getting tougher.

Richard O’Connor, at his site Ace & Son, starts a dialogue about this state of affairs. Worth the read, worth adding to the commentary.

Commentary 07 Jul 2012 05:35 am

Museum Movies and Others on line

Museum Animation Programs

- The museums in New York are offering a number of important animation programs this summer. Now through October 28th the Whitney Museum is showing Oskar Fischinger: Space Light Art—A Film Environment. This was a multiple screen program he had devised in 1926 called Raumlichtkunst. It included 3 35mm films that were projected simultaneously. It has now been transferred to high definition video and is projected in a loop, so that it is constantly running for the museum’s audience. The film was recently restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. From the museum’s posting it says: “Radical in format, its display of abstract shapes and colors produces, according to Fischinger, ‘an intoxication by light from a thousand sources.’”


The Quay Brothers at work

Meanwhile the Museum of Modern Art is having a gallery exhibition of the Quay Brothers‘ work. The brothers, originally from Philadelphia, have settled in London where for the past 30 years they created avant garde stop motion films. They’ve worked as illustrators, stage designers, and filmmakers. The installation showcases all of their work and features a series of “dormitoriums,” miniature décors created for their stop-motion films.There will also be a complete retrospective of their work including their early work, graphic design, calligraphic work, and works on paper. Their films include a complete retrospective of all the puppet films, as well as the student and live action films.
The program will rum from August 11th through January 7, 2013.
I’ll try to keep you posted on the upcoming film programs as they approach.

Also at the MoMA, Tues July 31st at 6PM and Mon August 6th at 8PM, Lou Bunin‘s version of Alice in Wonderland will be screened. The film is rarely screened theatrically and hard to find in DVD. While in production, Disney did everything possible to stop it from going forward, trying to take it to court. Both this Alice and Disney’s ultmately opened within months of each other. When it opened in England in 1950 the British censors objected to a caricature of Queen Victoria, and the film wasn’t released in England until 1985.

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Jeff Scher’s American Royalty

Jeff Scher continues to produce rich, abstract animated films. His latest is a music video for his “favorite new band.” I’ve embedded the film, below. Take a look.

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Bendito Machine

- I received a note from Jossie Malis about a series he’s been creating called Bendito Machine. In his words:

    Bendito Machine is a show which reflects on the innocence of a small, naive and clumsy species that cannot live without their machines, and which is guided by enlightened greedy bastards, who believe they have the answer to everything.

I was intrigued enough to go to his website and search out the films. There are four of them; they’ve just completed the last of the four. You can watch them all on line (here). They’re quite attractive pieces each about 5 – 10 minutes in length, and they’re all silhouette films. The filmmaking group is, naturally enough, a small one with obvious dedication to the work. It is quite attractive, and I encourage you to take a look.

They’ve recently started a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising money to do more of them; I think it’s a worthwhile project. Take a look at the films and consider for yourself whether it’s worth contributing – even as little as $1.

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Other Blog postings I like

There are a couple of other nice reads out on the internet this week:

    Traditional Animation features a good interview with Producer, Gary Goldman, on the 30th anniversary of The Secret of Nimh. The interview reviews all the elements that combined to create the studio and pull this first feature film together. This is a good site and worth visiting (and I don’t say that just because it includes an interview with me in its backlog.) There are many parts from news to forums to interviews.
    Mike Barrier has a fine piece on the Harman-Ising cartoon, The Milky Way (the first non-Disney cartoon to win an Oscar). It features some beautiful preproduction artwork from the film.
    Of course, on Mike’s site there’s also the great interview with Warner Bros animator, Phil Monroe. In case you haven’t yet read it, you should. Certainly if you have even the slightest interest in animation history.
    Bill Benzon, in his very detailed and analytical way, takes on the script of Disney’s Dumbo on his blog, New Savannah. Anything Dumbo is worth reading, especially if it’s written by someone as erudite as Mr. Benzon.
    One of those blogs that sits out there forever and has become a valuable piece of real estate for those, like I, who keep coming back to it is the Al Eugster Blog. Mark Mayerson set up this wonderful blog which honors a fine animator. There are many photos of Mr. Eugster in the many positions and studios he animated for. Pictures of the Ub Iwerks studio (Iwerks pitching horseshoes), the Disney Studio in 1935, the Fleischer Studio, or the pictures I sought out this week, the Gifford Studio in NYC. Many thanks to Mark for this hidden treasure as well as for his not-so-hidden treasure, his current blog, Mayerson on Animation. That site is a must-check daily.

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Scam Scum

Finally, what happens when you’re an artist and your email address has been pillaged by some idiot and all your “friends” on your mailing list have been contacted and told that you’ve been robbed in Spain and left penniless, so please send money? Well, if you’re Gene Deitch, you send out the following note to all on your mailing list who may have been approached:


Animation Artifacts &Disney &Layout & Design &Story & Storyboards 05 Jul 2012 06:08 am

Daydreams – recap

How frequently, lately, they’re running Alice in Wonderland on tv. Unfortunately, nowadays, it’s the Tim Burton version. Horrible. I’m going to have to go back to the DVD to watch the cartoon again. Speaking of which, the MoMA is going to screen the Lou Binin version in late July. I’ll write about it on Saturday, and I’ll re-review it when it does. I’m definitely going. Here’s an oldie but goodie.

- The Alice In Wonderland dvd contains a storyboard sequence of Alice daydreaming in the park. This sequence didn’t make it to the film (for good reason), but they’ve re-assembled it for the dvd. I’ve taken some frame grabs to show off the drawings. They’re on screen for such a short time.

My favorite’s the last.


(Click any image to enlarge.)__________


Daily post 23 Mar 2012 11:00 am

Alice’s Shadows – Re-post

- An interesting aspect of Disney’s Alice In Wonderland, deserves some attention, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone write about it.

Once Alice is in Wonderland, she immediately comes upon the woods, and from there she steps in and out of the woods to meet up with new crazies and her peculiar adventures. The effects department was used to signal this move in and out of the dark world of wonderland. She constantly steps in and out of shadows.

This, as anyone who did animation in the pre-computer age, knows that it was a complication to add shadows. Not only the shadows under the characters but the shadows over and around the characters. It meant filming the scenes twice, just for the shadows. Since the camera, during the filming of Alice, was not computerized this double shooting had to be done by hand VERY CAREFULLY. Every frame had to exactly match.

Hence, this was an important part of the design. The directors and Disney took these shadows seriously; after all they cost twice as much – just to photograph. Never mind animating them, coloring them or planning them.

I’ve put together a number of frame grabs which illustrate the move into or out of shadows, and I’d like to share them.


Here, Alice steps out of a shadow for the first time, and meets up with
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They’re partially covered, themselves, by shadow.
This variant of the shadow is a hard line of darkness that moves over her.


(Click any image to enlarge.)


Soon, Alice moves toward the Duchess’ house. We cut from her
standing dark in shadow, to her walking in a brighter light.


As she moves toward the Caterpillar, Alice is covered with shrubbery and shadow.
She is next seen struggling through the foliage to talk to the Caterpillar, in full light.


This variant of the shadow is a total shift in color as her entire body moves into darkness.
It was done by dissolving one Alice into another – meaning the cels were painted twice.


In the woods, Alice walks into and out of and into shadows.


She slowly moves toward the Cheshire Cat who directs her to the tea party.
As she does she moves from shadow and cuts into light as she appears at the gate.


This is a particularly nice effect wherein the entire area gets spotlighted -
led by the character. The area outside of the spot darkens slowly and beautifully.


Once leaving the tea party, she wanders around the Tulgey Wood trying to find any direction. Shadows aplenty as she moves endlessly through the woods.


Alice moves into and out of shadow via dissolves.


Alice passes by many crazy characters, going in and out of darkness.


Just prior to meeting up with the Cheshire Cat, and has an extended conversation
which just about ends her stay in the woods.


Finally, Alice steps into the Cheshire Cat’s tree and
into the light of the maze of cards to meet the Red Queen.

Commentary &Independent Animation 03 Mar 2012 06:11 am

More Crits, Quips and Cracks

Barrier Reading

- Last week I wrote about my reading Andrew Osmond‘s BFI monograph for the film Spirited Away. I quite enjoyed the short book and immediately read through it twice. Of course, I also enjoy Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away, so I had a lot to visit in the read.

In the rear of the book, there are notes and references for further reading. One of these was a commentary article by Michael Barrier which is still posted on his site, about Monsters Inc. and Pixar’s animation as well as mention of a couple of Miyazaki films, Princess Mononkone and Spirited Away.

My first thought on going back and rereading Mike’s article was in how much the comment and material holds up over the years. There’s some very specific arguments being made about the animation of all the films mentioned, and I can’t take issue with much of what he has to say.

I’d like to quote a few paragraphs from this article:

    Computer animation’s technology has from all appearances advanced at an even faster rate than the techniques of the Disney animators in the thirties. It’s becoming clear, though, that, in contrast to what happened seventy years ago, there’s no necessary connection between mastering the technology and putting more convincing characters on the screen. When a character is covered with millions of precisely rendered hairs, and his on-screen environment is richly three-dimensional, it’s reasonable to expect him to move with a real creature’s subtlety. Sulley does not pass that test. He is less persuasive than many drawn characters whose caricatured movements are simpler and more direct. It is Sulley’s voice (by John Goodman) that brings him to life, far more than the animation; in that respect, the Pixar characters are indistinguishable from Homer Simpson or, for that matter, Huckleberry Hound.

And about Spirited Away:

    Stylization, the ready answer, or excuse, for Japanese animators’ cavalier handling of their characters, doesn’t really serve in Miyazaki’s case, because he is so good at atmospherics—his settings seem real even when the characters don’t. To the extent that Chihiro, Miyazaki’s ten-year-old protagonist, wins our sympathy, it’s not because the animation brings her to life (except perhaps in fleeting moments when she slips into the paralysis of fear), it’s because Miyazaki places her in an environment as persuasively weird as those in the most obvious of his sources, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. But how much more powerful the film would be—how much more involving—if Chihiro had been animated so that she were wholly present on the screen . . .

Mike is definitely right. The animation of the early, pre-Brad Bird Pixar films is not quite sophisticated enough to take control of the well performed celebrity voices that dominate the characters. (Bird, I think, was able to coax bits of fine original animation out of the animators and the complex system of cgi animation.) Likewise, through Spirited Away, I see a simplicity in the animation of the characters. However, it is with this film that I believe some real animation starts to enter the Miyazaki films. The scene where Chihiro crosses a treacherous metal pipe outside the bath house. The character makes a strong change in personality with this animation, and it has to be taken note that this is not in the voice over but in the artwork. Miyazaki made the choice to change the personality here against the arguments of his animation director, and we can see that the character development has clearly stepped into the studio’s animation, no matter how slowly. From this point forward, Chahiro has a marked change in her character.

Yes, as Mike suggests, the atmospherics have strongly supported the obvious animation, up to this point, but I believe something stronger is entering the films.

This to me is quite clear in seeing The Secret World of Arrietty. Things have taken an enormous leap, and some of the animation is very personable, completely without artifice and wholly based on human action and interaction. Certainly, it still has many wooden scenes, but there is enough original work in there, that I have to have enormous pleasure in witnessing real 2D animation making its presence felt. This non-generic animation is hard to find in western work, and that’s almost inexplicable to me.

Mike Barrier in his commentary article on Disney’s Tangled has different thoughts about cgi animation. I have to say I don’t quite agree with him on this film, but I understand what he has to say.

    Where CGI is concerned, it seems to me that a complete naturalness in the characters’ movements, like that in parts of Tangled, does not limit the animators to a deadening literalness. Instead, it creates the potential for more subtle and expressive animation of a distinctly non-literal kind, just as the Disney animators’ growing mastery of hand-drawn animation in the 1930s meant that cartoon characters like the Seven Dwarfs could be more insistently present on the screen than characters that were drawn with superficially greater realism.

Where Mike sees glimmers of a reality in the animation, I see it all ripped away by generic popping movements, oftentimes covered with blurred motions. What you get are the slow moving gestures immediately followed by popping cartoon-like actions. This goes for both Rapunzel and her Prince. The end result is that their motions, to me, are identical, and there is no personality shining through beyond the voice acting (which I don’t think is great. Mandy Moore couldn’t be more generic.) The realistic movements, to me, are with the witch/stepmother. Here, Donna Murphy‘s voice over has a lot to do with the character, but I don’t discount what the character, herself, is doing in the animation.

In short, I have to say that there’s a veritable treasure trove of material on Mike Barrier‘s site. Dig in and take a look at some of these articles. His is a singular, articulate voice, and there’re books worth of ideas and living commentary on this site. And it’s all for free. but then if you really love animation, you already know this.

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The Animation Blog is Back

- I’m pleased to see that Ian Lumsden has returned to posting more videos on his blog, The Animation Blog. Ian’s taste is quite fine, and the work posted is always of a generally high caliber. Recently he posted Eugene Federenko and Rose Newlove‘s beauty of a film, The Village Idiots. Federenko is an artist of the most devoted kind, and to watch his films is always my pleasure. Believe me, I’ve seen many of them MANY times, and the welcome doesn’t wear thin for me.

Such films as Mr. Federenko’s makes me long for the National Film Board of even fifteen years ago when capital was a little more available, and the beautiful films
were plentiful. (I’m grateful for any short they’re still making and I wait for them at Festivals and Academy runoffs. This year’s Wild Life by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis and Dimanche by Patrick Doyon were both superb gems, and those filmmakers deserved the high praise they received in being nominated for the Oscar. I’d hoped for Wild Life to win, but am pleased they got as far as they did. It’s story is the best of those that were in the running.)

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Oscar Choices

- The Oscars came and went, and neither of my animation choices won, though I’m not ocmpletely dissatisfied with Rango‘s win. At least it was the more eccentric of the cgi films.

As for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, I find the film completely opaque. It’s obviously and attractive and seems to think it’s about something, but I’ll be damned if I can understand it. Except that the guy likes books and doles them out from his ersatz library in the middle of nowhereland. Oh yes, he’s lonely. All he has is a Humpty Dumpty animated illustration book to keep him in good company.

This is one of those design-y stories where everything is built around conceit, and the audience is fed schmaltz about nothing. It’s a poor meal to swallow.

A film like Wild Life is about many things and told its story beautifully, graphically and was well animated.


Just the same, congratulations to William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
I’m pleased that they’re onto other projects at Moonbot Studio.

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The Lorax

- Of the local critics, AO Scott of the NYTimes was particularly harsh on THE LORAX

    Don’t be fooled. Despite its soft environmentalist message “The Lorax” is an example of what it pretends to oppose. Its relationship to Dr. Seuss’s book is precisely that of the synthetic trees that line the streets of Thneedville to the organic Truffulas they have displaced. The movie is a noisy, useless piece of junk, reverse-engineered into something resembling popular art in accordance with the reigning imperatives of marketing and brand extension.

and then later in the review . . .

    In the film as in the book, the Once-ler ravages the landscape and destroys the Truffula trees to manufacture thneeds, knitted garments that have multiple uses but no real utility. Demand for them is insatiable for a while, and then, once the trees are gone, the thneeds are forgotten, partly because nobody really needed them in the first place. There is an obvious metaphor here, but the movie is blind to it, and to everything else that is interesting or true in the story it tries to tell.

It sounds like the trailer I saw for the film, as I waited patiently through many animated junk trailers, on the way to see The Secret World of Arrietty in a theater. The film screens for Academy members on this upcoming Thursday. Maybe I’ll muster the courage to sit through it.

But then, Eliabeth Weitzman in the NYDaily News seemed to enjoy the film calling it, “A Tree-mendous Animated Movie.”

    While softening Geisel’s darker themes, they still meld a valuable message into catchy songs, bright images (nicely done in 3D) and funny characters.
    Even adults are likely to walk out wondering how our own society has strayed so far from any sensible path … before hopping into their Lorax-approved Mazda and heading to IHOP for some Truffula Chip pancakes.

And, finally, the NYPost‘s Kyle Smith is merciless:

    I am the critic, I speak to displease:
    “The Lorax” is awful, like chronic disease.
    There’s no fun in “The Lorax,” no joy in its theme;
    It’s as boring as sales tax.
    I’m ready to ream.

Books &Commentary 10 Nov 2011 06:45 am

Lutz

- This week, I posted a review of E.G. Lutz’ book, Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development, and I commented that I have had this curiosity about who E.G.Lutz actually was. A quick Google search for biographical information comes up with nothing other than the Amazon listing of his books for sale and the references to him in other animation books.

It was a bit of a surprise to me to find that his singular animation book, published in 1920, is definitely not his best selling book. That would be Drawing made easy; A step by step guide to drawing for young artists. There are also another half dozen books he’s either written or illustrated.

I decided, then, to look in all of the books I own. The best place to start was with Donald Crafton‘s book, Before Mickey. Sure enough, there was an illustration by Lutz that was done in 1897. It depicted the “Lightning sketcher.” These were the artists who appeared on stage in Vaudeville theaters sketching an image at “lightning” speed. Georges Méliès enjoyed doing this for a while, and J. Stuart Blackton put it on film. Lutz illustrated such an artist.


I’ve had to do a little retouching in photoshop to get
this image to read well. I retyped all the text there.

Crafton later quotes the Lutz book:

    The first book devoted solely to the craft was Animated Cartoons; How They are Made, their Origin and Development by former caricaturist Edwin G. Lutz. This book became the vulgate of modern industrial animation, canonizing the major studios’ practices. Its guiding philosophy was embodied in the statement that “of all the talents required by anyone going into this branch of art, none is so important as that of the skill to plan the work so that the lowest possible number of drawings need be made for any particular scenario.” Lutz illustrated the book with his own rather quaint drawings. He described peg registration, in-betweening, speech balloons, and studio organization, but curiously his description of cels was limited to their use as static overlays.
    Lutz’s book was a fountain of common-sense advice, such as limiting dialog so that films could be sold in foreign countries. Among its most important contributions were the detailed instructions for drawing perspective runs and other kinetic effects, which would grow increasingly visible throughout the 1920s, especially when combined with mobile and cycled backgrounds. Cycling, supposedly invented by Nolan, consisted of a sequence of eight drawings planned to match at the end of a cycle by making the first and eighth drawings identical. This effect may be seen in practically any 1920s studio production, but Paul Terry seemed to especially love it, With these and all the Other techniques explained in detail, almost anyone with the ambition could begin making animated cartoons. Of these neophytes, certainly the most ambitious reader of Lutz was Walt Disney of Kansas City—who, because he could not afford to buy it, checked the book out of the public library.

This, of course, is the story of how Walt Disney pored over the book slavishly to find out the tricks of the trade. Mike Barrier in his book, The Animated Man, describes this well:

    (Disney) was essentially self-taught as an animator; he wrote to an admirer many years later, “I gained my first information on animation from a book . . . which I procured from the Kansas City Public Library.” . . . According to its copyright page, Lutz’s book was published in New York in February 1920, the same month Disney joined Kansas City Film Ad, so he must have read it very soon after it was added to the library’s collection. He said of the book in 1956: “Now, it was not very profound; it was just something the guy had put together to make a buck. But, still, there are ideas in there.”
    As elementary as the Lutz book was, it still offered a vision of a kind of animation far more advanced than the Film Ad cutouts. Lutz wrote at a time when animators commonly worked entirely on paper. They made a series of drawings, each different from the one before, that were traced in ink and photographed in sequence to produce the same illusion of movement that Film Ad achieved by manipulating cutouts under the camera. Lutz advocated the use of celluloid sheets to cut down on the animator’s labor—the parts of a character’s body that were not moving could be traced on a single sheet and placed over the paper drawings of the moving parts. Such an expedient (and Lutz recommended others) would have resonated with Disney, who had been so impressed by commercial art’s shortcuts when he worked for Pesmen-Rubin.

Barrier also quotes Hugh Harman as saying, “Our only study was the Lutz book . . . that, plus Paul Terry’s films.”


This is one of the illustrations Lutz did for his book,
The Animated Cartoon.

Donald Crafton talks extensively of the management theory of Frederick W. Taylor. Taylor basically stated that lower paid jobs should be done by lower paid employees on what would basically become an assembly line. This was adapted by J.R. Bray and Thomas Ince. The Inbetweener was born. Crafton writes:

    In his 1920 manual, Lutz was still promulgating the taylorist philosophy—for example, when he described the tracers’ function in language echoing Bray. “It can be seen from this way of working in the division of labor between the animator and his helper that the actual toil of repeating monotonous details falls upon the tracer. The animator does the first planning and that part of the subsequent work requiring artistic ability.

Initially, Disney rejected this theory. This was something that Ub Iwerks brought to the studio after traveling from Kansas City to LA. We see this in Leslie Iwerks & John Kenworthy‘s book, The Hand Behind the Mouse:

    Ub brought the studio renewed energy and new techniques. Abandoning the stiff and rudimentary methods Or animation he had previously learned, Ub would begin to evolve bis own straight-ahead style of drawing, which did not rely on model sheets or extremes. A key aspect of the Lutz orthodoxy was pose-to-pose animation, in which, for any action, a character was drawn in its starting and ending positions (or “extremes”) and intermediate poses were filled in later. Model sheets were used to trace over the original figure, allowing the animator to simply alter the parts of the body that needed variation. Ub instead professed a new method. He felt he could coax more expressive feeling from a drawing if he used model sheets as rough guides rather than being chained to them. By trusting in his own creativity and sense of movement, he threw out all structure to make way for his own free-flowing impulses.
    Russell Merritt and J. B. Kaufman in Walt in Wonderland assert that “If Iwerks had made no other contribution to the Studio, he would deserve to be remembered for this one. It marked the beginning of the smooth, flowing ‘Disney style’ of animation; and one can see it developing, slowly but surely, as the Alice series progresses.”

We also know that one of the sore points between Disney and Iwerks, which helped cause Iwerks to leave the studio, was that Disney tried to force Iwerks to leave inbetweens for others to follow. This would get more animation out of Iwerks, who already had been the animator with the greatest speed. Ultimately, Disney fell back on what he’d learned from Lutz.


This is one of the illustrations Lutz did for his book,
The Animated Cartoon.

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So, in the end, all this shows is that the Lutz book had a profound effect on animation in the developing 1920s. It also shows that Lutz did a lot of thinking about not only the process of how to make animated films and the technology available at the time of publication, but he thought of the methodology within a studio churning out many films.

We know from that initial “Lightning Sketch” illustration that Lutz was an artist. We also have to assume that he worked within an animation studio for some time to have been so thoroughly informed that he was able to describe the most meticulous details in the process of making films. Because he so completely details the workings of the camera (he also wrote a book in 1927 entitled The Motion Picture Cameraman) one would assume he must have spent some time actually shooting animation. I would guess that he started in that position, then moved into actually creating the art, as did Rudy Ising in the start of his career. It’s doubtful some producer wouldn’t use his artistic abilities in creating the animation.


This is one of the illustrations Lutz did for his book,
The Animated Cartoon.

However, this is all speculation. Perhaps he just had a strong interest and was given the authority to sit and watch within a studio. Of course, that would lead one to believe that the studio that allowed him access would have been promoted within the book. Yet. there is no studio mentioned, hence I’m led to believe that he had to have worked within a studio for some time.

I haven’t gone much farther than the books in my studio or the information on the Web. In the end, I don’t know a heck of a lot more than I started out with. I do know that Lutz’ animation book was the most important he’d written. It affected an entire industry and changed the way the process was done in the all important formative years of the studio system.

If anyone has more biographical information on Lutz, please don’t hesitate to leave it. I’d like to know more and will keep on looking.

Books &Commentary 03 Nov 2011 06:58 am

Dad’s Daughter’s book – an Overdue Review

Walt, Lillian & Sharon- I haven’t read the book, The Story of Walt Disney by Diane Disney Miller “as told to Pete Martin“, since it was originally published in 1957. Actually, I probably read the version that was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1956; then I most likely asked for a copy of the book for a Christmas present and read it then. After all, I was only 11.

I remember being grabbed by the book and hooked for all time on animation. Two years later, the Bob Thomas Art of Animation would lock it up for me.

The Story of Walt Disney is an odd book to review. I wonder how much actual research went into the writing. Was it enough to have the source, Walt Disney, reveal his story verbally to Diane and Pete Miller? The voice undoubtedly comes through. The book comes off as one for youngsters; there’s an innocence in the writing that Pete Miller obviously got across. He did the writing; the book is labelled “by Diane Disney Miller as told to Pete Martin.” Martin was a writer for The Saturday Evening Post, where the book was serialized prior to its publication. Miller was also known for having collaborated with Bing Crosby on a book of memoirs before working on this Disney book.

The young WaltSince this book is essentially out of the mouth of Walt, we have to pay attention to some of the stories being told. What was told and what was skipped?

There’s quite a bit more than usual about the Red Cross service Disney did at the end of WWI.
The “Alice” series is called by the title “Alice in Cartoonland.” Unfortunately, the Disney brothers called the series the “Alice Comedies.” Even though their first short was known as “Alice’s Wonderland,” they didn’t refer to the others with any reference to Lewis Carroll’s work. That may well have been the demand of the distributor Charles Mintz even though the Disneys may have thought of the series as “Alice in Cartoonland.” Obviously, Walt referred to it as that title in telling this story.

There’s a mention of Ub Iwerks when Walt asked him to move out to LA, but there’s no mention of his name when Iwerks left Disney to open his own studio under the assistance of Pat Powers. There’s some detail in the chapter about Snow White, but barely a mention of Pinocchio or Bambi. Lots to tell about Fantasia and a bit more about Dumbo. No mention
Walt teaching his animatorsof Song of the South, Fun and Fancy Free or So Dear to My Heart, but Cinderella gets attention as do the documentary nature films. There’s an odd telling of the Disney strike in this book, and the suggestion of how the South American trip came about. In truth, the book becomes more about the juggling of money once Snow White goes into production and less about the actual films. There’s plenty of detail about going public with the stock options, and there’s a lot of detail about the government work done during WWII.

An interesting sentence comes at the beginning of the book when we read about the farm in Marcelline in hs childhood. “He can still draw a mental – or rather a sentimental – map of that whole community exactly as it was then.” This is a rare sentence by Diane commenting on her father’s recollections, and one wishes there were more like it. The last chapter of the book offers a bit more of this when Diane decides to tell a bit more about her father away from the office. What he likes to eat, how he acts, etc. There’s a lot of personality in this chapter.

One wonders how useful this book is for actual animation historians. Mike Barrier and John Canemaker have obviously read it, but do they trust the material? And why shouldn’t they, especially if there’s a second source for any of it. The story as a whole is very readable, and one rolls along easily in the telling of the tale. It’s especially entertaining. Obviously, the goal was to make the story for the largest possible audience, so details of the films were less interesting than the struggles of the imaginative entrepreneur.

Walt & Lillian at the 1954 OscarsYou know that “dad” enjoyed telling his daughter of all his accomplishments. So this is his version, and it’s interesting how it comes out filtered through the voices of Diane and Pete Miller. Diane’s pride in the studio is certainly as great as Walt’s.

    “Father did the outlines of the drawings. The other two filled them in. Gradually Father gave them bigger assignments, until they were doing whole scenes themselves. Even then Father insisted upon a distinctive Disney style of drawing and photography, and he trained his two helpers to do things his way.
    .
    “They weren’t the only ones who have conformed to the Disney style. Almost all animated techniques since have conformed to the basic formulas that emerged from that primitive studio. Although they may vary in spirit, or another cartoon maker’s conception of what gives greater pictorial impact may differ from Father’s, they all owe a debt that goes back to the inventiveness and experimentation that went on in the back room of that converted real estate office.”

That sense of pride is understandable.

The Story of Walt Disney is actually a good read if you have a copy and haven’t seen it in years. Or you might be able to locate a copy in the library. Take the time; it moves quickly and is fun.

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