Do you guys remember the crazy-deadline animation project I worked on earlier this year?  (Like, at the beginning of the year, to be precise?)  Well, the client company posted it to YouTube, so I can finally show it off.


It wound up being about two months from concept to completion, two animators (Mr S and me), three cleanup leads with a bunch of cleanup assists on the easy shots, everyone else in the office (i.e., all three of 'em) compositing...  Ah, good times.

Almost forgot to add: the company who produced the animation did not produce the live-action footage as well.

Okay, finally saw it.


In short, this was a movie that didn't know what it wanted to be.  Was it a martial arts comedy, a sort of Beverly Hills Ninja with animals?  Was it a stirring action adventure? The hero's journey of a callow youth?  Even the visual style was confused.  It tried to be everything, without ever clearly being one thing, and came out a muddled mess.

Those martial arts sequences, though.  omg.

( Don't clicky if you're as spoiler-phobic as I am )

I'm still digesting so I'll probably have more specific thoughts later. (Of course, whether or not I can be bothered to type them out is another story altogether...)

I sort-of got to animate today.  (Yay?)  We're trying out a program called Magpie for the lip-synch on the current production (it's a 3D animated children's show; direct-to-DVD, I think), and the Animation Lead asked me, if I didn't have anything else to do (I've mostly finished all the drawings we need for the production, at least for the time being) to lend a hand with that.  So ... it was moving "A" "E" "OH" and "OO" sliders up and down, but ... I guess it counts as animation?

(P.S. This is my first time doing lip-synch animation; none of the other productions I've ever worked on have needed it.  Not even in school.)

I met today with the director (of the new project I am working on) to go over the storyboards I did this week.

Just got the following e-mail from him:

"Hey Kat - I wanted to tell you again how impressed I was with your boards today. Awesome job! Have a great weekend!"

Woo-hoo!  *does the happy dance*

Hey guys,

I just read that Ollie Johnston, the last of the Nine Old Men, has died.

I can't really collect my thoughts just now.  God bless him and keep him, and let light perpetual shine upon him.

UPDATE: Here's the Cartoon Brew article.  Includes some great tributes, an interview with Ollie himself from 2005, and a video of Glen Keane talking about the genius of Ollie's animation.  Worth a look. 

Hat tip: johncwright

...this morning at work.  Ratatouille, as you probably heard, took home the award for Best Animated Picture,* which occassioned a bit of inter-office debate.  I recreate some of the commentary here:

Luis (animator): Yeah, it was good, but I just don't think it was their best.
Jeff (animator): Really?  I thought it was awesome.
Kat (i.e., me): Seriously.  It's a work of certifiable genius.  Definitely their best.
Luis: Naw, Monsters Inc. is their best.  Still, I'm glad it won.
Shell (modeller, texture artist): I thought Surf's Up should've won, honestly.
Kat (in frank and open disbelief): Really?
Shell: Don't get me wrong, Ratatouille was good, but it didn't really break any new ground.  It felt sort of ... safe, compared to their other pictures?
Kat (sputtering): But ... but it's about art, and the artist's relationship to the art--it has a wonderful story, and it says true and useful and universal things!  It has themes!
Shell (a bit tetchy this morning, honestly): Yeah, I understand what the story's about.  But Surf's Up broke new ground, and was more ... helpful to the genre, I think.**
Kat (also a bit tetchy this morning, honestly): Hmph.  Well, I think you're wrong.
Shell: And I think you're wrong.
Kat (trying very hard to be less tetchy): Well, at least we agree about that!

So what do you think, readers?  I fully grant that Surf's Up was technically astonishing, did some amazing things with water effects and making 3D animation seem natural (although I thought the world realized in Ratatouille was more beautiful and more appealing; I tear up every time, at the shot where Remy is looking out over the lights of Paris), and it was an agreeable little movie with an amusing story (if you haven't seen it, in fact, I recommend it), but it didn't transcend, you know?  It climbed no mountains, ascended to no new and dazzling heights.  The story of Ratatouille, and, more, the way in which the story was told, was new, it was inspiring, it was beautiful--it was more than an agreeable little movie with an amusing story; it was--and it is--art.

So, which deserves the award?***  The film that is cute and enjoyable enough, though (arguably) technically superior, or the film that is beautifully crafted and realized, one that you can watch over and over again without getting tired of?****


*yay!^

**Gah! Animation is not a genre!  It's a medium!  Fantasy, sci-fi, true crime: those are genres!

***Clearly the Oscar-winner-choosing-committee knows what they think already.  :D

****Clearly, I know what I think already too.  XD

Also, isn't the craft of telling a story also a technical (though not a technological) issue?  Just wondering.

^and yet, it should've taken home Best Picture, period.  Bah.

So The Boss brought in my old 2D animation teacher/mentor-guy to help out on The Project of Doom.  Mr S, as I shall call him (did anyone else play Final Fantasy Legend II for the Gameboy?  Your teacher, who accompanies you on the first part of your journey, is named Mr S), is a very calm, down-to-earth, laconic sort of guy who makes 2D animation look absolutely effortless, and on whom, while in school, I had the hugest crush in the world.

Today I remembered why.  *facepalm*

He took the pitiful eight drawings of animation I'd painstakingly achieved yesterday, after much arm-waving and angst, and in about an hour whipped out some lovely quick smooth fluid gesture-y rough animation that had me gasping and going, "mew?"  "I hope you're not bored, sitting there watching me," he said.  O, no indeed.  Please.  I will sit here and bask in your awesomeness.

I have a mentor thing, I think.  Anybody else have that, that "You are a total badass in my own field, I will now fall in love with you" problem?  Issue?  Quirk?  What would you even call it?  I'm not sure myself, but I'm sure I would've fallen in love with Patrick O'Brian if I'd ever met him in person ("You write better nautical fiction than anybody: I love you!"), and the man was like ninety!

Such maunderings aside, watching Mr S animate was really eye-opening.  My rough animations are fairly loose, but nothing like as messy as the spilled-spaghetti-style rough sketches he produced.  "Don't worry about drawing on your first pass," he said.  "Just worry about the arcs.  Make it a kind of gesture over time."  Awesome.

And who gets to clean up those spilled-spaghetti sketches?

Hee.

I am learning a lot from this project!

Anyone out there familiar with Toon Boom?  We're looking to use it on the current project, and I've spent the afternoon poking around in the trial version, but the tutorials and help aren't exactly helpful, and, for example, the page comparing Toon Boom Studio and Toon Boom Digital Pro is more propaganda than anything else.

Have any of you guys used the program?  Got any hints, tips, reviews, preferences?

It's all over the internet by now, but I thought I'd share too: Disney has released its first official image from The Princess and the Frog in their annual report.



Well, I don't know about you all, but I'm excited!  Of course a lot's riding on this film, and I'm sure the stress levels at Disney are already high as they ramp up for the 2009 release--but, that this movie is happening at all is I think a sign that the 2D vs 3D pendulum is starting to swing back the other way (maybe? she said hopefully) and the industry might yet achieve some kind of balance.

(You can see a larger version of the picture on David Gilson's blog here.)