Expo Highlight of the Past Year

Someone (my wife) asked me today what I was proudest of in 2007. I would have to say (other than my great family) that the Stop Mo Expo at Woodbury back in April was the highlight. Here are some photos:


Opening remarks: Larry Loc & Stephen Chiodo


Corky Quakenbush


Will Vinton


Gene Warren Jr. (I went all fanboy when I met him)


Stephen Chiodo, Corky Quakenbush & Gene Warren Jr


Corky Quakenbush, Gene Warren Jr & Will Vinton




Edward Chiodo, Chris Warren & Simon de Jong (setting in for Randy Cook who was on deadline)



Tennessee Reid Norton


Christiane Cegavske (who ran off to a film festival later in the day)


Jim Matlosz


and last but by no means lest Jim Aupperle (who animated on one of my all time favorite screens, the temple monster from Flesh Gordon)

A Great big thanks again to Edward Chiodo, Stephen Chiodo, Tennessee Reid Norton, Dori Littell-Herrick, Greg Kindseth, Brad Koepenick, Will Vinton, Corky Quakenbush, Gene Warren Jr, Chris Warren, Christiane Cegavske, Mark Sawicki, Jim Aupperle, Ross Shuman, Rob Ronning, Misha Klein, Jim Matlosz, Simon de Jong, Mark Kausler, Jerry Beck and Woodbury University for making this event happen. You made my year!

One of my goals for this year is to edit the video of this and other events. I also have a very cool video of Dan Lund giving a leason in 2D effects at Laguna College of Art & Design that is up there at the top of the list right under Stop Mo Expo. I have a couple of tapes of Sol and Martha Sigall that need editing and some events with Mark Kausler and the list goes on and on.

End of Year Catch Up

Just got a number of photos from the Silverago library sighting of the Big Red One.




I have a syllabus to finish and post today or tomorrow. Then I have to get cracking on the Afternoon of Remembrance. After that I have some books to finish reading and re-reading with 3 by 5 cards listing all of the facts from said books.

Just finished up-dating the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Educators` Forum Web Site. (see link in side bar)The year is slipping away but the work still seems to stay. But it is much better then having nothing to do.

Over the past 12 months I:

• put on the Stop Mo Expo. Still need to edit the video.



• Put on 2 animation jams. Still need to do foley and voice work on both.



• Put on all the ASIFA-Hollywood panels and ran the booth (with lots of help) at Comic Con. Still need to edit all the videos.



• Helped form the Animaiton Educators` Forum. Still need to do so much here that I don`t even want to think about it. We have a Student Animation Festival on Saturday Oct. 18th.



• Ran a recording session for the 2006 Comic Con animation jam. Need to talk to the composer to see how it is going.



• Put on a number of presentation at a number of schools with a large number of very cool animation people. Still need to edit the videos.

I think I am seeing a pattern here. I have lots of editing to do. Still have last year`s Afternoon of Remembrance to edit too.

So what does next year look like? Just about the same but I don`t want to think about it right now.

Ho! Ho! Ho! and a happy new year.

Pixar Shorts Not Short on Anything:

Why buy a disk when you have most of the material already in your collection? I already had 9 out of the 13 shorts on this disk and parts of 2 of the other short films on interview and documentary recordings. Of the special Sesame Street Luxo specials I already had Light and Heavy, the best of the lot. So why was this disk so high on my Christmas list?






I didn`t have a copy of Andre & Wally B. I didn`t have a copy of Red`s Dream and I only had parts of Knick Knack and Tin Toy.







Those lacks are painful. That was my reasons for wanting this DVD. But the reason I am so happy that I got this collection is the documentary - The Pixar Shorts: A Short History.



The high light of this documentary for me is Jim Blinn from JPL with a whole rendering / surfacing system named after him just geeking out over what the guys at Pixar where doing in those early days.

And what they were doing, what John was doing, was animation. Animation with a new untried limited set of tools.

Conventional wisdom would seem to say that the later, more polished, films are better. But conventional wisdom would be dead wrong.

The early Pixar shorts are ground breaking. There is a raw power and joy to them. They are limited and their importance rests in the very limitations of the early tools and the genius that made a story within the limitations of the tool set.

Good storytelling does not have limited shelve life after the wow factor is gone. These early Pixar shorts are closer to John`s Oscar (R) winning student short Lady and the Lamp then they are to Finding Nemo.

To be able to watch all the Pixar shorts in the order of their creation is a real treat, an education and an important action for anybody with the slightest interest in the field of animation.

It is not about computer vs pencil. It is about animated storytelling. It is still hard to believe that there were people, just a few short years ago, running major animation studios who did not know that.

Animation Educators

Next ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Educators` Forum meeting will be held on Jan. 10th at 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 108 of the Fine Arts Building #4 (FA4-108) at Cal State University Long Beach.

We will be deep into the planning stages of the 1st. Annual ASIFA-Hollywood Student Animation Festival that will be taking place on Saturaday Oct. 18th., 2008.

For more details on this and other events and diving directions to this meeting check out the AEF website: http://www.asifa-hollywood.org/aef/index.html

Some of the Stuff From the Big Red One:

This movie scared the crap out of me as a kid. I have a beatup copy that I taped from TV 20 years ago. But Now I have the real thing.



I am shamed to say that I also had a from TV copy of Kong. Now almost dead. So it goes.



I did not have a copy of this He-Man. Maybe I should get Sito to sign it now that it back on his resume?



My son found me this killer NEC game of Little Nemo in the original packaging. I will be firing it up after dinner. Looks like a platformer but can`t wait to see how they dealt with the McCay world view.



My wife got me this Jerry Beck Warner Bros. book. I somehow missed this one. But that is what Christmas is for.

Hope all of you had a good holiday and were with people you love. The gifts are nice but it is the people who know you enough to know what you want and need that really make the holiday. Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more.

Screeners Up:

The Bee Movie and Shrek the Third join this season`s Annie screeners. All the movies up for Best Animated Feature Annie Award have been shipped to ASIFA-Hollyood members except for The Simpsons Movie. Shriek the Third wasn’t even nominated for best feature but it did have a number of other nominations in other categories. And it is very nice to add it to my collection.

Okay Fox, we are looking for a clean sweep for screeners in the feature category. Come on Fox, I would really love to have The Simpsons Movie for Christmas. I had a lot of students and friend working on your movie and I want to see it again. If we can`t see it how are we going to be able to vote fairly?

Moving Catch Up

I have been in Internet Hosting Hell for the last week. I will not go into the shoddy and unreliable incompetence of my last web hosting company but I will just say that it takes a lot of major screw ups to make me go through the hell of changing services.



Here is some of the stuff I should have posted last week:

Cool Annie Screens for both Surf`s Up and Persepolis. Surf`s Up is major good film that suffered from too many other lesser penguin movies releasing first. I loved the hand held CGI camera work and the water spotted lens effects. This stuff is not easy. This Annie screener is a release DVD with the full extra features. That means Oscar winning short animation The Chubbchubbs. It is so good to have a copy. Also the new Chubbchubbs Christmas short. (Not as great at the original)



As for Persepolis it is a beautiful film of a very personal nature. Something that would never make it through the U.S. pipeline. This is a true screener, the first real screener of the year all the others being release DVDs. Persepolis comes complete with the For Your Consideration watermark. I love getting unreleased films.



Just got an email warning from my friend, sometimes editor and ad hoc technical advisor Eric Graf. He is very happy to get his hands on a copy of Persepolis (agreed on that count) but warns about the damage the crappy case it was shipped in can do to your valuable DVD. If anybody would know able DVD cases it is Eric. DVD editing and authoring is what he does.

Hi again!
I expect you have your screener of Persepolis in your hot little hands right now, or will very shortly.

If you post this score on your blog, you can do your readers a big favor by telling them to GET THE DISC OUT OF THAT PLASTIC FLIPPY THING AS CAREFULLY AS THEY CAN AND THEN NEVER, EVER, EVER PUT IT BACK IN!

Just some friendly advice from someone who has had to deal with these things (and their usually unplayable contents) way too many times. They scratch the discs when they flip 'em out, they don`t protect the discs `cause the sides cave in and rub, and they leech this oily residue that gets all over the disc and your hands. I had to wipe the stuff off my copy of Persepolis before I could get it to play smoothly.

I'm very grateful to Sony anyway. If you haven`t seen Persepolis yet, do so at once. I'm thrilled to have a copy! Movie night at the Graf`s this Christmas.

Eric

Thanks Eric. Hopefully the nameserver pointers will change soon so this will show at my address.

waiting

waiting for the pointers to change. when this post shows up then I have completed my transfer to, hopefully, a saner web hosting service.

Moving

I am in the process of changing web hosting companies and this many have an effect on the regularity of posts at this blog for the next couple of days or more. Please bear with me.

In the meantime here are some photos of the Silverado kids party at the Silverado Library last night.







Man, that is a load off my chin buy worth the 6 months of hair raising
endeavor.

Is Rankin-Bass Jack Forst Public Domain?

The debate goes on about low class Public Domain companies putting out animation that may well be in copyright.

Hi there, Larry.

I'm not a copyright attorney, nor do I play one on TV, but I've seen Jack Frost in so many dollar bins from so many PD companies - including the more respectable ones - that I've always assumed that it **is** PD. Numerous websites also report its PD status.

However, IMDB reports that it's from 1979, so unless Rankin-Bass entirely forgot to register the copyright, spalterego is probably right. My mistake - I thought it was older than that.

Now I'm curious as well. Maybe everyone has been confusing it with the Iwerks cartoon? I've written to the guys at http://www.rankinbass.com/ to see what they know about it.

Perhaps it was a lack of lawyerly response to the Jack Frost discs that led EastWest to conclude that The Hobbit and Return of the King were also fair game?

Eric

I understand the PD companies bringing out a movie over and over again making you think that the movie is in Public Domain. But if Forst is 1979 the new 1976 Copyright law came into affect on January 1st 1979 so it would still be in copyright and with the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act it will remain in copyright for 70 years after the death of the creator or the last surviving creator.

This would put Jack Forst squarely in copyright for a very, very long time. And since you do not have to register under the new copyright law to have copyright it would still be covered. Sounds like Rankin and Bass need to get their lawyers busy getting damages from these slime. Removing copyright notice from a film you steal is not the same as not knowing.

Mess Ups

I am not sure where I got it in my head that there was only one of the Sherman Brothers left. Thankfully my friend and sometimes editor was here to edit my mistake. Thanks Eric.

Hi, Larry.

Unless you know something I don't, both Sherman Brothers are
still with us. Robert B. was living in the UK last I
heard.

Eric

This seems to be my day for mess ups. I just got a comment asking why I thought the Rankin and Bass Jack Frost is in Public Domain. rankin-and-bass-return-of-king

I don`t, strangely the part of the post this person is questioning came from a comment I posted from Eric. So I don`t truely know what the copyright state is on this work and never claimed to. Anybody out there know? Eric most times has it right so I lean toward taking his word on this one but would like to hear if someone has the facts.

To Infinity

Last night at the Egyptian Leslie Iwerks screened the Pixar Story, to Infinity and Beyond. I am so glad I went. I had seen it at San Diego Comic Con back in July. Hell I put on the event. But Comic Con is Comic Con and not much remains in the memory after that much stress. I needed to see it again.

It was kind of democratic, the guy at the door stopped Leslie and Roy Disney and would not let them in until they picked up their tickets at the box office.

The Hieroglyphs at the Egyptian are still faked. It always pisses me off a little looking at the mish mash of symbols thrown together without thought. Some unknown black bird setting on the symbol for gold and animal symbols looking into each other`s eyes.

Andreas Deja was setting behind me. The last surviving member of the Disney super song writing team, the Sherman Brothers, was setting in front of me. The animation obsessed were to the right and left of me.

Charles Solomon led a great Q & A. Only one question from the audience went on meaninglessly long and Leslie put a stop to that after being more polite that I would have been. I am going to be waiting for this one on DVD.

The Pixar Story Tonight, the 11th

I have talked about this event before. I saw the Pixar Story at Comic Con (the first U.S. Screening sneak peak) and I am going back tonight to see it again. You too need to see this film. There should still be tickets at the door. Call the box office and ask: 323.461.2020, ext. 110.




Here are a couple of images of Leslie from the Comic Con Screening.

SCREENING:
Leslie Iwerks. is going to be at Cimematheque with her documentary The Pixar Story and Roy E. Disney tomorrow Dec. 11th.

The American Cinematheque presents:
The Pixar Story
A feature documentary by Leslie Iwerks

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
7:30pm

Hollywood Egyptian Theatre
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA
(between Las Palmas & McCadden)

Q&A Following with:

Director/Producer: Leslie Iwerks
Director Emeritus/Consultant, The Walt Disney Company: Roy E. Disney

For ticket and addt’l information visit:
http://www.americancinematheque.com/
http://egyptiantheatre.com/tixtheatregeneralinfo.htm#tix
http://www.thepixarstory.com/

If you haven`t seen it you need to. I set up a screening at last year`s Comic Con and I worked my schedule so that I would be in town so that I can see it again tonight.

Flash, Savior of the Universe

It is funny to me. The 2 major innovations in computer animation, 3-D and Flash, both have at their core Stop Motion Animation skill. 3-D is like Harryhausen without the need for support beams and wire removal and Flash is like paper cutouts.

I am not a big Flash animator. I know how to work the program and have done so from time to time. In fact I still have a copy of Flash 1 somewhere. But as a Stop Motion guy Flash has little to offer me. That does not mean that I don’t appreciate animation created in Flash or the program itself.

I first ran onto Flash back in the late 90s when I was teaching HTML and Web Development. As a tool for web animation it is frankly flawed by the need for internal locked timing and the need to set that time to the slowest machine downloading.

But as an animation tool Flash is a feature rich development tool that brings down production costs as assets accrue over the lifetime of a show. For many it has been the future of 2-D animation.

On Friday night February 8th at the 35th Annual Annie Awards Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi the creators of the FLASH computer software will be honored with the Ub Iwerks technical achievement award.

Jonathan Gay and Robert Tatsumi of FutureWave Software were brought together with Macromedia because of the Disney web site. They were joined by Gary Grossman in 1998 who created the Flash Player. The Flash Player may have the largest installed base of any Internet software.

These 3 innovators changed the future of the Internet and of 2-D animation. I have heard a lot of people bitch about Macromedia not supporting Flash as an animation tool. That is Macromedia. Jonathan Gay was a game designer/programmer/animator before he ever created SmartSketch (the core code that Future Splash was built on). And Future Splash Animator became Flash 1 after the Macromedia buyout.

Jonathan Gay and Robert Tatsumi created Future Splash Animator as an animation program. It is not their fault that the corporation they sold their start up to chose to treat their software as only a web utility.

Animators recognized the animation program under Flash and used it as an animation tool. John K. will tell you that he single-handedly created the field of Flash Animation. Sorry John, the best we can do is call you one of the first to recognize an animation tool as an animation tool. That may not be as much as you want but that is okay, I still love George Liquor.

Flash animation as a television animation tool has done something that the Local 839 has been unable to do, bring animation jobs back to the U.S.

When one of my students sold a show to Nick he was told that he could have it animated overseas as a traditional animation or animated in this country as a Flash animation. He wanted to have as much contact as he could with the animation team so he went with Flash. This is a common Sanrio.

Designers love Flash because it is their designs going up on the screen. Producers love it because each season is cheaper to create because the cycles and other assets build up in the library making it easier to reuse animation. And animators love it because it is affordable and they can compete with studios on an even playing field.

Jonathan, Gary and Robert you truly deserve the Ub Iwerks Award. And a thanks to Steve Gattuso for pushing so hard to get you guys the recognition you deserve.

Ken Southworth RIP

Yesterday Cartoon Brew announced the death of animator Ken Southworth. I first met Ken at an ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Expo back in the 90s. Everybody was going high tech with early ink and paint programs and other animation labor saving devises.

Ken had set up his drawing table and was animating a panning run cycle. (not an easy thing to do in 1 step I always have students do it in 2 steps) Ken was selling his animation training videos and workbooks. A very good system.

Ken was there with Roy Pointer who had filmed and edited the animation training for him. I was running the Central Country ROP animation department at the time and was teaching a lot of beginning 2-D animation.

Ken lived in Anaheim at the time. I talked my school into buying his trainer program. I spent some time over at his house/studio. I talked to him every time I ran onto him at events. Called him on the phone a number of times. Even suggested him for a teaching job once.

He loved animation. He would talk to you for hours about the subject. One time I was over at his house just after Tarzan came out. He had problems with some of the movement on the apes. Man is the creature that can throw overhanded. The sholder anatomy is not right for an ape to throw overhand. But the animators had them doing it anyway. He had problems with the storytelling too.

Ken started at Disneys on The Three Caballeros, worked on Song of the South, was the assistant to Milt Kahl on Alice in Wonderland, assisted Frank Thomas on the Stepmother from Cinderella. Also worked on Legend of Sleepy Hollow and a lot of shorts. None of this work got him a screen credit.

After 6 years he realized that there was no upward movement at Disneys at that time. He didn`t want to be an assistant for his whole career, so he went to Walt Lantz on the promise that he would get the chance to be an animator.

Over the years he worked almost everywhere, a lot of the time with Tex Avery. I just found out a month or 2 ago from reading credits that he worked stop motion on Davey & Goliath. Somehow we never got around to talking about stop motion. I have seen his credits turning up in a lot of 60s and 70s animation at Filmation and elsewhere. I don`t think that he remembered all the animation he worked on.

In later years he taught at Van Arts summers. He taught at Cal State Fullerton. He taught effects animation at Laguna College of Art & Design in 2000 back before they changed their name. He taught all over the place. And he never stopped loving animation.

Ken had a brother who was in the grocery business. Ken told me that his brother could not wait to retire. Ken never wanted to get out of the game even thou his hands seems to be crippled up with arthritis. That never seemed to stop him from drawing.



In the history of 2-D effects animation, Ken may have invented the splat in prospective when he was over at Disneys. He came up with it on his own because it seemed more logical but never knew if he was the first to do it. His supervisor questioned him on why he did it that way but liked it better whan the normal flat way of doing a splat. So it is hard to say now if this is Ken`s sole invention because it has spread out into the field to such an extent that it is now universal.

I haven`t seen much of Ken in resent years because he has moved from Anaheim. But I am still going to miss him. And I am still going to look for his name in all those old credits.

And the Winsor McCay Award Goes To:

Monday saw the announcement of the Annie Award nominees and juried awards. In the next few weeks I will be looking at some of the people to be honored at the 35th Annual Annie Awards.

If I had a time machine where would I go? There was a famous Bob Clampett presentation that almost everybody in the animation universe was at; Jerry Beck, Eric Goldberg, John Canemaker, Mark Kausler, Tom Sito, all the crazed 70s animation influx of people growing up obsessed with animated cartoons. When Bob introduced Otto Messmer from the stage it was like dropping a bombshell.

A friend of mine who sat behind John Canemaker at that famous presentation said that it looked like someone have hit John with a cattle prod. He sat up straight and ridged like his brain had overloaded. And then he made a beeline over to Otto once the meeting broke up.

John was not the only one in that crowd wanting to meet the man who had created Felix the Cat. But John was the one who wrote the definitive work and brought Otto Messmer into the light and gave him the long overdue credit for all that he had done in the early days of animation.

John is a true scholar with a single-minded drive to get at what happened in the history of animation and bring it into the light. I had the honor of working with John in a very small way on one of his historical pursuits, the tracing down of every step of the filmmaking process on one single frame from the 1940 Disney film Fantasia. He is one of the nicest guys in the industry. He was so truly thankful for my small contribution to his research.

If John Canemaker was only an animation historian he would have earned this Winsor McCay Award several times over. Add to that his work as an animation educator and an Oscar winning animator and you have an impressive career that is long over due for this kind of recognition.

John, you are a gentleman and truely a scholar and congradulations on winning the Winsor McCay Award.

Thank You

Both my Son and my daughter were typing papers over the weekend, which monopolized computer time. Ironically my daughter`s paper was on censorship which kept me from reporting anything in these pages. Don`t think I have a first admentment case against her.

This afternoon I pick up the voice and effects edit on Right to Left, the first of the ASIFA animation jams. Then it is off to the composer.

Speaking of ASIFA, I just got off the phone with Marcus Adams, Steve Gattuso and Jon Reeves. I have known for weeks that were getting Certificate of Merit awards at this year`s Annie Awards but today the Juried awards and the Annie nominations were made public so I can talk about them.

These 3 guys make ASIFA at San Diego Comic Con happen. There is no way I could put on that event year after year without the support of Marcus, Steve and Jon. They have so earned this award. In fact some of the board were surprised that they had not already been honored for their years of hard work in this and other areas.

Another worthy is Woodbury University. They have been so good to ASIFA and to me over the years. The Stop Mo Expo was only possible because Woodbury let us have the space for free. The same thing is true about the 2-D Expo that Jerry Beck put on.

Woodbury has also hosted the Annie Judging for the last 2 years, again at no cost. These are good people. I have held ASIFA volunteer meeting and recording sessions for the animation jam sound track that I will be picking up today at Woodbury. When every I ask Woodbury they are there for us.

Thank you Woodbury, thank you to my Comic Con crew Jon, Steve and Marcus and thank you Jo Jo and Gemma who have done so much for the ASIFA Archives.

CERTIFICATE OF MERIT
* Marcus Adams
* Jo Jo Batista
* Steve Gattuso
* Jon Reeves
* Gemma Ross
* Woodbury University

Here is the whole list of nominations and juried awards http://annieawards.org/foryourconsideration.html More on this in the days to come.

Bearded Thoughts

My Christmas beard is making me crazy. I have never grown it so long before. I am tripping over the damn thing. December 19th is D Day when I do my thing and play D Big Breaded Red One and then D bread can be trimmed.

Maybe it is some of the itchy chin madness that drives me but today I want to do a little meditation on what it takes to be a animator. I have been thinking of this of late because of my work with the Animation Educators` Forum. I get the question all the time from students. What classes do I need to take to become an animator? My answer never fails to throw students.

• Acting (improv)


• Physics


• Dance


• Martial Arts


• Film Studies


• Psychology


• Creative Writing


• History


• Criminology


• Architecture


• Surfing


• Fashion


• Sports


• Hair Dressing


• Political Science


• Interior Design


• Science


• Science Fiction


• Culinary Arts


• Archeology


• Dead Languages


• Mythology


• Religion


• The Occult


• Motion Studies


• and a hell of a lot of Life Drawing, color theory, painting, sculpture, film editing, sound engineering and Art and more Life Drawing.

You can`t lock yourself off and study just one thing like medicine or dentistry, Sure you can become a journeyman animator by just learning how to make the ball bounce and the flower sack hop around.

That is all you need to become what is called a wrist. But do you want to be a mindless artisan getting told what to do and getting a paycheck and punching the clock? You might as well become an accountant, there is more money in it and the hours are shorter.