Monthly Archives: July 2012

DreamWorks Releases Its First App Called Ptch; Wants To Be ‘Technology Company’

By
on
19

Ptch is a new iPad/iPhone app that allows users to remix photos, videos, songs and text into 60-second music video-style shorts called Ptches. Sort of like an Instagram for videos (with “styles” instead of filters), Ptch aims to make video editing as intuitive and reflexive for the masses as taking a photograph with a smartphone. The app also allows users to remix ptches made by their friends so that each person can share their own version of an event. The software is available on Apple’s iTunes Store for free, though add-on songs and film “styles” will cost money in the future.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Ptch is headed by Ed Leonard, the Chief Technology Officer of DreamWorks Animation and the former director of R&D at Disney Animation. He convinced DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg to launch a new company called DWA Investments. The company, which is funded entirely by its parent DreamWorks Animation, has 15 employees, a third of whom are former DreamWorks staffers who took paycuts (in exchange for stock) to join Ptch.

Sites like Fast Company and BetaBeat have been debating what Ptch means for the future of DreamWorks. For example, does it signal the company’s transition from being a content producer into a technology company? Ptch helmer Ed Leonard hinted at that possibility while speaking with BetaBeat:

“There’s a lot of ambition at DreamWorks, they’re thinking about how to leverage ambition on the film side and how to reinvent themselves as more of a technology company than a movie company and really leverage all that value. If you get close to what Jeffrey is thinking about in terms of the DreamWorks brand … Jeffrey really believes in the intersection that’s happening between technology and entertainment.”

It’s hard to know what to make of all this just yet, but Leonard’s quote reveals that DreamWorks Animation is evolving in different and unexpected directions.

FIRST IMAGE: McCracken’s “Wander Over Yonder”

By
on
43

I was just cleaning out my bags from the Comic Con last week and found this postcard (both sides, below) for Disney’s forthcoming Craig McCracken series. I’ll bet this was posted on the internet somewhere, or Facebook, but I hadn’t seen it myself till now, so I thought you should see it too. Intriguing images… I can’t wait to see the show!

New Books of Note

By
on
6

Three new books popped into my mailbox this week. What were they? Funny you should ask…

I’m a big fan of Chronicle’s Art-Of books for Disney and Pixar’s recent animated features – but this one, based on Laika’s new stop-motion feature, is one of the best yet from the publisher. The Art and Making of ParaNorman is not only loaded with the usual gorgeous pre-production art and character designs – it’s got that in abundance – but it takes you through the entire process of making a modern stop motion feature. Jed Alger’s text goes beyond the usual artist interviews and tells us the whole story – the book is crammed with behind-the-scenes images; illustrating all the puppet parts, the sets and the people behind them. Bravo! This is a wonderful peek behind the curtain for anyone who loves hand-crafted animation – and if stop-mo is your thing, this book is a must-have.

This is an unusual surprise: a newspaper comic strip I never heard of, The Adventures of Buck O’Rue and his Hoss, Reddish written by animation legend Dick Huemer (Scrappy) and Disney animator and comic book artist Paul Murry (Mickey Mouse, Goofy). It lasted about two years and was unsuccessful, but now Huemer’s son Richard, and comic book editor Germund von Wowern have collected all the strips (daily and Sunday) in this beautiful volume, augmented with several articles, prefaces, epilogues and appendiices filled with rare Murry and Huemer art, newspaper clippings, photos, the stories behind the men, their careers and newspaper syndication. The strip itself is an amusing parody of cowboys and western lore – but it’s the “bonus materials” that bookend the strips that make this a must-get. The project as a whole an interesting footnote to the history of Huemer and Murry – and, by extension, to the history of Disney.

Iwao Takamoto’s 2009 autobiography (written with Michael Mallory) was an excellent account of the animator’s career. Now his step-daughter, Leslie E. Stern, has written another account, Living With A Legend, from her point of view and its a nice memoir of a life with Iwao behind the scenes. Her publisher send me an advance copy and I can attest that its a well done tribute. Apparently their will be several versions of the book available at various prices. For anyone, everyone, who grew up with Hanna Barbera, this is a treat.

2012 Animation Emmy Nominations

By
on
19

The 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations were announced today by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Congratulations to all our animation industry honorees. These include:

Outstanding Animated Program
American Dad! – Fox Television Animation
Bob’s Burgers – BentoBox Entertainment
Futurama (The Tip Of The Zoidberg) – The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Television
The Penguins Of Madagascar (The Return Of The Revenge Of Dr. Blowhole) – Nickelodeon and DreamWorks Animation
The Simpsons (Holidays Of Future Passed) – Gracie Films in association with 20th Century Fox Television

Outstanding Short-format Animated Program
Adventure Time (Too Young) – Cartoon Network Studios
Disney Phineas And Ferb (The Doonkleberry Imperative) – Disney Channel
MAD (Kitchen Nightmare Before Christmas / How I Met Your Mummy) – Warner Bros. Animation
Regular Show (Eggscellent) – Cartoon Network Studios
Robot Chicken (Fight Club Paradise) – Stoopid Monkey, Shadow Machine, Williams Street

Outstanding Voice-Over Performance

Disney Phineas And Ferb: Across The 2nd Dimension – Disney Channel
Dan Povenmire as Doctor Doofenshmirtz

Disney Prep & Landing: Naughty Vs. Nice – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Rob Riggle as Noel

Futurama • The Silence Of The Clamps – The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Television
Maurice LaMarche as Clamps, Donbot, Hyperchicken, Calculon, Hedonismbot, Morbo

The Looney Tunes Show • Double Date – Warner Bros. Animation
Kristen Wiig as Lola

The Simpsons • Moe Goes From Rags To Riches – Gracie Films in association with 20th Century Fox Television
Hank Azaria as Moe Szyslak, Duffman, Mexican Duffman, Carl, Comic Book Guy, Chief Wiggum

Complete list of nominees here.

“The Croods” Print By Chris Sanders

By
on
62

A few thousand copies of this Croods print drawn by Chris Sanders and painted by Arthur Fong were handed out at Comic-Con last week. The charm and vitality of Sanders’ sinuous line artwork will inevitably be lost in the transition to CGI so enjoy this little taste of what the film could have been. (Click on the image for a bigger version.)

(via The Croods blog)

Using Kinect Point Clouds To Animate Figures

By
on
4

Brazilian artist Jomário Murta used multiple Microsoft Kinects to generate a sequence of point clouds (a set of points in 3D space) as reference for creating animation. The process is akin to motion capture, but not the same:

This is something like animating over the videos. Just like we usually do as reference for timing and more complex movements. The difference is that I can animate three-dimensionally “inside” the video; the advantage instead of mocap is that the animation process is more free, where I can easily exaggerate the movements and play a lot with the poses without compromising my style of animation.

Murta admits that he is still in a research phase and hasn’t figured out any practical applications for the technique, but that’s to be expected of any exploration of a new technology. The results are promising thus far, and it’ll be interesting to see how he and others build on the process.

“What Is Dead May Never Die” by Kadavr Exquis

By
on
11

Okay, all you lovers of experimental animation – here’s one for you: What is Dead May Never Die by Kadavre Exquis (aka François Grumelin-Sohn) a french graphic designer and musician living in the Netherlands. The film celebrates various images of retro technology, influenced by the utilitarian design of NASA computers, TV logos, film credits and other lo-fi animation from the 1970s and 80s. None of this is stock footage, it’s all created by Exquis – who also released a small soundtrack CD composed with various jingles he created for the film.

Pixar Is Making “Finding Nemo 2″

By
on
239

Pixar is developing Finding Nemo 2, according to a report on Deadline Hollywood. Andrew Stanton is on board to direct. Stanton, who has experienced success with his animated films including the original Finding Nemo, had a less-than-stellar live-action debut with John Carter, which resulted in a $200 million write-down for the Disney Company earlier this year.

Joel Trussell On Directing Tom Hanks’ New Webseries “Electric City”

By
on

He’s lived in Knoxville, Seattle and Los Angeles, but animator Joel Trussell recently moved to a town you won’t find on any map — Electric City. Electric City is the name of the new animated series spearheaded by actor/director Tom Hanks, and it’s one of the first major animation productions specifically designed for online viewing. Premiering today on Yahoo’s video site Yahoo! Screen with ten five- to seven-minute episodes, Electric City is a co-production by Hanks’ Playtone shingle and Los Angeles animation studio Six Point Harness, who tapped Trussell to direct this unique animated series.

Trussell’s career has seen a steady uphill trajectory since graduating from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 1998, doing animated music videos to commercials and even segments of television shows like Yo Gabba Gabba. Cartoon Brew has followed Trussell’s career for years, beginning with 2005′s War Photographer music video . After doing a prodigious amount of work out of his Knoxville home far removed from the traditional animation hubs, Trussell moved to Los Angeles in 2009 to pursue opportunities for larger projects. In no short time, Trussell connected with Six Point Harness to do commercials which segued quickly into the opportunity to helm Electric City.

Chris Arrant: Electric City is the biggest project you’ve ever done — 20 episodes, 5 to 7 minutes each. How’d you get involved and did you have any concerns about such a large scale project?

Joel Trussell: For several years I directed animated many music videos (Jason Forrest’s War Photographer, M. Ward’s The First Time I Ran Away) commercials (Esurance, Nicorette) and TV/film segments (Yo Gabba Gabba, The Animation Show) while living in Knoxville, Tennessee.  In the fall of 2009 I moved out to Los Angeles and started directing some projects over at Six Point Harness Studios.  While I was there Playtone approached Six Point with a request for some spec images and budget for the Electric City series.  The owner Brendan Burch felt my experience and style would be a good match for the project and asked me to submit my visual take.  I created a handful of images based off a short script Playtone sent, and Six Point pitched me as the director for the project. After a short courtship and a few meetings with Playtone and Tom, they were into it and the deal was done.

The size of the project was collectively bigger than anything I’ve ever worked on, but it was segmented into small chunks for the Internet which I’m used to. I’ve worked for some online series in the past and with my experience in directing many short form spots, I felt confident in taking it on. The fact that this project was going to be creatively challenging actually created more ambition for me rather than fears.

Chris: What made Electric City appealing to you as an animator and director?

Joel: The project was appealing on many levels. Of course the lure of working with Tom Hanks was pretty great, but knowing that he was going to not only star in it but write it as well was totally intriguing. I’m also a big fan of working on unconventional projects no matter what the medium. I’ve worked with puppets, live action, hybrid animation, etc. and what I love most is exploring and creating new styles, techniques and ways of telling stories.  After reading the script and seeing earlier incarnations of the project… this was clearly unconventional. It’s definitely not the kind of project that springs to mind when you hear Tom Hanks is creating it…which is what makes it so rad.

Another huge appeal was the great chance to direct on a long-form project (which was the whole reason I moved to California rather than staying in Tennessee) so I was very eager to make it all happen.


Early Head Sketches of main character, Cleveland Carr

Chris: Did you regularly interact with Producer Tom Hanks? If so, how much guidance did he give you?

Joel: This was a total passion project for Tom and he was way more active than I imagined he would be. We had meetings over at the Playtone offices with him; he came down to the Six Point studios and would hang out to review animatics and artwork; and sometimes we’d just get some quick thoughts from him via email saying something like, “We need more sheep in this thing!”

We initially met over at Paramount on the set of Larry Crowne where he was in the midst of directing actors, reviewing takes, acting, and talking to us all at once and making it look graceful and effortless like a boss.  It was all very surreal.

Since he had been working on this project for several years, he had a ton of reference material for us and was able to give us specific guidance as we translated his vision into something the budget and timeline could accommodate.  Playtone producers Bo Stevenson and Joshua Feldman were also very hands on during the process making sure that we understood the details of this world.  Playtone was great to work with and very generous by allowing us to collaborate, explore and experiment with everything from the visual style to story points.

Chris: Electric City’s being promoted not just for its creative side but also its technological prowess, being one of the first major animation projects done specifically for online distribution. Did the venue of the project play any role in how you molded the episodes?

Joel: The venue was definitely taken in to consideration. We knew two main stages for this was going to be on tablets and smart phones, so our images had to hold up for larger screens yet easy to read for smaller screens. The main factors in molding the episodes were how to push the quality up as high as we could to the limit of budget and timeline parameters. Although the budget wasn’t tiny, we weren’t dealing with TV or movie sized financing so we wanted to put every dollar spent on the screen.

Chris: Was the art direction and animation scaled in any special way for its exhibition on the ‘net (as opposed to TV or theatrical)?

Joel: Only a little. We tried to keep our production value as high as possible, but we had the reality of our budget. We knew that animation would have to be limited, so we tried to board strategically focusing more on strong compositions and design rather than flowing “Illusion of Life” animation. My experience with short form work taught me how to use get the most out of economical storyboarding, quick decision making and working at a fast pace which paid off with this project and kept Playtone, Reliance and Six Point happy.


Test image for color palette and atmosphere composition

Chris: You’ve bounced around from working out of your home in Tennessee to Seattle and for the last three years you’ve been in the animation hotbed of Los Angeles. How has it been being able to live and work surrounded by so many fellow animators, and having more animation-related activities to do than in Tennessee?

Joel: Even though I was making a pretty good living at doing music videos and commercials in Tennessee, I still felt the draw of doing longer form content.  In order to do that I felt I needed to make the jump to L.A. where I could be around a crew of artists in one place rather than coordinating a handful of artists remotely. Once I came out here (despite bracing myself for the worst) I’ve totally enjoyed it and the opportunities have branched out for developing, directing and designing for places like Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.  To be honest I don’t actually find myself doing a lot of animation related stuff outside of work, but I like being around creative people of any type.  I feel as if I only do animation related things I’ll only revisit already treaded ground. I find it more fun to find new ingredients, mix them all up, and throw them in the oven to see what the new flavor is like.  That’s one reason L.A.’s been great.  Being around so much creativity has definitely inspired my own projects.

Chris: Are there any artists you’d like to point to for their special contributions to this project?

Joel: Absolutely! First off, I have to say my small, scrappy crew at Six Point Harness in Hollywood worked with a ton of heart to make this happen. Rafael Hurtado was a master establishing the look of our show’s environments and designing almost every background. Carl Beu was an insane talent leading the way with background painting. Tony Christopherson brought a ton to the plate with his eye for coloring and lighting once we were in post. Andy Suriano and I contributed to the initial character design along with Saharat Tantivaranyoo (IMHO Hollywood’s best character design stud) who ended up shouldering and overseeing most of the character design with Angelo Vilar. Alberto Antinori was a powerhouse in the department of props and vehicles. I was also very lucky to work with the mighty Dave Wasson as the animation director and board supervisor.  Marius Alecse was invaluable as our fearless animation supervisor.  Ed Skudder made all our specialized fx animation as well as taking on difficult character animation scenes. Animator Joel Moser took command of all 3-D animation as well as a large portion of 2-D character animation. Our producer Samantha Scharff was instrumental in keeping things running smoothly and helped solve the sometimes puzzling logistics of the project.  We even had legendary animation artist Jim Smith rocking layouts with us.  It was truly a great experience that I’m glad to have been involved with.  Hope Mr. Hanks lets us do it again!