I’ve always admired filmmakers who can make a good shoestring budget film. It’s no easy task and takes a lot of bull-headedness and luck. In my youthful days, Super-8 was the most accessible format, and some of my best childhood experiences revolved around making my own movies with my friends. The only concerns on those little epics were the financial concerns of film stock and processing, and other little trivial things, like the loyalty of the lead actor. Midway through shooting my most ambitious film, a Super-8 spaghetti western, my lead actor decided to get a summer job rather than finish my film. The film stopped dead in it’s tracks. Oh, the sorrow.
Robert Rodriquez is probably the most well-known of the DIY filmmakers, and he certainly deserved the open doors that came from El Mariachi.
Enter Federico Alvarez. Alvarez made a short film, under five minutes in length, at a cost of $500, and posted it on YouTube. Not a bad little film for what it is. Mandate Films flew him to LA to offer him a $1 million directors fee to write and direct a “compelling” original film for a $30 million budget. Mandate has put him in an apartment, given him a car, and assigned Sam Raimi to help him develop it. Not a bad deal from a $500.
Alvarez isn’t a college aged youngster, however. He’s 30 and runs a post production house in Montevideo, Uruguay. But even though he’s no spring chicken, his achievement is something to be admired.
Matthew Innis has posted some excellent quotes from the illustration giant Howard Pyle. These quotes were recorded and preserved by Pyle’s assistant Charles Defeo.
After the first half-hour of work, your lay-in should kill at a hundred yards.
If you can make a picture with two values only, you have a strong and powerful picture. If you use three values, it is still good, but if you use four or more, throw it away.
They will never shoot you for what you leave out of a picture.
Time Out invites Terry Gilliam to build a list of the 50 greatest animated films of all time. There are some odd decisions that many would object to (how is Disney’s Robin Hood better than Jungle Book?), but it’s a pretty decent list overall. Gilliam’s commentaries are interesting.
Hayao Miyazaki and Moebius shared an exposition of their work in Paris, and they sat down together for a joint interview.
Scott Westerfeld’s children’s book Leviathan was released this week. The book is another addition to the strange literary fare that seems to sell well to children these days, though I haven’t read it, and have no plans to.
What interests me more is the book “animatic” — the motion graphic trailer, made up of moving images from the book. This approach to promoting books is becoming more commonplace, and, anyone who has worked on animatics in After Effects or Combustion will know that, these things are an art form in-and-of-themselves.
I’m a huge fan of pencil tests. No, a pencil test isn’t something that measures the qualities of a pencil. A pencil test is the raw artistic performance of an animator before any assistant takes hold of it. The value in a pencil test is to observe how an animator thinks.
Only the most important elements, the irreducible story telling gestures and movements, are drawn. It’s like stripping away the visual candy of finish, color and effects to see deeply into the heart and soul of an animator. Sometimes that glimpse isn’t very valuable at all. But when the animator is a master of story and performance, the pencil test is far better in rough sketch than it is when clothed in complete artistic finish.
Given this truth, the Pencil Test Depot is a gem of a resource for animation appreciation.
Sidebar has recently interviewed artist Greg Manchess. Manchess talks about his days in art school, struggling to find teachers who taught art rather than philosophy, and his formative years working alongside Gary Kelly at Helmut Design. Greg also talks about his many projects, his artistic process, and current career situation.
Greg is not a believer in the popular idea of talent. A rare few actually have something we would call talent. For most of us excellence comes through strong training and hard work. This is an important lesson that would save many art students from stalling their artistic growth.
There is also an excellent article Subtle Distinctions that interviews Greg about his sensibilities and approach to painting. This was originally published in Step by Step Graphics magazine.
Glen Keane is animator of Tarzan, Fagin, the Beast, Aladdin, Long John Silver, and many other memorable characters in the Disney line-up. Glen is a master of character animation. His work is filled with emotion, personality and appeal. But there is one thing that stands out about Glen’s work that surpasses most other animators, and that is his work tells a clear and believable story.
The greatest challenges of any animation performance is to serve the story in a clear, believable fashion. In fact, this is the challenge of all the dramatic, storytelling arts, be it acting, directing, or writing. Is the story served clearly and believably?
Keane’s animation is clear in it’s communication of story and personality in every frame. It doesn’t have to be in motion to work. Stop on every frame and you will see these things in every pose. The poses are not confusing, they are simple and clear. The motion is not cumbersome, awkward or cliched, it is believable and filled with emotion. And it all fits within the dramatic needs of the story.
Keane also storyboarded many sequences in Tarzan. Here is a storyboard reel for one of his sequences.
Steven Spielberg spoke at the AFI in 1978. Here are some clips.
First, Spielberg talks about how many directors don’t know what they want. Animators, on the other hand, have to see everything. They have developed their imaginations to be able to visualize everything.
In this clip, Spielberg talks about how he uses storyboards and sketch artists to pre-visualize his ideas.
Brad Bird is one of the most visionary directors alive today. And he has guts. How many directors would have the nerve to go into Pixar and shake up the system to keep it fresh? How many directors would even know how to begin? Yet Bird did just this while writing and directing two of the most successful Pixar movies to date. The McKinsey Quarterly interviewed Brad Bird about his leadership at Pixar (posted at GigaOM).
