School, School & Student Animaiton Festival

The above image is last Monday night`s Animation History class at Cal State Fullerton. I have an enrollment of 98 students with about 14 more who want to add the class.

Today I am over at Laguna College of Art & Design for a teacher`s meeting before the start of classes.

I have spent the last couple of days going through all the submissions for the Student Animation Festival coming up in October (18th).

Tommorow I am at Cal State Long Beach for an Animation Educators` Forum dealing with the Student Festival: http://www.agni-animation.com/aef/fest.html

Some the the student animations are killer and some of them will not play. Lots of phone calls on that front.

I am so far behind on my email. After I post this I am going to try to get through some of it before the teacher`s meeting starts.

Pre-Semester Run Around

Nightmare week getting everything ready for the new semester, just finished writing 2 syllabi and the class websites that go with them.




Have yet to get everything straightened away checking in at Cal State Fullerton after 4 hours of hell walking all over campus. This time they added a new twist to their stations of the cross walk all over campus check in procedure of the damned by not having my contract ready. So no one would let me do any of the things I needed to do at all the departments all over campus that I had to go to, to check in, without me first fighting through the miles of red tape. Don`t even get me started on the book order for my class at the book store. Enough of that.

Spent yesterday getting my videos and DVDs in shape. Will be doing the same today. I have gotten way behind in documenting new additions to the collection. Which means cataloging, labeling and scanning an image for my database. At some point I will need to fill in all the details for each item. But not today.




Next up, going to be very busy with the Student animation Festival. A whole lot to do on that front. The deadline for submitting the already entered finished films is the 29th of this month. Then judging and right on toward morning.

Update

Just finished posting my new class for Fullerton. Have also updated my website with samples from version 7 of my ebook, Animation on a ShoeString.



Off to the el Cap tonight for the Ollie event.

Back to the Past

Yesterday, between the phone calls for the Student Film Festival, I spent some time in a time warp. I just picked up an Atari 2600 for my upcoming History of Videogames class at Laguna College of Art & Design.

The 2600 is not the first home console with interchangeable game cartridges but it is one of the first big winners of the console wars. One of the first systems to become the standard to meet or beat.



I picked up a number of games for the 2600 including the infamous E. T. movie tie in game. Movie tie in games have always been questionable from the beginning. With a built in audience often little effort is expended in the search for quality gameplay. E. T. was such a dog that warehouses of the unsold game cartridges of this title ended lifes buried in the dessert under a large slab on concrete. I am not kidding on this. It happened but not soon enough.





The game I am having the most fun with is Spider Fighter. There is a real Centipede feel to the game in the movement of the enemies and the shooting. This of course is all just an accident of design.




I already have a lot of these (most of these) games in ports for other systems but the controllers are completely different on those systems, better. So the game play is different. There is something about the clunky 2600 joystick with the one button firing control that makes the game more real then playing a port on Game Cube.

Speaking of ports, there are a number of arcade ports in the games that I bought for the 2600. Donkey Kong looks like a gingerbread man and Packman eats dashes not dots. They both play much as their arcade parent did, they just look different because of the memory limitations of the console.




Since I picked up the 2600 unit for student training I bought games for their importance in gaming history not for their quality. That means I picked up Football.

I have never understood the mentality behind sports games and I have not liked a sports game since Pong. But somebody bought and played these games in the past so they have an importance in the history of games even if they played no part in my own personal gaming history.

Normally I buy games I like, but now I find myself buying bad games in much the same way I buy bad animation: for the teaching value. Maybe if I show enough in the way of what not-to-do to my student in the classroom it will make the marketplace a little safer place in the future. Nobody sets out to design a bad game, it just works out that way far too many times.

Student Animation Festival Schedule of events

Animation Educators` Forum / ASIFA-Hollywood Student Animation Festival
Woodbury University Campus
Oct. 18th 2008
7500 Glenoaks Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91510

All events are Free and open to the public

• Portfolio Review 10 AM to 4 PM (rooms in the new business complex)


• Saturday Morning Rear Cartoons 10 AM to Noon (Theater)


• Screening of student festival films 1 PM to 2 PM (Theater)


• State of the Animation Industry 2 to 3 (Theater)


• Breaking into Animation 3 to 4 (Theater)


• Screening of Student films 4 to 5 (Theater)


• Meet and Greet with food 5 to 6 (theater lobby)


• Awards Show and screening of winners 6 to 7:30 (Theater)

http://www.agni-animation.com/aef/fest.html

From the Email Bag

Hi Larry!

This is S_ _ _ _ L_ _ _ _. I was in your history of animation class last semester. I have been meaning to ask you some questions about copywriting (sic) and preparing a show idea to networks. Me (sic) and J_ _ _ _ N_ _ _ _ have an idea for a serialized cartoon show that would probably do best on a network like Adult Swim, Spike, or Sci-Fi. Do you know what we would need to do to make sure we are properly protected before we attempt to pitch it? Also what type of things do you think networks would like to see in a presentation portfolio for something like that. Is it good to have a pilot ready? I remember you saying I needed to copyright it with some type of screen actors guild? Any information would help out a lot. We are really excited about this project. Once we get some things together we would love to show it to you if you had any time! Thank you very much!
-S_ _ _ _ L_ _ _ _ and J_ _ _ _ N_ _ _ _
_&_ Productions

S_ _ _ _,
Good to hear from you. No really, I have been going through some rough times with a bunch of jerks and it is so nice to hear from real people. Reminds me what it is all about.

Enough of that. Copyright. Any idea you are going to sell to the networks they are going to want to own. The thing is to make sure you own it first before you sign that VIACOM contract with the 35 pages stating what is not considered profit.

Here is the link to the copyright office: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/ Copyright is $45 by mail and $35 over the Internet. They no longer even offer the printable forms at their website so they really want you register by Internet.

Your first project you are going to lose / sell. It is called paying dues. The idea is to make sure that your product (sorry - that is what they call it) is your Intellectual Property and not considered Work-For-Hire so that you can revoke the copyright 25 to 33 years down the road and get your characters back in the 35th year so that you have something to live on in your old age.

The only way you can hope to own your first project is to do it on your own in a media where it makes a name for itself. (EXAMPLE: Books, Self-Published Comic Books, Internet or Film Festivals) Then you have a little leverage. Also publishing prove copyright and kills the question of Work-For-Hire.

Less is more with a presentation and pitch. Some character design sheets with a mini bio on the main characters. An overall series idea, (EXAMPLE: a retirement home for imaginary friend that kids no longer believe in). If you can do a short pilot, do so. But short like maybe a minute or three. They don`t want to see everything worked out episode by episode. That way is death. That leaves them nothing to add and shape. And they are going to want to add and shape to prove that they are creative too. This small package is what you would send in for copyright.

Here is a link to a very good book of TV animation by my friend Jean Ann Wright - Animation Writing and Development: From Script Development to Pitch http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0240805496/qid=1120503556/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/103-0200484-5559859?n=507846&s=books&v=glance

Ideas can not be copyrighted. So they can see what you are doing and say to themselves good idea let`s do that and then say to you sorry not interested. Most times they won`t do this because they want your next idea and the one after that and will not have access to you if they screw you over too much. The more power you have the more you can get on your next deal. And that is what you are working for.

Here is a link to the The Writers Guild of America West: http://www.wga.org/ You can register you script with them for a small fee. It use to be $35 dollars. Don`t know what it is now.

You might also want to take part in the free Portfolio Review at the Animation Educators` Forum / ASIFA-Hollywood Student Animation Festival on October 18th on Woodbury University Campus. (See link below) The whole festival is free and open to the public.

Festival Update

Judges named for Animation Educators` Forum / ASIFA-Hollywood Student Animation Festival.

• Jorge R. Gutierrez - Creator and Executive Producer of El Tigre


• Floyd Norman - Disney Legend and master storyman at Disney, Pixar, etc


• Tim Johnson - DreamWorks Director of Over the Hedge


• Aki Umemoto - Pioneer of CGI Commercials and Creative Director at Mattel for 25 years


• Robin Brigstocke - Director and Storyboard Supervisor at King of the Hill

For those that don`t know, the Festival will be taking place on October 18th on the Woodbury University campus.

It will be an all day event featuring free professional portfolio review. Currently we are thinking of having industry professionals reviewing work in 4 areas:

Character Animation - Feature, TV and Games

Pre-Production - Production Design, Story, Storyboards, Color Styling,

Production & Effects Animation - 2-D and 3-D effects animation, Lighting, rigging and Texturing for Features, TV and Games

Post-Production - Compositing and Editing

The Festival Website is update at this URL http://www.agni-animation.com/aef/fest.html

The festival is a joint venture between the Animation Educators` Forum and ASIFA-Hollywood and is sponsored by Woodbury University, DigiCel FlipBook and Central Visual Information Systems, Inc.