Happy Halloween!

This year, I have dressed up as an angry old animator-beast. Rargh! Fear me! And so on.

Have there ever been any horror movies about psycho old animators? I think there should be. Maybe a variation on that one with the hand that came from a serial killer - animator loses his hand, gets transplant and the hand then draws the deaths of people. Before long, those drawings turn to reality as one-by-one, people die. Under anvils. Or pianos.

Death By Doodle

When cartoonist Manny Pantera lampooned his subjects, people would die laughing. Until the day the laughter stopped.

Screaming Sketch

He'll sketch... until you scream!

2B Terror

Pray you're not 2 B next.

Scrawl From Beyond The Grave

Reknowned cartoonist Lance Doomsmith wants to shake your hand. With his hand. What was once on a serial killer. Who killed people.

So which would you go to see?

Hope you all have a happy halloween! Anyone see Saw V yet? The missus won't let me bring the kids so I haven't seen it yet (so no spoilers!).

It's like that R.E.M. song

Things are going to be a little slow here for the next week. I'm just getting adjusted to the new change in my life and, well, it's all a little nuts. Even posting this is tricky because number 1 is sitting on my lap insisting on hammering on the keyboard while number 2 sleeps. So I'll be lucky if the rest of the post doesn't turn out like this - bniakdnnnxnbhshsmxmxmmsmamjka.


Actually that looks rather similar to my file naming system at work. All it needs to complete it is a "FINAL1a" at the end. And then "FINAL1b". And so on until "FINAL17Xa4" or something.

There were a few more comments on my "bleak future of animation" posts that I thought were good discussion points but I'll get to those another time I guess.

Halloween is in a few days time. This year, I'm going to be dressing up as a haggard and frazzled old father. What are you dressing up as?

The bleak future of animation - part 4

This could be a long post as I'm going to try to wrap up my current thought process in this one - I need to spend more time figuring out how life is going to work with this new addition!

So what happens when the current generation of traditional animators retire or die? When we lose those people who drew every single day for longer than they did pretty much anything else in their lives? Those people who lived 'practice makes perfect'?

Well, Andy said - the death of animation happens.

In so many ways, yes, yes, yes. Decay sets in, those skills and training die over time and there is a massive decline in animation ability. It's that simple and seems blindingly obvious. You can only learn so much in college - most animators will tell you they learned more in three months (or even three weeks) in a studio than they did in three years in college. Theory only gets you to the starting point. Practice does make perfect. Influence and teachings from people who have put in years of that practice guides that practice. Take that away, and a generation later you'll see that decay set in.

Aaron over at Cold Hard Flash did make some good points however when Brad Bird made those comments. Firstly, Flash has brought animation production back to the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and other countries that otherwise wouldn't have any. This is very true, though I would be skeptical about how long that will last. Aaron also mentions the amount of independent animation that is now being produced, some of which is excellent. He goes so far as to call it a new "golden age". And you know what? He's right. He's absolutely right. Flash has opened up possibilities like nothing else before it. Have an idea? You can make a film in Flash about it.

But is that a golden age for animation as in the actual animation itself? Or a golden age of animated realisations of ideas?

The latter is important and its impact and the opportunities it opens up should definitely be recognised and even celebrated. But, even though Flash and 3D offer their own sets of skills, it is not a golden age for the craft.

If you have any doubts as to the importance that drawing plays in either of those, ask yourself why the best people sketch what they want before they actually make it move in Flash or 3D. Consider what can be explored in a good, finished drawing. And what can be learned by creating one.


And what you lose if you're not doing 7,000 a year for every day you work.

But Aaron from CHF also put me up to it, as does Humphrey in the comments - what do I suggest?

A damn good question.

What do I suggest? I have no idea. Every way I look at it, it seems to me that with the way things have gone, things right now, with many of us getting work in Flash or 3D, it's actually as good as it can be in the current climate. I can think of no way to rescue the craft. I don't come with a solution. I come empty-handed.

And that is why the future is so bleak.

This decay will happen. And this is as good as it gets.



Of course, there's always nostalgia and people will come and try to mimic what was done in the past. But, having lost those traditional animators, not having put in that intense practice, those studies that come from simply doing your job in even cheap traditional animation, people will start from scratch not by trying to relearn the process, but by just looking at what they grew up with as a child and trying to mimic what they see on the surface.


That already happens now. Imagine what that will be like in 30 years time. 40 years. 50.


If my zombie corpse rose up to see Disney's Tai-Chi Platypus, I'd be weeping. But with joy? No. Of course not. I'd weep a single dramatic tear and then shuffle off to eat somebody's brains.


And, compared with animation, I think that's a pretty bright future to look forward to.

The bleak future of animation - part 3

I meant to get to this post yesterday but ended up having to attend the birth of my child. Live blogging would have been seen as bad form. So where was I?

7,000 drawings a year. Possibly a little less. Possibly much more. That's how much a traditional animator or would-be animator could rack up in just the normal course of their day. That doesn't include personal studies or sketches or little thumbnails that they would do along with those drawings. That's 7,000 finished approved drawings.

You don't get this from Flash animation.

Nope, really. You just don't.

Seriously.

In Flash, with most working methods, it is about manipulation of libraries, often totally flat and completely predefined. Drawing within Flash is for two things - to rough out a piece on the timeline so you have an idea of what you're doing (and some animators skip this, at their peril), or to make a missing symbol or hide a join, and some studios discourage or completely disallow this for fear of loss of control. The good Flash animators will likely (hopefully) have doodles of poses and expressions around their desk from the scenes they are working on. But that's not the same or even close to what is expected from a traditional inbetween, clean-up or animation drawing. And certainly doesn't approach the same numbers in volume.

But Flash animation isn't the same thing, is it? So does it matter?

You also don't get this from 3D. In 3D animation you are manipulating marionettes effectively. It's about posing them. It's an art in itself of course so not really all that directly comparible to traditional. But, like Flash, good animators will often have poses roughed out in pencil first. Again, not close to what is expected from a traditional finished drawing.

3D animation is a whole different form though, more like stop-motion. So does it matter?

Some of the best Flash animators learned traditionally and then were trained in Flash. Some of the best 3D animators learned traditionally and then were trained in 3D. In both methods, traditional animators have a massive advantage, are often the people directors seek out first and can have a great positive influence in studios.

Those are the 7,000-a-year drawing people.

Could it happen the other way around? Could someone spend five years animating on a Flash show and then produce a great piece of 2D animation? Or even 3D?

Not the way the 7,000-a-year people could.

Yes, I'd say it matters.

The most-excellent Cold Hard Flash reported on something Brad Bird said about a Marky Maypo spot. He said "I sometimes worry that people whose knowledge is limited to Flash tricks will never be able to reach the level of skill demonstrated in these little demonstrations of genius." Personally, I think he's right. How could he be wrong? We're comparing with the 7,000-a-year people.

But what happens when those animators retire or die? What happens when their influence is gone? What happens when you take away the people who were practicing to the tune of 7,000 drawings a year?

The bleak future of animation - part 2

So what's the difference between the way an animator used to work their way through their craft and the way it happens now? A difference that could matter so much?


Well, what you guys said in the comments is all relevant (and some of it I'll come back to) but Limbclock got where I was going. It's the drawing. He says "when the person learning animation the pen and paper way, he is able to learn all the important fundamentals, such as timing and spacing between frames, and how to actually create simple stuff like walks and so on". I believe this to be very true.


But people who end up in Flash animation likely did loads of drawing in college, or their own personal sketches and same with many people in 3D. The difference is the drawing but that's just the start of my thought process. Just take a look at how it works -

With the way it used to work, no matter which end you came in on, you would be drawing constantly every single day. Drawing after drawing. For 8-10 or more hours. How many drawings you would get done in a day depends on where you come in and what type of production you are on but let's say as an example that you're doing 4 drawings an hour. On an 8-hour day, that's 32 drawings a day. On a 5-day week, that's 160 drawings a week. 640 drawings a month. 7,680 drawings a year. That's rough of course. It could be less, it could be more, especially as I was conservative on my studio hours (we've all worked much longer hours than that).

But that's around 7,000 drawings a year during work hours. Finished approved drawings. All having to conform to certain structures, so they can't just be self-indugent. All having to be approved by animation directors, animation checkers, directors and producers. All having to work within the animation of other people. And that doesn't begin to count your own personal drawings.

They say practice makes perfect. How is 7,000 drawings for practice? Five years in the business? 35,000 drawings worth of practice. 70,ooo in ten years. Each drawing in just about any traditional animation studio (yes, even the crap ones) teaches structure, adherence to rules, flow, posing, acting, expression, control and even time management - principals and techniques that can be applied to all styles and methods of animation.

So what's the difference between the way it used to work and the way it works now?

About 7,000 drawings a year.

The bleak future of animation - part 1

As many of you know, I started in this business animating traditionally and have since moved into Flash because that is the way the idustry would have me go. I blogged about why I thought Flash both rocked and sucked before, here, and here and here. Oh and here too. And here and here. That series of posts seemed to strike a chord with people who had been working with Flash far longer than I have so I reckon my initial feelings were on the right track.

That's probably not a good thing because some of my feelings on where it could lead the industry were pretty bleak - especially regarding the devaluing of the craft and outsourcing of even cheaper Flash animation. But that's not what this post is about (or series of posts actually, because I'm realising this will be too long for one post).

It is, however, about the demise of animation. But not from a financial/production end. From an artistic end.

I was discussing animation recently with an animator who has some really good traditional skills in terms of movement and timing and is now working in 3D. We were just talking references and stuff and then something hit me. Hit me hard. I realised that this animator was now at a disadvantage. And then, the next day, I was looking around the studio and I saw it - the beginning of the end. The decay of animation. Not just old fashioned bitter 'animation ain't what it used to be when I were a lad' stuff.

No. I'm talking proper end is nigh stuff.

The first thing you have to consider to know where I'm going to go with this is that Flash (or Flash-equivalents) and 3D are dominating the markets. Flash is cheap, can be produced with small crews in high volume and it makes perfect sense for television production. 3D is shiny, works for games (which employs a huge number of animator and shouldn't be discounted), and right now dominates the larger budget productions. Flash and 3D dominate.

Traditionally-made frame at a time 2D is slow and is reserved for very rare features (which industry-wide don't employ a significant percentage of animators) and still some television production (which is shipped to Korea etc. and will likely be replaced by Flash in the very near future).

The next thing to consider is - what leads to a good animator actually getting good?

Here's the way it used to work - a person with decent drawing skills would study animation in college, then they'd get employed inbetweening or cleaning-up or, if they had a serious amount of raw talent and were going into a tv studio, they may even get to start directly as an animator. And off they'd go, moving up the ladder and getting better.

Here's the way it seems to work now - a person with decent drawing skills would study animation in college, then they'd get employed as a junior or trainee animator in a Flash studio or games company or whatever. And off they'd go, moving up the ladder and getting better.

So what's the difference?

Well, the difference, as it turns out, is pretty damn huge. Feel free to let me know what you think it is. I'll let you know my take on it in the next post.

The weekend rambling

What, the same post? Nah, I just had coloured it after I posted it the other day, meant to replace it in the post and then lost track of the day so didn't do it. Here it is now though. Late. And pretty pointless.

Any games players here? Well, I know we have at least one and that one in particular (Mr.Trombley) will be interested in this piece of news. So, you know Earthbound, right? It was a SNES RPG about aliens and was just about one of the most charming games ever made. Well, Earthbound fans outside of Japan got kind of shafted. The original game, Mother, (Eartbound was Mother 2) was never released in English. Then, years later, they made another game in the series, Mother 3, for the GBA. No English release either.

Well, after a long wait, some frustrated yet talented and hardworking fans have done a complete fan translation. The whole game, now in English. That's nice of them, eh?

I finished reading Joe Murray's 'Crafting a Cartoon' ebook. He's the man behind Rocko's Modern Life and Camp Lazlo. If anyone is curious about what it takes to get a cartoon made, that's the book to read. Well, in the US anyway. It actually works quite differently for the most part over here in terms of selling it and financing. The book is a good read with a great attitude behind it. It's positive, not bitter (I find that refreshing) and yet also entirely based in reality. Who would have thought the realities of animation these days could be viewed without bitterness? Really? Certainly an eye-opener for me.

So the plug has been pulled on the Masters Of The Universe movie that was due to be made. Good thing? Bad thing?

Yeah, rambling... always the same at the weekend. I think my brain goes into shutdown. Or something. Still in a Star Trek mood so I'll leave you with the clip below and the brag that I once met Mr.Sulu.