It’s no coincidence that DreamWork’s Antz and Pixar’s A Bug’s Life hit theaters almost within a month of each other. Former chairman, Jeffery Katzenburg, left Disney after a bitter feud with Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Katzenburg went on to form DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in hopes to compete with Disney animation. Prince of Egypt was intended to be SKG’s first animated release but John Lassiter, director at Pixar and old -time friend of Katzenburg paid him a visit. Toy Story release date was drawing near and Katzenburg asked Lasseter what the next project would be. Lasseter told Katzenburg in great detail what would be A Bug’s Life. Later that year SKG announced it would also be releasing a computer animated movie about the life of an ant as well and only weeks before Bug’s was going to be released. Lasseter called up Katzenburg furious and feeling betrayed. Katzenburg denied stealing the idea from Lasseter and claimed the Antz idea had been pitched to him years before. Lasseter remained in disbelief and cursed Katzenburg out as he hung up the phone.

Production for Prince of Egypt was already under way and artist at SKG had to work double time to make two feature movies simultaneously. Katzenburg was determined to get Antz released before A Bug’s Life. Katzenburg claimed later in an interview that he felt betrayed by Lasseter for releasing Bug’s around the same time Prince of Egypt was going to be released. During production he called up Lasseter offering to move the Antz release date back if Pixar would move the Bug’s release date. Lasseter refused.

Both movies were released on schedule, (Antz -Oct 2, 1998; A Bug’s Life -Nov 14, 1998) and both were received well by audiences. Though, both are about the life of a blundering outcast ant, the movies are surprisingly different. Antz has a darker tone with political satire, violence, stand even death. It’s geared more towards teenagers and adults, while A Bug’s Life is much more family-friendly and very lighthearted.

Lasseter later said that if Katzenburg’s movie had been about anything other than bugs, he would have closed down Pixar on the day of release and have all the employees see it.

Post 9: A Disney Animation Marketing Strategy

When Disney Animation produces feature films, they don’t bother to target any niche of audience, the mass market almost every feature film of theirs to audiences of all ages and demographics. Their target platform is “children and families”, but in all honesty, most anyone can enjoy and appreciate the innovation and appropriate adult humor.

Disney has been targeting all ages and demographics since some of the very first animations in the 20’s. Animations such as Steamboat Willie, and The Barn Dance and the first feature length animation, Snow White have been enjoyed and treasured by the majority of audiences with it’s new innovations Disney brings to animations and the well-rounded plots and witty-playful humor.

In the past, Disney has had a reputation for putting out “family-friendly” kid’s movies. Recently, Disney has branched-out to producing PG-13 movies targeted at young adults –movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Tron, and The Avengers. Both Pirates and Tron were labeled with the Disney brand. Pirates did very well under the brand but I believed Tron suffered being associated with Disney. Young adults may have been turned off by the Disney label and maybe could not take it as seriously. Though, with The Avengers, Disney kept its brand off the movie marketing and packaging completely but for a small note at the end of the credits.

Disney is slowing gaining a reputation for producing quality action/gritty young adult movies but it could take a while longer for Disney to completely shake the “kids only” reputation.

Post 8: Gross Animation

The highest theater-lifetime grossing animated movie is Shrek 2 pulling in $441,226,247 during its release in theaters. Close behind it is Toy Story 3 with $110,307,189. Both movies are computer animated. Computer animation is the fastest developing movie style today and it’s still a rather recent development in the world of cinema considering film making has been around over a hundred years. But for the last decade, computer animated features have been stealing #1 in the weekend box-office several times a year. Disney’s Frozen has already made its way to #6 on the list of highest grossing movies of all-time (and it’s still playing at University Mall!)

Why are animated movies so successful? They’re not even real! I would say big name animation studios such as Pixar, and Disney find so much success because they target all audiences with each of their feature lengths. Another factor would be that computer animated films have yet to lose their magic. The technology is developing like crazy and new innovations are implemented in 3D animated films every year. The average audience can still be awed by the shear beauty of a cartoon-ish world made believable. With animated films, diractors have full control over every element that hits the screen. Things such as landscapes, charcter looks, and acting choices can be finely tuned and tweeked for maximum appeal.

I think animated films have alot of room for further developments and creative avenues. Animations will be breaking the box-office for years to come.

Post 7: Evolution of Animation Education

How did most of the early animators (and the “nine old men”) at Disney learn to animate? They were the pioneers of professional animation and techniques. They certainly didn’t learn it from Walt Disney himself. Walt knew almost nothing about the practice of animation. Walt was merely the one who always challenged the animators to do more and to push their limits. He was the driving force behind the animation projects but not the mentor. The animators had to learn by trial and error. They would also study real-life movement -down to the smallest muscle movements. Animators at Disney came up with the 12 principles of animation which can be applied when simulating real or exaggerated movement.

Many of these animators went on to teach others the practice of animation at prestigious universities. California Arts Institute became world renown for having the best traditional animation courses. With enough money, talent and a portfolio to show, students could learn from the world’s top animators and be ready to enter the industry upon graduation.

Today, animation education is available to everyone by varying degrees. For instance, a person interested in learning animation can find thousands of tutorials about drawing and lines and movement and techniques from amateurs and professionals around the world who make and upload these videos on their own time. Someone looking to pick up a skill without paying don’t have to look far and can start today.

For those looking for advanced training and are willing to pay up, there are many online training sites that can help an individual hone their skills and become employable in the field of animation, graphic design, special FXs and any other facet of production. There are even online schools of animation, such as AnimationMentor.com, where anyone from around the world can receive professional training and feedback from professionals in the industry. The internet has once again made things easier and more available.

Post 6: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, created by Square Studio is the fist photorealistic animated feature film. This film also hold the record for the most costly video-game adaptation. For the making of this film, Square Studios used workstations with some of the most advanced processing capabilities for computer animation at the time. The original budget for the film was 70 million, but with cost increases toward the end of the production, the entire film ended up costing Square Studio 130 million. Of which, the film only made back 88 million at box office.

The basic film was rendered at a home-made render farm created by Square in Hawaii. It housed 960 Pentium III-933 MHz workstations. Animation was filmed using motion capture technology. 1,327 scenes in total needed to be filmed to animate the digital characters. The film consists of 141,964 frames, with each frame taking an average of 90 minutes to render. By the end of production Square had a total of 15 terabytes of artwork for the film. It is estimated that over the film’s four-year production, approximately 200 people working on it put in a combined 120 years of work.

The film was a box office flop and not a very talked about or memorable movie. The importance of this film is that it demonstrated the shear power of computers to generate a hyper-realistic virtual world. It also showed how much computer animation technology had advanced in less than 10 years since the first feature-length computer animation, Toy Story.

Surprisingly for a film loosely based on a video game series, there were never any plans for a game adaptation of the film itself. Sakaguchi indicated the reason for this was lack of powerful gaming hardware at the time, feeling the graphics in any game adaptation would be far too much of a step down from the graphics in the film itself.

Post 5: Walt Disney Transition from Traditional 2D to Digital Animation

Walt Disney Company was built from the-ground-up, with the revenue it made from traditional 2D animation. 2D hand-drawn animation is what it was known for and it was what the animators were trained to do. Everything was done on physical paper (or glass slides). This all began to changed with the introduction of CAPS ( Computer Animation Production System). CAPS was a collection of software, and scanning cameras systems developed by Walt Disney in collaboration with Pixar in the late-1980’s. The purpose of CAPS was to completely digitize the post-production ink & paint process and replace traditional (and time-consuming) cel animation. The system’s first digital feature film was The Little Mermaid in 1989, Thought the system was limited and it was only used for the rainbow sequence at the end of the film. The first feature-length animation to be completely made using CAPS was The Rescuers Down Under. It was the first 100% digital feature film ever to be produced.Other films made using CAPS were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. With these films, more advanced features of 2D/3D integration came into play.

CAPS was capable of a high level of image quality using significantly slower computer systems than are available today. The final frames were rendered at a 2K digital film resolution (2048 pixels across at a 1.66 aspect ratio), and the artwork was scanned so that it always held 100% resolution in the final output, no matter how complex the camera motion in the shot.

In 2004, Disney Feature Animation management decided that audiences wanted only 3D computer animated features and closed down their traditional 2D animation department. The CAPS desks were removed and the custom automated scanning cameras were dismantled and scrapped. As of 2005, only one desk system remained (and that was only for the purpose of reading the data for the films that were made with this system).

Since the merger with Pixar, as most of CAPS was shut down and dismantled, Disney’s subsequent traditionally animated productions (How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, The Princess and the Frog, The Ballad of Nessie, and the new Winnie the Pooh) were produced using Toon Boom Harmony computer software, which offered an updated digital animation system.

Post 4: Computer Animation Workflow

Animators at any large studio have one job to do: move the character on screen – bring it to life. Animation workflows computer animation varies from animator to animator. Between professional animators, there are three different over-arching ways to animate a character in a shot.

The first way is straight-forward. With this technique, the animator with move the character one frame after another, animating the shot from start to finish. The second way to animation a character in a shot is pose to pose. With this technique, the animator with start working on the shot by fully posing each part of the character (as seen in the picture).

This first pose becomes the first “key-frame”. He will then move on to fully pose the character in the next “key-frame”. The frames in between the key-frames are ignored until the animator has set the character to hit every key-frame pose needed to deliver the action. A method called “blocking” is often used with this type of workflow. When the animation program is set to “blocking”, the program does not render in between frames so the animator can only see the key character poses as he is working on the animation. When he has all the poses he wants, he then works on the in between frames. The third animation workflow is “layered” animation. With the “layered” technique, the animation will move and key the larger parts of a character (hips, torso, [center-of-gravity]) through the entire shot first, and then once he has the larger parts of the character doing what he wants, he will then animate the rest of the body parts (arms, legs).

Those are the three common over-arching animation workflow, professional animators use to animate any particular shot in a moive. Now, granted, there are innumerable combinations and variations of these three, but most animators will prefer one over the other, and often difficult shots can more easily be done by a certain type of workflow.

Thanks for listening, I hope that wasn’t confusing.

Post 3: Digital Animation

What are some milestones in the evolution of digital animation technology? Computer animation dates back to the 1960’s with research and development ventures at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Some of the first computer animation was used in the 1973 movie Westworld, which is about robots living among humans and it’s sequel Futureworld. The venue for presenting achievements became SIGGRAPH in 1974. Thousands of digital effects enthusiasts gather every year to see what new things have been done with digital technology.

The fist full-length feature digital animation was Pixar’s Toy Story (1995). This animation became a landmark in the world of digital animation as it proved that 3D digital animation was a viable medium for feature-length movies.

In the last decade, games have become a big focus in the world digital graphics as 3D game developers are constantly striving and pushing technology to make real-time game graphics match realism.

Post 2: The Animation Production Pipeline

POST 2: THE ANIMATION PRODUCTION PIPELINE

The process of creating a full-length feature animation is a long road involving million dollars, hundreds of thousands of man hours, and a coalition of businesses spanning across multiple industries.

It starts with an idea. A movie idea can be developed and worked on for years, sometimes decades before a company actually decides to invest money in it. Once an animation production company decides to start developing an idea for an animated feature, it will often take another 4 to 5 years until the movie actually hits the big screens.

The process begins with a script, and after the script has been written, reproofed and rewritten, it goes into the movie “production pipeline”. The first step of the pipeline is story boarding. In this phase of production, the director and story writers work with sketch artists to create a rough visual outline of the movie from start to end.

The next phase of the production pipeline is to create the character and visual design for the movie, then to cast voice actors that fit those characters and create vocal tracks.

After this, the designs are put into the computer and digital character models and sets are created, textures, and animated. Real-world lighting is added and the animated shots are then rendered to the final look. The images are composited together and special effects are added. The soundtrack is scored and sound effects are added.

As production comes to an end, the movie is marketed and distribution deals are made. The movie then finally hits the big screen.

ahistoryofanimation

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My Comments On Other Posts (some still need approval)

Post 10: Antz vs. A Bug’s Life