A hearty thanks from Jerry Beck and myself to Mark Mayerson for being our first guest contributor, and a superb one at that. Over the past few weeks, I’ve enjoyed reading his insightful perspective on the TV animation biz, and we’ve heard from numerous other folks thanking us for his pieces. Thanks again to Mark and stay tuned for our next guest contributor who we’ll be announcing soon.

Here’s a photo of Will Smith, Angelina Jolie and Jack Black at the Cannes Film Festival riding atop an inflatable SHARK TALE pool toy. And there’s still five months until this film is released. Boy, this is going to be a lot of fun.

More than a dozen 700 pound statues of Mickey Mouse will soon appear in Portland, Oregon, as part of a year long Disney Company nationwide tour, “Celebrate Mickey: 75 InspEARations”. Read about it here.

Oh, this looks good!A new trailer for Pixar’s The Incredibles is up - posted here - and it’s hilarious. Any doubt that this will be anything less than a blockbuster?Go, Pixar, go!

This is going to be my last contribution to Cartoon Brew. I’d like to thank Jerry and Amid for having me as a guest for a few weeks and I hope that my contributions were useful to somebody.

Having talked in generalities about TV animation, I’m now going to get specific and talk about myself. Monster By Mistake has wrapped up production and now I’m writing new scripts and pitches which I’ll be taking into the marketplace later this year.

One market that I hope to crack is the direct-to-video computer animated feature. I’ve got a script for one ready to go and another script in progress. If there are any home video producers reading this (or for that matter, any feature producers) who’d like to see the material, please contact me through the Catapult Productions website (which is way overdue for an update; that’s what happens when you’re neck deep in production).

Another goal I have is to find an agent. I’m not interested in an agent to rep me as a writer-director so much as I am interested in an agent to represent Catapult Productions as we try to launch new properties for TV, home video and (someday, please!) films. If there are any interested agents out there or folks with representation who might be willing to give me a referral, please contact me through Catapult Productions.

Once again, thanks to Jerry and Amid for a great website and for giving me the opportunity to be part of it. -Mark Mayerson

It’s rare in TV animation these days for the director to be in the same location as the animators. On Monster By Mistake, we were lucky to do the first 26 episodes entirely under one roof. For the second 26, I was able to keep the animation local, though the modeling and lighting were done elsewhere.

When working with a group of animators, a director soon learns their strengths and weaknesses. Some are better at dialogue than action. Others are better at comedy than emotion. Ideally, each sequence should have a reason for being in a show and the director’s job, through casting animators, is to put that reason across to the audience as strongly as possible.

There are live action directors who claim that casting is the most important part of their job. If you get the right performers for a role, you’ve solved most of your problems. Sadly, in TV animation, casting the animators isn’t seen as a priority. Usually, when an animator needs more work, the animator is just handed whatever is ready to go.

When the director and the animators are not in the same country, the director has no input into animator casting. It may be done by an overseas supervisor or by a manager of the subcontracting company, but it might be ignored. The director is left trying to create performances by remote control, using various methods of pre-production.

Poses come from the storyboard and layouts. More poses may be added on the exposure sheets by the sheet timer. The problem with this approach is how poses are timed. Because animation has been going overseas for so long, many sheet timers actually have no experience animating. They tend to play it safe on timing. Also, there’s a lag between timing the sheets and the animation coming back. Often the sheet timer is already off the production when the animation returns, so there’s no chance to learn from mistakes and improve timing for later episodes.

There’s no question that when a director is able to work in close contact with animators you get a better result. It’s a shame that this has become a luxury in the TV animation business.

I think I’ve spotted the big new trend in CG animation: eerie, quasi-realistic looking orange cats. Alright, it’s only SHREK 2 and GARFIELD: THE MOVIE so far, but I’m betting the rest of Hollywood will catch onto this exciting fad before the year is out.

SHREK: FROM THE SWAMP TO THE SCREEN is hands-down the ugliest “art of” book I’ve ever seen for an animated film, which is probably owing to the fact that it’s little more than a collection of stills from the film. Let me put it this way: if the US military wants an effective interrogation technique for Iraqi prisoners, there’s no need for naked pyramids and all that silliness - just force the Iraqis to look at this book and they’ll start talking in no time. Then again, I’m sure there’s something in the Geneva Convention that protects people from being exposed to such ugly animation artwork. The only half-decent parts of the SHREK book are the handful of pages showing the pencil development art, which illustrate how appealing and visually enticing the SHREK franchise could be if Katzenberg would only step aside and allow artists to do their job. If you simply must have the book, wait a few months until it’s remaindered, like the “art of” book for PRINCE OF EGYPT which is currently marked down from $45 to $2.95 at HamiltonBook.com.