Author Archives: Amid Amidi

About Amid Amidi

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Nate Theis

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Nate Theis

Meet my favorite animation director of the moment: Nate Theis. He works at Madison, Wisconsin-based Planet Propaganda which is a hybrid ad agency/production house. Theis recently posted a selection of work on his new website NateTheis.com and I love pretty much everything he’s done. The commercials feel fresher, sharper and just a little more raw than the majority of advertising I see coming out of mainstream ad agencies. The Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwich campaign, which Theis helped to concept and write in addition to animating and directing, is one of the funniest collection of spots I’ve seen in some time, not to mention a perfect Roger Ramjet tribute. The Nonsek clothing and ACR Electronics spots are simple concepts executed to a tee, while the Gary Fisher bike campaign shows range and a willingness to experiment. A graduate of Savannah College of Art & Design, Theis is a director to keep an eye on.

COMMENTARY: Animated Feature Oscar is Still A Bad Idea

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Idiots and Angels

Earlier this decade, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began handing out Oscars for best animated feature, I viewed it as a misguided decision. Increasingly, over the past eight years, I’ve come to see it not only as misguided, but as downright awful, an idea that is at best backwards and out of touch with contemporary times, and at worst, a reactionary measure designed to protect their live-action base of filmmakers from the threat of an emergent art form. Furthermore, the immature manner in which the Academy presents the animation award during their ceremony is completely at odds with what is actually happening within the art form. If I didn’t know better, I’d think their intentions were to pigeonhole animation into its own specialized niche instead of promoting the art form as a valid equivalent to the live-action process.

The Academy’s animated feature award looks increasingly antiquated as more progressive film awards and festivals begin to recognize animation on its merits as film and not as some weird subset removed from the rest of film art. Yesterday, the 29th edition of Fantasporto, a major film festival in Portugal, awarded its top prize for Best Film and Best Screenplay to Bill Plympton’s feature Idiots and Angels. Plympton beat out of dozens of live-action films for both awards. The screenplay award is notable because Idiots and Angels is dialogue-less and Plympton relied purely on visual storytelling to make his film.

Also, this week at the Fargo Film Festival, Don Hertzfeldt’s latest short I Am So Proud of You won not only Best Animation, but also Best Picture and Best Screenplay. The 22-minute short won the Best Picture award over dozens of live-action features, animated films and documentaries. Festival co-chairman Matt Olien told Fargo’s local paper Inforum that their selection of Hertzfeldt’s film falls in line with animation’s emergence “as a major player in movies” and that he felt WALL-E should have received a best picture nomination at the Oscars.

Animation filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries as never before and they are being recognized for their progress throughout the film community. It’s unfortunate that at the exact moment animation began coming into its own and regularly equaling live-action in terms of writing and filmmaking quality, the Academy took action to make it more difficult for animation to compete in its major categories. As animation continues its evolution so should the Academy. It should embrace animation as a film art worthy of its major awards and abolish its separate but equal treatment of animated films.

Obama Mo-cap

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Obama Mocap

The Onion reports that Barack Obama has been outfitted with motion-capture sensors and that his entire presidency is being recorded in 3-D. While the article is obviously in jest, I wonder how far away we are from the day where all of our lives will be recorded in digital form giving us the option to virtually replay personal events from different perspectives and to create different outcomes.

(via Motionographer)

The Legend of Milu Deer: Princess Yoyo

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Legend of Milu Deer

One of my favorite sources for learning about obscure foreign animated features is TwitchFilm.net. Certain films though are perhaps best left undiscovered. Case in point: the forthcoming CG effort called The Legend of Milu Deer: Princess Yoyo directed by Guo Weijiao. The film is largely a response to DreamWorks’s Kung Fu Panda. The success of a Chinese-themed story produced by an American company miffed a lot of Chinese citizens and has inspired them to make more (if not better) use of their cultural symbols and traditions.

The film is being produced by the Zhonke Weiwo Digital Technology Co. in collaboration with the Scientific Art Center of the Institute of Automation in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. According to the film’s official website, they are employing “special effects such as 3D deformation, hair, fabric, particles, groups animation, motion capture, and network rendering, which reaches the [most] advanced level in the world.” Apparently, the world they are referring to is the one of 1990.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television is planning to offer this movie as a “present” to the people of China for this year’s 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. If this is a present, I’d hate to think how they punish people in that part of the world.

The trailer:

Anime is Dying

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The Japan Times has a long, and at times sensationalistic, article describing how the Japanese animation industry is struggling to survive and why their “animation bubble” is about to burst. A vast number of reasons are offered. I don’t know enough about their industry to properly assess which reasons are accurate and which are overblown, but some of the reasons covered in the article include a sluggish economy leading to lower production budgets, too much adult content turning off general audiences, piracy and fansubs in the West, lack of financial incentives for show creators, shady business practices by production studios, and low pay for the average animation worker. I was also surprised to read that 90% of their animation work is outsourced to countries like China and the Philippines. Maybe the US animation industry isn’t that bad after all.

(Thanks, Karl Cohen)

The Director of Hoodwinked Speaks

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Cory Edwards

Cory Edwards, the guy who made the moderately successful steaming pile of CGI known as Hoodwinked is still plying his wares around town and is currently tapped to write and direct Fraggle Rock: The Movie for the Jim Henson Company. He talks about his work in this interview on the Fulle Circle Productions blog.

Whatever one’s opinion of Hoodwinked, you’ve got to admit that Edwards was on the forefront of indie CG, a trend that is becoming more and more prevalent nowadays. In his own words:

“And I realize that there were other independently-funded projects being done at the same time, but yes, we were the first… the first kind of a new model and a new way of making an animated film. It was made with no studio money, overseas, then picked up by a major distributor. A few other animated films have followed this path, but not to the level of success that Hoodwinked was able to achieve. I know Veggie Tales had a movie come out earlier that year, but that was with a struck deal and brand recognition. Hoodwinked was this freak of nature that was made completely outside of the studio system and, thankfully, worked. I rarely toot my own horn, but these are facts that never get mentioned and I am really proud of what our little film did. Hoodwinked was made for under $8 Million, and has grossed over $150 Million worldwide. That easily makes it the most profitable animated film of its time.”

Beyond the business aspects of indie CG, the rest of the interview is packed with gems that both infuriate and tickle the funny bone. For example, Edwards reveals one of his reasons why he’s not directing Hoodwinked 2: “I wanted desperately to get into live action films, and was very concerned about being pigeon-holed as an animation director.” There’s also a wonderful bit about how he’s going to approach the feature-length Fraggle Rock: “I’m shooting high with this one, trying to say some big things about humanity in the way that WALL-E did, but at the same time, make a really cool adventure film.” Apparently the new formula for success in Hollywood is to just give it a little bit of that Wall-E humanity oomph.

Most amusing though is where Edwards sees himself in ten years:

“I sincerely hope that I will be able to carve out a niche in this business where I am a ‘brand name’ director. By that I mean, when an audience sees my name, they anticipate something good… and when a studio thinks of me, they are eager to make a “Cory Edwards film…I want to keep surprising people, but still keep my name synonymous with quality.”

Considering that every project his name has been attached to (Hoodwinked, Doogal) has been an artistic abomination, keeping his name synonymous with quality is a ship that sailed a long time ago. No worries though…nobody notices in Hollywood anyway. Keep up with Cory’s attempt to turn Fraggle Rock into the next WALL-E at CorysCuriosities.blogspot.com.

Get Plastered with Plympton and Lasseter

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Plympton Wine Bottle

When I think of the alcohol of choice for animators, I typically don’t think wine, but a number of animation artists are becoming involved in the wine industry. We start with indie filmmaker Bill Plympton who recently designed the labels (above) for PS1909 produced by the Dhaliwal Vineyards in California.

Lasseter Winery

That’s nothing compared to Pixar’s John Lasseter who is starting up his own Sonoma Valley winery called Lasseter Family Winery . A newspaper article from last December discusses some of the ideas for the 38-acre property. Of particular interest to animation fans, the winery will also be the home of Ollie Johnston’s locomotive and Ward Kimball’s train depot. In other words, it’s going to be a pretty damn awesome winery.

(Lasseter wine info via Pixar Touch blog)

Glen Keane Interview

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Glen Keane

The new-ish animation blog Lineboil offers up a fine interview with Glen Keane, in which he talks about his preference for pencil over Cintiq, who his greatest source of animation inspiration is (a surprise, at least to me), and suggests that he may one day become a full-time teacher. When asked if the amount of animation we’re seeing today constitutes a new Golden Age, Keane diplomatically shoots down the idea with a fantastic answer that I couldn’t agree with more:

“It seems to me that a ‘golden age’ starts with a movement to discover and learn. It worked that way when Walt turned Hyperion studios into a veritable animation university complete with animal pens to keep deer for study. The result was Snow White, Bambi and Fantasia. In the seventies, when Disney re-started its training program, there was an influx of new talent, new discoveries and wonderful new films like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Lion King. Branching out from Disney, there are the films of John Lasseter, Brad Bird and Tim Burton.

“We need to be stretching out and learning, discovering, trying new things. We cannot rest on where we are. There is always a stronger, more convincing, more personal and expressive way to tell our stories and to animate our characters. If we do that then we can move into another ‘golden age.’”

(photo via O-meon)

Drux Flux by Theodore Ushev

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The National Film Board of Canada has made Theodore Ushev’s powerful 2008 short Drux Flux available on YouTube. This is a film that benefits greatly from the bigscreen but if you’ve been unable to see it elsewhere, this video offers a glimpse of its fast-cutting layered montage approach. The official synopsis of the film is as follows:

Partly figurative, partly abstract, Drux Flux is an animation film of fast-flowing images showing modern people crushed by industry. Inspired by One-Dimensional Man by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the filmmaker deconstructs industrial scenes and their terrifying geometry to show the inhumanity of progress.

Ushev informs me that a 3D anaglyph version of this film (as well as a 3D version of his earlier short Tower Bawher) will soon be posted on a special NFB website.

The 3-D Onslaught

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3D Kid

Coraline was the first time I’d seen a film in 3-D in a very long time, and while I enjoyed the film immensely, the 3-D technology was a huge dud. The imagery on-screen was so fuzzy that I initially thought my glasses were defective and exchanged them for another pair. Apparently, it wasn’t the glasses though; that’s just part of the 3-D “experience”. Add to that an annoying strobe on close-up shots, tinted glasses that obscured details during the film’s darker scenes, and leaving the theater with a headache, and it ends up being a miserable experience that I don’t anticipate repeating anytime soon.

It’s too early to tell where 3-D will go, but every sign so far points to it being a corporate-induced fad just as it was in the 1950s. Having said that, I’m still fascinated by Hollywood’s shift to 3-D techology, particularly because animation now represents the second biggest category of 3-D releases, following documentary films. I’m also intrigued by the unique storytelling possibilities of the medium, though as yet I’m unclear as to what those may be. To that end, I’ve been searching for a solid source to learn more about the technology. I know there’s the MarketSaw blog which offers news about 3-D releases, but its uncritical cheerleading of every film doesn’t offer much insight into the art side of 3-D. Last night I finally stumbled across what I’ve been looking for–an amazing resource called 3-D Stereoscopic Film and Animation Blog which is run by a Bristol, UK-company called 3-D Revolution Productions.

Besides the informative blog, the company has all sorts of pages devoted to the technology such as 3-D film theory, how to build a 3-D camera, and an incredible piece of original research documenting every 3-D film ever released. In other words, if you’re at all interested in 3-D filmmaking, this blog and accompanying website is THE place to start your journey.

A chart that stood out on their blog is the one of 3-D releases throughout history. It’s surprising to see that 3-D never died out, and in fact, more 3-D films were released in the early-2000s than are being released today, though contemporary releases are obviously playing on a far greater number of screens:

3D Chart

There’s also an enlightening article that discusses the traditional 3-D effect of objects popping out at audiences–”negative parallax” is the technical term–and how the art of 3-D won’t develop until filmmakers move beyond these type of cheap tricks and recognize that:

“3-D movies are a different medium altogether — neither film nor theatre, but volumetric narrative visual entertainment of its own. A new medium with new rules — where the fourth wall can be broken at will and where serious drama is followed by visual puns and an opportunity to examine objects and scenery in volumetric detail.”

The author of the blog also shares this comment told to him in 2007 by Pixar director Pete Docter: “We have looked at 3-D in the past and have come to the conclusion that there is little to no way in which 3-D can indeed enhance the quality of our storytelling or enhance the character interaction in a meaningful way.” It leads to the question, What has changed in the past couple years that has convinced Pixar and other studios to create all their animated films in 3-D? Is it purely a response to market pressure and keeping up with Katzenberg, or have filmmakers found legitimate ways of using the technology to enhance storytelling? Perhaps I’ll discover the answer when I find a way to watch 3-D films without getting a migraine.

The Cat Piano Trailer

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Here’s the stylish trailer for The Cat Piano, a just-completed animated short by our friends at the People’s Republic of Animation in Adelaide, Australia. The short is directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson and its content described as, “a city of singing cats is preyed upon by a shadowy figure intent on performing a twisted feline symphony.” We offered White’s earlier short, Carnivore Reflux, co-directed with James Calvert, way back when we launched Cartoon Brew Films. That short can now be seen on YouTube. The guys at PRA are enthusiastic, young and skilled, which is a powerful combination. It’s commendable that they continue doing shorts inbetween their busy workload of TV commercials, music videos and long-form commissioned projects.

“Happy Up Here” video by Reuben Sutherland

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A visually impressive Space Invaders-themed music video directed by Reuben Sutherland of Joyrider Films for Röyksopp’s new single “Happy Up Here.” At first glance, I thought it was a mix of live and CG, but upon closer examination, it appears to be almost entirely CG. It’s a fun piece in which the visual elements and cutting perfectly match the energy of song’s beats.