Indigenous Animation Movement

The September/October issue of Native Peoples (a magazine of indigenous people http://www.nativepeoples.com/ on news stands now) reports an explosion in animation in Native American culture. Claiming that the Cherokee Nation capitol of Tahlequah, Oklahoma may have more animators per capita than any community in the United States.

This is due, in part, to the American Indian Resource Center (AIRC) and their strong animation program centered in Tahlequah.

There is also an explosion of animation in the Canadian Nations. We had a stop motion series from Canada in the Stop Mo Expo Animation Festival back in April.

A fair amount of the Indigenous Animation seems to be stop motion (yeah!) but there is also 2-D and CGI animation represented in the article by Kkade L. Twist (Cherokee).

The animators, who are starting to have an impact on the animation festival circuit, come from all the nations; Cherokee, Pawnee, Delaware, Kiowa, Plains Cree, Dine, Ponca, and (my own hidden native blood) Ojibway.

A lot of the Native American animation story content is uniquely indigenous in nature, dealing with current problems facing the First American Nations and with the myth and culture of the indigenous poeples that the animators come from.

Native Peoples magazine seems to post there past issue to the Internet so the article should be on the net when the November/December issue is published. http://www.nativepeoples.com/

A New Game Begins:

Game History for fall is yours. Thanks for your time today.

Sandy A_ _ _ _
Chair of Game Art

Yesterday I talked about how old failed projects become future samples. (see below). As you can see, I got the job for next Fall.

That is Fall 2008, which gives me a year to research this fascinating subject. I know a little about a lot of game history because I have always been a gamer, from the early days in the arcades playing Centipede to the early 1981 nights playing text base D & D like games over a modem on the Deck main frame with a borrowed password. Right up through the early computer and NES games.

But that was just playing. This means some real heavy history research. (something I always like) This means lots of 3 by 5 cards. This means finding and recording game pay of rare old NES games. This means lots of new history facts that for once Tom Sito may not know. But most importantly this also means that all my gaming purchases from now on are tax deductible.

The Future Value of Past Failure

Careers are strange twisting paths. Back in 2003-2004 I was trying to get a game off the ground. It all fell apart. My partner turned put to be a pathological liar, junky, no talent business programmer with a talent for sounding like he knew what he was doing.

Waste of 2 years? Today I am going to an interview at a college that is starting a new gaming program and all that work that was wasted now becomes part of the interview presentation. Save your work it will save you in the long run.

Jam Yesterday & Jam Tomorrow

Finally got all the animations together and in the right order with the right names attached for the 2007 Comic Con ASIFA-Hollwood Animation Jam. Just finished doing titles, render it, and rendering it to a small size for the Internet and uploading it to the Internet. We had one animation still missing on Kent`s hard drive, which we traced down. I have posted the final product here:


CLICK Image

The 12 Animators who took part in this year`s Comic Con Animation Jam were:

Larry Loc
Elizabeth Simpson
Rebecka Pavlik
Adam Henry
Ron Yavnieli
Michael Morris
Aubry Mintz
Rhianon Teran
Tom Sito
Tobias Jon Loc
Jason Roman
Thomas Smolenski

Good job one and all. It takes nerve to animate on a convention floor with 150,000 people looking over your shoulder.

Favorite Disney - Pixar Characters

The family when to the beach for a picnic breakfast today. I left a render running of the computer and off we went. We eat bagels and hardboiled eggs and fruit and tea and then walked up and down the beach in each other`s foot prints being silly.

Since we were so close to San Clemente we popped over to their 99 Cent Only store which is much nicer than our local one.

Picked up the Underworld VHS and the 3 by 5 cards for a new class I am prepping and this item:



Disney Fun and Games Mini Fun Kit Featuring your favorite Disney - Pixar characters!

Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Lilo and Stitch

A box with a coloring book, crayons, colored pencils, stickers, a double-sided reusable game card, a mini stencil and a paper fortune-teller all featuring the characters from Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Lilo and Stitch.

Favorite Disney Characters, think about it. I am looking forward to that changing in the near future. The Goofy short that Eric Goldberg is working on sounds good. I am hoping for the Frog Princess. Hey I love Pixar but it is time for 2-D to come back strong. I miss seeing it.

Blank Page:

Every artist and every writer know the fear and glory of creating out of the void. Staring at the blank page. The citizens always ask the same question were do you get your ideas? Ideas are a rare and magical thing to the person who has not trained themselves to think in ideas, concepts, storylines.

Who, What, When, Where, Why and How are the friends of every writer. Throw in the magical question What If and you are on the road to creativity.

I do a number of exercises with my pre-production students designed to put them in touch with the creative. One of my favorites is the newspaper technique.

On the way to class I stop at the newsstand and buy the paper. I open the paper in front of the class and start reading the headlines. Always trying to ask What If about each headline.

Sport`s gives storylines about genetically engineered athletes. The human interest stories may give up stories about suicide protests by environmentalist whales. The society papes yield intrigue, alien invasion, gangsters and the illuminati. And the National and International news never fails to stoke the ghost and fires of Ian Fleming.

My beloved teacher, Hy Eisman, use to tell the story of a gag writer friend of his who could turn anything into grist for the humor mill. I went to see him in the hospital and every horrible thing that could go wrong had happened to him. They even dumped a bedpan on him. And he was happy as could be. I`ve got 50 new hospital gags.

Where do you get your ideas? is a silly question. For years I would write down every new idea that popped in my head on little slips of paper. I have 3 giant boxes filled with slips of paper each with an idea written on it madly and in haste.

I stopped writing ideas on slips of paper over 30 years ago. But I keep the boxes in case I run out of ideas. I and happy to report that I have never had to look for an idea in those boxes or anywhere else. Once you turn on the tap, it is on for life. It is a way of life.

Sound Future Plans:

It always comes down to the same thing. I want something done and nobody will do it. I want the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Jam project finished and burned to disk. I have tried to get drama departments interested and voice actors interested. But nobody had picked up the gantlet.

So I am in the process of putting together recording sessions and Folly sessions to record the sounds needed to finish the projects.

There will be a little bit of post sync dialog, some none sync dialog (rough animation with no lips to sync) vocal sound effects and Folly. Might take a few sessions.

Dori, at Woodbury (god I love that school - they are so nice to ASIFA) has conditionally offered us the use of their sound booth. That means I am starting to look for people who want to try their hand at voice acting and Folly. It also means that I am looking for a sound tech. And I may have a line on a legendary recording director. (Hopefully, more on that later)

If you are interested, email larry@agni-animation.com subject line ASIFA JAMS. Volunteers that work on the project will get credit on the film, we should be able to arrange craft service on recording days, there will be lots of fun but, of course, no money.

Calling All Animaiton Teachers:

Animation education is a very specialized field. You can`t just be an educator, you have to be an animator first and foremost. A math teacher, a gym teacher, a science teacher, you just have to be able to teach and not necessarily have to be able to do what you teach. But in animation and all the arts you have to put up or shut up.

There are special needs in animation education and the resources are limited and sometimes hard to find. Time and time again I have talked to people start new animation programs and it has seemed to me there is a real need to share information.

Dori Littell-Herrick (head of Woodbury Animation Department), maybe Tom Sito (Tom is very busy running a show right now) and Larry Loc (myself, I just love the 3rd person stuff) are in the process of putting together a group of like minded Animation Educators to meet once a month and talk about our programs.

The idea is to get a group together and kick ideas around. You know come up with really cool name for the group. Something like Animation Coalition of Educators or A.C.E. or Animators Teachers and Tutors which would be AT&T. Whatever. Then kind of hang out once a month at a local restaurant and talk to each other and share ideas.

If you teach animation and are in the L.A. / Orange County area and this sounds like something you would be into then drop me an email larry@agni-animation.com with the subject line ANIMATION EDUCATORS.

Sound and Fury

Had to re-render all of the ASIFA Animation Jam files to get them to run on a MAC, Bill and Steve talk to each other, why can`t their computer systems.

Looks like we are going to have a composer for the ASIFA Animaiton Jam project, Will talk about him more if and when. Next step is Dialog and Folly. Going to try to get use of a animation program`s sound booth and hold a volunteer meeting/recording session. Could be fun.

Talked to Dan Lund today, he is back working at Disney`s, I must be dreaming. This makes me happy on so many levels. Seems like 2/3s of the Dream on Silly Dreamer crew we had in San Diego for the 2006 Comic Con are back at the Mouse House.

If you had asked anybody at the Alex Theatre screening back in 2004 if they thought the industry turn around would happen this quickly I don`t think you would have found one person that could have guessed this future.

Time Laps, QuickTime & Much-Maligned Producers:

Stop Mo Time Laps:
One of the few advantages of spending the weekend rendering out animation files to submit to a composer is that things, long put off, finally get done.

Back in April I was cursing QuickTime on the net for being so money grabbing on the PC platform, and trying to figure out some way to get QickTime files into anything usable without buy the damn program yet again.

Long and short, I never did get a good small size render of the Stop Mo Expo Animation Jam Time Laps footage that I could post to the Internet. So at long last, here it is, along with the footage from the jam itself. (below, a stop motion penguin juggling & Aki Umemoto animating said penguin)


CLICK image to watch footage:

Animation Jam Project:
It is finally looking good for getting a DVD of the 3 ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Jams produced. Again I find myself in that much-maligned roll of producer.

Producers, Scum or Slime?:
[soapbox]
You know what, you can say anything you want about producers being parasites feeding off of creative people, and some do, but when it comes down to the wire and you want to get something done, somebody has to step up to the plate.

There is a lot of stuff that creative types won`t or can`t do and that falls to the producer. So give your producer a hug, you wouldn`t be able to get it all done without us. And remember some producers are creative types that will put on the evil hat, when nobody else will, just to get the job done. [/soapbox]

And the Word

There is no way I can finish up my postings of sound for animation without dealing with voice acting sound effects.

Dialog:
You are going to have to record your own dialog. There is no way you are going to find your script on someone else`s CD.

Sound Forge, Sound Blaster`s Wave Studio, ACID Loops Pro and many other sound editing software packages have the ability to record and manipulate sound.

Get a good microphone and enlist your friends. Recording sessions are fun and can be made into a party as long as you get the tracks laid down before too much alcohol dulls the wits of your actors and engineers. The party also becomes the consideration for the work for hire contract you will need to get signed by your actors.

Make sure that the actors sign a work for hire release form or if you make it big with a project you might find your friends wanting a big piece of the pie.

Voice Actors:
Voice acting is a small world. Everybody uses the same short list of very talented pros.

Therefore breaking-in as a voice actor is not easy. That means there are a lot of people who have not made it yet that want to work on projects so that they will have real samples of work.

Network with friend in the industry. That means ASIFA-Hollywood Volunteer meetings. The last Wednesday of most months. I have been holding them recently on Woodbury University Campus at 7 PM in Room D104 (Design Center) but it changes with the projects and availability of a room. Sometimes we only have meetings when there is a project looming.

Woodbury University
7500 Glenoaks Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91510

Keep an eye on the ASIFA web site http://www.asifa-hollywood.org/

or

Check my Blog for meeting info:
www.agni-animation.com/blog/index.html

or

Send me an email with a subject line of ASIFA VOLUNTEER to get your name added to the email list. larry@agni-animation.com

Other networking groups:

Women in Animation. http://www.womeninanimation.org/

Animation Guild classes http://www.mpsc839.org/ . You meet lots of very talents people at Guild classes and the price is low.

There are voice-acting seminars at comic con. Bob (Porky Pig) Bergen gives classes in voice acting all the time http://www.bobbergen.com/ They are not cheap but it will put in with a group of want to be voice actors who should have more talent than the guys you play basketball with.

Check out this site: http://voice123.com/ . It is a clearing house for voice jobs. Most of them, very much, want to be paid. I have not had much luck getting anybody at this site involved with non-paying jobs. But it can`t hurt to try. And if all else fails you can always pay a little something.

You can try talking to drama students on college campuses. In practice it should be a win / win. You can get free voice actors and they can get free samples of work. But again I have not had much luck here either. Money, it seems, talks.

The best bet is to work with talented friends. And be sure to get those release forms signed.

Dialog Editing:
Plan your sound before you record. If you are going to speed up or slow down the sound, practice! Record something and then speed it up or slow it down. Learn how to talk for the speeded or slowed sound you are going to output. You are going to slow the voice you need to talk quickly with a deep voice and is you are going to speed the sound you are going to have to talk slowly with a high voice.

Testing the process on your own voice will give you a handle on the process before you go into the studio. Even if it is your home studio. That way you can direct your actors and sound like you know what you are doing. You don’t want to waste the actor’s time. This makes you look unprofessional.

If you look professional and you act professional then people will think you are professional and then, guess what, you will be.

Home Folly Studio:
Go through you junk drawer, get out the pots and pans. Celery wrapped in a wet shammy and then hit with a stick gives a great karate strike sound. Go to the toy store and look at the music based toys. Then start making noise.

Get out the coconut shells and make the hoof beats of a knight’s horse. Can’t find it on a disk in the store or on the Internet, make your own.

Speeding up or slowing down sound changes it markedly, as does echo and other filters. You have time to learn it on your own. That is the trade off. Small budget lots of your sweat and time.

(C) & (TM) Larry Loc 2001 -2007 Animation on a ShoeString

Hurry Up & Wait

I am spending the weekend rendering. I have a composer willing to take a look at the 3 ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Jams. That being the case I need to get them in finished form with beginning and end titles so that he has an idea about time and movement.

Rendering always takes 10 time longer that it has any right to do. It is kind of a revenge al la machine for going digital.

As some as I get the disks in the mail I will be returning to talk about voice acting for animation. See you hopefully tomorrow.

ASIFA Comic Con Animation Jam Posted

CLICK image for Jam:

Kent Braun from DigiCel FlipBook (the guy who was nice enough to supply ASIFA with animation hardware and software at Comic Con) sent me a link to a FTP site with the files from this year`s ASIFA-Hollywood Comic Con 2007 Animation Jam.

Here is a Link to 176 by 120 video render of this year`s animations. (click image above) The files are not in final order - still have to research their order of creation but you will get the idea.

I am currently in discussion with a composer to create a soundtrack for all 3 ASIFA Ani Jams, Comic Con 2006, Stop Mo Expo 2007 and Comic Con 2007. The finished product would be a limited edition DVD with the working title of ASIFA-Hollywood Jams. Hopefullu more on this later.

Derek Lamb: The UPA Connection

A couple of days ago I tried to make a conection between Tim Burton`s Vincent and Ted Parmelee`s UPA masterpiece The Tell-Tale Heart.

At the time I was writing that piece I had this connection in the back of my head. Something that had always stuck in my head connection Tell-Tale Heart with another animaiton.

Look at the images below. Do they strangely seem to come from the same production?



This is an image from the beginning of Ted Parmelee`s Tell-Tale Heart.



And this is an image from the beginning of the Edward Gorey / Derek Lamb opening for PBS Mystery Theatre.

At last month`s ASIFA-Hollywood UPA Comic Con panel Fred Crippen said that he always thought that the Canadian Film Board was going to be the next UPA. Maybe he was right.

Leslie Iwerks: RECYCLED LIFE

I got the following email from my friend Leslie Iwerks. Thought I would pass it on to you.

Dear Friends. . .

We Are Pleased to Announce the HBO Television Premiere
of the Oscar(R) Nominated Short Documentary

RECYCLED LIFE

Thursday, August 16, 2006
7pm - 7:45 on CINEMAX

Directed, Photographed and Edited by Leslie Iwerks
Produced by Mike Glad
Narrated by Edward James Olmos
Music by Mader
Senior Producer for HBO: Nancy Abraham
Executive Producer for HBO: Sheila Nevins

Along with

A SAFE PASSAGE: A Tribute to Hanley Denning

Airing on HBO-ON-DEMAND
About the dedicated life of Safe Passage Founder Hanley Denning

Directed, Photographed and Edited by Leslie Iwerks
Produced by Mike Glad
Music by Mader

Please visit:
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/recycledlife
For More Information and Additional Showings
Both Programs run from August 16 through September 17, 2007 •


For DVD Sales and Further Information Please Visit Our Website:
www.recycledlifedoc.com

Music Creation Programs (Animation Music Part 4)

In Part 4 of my look at Music for Animation I look at the different music creation software packages.

Quite often the flower phrases describing the wonders and powers of each product comes from the web sites of the products themselves and are therefore to be taken with a grain or 3 of salt. I will put the manufactures comments in red so that you can tell the copywriter`s art-form.

These are good products and fine arrangements of music can be created with them but they are only as good as the musical sense of the person using them. It is best to have a musician if at all possible. (see Part 2 & 3 below)

Music Creation Software:
Most music creation software is based on the loop concept. Different short loops of music are used as building blocks to create musical arrangements.

ACID Pro Loops, for long years the top contender, was from Sonic Foundry and was the leader on the PC platform. They were bought out by Sony who sat on them for about a year but has now started to develop the product again. They have changed the names of their produces again so I am not sure what is what anymore.

Sony ACID Pro
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/acidfamily.asp

American Idol Extreme Music Creator:
Give your music dreams a jump-start with American Idol Extreme Music Creator software. It's everything you need to record, mix, edit, and burn your own demo CDs so you can share your talent with the world.

US $49.95

This seems to be the ACID XMC software with a licensed name and another $10 added to the cost to cover the flashy name license.

ACID Music Studio:
ACID Music Studio software is the perfect tool for original song creation, live recording, studio-quality mixing, and effects processing. Includes audio effects such as EQ, reverb, delay, chorus, and echo.

US $69.95

ACID Pro 6:
ACID Pro 6 software is a professional music workstation for composing, recording, mixing, and arranging audio and MIDI tracks. Multi-track recording. Comprehensive MIDI sequencing. Over 1,000 loops.

US $374.96

You can Download a free trial of all 3 products. Students can get the Acid Loops Pro from http://www.studica.com/ Sony Acid Pro 6 Win CD - Free Shipping $188.95


Cakewalk Home Studio 2004:
Cakewalk is a music loop system that made a lot of headway while ACID Loops was working out its business problems. It will work with its own loop packages or with the Acid Loops format. (which is s strong point for the underdog)

SONAR Home Studio Version 6: From Cakewalk:

SONAR Home Studio 4 : $139.00
Loop Desks : $ 69.00

They seem to be moving toward a computer based music tool for musicians with USB MIDI connection tools.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/HomeStudio/default.asp

The problem with this type of system is that it gives everybody the tools to create music. That of course is also their strength. I have heard some music (sic) that never should have heard light of day created with these programs. I have also heard some very passable tunes done by non-musicians.

Both groups of music creators thought that they knew what they were doing when they started pasteing sound loops together. One of the groups was very wrong.

Ask your friends or teachers to honestly tell you if your music sucks and hope that they have the music sense to tell the difference between a good and bad soundtrack. If you know any musicians ask them for help. Nothing can kill good animaiton quicker than a bad soundtrack.

copyright and TM 2001-2007 Larry Loc (From: Animation on a ShowString 6th Edition)

Tim Burton: The UPA Connection

The important thing to remember about Tim Burton is that he is a student of film as well as a director. Add to this the fact that he started his career as an animator and you go a long ways in understanding his film references.

Yesterday my son, Tobias, ask me to screen Tim Burton`s Vincent. I have it on the Chiodo Bros. demo reel and it is one of my favorites.

Vincent is autobiographical in nature, a tale of a little boy who sees the world through the haze of his love of monster movies and tales of horror.

Burton makes his visual references clear from the beginning. His tortured hero is named Vincent McCloy. He shares a last name with UPA`s own Oscar winning tortured child hero, Gerald McBoing Boing.

Visually Vincent owes its striking look to UPA`s The Tell-Tale Heart. Both films are narrated; Vincent by Vincent Price and Heart by James Mason. But it is the darkness, mood, and checked imagery that marks Vincent as an homage` to UPA`s horror masterpiece.

Below are a group of screen captures from these two classic animations. Still images can not capture the true similarity in mood between these two great animated films but it can show the use of the checkered pattern as a visual tool in both works.





The Tell-Tale Heart is available on the Hellboy 2 disk DVD. And Vincent is available on the Special Edition DVD of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas as an extra features or you can make friends with the Chiodo Bros.

Tomorrow: Part 4 (the last installment) of Music for Animation.

If you want to check out a fan site for Vincent here is the top search engine pick at Google http://vincent.madonna-online.ch/

Part 3: Music For Animaiton

continuing my 4 part legal music for animation article: (see parts 1 & 2 below)

Starving Musicians:
There are lots of musicians with lots of talent that have not made it in the world of record labels and contracts.

Cut a deal with them, you animate their music video and they score your animation.

Check the Internet for band websites and listen to their MP3 downloads. You can pick the sound you want and work a trade.

If you are in college then head on over to the school of music and meet some people. Put up signs on the board. Even it you are not in college you should be able to put up a sign advertising for musicians. Ask at the office.

Make sure that the musicians sign a release form or if you make it big with a project you might find your handshake friends wanting a bigger piece of the pie.

copyright and TM 2001-2007 Larry Loc (From: Animation on a ShowString 6th Edition)

For what it is worth: Digitizing Oversize Artwork

I have been doing a little product research for my friend Mark Kausler. He and his wife Cathy paint with a Plein Air painter`s group and he has been looking for a way to scan their painting into a digital form. The thing is, scanners are not designed for artists.


Cathy Hill portrait of me with my Santa beard - CLICK for her web site.

The reason I am talking about this is that lots of other people in the art world are having this same problem. Scanners are designed for books and legal documents with a standard size of 8 1/2 by 14. This has nothing to do with the sizes that artists work in.

Yes, there are some scanners made that are wider. The problem is that the price quadruples with every half-inch of width you add. Width of course is really more expensive because of the need to add more sensors to the scanning arm, with length there is no need for additional sensors. But the width to cost ratio is way disproportionate to any real equipement production costs.

You can get a reconditioned 8 1/2 by 14 scanner for about $50 (most of them come from discontinued service programs which trade out rebuild scanners for faulty scanners under warranty). I have one that I have used with no problems for the last 6 years. A new 8 1/2 by 14 scanner is going to price out at about $200 to $300 dollars. The lowest price I have seen for a 11 by 17 scanner was $1,700 and heavy change. I have seen them as high at $6,000. I am sure you can find them higher still when you get into professional publishing models.

Time to think outside the box. If you are a traditional animator like Mark, chances are you have a camera stand around the place. A camera stand with a digital camera is the perfect solution to digitizing over sized artwork. The camera stand takes care of the hand held distortion wobble and with a little playing around with lighting and reflectors you can get a very good digital copy of your oversized art.

Music (continued):

Yesterday I shared thoughts on how to obtain music for your animaiton. Today we will look at another option.

Contact the artist:
You aren’t going to have much luck if you are trying to contact Paul McCartney or David Bowie. But some of the mid-level bands are more approachable. If they are on the upper end of the mid-level you will need to approach them by way of their lawyer or manager which can be difficult since they are paid to think in terms of money. Try getting in touch with them directly first.

One of my students procured the rights to use a song from a mid-level Christian rock band in his animation for only $5. What does it cost to ask? You might get lucky.

Start with their contact information on their CD and use the Internet to find their official web site or call their record company. If you talk to them you have more chance than if you talk to their agent.

copyright and TM 2001-2007 Larry Loc (From: Animation on a ShowString)

Music:

Lights, Sound, Action! But the lights and the action are nothing without sound. Even silent films had somebody named Carl on the piano.

So what to do about music for your animation? Many students just grab any CD that they like and slap it on their animation.

Oft Repeated Dialog:
Student: I have this great song for my animation!

Me: Who owns the song? Do you have the rights?

Student: I own it, I bought the CD. So can I put it on my animation in this lab?

Me: It is physically possible but not legally possible . . . (See my rant in the copyright section)

Show up at an animation festival with a film that has music that you haven’t procured the rights to and ASCAP or BMI will impound your film and will write you a nice big fine.

That means you need the rights to the tunes you use. Or you need works that are in public domain.

Oft-Repeated Dialog: (continued)

Student: How about classical music? That has got to be in, you know . . . they have been dead for years!

Me: The WORK is in public domain but THIS performance is not, and on and on and over and over.

Where to get tunes that you have the rights to? Four sources:

• Contact the artist and ask


• Music buy-out


• Music creation software


• Starving Musicians

Music Buy-Out:
The Music Buy-Out concept is a good one for a low-end animation studio. You buy the rights to use the music when you buy the CD.

The Music Bakery is the main player in this field.

Disks are about $99 each but they have a $59 sale a couple times per year.

A lot of the tunes are of the corporate presentation variety but they can be changed around. Since they have gone on the Internet they have added downloadable sound effects and beefed up their sound track music.

Their early disks are in an early CDA format and are hard for a lot of software to recognize. The last disks I got from them are in WAV or MPEG formats and are very easy to use.

They also have a web site where you can demo and buy tunes 24-7.


CLICK for Link

From: Animation on a ShoeString (tm) & copyright 2001-2007 Larry Loc

Pitcher Up:

Chris Miller Pitching a scene from Shrek:

Artist, by the rule, are not good at talking to groups of people. Most of us would prefer to set in a quite room by ourselves and draw pictures. Pitching a story idea is one of the hardest things for animation students. I have a feeling that it is hard for professional animators too.

Today was the mid-term pitch for my Visual Storytelling class at Brooks College. The mid-term is a pitch of thumbnails, story beats, rough character designs and rough production designs. The class is basically a pre-production class with a mid-term and final pitch.

I have found in the past that it helps the students to show them actual pitches. For that, the best resource is the Shrek DVD. The special features have 3 great examples of story pitch from Cody Cameron, David Lowery and Chris Miller.

All three of the pitch styles are different. Chris does great voices with dead on impersonation and sound effects. David is the most reserved and may I say dignified. Cody falls somewhere in between.

It would be a great service if other pitches found their way onto the special feature menus of other DVDs. Hint, hint. Wouldn`t it be nice to see pitches from the Golden Age of Disney. I bet there is still film on some of them. There is an idea for you Leonard.

Thrift Shop Treasures of the 90s:

I was out at the thrift stores yesterday looking for animation that isn`t in my collection and again I was struck by what great animation came out of the early 90s. Darkwing Duck, Batman the Animated Series, Gargoyles, and even (to a lesser extent) Goof Troop, TailSpin and Bonkers, the kid`s afternoon block was way fun again just like when I was a kid.

I have talked about this second golden age of animation a number of times. And I have had it passed off lightly by people who should know better. The off shore animation studios were getting better before the producers moved to even cheaper markets and went back to bad quality animation. Like all there is to an animation is animation. But it is not just that, because good animation without content is just a light show.

In the late 80s early 90s the almost lost generation of animators were coming into their own. The obsessed fans that had grown up on Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, and Tex Avery where firmly in control of TV animation at long last and soon to take over feature animation. The 20-year wasteland had been crossed. The torch had been past without completely going out. And it was time to kick some ass on the airwaves.

Strangely enough, the golden age of television animation started with Pee-Wee`s Playhouse, (remember the first golden age was in theatrical animation that was shown to TV audience kids to shut us up while Mom and Dad went on with their lives. The stuff being created for TV during the dark ages was very, very bad. Just ask Jerry Beck.)



Pee-Wee`s Playhouse as a show wasn`t so much about animation and it was immersed in animation. All kinds of animation, paper cutout, clay, human heads matted onto puppets, foam latex, 2-D board, any idea was possible.

Paul Rubens, or Paul Rubenfeld when I first met him in the dressing room at the Asolo Children`s Theatre Company back in our home town of Sarasota, loved all things animated and soaked his program in every imaginable type of animation process. It is this love of animation by an entire generation that brought about high quality TV animation in the early 90s, not some accident of talent ripening before being abandon to lower cost foreign workers.

Go to your local thrift shop and check the video bins, all this great 90s stuff is being sold off now that the kids are old enough not to need animation babysitting.

Hollywood Animation Spy for 99 Cents

Back in the days before the military started destroying their old technology, way back in 1980, you could pretty much tell what the military was up to by looking at the computer surplus store on Canal Street.

It its own way the 99 Cent Only Store video / DVD rack has become a microscope into the working of the Hollywood film world. Just check out what is being sold off at a loss from the film warehouses to get a peek into the minds of the suits at the studios.

Back in 2001 after the movie of Robert Heinlein`s Starship Troopers made a splash at the box office someone got the idea of bringing it to the small screen. They toned down the Fascist overtones of the novel. Kept the Lightwave bugs. And did the humans, including speech, in early motion control. Very odd.

There is a sameness to all the characters because of their power suits. The suits also made it possible to do linked assemble animation, as did the bug designs. Deformation animation seems to be a little beyond their skill set, which is plain every time the heroes are out of uniform. Which isn`t often.

The writing is 50s W.W.II war picture, one battle after another. The current administration would love it. And the dialog, it`s not over until the fat bug screams! is not quite bad enough to be funny.

You can have your very only copy of this gem for just 99 cents plus tax at my local, and maybe your, 99 Cent Only Store. Because the VHS version of this piece of TV animation (sic) history has just been dumped for the write off.

And the Horse He Rode In On:

Sunday mornings my daughter listens to a couple of radio shows on the Beatles. The format is 10 % talk about some Beatles theme, 5 % audio clips of the Beatles or other people involved with the Beatles talking about the theme of the day and 85 % Beatles songs that somehow kind of match up with the theme.

Yesterday, life was such and easy game to play, the theme was the Beatles animated TV show and the animated movie, The Yellow Submarine. Imagine my surprise when there was not one mention of George Dunning in the entire hour radio show.

The entire story was told from the point of view of the marketing guy at King Features. The Point Of View of the guy that they had to fight against to create a good show. This opens a whole new branch of history, Suit History. We could tell the Rocky and Bullwinkle story from the prospective of General Mills. Hey what a great thing it was to cancel the show once there were enough episodes in the can to syndicate re-runs. And then we could tell the Cole Porter story from the Point Of View of the horse that crippled him.

Hey radio talk guy. His name is George Dunning; he was the protege of Norman McLaren and a powerhouse at the Canadian Film Board. He directed the Yellow Submarine and an awful lot of the better Beatles Animated TV episodes. His unfinished animated feature The Tempests is brilliant. As for the suit at King Feature and the horse he rode in on.

Silly of Me, I Must Be Dreaming:

Animation is a cyclical business. Some times it is good and some times it is not. We all have our signs. Like the swallows returning or the song of the katydid.

I got an email from Dan (Dream on Silly Dreamer) Lund yesterday and he is back working at Disney. That just makes me happy. It is something that never could have been imagined just a few short years ago.

In their own way Dan and Tony and their little movie had something to do with creating the current reality at the Mouse House. So if I am dreaming don`t wake me.

UPA Panel at Comic Con (Video Clip)

The video clip (above) is from the ASIFA-Hollywood Comic Con panel on UPA , MAVERICKS, MAGIC AND MAGOO, that took place on Thursday July 26th, 2007. The people on the panel were Tee Bosustow (son of the co-founder of UPA) Fred Crippen (UPA animator and creator of Roger Ramjet) and Larry Loc (myself as moderator).

In this clip Fred talks about his start at UPA New York and the importance of Bobe Cannon as a personal mentor and under-valued cartoon filmmaker.

video is by Tobias Loc

There Might be Giants of the Industry

I found out from Tom Sito last Wednesday at the ASIFA Board of Directors meeting that we had both been granted Giants of the Industry status over at: o-meon . Nice of you to say Chuck. Always good for a laugh if nothing else, but when Ray Harryhausen and Bill Plymton are in the same hall I have to hold off on accepting delivery on my Giant of the Industry T-shirt. And Tom says much the same thing.

Tell you where the real giants were hiding at Comic Con, over in Artist Alley with Dick Ayers and Mike Ploog and a lot of other great artist that were being ignored by the fan boys and girls. The only people looking them up were other artists and die hard art lovers. People that know good comic book storytelling and know how to read the creator`s names in the credits. Which makes us a very small sub-set of Comic Con.



Speaking of my old teacher, Dick Ayers, I have been reading his life story in comic book form part 1, 1924 to 1951 and am reminded of the whole story of Mi Lei Fo which he did not put in his autobiography.

Dick painted nose art for the 586th Bomb Squadron during WWII. One day he came in to teach us Kubert students and he was very bummed out.

He had been cleaning his studio over the weekend and had found the good luck charm of one of the bomber units, a laughing Buddha sculpture or as it is called Mi Lei Fo.

Dick had painted the nose art for Mi Lei Fo mock 1 back in the States before his unit shipped out to Europe. When the guys of Mi Lei Fo got a new plane just before the end of the war the pilot wanted Dick to paint the Laughing Buddha on the nose of this new plane.

Sure, but I will need your good luck charm to do some sketches from. Here you go. I`ll pick it up after this mission. The reason Dick still has that Laughing Buddha is because they never came back from that one mission they flew without their good luck charm.

I tried to talk Dick into doing a war comic of the story for D.C. (That would have been 1976 or 77) but he told me he could never draw that story. It was just too painful. Well, have somebody else draw it. And he did. He got one of the other teachers, Ric Estrada, who drew up the story from Dick`s script and it was every bit as powerful and poignant as the true story behind the story.

Ric spent years over at Hana-Barbara and still has one foot in comics and one foot in animation. Dick has spent some time working in animation with J.J. Sedelmaier in Whiteplains. But comic books are his first love.

If you ask Dick about giants he would talk about Burne Hogarth and Alex Raymond. He wouldn`t order his Giant of the Industry T-shirt either.

Catching Up From Con:

The edit on the State of the Animation Industry went poorly. Too much software to restore and the file size is prohibitive. Very prohibitive. Even the audio file is a monster. But here is the audio file of the first question and some images of the speakers. That will have to do for now.

State of the Industry 2007


Larry Loc: ASIFA-Hollywood


Tim Johnson: DreamWorks


Bill Plympton: Plymptoons


Sarah Baisley: AWN


Aki Umemoto: Base Station (Mattel)


Stephen Chiodo: Chiodo Bros.


Kent Bruan: DigiCel FlipBook


Aubry Mantz: Cal State Long Beach Animation Department (Laguna College of Art & Design)



Got this image from the Simpson`s Movie credits from a former student. Turns out that 3 of my former students are on the same credit crawl. My plan is that one of my former students will make it big in animation and then hire me as a flunky. My estate planner does not like the idea but it seems to have more chance to work than what he has been telling me. Good work Amy, Jenny & Alice. Call me about that job as your flunky.

ASIFA-Hollywood board meeting last night. They are starting to take Comic Con seriously for next year. I have been doing it for them for the last 5 years and it is nice that they are getting it at last. The idea is to revamp the booth and a whole lot more.

CURRENTLY READING:


The life of Dick Ayers (one of my teachers from the Kubert School daze) part 1 (1924 to 1951) in Comic Book form.