Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Monday, December 04, 2006
Disney's Animated Response
By Rick Aristotle Munarriz
Now that Pixar is in the Disney bloodstream, it seems that a few of Disney's in-house animators are being shown the door. Several reports over the weekend had the family entertainment giant letting go of as much as 20% of its 800-strong workforce. Pixar's headcount, supposedly, won't be chopped.
After a string of mostly lackluster productions, Disney has whittled away at its ink-and-paint staff in the past. This move appears tame by comparison. It's also not a very surprising decision. The company had already indicated that it was hacking away at the number of live-action features it would be producing, so it's only natural to see it follow suit in non-Pixar animation.
In the past, cynics would have considered a move like this to be retreat. It just doesn't feel that way these days. Under CEO Bob Iger's leadership, terms like "addition through subtraction" and an emphasis on quality over quantity aren't likely to draw snickers. Disney really does feel like it's coming together as a quality family entertainment powerhouse, even if it had to acquire some of the key parts -- like Pixar -- to get there.
Steve Hulett, an Animation Guild representative that Reuters cited in its story on the matter, claims that Disney is lengthening its production timeline on new releases from a year to 18 months. That doesn't sound like the move of a company trying to skimp on costs. It sounds like a commitment to quality. Pixar and DreamWorks Animation have come to rule the computer animation space, in part because of their longer development cycles. Better stories and crisper animation have helped set their efforts apart from many of their rivals, as well as from some of Disney's rushed theatrical and direct-to-video offerings.
Yes, you can produce rendered magic in a hurry and on a shoestring budget, but it's not worth the near-term cost savings. Disney fell into that trap during the latter half of Michael Eisner's tenure, and it began to pay for it dearly in brand-sapping duds and a $7.4 billion bailout in the form of a Pixar purchase.
As long as it leans on the Pixar gray matter, which has done nothing but serve up classy epic after classy epic, Disney's future will be brighter than its bleaker recent past in in-house animation.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Animation goes wild with talking critters
The recent onslaught of computer-generated 'toons is expected to stir interest in stories over technique.
By David Germain
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Prancing penguins. Rascally rodents. Sociable squirrels. Saber-toothed tigers. The Hollywood hills were alive with talking critters in 2006, possibly the biggest year ever for movie animation.
With the barrage of ads for flicks about cute, fuzzy wildlife and other cartoon creations, are audiences having trouble telling one from the other, and, more important, are they getting overloaded by animation?
"There's definitely an overload, and I think everyone recognizes that," said George Miller, director of the latest animated adventure, the Warner Bros. penguin romp Happy Feet, which opened Friday and was No. 1 at the box office for the weekend.
In the decade since Disney and Pixar's Toy Story revolutionized the industry with computer-generated images instead of hand-drawn cartoons, first DreamWorks with Shrek and then other major studios leaped into the animation business.
As with the initial novelty of talking pictures nearly 80 years ago, computer animation's early appeal resulted partly from its fresh look. Now, CGI films have become the standard, so commonplace that the story - not the style - is more crucial than ever in a movie's success or failure.
"What's happened is, no longer will people go see CG animation simply because it's CG-animated, as they did when they first saw Toy Story. Everything will have to work on its own merits," Miller said. "Sure, when The Jazz Singer came out, people turned up to see sound pictures. In a handful of years, people no longer turned up to hear movies. They just turned up to see a movie they thought was good. The same thing is happening with animation."
For Disney, Something Old (and Short) Is New Again
MOVIEGOERS who have become inured to pre-show car ads and trivia quizzes may soon get something old enough to seem new: cartoon shorts.
After a hiatus of nearly 50 years, Walt Disney Studios is getting back into the business of producing short cartoons, starting with a Goofy vehicle next year. The studio has released a few shorts in recent years — “Destino,” “Lorenzo” and “The Little Match Girl” — but those were more artistic exercise than commercial endeavor. The new cartoons, by contrast, are an effort by a new leadership team from Pixar Animation Studios, now a Disney unit, to put the Burbank company back at the forefront of animation with a form it once pioneered.
“The impetus comes from John Lasseter, who takes the idea from Walt Disney and 100 years of film history,” said Don Hahn, producer of “The Lion King” and “The Little Match Girl,” in a recent interview at his studio office. “Shorts have always been a wellspring of techniques, ideas and young talent. It’s exactly what Walt did, because it’s a new studio now, with new talent coming up — as it should. I think the shorts program can really grow this studio as it grew Pixar, as it grew Walt’s studio.”
Although audiences today are more familiar with his feature films, Walt Disney’s reputation was originally built on shorts. In the 1930s “A Mickey Mouse Cartoon” appeared on theater marquees with the titles of the features, and Disney won 10 Oscars for cartoon shorts between 1932 and 1942. He used the “Silly Symphonies” to train his artists as they geared up to create “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” But after World War II Disney phased out short cartoons because of rising production costs and the minimal amount theater owners would pay for them.
Mr. Hahn said the new shorts would be screened in theaters along with Disney films. “You pay your 10 bucks to see a movie,” he said, “and you get a surprise you hadn’t counted on.” The new shorts will be done in traditional 2-D animation, computer graphics or a combination of the two media, depending on the story and the visual style.
This is not the first attempt at such a revival. Warner Brothers, for example, tried to bring back the classic Looney Tunes characters in new shorts in 2003, but they proved unsuccessful and most of them were never screened theatrically.
View full story.Disney to cut 160 workers in animation
December 2, 2006
Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it would dismiss about 160 of the 800 employees in its feature animation unit as the company slowed production at what once was its crown jewel.
The 20% cutback comes nearly a year after Disney purchased Pixar Animation Studios, maker of such computer-animated hits as "Cars" and "The Incredibles." Pixar executives including creative guru John Lasseter took control of the Disney group, aiming to revive an operation that was a crucial profit center before it lost ground to other studios.
"With John Lasseter from Pixar being put over the division, and the much brighter track record they've had, he's going to keep his guys and his projects first," said David Koenig, an author of books on Disney.
The number of artists, technologists and production managers in Burbank will be reduced. A separate TV animation unit is unaffected.
Employees said they were told that because the average production time for the Burbank company's animated films was expanding from 12 months to 18 months, fewer staffers could handle the workload.
"The management team at Walt Disney Animation has determined that each film will dictate its own appropriate production schedule," Disney Studios spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said. "The result of this necessitated a reduction of staff."
Hundreds of the division's employees are members of the local animators guild and are covered under a collective-bargaining contract. But management can choose whom to fire based on skill level instead of seniority, guild business representative Steve Hulett said. Notification of those affected is to begin the week of Dec. 11.
"Everybody's wondering who's going to be getting the ax," Hulett said.
View full story.
A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation
As the CG discipline has matured, researchers have moved from trying to discover fundamental drawing and rendering techniques, and have looked to increasing the complexity, and in some respects, the realism of synthetic images. Hardware has helped in this quest, but the algorithms that are embedded in hardware were first (usually) written and tested in software, later migrating to hardware.
One of the keys to complex realistic images is to represent the laws of nature and the physical environment in such a way that they are reasonably accurate and consistent, yet approximated in such a way as to allow reasonable computation speeds. CG researchers have often resorted to "tricks" that fool the observer into believing that the physical laws are represented ... the proof, as some maintain, is in the believability of the image, not necessarily in the accuracy of the representation.
Some of the more important attempts at realistic image synthesis are covered below. Many of the researchers are leaders in the field, and many have won awards for their contributions to the discipline.
View full entry.Saturday, December 02, 2006
Wikipedia: The Wild -- Criticism
Criticism
The Wild received some harsh responses even before the trailer premiered. Movies.com described it as "Madagascar meets Finding Nemo with The Lion King thrown in for effect."
The movie has many similarities to Madagascar including its setting in New York, similar animals as characters, and the primary plot of introducing zoo animals to the wild. The name of the film and the tag line, "Start spreading the newspaper", a play on the opening line from the "Theme from New York, New York", were both used as integral plot points in Madagascar. The koala's line "Sprechen sie koala?" mirrors Madagascar's: "You. quadraped[sic]. Sprechen sie English?" Because of this, some people believe that the movie is a possible plagiarism of Madagascar, a Jack Bauer-meets-Madagascar film. Rotten Tomatoes describes the critics' consensus on The Wild as "With a rehashed plot and unimpressive animation, there's nothing wild about The Wild". As of July 13, 2006, only 19% of reviews from critics there were positive; the negative reviews frequently compared The Wild with Madagascar.
However, there is strong evidence that The Wild was in production first. Director Steve Williams said that he received the script in 2001. His contract with Disney stated that C.O.R.E would animate, and this contract was green-lit in 2003. The Wild has reportedly been in some form of production for a decade, first being called The Big Break, then Wildlife, and finally The Wild. Animators from the film have come forward on internet communities such as IMDb and stated openly that they had been working on The Wild already when they first saw the trailer for Madagascar. Several even believe that Marty's line "I wish I could go to The Wild!" from Madagascar is a direct mocking of their own efforts. It should also be mentioned that when it came out in 2005, Madagascar was panned by critics for its underwhelming story and relatively poor animation, further suspecting many to believe that the film had been rushed into production and released. Although despite that Madagascar was better received by the public, than The Wild.
Other movies with similar plots include:
- A Bug's Life and Antz, released in 1998, both are computer animated features with individualist ants in colonies under threat.
- Flushed Away (2006) and Ratatouille (2007) are both animated (computer animated) films about rats.
- Finding Nemo (2003) and Shark Tale (2004) are both computer animated movies centered around a community of undersea animals.
From Wikipedia: Computer animation - Detailed examples and pseudocode
This excerpt explains the "magic" behind computer animation.
In 2D computer animation, moving objects are often referred to as "sprites.” A sprite is an image that has a location associated with it. The location of the sprite is changed slightly, between each displayed frame, to make the sprite appear to move. The following pseudocode makes a sprite move from left to right:
var int x := 0, y := screenHeight ÷ 2;
while x <>// draw on top of the background
x := x + 5 // move to the right Modern (2001) computer animation uses different techniques to produce animations. Most frequently, sophisticated mathematics is used to manipulate complex three dimensional polygons, apply “textures”, lighting and other effects to the polygons and finally rendering the complete image. A sophisticated graphical user interface may be used to create the animation and arrange its choreography. Another technique called constructive solid geometry defines objects by conducting boolean operations on regular shapes, and has the advantage that animations may be accurately produced at any resolution.
Let's step through the rendering of a simple image of a room with flat wood walls with a grey pyramid in the center of the room. The pyramid will have a spotlight shining on it. Each wall, the floor and the ceiling is a simple polygon, in this case, a rectangle. Each corner of the rectangles is defined by three values referred to as X, Y and Z. X is how far left and right the point is. Y is how far up and down the point is, and Z is far in and out of the screen the point is. The wall nearest us would be defined by four points: (in the order x, y, z). Below is a representaion of how the wall is defined.
(0, 10, 0) (10, 10, 0)
(0,0,0) (10, 0, 0)
The far wall would be:
(0, 10, 20) (10, 10, 20)
(0, 0, 20) (10, 0, 20)
The pyramid is made up of five polygons: the rectangular base, and four triangular sides. To draw this image the computer uses math to calculate how to project this image, defined by three dimensional data, onto a two dimensional computer screen.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Animation Overload
Saturday, November 25, 2006
David Germain
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES — Prancing penguins, rascally rodents, sociable squirrels and sabertoothed tigers — the Hollywood hills have been alive with talking critters in 2006, possibly the biggest year in history for movie animation.
The cute, fuzzy wildlife and other cartoon creations are being introduced so rapidly these days, audiences might well struggle to tell them apart.
"There’s definitely an overload, and I think everyone recognizes that," said George Miller, director of the latest animated adventure, the Warner Bros. penguin romp Happy Feet — which opened last week.
Toy Story, from Disney and Pixar, revolutionized the industry with computergenerated images instead of hand-drawn cartoons; in the decade since, first DreamWorks (Shrek) and then other major studios took leaps into the animation business.
As with the initial novelty of talking pictures almost 80 years ago, the early appeal of computer animation resulted partly from its fresh look.
Films with computer-generated images have since become the standard, so commonplace that the story — not the style — is considered ever more crucial to success or failure.
"What’s happened is, no longer will people go see computer-generated animation simply because it’s CGanimated, as they did when they first saw Toy Story. ," Miller said. "Everything will have to work on its own merits.
"Sure, when The Jazz Singer came out, people turned up to see sound pictures. In a handful of years, people no longer turned up to hear movies. They just turned up to see a movie they thought was good."
Ten years ago, Hollywood released as few as three or four animated movies a year, with Disney the only steady player. This year, 16 films are expected to be eligible for the Academy Award for feature-length animation, only the second time in the six-year history of the animated Oscar that there were enough movies for a full field of five nominees, rather than the usual three.
View full story.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Excerpt taken from Wikipedia under "Flash cartoons"
Flash animation in professional studios
Although Flash animation creation is generally much easier and less expensive than traditional animation techniques, the amount of time, money, and skills needed depends on the chosen content and style. Distribution via the Internet is very easy and cheap compared to television broadcasting, and websites such as Newgrounds and UGOplayer host Flash animations for free. Many Flash animations are created by individual or amateur artists, though it does require enough technical expertise to use Adobe Flash. Some web Flash animations become popular enough to air on broadcast television, on channels such as MTV and G4TV.
In recent years more and more studios doing animation for TV use Flash, especially since some recent drawing styles are easier to do in Flash than with other techniques. TV series also benefit from Flash's ability to organise a large number of assets, like characters, scenes, movements, and props for later re-use. Because Flash files are a vector file format, they can even be used to transfer animation to 35mm film without any compromise in image quality when bringing the cartoon to the big screen. This opportunity is used by several independent animators world-wide.
Excerpt taken from Wikipedia under "Computer animation"
Amateur Animation
The popularity of sites such as YouTube, which allows members to upload there [sic] own movies for others to view, has created a growing number of amateur computer animators. With many free utilities available and programs such as Microsoft MovieMaker anyone with a bit of creativity can have their cartoon viewed by thousands.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Animators Start 2-D Movie Studio
Monday, August 28, 2006 03 50 PM
Tom Hignite knew something was off when he went to the Disney studios in Florida three years ago and saw empty easels instead of animators working on a film.
Hignite later heard they had been laid off — since fans were going to see more computer-animated movies and box-office sales had been lagging for classic hand-drawn, or two-dimensional, movies.
Having gone to school for art, he didn't want 2-D films to die. He had been successful owning a home building company in southeastern Wisconsin, and decided to put money into a studio that would make only 2-D cartoons.
So in 2004 he started Miracle Studios in Polk, about 30 miles north of Milwaukee. He hired 12 animators, who have worked at Disney, Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. They also sometimes work from Hignite's Richfield home.
"If I could do something in a small way to keep this art alive ... it just struck me as a good time to do it," Hignite said.
So far they've finished a book called "Miracle Mouse" and plan to use the proceeds for an animated film based on the book.
Steve Hulett, a business representative for the Animation Guild, said major studios that worked on hand-drawn feature films used to employ 2,000 to 3,000 people in the mid-1990s, but that number has dropped to a few hundred.
Some companies still produce hand-drawn films, but contract some or all of the animation to other countries. The emergence of computer-animated films such as "Shrek" and "Finding Nemo" raked in big bucks, causing the industry to veer away from 2-D, he said.
"I think the market is heavily tilted to computer-generated imaging," Hulett said. "I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future."
But Sarah Baisley, editor in chief of Hollywood-based Animation World Network, an online animation news service, said even though 2-D films aren't being produced as much, that doesn't mean 2-D is dead.
She said other countries have become more involved in animation such as France, Germany and Canada, with some even giving subsidies, grants and tax incentives to help support the industry. About 20 European features are coming out this year, but they don't have the marketing savvy of U.S. studios, Baisley said.
She said Bill Hanna of Hanna-Barbera was one of the first to contract studios in other countries in the 1970s and since then studios have followed suit.
Los Angeles area animation house Film Roman Inc., which produces "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," is working on a Simpsons film and another 2-D film by Rob Zombie called "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto."
Scott Greenberg, the company's president , said they have 300 or 400 animators working on their television and DVD productions. They do much of the animation in the U.S. but some is sent elsewhere, like to AKOM Production Co. and Rough Draft in South Korea.
"We do as much as we can in the U.S.," he said.
Suspended Animation
David Koenig
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Unfortunately, the latest installment of Survivor doesn't take place at some remote tropical island. It takes place a lot closer to home… in beautiful downtown Burbank, under a giant Sorcerer's hat, at the Walt Disney Feature Animation building, where last week another group of stressed-out castaways were voted off the show.
Forget the official Disney line that Feature Animation boasts a staff of 1,000 to 1,500 artists. In Burbank, there are only about 60 traditional “2-D” animators left who actually pick up a pencil or a paintbrush, counting Layout, Animators, Clean-up and Background artists… and Disney has no 2-D projects currently in production for them to work on. (Disney has a like number of survivors holding on in Florida, where a half 2-D/half-CG (computer graphics) project tentatively called My Peoples is underway.)
The vast majority of Feature Animation's artists have been reassigned to a computer or shown the door. It all points to Disney's next two animated features (this fall's Brother Bear and next spring's Home on the Range) being their last.
The latest cutback came two weeks ago, after 13 traditional animators submitted five scenes they had done on computer to vie for six “3-D” spots left to cast on Chicken Little. “The real controversy of this,” noted an onlooker, “is that they were pitted against one another and the playing field wasn't fair. Those who just finished the training program called 'Boot Camp' were up against those who finished Boot Camp six months ago and had more time to finesse, complete and present a more finished test. Also, they purposely entered more people into the training program, anticipating that the majority would fail at learning the computer. Well, they were terribly wrong! They all did great. Now they're worried because they don't know what to do with them because they already hired animators from The Secret Lab (Kangaroo Jack, the dragons on Reign of Fire). They hired them on the superficial qualities that they could do a lot of footage. Forget the fact that they can't do a lot of character footage!”
Last week, six of the animators got the openings on Chicken Little. It looks like the other seven will get the boot. Consider the loss of talent:
- Randy Haycock – character animator on Aladdin, Pocahontas, Lion King, Treasure Planet; supervising animator of Hercules' Baby/Young Hercules, Tarzan's Clayton, Atlantis' Princess Kida
- Richard Hoppe – animator on Black Cauldron, Beauty & the Beast, Tarzan, Atlantis, Treasure Planet
- James Lopez – animator on Lion King, Pocahontas; supervising animator of Hercules' Pain, Emperor's New Groove's Tipo
- Shawn Keller – started in 1970s, character animator on Black Cauldron, Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Co. , Little Mermaid, Treasure Planet; supervising animator of Atlantis' Cookie and Preston Whitmore
- Mark Pudleiner – character animator on Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Hercules, Emperor's New Groove
- John Pomeroy – started in 1970s and worked on Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Rescuers, Pete's Dragon, before leaving with Don Bluth; returned to Disney in 1990s to serve as supervising animator for Pocahontas' John Smith, Fantasia 2000's Firebird, Atlantis' Milo, Treasure Planet's Flint
- Dougg Williams – character animator on Tarzan, Atlantis, Treasure Planet
Officially, most of the seven still “work” for Disney, since their contracts all end at different times (some extending into next year). But don't expect many of them to latch onto new projects too quickly, considering Michael Eisner's official decree: “2-D is dead.”
Just Watched Castle in the Sky - Don't Let 2-D Animation Die!
by Mark Rollins
Nov 28 2005 12:00AM
This image, showing the aformentioned castle itself, shows just a small bit of the magic that can be brought forth in 2-D animation. This picture and all the detail within it was done by hand.In case you haven’t heard, Disney has announced that they will no longer be doing traditional hand-drawn animated films. Disney/Pixar’s soon to be released feature Cars will mark the end of their partnership, and probably begin a war between the two computer animation groups. With CG films such as Dinosaur and Chicken Little being the new standard of animation with Disney, it is clear that Pixar’s films, such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo, are the true family classics.
Which leaves us with an important question: is 2-D animation dead? I certainly hope not. Recently, I discovered a 2-D anime masterpiece that was marketed by Disney called Castle In The Sky. I absolutely could not believe what a fantastic work it was. It takes place in a world that is too primitive to be futuristic, but too advanced to be in the past. I realize how confusing that is, but it is a world dominated by city-sized airships, floating islands, and steam-based technology. Think Jules Verne meets George Lucas.
The story begins when a group of sky pirates led by Dola and her crew of mama’s boys attempt to kidnap Sheeta from a gigantic airship. Sheeta is being held by foreign agents led by Muska, and she sees the attempted abduction as a chance to escape. Unfortunately, she falls off the airship, only to be miraculously levitated by her magical necklace. She is then found by Pazu, and together they are chased by pirates and the military. They soon discover that Sheeta and her necklace are the key to Laputa, a fortress powered by an advanced technology that floats in the clouds.
Although Disney released a translated version of this story in 2003 with such voices as Anna Paquin (Sheeta), James Van Der Beek (Pazu), Cloris Leachman (Dola), and Mark Hamill (Muska), the original version was released in 1986, three years before Disney’s 2-D animation boom with The Little Mermaid. Writer and Director Hayao Miyazaki created an ahead-of-its-time masterpiece that combines elements of both fantasy and science fiction and pushes 2-D animation to its highest level.
What makes it work is the fact that no 3-D animation is used. Even if such advanced technology had been available during that time, it would cheapen the effect. Remember how Titan A.E. tried to integrate the two elements, with 3-D rendered spaceships that looked too advanced in comparison to the cartoonish characters? There are several scenes in the film where we see robots, and I couldn’t help but think that a modern animation director would have rendered them in 3-D. If they had, then the whole film would simply not look as beautiful as it does.
Disney Returns To 2-D Animation
This year will see a record number of computer animated films released in theaters. Only one of those is made by Pixar, which means most of them probably won’t be very good (Weinstein Company, I’m looking at you). 3-D CGI is officially no longer a novelty, which may mean that audiences are ready to get over it and make room for mostly dead 2-D animation to return.
Disney is betting on it, and Variety says they’re returning to 2-D animation for the first time since 2004’s Home on the Range. They’ll do it with a movie called The Frog Princess, being developed by John Musker and Robert Clements. They’re the guys responsible for Disney 2-D classics like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. The interesting thing here is that both Musker and Clements abandoned Disney several years ago, and only recently returned after the very public merger of Disney and Pixar, which put people like John Lasseter in charge of Disney’s animation division. With the help of Pixar’s team, it looks like Disney is regaining its reputation as a haven for great animation talent.
Don’t think that means Disney’s slowing down on releasing more 3-D CGI movies. Their upcoming slate of computer animated movies includes Meet the Robinsons, Rapunzel, Joel Jump, and the next Pixar movie Ratatouille.
View full story.
Review: Flushed Away -- James' Take
What is it about kid's films? Or, rather, what is it about kid's films recently? Computer animation has made making kid's film's easier, it seems, based on the flurry of dreck like Chicken Little and The Barnyard; the better question is if computer animation has made releasing them too easy. The case in point this week is Flushed Away, the latest collaboration between Aardman Animation (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run) and Dreamworks Animation (Shrek, Madagascar). Flushed Away combines two worlds - the design and aesthetic of Aardman's gentle, claymation stories with the computer-generated spectacle of Dreamworks' industrial approach to animation. The result is a curious, unfixed mix of the good, the bad and the ugly -- while Flushed Away has a certain English whimsy to it, it also has the overstuffed, joke-a-millisecond kind of excess that executives think render animated films breezy trifles, but actually turns them into leaden chores. Or, put another way: In Flushed Away, a group of minion frogs in the service of a mercenary bad guy known as Le Frog (and voiced by Jean Reno) are given the order to action; they immediately hurl up their hands and cry "We surrender!" Is this funny, to a kid? Is it funny to any grown-up whose I.Q. is higher than their belt size?
Before Le Frog enters the arena, though, Flushed Away begins as pampered house pet rat Roddy (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is left alone as his owner leaves the house for a holiday. Roddy promptly goes on a high-spirited spree, playing with all the toys and dolls and neat geegaws, but we also notice he's a bit lonely. A plumbing mishap leads loud, boisterous rat Sid (Shane Richie) to Roddy's home, and soon Roddy is plunged into the toilet and out of his paradise. In the sewers, Roddy finds a small London, underground -- a teeming Rodent-opolis of families, commerce and bustling activity. Roddy's quest to get back home brings him to the dock of ship's pilot Rita (voiced by Kate Winslet), who may be able to get him to the surface -- but that's waylaid by the manipulations of the silken-voiced mastermind known as The Toad (Ian McKellen), who's plotting to wipe the sewer rodent-opolis away. ...
... And I hope you could follow that, because I barely could while in the theater. There are Aardman animation touches here -- little sight gags like a container of liquid nitrogen that reads "WARNING: RATHER COLD" and quieter physical bits like when a group of slugs run from danger as fast as they can, which is to say, not very fast at all. Or the fact that the computer-animation replicates the imperfect, jittery frame rate of clay-mation Aardman-style mouth-movement and subliminally reminds us of the hand-shaped charms of Wallace and Gromit. But that gracious, gentle sense of understatement gets blasted off the screen by the barrage of pop-culture references thrown at the screen; there are seven separate names in the writing credits of Flushed Away, and that's not even including all the names listed in the final credits who contributed 'additional material.' So we get a brief splash of Roddy in James Bond gear re-creating the opening credits -- and, again, do kids get that? Does that mean anything to them?
View full story.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Glut of cute films fails to animate audiences
Laura Holson in Los Angeles
October 4, 2006
WITH more than a dozen computer-animated movies being readied for release by mid next year, Hollywood is facing viewer fatigue worthy of Sleeping Beauty. Now, with so many movies for audiences to choose from, some are failing to meet expectations or flopping outright.
Disney's The Wild proved anything but, bringing in only $US37 million at the US box office. A bigger disappointment was The Ant Bully, produced by Tom Hanks and distributed by Warner Brothers, which took only $US27 million. While the debut of Open Season, the tale of a grizzly bear and a deer who battle hunters, brought in $US23 million ($31 million) last weekend for Sony Pictures, putting it in first place, only time will tell whether it is widely embraced by moviegoers.
Over the past five years, almost every major film studio has sought to make or acquire the type of movies pioneered by animation studio Pixar, which was recently acquired by Disney. But while animation continues to be popular with families, audiences complain movie plots and characters looking increasingly alike.
And talking animals, it seems, may be wearing out their welcome.
Computer animation is not the novelty it was a decade ago. "I think audiences are saying, 'I've seen a lot of computer animation and it's not so special any more,"' said Julia Pistor, executive producer of Barnyard, a modest hit that earned $US71 million in the US. "In that case, it's a lot harder for a movie to break through."
Both Pixar and its main rival, DreamWorks Animation, continue to dominate the genre because their brands are widely known and highly regarded. But even they are feeling the pinch. Though Cars was a hit, bringing in $US243 million, even it failed to live up to expectations. The stock price of DreamWorks is down about 12 per cent since the company went public in 2004. Box office figures show how central Disney and DreamWorks are to the animation business. Monitors Nielsen EDI said 2004 was a banner year for animation, with domestic box office receipts of $US1.2 billion. That success was largely due to the release of DreamWorks' Shrek 2 and Shark Tale, and The Incredibles from Pixar.
Last year, the US box office fell by half, to $US640 million. Pixar did not release a film that year, and DreamWorks' Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was a flop.
As of last month, animated films had taken $US928 million in the US. But there has been a rise in the number of films - with 17 films released compared with last year's 11. And the latest crop looks a lot like a zoo, with Warner's Happy Feet, featuring tap-dancing penguins, and two about rats - DreamWorks' Flushed Away and Pixar's Ratatouille - which follow the hits Over the Hedge and Ice Age.
90 seconds on the road to eternity
By Nirit Anderman
When Doron Meir was a boy, his father used to drag him to the cinema as an excuse to watch cartoons. He knew that if he entered the hall in which "Fantasia" was playing without a child at his side, people would stare at him awkwardly. Animation, many then thought, was strictly a children's affair.
Several years have passed since, and today Meir, 33, is an animator who fulfilled many of his colleagues' dreams: He worked on a full feature animated film, in the tradition of the films Disney Studios used to produce back when he was a child. Although he was only one of dozens of animators who worked on the film "Asterix and the Vikings," which premiered six months ago in Europe, he still feels highly privileged. The production of such a film, with a budget of several dozen million dollars, is quite rare these days.
Most of the animated features produced in Hollywood in recent years are computer-animated films, created with advanced three-dimensional imaging programs. The production of an animated film, with dozens of animators working on thousands of drawings, is considered a financial gamble most studios don't rush into. The animated films and series still created today are mostly marketed to the television industry, and produced on relatively low budgets, requiring shortcuts and tricks to reduce the production's expense.
Meir left Israel two years ago and relocated to Denmark in order to work on "Asterix and the Vikings." "I accepted the offer because of my love for the Asterix books, which I have known since childhood, and also because I wasn't sure how many more opportunities like this will present themselves. Today, the entire world of animation is shifting to 3D, and I wanted to take part in a movie like this one, still done in two-dimensional animation," he says.
"I think this is the largest animation production, budget-wise, done in Europe to date," says Meir, now visiting Israel. "The goal was to create quality animation, on par with Disney, meaning that if you have 21 frames a second, then in each one, you draw the whole frame from scratch. In most TV-ready animation series produced today, they draw the body only one time, and what changes from one drawing to the next is the way they draw the mouth, so it looks like the figure is talking. This is limited animation, less convincing, and the coloring and backgrounds are also poorer."
'My heart leans toward 2D'
After he finished his work on the film, Meir joined a Danish animation company which develops 3D computer games, among them the successful "Hitman" game series. Tonight he will participate in a series of lectures at the Tel Aviv Camera Obscura school. Meir will lecture on the role of the animator in computer games, the Tel Aviv Animation Festival's curator, Dudu Shalita, will speak of animator training in an age of change, and animator Dror Lazar will survey new animation technologies.
When Meir is asked how he thinks the battle between 3D computer animation and hand-drawn animated films will be decided, he confesses that until a few years ago he believed that the traditional 2D animation was facing extinction.
"Today when someone decides he wants to animate, the easiest thing to do is to get a computer with 3D software and start working," he explains. "On the other hand, if you want to animate in 2D, you first have to sit and learn how to draw for a few years, then you need the equipment - camera, special desks - and it's much more complicated, it's a very large obstacle. On the other hand, I believe that the 3D animation taking over the animation world in recent years is merely a trend, and that in a few years it will change. 2D did not catch on in recent years simply because not enough good films were made using this technique. Besides, I don't believe that you can be a good 3D artist if you cannot also draw 2D animation. It's just like you need to know how to draw to be a good sculptor.
When he is asked about which animation he prefers, 2D or 3D, Meir takes his time. "After years of working in 2D, I realize it's very hard work, it wears you down, and I found out that I like to combine 2D with 3D, to switch between the two. But my heart leans toward 2D. Granted, it's more demanding work, and it takes me longer to produce the desired product - but therein lies my holy grail."
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Is there an animation overload in Hollywood?
Laura M. Holson / New York Times
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Mike Hernandez has had it with the new offerings of animated movies.
Other than "Cars," the summer hit from Pixar Animation Studios, he would rather watch the re-released older animated classic "The Little Mermaid" with his 4-year-old daughter, Alicea.
"They had a good message," Hernandez said of "Cars" and "The Little Mermaid" after attending a recent afternoon matinee of "The Little Mermaid." Of other, newer films, he said, "I don't pay too much attention."
With more than a dozen computer-animated movies being readied for release by next summer, Hollywood is facing viewer fatigue worthy of Sleeping Beauty. Analysts and industry executives have long warned of a coming glut of computer-animated movies. That time has come. Now, with so many movies for audiences to choose from, some are failing to meet expectations or flopping outright.
This summer's "The Wild," from the Walt Disney Co., proved anything but for moviegoers, bringing in only $37 million at the domestic box office. The bigger disappointment was "The Ant Bully," produced by the actor Tom Hanks and distributed by Warner Brothers Entertainment. That movie could only garner $27 million.
Over the last five years, almost every major film studio has sought to make or acquire the type of movies pioneered by Pixar, which was recently acquired by Disney. At the same time, independently financed animators have ratcheted up production. But while animation continues to be popular with families, audiences complain it is suffering from too much sameness, with movie plots and characters looking increasingly alike.
"I think audiences are saying, 'I've seen a lot of computer animation and it's not so special anymore,"' said Julia Pistor, an executive producer of the recent "Barnyard," which was a modest hit, bringing in $69 million domestically. "In that case it's a lot harder for a movie to break through."
Both Pixar and its main rival, DreamWorks Animation, continue to dominate the animation genre because their brands are widely known and highly regarded. But even those studios are feeling the pinch. Though "Cars" was a hit last summer, bringing in $243 million domestically, it failed to live up to prerelease expectations.
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