Full Prediction

In 2004, director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) released his film adaptation of the children’s book The Polar Express. Did you see it? Odds are, you didn’t, but the film still grossed nearly $181 million in the U.S. and $124 million in foreign markets, almost doubling its production budget and setting Zemeckis firmly on his “performance capture” crusade.

Quick, without stopping to think, say the first thing that pops into your head about The Polar Express. I’d guess that about half of you answered “Tom Hanks” and the other half answered “creepy, dead eyes.” That’s because the performance capture methods used for the faces of Tom Hanks’s multiple characters in 2004 could capture a lot of details about the actors’ performance, but not enough to match the incredible subtlely of the human face. Animators then stepped in to add detail and subtlety, but even they were limited by the amount of control available on the digital characters’ faces. In subsequent movies, the capture technology got better, and so did the digital characters, but despite the startling amounts of detail and realism in the most recent of these films, Beowulf, the most common complaint is still those creepy, dead eyes.

Which brings us to our current trailer: Disney’s A Christmas Carol. The movie is a production of ImageMovers Digital, a new company made up of the people that made Zemeckis’s previous performance capture movies. Now that I’ve seen the trailer, I can predict with confidence that this movie will also feature creepy, dead eyes… but not as creepy as before. That is partly due to improvements in technology, but more importantly, the character design for the central character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is much less photorealistic than Beowulf or multiple-Hanks was before him. The cartoonish features give the facial animators great flexibility to exaggerate the expressions and bring them to life on the big screen in a way that pure performance capture cannot. Yes, the eyes are still a bit “off,” but I don’t think they will be the most distracting part of the performance.

No, the most distracting part of the performance will be the dissonance between Scrooge’s face and his body. Scrooge’s movements are faithful recordings of Jim Carrey’s performance, and they capture the subtleties of human movement in great detail. Meanwhile, his head is a cartoon character with a huge nose, frizzy eyebrows, and a jutting chin. The effect is not unlike watching an actor wearing an oversized prosthetic head, except that the movement of the face is far too fluid and subtle to be makeup or puppetry.

But that’s all fine and dandy for Zemeckis, who is counting on audiences being distracted by GLORIOUS 3D! (If you are reading this article out loud to a friend, please employ an echo effect every time the words “GLORIOUS 3D” appear. I recommend using a megaphone as well.) Trust me, the GLORIOUS 3D will be the main attraction in any review written about this movie. Some reviewers will devote eight paragraphs to how beautiful and immersive the 3D effects were, leaving only one paragraph at the end to both summarize and critique the story. There will be some contrary reviewers (including Roger Ebert and myself) who will be underwhelmed by the use of GLORIOUS 3D, dismissing it as mostly distracting from the movie rather than enhancing the experience.

Maybe that won’t be a bad thing, though. The trailer doesn’t give away much in terms of story, but come on… it’s A Christmas Carol. We all know how this one goes. Most adults have read the novel, or at least the short story version once in their lives, and if you’ve managed to miss all four theatrical versions (my favorite is the Muppet version) AND the multiple televised versions (like the one with Mickey Mouse) AND never saw a version on stage, then I have no idea how you managed to find this article. My point is that a new version has to bring something original and new to Dickens’s classic — but not too new or original or else audiences will hate it. Zemeckis has his work cut out for him if he wants to capture his audience’s interest without compromising the story that people love so dearly. I expect that the critics who aren’t too blinded by OMG REALISTIC and GLORIOUS 3D to write about the actual story will yawn their way through their reviews and dismiss the movie as an inoffensive and ultimately forgettable version that, with time, will become muddled together with the dozens of other retellings.

That isn’t to say the movie will perform poorly at the box office. On the contrary, I predict that Disney’s A Christmas Carol will absolutely kill during its opening weekend and throughout the holiday season. Here’s why:

1. It’s a Christmas movie, and it’s being released on November 6. It is literally the only Christmas-related movie scheduled for release in November or December of 2009.
2. It’s animated, which has generally been good for opening weekend grosses for the past few years. Add that to the Disney hype machine and the promise of GLORIOUS 3D, and you’ve got yourself a winner.
3. Look at the titles being released on the weekends before, during, and after November 6: revenge dramas, sex comedies/dramadies, political and psychological thrillers, horror movies/sequels, quirky comedies, period dramas, and a depressing memoir film. During those three weekends, only two movies besides A Christmas Carol are even remotely family-friendly: The Fantastic Mr. Fox (whose trailer I will probably review) and Tooth Fairy, a comedy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Both of them will come to theaters the weekend after A Christmas Carol. The only kid-friendly movies that would possibly still be in theaters by November 6 are Atro Boy (mini-prediction: it won’t be a threat) and Where the Wild Things Are, which I predict will go over the heads of the young fans of its source material. The next family-oriented film after that will be Planet 51 (stay tuned for my predictions) on November 20. In case you still don’t get it, A Christmas Carol is going to steamroll its way through a weekend in which it is the only option for parents of young children.

As for my personal trailer prediction, I don’t expect that I will go to see this movie unless I’ve been wrong about everything else in this prediction. The only one of Zemeckis’s performance capture movies that I’ve seen was Monster House, which was quite a deviation from the style. I enjoyed it, but I don’t expect there will be anything exciting enough in Disney’s A Christmas Carol to pry open my wallet and extract the ticket price.

For the first time in the 10 years that I’ve called myself an animator, I finally have something to back up the claim. My first official demo reel is now online, and I’m taking 15 copies of it with me to San Francisco this weekend as I attend the AnimationMentor job fair. I’ve got a nice Quicktime version of it on my main site, and I’ve also got it up on YouTube. Enjoy!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrDzR6Cf0_E

My personal animation, art, and bio page is now live! It’s incomplete for now, but I’ll be adding a resume and demo reel page soon. You can see it at http://sockmonkeydesign.com.

The great thing about this page is that I built it in about 2.5 hours using RapidWeaver. I really like this software. I used a generic template for the site, but I can personalize it later when I have more time. The 2.5 hours I spend included about 20 minutes fighting with web host issues that weren’t software related and another half hour or so discovering that a free plug-in would allow me much greater control over my art gallery. Next time, I could probably build the same site in about an hour and a half.

3-D stereoscopic movies are big business right now. Robert Zemeckis, Jeffrey Katzenberg, James Cameron, and a host of Hollywood heavy-hitters (ooh, untintentional aliteration! Bonus points!) are convinced that 3D will save the film industry by luring moviegoers back into the theater for a spectacle they can find nowhere else. Proponents liken the newly improved 3-D technology to the advent of sound or color, both of which changed filmmaking dramatically and permanently.

They are wrong. Lots of people know it. Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew knows it. So does Roger Ebert. Despite a gut feeling that 3-D movies are a fad, most people have failed to come up with a convincing rebuttal to the “greatest thing since color” chorus in Hollywood. Beck’s article is a very convincing argument about the political and economic factors that might lead to 3-D’s demise, such as slow adoption by theaters. He’s completely correct, but his arguments only hold up if the public doesn’t demand 3-D movies. And why wouldn’t they demand what is clearly the future of filmmaking? Ebert comes closer to the core problem, declaring that 3-D movies fail on two points: they degrade the movie-watching experience with uncomfortable and image-dimming glasses, and they are unnecessary. He’s right, of course, but his argument doesn’t hold up in debate. The discomfort issue may be resolved as the technology improves, rendering his first point eventually moot. His more central “it’s unnecessary” argument is easily disarmed with the repeated refrain: “sound and color weren’t ‘necessary’ either!” In other places, Ebert has tried to refine his argument, asking “What can 3D do that 2D can’t?” It’s a good question, but it’s still too vague, and it deals more with infinite future possibilities than with the present business and artistic realities.

And that’s where the 3-D doubters’ argument usually breaks down, because as annoying as they can be, the 3-D cheerleaders are right about one thing. Sound and color were both expensive and gimmicky in their earliest forms. It is the strongest argument in the pro-3-D arsenal, and until we can answer the question “how is 3-D different than those earlier, successful technologies?” we are forced to throw up our hands and end the debate with “Just wait, I’m sure I’m right.”

So what is the answer? Why is 3-D different than sound or color? Why will it whither away when they succeeded? To answer those questions, I propose the following question of my own as a litmus test for the success of any new technology:

“Would you miss it if it weren’t there?”

This can apply to any technology I suppose, but I’m referring specifically to film technology. Have you ever seen a movie in 3-D and wondered how it could possibly work in 2-D? Have you ever watched a 2-D version of a movie and concluded that it would have been a better movie if only it had been in 3-D? I’m willing to bet the answer to both questions is “no,” and if so, people will not want to pay extra for it for much longer.

Try applying the same question to sound or color. “Could this movie have been made without sound?” Maybe, but it wouldn’t make a lick of sense. “Would this movie be better if only I could see it in color?” Just ask my dad, who watched The Wizard of Oz on his black and white television for years as a child, and didn’t understand the coolness that Dorothy witnessed when she first stepped out of her house and into Oz. In contrast, I just watched “Up” in glorious 2-D, and I didn’t miss a thing. If I try really hard, I can imagine how it might have been different (“wow, that kid just swung over my head on a rope!”), but even then I’m just wondering how it would have been different, not better.

Maybe I flatter myself, but I think most people are like me. They’ll go to a few 3-D movies because they’ve heard it’s the greatest new thing. After 3 or 4 of them, they’ll start to ask themselves why it’s worth four more bucks just to get a little extra zing when they can enjoy the movie just as much in 2-D spend that money on popcorn instead.

The animation is really rolling now on my short film. When I complete AnimationMentor in June, it should be about 2/3 animated. After that, I have to finish the final third, and then its on to lighting and rendering. Hopefully I will have the whole thing completed by the end of the summer!

Over at Spungella, there’s a great article about choosing what to animate as a student. Highly recommended reading, it goes right along with the theme of this blog.

Spungella: What should I animate?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nlZK25BYMU

Here is my Session 3 progress reel from AnimationMentor. I’m halfway done with the 6 session curriculum!

The first video in the reel is a complete assignment, but it’s not a complete animation. The assignment was to animate the body, the pupils, and the opening and closing of the mouth, but there is no animation of facial expressions. I’ll be adding those as the first assignment for session 4, starting next week.

I don’t know who my mentor will be yet, or when I will have my weekly Q&A session. Hopefully not on Wednesday nights, since I have two Wednesday rehearsals coming up for my two final OSFA shows in October.

I originally started writing this post as a comment on Kevin Geiger’s animation blog in response to his posting entitled Cube Dreams. This article is definitely recommended reading (as is the rest of his blog), but Geiger’s basic premise is this (with apologies if I’ve misinterpreted): today’s animation studios are being short-sighted by mainly hiring employees with strong but narrow skill-sets because it is the broad-thinking, outside-the-box thinkers that will keep the entire industry fresh and vibrant in the years to come. It follows, then, that today’s animation schools are being similarly short-sighted when they conform their training to the wishes of the studios’ human resources departments.

I think this article is very insightful. I particularly agree with the first part of the premise: our industry hires people based upon criteria that are too narrow. I’d even go further and assert that this has always been the case.

As a current animation student who has been studying “computer graphics” on-and-off-again for nearly 10 years now, I have some insights of my own concerning the role of education in this whole process. (Additional Disclaimer: Please read Geiger’s original article! Do not comment on his opinions based upon what you read second-hand in my blog!)

For my first four years of CG education, I attended a university program (which for the moment shall remain nameless) that prided itself on providing a “well-rounded” educational experience for its animation students. They held themselves above such ideas as “job training,” choosing instead to offer (and enforce) a curriculum that included physics, business writing, desktop publishing, typography, lighting and rendering, and statistics. In the entire “animation” curriculum, only 9 credit hours were dedicated to the study of animation.

The school’s stated explanation for this structure was that they trained not the future “grunt animators” who slaved away for their bosses, but the future directors and creative visionaries with a greater understanding of the animation process and of the world in general.

This was, if I may be blunt, bull. The school’s job placement from the animation curriculum was abysmal. Far from creating visionary directors, the program created students with few job skills and fewer prospects. The most successful of its graduates became so by working extremely hard on their own time to learn the skills that were not offered to them in class. Most of these success stories went on to become TD’s or otherwise work in the technical departments of animation studios — far from the dreams of animation that many of them started with.

My current program, AnimationMentor.com, works from the opposite mentality: equip the student with job skills, and leave the creative vision up to the student. Their results are much more encouraging — high rates of placement in animation positions. Will these students go on to be visionaries in the field of animation? Only time will tell. Will they be working in the field they always dreamed of? Yes!

Artistic geniuses rarely if ever learned to be that way in school. School is where they learned their skills, but the genius came from within. Nobody taught Mozart to be better than Salieri — he just was. Michelangelo’s teachers did not set out to mold him into a free-thinker or rule-breaker. Even Einstein chafed under the structure of academia.

My educational preference, based upon my personal experience, is for the educators to equip me with the skills I need to be useful, then get out of my way when I’m ready to start using them. Our next generation of heroes will arise despite their education, not because of it. I aspire to become one of them, lofty a goal as that may be, and I’m grateful to AnimationMentor for providing me with the tools I will need on that personal journey.

This is my second-to-last draft for the first animation for AnimationMentor session 3. I’m really happy with it, and my mentor’s critique was full of really specific and detail-oriented feedback. Next week, I will post the fully polished animation.

When I was an udergraduate studying computer graphics at Purdue University, I was often unmotivated. I was also too “busy” (playing video games and occasionally working on homework) to stay informed about the past and future of the animation industry. Little did I know that the two conditions were related. After graduation, I bummed around for a while before a strange thing happened: I fell in love with animation. How did it that happen?

It happened because I started reading animation blogs. The first was Keith Lango’s blog, which I discovered through his excellent free animation tutorials site. Next came John “Ren & Stimpy” Kricfalusi’s blog, which opened the floodgates. Thanks to his passion for teaching people how to animate in the “good old fashioned way,” I started seeking out more and more animation-related blogs and websites, soaking in the knowledge and experience of animators and artists around the world. It wasn’t long before I knew I had to get back into animation, but this time with gusto. It was that decision that led directly to me enrolling at AnimationMentor.com (which deserves a post or two of its own).

Staying up to date on animation news and resources is not just for shooting the breeze with other animators, though that certainly helps. To stay inspired, it helps to know what other animators are doing, and what is inspiring them. A lot of animators also post really helpful tips and tricks, both artistic and technical, that can save you a ton of time and add life and beauty to your work.

In the following sections of this article, I’ll give you some tips on how to find useful sites and, just as importantly, how to find the time to read them.