Pixar artist Ronnie del Carmen has a report and photos from the San Francisco comic convention WonderCon which took place last week (see Ronnie’s May 3rd update). Apparently the convention isn’t as festive or fun as the San Diego Comic-Con.

Animator Volus Jones passed away on May 3 at the age of 90. He worked in animation from 1934 through 1982 at studios including Harman-Ising, Disney, Columbia, Format, TV Spots, Warner Bros., Fred Calvert Productions, Bakshi, UPA and Hanna-Barbera. Animation veteran Floyd Norman offered this remembrance of Jones on Animation Nation:

The old guys called him “The Duck Man.” Volus Jones spent a good deal of his time at the Disney studio animating Donald. And, he did it pretty darn good.

When this young kid picked up his first Donald Duck scene to inbetween back in the Fifties, it was a Volus Jones scene. I was proud to just be doing inbetweens for a real Disney animator. The guys who animated the Disney shorts never had the fame of “The Nine Old Men,” but you better believe me, they were darn good animators.

Volus Jones was always a charming gentleman. Casual, relaxed, yet classy all the way. I’ll sure miss him.

What can I say? It’s amazing!I never thought I’d live to see the day they’d release restored, perfect copies of DER FUEHRER’S FACE, EDUCATION FOR DEATH and VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER on home video. These were “Holy Grail” films in my lifetime - and here they are, as fresh as the day they were made - in a collection that everyone must own (heck, buy two… before Disney comes to their senses!).WALT DISNEY ON THE FRONT LINES is the animation dvd event of the year - whether you are an animation fan, a history or miltary buff or a Disney completist. These wartime shorts are some of the best animated films the studio ever made - all have been rarely seen since their original release - and they are surprisingly relevant to current world events.The highlight of the dvd is the magnificently restored film prints - crystal clarity, vivid colors and sharp sound. I’d forgotten how good THE OLD ARMY GAME and COMMANDO DUCK are, and I’d never seen HOW TO BE A SAILOR. What great cartoons!
I’d seen shorts like THE WINGED SCOURGE and SPIRIT OF ‘43 before - but never from 35mm in brand-new condition like this! Amazing!
Then there are the bonus materials - it’ll take you hours to go through: The trailer, behind the scenes footage, production art from VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER; production art from most of the shorts… in fact, I finally saw something I always wanted to see: a Hitler model sheet! It’s included in the EDUCATION FOR DEATH production art gallery. I knew Disney, Warners, Lantz and others had to have made such a chart - they used the “character” so often - but I’ve never seen one reprinted anywhere.
The galleries include pages from DISPATCH FROM DISNEY (a rare wartime publication), Disney insignias, and Disney propaganda posters. Leonard Maltin introduces various sections and specific shorts, as well as conducting some wonderful, conversational interviews with Joe Grant, John Hench and Roy Disney.There is much here to rave about. Special mention, and our thanks, must go to Roy Disney, Dave Bossert and Leonard Maltin for making this incredible dvd compilation a reality. ON THE FRONT LINES goes on sale May 18th.

John Seely recieved music credit on six Warner Bros. cartoons released in 1958 - when Milt Franklin and the Warner studio musicians went on strike. Seely’s stock music cues were used to ruin several Jones’ Road Runner films and made a lackluster Tweety & Sylvester entry (A BIRD IN A BONNET) even worse than it really was. McKimson’s PRE-HYSTERICAL HARE (the one with “Elmer Fuddstone” voiced by Dave Barry) was possibly the worst Bugs Bunny cartoon ever made, and Seely’s score certainly helped sour the proceedings.John Seely’s music was used to better effect on several sitcoms (Dennis The Menace, My Three Sons, Donna Reed) and numerous Marx Toys commercials. Seely passed away at age 80 on April 23rd. It was announced in this obituary in the Oakland Tribune.

Have you seen this trailer for the CG/2-D anime feature APPLESEED?Not sure what I think of it myself - but it’s a good trailer.

What If You’re Not a Multinational?

The multinational corporations are not the only companies making animated TV series. But if you’re not a multinational and don’t own your own channels, you have to work hard to get a broadcaster interested.

One way to do it is with a marketing hook. You’ve got to show broadcasters something that they believe will pull in an audience that they can sell to advertisers. In children’s television, one approach is to adapt a well-known children’s book. Some companies, like Nelvana and Cinar, built their studios on this approach. The success of the books also provides a safety net for the broadcast executive in charge of buying programs. If a show based on a well-known book fails, it’s easier to defend the decision to buy the show than it would be to defend buying something untested in the marketplace.

The marketing angle doesn’t have to come from a book. While DreamWorks is a large, successful company, they don’t own a broadcaster and as a result, their success in TV has been limited. Father of the Pride, their forthcoming computer animated prime time series, has several marketing hooks. It uses computer animation (though that didn’t seem to help Game Over) but more importantly, it features Siegfried and Roy, performers who are known from their TV appearances and their Las Vegas act. It also doesn’t hurt that the animal characters are lions. I’m sure that NBC is hoping that Jeffrey Katzenberg’s previous success with animated lions will continue.

Independent companies often rely heavily on merchandising revenues. HIT is a British company that owns Bob the Builder. They spent a limited amount of money producing the animation and then merchandised the property as heavily as they could. They made more from the merchandising than they did from the show. Using their profits from Bob, they bought Barney the Dinosaur and also bought a Canadian company, Gullane, just so they could get ownership of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Some companies have resorted to giving their shows away for free in the U.S, just so that the shows can stimulate the sale of merchandise. Barney, even before it was bought by HIT, was provided to PBS for free, as was the show The Big Comfy Couch. The producers felt that if they could get the show to an audience, they could sell enough merchandise to pay for the production of the show and still show a profit.

I’ve heard of instances where producers offered to pay to put their shows on the air in order to find an audience for their merchandising efforts.

This is how companies sometimes get broadcasters interested. Another necessity for companies that don’t own channels is keeping their costs down, and they do this through outsourcing and co-productions. I’ll talk about these next time.

I had a bittersweet experience yesterday, during a screening at the Disney studios.
I saw Mike Gabriel’s new five minute animated short, LORENZO (which will be released May 26th with the feature “Raising Helen”) and it’s a real gem. I truly think it’ll be the Oscar winner in next years animated short competition.Like DESTINO, it is artistically brilliant, innovative and dare-I-say-it, “cutting edge”. Unlike DESTINO, it has a clever story, funny gags and sharp comic timing. And did I mention it was animated traditionally?That’s the sad part. I sat there enthralled by this delightful cartoon knowing that the studio had dismissed a majority of it’s traditional animation staff - and here on the screen was a clue to where Disney 2-D could go; here was a possible future direction for feature animation. A brilliant way traditional and CG can blend together beautifully.
The film does indeed use computers - a new computer program, ‘Sable, which allows characters to retain the crude but lush brushstroke appearence of Gabriel’s original inspriational art: acrylic paints on black construction paper.The finished product is a delight. That elusive “magic” that Disney once had is here in spades. Joe Grant came up with the story - about a cat whose tail comes to life and he can’t get away from it. Gabriel set the story to an Argentine tango (the film was started as a possible segent for Fantasia 2000). Roy Disney, Don Hahn and Baker Bloodworth produced. Kudos to all - for reminding us all how great animation is, and can continue to be.

How Multinational Corporations Thrive

As I mentioned in the last installment, the paradox of the TV business is that the increasing number of channels leads to a decrease in viewers for any one channel. Fewer viewers mean less income. There are strategies for getting around this problem and this installment will talk about how the multinationals – companies like Disney, Time-Warner, Viacom, etc. - deal with it.

One way large companies increase the amount of money they make is by vertical integration. A single company owns production, distribution and exhibition. Disney has the ability to create a show, distribute it and air it on TV. By buying from itself, Disney makes sure that money that it spends stays inside the company. Any profit generated by a show also stays within the company.

But how do Disney, Time-Warner or Viacom compensate for the shrinking size of their audience? They do it by putting their shows on more channels. All of these companies own more than one channel in North America. In addition, these multinationals own channels in other countries as well. There are Disney channels in Europe. There’s a Cartoon Network in South America. There are versions of Nickelodeon in several countries. If you can place your show on enough channels that you own, you can find an audience big enough to make a profit.

Animation travels better than live action. TV regularly takes shows from other countries and remakes them. All in the Family was based on a British TV series. Survivor now has different versions running in several countries. That’s not the case for Spongebob Squarepants. While he’s dubbed, the same episodes are shown all over the planet.

Economically, this model works great. From a creator’s or a viewer’s standpoint, it doesn’t work as well.

Large companies want to own things outright. If you pitch a show to a Disney or a Viacom and they’re interested, they’ll end up owning it. You’re free to try and negotiate your best financial deal, but the copyright will go to them. I don’t know Genndy Tartakovsky’s deal on Samurai Jack, but if Time-Warner decides that they want to team Samurai Jack up with Yogi Bear, there’s nothing that Tartakovsky can do about it. In the worst case scenario, a creator can be fired from his own show. This is what Nickelodeon did to John Kricfalusi on Ren and Stimpy.

The fact that shows appear on more than one channel effectively reduces the variety that the 500 channel universe was supposed to provide. What good are more channels if the bulk of them are running shows you can see elsewhere?

Another problem is that companies prefer to make shows from properties they already own. It’s easier to sell the audience something they’re familiar with than something new. I’m losing count of how many animated versions of Batman there are. I don’t doubt that as long as Time-Warner owns Batman, there will be new Batman cartoons. As good as they might be, the airtime taken up by Batman is airtime that won’t be available for something new. That limits the opportunities available to creators and limits the variety available to viewers.

But the multinationals aren’t the only ones producing TV animation. Next time, I’ll look at how smaller companies deal with the economics of TV.