Wolcott Gibbs was the the drama critic of The New Yorker for many years, but he also wrote about other sorts of stuff, such as this smart take on The Three Caballeros. A lot more of Gibbs’ writing can be found in the new collection Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from the New Yorker. There’s also a recent piece about Gibbs written by Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal that sheds light on his quirky personality.

Here’s a batch of recent music videos from around the globe to start off the new year. Remember to keep submitting your videos. We intend to make the music video roundup a regular feature on the Brew.

“My Heart Belongs to You” by Colin Huggins
Video directed by Lev Polyakov (US)

---

“Cronache di una marionetta” by Radiochimica
Video directed by Milan Kopasz (Hungary) and Pezze&Bottoni (Italy)

---

“Pelican” by The Maccabees
Video directed by by David Wilson (UK)

---

“Good Love” by the Whitaker Brothers
Video directed by Malika Whitaker (France)

A few months ago, Colorado-based filmmaker Corrie Francis Parks raised nearly $12,000 through Kickstarter to create her first professional animated short. Afterward she wrote a detailed blog post explaining how she did it. There’s lots of valuable advice in her post, including the importance of setting a realistic fundraising goal and managing the campaign after it’s launched:

Like many artists, I’m not much of a self-promoter, so I had to find ways to keep sharing the project over and over without losing my authenticity. I also wanted to share something meaningful with my potential backers. This meant creating new content by writing project updates, offering special rewards at landmark moments, making some new rewards when the funding flat-lined. One of the sand paintings I created for a special reward. I had 450 people on my email list, and after every email, I saw a jump in the pledges. I asked people to share the project with 2 of their friends in a personal email or phone call. 35% of my backers are people i don’t know, but I’m pretty sure many are a result of those emails and phone calls.

Fundraising is in many ways a full-time job. One of my next-door neighbors recently raised over $40,000 for her film project, but she had to commit a couple months to full-time campaigning. Deciding whether you want to commit the time and effort to raising money is an important decision to make before embarking on any fundraising campaign.

(link to Corrie’s blog via ASIFA-SF newsletter)

Let’s have one more batch of Animated Fragments to close out the year. Fragments has been one of our most popular new features in 2011, and we intend to feature plenty more bits and pieces of animation in the new year.

Lip Sync Test by Luca Tóth (Hungary/UK)

Bonne Année! by Rafael Sommerhalder (Switzerland)

Tribute to Emir Kusturica by Pavel Pogudin

2 Comedians by Spencer Morin (US)

Petit Cul by Gabriel Harel (France)

The future of animation books, like the rest of the publishing industry, isn’t rosy. Page counts and print runs are shrinking, and publishers seem more reluctant than ever to take risks with unconventional subject matter. Despite the uncertainty, there is still a fairly promising line-up of animation-related titles being released in 2012, including a much-needed biography of the McKimson brothers (most notably Bob, but also Chuck and Tom), the definitive history of UPA, and an intriguing flipbook project by Up and Monsters, Inc. director Pete Docter. My list below is by no means complete. Publishers still haven’t released their winter ‘12 titles, and others books will certainly pop up throughout the course of the year. If you know of other animation-related titles coming out in 2012, please comment below.

FEBRUARY 2012

Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life by Tom Bancroft, foreword by Adam Hughes (Focal Press).

Book description: You’ve researched your character extensively, tailored her to your audience, sketched hundreds of versions, and now you lean back content as you gaze at your final character model sheet. But now what? Whether you want to use her in an animated film, television show, video game, web comic, or children’s book, you’re going to have to make her perform. How a character looks and is costumed starts to tell her story, but her body language reveals even more. Character Mentor shows you how to pose your character, create emotion through facial expressions, and stage your character to create drama. Author Tom Bancroft addresses each topic with clear, concise prose, and then shows you what he really means through commenting on and redrawing artwork from a variety of student “apprentices.” His assignments allow you to join in and bring your drawing to the next level with concrete techniques, as well as more theoretical analysis.Character Mentor is an apprenticeship in a book. Professional artists from a variety of media offer their experience through additional commentary. These include Marcus Hamilton (Dennis the Menace), Terry Dodson (X-Men), Bobby Rubio (Pixar), Sean “Cheeks” Galloway (Spiderman animated), and more.

Animation.CH: Vision and Versatility in Contemporary Swiss Animated Film by Christian Gasser (Benteli Verlags).

Book description: Swiss animated film is currently in one of its most productive, ambitious and successful historical periods. Never before have so many films been made and never before have these films enjoyed such international success. At the centre of animation.ch are conversations with 20 film makers who represent the variety and uniqueness of Swiss animated film – from short author films to children’s productions, from television series to feature film projects, not to mention art and commercial productions. animation.ch explores the development of Swiss animated film over the last 20 years, examines current trends and looks at what’s to come in the future. With Georges Schwizgebel, Jonas Raeber, Samuel and Frédéric Guillaume, Ted Sieger, Yves Netzhammer, Claudius Gentinetta, Claude Barras, Isabelle Favez, Jadwiga Kowalska, Rafael Sommerhalder, Adrian Flückiger, Marina Rosset, Basil Vogt, Dustin Rees, Zoltán Horváth,Izabela Rieben, Maja Gehrig, Anne Baillod, François Chalet and Claude Luyet.

MARCH 2012

The Art of John Carter: A Visual Journey by Josh Kushins (Disney Editions). Artwork from the first live-action feature by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E). Not necessarily animation-related but of likely interest to fans of Stanton’s Pixar films.

When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA by Adam Abraham (Wesleyan University Press). Read our preview of When Magoo Flew.

Animating the Unconscious: Desire, Sexuality and Animation by Jayne Pilling (Wallflower Press). British animation historian Jayne Pilling has also compiled a three-part DVD series focused on the same theme.

This Sweater Is for You!: Celebrating the Creative Process in Film and Art with the Animator and Illustrator of “The Hockey Sweater” by Sheldon Cohen (ECW Press).

Book description: One of the most beloved stories of all time—The Hockey Sweater—is celebrated in this heartfelt recollection. Reflecting on the original short story and mortifying real-life moment that started it all, the account relates how the resulting film is as much about childhood emotions and the desire to fit in as it is about hockey, the clash of cultures, and a harkening to bygone times. Canada’s tireless devotion to the film is illustrated, emphasizing how it is also loved by many more around the world. Delving into the artist’s notebooks, photographs, and memories, this record recreates the movie’s entire development, journeying back to the people and places that inspired its original imagery. The director’s additional films and illustrations are also explored, chronicling a 40-year career and providing rich insights into the creative process.

MAY 2012

“I Say, I Say . . . Son!”: A Tribute to Legendary Animators Bob, Chuck, and Tom McKimson by Robert McKimson Jr., foreword by John Kricfalusi (Santa Monica Press).

Book description: The first survey dedicated to the work of the McKimson brothers, this book offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the upper echelon of 20th-century animation and examines the creative process behind the making of numerous popular characters and classic programs. Featuring original artwork from the golden age of animation, this book includes a wealth of material from many professional archives—screen captures, original drawings, reproductions of animation cels, illustrations from comic books, lobby cards, and other ephemera from the author’s collection—while surveying the careers of three groundbreaking animators whose credits include Looney Tunes, the Pink Panther, and Mr. Magoo. Beginning in the 1920s and then tracing the brothers’ work together at Warner Brothers Cartoons in the following decades, this history details Robert McKimson’s creation of such beloved characters as Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, and Speedy Gonzales; Tom McKimson’s work at Warner Brothers, Dell Comics, and Golden Books; and Chuck McKimson’s long career working in comic books and then later at Pacific Title, creating animated film titles and commercials, including his award-winning work on Music Man, Cleopatra, and The Sound of Music.

Ray Harryhausen’s Fantasy Scrapbook: Models, Artwork and Memories from 65 Years of Filmmaking by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton, foreword by John Landis (Aurum Press).

Book description: Designed in the form of a scrapbook, this visual feast for Harryhausen fans reveals models from unrealized projects, such as dinosaurs from the unfinished film Evolution; prints of outtakes from various films; early concept drawings and storyboards; color transparencies of Ray at work; written artifacts such as letters, production budgets, and a diary that details Ray’s first meeting with his mentor Willis O’Brien; early film treatments and script extracts; publicity posters and brochures; and more. Some items show Ray’s earliest artistic endeavors such as watercolors painted when he was 15 years old and marionettes of creatures from King Kong that he made when he saw the film in 1933. The result is a treasure trove of rare artifacts and material which not only offer new insights into how Ray created particular effects, but bring the worlds of his films to life in a new way and paint a fascinating visual portrait of the man himself and his creative imagination.

Animation Under the Swastika: A History of Trickfilm in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 by Rolf Giesen and J. P. Storm (Mcfarland & Co.)

Book description: Among their many idiosyncrasies, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, remained serious cartoon aficionados throughout their lives. They adored animation and their influence on German animation after World War II continues to this day. This study explores Hitler and Goebbels’ efforts to establish a German cartoon industry to rival Walt Disney’s and their love-hate relationship with American producers, whose films they studied behind locked doors. Despite their ambitious dream, all that remains of their efforts are a few cartoon shorts–advertising and puppet films starring dogs, cats, birds, hedgehogs, insects, Teutonic dwarves, and other fairy-tale ensemble. While these pieces do not hold much propaganda value, they perfectly illustrate Hannah Arendt’s controversial description of those who perpetrated the Holocaust: the banality of evil.

JUNE 2012

The Art of Brave by Jenny Lerew (Chronicle Books)

Robots Feel Nothing When They Hold Hands written by Alec Sulkin, Artie Johann, and Michael Desilets, and illustrated by Joe Vaux and Dominic Bianchi (Chronicle Books). It’s described as an “R-rated picture book of jokes” by writers and artists who work on Family Guy. Expect 192 pages of this.

AUGUST 2012
The Toy Story Films: An Animated Journey by Charles Solomon (Disney Editions)

SEPTEMBER 2012
Animation Flipbook Box Set by Pete Docter (Disney Editions)

FALL 2012
Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Henson Journal by Karen Falk (Chronicle Books). Book description: Compiled directly from the Henson workshop archives, this elegant and inspirational gift book adapts the diary that Jim Henson faithfully kept throughout his career, collecting rare sketches, concepts, photographs, and ideas from the creator of the Muppets and one of the twentieth century’s most influential artistic talents. Throughout, archivist Karen Falk offers behind-the-scenes details and insights into Henson’s writings and drawings and offers insights into Henson’s life, his magical creations, and the artistic process.

Part of a Complete Breakfast: Cereal Advertising Characters of the Baby Boom Era by Tim Hollis (University Press of Florida).

The Fairest One of All: The Making of Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” by J. B. Kaufman (Walt Disney Family Foundation Press).

Full Steam Ahead: The Life and Art of Ward Kimball by Amid Amidi, foreword by Brad Bird (Chronicle Books). This is my own book, which I’ve been working on for the past five years. I announced the project a few months ago.

This is not a review of the Adventures of Tintin. I think we can all agree there have been enough of those already. My primary interest in checking out Tintin was to see the animation approach taken by Steven Spielberg and New Zealand animation studio Weta (as well as Giant Studios, which handled the motion capture recording). These two studios are at the cutting edge of exploring new forms of character animation, and Tintin has proven to be an important stepping stone in the development of our art form. To my eyes, it’s the first successful example of “photoreal cartooning.” By successful, I don’t mean perfect, but rather that the technology no longer disrupts the overall viewing experience. It takes a generous imagination to see where the technologies in Tintin are headed, but think back to the creepy baby in John Lasseter’s Tin Toy. It took less than twenty years for CG character animation to evolve from a deformed lopsided infant into the most common feature animation filmmaking technique.

To be honest, it’s hard for me to judge the animation in Tintin. Photorealistic cartooning—which some will argue is an oxymoron—makes even keyframed CG animation look traditional. Many will say it isn’t even animation. The confusion is understandable. Animation is evolving so rapidly before our eyes that we can barely keep pace with these changes. We desperately try to apply old labels and definitions and find them insufficient. Still, Tintin at its core is pure animation created frame by frame. True, it was augmented by other processes, but the end result was achieved distinctly through frame-by-frame techniques. And if the mark of a true piece of animation art is the director’s control over every element within the frame, then never has this been truer than in Tintin.

Motion capture is a flexible technique that can be stretched in multiple directions. James Cameron used it in Avatar to mimic the performance of live actors. Ironically, Cameron had to employ a team of animators to tweak and mold the motion capture data to achieve greater realism. The technology cannot yet accurately record the nuances of human behavior without the intervention of animators.

Spielberg, on the other hand, appears to have made animators a more integral part of the creative process. Instead of demanding that the animators make the motion capture data look more realistic, he allowed them a degree of freedom. In this LA Times interview, he explained, “I can underwrite or overwrite a performance and through the animators put [something into a performance] that even the actors didn’t bring to the bay.” In that quote, Spielberg acknowledges that the actor is not the be-all, end-all of the motion capture process (much to Andy Serkis’s dismay I’m sure) and that animators play a role in creating the performance, much as in traditional animation.

Spielberg’s attempt to marry motion capture and animation is a step forward, but not entirely successful. The photorealism of the design jars with the disturbingly wacky behavior of the characters. Watching a pliable, squash-and-stretch cartoon character like Daffy Duck wrapped up in a spinning plane propeller and spit out is funny; watching the photoreal Captain Haddock perform that same gag in Tintin looked awkward and uncomfortable. This discordance between design and performance will be ironed out when the technology is placed in the hands of experienced animation directors who more fully understand how the medium works.

There’s another component to Tintin that’s been largely overlooked and it’s this:

Producer Peter Jackson explained what Spielberg is doing in the photo:

For [Tintin] we wanted to create a virtual studio – we haven’t even got a name for it – where Steven would be able to pick up a virtual camera that looks a little like a PlayStation controller with a six-inch screen and use it to step inside the world of Tintin that we had created. All the locations had to be built in advance of us doing the motion-capture shoot, as it were; so for the best part of two or three years we were building all of the sets, all of the cars, all the airplanes, everything in the film was constructed but then the key thing was to break away from all of the technical restraints and make it as much a live-action experience as we could.

This is a transformative concept, much like 3-D was hyped as being, except this is the real deal. Whereas animation in the past was a labor-intensive process, and each scene was carefully laid out from a single angle that was drawn by the layout artist. Even as we moved to computer-generated imagery, artists were careful not to overreach the boundaries of their world. Brad Bird told me how he stayed on budget on The Incredibles by carefully selecting shots in the storyboard/animatic stage and not modeling the world beyond the confines of those preselected shots.

To open up the entire world to the animation filmmaker creates a tantalizing array of possibilities. It is a paradigm shift in animation production that pushes it closer to the world of the live-action camera, while still remaining firmly entrenched in the realm of cartoon fantasy. The technology also raises interesting questions. For example, if a director is selecting all his shots via a specialized hand-held controller, what could that potentially do to the role of the previz/layout artist? These roles won’t disappear anytime soon, but the job descriptions must undergo an evolution. The “virtual studio” approach will mean more planning upfront and more work for people who have to design and build the worlds, but less control over the finished film for the layout artists.

The limitations of the filmmaking-by-controller approach are evident in Tintin. Spielberg is trapped in a videogame of his own making and can’t stop exploring the world long enough to tell a story. Knowing when to exercise restraint will become even more crucial in this new mode of animation production. Whenever I see the incessant camera moves in animated films today, I’m reminded me of something that French animation director Michel Ocelot told me over dinner a couple years ago. Michel abhors camera pans and trucks. He feels that camera movements pull the viewer out of the story, and he prefers a static screen as much as possible. His austere minimalism may seem archaic, but the argument for Ocelot’s point of view would be the pirate ship battle and the crane-fight finale in Tintin. Despite their nauseating overuse of the camera, both of those scenes lumbered along, failing to elicit any tingle of excitement or adventure. The camera, even in this latest and fanciest iteration, does not compensate for skillful filmmaking.

Many people, including those with whom I saw Tintin, have commented that they have been exhausted after watching the film. Much of that we could presume is due to the repetitive action sequences, but I would also suggest that it was the overwhelming level of graphic detail. There was so much happening that the eye never stopped racing around the screen, in desperate search of a focal point.

Here’s a good example: halfway down this web page, there’s a short scene with Snowy running. Pay attention at the :27 second mark. There’s a guy running across the street for no apparent reason. He may be running because of the oncoming cars, but then why does he look in the opposite direction of where the cars are coming from? To me, it’s emblematic of the entire production: too many artists working on too many individual elements in each scene. There is an inordinate amount of randomness in Tintin and many scenes lacked cohesion or clarity. Audiences may not have been able to pinpoint the randomness but they certainly felt it.

Tintin was, in some ways, exactly what I expected it to be: a typical Spielberg film with hamfisted direction. But it was also surprising and fascinating from a technological point of view. As the animator’s toolset continues to evolve, directors will gain granular control over cartoons in a way that was never possible before. The challenge in the future, as in the past, will be harnessing the technology to work with the artwork instead of against it.