An Independent Success

The video embedded above has been viewed almost 42 million times. That's a number larger than the population of many countries, including Canada.

If you're not aware of it, Simon's Cat has been around for about 5 years and is a series of cartoons like the above by Simon Tofield on YouTube.  In addition to his animation, Tofield has authored eight books featuring the character.

Now, he has sold worldwide distribution rights to Entertainment One, and their goal is to broadly merchandise the character.

Merchandising has always been gravy money in the animation business.  Somebody pays you to produce products featuring your character.  While there are some costs associated with it, such as quality control, it's less expensive than animation and more profitable.  Licensing a character is as close as you can get in animation to printing money.  (That's why The Simpsons is still on the air even though its ratings have fallen substantially over the years).

 Look at what Tofield has done.  The series is designed to be just linework, no colour or gray tones.  All the films are pantomime so that they can be understood around the world.  There is no music except over the opening and closing credits.  They videos are based on an animal that's familiar to everyone.  The videos are short and there is no standard length, so they are as long as they need to be, not padded like TV animation to fill a predetermined slot.  It's built on a continuing character and the animation focuses on behavior, not stock poses or timing.

Not every idea is going to catch on with audiences, but here is proof that a single person with an idea and the ability to design to fit his production limitations can create a success and keep ownership of it.

Thanks to the internet, there were no gatekeepers.  There were no broadcasters changing the idea to make it more popular (as if they know how); no studio to take the rights away from Tofield and offer him what's called monkey points.  Monkey points are a percentage of profits, but when the studio is doing the book keeping, somehow there never are profits no matter how successful a property becomes.

Tofield had an idea and a way to get it to the audience.  That opportunity is available to everyone.  While the results will vary, it's more proof that pitching ideas to studios or broadcasters isn't necessary for success.

(Thanks, Paul Teolis)

R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen

Details here, here and here.

Bing Crosby's 110th Birthday

May 3 is Bing Crosby's 110th birthday.  While most people these days only know Bing Crosby for singing "White Christmas" or the duet he did with David Bowie, he was unquestionably one of the leading figures of popular culture for a good 30 years.  He was a success in recording, radio, movies and TV.  He was parodied in animation in cartoons like Bingo Crosbyana, Swooner Crooner, and Catch as Cats Can, but he lent his voice to animation on several occasions.  He sang for Paul Whiteman in the animated segment of the feature King of Jazz in 1930.  As well, he narrated Disney's version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and as spokesman for Minute Maid orange juice he voiced an animated caricature of himself.

Stop Motion Atoms

Stop motion animation can be done with anything that you can move one frame at a time.  But atoms?  IBM can do it.

 

"Obviously, this sort of stop-motion is a little more complex than your latest Vine. Every second millions of particles land on a typical surface, so this work had to be completed in a vacuum. And because atoms are feisty at room temperature, IBM used a scanning tunneling microscope to reach temperatures of -268 degrees Celsius (or 4-5 degrees Kelvin)—a point so close to absolute zero, most matter loses its hustle. To push and pull the atoms into place, scientists used a needle so sharp its point ends in a single atom. (Like the Earth and the moon, the needle doesn’t so much “touch” the atom as it does influence it.)"

Read more about it at Slate.

The Other Walrus and the Carpenter

Alice in Wonderland is one of those books that has been adapted many times for film. Paramount released a live action version in 1933 with an incredible cast: Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Jack Oakie, W.C. Fields, etc. For all the star power, the film is not very good.

The Walrus and the Carpenter segment in the film is animated, produced by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising.  It's also not particularly good, but it is somewhat rare and the film is going to be on Turner Classic Movies on Friday, May 3 at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

The whole film is a curio, but if you haven't seen it, it's worth watching once.

30 Seconds of Eric Goldberg Animation

Eric Goldberg did some drawn test animation for Wreck-It Ralph. Below is Eric speaking and showing 30 seconds of his animation.  You probably want to go full screen for a better view. (Link via Bleeding Cool)

Steven Soderbergh on the State of Cinema

Excerpts from Steven Soderbergh's  keynote address to the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival.  Read the whole thing here.  It's long, but worthwhile.

"The simplest way that I can describe it is that a movie is something you see, and cinema is something that’s made. It has nothing to do with the captured medium, it doesn’t have anything to do with where the screen is, if it’s in your bedroom, your iPad, it doesn’t even really have to be a movie. It could be a commercial, it could be something on YouTube. Cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s an approach in which everything matters. It’s the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the result is as unique as a signature or a fingerprint. It isn’t made by a committee, and it isn’t made by a company, and it isn’t made by the audience. It means that if this filmmaker didn’t do it, it either wouldn’t exist at all, or it wouldn’t exist in anything like this form.

"...The idea of cinema as I’m defining it is not on the radar in the studios. This is not a conversation anybody’s having; it’s not a word you would ever want to use in a meeting. Speaking of meetings, the meetings have gotten pretty weird. There are fewer and fewer executives who are in the business because they love movies. There are fewer and fewer executives that know movies. So it can become a very strange situation. I mean, I know how to drive a car, but I wouldn’t presume to sit in a meeting with an engineer and tell him how to build one, and that’s kind of what you feel like when you’re in these meetings. You’ve got people who don’t know movies and don’t watch movies for pleasure deciding what movie you’re going to be allowed to make. That’s one reason studio movies aren’t better than they are, and that’s one reason that cinema, as I’m defining it, is shrinking.

"...And unfortunately the most profitable movies for the studios are going to be the big movies, the home runs. They don’t look at the singles or the doubles as being worth the money or the man hours. Psychologically, it’s more comforting to spend $60 million promoting a movie that costs 100, than it does to spend $60 million for a movie that costs 10. I know what you’re thinking: If it costs 10 you’re going to be in profit sooner. Maybe not. Here’s why: OK. $10 million movie, 60 million to promote it, that’s 70, so you’ve got to gross 140 to get out. Now you’ve got $100 million movie, you’re going spend 60 to promote it. You’ve got to get 320 to get out. How many $10 million movies make 140 million dollars? Not many. How many $100 million movies make 320? A pretty good number, and there’s this sort of domino effect that happens too. Bigger home video sales, bigger TV sales, so you can see the forces that are sort of draining in one direction in the business.

"...In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, ten years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard."

A Cat in Paris

I finally caught up with this film on DVD and I'd say it's a mixed bag.  The best thing about it is the design, which seems influenced by Lorenzo Mattotti.  It's a relief to see a drawn feature that isn't imitating a too-familiar animation style.

The next best thing is the direction, which is taut.  The suspense works well and the chase scenes are exciting.

The story, however, is typical of a TV cop show.  It's literally cops and robbers stuff.  The only ambiguity is the cat burglar, whose personality is never developed well enough to explain why he's stealing in the first place or why a child's welfare is enough to cause him to change his plans.  The real villain, Costa, is pure cardboard.  He's exactly the kind of villain that animation too often falls back on: someone who is nasty with no explanation and surrounds himself with incompetent, comedy-relief henchmen.

The woman police officer is the only character who is really motivated.  Besides needing to catch criminals for her job, she has a personal stake in catching Costa, who murdered her husband.

If all the characters had been developed to the same level, the film would be more interesting.  The graphics, direction and pacing certainly make watching it a pleasant experience and Europe continues to show that drawn animation has possibilities that North America has ignored.  But the film itself doesn't live up to its design.

This is the directors' first feature.  Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol are currently working on Phantom Boy, due for release in 2015.  While the story is another cops and robbers tale, there's enough promise in A Cat in Paris that I'm looking forward to it. 

Sometimes "They" Are Other Artists

As a sort of follow-up to my last post, I'd like to point you to an excellent piece by animation veteran Steve Moore over at the FLIP blog.  It's a great look at studio politics in the present day and a warning about the rose-coloured glasses that animation artists often wear.

I'd point out, especially to students about to enter the workforce, that the large studios many students aspire to are often the most political.  They are filled with excellent artists and those artists are also highly ambitious.  It's the combination of those two qualities that got them there.  That causes the political maneuvering for choice spots, whether it's job titles or the juiciest shots, to be extreme.

Smaller studios are generally lower pressure places.  As an individual represents a greater portion of a studio's workforce, it means that individuals are treated better.  Should someone leave,  there's a larger hole in the project.  Smaller studios are also places where you can make mistakes without the spotlight being on you.  Smaller studios tend to work with smaller budgets and have smaller audiences, so the inevitable mistakes early in a career don't attract as much attention.

The "Frank and Ollie trajectory," as Moore describes it, was always a rare occurrence.  It's good to remember that as much pride as you might take from your employer's name, it's most likely a temporary association.

And just so you don't think that Moore's opinion is the exception, read what Steve Hulett of The Animation Guild has to add.