Monday

I don't mind not having my phone with me but my iPod is an essential. As is my pants. Not sure how that happened. I leave them out so I can't miss them.

Unless somebody moved them...?

Forgot my headphones too so I can't just listen to music from my computer either. Oh well. One of those days.

It's September. I've been doing this blog almost two years now. That's flown. I have been far less prolific over the last while. Things have been busy. Is anyone still here?

But it also means we're going into Autumn and on towards Winter. And the project I'm on finishes early next year and I have no idea what will happen after that. I am faced with the prospect of having nothing to move on to and that is something I haven't had to face in a long, long time. It's a little scary. Actually it's very scary as the last times I faced this, I didn't have children to feed. Now, I do.

I'm not sure how it will all work out.

There's a small work for hire project that may happen but it's looking less and less likely. That wouldn't be an awful one to do by any means. Well within my comfort zone. Then there's another project that might happen but it's one I feel should never be made and I just don't see it in my future. If I was going to do a job I am completely against, there are probably ones that can make me more money - like dealing arms or drug running.

And then there's... nothing.

If I didn't have a family to feed, I'd live on beans for a while and write a book or something. I'd actually use a break to really put my time into something creative. But things are different now.

All part of growing up, I guess.

Because I have nothing better to do

People have a habit of asking for things they don't need. Often under the guise that someone else who doesn't need it, needs it.

They don't. Need it, I mean.

This has happened all through my career. Animation tests when it is blindingly obvious from my showreel what the level of my ability is, ridiculous amounts of expected pitch material to win a ten second ad that won't pay a week's wages and then all kinds of lunacy to help clients 'visualise' because their imaginations died that one Christmas night when they saw who was actually putting the presents under the tree.

For a project I was looking at recently, it was suggested to me that I create animated storyboards for the entire project. All one and a half hours of it. You know, just knock them up. Because, like, that's just the way we do things. A couple of sketches and a good night's sleep and, next morning, BAM, a whole animatic. Don't worry that the script isn't even in first draft stage because, when we finalise it, we can do them all over again.

People just ask for things they don't need.

Why is that? Do they just like having stuff? Things they didn't have the day before? Do they feel they need for a constant stream of arbitrary requests to justify their salary?

I honestly don't know.

But it occurred to me while thinking of that that I have survived in my career precisely by not doing things I don't have to. I get things done on time and on budget by making sure none of my time is taken up doing things that won't ever matter. When I'm more heavily involved in a project, I try to make sure that every penny of the production makes it on to the screen. And I do that by not pissing it away doing things people will never see and will not make a damn bit of difference to the end product.

Maybe I should be applying this way of thinking to my own life. My own recession budgeting. What do I actually need? What will actually make a difference up there on to the screen that is my whole life?

Perhaps that's something I need to think about.

Survival of plain ol' me

Where I am, as I've mentioned, this recession has hit pretty hard. Many friends are now out of work. When I say many friends, I actually have very few friends but many people I know or know of are now out of work. The centre of town is like a wasteland.

Scary times.

And I realised recently that I spend more than I earn.

There's nothing like a full-on media-driven panic-fuelled recession to make you rethink your priorities. I've gone very quickly from 'I want to have loads of money to buy this and that' to 'I'll be happy if I can survive another year'. And, right now with things being what they are, simple survival isn't as easy as it once was.

So there would have to be the money talk. The sitting down, going through budgets and getting real about that.

We haven't yet done that. But, when it happens, I'm sure the end result will be that I can buy nothing.

Not a thing.

Ever.

So, in anticipation of not being able to spend what I want when I want to, I have ordered a whole rake of stuff online. If it was bought before the meeting, it doesn't count. Man, I can't wait for the post man to arrive.

What's the word from Kidscreen '09?

The Kidscreen folk call their event "the largest and most important event of the year for kids entertainment executives." I don't know if that's true but the buzz over the last few years has been very positive. I've never been. If I want to see Sebastian from KIKA dance the way German men do, or have the guys from Millimages tell me just how important they are and how many projects they 'got away', or have Ron Diamond from AWN follow me about, I can do all that at the Cartoon Forum. And even that, well, once you've been to one it sort of loses its appeal.

This year there wasn't a chance in hell of me going with this project having turned into some sort of disaster movie, like maybe Towering Inferno. No, Airplane is probably closer to the truth.

But word is coming back from last week's Kidscreen Summit and, from the sounds of it, a recession-era Kidscreen is a poorly attended one. That's no big surprise. For the first time, Kidscreen were spamming my mailbox right up to the last minute offering me better and better deals to attend. Companies are not about to splash out for little holidays like that right now. In fact, while they were just offering me good deals, I know they went as far as to pay for some key people to go but I'm just not that important.

From what I'm told, those who did attend seemed to be a bit more down to business, using it more as just a meeting space than anything else.

And the business? Well, that seems to have been the business of pulling out of projects. Yep, sounds like the recession panic has hit hard. Several projects that I know of, at least one due to go into production in the next month, have had the rug pulled from under them by funders. Many projects that were due to be delivered this year or early next year just won't happen. Stories of doom and gloom abound.


A year from now, how many production companies will have shut down? How many people will have lost their jobs?



It's an unfortunate truth that this business, at least over this side of the pond, is bloated. There is far too much product, not enough places to put that product and, even then, there's only so much a child can watch and certainly they should be watching less, not more.



Many if not most companies exist on local government subsidies, tax breaks and schemes - very few companies have a sustainable business model. In my view that's not a bad thing - the ones that have a sustainable business model are usually working for the forces of evil and selling shit to your kids. Because of bans on certain advertising to children (again, in my view a very good thing), local subsidies are essential in making sure young children have something good to watch and aren't just growing up with imported Barneys.



But the business is bloated.



And this recession I think is about to bring about a cull. While that sucks for those who won't survive it, for the rest of us (at least I'm hoping I'll be with the survivors), I think we'll be in a far better position when it's done.

It's the first time I've ever won anything

So I'm a recipient of one of what I think is the first batch of A Hoy awards. Susan from the 'If You're Going Through Hell' blog awarded it to me, which is really very nice of her. At first I thought it might be an insult. I mean, A... Hoy... I thought it sounded a little like A-Hole. But, no, it seems to be a compliment and, looking at the other blogs on the list, I'm in great company.

So huge thanks for that! Almost makes me feel like I have a real blog.

I managed to get my Christmas shopping done, which is great. It's going to be a lean Christmas this year though. I'm broke and, well, it's recession time. It's odd that some people, mainly economists, advocate spending like there's no tomorrow to keep the economy healthy and turn around this recession.

Doing that is like risking being the last guy in a pyramid scheme. You see, there is a tomorrow. And you could have lost your job by then. You want to be the guy who just spent his latest paycheque on a pair of fancy shiny Italian shoes? Will the boost you gave to the economy be any comfort when you can't pay your rent or mortgage?

And I call it 'recession' because that seems to be the accepted term for what's happening but that's not the reality where I am. It's simply that things are returning to more realistic levels. The economy over here was completely false. It was unsustainable. Built entirely on fantasy. The cost of living went sky high, house prices went utterly ridiculous and people got themselves up to their ass in debt all the while shouting about this great time of boom. When reality kicks in, it looks like a recession but it's simply the world returning to a state of normality.

But the thing about the economy is that it is a man-made system. And people get rich simply by manipulating these arbitrary made-up rules. But economists are full of shit. They're like cult members. They spend years in college being conditioned that the world is a certain way and they totally believe it because they have to - if they didn't, their world would mean nothing. And so they have a massive vested interest in making a reality out of their teachings, just like cult members I guess.

Thing is, a good economist can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their systems work.

Because they prove it by enforcing their own set of conditions.

I think one thing is important to bear in mind: the world we are born into is one that we, humans, created. Our cities are not built to a divine plan. Our economic systems, our political systems, our societies were not set in stone at the moment of the Universe's conception. We made the world this way. We created it.

And, if we created it, we can always tear it down and start again.

So, yes, for me it's a more lean Christmas this year. It has to be. That doesn't mean it can't be a fun, warm Christmas spent with family and, if I had them, friends.

Things are just shutting down everywhere

In spite of my earlier bravado, things are actually looking quite scary around here. This recession is kind of like the Nothing from that Never Ending Story film. It's just sweeping through the streets. I don't really think I've seen anything like it in my lifetime.


Every day, I see another empty office, another set of 'To Let' signs, another shuttered shop or restaurant. The buildings around the studio are vacant. The car parking spaces empty.


It's getting eerily quiet. You know, as opposed to peacefully quiet, which would be a good thing.

Getting cramped in here anyway

Yeah, I can be an arrogant ass sometimes.

As you would have gathered from my last post, I (we) am (are) tired. In ways, I feel defeated. I just want to go live in a warm cave with some beer and play Gears of War or Little Big Planet for a while. Yeah, a little defeated. In some aspects of my life.

But not all.

When I started in animation college, things were looking rosy. There were loads of huge 2D studios producing features, loads more doing TV and video features. I was pretty much guaranteed a good job that would be a great training ground.

By the time I finished college, things were very different. Some studios were gone. Others downsized and relocated. Others still thought they were giants and yet were going down the crapper and wouldn't last much longer. And they didn't.

Simply put, my job prospects were buggered.

I saw a lot of people suffer major career hits at that time. Some people had spent years training in effects departments in large 2D studios, producing amazing work. These people had no place when the large studios fell. They became obsolete. Nobody could pay someone just to do the odd bit of water or fire. People who had perfected clean-up, waiting for their chance to move into animation, ended up competing for clean-up scraps with hundreds of others and most of their skills went to waste. Many moved out of the business. Even the animators were hit. The marketplace was flooded with animators looking for work, and there wasn't a huge amount of it to go round.

In my first few years in the business, I saw a lot of people forced out of it.

My timing seemed kind of crappy but it wasn't. Because it taught me very quickly to adapt. That I couldn't afford to specialise. And that I had to be pretty good at what I do because there will always be people looking for the same jobs I want.

I think this is more true now than ever. But when things go to shit there will still be work. People still want to be entertained. There's still work. There's just less of it. But if you're adaptable and good at what you do, that's not a problem, right?

Bring it on.