An article in National Geographic discusses the results of an “uncanny valley” test on monkeys. Researchers showed monkeys three versions of a monkey on a monitor—one video of a real monkey; one stylized CG model; and one realistic “uncanny valley” animated face. Guess what happened? The research suggests that “given the choice, monkeys prefer to look anywhere other than at a realistic fake monkey.”

The monkeys looked more often, and longer, at the real deal and the unrealistic fake, study co-author Asif Ghazanfar said. “This is anecdotal, but they seemed to even avert their gaze from the realistic fake face, like they didn’t want to look at it,” said Ghazanfar, a Princeton psychology professor.

The article goes on to say:

The discovery may be important, for a couple of reasons. First, Ghazanfar said, it provides evidence supporting the theory that the uncanny valley is not a result of cultural preferences—it’s hardwired into our heads.

(Thanks, Arthur Metcalf)

Here’s something the great Art Babbitt uttered in 1941.

“I look forward to the day when real artists who are more than craftsmen, who have developed their art, will come into this business, will pay it the attention it deserves as a potentially serious art medium…Disney and other studio heads have actually held the industry back by years by their ‘out-of-the-world’ fantasies, by their refusal to deal with real life and by their enchantment with ‘calendar art.’ I want to see those days go by the board. I want to see real artists assume leadership in this game.”

One could say the exact same thing about today’s mainstream animation, and sadly, it would all still apply.

(quote from Michael Barrier’s website)

Recently I revisited The Visual Craft of William Golden, a book published in the early-Sixties about the legendary CBS creative director. There is an essay in the book by CBS exec John Cowden that sheds light on Golden’s artistic integrity, and helps to explain why the advertising work created under his guidance remains to this day the strongest body of advertising ever created for a TV network.

Golden’s world revolved around graphic design, illustration and advertising, but I find his experiences to be relevant to creative people working in any commercial field, and especially animation. For example, Cowden recounted how Golden was offered a promotion from creative director to an upper management position. Golden flatly turned down the offer, Cowden wrote:

Many years ago, when he was offered the title of Vice President in charge of Advertising and Sales Promotion, he said no thanks. His reasons were significant—and characteristic. He said the stripes would be bars…that they would force him to become a “company man”…to take the so-called “broad view” at the expense of principle.

Bill preferred to keep his independence and to preserve his inalienable right to shout—when the occasion demanded—that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes. In any case, he said he didn’t want to go to meetings, or be snowed under by administrative duties. I mention this because it reveals how Bill was willing to sacrifice anything—including his own advancement—if he felt it stood in the way of better design and advertising.

The story, incidentally, has an ironic but delightful ending. In scorning the conventional status symbols, Bill won far more. By turning down a vice presidency, he eventually gained a respect and status that outranked any vice president in the company.

Contrast Golden’s unwavering integrity to all of the animation artists in recent years who have moved into high-profile executive and management positions. In every case—with the notable exception of John Lasseter—these artists have unwittingly weakened their creative influence and become part of the problem by entrenching themselves within broken production systems.

Golden, who refused to become a part of upper management, also had his own ways of dealing with clueless business people. Again, from Cowden’s essay:

This integrity and pride in craft were also apparent in his willingness to lay his job on the line if anyone tried to invade his special area of responsibility. I remember a layout for a rate card he once submitted to his superior—the President of the Division. It came back by messenger with a note saying “I don’t like it very much. Let’s discuss.” Bill’s answer was simply to scotchtape a drawing pencil to the corner of a large layout pad and send it back with this message scribbled across the top sheet: “Let’s not. Why don’t you make a better one.” There was no reply. The rate card was produced as originally designed.

Here’s another example of how he dealt with the endless stream of unqualified individuals who tried to encroach on his domain:

Bill flatly refused to submit art for approval to anyone. On another occasion, he commissioned the artist Rene Bouché to do a drawing of a certain television star for a newspaper ad. When the star saw the sketch in the paper he exploded. He demanded that only authorized photographs be used in all future ads. I was one of many who urged Bill not to make an issue of the matter but to go along with the request. Instead, Bill immediately commissioned Bouché to do another drawing of the same performer and again refused to show it to the star. Eventually the new sketch appeared in another ad and became the famous trademark—on the air and off—of America’s all-time favorite comedian: Jack Benny.

Bill Golden demanded the best, and didn’t accept excuses from artists:

Nothing upset [Golden] more than someone who alibied his samples on the ground that his particular client would not let him do good work. Bill maintained—and proved it at CBS—that there are no good or bad clients, there are only good or bad advertising men.

Unlike so many blockheads in positions of power within the contemporary animation industry, Golden could identify skill and talent with his trained eye. This is evidenced by the group of people who worked for him, which is a who’s who of mid-century illustration and design giants: David Stone Martin, Feliks Topolski, Leo Lionni, Joe Kaufman, George Lois, Ludwig Bemelmans, Ben Shahn, Miguel Covarrubias, and Jan Balet, to name but a few. Cowden’s memories of Golden are a reminder that great commercial work, whether it’s a piece of print design or an animated film, doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because of this:

[Golden] accepted the fact that part of the responsibility of being an advertising man and a designer was to have the courage of one’s convictions…a bulldog tenacity…a willingness to do daily battle for the things one believed in…and the recognition that constant vigilance is the price of freedom.

I was going to write a post about this, but my friend Pete Hammond at the L.A. Times beat me to it.

This has been a pretty good year for animated features and by my count we have fifteen films that are technically qualified for an Academy Award nomination. In order to qualify for five nominees (as opposed the usual 3) the producers of all fifteen of these films must enter their features for nomination. Then a 16th (or better yet, a 17th and 18th) film must qualify - the rules state that five animated features can be nominated if 16 films qualify.

Here are the fifteen that already played (or will play) theatrically this year for at least one week in Los Angeles, in order of release:

1. CORALINE - Focus Features.
2. MONSTERS VS. ALIENS - Dreamworks
3. BATTLE FOR TERRA - Lionsgate.
4. UP - Pixar.
5. ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS - 20th Century Fox.
6. PONYO - Walt Disney Pictures.
7. 9 - Focus Features.
8. CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS - Columbia.
9. EVANGELION: 1.0 - YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE - Funimation.
10. MARY AND MAX - Sundance Selects/IFC.
11. ASTRO BOY - Summit Entertainment.
12. A CHRISTMAS CAROL - Disney.
13. THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX - 20th Century Fox.
14. PLANET 51 - Tri-Star.
15. THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG - Disney.

What, if any, other features are likely to open before now and the end of December? Perhaps The Secret of Kells, which had only one festival showing in LA. but no U.S. distributor that I know of. Perhaps the stop-mo A Town Called Panic, which recently played in NYC, will be given a run in LA? Maybe Disney, who are playing the direct-to-video feature Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure for one week at El Capitan in Hollywood, CA, next week, will submit it for Academy consideration?

With ten (most likely all live action) films being nominated in the Best Feature category, it only seems fair that the animated feature race is upped to five contenders. Personally, I think there are more than enough good films this year worthy of a shot at the prize.

Carlos Ramos, the creator of Nickelodeon’s The X’s, ponders on his blog, Why can’t we have more hand-drawn animated features like Pete Candeland’s trailer for the videogame The Beatles Rock Band:

It’s such simple animation but with so many great tricks your eye can’t see the strings. Things like blurred focus, CG instruments and props, fast camera moves, quick cutting and gorgeous held drawings make this some of the best animation I’ve ever seen. The shame is that there isn’t a feature in our near future in this style. I swear it could save 2D but I’m sure that money is currently being spent on the next CG feature based on a children’s book with shrill celebrity voices.

I’m in complete agreement with Carlos. The trailer, which we wrote up earlier, is one of the most daring and dynamic pieces of commercial animation I’ve seen all year long. What prevents Hollywood from producing modestly budgeted animated features that have a clear directorial vision like this piece?

Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules for writing short stories. With a few modifications, they also serve as a nice set of rules for makers of animated shorts. In particular, a lot of people would benefit from following his first one:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

(via Kottke)

I’d like to applaud Channel Frederator for finally seeing the light after nearly four years of operation, and announcing that they’re going to begin doing what Cartoon Brew TV has been doing since day one: paying filmmakers for their content.

They even made a video to commemorate this momentous occasion:

Let’s get one thing straight: Paying artists is always a positive thing. But the manner in which the guys at Channel Frederator are doing it continues to reflect their lack of regard and respect for the filmmaking community upon which they’ve built their brand. Seriously, in what universe is $50 considered an acceptable fee for anything nowadays? Have they been misinformed that filmmakers can time travel back to 1964 to make all their purchases?

Here’s a reality check—the last time I went out to lunch with Channel Frederator founder Fred Seibert, our lunch bill ended up being over fifty smackers. In other words, this paltry amount isn’t even enough to fill up Fred’s tummy for one afternoon, yet somehow it’s supposed to represent a filmmaker’s reward for months of blood, sweat and tears. They’ve also announced that every month they’ll pay the filmmaker of the most viewed film a whopping $200. Guess what? That’s still less than what we pay every single filmmaker on Cartoon Brew TV.

Cartoon Brew TV doesn’t claim to be the standard bearer for online film distribution. Our company is two guys, Jerry and myself, and we’ve never received tens of millions of dollars in funding like Channel Frederator’s parent company, Next New Networks. But at the end of the day, I sleep well knowing that I do my best within our limited means to give something back to the community. I don’t make self-congratulatory videos and blog posts when I decide to do the right thing that I should have been doing all along. I put my money where my mouth is instead of making grandiose outward shows of being artist-friendly and supportive of creators. And most importantly, I don’t insult filmmakers by paying them fifty bucks. 

I truly believe that there needs to exist an alternative to the hucksters who have been exploiting the animation talent pool for years. This is what drives me to continue building Cartoon Brew TV into the premier destination for animated shorts online. We all know that the possibilities for filmmakers to earn money on the Internet are greater than ever. And while I don’t have a lot of money, I have more than $50, and I’m more than happy to dole it out when I put your film on the site. Who knows, maybe this idea of paying animators a respectable fee for showing their work online will someday become an industry-wide practice. It’s only fair, right?

And so it goes: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was the number #1 film in the country last week, grossing $30.1 million dollars in its first three days of release. However, Ben Fritz of the LA Times choose to report the story this way:

Sony’s animated film opens at No. 1, but its $30.1 million is so-so. Although it’s relatively strong for the historically slow movie-going month of September, the opening of “Cloudy” is decent but not spectacular compared with its $100-million budget.

Animated features are earning big bucks, but what does it take for animation to earn some respect? Cloudy had a $30 million dollar opening, coming in at #1 - with #2 (Soderbergh’s The Informant) grossing almost $20 million dollars less, $10.5 million. Hollywood would declare any live action flick earning $30 million over three days in September, beating the competition two-to-one like Cloudy did, a major blockbuster. Instead, the film’s opening gross was “decent, but not spectacular.”

Instead of comparing Cloudy to other movies in the marketplace, or maybe to previous live action comedies, the LA Times rated its success against Dreamworks, Pixar and Blue Sky’s CG films - and judged it poorly against them. To quote again from Mr. Fritz:

It also keeps Sony behind several of its more experienced animation competitors — DreamWorks, Disney’s Pixar and Fox’s Blue Sky — all of whose movies usually have bigger openings.

For good measure, Fritz decides to remind us of how poorly Sony’s previous film did - and despite Cloudy’s number one status in South America, has doubts about its chances in Europe:

The studio’s second animated movie, 2007’s “Surf’s Up,” was a box-office flop that opened to just $17.6 million. It remains to be seen how Sony’s new animated film will perform overseas, although it did open at No. 1 this weekend in four countries: Britain, Mexico, Chile and Ecuador.

It never ceases to amaze me. You can have the biggest hit in Hollywood, and the industry trade reporters will still treat your film as a second-class citizen - if its animated.

Now, for a second week in a row, Cloudy came in again at #1 - with a 19% drop-off in attendance from the previous week. Word of mouth is clearly kicking in; and 19% is a record low for a second week of any Hollywood film. Still, several industry pundits are now tying Cloudy’s surprise success to the fact that it was released in 3-D.

Has it ever occurred to these geniuses that maybe, perhaps, possibly… that this non-Pixar-Dreamworks-Blue Sky animated film could actually be “good”. That audiences might conceivably want a funny story, with crazy characters, spectacular visuals and great animation?

Until they figure it out, animation will remain Hollywood’s biggest mystery. And like Rodney (or Rover) Dangerfield, animated features will still be waiting for respect.