I drove down to San Diego this weekend to give a talk to high school students about going to school for animation. I told them everything I wished I had known back then, the most important being to purchase the Animator's Survival Kit and read it. Their eyes lit up when I told them it was written by the animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, so that was a good sign. In three/four hundred art students there were about seven who kept asking lots of animation questions.
My hero.
There was even one kid who wanted to go to NYU for animation. I thought it was all going rather well, right up until the very last question, when someone raised his hand and asked about the technology the first Disney shorts and Pinnochio were made with. I started to answer about multi-plane and had to be cut off by the host because my time was up. I went up to the kid afterward and started to explain again, then realized he was asking me how you made a movie before computers existed. I asked him if he knew what a cel was, and he said no. D:
I gave him a quick explanation and told him to read "Walt Disney: The Triumph of American Imagination" so he'd learn all about the Alice shorts and Silly Symphonies and such. I told him to look for the popping colors in older shorts, they would tell him when an additional cell was being laid on top of the bunch.
Well, you can't have it all. If I'm asked back next year I'll try to do a quick technological history of the medium.
This is a cel. This is only a cel.
I only saw one entirely animated short, entitled "Daniel Finds His Walking Stick."
A bit about the panel discussion: it was moderated by Tom Sito, a fellow New Yorker! And someone who shamefully I knew nothing about before I saw him on a panel at Comic-Con. He's worked on all the biggies that came out after I was born: Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He was president of ASIFA, teaches in colleges around L.A., and wrote several books including an update of "Timing for Animation" (which i have yet to buy.) He's got a cool website here: http://tomsito.com
The panel included director Ted Thomas, producer Kuniko Okubo, D.P. Shana Hagan, and composer James Wesley Stemple. They discussed the challenges of tracking down the people and places Walt came across, and their fidelity to the music and photography of the trip. Most of the documentary is shot is super 16 (film!!), which made D.P. Hagan giggle with delight. The filmmakers used local crews and processing facilities.
Composer Stemple spoke at length about the effort he put into the soundtrack attempting to create an accurate musical map of South America, both geographically and temporally, and of the limited number of artists and instruments he had to work with. He also composed music that complemented the narrative of the documentary. They screened one segment M.O.S. and again with his soundtrack, and it sounds like he did a great job.
We went to see Moon this weekend instead of El Group, so hopefully I'll see the documentary itself during the week.
Now for the last half of Saludos Amigos:
Aquarelle du Brésil (Watercolor of Brazil)
The snippets that we saw contained a lot of Mary Blair's work, and it's astonishing to see how faithfully it is recreated in this short. I'm used to concept art looking nothing like what appears in the final film. Those black and white wavy lines Donald and José walk over? They're not abstract, but are actually mosaics that cover the streets of Rio de Janeiro. This does not come across well in the short, but "El Groupo" has great footage of them being created.
This short introduced José Carioca, who Wikipedia tells me is kind of a big deal in Brazil. He's on a soccer team, has a secret identity called the Green Bat, and is a bit of a man-ho. I've seen him in the "Baía" segment of "The Three Caballeros." He's in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" too.
Ted Thomas explained that Goofy had done a series of 'how to be a' shorts, including how to be a cowboy, so it was natural to make him a Gaucho. This is perhaps the most educational short in the film, and it appears to be the most accurate. "Walt and El Groupo" includes the footage Disney shot of these cowboys. Tom Sito commented that a movie critic back in the day made fun of the impossible dance move Goofy does, moving his feet really fast while his upper body remains rigid. The documentary shows concept art and footage proving that this is a real dance.
On Tuesday I attended the American Cinematheque's "The Making of Walk & El Groupo" panel discussion about the upcoming documentary. I had first heard of this documentary by running into one of its crew members at a random party; I overheard him talking to someone about Walt Disney's 1941 trip to South America. I had heard of the film the trip had produced, "Saludos Amigos," but had only seen one flip book with a sequence of the film. (The flip book had a Mickey Mouse cartoon on the other side I think, and I don't remember where we got such a thing.)
The documentary, directed by Frank Thomas' son Ted Thomas, visits the same places that the Disney artists went to on their tour. We saw snippets of the documentary which featured footage and artwork from the 1941 trip. A brand new 35mm print of "Saludos Amigos" was screened afterward, and it was great to see where all the designs and music and dances had come from. The documentary also follows Mary Blair's transformation into one of Disney's favorite artists as a result of this trip.
I'm going to go see the documentary this weekend, so I'll talk about it later. Here's the trailer:
Went to the Silent Movie Theater last night to see Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesday. It was a great presentation of films from the 30's to the 50's, including Mickey, Baby Huey, Tom Thumb, and lesser known characters. He included one Tom and Jerry short that had slugs from an Eastman Kodak print (to preserve the audio and timing) that were completely pink in comparison.
He started with an early 30's short called "Woodland Cafe":
It's got double bouncing characters AND grasshoppers in black face.
This next one, "Mickey's Garden," was on a tape my mother got for us when we were little. Although I vaguely remembered the images and storyline, it was the sound design that I remembered beat by beat:
He played a "saccharine" Raggedy Ann short about a blind girl who accepts a rag doll from a policeman that stops by everyday to hit on her mother, and for the first time uses her imagination to guess what her mother looks like. She imagines a blonde princess, when in reality her mother is a perfectly attractive brunette. Thanks, Raggedy Ann, for gettin em while their young and can't see.
We always get a cupcake from the SMT, because they are Crumbs cupcakes and they are awesome.
Crumbs Cupcake: Cookie Dough
Description: Vanilla cake with chocolate fudge filling covered in our signature vanilla cream cheese frosting mixed with soft chocolate chip cookie pieces and topped with a chocolate chip cookie.
Rating: 3.5 / 5 Sprinkles. Very good, but not the best I've had from them. The 'cake' part did indeed have a delicious rawness to it, but the chocolatey surprise in the middle was a bit unwelcome. The cookie on top was too soft.
And I learned about this brilliantly simple childrens' series from Spain today. So simple! So direct! So easy to make and understand!
My brother and I made the following animation for Aniboom's "The People Speak" contest, sponsored by the History Channel. They provided an audio clip of a celebrity reading from a famous document about war, racism, sexism, etc. and had users made a 30 second storyboard. The top animation gets a development deal with the History Channel.
You can vote us up if you like, but we're not going for the popularity contest this time. We chose a clip from Emma Goldman's "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty," a condemnation of global leaders who try to impose their superiority on others through slaughter.
Tristian made the storyboards and 2D elements in Flash, and animated his section. He also drew the background in Corel Paint. I created the 3D environments in Maya and comped everything together in After Effects. I edited down Sandra Oh's clip for time and dramatic purposes.
A native New Yorker, I've come out to L.A. to pursue a career in animation. I've got much to learn, and I'm writing it all down here as I go along.
All original artwork copyright Guenever Goik
