Frozen Fever
Why Frozen’s Success Matters
Digital Master
Interview with Makoto Shinkai
www.animart.com
March 2014
Editorial Frank Peñalver Doris Caicedo Diseño Editorial
Authors Thomas J. Mclean Lucy O’ Brian Ramin Zahed Kevin T. Rodriguez Wesley Fenion Robin Allan
Websites ign.com animationmagazine.net tested.com awn.com examiner.com
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Color Schemes
Editor’s Note This magazine is for academic purposes. The articles, pictures, advertisements, and opinions are properties of their owners and not of Frank Peùalver 3
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Contents
Animation and the Oscars PG 8
Why Frozen’s Sucess Matters
PG 12
Here There Be Boxtrolls
PG 15 Infographic
Does CGI Animation Really Make more than 2D? PG 16
First Reviews of Folman’s ‘The Congress’
2D Animation in the Digital Era PG 18 PG 20 5
Walt Disney’s 9 Old Men & The Art of Animation PG 28
In Theaters and Coming Soon Mr. Peabody & Sherman DreamWorks Animation March 7, 2014 Director: Rob Minkoff Writer: Craig Wright, based on the series by Jay Ward Starring: Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Ariel Winter, Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann, Stanley Tucci, Lake Bell, Patrick Warburton, Mel Brooks, Leila Birch Based on the beloved 2D segments from Jay Ward’s Rocky and Bullwinkle show, the time-traveling adventure kicks off when a mishap with Mr. Peabody’s ingenious WABAC machine sets the brilliant canine, his adopted boy Sherman and schoolmate Penny on a race through the great events of history to save the future.
The Wind Rises
Rio 2
Studio Ghibli, Disney
Blue Sky Studios, Fox
February 21, 2014
April 11, 2014
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Director: Carlos Saldanha
Writer: Hayao Miyazaki
Writers: Don Rhymer, Carlos Saldanha
Starring: (English cast) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Mandy Patinkin, Mae Whitman, Werner Herzog, Jennifer Grey, William H. Macy
Starring: Ann Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Jamie Foxx, Jake T. Austin, Andy Garcia, Kristin Chenoweth, John Leguizamo, Jemaine Clement, Amandla Stenberg, Bruno Mars, Rita Moreno, George Lopez, Will.i.Am, Tracy Morgan
Based on the original manga by Miyazaki, the film centers on Jiro a young man who dreams of flying and building beautiful airplanes. Against the backdrop of early 20th century Japan, Jiro becomes an accomplished engineer and falls in love with the pretty Nahoko, but is haunted by tragedy and the repercussions of his greatest invention: the infamous Zero fighter plane.
When Blu, Jewel and their three hatchlings strike out from the magical city of Rio to the wilds of the Amazon rainforest, our feathered hero must go beak-to-beak with the vengeful Nigel and try to fit in with his most fearsome adversary of all: his fatherin-law. A cast of colorful birds and other critters also feature in this music-filled sequel.
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How to Train Your Dragon 2
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
DreamWorks Animation
Summertime Ent., Prana, Clarius Ent.
June 13, 2014
May 9, 2014
Director: Dean DeBlois
Directors: Will Finn, Dan St. Pierre
Writer: Dean DeBlois, based on the books by Cressida Cowell
Writers: Adam Balsam, Randi Barnes, based on the novel by Roger Stanton Baum
Starring: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig, Kit Harington, Cate Blanchett, Djimon Hounsou
Starring: Lea Michele, Martin Short, Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Kelsey Grammer, Megan Hilty, Hugh Dancy, Oliver Platt, Bernadette Peters, Patrick Stewart
Five years on since Hiccup and Toothless have united the Vikings of Berk with their dragon companions, the inseparable duo take to the skies to chart unmapped territories while the rest of the gang are busy challenging each other to dragon races. When one of their adventures leads them to discover a secret ice cave home to hundreds of new dragon species and the mysterious Dragon Rider, Hiccup and Toothless find themselves in the middle of a battle to protect the peace and change the future of men and dragons.
This CG indie follows beloved L. Frank Baum heroine Dorothy Gale returning to a devastated Kansas before finding a way to return to Oz, only to discover her old pals Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and the entire land are in grave danger. With the help of a marshmallow man, china doll princess, talking tugboard and sage owl, Dorothy sets out to stop the wicked Jester who wants to take control by turning the Oz folk into marionettes.
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Animation and The Oscars The Academy Awards are given each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the best films and achievements of the previous year. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for animated films. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first given for films made in 2001. Academy Award nominations and winners are chosen by the members of the AMPAS. If there are 16 or more films submitted for the category, the winner is voted from a shortlist of five films, which has happened four times, otherwise there will only be three films on the shortlist. [1] Additionally, eight eligible animated features must have been theatrically released in Los Angeles County within the calendar year for this category to be activated. The final results are presented at
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the Academy Awards ceremony in January. Animated films can be nominated for other categories but have rarely been so: Beauty and the Beast (1991) was the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture. Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) also received Best Picture nominations after the Academy expanded the number of nominees. Waltz with Bashir (2008) is the only animated picture ever nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (though it failed to earn a nomination in the Best Animated Feature category). Thomas J. McLean
Best Animated Feature Film
THE CROODS
DESPICABLE ME 2
Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco and Kristine Belson
Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin and Chris Meledandri
The Crood family lives in a prehistoric world filled with dangerous animals and unsettling changes. When they encounter a young man named Guy, a member of a more evolved group of humans, only teenage daughter Eep is willing to listen to his warnings that the world as they know it is ending and the Croods will need to alter their way of living if they are to survive.
With the formerly villainous Gru now a doting father to his three adopted daughters, the talents he once employed for evil are largely wasted in his new role as a jam and jelly maker. When he is approached by Lucy Wilde, a secret agent from the Anti-Villain League, Gru finds not only a new focus for his abilities but a possible romantic interest as well.
THE WIND RISES
ERNEST & CELESTINE
Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki
Benjamin Renner and Didier Brunner
As a boy, Jiro Horikoshi dreams of someday building the planes that his poor eyesight will never allow him to fly. After training as an engineer, Jiro puts his talents to work for Mitsubishi and becomes a leading innovator in aviation design, while Japan moves through the turbulent events of the 1920s and ‘30s that will carry it closer to the Second World War.
Beneath a village inhabited by bears lies a subterranean community of mice who steal from their ursine neighbors and particularly value their teeth. When Celestine, an orphaned mouse studying dentistry but dreaming of art, meets a sensitive, talented bear named Ernest, the interests they share lead to a bond between them that challenges the traditional enmity between their species.
Frozen Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee and Peter Del Vecho Sisters Elsa and Anna enjoy an idyllic life in the enchanted kingdom ruled by their parents until Elsa’s magical ability to create ice and snow around her proves a threat to those she loves. Emerging for her own coronation after several years of self-imposed isolation, Elsa flees her home in distress when her uncontrollable powers transform the kingdom into a frozen realm.
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Best Animated Short Film
Feral
Get A Horse!
Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden
Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim
A wild boy who has grown up in the woods is found by a hunter and returned to civilization.
Mickey Mouse and his friends are enjoying a wagon ride until Peg-Leg Pete shows up with plans to ruin their day.
Possessions
Mr. Hublot
Shuhei Morita
Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares
A man seeking shelter from a storm in a dilapidated shrine encounters a series of household objects inhabited by goblin spirits.
The eccentric, isolated Mr. Hublot finds his carefully ordered world disrupted by the arrival of Robot Pet.
Frozen took home the Best Animated Feature Oscars Sunday night, with the French short Mr. Hublot winning the best animated short film. Frozen also won the song category for “Let It Go,” with the winner announced just after the song was performed to a standing ovation by Idina Menzel. Here are the comments made by Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee and Peter Del Vecho in accepting the Oscar for Frozen:
Room on the Broom Max Lang and Jan Lachauer A genial witch and her cat are joined on their broom by several friends as they set off on an adventure.
“Lee: We’re gonna do this together because we’re collaborative, but we’ll be fast. Del Vecho: First, we want to thank each and every person at Walt Disney Animation Studios, our family. We are so proud of you for making the film as magical as it is. And we’re bringing this home to you. Lee: And for our personal families and dearest friends, thank you so much for supporting us through this hard work. And for really being our inspiration. Buck: And finally we’d like to dedicate this to our guardian angel, that’s my son, Ryder Buck. Thank you, Ryder. Lee: Thank you.”
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Frozen took home the Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song Oscars Sunday night, with the French short Mr. Hublot winning the best animated short film.
Here are the comments made by Laurent Witz in accepting the best animated short film Oscar for Mr. Hublot: “Sorry, lot of emotion. I have to take a paper. Thank you, the Academy, for this award. Thank you for supporting shorts and new talents. It’s my first movie as director and producer. The first movie of Alexandre as co-director. I feel it’s an American dream. Thank you Stéphane Halleux, your fantastic [unintelligible] and artwork, you deserve an Oscar, my friend. Thank you, Mickael, Pascal, David
[unintelligible], Li-Lo and the rest of the team. Their work was [unintelligible]. Many thanks to Film Fund Luxembourg, Guy, here, the CNC [unintelligible], ARTE. Thank you to my family and especially Audrey and my children. Thank you. I love you. And finally, thank you Mr. Hublot for making this dream become reality. Thank you very much. Merci.”
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Disney’s latest animated hit is an important change of direction for the animation studio. Disney’s latest animated film Frozen has done very, very well. Not just better than analysts might have predicted, but record-breakingly well. It recently eclipsed Finding Nemo as the highest grossing original (that is, a non-sequel) animated movie of all time, and with a sing-along version hitting theatres in the U.S. and home entertainment releases still to come, its success will only continue. Frozen deserves its financial wins and many critical plaudits because it is a very good movie, made by passionate, talented people. But it is also an important movie, introducing audiences to a Disney unafraid to eschew old-fashioned ideals and present us with stories and characters more reflective of our reality, more pertinent to us, than anything made by the studio that preceded it. The film is, in turn, the most subversive of Disney’s efforts and also one of its most traditional. It seduces us with familiar Disney fairy tale tropes before abruptly turning its focus away from young romantic love towards the deeper and more complicated bond shared by two sisters. When considering other
“The film is, in turn, the most
subversive of Disney’s efforts and also one of its most traditional.” animated features from big studios, perhaps only Pixar’s Up – with its story about a relationship between a widowed retiree and a young boy – eclipses it in courage to shy away from what is deemed to be universally marketable. It seems that even Disney deemed Frozen’s story unmarketable – well, presumably to anyone but young girls – considering it wasn’t really marketed at all. The movie was sold to us in trailers and posters as an ambiguous concoction of nondescript human characters, loveable animals and hilarious sidekicks, with central focus placed on Olaf, the film’s companionable snowman. Frozen is not, in fact, about the adventures of Olaf, although he is undoubtedly one of the film’s
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highlights. It is about Anna and Elsa, new, richly drawn female Disney characters who seem miles away from the demure cookie cut outs of many of their princess predecessors. Oh, and contrary to what we might have taken away from the trailer, they sing. A lot. Like most girls on the verge of adulthood, Anna and Elsa are unsure of themselves, clumsy, scared, excitable, naïve, spontaneous, and dangerous with an adult power they’re not yet sure how to wield. This power is literally realised in older sister Elsa, who freezes everything she touches; a ‘curse’ so repellent to her that she suppresses it until it’s fit to burst. This idea of ‘conceal, don’t feel’ – Elsa’s mantra and the hook on which much of the film’s music and lyrics
Frozen
hangs - is surely something we can all identify with, particularly during the chaotic period of adolescence. It is unsurprising that Elsa’s character has been read a million different ways by a million different critics, whether as a Christian metaphor for the flawed human race (forgiven by the faithful Anna, aka Jesus) or as a reflection of the experience of coming out; belted out, loud and proud, from the top of a mountain. Younger sister Anna, on the other hand, is as open to life’s delights as Elsa is closed, possessing a mostly adorable joie de vivre. Anna is Disney’s first real goofy princess, satisfying her emotional needs with chocolate, shooting her mouth off inappropriately, clumsily falling over things in her enthusiasm; she would border on a Manic Pixie Dream Girl if she wasn’t far more assertive than
that trope allows. Anna is impulsive, which leads her to make stupid mistakes, but she’s also brave, adventurous and strong. There are of course men in Frozen too, but they are not there as the inevitable goal for the women to reach at the end. In a remarkable change of pace for Disney, stocky, sweet-natured Kristoff and smoothly charming Hans are not the solution to Anna and Elsa’s problems, or companions to ride off into the sunset with after brief, chaste love affairs. It’s here that the film really parts ways with Disney’s traditional concerns. Frozen is about accepting oneself, warts and all (although I do wish these girls looked a little more realistic and less like Bratz dolls), and in turn, learning to accept love from others. It shows little girls – and
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little boys I’m sure – that there isn’t a singular definition of ‘true love,’ that there can be more at the end of the movie than someone to sweep the heroine off her feet. In very simplistic, easy to understand terms, it stresses that it’s alright to be different, and that message is important, even if it sits imperfectly formed at the back of kids’ minds while they quote loveable Olaf verbatim for the rest of the year. Interestingly, Frozen has continued to do well despite the now universal awareness that A: at its core it’s about two princesses and B: it’s a big ol’ musical, aspects of the film quietly shunted from that original marketing campaign. Like Up before it, Frozen reminds us that ‘difficult sells’ make for some of the most interesting movies, and tell some of the most important truths.
Lucy O’Brien
Here There Be Boxtrolls Focus Features and Oregon-based animation house LAIKA, the companies behind the Oscar-nomninated stopmotion film ParaNorman, have announced their third collaborative project is set to begin with the kick off of production on The Boxtrolls. The new movie will be released nationwide by Focus on October 17, 2014, Focus CEO James Schamus and LAIKA President & CEO Travis Knight stated in the announcement. The Boxtrolls is a 3-D stop-motion/ CG hybrid animated feature, based on the popular fantasy adventure novel Here Be Monsters by Alan Snow. The film will be a comedic fable unfolding in the posh Victorian-era town of Cheesebridge obsessed with wealth, class and fine cheeses. Below its streets live the four monstrous Boxtrolls who come out at night to steal the townsfolk’s children… and cheese–or so it is thought. The Boxtrolls are actually quirky and lovable oddballs raising a human boy named Eggs. When their underground community is targeted by a malicious exterminator, the Boxtrolls must rely on their adopted boy and an adventurous rich girl to bridge the two worlds.
The Boxtrolls is being directed by Anthony Stacchi (co-director of the hit animated feature Open Season) and Graham Annable (story artist on Coraline and ParaNorman), and produced by David Ichioka and Travis Knight. The voice cast includes Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley, Academy Award nominee Toni Collette, Elle Fanning (marking her fourth movie with Focus), Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Game of Thrones), Emmy Award nominee Jared Harris (Mad Men), Simon Pegg (Star Trek), Nick Frost (of Focus’ upcoming The World’s End), Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd), and Tracy Morgan (30 Rock).
“The Boxtrolls is a visually dazzling mash-up of gripping detective story, absurdist comedy and steampunk adventure with a surprisingly wholesome heart,” says LAIKA’s Knight. “It’s Dickens by way of Monty Python. Tony [Stacchi] and Graham [Annable] have crafted a strange and beautiful world replete with fantastical creatures, good-for-nothing reprobates, madcap antics, and riproaring feats of derring-do. But at its core, like all LAIKA films, The Boxtrolls is a moving and human story with timelessness and powerful emotional resonance. We’re thrilled to partner with Focus Features and Universal to bring this remarkable story to family audiences around the world.”
Ramin Zahed
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First Reviews of Folman’s ‘The Congress’ Oscar-nominated director Ari Folman’s new pic The Congress opens the 45th Director’s Fortnight sidebar during the Cannes Film Festival on May 16. The sci-fi movie mixes live-action with animation and stars Robin Wright, Paul Giamatti, Jon Hamm, Harvey Keitel, Danny Huston and Frances Fisher. The much-anticipated feature by the gifted Israeli director is based on The Futurological Congress by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, who also wrote the famous sci-fi book Solaris. The plot follows the story of an aging actress (Robin Wright), who agrees to having herself scanned and turned into a digital actress for the sake of a single last, large payment to support her disabled son. The studio (which is cleverly called Miramount) can use her digital image in any way they see fit, and she is forever banned from acting again. Of course, she doesn’t quite realize how extensive the ramifications of her actions are. Here are some of the early reviews of the film, which doesn’t have a U.S. distributor yet. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter writes:
“Ambition markedly outstrips achievement in The Congress, a visionary piece of speculative fiction that drops the ball after a fine setup. Director Ari Folman follows his breakthrough 2008 feature Waltz With Bashir with a different style of animation applied not to a historical war story but to a look at an alternative future based on transfigured real people. Initial viewer curiosity gives way to impatience and finally ennui in the film’s second half, spelling lukewarm commercial prospects for this commendable but shortfalling…”
assigned to Robin for two decades and has, of course, fallen in love with her.”
Pete Debruge of Variety opines: “Conceptually speaking, such a satire could only work as animation, but even then, it doesn’t quite come together Admirers of director Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir should seriously adjust their expectations. For this [animated] portion, Folman ditches the cutout style of Bashir (or the obvious-fit approach of Asian anime) for a loonier toon look, resembling a cross between Fleischer “Abandoning the ‘cut-out’ style that Studios’ Betty Boop shorts and was so striking in Waltz With Bashir, the drug-addled aesthetic of Ralph Folman here harks back to earlier, Bakshi (Cool World).” more traditional animation forms that perhaps aspire to the 1930s Fleischer “The style of this environment is lively model but, in the event, more closely enough, opening with a delightful resemble the psychedelic aspects of bit of Yellow Submarine-worthy Yellow Submarine and the work of surrealism, though the rules are Richard Williams. Plants and flowers virtually impossible to follow. Beyond grow out of buildings, shapes flow the recurring symbol of her son’s red and morph from one configuration kite, there’s little to connect Wright to another, none of it particularly to this hallucinogenic animated space attractive or enchanting. The themes where disgruntled citizens are free to and concerns that set the film’s pass as the persona of their choice, agenda early on are still present but be it Marilyn or Magritte, Grace Jones recede, just as Robin’s kids take a back or Jesus.” seat to the undynamic character of the Ramin Zahed animator (Jon Hamm) who has been
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2D Animation in the Digital Era 20
Interview with Japanese Director Makoto Shinkai One of the anime’s emerging stars leads a generation of artists using Wacoms and Photoshop, rather than traditional cels, to create animation. In May 2001, a young Japanese graphic designer named Makoto Shinkai left his job at a video game company to create a short animated film called Voices of a Distant Star. Despite having almost no experience combining narrative and animation, Shinkai told a uniquely poignant story, blending science fiction with the drama and angst of adolescence. More importantly, the short film looked incredibly good for a oneman project. Voices was a breakout success for an amateur animator, and Shinkai has created three more films in the past decade, establishing himself as one of the anime industry’s preeminent creators. Shinkai belongs to a new generation of animators who have never worked in the traditional penand-paper format, and Voices of a Distant Star is a testament to how dramatically computers have changed the animation industry in the past decade. He created the 25 minute short in seven months, using only a Power Mac G4 at a time when PowerPC processors were still reaching for the 1GHz barrier. “If I had been born 10 years earlier, I don’t think I would be an animator,” wrote Makoto Shinkai in an email interview about the evolving landscape of 2D and 3D animation. “Oh, I might have drawn some things, but I doubt I would have been able to do it for a living. When I became obsessed, in my twenties, with the need to express myself, it was just at the point when computers and digital tools had matured enough to make that possible.” Aspiring animators can now create their passion projects with
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technology that’s cheaper and more approachable than it’s ever been, and Shinkai’s follow-ups to Voices of a Distant Star have embraced that technology to create some of the industry’s most beautiful imagery. All of his art has a distinct visual feel thanks to a combination of warm lighting and detailed vistas. But Shinkai proposes an important distinction between the technology and style of digital animation: Though the process is brand new, the technique is still rooted in the cel tradition. And tradition is slow to change.
A Brief History of 2D Animation In 2009, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog heralded Walt Disney Pictures’ grand return to “traditional” animation, a process they abandoned after the release of Home on the Range in 2004. Traditional is a funny term in the world of animation: It’s often used to distinguish 2D animation from the 3D computergenerated imagery of a Pixar film like Toy Story, but tradition is about more than 2D or 3D. It’s about technique. Since the 1910s, animated characters have been drawn and colored on transparent pieces of celluloid (later cellulose acetate) called cels. Cels were a huge breakthrough; without them, animating one part of a frame required redrawing the entire image. With layers of cels, static objects could be drawn once and reused, while characters could be drawn again and again to create movement at 24 frames per second. Disney hasn’t used cels for more than 20 years. The Little Mermaid, released in 1989, was the final Disney film to be animated with painstakingly hand-painted cels. Beginning with The Rescuers Down Under in 1990, Disney moved to a new system called CAPS. They still drew each frame of
Shinkai created his first animated short in 2001 using a Mac and a drawing tablet. His later films still follow the same visual style.
The Little Mermaid, released in 1989, was the final Disney film to be animated with painstakingly hand-painted cels.
The flatly drawn characters in “The Place Promised in our Early Days� stand ou against their surroundings. Shinkai´s characters have slowly become more detailed.
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Cel shading camouflages CGI in “Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below¨”.
Visual and thematically, “Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below” follows in Miyazaki´´s footsteps, but Shinkia´s art style is still instantly recognizable..
Princess Mononoke was the last Ghibli Film to be traditionally painted (and the first to use digital paint and CGI in some scenes).
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Clouds and dramatic lighting combine a classical visual style with digital technology.
animation by hand, but the line art were scanned and digitally colored on computers. Cels were obsolete. In that sense, The Little Mermaid was Disney’s final work of “traditional” animation. After decades of sluggish technological change, the last 20 years of computer development have affected the animation process tremendously. Animations can be drawn and colored digitally, but even today some productions like The Simpsons are drawn on paper and scanned for digital inking and painting. We’re living in an age of digital animation, even if some creators are slow to adapt.
“I would go so far as to say that it’s being held back by an emphasis on recreating the techniques of handdrawn animation,” he continued. “That’s one reason why, even though we’re in the digital age, new ways of representing things have a hard time getting a foothold. I think there are places outside of the realm of Japanese commercial animation where you can find digital animation used as a purely new technique. I think those creating amateur 3DCG and flash animations are able to freely master digital animation to a much greater degree than those in the industry.”
After creating Voices of a Distant Star entirely on his own (and recording But what does that entail, exactly? an early audio track of the story’s two protagonists with his fiancee), The New Generation of Shinkai quickly became a part of the Digital Japanese industry. He wrote and “Digital animation, at least in the case directed a 90-minute film titled The of the Japanese animation industry Place Promised in Our Early Days (my films included), is a direct (2004) with a staff of more than successor of hand-drawn animation,” 30 artists and animators. His next Shinkai wrote. That doesn’t just mean project, the hour-long 5 Centimeters animation houses like Miyazaki’s Per Second (2007), employed a Studio Ghibli are transitioning to similarly sized staff. computers after decades of handAll three stories share similar drawn animation--it means they’re still lingering, at least mentally, in the themes; they’re set against science fiction backdrops but focus more on cel era.
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relationships between characters struggling to connect with one another. That struggle comes across in the character designs--the film’s young protagonists often have minimal facial features that reflect their stunted self-expression. The pairing of lovelorn teenagers and science fiction is also deliberate. “I think that science fiction can, by creating extreme situations and settings, draw out the essence of human relationships,” Shinkai wrote. “The ability of science fiction to create thought experiments...is one of the things I like about it.” All three animations feature watercolor clouds, vividly colored skies and dramatic lighting. The latter is a digital giveaway: Shinkai uses lens flares like a slightly more reserved J.J. Abrams. “In the analog age...the cel and the background...were physically separate and there were inescapable restrictions on lighting caused by this,” he wrote. “Now that everything’s digital, we can be much more sophisticated with lighting and color schemes. For example, I think about how environmental and reflected light will apply to a character, how
to match that light to the color of the background, and then create the image as a whole. If a character is in a green forest below a blue sky, I’ll adjust the color of the character’s shadow to be green or blue. Lens flares are the same. Rather than just placing a flare in a cool way above the picture, I keep in mind what kind of flare would be created and how as I draw.” Even though some animators are struggling to switch to digital technology, Shinkai doesn’t think it’s evolving fast enough. He’s essentially been using the same tools--Adobe Photoshop and After Effects with a Wacom tablet--since Voices of a Distant Star in 2001. “RGB 24-bit color depth (16 million colors), anti-aliasing, layers, undo, and pressure sensors on tablets were the essential elements behind the impact digital tools had 10 years ago,” he wrote. “But even though ten years have passed, that hasn’t really changed. CPUs are a lot faster, resolutions, RAM, and storage space have gotten a lot bigger, but the core experience of drawing digital art hasn’t changed in ten years. For this reason, I feel that digital art creation is in a bit of a rut. I’m hoping that
innovations will come to the graphics tools world in the future, such as happened with multi-touch on smart phones.”
Getting Away With CGI in the Digital Age
As anime moved towards digital inking and painting in the late 90s and early 2000s, studios turned to another digital technology to help cut production costs: 3D. Cowboy Bebop, released in 1997, used 3D models in place of hand-drawn images for rotating space stations. In 2002, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex used 3D renders for robots and cars. Disney was using 3D in its films as far back as The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective in the mid-1980s. Computer generated imagery is cheaper, but it stuck out like a sore thumb in early 2D/3D hybrids and still lacks the detail of the 2D art surrounding it. The 2004 CG anime film Appleseed used cel shading to make its 3D character models look traditionally animated. If there’s anything that will make you appreciate 2D animation, it’s Appleseed’s attempt at mimicry-animation’s own uncanny valley of sorts.
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Shinkai uses CGI, too, but you might never notice it. “Animation is created from two elements, the characters and the background,” he begins. “Since the intrinsic feel of 3DCG is different from either of those elements, if it’s just used as-is it introduces an unwanted third element to the animation. In other words, it prevents the animation from feeling like a unified whole. To prevent this, when using 3DCG, I try as much as possible to make it look like either part of the cel or the background. “I’m not really drawn to 3DCG as an individual....But the down side to hand-drawn animation is the cost. Because of budget and scheduling issues, there’s going to continue to be a need to substitute in 3DCG. And as long as that’s the case, there’s a need for the technology to continue to advance in its ability to represent things.” Careful use of CGI can blend almost seamlessly into a 2D world, but there’s still something a bit off about it. It’s the movement that gives it away, an unnatural, tooperfect smoothness missing from the animation around it.
Shinkai writes: “When using CG models for a flock of swallows, I use cel shading to make it look like the models are part of the cel (by giving them a black outline and flat color). For a turning windmill, I use texture mapping with background art to make the 3D object appear more like the background.” CGI is inevitable in modern 2D animation--the animation industry has to keep costs down, and no one can afford to dedicate 30 years to insanely detailed faux-3D hand-drawn animation. Thankfully, it’s come a long, long way since The Rescuers Down Under, as Shinkai’s latest film proves.
The Lingering Influence of Analog Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below, released in 2011, departs from Makoto Shinkai’s previous work, trading sci-fi and Tokyo’s urban jungle for the verdant countryside and imaginative fantasy world of a Studio Ghibli film. It’s his longest, most detailed film, but Miyazaki’s influence reaffirms that even the newest digital art has ties to the hand-drawn tradition.
back at the cel animation of Studio Ghibli films like Castle in the Sky, it also demonstrates an evolving art style and technical sophistication. When the next digital leap Shinkai hopes for arrives, he may be one of the first to break new ground. In light of 2011’s devastating quake, his next project is a short film meant to capture Tokyo as it stands today. For now, animators in the United States are struggling to sell 2D to audiences enamored with Pixar and Dreamworks 3D, while the bulk of the Japanese industry is slowly catching up to modern technology. And despite the fact that digital opens up editing and lighting options that didn’t exist with cels, Shinkai points out that technology has its own drawbacks: “I feel that the footing of Japanese animation production has become more and more precarious since the shift to digital. The basic production tools we use are primarily foreignmade commercial software (Adobe After Effects, etc.). Speaking in the extreme, areas of Japanese animation technology are controlled by what Adobe decides to include in each new version of their software. Current computers can’t properly open After Effect files from 10 years ago. A SCSI drive from 10 years ago can’t be connected to modern computers and a CD-R burned 10 years ago is already reaching the end of its life expectancy.
“As an amateur I might have been part of the vanguard of the digital animation generation, but in terms of aesthetics I probably belong to the generation of analog age animation directors,” wrote Shinkai. “I say this because the commercial Japanese animated films of the 80s and 90s are What we, as filmmakers, need to emphasize are the things that we still what come to mind when I think do actually have control over; that of what the ideal for visuals is.” is, the story, the original art, the artistic concepts. Those are things for Another leap forward in digital toolswhich, ultimately, no easy distinction -or a breakthrough hit from a young between analog and digital exists.” animator who, like Shinkai, never learned the craft of cel animationWesley Fenlon -could be key to 2D animation’s longevity and innovation. Young animators getting their starts today are even further removed from the techniques that codified the visual style of 2D animation in the 20th century. At 39, Shinkai still has a long career ahead of him. Though Children looks
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Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men & The Art Of Animation Robin Allan reviews John Canemaker’s new book, Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men & The Art Of Animation This is an outstanding addition to our studies of animation in general and Disney animation in particular. John Canemaker has given us a lively and fascinating account of the famous nine old men of the golden age of Disney animation. There are many books about Disney and few of them are of any worth -- most are glossy coffee-table accounts of particular films, hagiographic to the point of risibility (for example, note the number of self-congratulatory comments in the recent book about the lamentable Fantasia/2000). Some are inaccurate, some critically enclosed in their own arcane academic jargon. John Canemaker’s studies -- this is his third major work on Disney art -- are meticulous and scholarly but without the gobbledygook of academe, and they are enlivened with his own spirited, idiosyncratic and racy style. To put it simply, he is a good read. Although I have some criticism about the pictures in the new book, in general I prefer this layout and design to Canemaker’s previous work on the
story artists, Paper Dreams (NY: Hyperion, 1999), which has wonderful reproductions, but is a little unwieldy to handle and perhaps not as tightly structured as his new study. Here, his attention is fully focused on the lives and work of nine remarkable artists, who struggled, fought and sweated for their master Walt Disney, whose charismatic, curmudgeonly presence inhabits every page.
but it would have been valuable for us to know what originated as a still, a frame blow-up, or a cel mounted on an original production background vs. one mounted on a post-production background, very different from the original background. One illustration is reversed (p20), one appears to be made up of cels from different scenes (p284) and others are clearly cels laid over post-production backgrounds (pp217, 246 and 249). There is also inconsistency of colour and tone on The Mechanics the same page (see p220 with what May I get my one criticism of this appear to be three frame blow-ups). fine book out of the way as soon I would also have liked to see a brief as possible; Canemaker’s previous mention, perhaps at the end of the books have been supremely well book, of picture credits, for not all the illustrated -- as a practicing artist illustrations come from the Disney and animator himself he has provided Company’s sources. (with the collaboration of his designers) outstanding reproductions Having said that, the author’s from many sources. My cavil over remarkable research has given us the pictures for the new book is not a dazzling display not only of the so much that they vary in quality as nine old men’s creative output, reproductions, but that they have not but also fascinating photographs been captioned fully enough. I realize of themselves at many stages of that additional information on the their lives, and photographs of their page would take up excessive space, colleagues, families and friends. The
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men come to life through both text and pictures, and the illustrations are closely linked to textual reference, so that we can see what the author is writing about. I also like very much the film frames running in sequence down the page; these little pictures flicker to life in our mind’s eye as our gaze travels down the page. This device is used again and again to astonishing effect, the animator’s art springing to life; it is a splendid accompaniment. John Canemaker is our primary Disney historian; he has studied the work of the studio for years and has interviewed many of the artists who worked there. He is supremely qualified to write this definitive account of the nine old men, and he draws on reserves of knowledge about many other aspects of the Disney organization. Thus, while we learn about the history and background of these nine great animators, we also learn about their mentors and influences. The first talents at Disney included men like Ham Luske, Norman Ferguson and Freddy Moore, all of whom figure in these pages, though Canemaker keeps his sights firmly on the nine men themselves. We are introduced to them warts and all; these are real fellows with their ambitions and weaknesses revealed. They may be supreme artists but they are human like the rest of us. They are ambitious, ruthless, caring and
vulnerable by turns and as we follow their adventures through the golden age and beyond, we see the subtle shifts of power waged between them, and how Walt Disney was able to balance their talents in his relentless pursuit for excellence.
What Awaits You... The gentle Les Clark, teamsman and loyal servant, animated the beautiful delicacy of the dewdrop fairies in “The Nutcracker Suite” from Fantasia. He also animated complicated scenes in Snow White, and his talent is contrasted with the energetic and broad strokes of Woolie Reitherman, who brought Monstro the whale to life, as well as Timothy Mouse and the battle of the dinosaurs in the “Rite of Spring” section from Fantasia. We learn of a diffident vulnerability in this bluff self-confident man who served as a pilot in the Second World War. He returned to Disney to animate one of the few gripping moments of Sleeping Beauty and then became a director. In turn his talent is contrasted with the quiet authority of Eric Larson, that most patient and courteous of teachers, inspiring many of the younger animators who today gladly acknowledge their debt to him. Figaro the kitten, trying to open the window in Pinocchio, the incorrigible Peg, she of the swaying hips and come-hither eyes in the dog-pound from Lady and the Tramp are two of the characters brought to life by
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this artist, who suffered greatly in later life not only through the death of his beloved wife, but also through changes occurring at the Disney studio. John Canemaker charts the painful story of Larson’s later years with detached but sympathetic clarity. Canemaker’s book concludes with chapters on the gifted, modest John Lounsbery and the Renaissance man Marc Davis, so recently lost to us (he died in 2000). Lounsbery put into his animation a swashbuckling exuberance and vividness in almost everything he touched, from the vaudeville act of the Fox and Cat from Pinocchio, to the exuberant Ben Ali who woos Hyacinth Hippo so gallantly in the “Dance of the Hours” from Fantasia. Then there is his Italian duo -- Tony and Joe who sing to Lady and Tramp under the stars and washing lines, and another pair, the baduns Horace and Jasper so ineptly assisting Cruella DeVil in 101 Dalmatians. Thomas and Johnston are quoted in this book (p257) as declaring that Lounsbery’s drawings “were simple and loose and full of energy. This is a remarkable tribute to remarkable men by a remarkable writer, and one of the few great books on the golden age of Disney. Robin Allan
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