Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Freekin Animation process
Part One: Story
Can you draw the pirate? That’s swell. You’ll never sell a Pirate cartoon to Disney. Can you draw the little jackass? Once again, you’ll never sell it to Disney.
Why not? Well, as far as Pirates go you can’t touch any of the cliché’s that they have built into the theme park ride, even though most of the stuff in there is directly from treasure island. There’s a weird little thing that Disney won’t allow any mention of Disney properties in a cartoon made by Disney. You can’t sing, “Chimm chimminy”, say “Zipity-do-da”, hell you can’t even show a disembodied, white, three-fingered glove. They’ll shut you down. You can’t use anything that the lawyers recognize. Why? Beats me! I have a theory but this is a nice blog. But I’ll give you a clue; It’s probably directly related to that little jackass cartoon that the lawyer sees every morning when he’s shaving.
Here’s the long version:
Back in the old days animators used to draw stuff and sell it to movie houses. As I understand it, when you went to the movies, you used to get to watch a cartoon, a newsreel, a short subject and a feature. And on Saturday you got two features, another cartoon, another short subject, coochie-coochie dancers and a basket of fried chicken. All for a nickel! (Now for $11 you get fifteen commercials and a pirate movie.) (small rant!)
The animation studio was usually a hand full of wise-guys in a big room. Next door were the ink and paint “girls”. When the animators weren’t visiting the ink and paint room they were drawing pictures of mice dancing around and doing crazy, random crap. Lighting fire crackers, pulling on cat’s tails, drawing little pictures of jackasses…
At one point someone decided to make all of these segments tell one story. I don’t know whose idea it was originally, but Walt Disney took credit for it.
The idea was simple; draw a bunch of rough drawings and tell the story as you point to the pictures. That way when a sequence wasn’t working you just tossed out a couple drawings, not an entire animated segment, and moved on. This process worked well at Disney for years. The studio used this process, called, “story Pitch” from, “Flowers and Trees” (1932) to present day. (At least I assume they still use it. I’m not allowed in the feature building, because I work in television.) (another rant)
Flowers and trees was a pretty big hit for the studio because it told a story. The story, oddly enough, had a lot to do with flowers and trees, and most of the people weren’t too disappointed by the fact that there were very few jackass-drawing mice.
The years rolled by and story was given over to script writers. The people who drew the funny cartoons were told by the people with typewriters how to draw funny cartoons. Cartoons soon became a series of talking heads telling each other what they were doing: “I see you over there! I’m going to pick up this huge mallet and chase you over three hills while we iris out!”
When I was at Games animation (Nickelodeon’s predecessor) we used the old story pitch method to make our show, “Rocko’s modern life.” The writers would come up with a premise, and the story people would rough out and pitch the storyboards. I’m sure originally, it was hard to convince the money people to let us do this because no one knew how much it would cost. But, some people with insight allowed us to do it, adjusted the budgets and we had a pretty successful run.
A lot of the people on this show took the “story pitch” idea with them when they moved on because it was a really good way to make a funny cartoon. Sponge Bob, Camp Lazlo are the two good examples.
So now, the show that I’m on decides to take this process back to the place that it was invented and guess what?
Right, Disney don’t like change. But we’re doing it. We’re meeting resistance on practically every levels from the lawyers all the way down to our own production staff. Why? Because that’s not the way they did it on the last show they worked on.
It’s been a little over a year now and were winding down on the first season. The show (nameless for now because Disney monitors the internet) has had two sneak previews that tested very well. Tested you say? Yes test. (I can’t hold back! Sidetrack rant coming up!)
Testing a twisted tail all it’s own. That’s when executives, who don’t want to stick their necks out and say they like something, show a cartoon to a bunch of kids. The kids say they like it (they usually do because kids love the attention) and the executive makes their report. Now they’re bullet proof. So now, when the show tanks they can point to the report and convince their bosses they aren’t to blame. And they work on for the next 25 years without anyone really knowing how amazingly unqualified they are.
So while we wait for the show to test. And be aired. And be judged. And for all the executives to cover themselves with test results before they green light a second season, the artists face a six-month lay off.
My crew looks to Warner’s animation and find that it has shut down completely. Cartoon Network has nothing in development because they’re not sure what kids like, Nickelodeon is wasting their time rewriting a show that has already been animated, and Disney.... This was supposed to be about story, not finding jobs for my crew. Sorry, rant over.
I guess I’m just saying that the thing people who are making good money don’t want is for things to change. And comedy is nothing but change. I assume it’s always been that way, and really without the suits there would be nothing to make fun of. We’d all still be drawing flowers and trees. I’m resentful of the lack of respect for artists. A person doesn’t normally go into the art business to make money. They go into it because someone picked on them at one point, and it’s the only thing they could think of to do to retaliate. They do it because there’s a chemical deficiency in their genetic make up. I’m sure there’s another reason but I can’t think of it.
The poor bastards. Whatever.
Next time on the Freekin animation process; Part 2: Acting and foley! The sounds that make the magic go to.. uha the sounds that you will… Oh, to hell with it.
Can you draw the pirate? That’s swell. You’ll never sell a Pirate cartoon to Disney. Can you draw the little jackass? Once again, you’ll never sell it to Disney.
Why not? Well, as far as Pirates go you can’t touch any of the cliché’s that they have built into the theme park ride, even though most of the stuff in there is directly from treasure island. There’s a weird little thing that Disney won’t allow any mention of Disney properties in a cartoon made by Disney. You can’t sing, “Chimm chimminy”, say “Zipity-do-da”, hell you can’t even show a disembodied, white, three-fingered glove. They’ll shut you down. You can’t use anything that the lawyers recognize. Why? Beats me! I have a theory but this is a nice blog. But I’ll give you a clue; It’s probably directly related to that little jackass cartoon that the lawyer sees every morning when he’s shaving.
Here’s the long version:
Back in the old days animators used to draw stuff and sell it to movie houses. As I understand it, when you went to the movies, you used to get to watch a cartoon, a newsreel, a short subject and a feature. And on Saturday you got two features, another cartoon, another short subject, coochie-coochie dancers and a basket of fried chicken. All for a nickel! (Now for $11 you get fifteen commercials and a pirate movie.) (small rant!)
The animation studio was usually a hand full of wise-guys in a big room. Next door were the ink and paint “girls”. When the animators weren’t visiting the ink and paint room they were drawing pictures of mice dancing around and doing crazy, random crap. Lighting fire crackers, pulling on cat’s tails, drawing little pictures of jackasses…
At one point someone decided to make all of these segments tell one story. I don’t know whose idea it was originally, but Walt Disney took credit for it.
The idea was simple; draw a bunch of rough drawings and tell the story as you point to the pictures. That way when a sequence wasn’t working you just tossed out a couple drawings, not an entire animated segment, and moved on. This process worked well at Disney for years. The studio used this process, called, “story Pitch” from, “Flowers and Trees” (1932) to present day. (At least I assume they still use it. I’m not allowed in the feature building, because I work in television.) (another rant)
Flowers and trees was a pretty big hit for the studio because it told a story. The story, oddly enough, had a lot to do with flowers and trees, and most of the people weren’t too disappointed by the fact that there were very few jackass-drawing mice.
The years rolled by and story was given over to script writers. The people who drew the funny cartoons were told by the people with typewriters how to draw funny cartoons. Cartoons soon became a series of talking heads telling each other what they were doing: “I see you over there! I’m going to pick up this huge mallet and chase you over three hills while we iris out!”
When I was at Games animation (Nickelodeon’s predecessor) we used the old story pitch method to make our show, “Rocko’s modern life.” The writers would come up with a premise, and the story people would rough out and pitch the storyboards. I’m sure originally, it was hard to convince the money people to let us do this because no one knew how much it would cost. But, some people with insight allowed us to do it, adjusted the budgets and we had a pretty successful run.
A lot of the people on this show took the “story pitch” idea with them when they moved on because it was a really good way to make a funny cartoon. Sponge Bob, Camp Lazlo are the two good examples.
So now, the show that I’m on decides to take this process back to the place that it was invented and guess what?
Right, Disney don’t like change. But we’re doing it. We’re meeting resistance on practically every levels from the lawyers all the way down to our own production staff. Why? Because that’s not the way they did it on the last show they worked on.
It’s been a little over a year now and were winding down on the first season. The show (nameless for now because Disney monitors the internet) has had two sneak previews that tested very well. Tested you say? Yes test. (I can’t hold back! Sidetrack rant coming up!)
Testing a twisted tail all it’s own. That’s when executives, who don’t want to stick their necks out and say they like something, show a cartoon to a bunch of kids. The kids say they like it (they usually do because kids love the attention) and the executive makes their report. Now they’re bullet proof. So now, when the show tanks they can point to the report and convince their bosses they aren’t to blame. And they work on for the next 25 years without anyone really knowing how amazingly unqualified they are.
So while we wait for the show to test. And be aired. And be judged. And for all the executives to cover themselves with test results before they green light a second season, the artists face a six-month lay off.
My crew looks to Warner’s animation and find that it has shut down completely. Cartoon Network has nothing in development because they’re not sure what kids like, Nickelodeon is wasting their time rewriting a show that has already been animated, and Disney.... This was supposed to be about story, not finding jobs for my crew. Sorry, rant over.
I guess I’m just saying that the thing people who are making good money don’t want is for things to change. And comedy is nothing but change. I assume it’s always been that way, and really without the suits there would be nothing to make fun of. We’d all still be drawing flowers and trees. I’m resentful of the lack of respect for artists. A person doesn’t normally go into the art business to make money. They go into it because someone picked on them at one point, and it’s the only thing they could think of to do to retaliate. They do it because there’s a chemical deficiency in their genetic make up. I’m sure there’s another reason but I can’t think of it.
The poor bastards. Whatever.
Next time on the Freekin animation process; Part 2: Acting and foley! The sounds that make the magic go to.. uha the sounds that you will… Oh, to hell with it.
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