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Frame-by-Frame The Monthly Animation Planner. A look at animation trends in gaming. By the Numbers. A few facts from some of the major Asian animation markets.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

1K views72 pages

Animation Magazine 20-04 - Apr 2006 - Ice Age 2 Heats Up The CG Climate PDF

Frame-by-Frame The Monthly Animation Planner. A look at animation trends in gaming. By the Numbers. A few facts from some of the major Asian animation markets.

Uploaded by

xhylyra

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

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Contents | Zoom In | Zoom Out For navigation instructions please click here Search Issue | Next Page

T H E

B U S I N E S S ,

T E C H N O L O G Y

A R T

O F

A N I M A T I O N

April
2006

Ice A ge 2
Heats Up the

CG Climate

Asia:
The Next

Wave
Gaming
Tr e n d s

of 2006
of2006

w w w . a n i m a t i o n m a g a z i n e . n e t

_____________________________________________________

Contents | Zoom In | Zoom Out For navigation instructions please click here Search Issue | Next Page

A
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Volume 20, Issue 4, Number 159, April 2006

CONTENTS

4 Frame-by-Frame
The Monthly Animation Planner ... Samurai 7 premieres on IFC ... Books We
Love... Brozers The Rainbow Snake

10 Gaming
10 AIs Got Game. The Art Institute of California-Los Angeles puts
education in play at Game Center. [by Ryan Ball] 12 The New Flavors.
A look at animation trends in gaming. [by Ryan Ball]

14 Features

14 A Second Mammoth Undertaking. The speed of development and

animation on Fox/Blue Skys Ice Age 2: The Meltdown was anything but
glacial. [by Michael Mallory] 17 A Taste of Europe. The continents
animated feature scene is alive and kicking at Cartoon Movie. [by Ramin
Zahed] 18 West Meets East:Thoughts on America and the New Anime
Wave. [by Patrick Drazen] 21 Look Out, Godzilla. Here Comes Negadon!
New lm brings CG to the classic Japanese monster movie. [by Ryan Ball]
22 A Cultural Give and Take. The real world could learn a few lessons in
harmonious co-existence and blending of cultures from animated series that glide easily between Asian and Western traditions.
[by Charles Solomon] 24 All Eyes Focus on Animated Japan. Despite the shrinking air time on Japans terrestrial channels, anime
continues to cast its global spell. [by Tad Osaki] 26 Is Singapore the New Toon Power Spot? [by Patrick Drazen] 24 By the
Numbers. A few facts and gures from some of the major Asian animation markets. [by Sarah Gurman]

29 Shorts
29 Brooklyn Blues. Adam Parrish King impresses Sundance with The Wraith of Cobble Hill. [by Ramin Zahed]

30 Home Entertainment
30 Japanimation Hits Home. Our reporter catches up with some of the top anime DVD distributors in the U.S. to nd out
whats hot in 2006. [by Thomas J. McLean] 34 The Samurai Critic. Reviews of three Studio Ghibli classics on DVD.
[by Charles Solomon] 35 Spring DVD Fever. Parodies, Looney progeny and Pooh take the edge off residual winter chill.
[by Sarah Gurman]

36 Television
36 A KOCCA Star is Born. [by Sarah Gurman] 37 Sushi Out of Water. An American actor makes it big as an anime hero in the
Animation Collective/Nicktoon series, Kappa Mikey. [by Ramin Zahed] 38 Classroom Pets Dig Show Tunes. Three musically
minded animals are the stars of Nick Jr.s The Wonder Pets! [by Ramin Zahed] 34 Padded Cel. Thoughts on recent toon
mergers. [by Robby London]

40 Licensing

40 Crossing Borders. Korean properties are gaining visibility outside their homeland. [by Karen Raugust]

44 VFX
44 V is for Vigilance. Dan Glass and his team of vfx artists use CG technology wisely and sparingly in the big-screen
adaptation of Alan Moores graphic novel, V for Vendetta. [by Ron Magid] 48 Hair of the Dog. Tippett Studio puts the Wow!
in bow wow for Disneys The Shaggy Dog redo. [by Ryan Ball] 50 State of the Art. Weta Digitals vfx experts used a variety
of CG tricks to recreate the environmental shots of Skull Island for King Kong. [by Barbara Robertson] 52 Digital Magic.
Calling All Robotech Fans. [by Chris Grove] 53 Tech Reviews. [by Chris Tome] 54 Is That a Toon in Your Digital Pants
Pocket? Todays savvy animation producers dont expect instant riches as they prepare content for tomorrows platforms.
[by Chris Grove]

58 Opportunities
58 School Project Shines at Sundance. San Jose State University puts its best Foot forward
[by Ellen Wolff] 52 Writing for Animation? Draw on Experience. A toon biz veteran offers some
practical advice on how to create the right scripts for cartoons. [by Fred Crippen]
68 A Day in the Life. The good people at Singapores Peach Blossom Media show us their
true colors.

On the Cover: Fox and Blue Sky take moviegoers on another delirious, CG-

48
www.animationmagazine.net

animated adventure with Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, directed by Carlos Saldanha.
Cartoon Movie Cover: Magma Animation and Europool GmbH bring their latest project Bug
Muldoon to Cartoon Movie.

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

April 2006

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ANIMATION MAGAZINE
April 2006

EDITORS NOTE

Vol. 20, Issue 4, No. 159

[email protected]
____________

his month, everyone at the magazine was in a true Asian

frame of mind as we prepared for our special March
distribution at the Tokyo International Anime Fair and the
Hong Kong International Film and TV Market. We were lucky
to have experts such as Charles Solomon, Patrick Drazen,
Tad Osaki, Thomas McLean and our own staffers Ryan Ball and Sarah Gurman
search high and low for the latest trends and projects that are generating buzz
in Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines and Singapore.
Of course, just like everybody else, we were surprised to read that Chinas
State Administration of Radio, Film and TV has decided to ban TV series and
lms that featured real human actors interacting with animated characters.
Our rst reaction was Whaaaaaaaah? Our second impulse was to feel sorry
for poor Jessica Rabbit, the hyperactive pooch from Blues Clues and the whole
Looney Tunes gang which seemed to genuinely enjoy the company of Michael
Jordan, Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman.
We hope somebody starts a rally somewhere demanding equal rights for
toons. Come on, people, cant we all get along? Didnt they watch Crash? And
whos going to stop Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and those neglected
kids from Mary Poppins when they just have to jump into the animated
chalk drawings in the park? We are just praying that somebody will sit that
impressionable Dakota Fanning down and explain the ugly realities of the world
to the young actress who seems to think nothing of mixing with the animated
animals on the set of Paramounts upcoming Charlottes Web movie.
Joking aside, experts believe that China is only trying to increase the
demand for homegrown animation and to up the local production of Mandarinlanguage shows. The country has a history
of banning shows that include fantasy
elements, especially lms that center on
talking animals such as Babe and Gareld.
Never before has there been a higher
demand for communication between the
East and the West. We hope Animation
Magazine can play a small role in bridging
the cultural gaps and help the talented
Charlotte's Web
people in Asia work together with Western
companies to expand co-productions and sales. Just please remember to leave
Jessica Rabbit and little Dakota out of it,
O.K.?

Ramin Zahed
Editor-in-Chief
_________________
[email protected]

Quote of the Month

In a refreshing departure from the
animal heroes of most recent childrens
movies, this Curious George doesnt rap,
punch out bad guys or emit rapid-re
commentary on pop culture. George is
all monkey ...
From The New York Times capsule review of Matthew
OCallaghans Curious George feature which made over $33
million in its rst two weeks at the U.S. box ofce.

April 2006

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

President Jean Thoren

Publisher Jodi Bluth
Accounting Jan Bayouth
Webmaster Eric Brandenberg
______________
EDITORIAL [email protected]
Editor-in-Chief Ramin Zahed
Web and Gaming Editor Ryan Ball
Contributing Editors Chris Grove, Ron Magid,
Barbara Robertson
Editorial Assistant Sarah Gurman
Copy Editor Roberta Street
Animation Art Advisor Ron Barbagallo
Digital Reviews Editor Chris Tome
Contributors Fred Crippen, Patrick Drazen,
Mike Fisher, Robby London, Thomas J. McLean,
Tad Osaki, Mercedes Milligan,
Charles Solomon, Ellen Wolff

ADVERTISING SALES
_______________
[email protected]

Sheri Shelton, Dave Warren

PRODUCTION [email protected]
______________
Art and Production Director Susanne Rector
______________
CIRCULATION [email protected]
Circulation Director Jan Bayouth

TO ADVERTISE:
Phone: 818-991-2884
Fax: 818-991-3773
_____________
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.animationmagazine.net
List Rental
Quantum List Marketing
480-860-6036
ANIMATION MAGAZINE
(USPS 015-877/ISSN 1041-617X)
Published monthly by:
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30941 West Agoura Road, Suite 102
Westlake Village, CA 91361
Periodicals postage paid at Thousand Oaks Post Ofce, CA,
and additional mailing ofces.
POSTMASTER:
SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO:
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Animation Magazine
2006 Animation Magazine
Prior written approval must be obtained to duplicate any and all contents.
The copyrights and trademarks of images featured herein are the property of their
respective owners. Animation Magazine acknowledges the creators and copyright
holders of the materials mentioned herein, and does not seek to infringe on those rights.
Printed in the U.S.A.

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The Animation Planner

April
FRAME-BY-FRAME

1-2

Find shelter from

the nonstop pouring rain in
Seattle at the Emerald City
ComiCon
___
(www.
emer___
aldcity____
____
comicon.
com).
__

5-9

The romantic
city of Positano, Italy is
the backdrop of the annual
Cartoons on the Bay
festival (www.cartoonsbay.
__
com).

3-7

Find out whats on

the TV animation and mobile
content universe in Cannes,
France, at the annual MIPTV
and the new Content 360
events (www.miptv.com).

The Chronicles of Narnia

___
The Ofcial Mobile Entertainment Summit (www.
ihollywoodforum.com) stays in Vegas, baby.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe, Disney/Walden Medias holiday
blockbuster is available on DVD today.
Anime fans can check out Geneons DVD
release of Viewtiful Joe, Vol. 2 and
VIZs InuYasha, Vol. 40 and for fans of
adult humor, theres Anchor Bays Tripping
the Rift, Season 2.

A. A. Milnes delightful characters have another outing

in Poohs Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher
Robin on DVD, just in time for the
bears 80th anniversary. Spend your
hard-earned cash on Disneys Best
Pals (Donald and Daisy, Mickey
and Minnie, Mickey and Pluto);
IGPX, Vol. 2 and Zatch Bell, Vol.
3.

Tom Cruise, War of

the Worlds, The Village
and many other recent pop
culture phenoms are spoofed
in David Zuckers Scary
Movie 4. Disneys latest CG
feature, The Wild, comes
to life with COREs animation
and the voices of Keifer
Sutherland and Eddie Izzard.
The Wild

Remember
Thundercats? You can relive
the second season (Vol. 1)
of the show on a new Warner
Bros. DVD release today!

Get out your credit card

and get ready to spend, spend,
spend: Some DVDs to consider:
American Dad, Vol. 1;
One Piece, Vol. 2;
Little Einsteins: Team
up For Adventure and
Inspector Gadget:
The Original Series.

20-22

Silent Hill

27-May 2

If
you happen to be in southern
Germany, dont
forget to check
out the Stuttgart
Intl Festival of
Animated Film,
and please taste the
local beer for us,
OK? (www.itfs.de).

Another popular game

becomes a movie. Silent
Hill, directed by Christophe
Gans and starring Radha
Mitchell as a mother who
loses her sick daughter in
a strange town, opens in
theaters today.

Chat about
the future, the art and
technology of animation at
the Cartoon Masters event
_______
in Vigo, Spain (www.cartoon_____
media.be). The Vision
Film Festival in Roanoke,
Virginia, has added a new
animation category to the
_____________
mix (www.blueridgeswva
lm.
__
org).

28-May 3

22-27

Get your tech

act together at National
Assoc. of Broadcasters
confab in Las Vegas (www.
___
nabshow.com).
_______ Oh yeah, that
a.m. dude, Regis Philbin
wins some kind of lifetime
achievement award too!

Director Terry Zwigoff

brings another famous Dan
Clowes comic strip to the
big screen in Art School
Condential starring Sophia
Myles and John Malkovich.

Hangzhou is the place to be

for the Second China Intl
Cartoon and Animation
Festival (www.cicaf.com).

Art School
Condential

To get your companys events and products listed in this monthly calendar, please e-mail ________________________
[email protected]

April 2006

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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BOOKS WE LOVE
Pink Panther: The
Ultimate Guide to the
Coolest Cat in Town

FRAME-BY-FRAME

By Jerry Beck
(DK Adult, $24.99)
Animation historian and guide
extraordinaire Jerry Beck (The Animated
Movie Guide, Looney Tunes: The
Ultimate Visual Guide) has delivered a
comprehensive account of the exploits
and wonders of our favorite pink feline
over the past 40 years. The book breaks
down the panthers comings and goings

by
decade
from the 1960s
on
(MGMs
recent
liveaction release
gets
some
attention, and
theres
also
an interview
with the new
Inspector Clouseau, Steve Martin.),
detailing the history behind Panther
lms, comics, cartoons, memorabilia and
the Depatie-Freleng Studio. Featuring
a forward by director Blake Edwards,
intro by David DePatie, an afterword by

by Sarah Gurman
amurai 7,
FUNimations anime of
epic
proportions, is set to
debut March 1
for
American
audiences
on
ANIMANIA HD
and will hit the
cable airwaves
via IFC on April 1.
Putting a sci-
spin on Akira
Kurosawas
1954 classic movie Seven Samurai, the series visits a desolate village in the future where the inhabitants are struggling to recover
from a massive war while fending
off the attacks of hybrid Nobuseri
bandits. The Nobuseri are former
Samurai who merged their living
cells with machines during the war
to create weapons and have now
become corrupt with power. In a
desperate move to save their land,

April 2006

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by Sarah Gurman

Samurai 7 Ready to
Rumble in Hi-Def
S

Kirara the water

priestess,
her
younger
sister
and fellow villagers Komachi and
Rikichi set out to
recruit any remaining samurai
to ght the cyborg oppression.
The 26 highdef episodes of
Samurai 7 produced by GONZO
Digimation will
expand ANIMANIA HDs audience
to young-adults 14-18, airing for
one hour every Wednesday as part
of the new Animayhem programming block. For IFC, the honor-defending property will help build on
the theme of the networks longest running lm strand, Samurai
Saturdays. Q
Samurai 7 airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
on ANIMANIA HD. It premieres on IFC
April 1 at 10:30 p.m.

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

animator Art Leonardi and oodles of fun

facts and cool cat eye candy in between,
Becks resource book really gets to the
heart of why the rosy rascal has had
such a lasting impact in pop culture. This
tome also gives fab Panther co-stars like
the Ant and the Aardvark, Misterjaws and
the Inspector their due page time and is
really a much-needed accompaniment
to the new MGM DVD release, The Pink
Panther Classic Cartoon Collection
featuring 124 toons (13 hours) as well as
documentaries about the durable classic.
And lets not forget DKs Pink Panther
Ultimate Sticker Book ($6.99)come on,
over 60 stickers and theyre reusable! Q

BKN Unmasks Zorro

nimation company/distributor
BKN has acquired exclusive
rights to produce and distribute
a new TV series and home-video
feature based on the classic Zorro
character. The deal with Zorro
Prods. will see the masked Latino
avenger brought to modern times
with 26 animated episodes and a direct-to-DVD movie tentatively titled
Zorro: Generation Z.
Zorros trusty steed will be replaced by a sleek, black motorcycle as college freshman Don Diego rights wrongs in a modern-day
city patterned after Los Angeles. No longer relying on his swordsmanship and athletic abilities alone, our hero reportedly will use
high-tech gadgets including a Z-Pod and a Z-phone.
BKN, which will also handle worldwide merchandising and licensing for Zorro: Generation Z, will be presenting the $8.4 million
series and movie at MIPTV in Cannes this April. The company recently entered the home entertainment and new media distribution market with the formation of BKN Home Entertainment Ltd in
the U.K. and BKN Home Entertainment Inc. in the U.S. The slate of
animated feature lms to be produced for distribution include Ali
Baba and the Forty Thieves, Kong II - Return to the Jungle, A Christmas Carol, Robin Hood, Jungle Book, Jack and the Beanstalk, The
Prince and the Pauper, The Three Musketeers, Gullivers Travels,
Alice in Wonderland and The Nutcracker. The company will also
handle DVD releases for the full BKN catalogue, including such
new TV series as Legend of the Dragon, KongThe Animated Series and Dork Hunters from Outer Space. Q
Ryan Ball

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The Dream
Life of Brozers
Ancient culture inspires an
Aboriginal original.

FRAME-BY-FRAME

by Ramin Zahed

n adventure-packed surng trip Down

Under could have far-reaching inspirational effects beyond expectations.
Just ask French brothers Jerome and Cyril
de Baecque, who came up with the idea
for their beautiful animated project The
Rainbow Snake during an Australian adventure in 2000. We discovered the Aboriginal art on display at the Sydney Museum and literally fell in love with it, says
Jerome de Baecque. That was the starting point. Then we embarked on two years
of research, which included reading many
books about the culture and meeting with
people in the art world.
Jerome joined forces with screenwriter
Mathilde Annaud (daughter of noted
French director Jean-Jacques Annaud) to
esh out a satisfying storyline based on

the rich Aboriginal ethnology and culture.

It took us over three years and around 20
versions, because we wanted to create a
story for children that is fun and dynamic,
but one that also expressed the richness
and specicity of the culture.
The team moved on to the design
stage last year with the aid of Pascal Valdes, a talented veteran of the business,
who also served as the art director on
Christian Volckmans acclaimed CG-animated feature, Renaissance. Since he
joined our team and discovered this amazing culture, hes also hooked, adds Jerome. Now after spending four years, we
have brought the lm to an advanced

April 2006

stage of development and are ready to

squash animation. Character animation
start pre-production.
and foregrounds will be in CG, while most
Set in the great plain of Papunya, The
backgrounds will be in 2D and some seRainbow Snake centers on 10-year-old
quences will involve hand-painted eletwins Manoa and Djebek, who became orments in the style of Aborginal dot
phans when their parents were transpaintings.
formed into rocks. Upon receiving a teleJerome notes that ancient Aboriginal
pathic message from their parents, they
tales and legends have inspired the storyembark on a journey across Australia to
line and the cultures paintings and sculpnd the ancestral spirit of water (the
tures have inuenced the design. This
Rainbow Snake) to save their clan
culture is the oldest surviving form of
from a terrible drought.
spiritual art in the world, he adds. For
60,00 years it has been passed on from
In 2003, the brothers launched
one generation to the next. Today the Abtheir company Brozers Inc. in order
origines are trying to save their heritage
to develop The Rainbow Snake, as
through the distribution of their paintings
well as another lm titled Troublearound the world. We hope that our lm
makers. They are also working on
will help their cause. Q
other projects for TV, such as the
For more info, visit www.brozers.com
CG-animated show Kongzi, which
they will take to MIPTV
next month. In March,
Hot Discs
they will present their
feature project at the
Cartoon Movie event in
Animated
Germany to seek poten1. The Lady and the Tramp:
tial European partners.
50th Anniversary Ed. (Disney)
At this stage, we dont
2. Wallace & Gromit: The Revenge of the
have a set budget, but
Were-Rabbit (DreamWorks)
we think it will be around
3.
Ultimate Avengers: The Movie (Lions Gate)
10 to 15 million euros,
says Jerome. We see
4. Bambi II (Disney)
the production as a
5. Howls Moving Castle (Disney)
Toon-shaded CG feature
and are aiming for highSource: amazon.com, 2/21/06
est level of stretch-and-

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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CONFERENCE MAY 9-11

EXPOSITION MAY 10-12

BEMaGS
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L.A. CONVENTION CENTER

WHERE BUSINESS GETS FUN

Three Days That

Could Change Your Year.
One place. One entire industry waiting for you. One dynamic educational program
that will guide you toward the most promising opportunities within the interactive
entertainment industry today. It's the E3 2006 Conference Program.
Industry executives and renowned creative talent will share their knowledge
and views of the future, and supply you with tips and strategies to perfect your
business plans and keep you one step ahead of the competition. Whether youre
a designer, manager or strategist, there are more than 30 sessions covering a
wide variety of topics specifically designed to meet your needs and interests.
And thats not all. The exhibit floor is where you will see all the newest computer
and video game products and technologies that the industry has to offer.

2006

Register today for the E3 Conference Program.

Three days that could change your whole year.

E 3 is a trade event and only qualified industry professionals may attend. No one under 18 will be admitted, including infants.
Visit www.e3expo.com for registration guidelines.

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The Hash Inc. booth attracts a ock of

inquiring minds at the Game Center opening.

Photo credit: Shahla Bebe

AIs Got Game

The Art Institute of California-Los Angeles puts education
in play at Game Center. by Ryan Ball

GAMES

trengthening its commitment to game

art and design education, The Art Institute of California-Los Angeles recently
opened the Game Center, a state-of-the-art facility where students can play the latest titles
and prepare to bring tomorrows hottest games
to the masses. The Jan. 26 opening ceremony
was well attended by both students and industry professionals who got a look at the latest
developments and a glimpse of whats in store
for students eager to enter the lucrative world
of interactive entertainment.
The day-long event started with an exposition of new hardware, software, games and
technology presented by Game Center partners
and sponsors. Company representatives from
such industry leaders as AMD, Autodesk Inc.,
Avid Computer Graphics, Luminetik Animation
Studios, Nvidia Corp., Seagate Technology and
wondertouch were on hand to talk shop and
share their latest offerings while students
seized the opportunity to network. Other participating companies include SilverStone, Tyan
Computer Corp., ViewSonic, International Game
Developers Assn (IGDA), Motion Analysis Corp.,
nPower Software, PC Unlimited, Peachpit Press,
Pioneer (USA) and F. Dice.
We are honored to have so many prestigious
partners for the Game Center, says Laura Soloff, president of The Art Institute of California
Los Angeles. All of the tools they have contrib-

Game Center houses the tools and technology

for students who want to do extra research and
preparation to get ahead of the game before entering the work force.
For the technology partners involved, the
Game Center provides an opportunity to get
their products in students hands and forge crucial relationships with up-and-coming game talent. PC Unlimited president Allen Hodjat comments, We are building advanced workstations
tailored directly to professional animators, video
editors and game developers. The Game Center
puts us in direct contact with students and pros
of the game development eld, helping us to
better understand their needs, and in turn, build
more advanced systems.
IGDA Los Angeles chapter coordinator Jeff
Lander adds, The excellent equipment and facilities at the Center give students and members the ability to
get hands-on experience with
the tools used by the studios on
high-end productions. I look forward to seeing some amazing results from this collaboration.
Following the expo, guests
toured the new facility, which
boasts a fully functional motioncapture studio featuring top-ofthe-line cameras and other
equipment donated by Motion

In addition to what our students learn in the classroom,

the Game Center houses the tools and technologies for
students who want to do extra research and preparation to
get ahead of the game before entering the work force.
--Laura Soloff, president of The Art Institute of California--Los Angeles

uted to our school provide a tremendous benet

to the students in our Game Art & Design and
Media Arts & Animation programs. In addition to
what our students learn in the classroom, the

April 2006

Analysis Corp. There was also a private screening of work by Game Wizards, the student game
development team at the Los Angeles campus
in Santa Monica. An impressive presentation

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

demonstrated what a handful of students can

accomplish on a shoestring budget and a tight
schedule that would make any developer cringe.
And while the quality of the graphics and design
level displayed could easily be passed off as professional product, it served as a mere taste of
the talent that is going to be issuing forth from
the program in the coming years.
One of the on-going activities of the Game
Center is the Animation 21 Lecture Series, which
brings game, animation and digital lmmaking
professionals and celebrities together ten times
a year to discuss their craft. According to Game
Center industry liaison Bijan Tehrani, a host of
other special programs will be added to the mix.
We are planning several events for the Game
Center, he notes, including a festival of best
game animation, a game industry job fair, new
game launch events and A
Touch of GDC to show the best
of the Game Developers Conference in one day in L.A.
Commenting on the overwhelming turnout for the expo
and ribbon cutting, dean of
academic affairs Vi Ly enthuses, I was so elated to see the
industry support at The Art Institutes Game Center opening.
It is evidenced that such a center is needed for the next generation of gamers, and we
hope our small, efcient center will become an
essential and integral part for future game designers.
It was great to nally see the culmination of
all the hard work and planning that went into the
development of the Game Center, adds Eric T.
Elder, academic director for the Game Art & Design program. It was great to get all the positive
feedback we received about the event and this
new resource we have created.
Free membership to the Game Center is available to students of The Art Institute of California
Los Angeles, members of the IGDA L.A. chapter
and industry professionals. To apply, contact Bijan Tehrani at (818) 613-4227 or _______
btehrani@dljl.

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Five Game Animation Trends to

Watch For
by Ryan Ball

GAMES

hen
one
compares
an
arcade classic
like the original Donkey
Kong to something like
Peter Jacksons King Kong:
The Ofcial Game of the
Movie, its obvious that
video game animation has
come light years in just a
couple of decades. As the
game industry gradually
rolls out the newest
generation of consoles and
titles, it's also clear that
theres no limit to what
artists will be able to do
in the interactive space as
the tools and technology
get better and better. We
spoke with various industry
professionals to get an idea
of what we can anticipate
in the next few years and
what technical advances
are driving the new
milestones and challenges
in game animation.

Run-time technology
Gamers who spend any amount of time with one title are
sure to start noticing the same canned animations cycling
through, whether it's a devastating sword blow, a sick
skateboard wipeout or a gut-wrenching wrestling take-down.
This issue is being dealt with by NaturalMotion, whose
endorphin is the only character animation software to utilize
Dynamic Motion Synthesis, a technology based on articial
intelligence controllers that essentially allow characters to
animate themselves in real time. While endorphin is used
heavily by in the motion picture industry, the company is
offering game makers a new product called euphoria, which
promises to take animation out of the can and give gamers
completely interactive characters for the rst time.
This is really a huge step for the company and for the
games as well, because youre now moving away from having
to pre-produce everything to actually
seeing things in real-time as they
happen on the screen says
NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil. The
best example he can cite is American
football games where all the tackles
currently have to be pre-animated.
With euphoria, however, they can be
done in real-time and will always look
different. Whenever a tackle happens
on screen, it's a unique tackle, he

Total-Performance Mo-Cap
Motion-capture technology already plays a major role in video game
animation, but were told that the industry is seeing a major shift in how
data needs to be captured for next-gen titles.
Next-generation games platforms are delivering graphics capabilities at
such a level that motion-capture in general and motion-capture of facial,
full body and hands in particular has become crucial for game cinematic
animation and more and more for in-game animation, says Jon Damush,
VP and general manager of the entertainment division at VICON Motion
Systems. Couple the requirements for increased realism with the fact
that schedules are not getting any longer for getting
content out the door, and you now have a real need
to capture entire performances at once. Theres no
longer time to motion-capture body, ngers and facial performances separately and put it all together
later.
Damush boasts that the four mega-pixel cameras
12

April 2006

states. It all depends on what youve donethe angle, the

speed of your body, the strength of your body, everything. Its
not a matter of triggering animation #42.B or something.
NaturalMotion believes euphoria and run-time technology
with revolutionize the way players respond viscerally to any
given game. The obvious effect, say Torsten, is that the
quality of the animation and interactivity is much higher, but
we think theres something even bigger there. For the rst
time you have these unique game moments where you say,
wow, Ive just seen something that I know has never happened
before and is never going to happen again in the same way.
The company will be demonstrating euphoria behind closed
doors at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March.
Michel Kripalani, games industry manager for Autodesks
media and entertainment division, also identies a shift from
pre-created animations to those driven by parametric systems such as forward kinematics (FK) and inverse kinematics
(IK). These technological improvements will give characters
more uidity and animation options as the system will not be
stuck with a pre-dened set of
baked animations, he says. Autodesk is continuing to develop
high-end animation systems in
3ds Max, Maya and MotionBuilder
through a variety of new technologies and techniques.

and grayscale processing of VICONs MX 40 cameras has pushed motioncapture to the point where character motion can be recorded with incredible
accuracy and detail. We can put tiny markers on the face and ngers and
larger markers on the body to capture a complete performance, he says.
Game producers can now work with a motion-capture performer and elicit
full responses and emotions in the same way live-action lm directors work
with actors on set.
According to Damush, game and lm customers are demanding higher
and higher camera counts to capture performances in greater detail. A
games customer booking a job at our House of Moves motion capture
studio, for example, has 100 VICON MX cameras that can be congured
for total-performance capture for any workow, he
notes. Theres a new thinking for motion-capture
and for using it in non-traditional ways like capturing
a beat box in 3D to provide music sync for a karaoke
game. The bar is being raised with more performers,
more complex props and more interaction, again now
possible from a total-performance point of view.

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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Facing the Uncanny Valley

lar reactions to Warner Bros. The Polar Express,

which employed ImageMovers performancecapture system.

Keeping Up with
the Joneses (a.k.a
Graphics)
As graphics get better
and polygon counts continue to rise, animation naturally has to step up to the
next level, according to Edge
of Realitys Chad Hranchak,
who served as senior animator on Activisions Over
the Hedge game, based on

the upcoming DreamWorks Animation feature. On this front, he says

the human factor is perhaps more
important than technology.
One of the biggest things Im
seeing is the need to emphasize
the character as a real character
and letting the player really connect with that [person], almost on
a personal level, Hranchak remarks.

The DVD Factor

In the 1980s Don Bluths laser disc-based Dragons Lair burst onto
the scene and introduced a completely different kind of gaming experience. Todays equivalent is perhaps the emergence of the DVD
board game, which creates yet another outlet for interactive animation. Since the movie trivia game Scene It blazed the trail, weve seen
a number of contenders enter the market, which is rapidly expanding
judging by the number of DVD board games unveiled at this years Toy
Fair in New York.
Animation plays a signicant role in our games, says Brian Johnson,
CEO of B1 Games. We always strive to enhance the original property
with animation. In the case of our X-Men DVD board game, we are
taking existing comic books and giving them motion. We have an inhouse creative staff of over 80 people bringing
these images to life using Illustrator, Combustion,
After Effects and Maya.
Johnson goes on to say that as license fees

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Back in the day, you had characters that were just blocks
and you accepted them as
blocks and that was okay.
But I think the player really
wants to feel who theyre
playing now and, obviously,
animations going to play a
huge role in that.
On the Over The Hedge
game, Hranchak says there
was a lot of going back and
forth with co-workers to
have other people feel out his work.
Instead of just trying to accomplish
a jump or attack, you try to gure
out what makes it feel different
from all the other characters, he
says. We had four main characters
on this game, for instance, and each
one had to do all of the same moves
but each had to feel like their own
little guy.

GAMES

Autodesks Kripalani, tells us one of the key

hurdles game developers will face and eventually overcome in the next ve years will be
something called the uncanny valley.
The uncanny valley is the point at which a
character becomes just close enough to photoreal and believable that it actually looks sort
of creepy, he says. Viewers nd these types
of characters to be uncomfortable whether in
games or lms, even if they are unable to put
their nger on why things feel odd.
According to Kripalani, game artists will eventually climb out of this gorge with improvements
in the subtle nuances of character animation
and facial expressions, as well as more convincing hair and cloth.
We have seen issues regarding the uncanny
valley phenomenon before in regards to the
motion picture industry. The creepiness some
viewers detect in photrealistic characters may
have contributed to the failure of the CG feature
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within from Square
and Sony Pictures. Some moviegoers has simi-

for actual TV and lm clips increase, more games are being done
using animation. We have produced several DVD Board Games where
animation was the only way to bring it to life, he comments.
B1 hopes to make a splash in the online game realm as well with
plans to develop web-connected HD DVD games. Currently, the
company is working on games based on FOXs 24 and CBSs Amazing
Race. Meanwhile, one of its competitors, the similarly named b-Equal,
has licensed the DreamWorks Animation franchises such as Shrek
and Over the Hedge for DVD board games that will also feature new
animation.
With video games sales currently in a slump, this might just be the
right time for DVD titles to move in and capture a bigger chunk of
the home entertainment market. But dont count the rst-person
shooters and RPGs out. As game animation continues to improve, it
can only increase the demand for experiences
that pull people out of reality and immerse
them into brave new worlds that only stings
of zeros and ones can create. Q

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

April 2006

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A Second Mammoth
Undertaking
The speed of development and animation on Fox/Blue
Skys Ice Age 2: The Meltdown was anything but glacial.
by Michael Mallory

FEATURE

he makers of Ice Age 2:

The Meltdown (Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios)
want you to know that they are
not presenting a story ripped
from todays headlines. Despite
what many reviewers are destined to read into the lm when
it is released March 31, the story
of a pack of fur-clad heroes who
struggle for survival through a
globally warming, rapidly changing and suddenly dangerous
world is not a deliberate parallel
of our own recent hurricane-and
tsunami-born disasters.
Its a cartoon! laughs executive producer Chris Wedge. If you go to this movie with
the expectation of seeing a lot of sharp
critical allegory about whats going on in
our world today, you may be disappointed.
Adds producer Lori Forte: We denitely
did not go into it saying, Lets do a story
thats relatable to global warming. But
once you set up an ice age, you have to
start thinking about whats going to happen to all of your characters once all this
ice melts.
As they used to say in Hollywood: If you
want to send a message, call Western
Union. What Ice Age 2: The Meltdown does
represent, particularly for those who are

April 2006

savvy about the process of making an animated feature, is something of a miracle

birth. The lm, which brings back the disparate tribe from 2002s Ice AgeManny
the mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), Diego the sabertooth (Denis Leary) and Sid
the sloth (John Leguizamo)and adds new
characters Ellie (Queen Latifah), a lady
mammoth who thinks she is a possum, and
Eddie and Crash (Josh Peck and Seann William Scott), her two gonzo adoptive brothers who really are possums, was completely animated in eight months.
The rush was in part to make sure that
the memory of the original Ice Age did not
melt from moviegoers minds. We wanted
to remain within four years of the original

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

lm, says Fox Animation

president Chris Meledandri.
We believe that the rst
lm had an enormous audience who really loved it, and
we wanted to follow up with
a lm while it was still in
their consciousness.
Meledandri adds that the
studio also wanted to maintain the March release window that Fox Animation
staked out with the rst Ice
Age and now virtually owns.
(And, truth be told, Robots
ran a bit over schedule, carrying the crew
with it.) Still, eight months to animate a
feature?
Granted, the characters were already developed and modeled, but that was the extent of the re-use factor. The world of Ice
Age 2 is considerably different than the
pristine, almost austere glacial environment of its predecessor. The rst movie
was more of white blues than browns, says
director Carlos Saldanha. For this one we
added a layer of green to it. We have forest,
grass, owers, elements that will take you
a little more to a springtime feeling, which
added a little more of the complexity to the
look and took away a little bit of the simplicity of the graphic quality.

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De SIGN by de SVE

Chris Wedge

Lori Forte

Chris Meledandri

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ANIMATION MAGAZINE

April 2006

FEATURE

The simplicity of Ice Ages story structure was maintained,

though, with each of the characters having well-dened
goals and/or problems. For Manny it is the possibility that his
species will become extinct unless he can nd a lady mammoth, and when he does, he cant stand her! Former antagonist Diego has a more pressing problem (Hint: Cats hate water), while the Scrat is still governed by his Sisyphian determination to open that infernal acorn.
A concentrated effort was made across the board to retain the stylized look of the rst lm while taking advantage
of the advancements in technologyfur technology, in
particular. In the rst lm, the texture of the fur was painted on millions of invisible cards, so it had a sleek kind of quality to it, says character designer Peter de Sve. Here there
were actually follicles grown onto them. The advantages are
it looks much more real; the disadvantages are it looks much
more real!
Naturally, the skills of the animators evolved as
well. There is some incredibly entertaining animation in this
movie that I wouldnt have dreamed of doing when we started doing the rst one, says Wedge. Alias Maya 6.5 was
used for the character animation, while Blue Skys proprie-

Photo credit: Greg Preston

Animated features normally

employ an entire staff of character designers, but that tradition
has been shattered by Ice Age
2: The Meltdown, for which complete control over character design was entrusted to just one
artist: Peter de Sve.
An illustrator for books (Finn
McCoul) and cover artist for New
Yorker magazine, de Sves rst
foray into animation was Disneys Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Since then he has worked on such lms as Mulan, A Bugs Life,
and Finding Nemo. But it was with 2002s Ice Age that de Sve
rst went solo.
I was one of a few designers who were invited to work on
Ice Age 1, he says. After a few months of sketching for Chris
Wedge, I found that I was the only character designer on the
lm. Not only did the artist relish seeing his designs undiluted by the melting pot process that had been the norm on
other lms, but he was able to go beyond the design stage
and work directly with the modelers, animators and riggers to
bring the characters to life.
For Ice Age 2, de Sve designed more than 20 new characters, including a few that were initially pitched for the rst lm
but were left on the drawing board. His biggest challenge,
though, was differentiating the look of Ellie, the female mammoth, from that of Manny.
We went back and forth
just trying to get Ellie
right, de Sve says. You
revise the eyes and do the
eyelash thing, but at the
same time you dont want
to be obvious about it. So
there are subtle things in
the shape of her silhouette. Manny is made up
more of planes and straights, and shes got more curves and
in the way her wig is shaped, and her tusks, which are much
smaller.
Currently de Sve is helping develop three more
projects at Blue Sky, including a concept of his
own, while awaiting the nal rendering of Ice Age
2: The Meltdown. I think
this movie is going to look
great and Im very proud to have been a part of it, he says. Q

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FEATURE

Carlos Saldanha

tary package CGI Studio was employed for rendering.

While necessitating tweaks in lighting, color and volume
(de Sve notes that applying the new fur technology to
the existing model of Sid initially made him look obese.)
the new fur technology allows for far greater realism in
how the hairy coats relate to wind and water and even
internal forces such as breathing. In one sequence, a baby
mammoths panicked breathing and the way her fur reacts to it creates a stunning effect.
The character who enjoys the most fur-to-element contact is the Scrat (voice, er, utterances provided again by
Wedge), whose Buster Keatonish-mishaps intersect more
closely this time around with the main storyline of the
mismatched nomadic family. The fur itself became a
character we could animate, says Saldanha.
The entire production team has nothing but praise for
and occasionally amazement at the hardworking Blue Sky
crew, which included supervising animators Mike Thurmeier, Jim Bresnahan and Galen Chu, lead animator David Torres, art director Tom Cardone, fur supervisor Eric Maurer
and effects supervisor Rob Cavaleri, who was responsible
for channeling the lms vast supply of water. (The effects
animation also had to be completed within that eightmonth production period.)
At the end of achieving every milestone it was a very
emotional moment because I could see how much people
cared about this movie, Saldanha says. They put every
drop of blood into this movie because they believed in it.
In one sense, Saldanha adds, the schedule turned out to
be a good thing creatively. Not having the luxury to wander
around makes you go with your gut feeling more, he says. I
think at that level, maybe some of the stuff came out better
than if I had milked it to the last minute. Still, he laughs and
says, I dont want them to make this a trend! Q
Michael Mallory is a Los Angeles-based journalist who
specializes in animation and visual effects.
Fox releases Ice Age 2: The Meltdown in theaters
nationwide on March 31. For more info, visit www.
____
iceagemovie.com.
_____________

April 2006

A Pre-hysterical Chat with

John Leguizamo

nterviewing actor John

Leguizamo, who returns in
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
as the voice of the sibilant
scene-stealer Sid the sloth,
is like talking with an entire
cast. One second hes
John, and the next hes the
clipped British narrator of
the documentary on sloths
that he used for research;
then hes Sid with his tongue being pulled out, for an Ice Age 2 tiein talking toy; and then hes a studio marketing wonk who, after 15
cups of coffee, dreams up the promotional stunt that will soon put
him atop an iceberg in Alaska. (The stunt is apparently real, though
the caffeinated exec is the product of Leguizamos Energizer Bunny
imagination.)
Creating wild, funny characters is the actors stock in trade, and Sid
is one that he loves. We have an amazing chemistry between the
three of us [he, Ray Romano and Denis Leary], Leguizamo says. Its
so hard to come up with characters that have a really good chemistry
and good interlocking neuroses For Ice Age 2, he says that Sid nally
feels like he is part of the surrogate family, but the part that is usually
overlooked. Sid feels like the middle child, the one that cant get
noticed: He spends the whole movie trying to prove himself and stand
out.
In addition to the aforementioned tongue-pull toy, Leguizamo has
also lent his Siddian lisp (which he developed after learning that actual
sloths store food in their mouths) to a wide array of other products
and TV spotsunlike the situation from the rst Ice Age outing. Last
time [Fox] didnt know they had a hit on their hands, so there werent
enough toys, he says. Now weve got Burger King behind us and a
ton of toys and video games!
Who knew a sloth could be so industrious?
Michael Mallory

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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Gankutsuou: The Count of

Monte Cristo

West Meets East:

Thoughts on America and

the New Anime Wave
by Patrick Drazen

FEATURE

ts a sign of the times. More anime productions in Japan are showing signs of western involvement. Some believe that the
new presence of American co-producers is
coloring the innate Japanese avors of these
productions, while retaining their unmistakable style and quirks.
Two series are based on western literary
classics with a science ction twist. Hakugei:
Legend of the Moby Dick time-warps from
Herman Melvilles Moby Dick to a future where
whale hunters are salvage astronauts who
round up derelict starships (occasionally
stealing some of the cargo, giving them a
reputation as pirates). The one-legged, eyepatch-wearing Captain Ahab is the greatest
whale hunter in the Nantucket Nebula, and
this series tells of his hunt for the Moby Dick,
a whale-shaped prototype starship capable
of destroying entire planets. (Like many modern anime, theres a hidden government agenda, so this whale hunt isnt as simple as it
sounds.)
Hakugei, originally broadcast in Japan in
1997, is directed by anime veteran Osamu
Dezaki, an animator with experience on both
sides of the Pacic. Not only did he direct
various titles based on manga by Osamu Tezuka (most notably the Black Jack videos and
the 1980 Astroboy remake), he was also behind one of the Rainbow Brite projects. Dezaki, who had previously tried to adapt Melvilles

April 2006

novel, was approached by Shueisha Publishing to write a how-to guide for anime directors.
I tried to create a story and write a book
that used it to explain the ow of production
from conception to screenplay and storyboards all the way to animation, Dezaki explains. Doing that, I tried to deal with Moby
Dick again, but for various reasons I thought
Id try giving it a science ction avor. After
that, producer Tetsuo Katayama who I go way
back with was like, You went to all the trouble
of making up the project, so... So I got up my
enthusiasm and we decided to animate it.
Dezaki planned a 39-episode run, which

was pared down to 26 weeks. This explains

the high-octane action level of the series as
did his having earlier animated another western-lit-inspired series, based on Robert Louis
Stevensons Treasure Island.
While Dezakis visual style will be immediately recognizable to fans of his work, the
look of Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo looks like no anime anyones ever seen.
Like Hakugei, its a 26-part series that gives a
science ction twist to Alexandre Dumas
novel, while retaining much of the plot and
the characters. The striking look, however, is
the result of the collaboration between Gonzo
Digimation and Asian-American fashion designer Anna Sui.
I visited Gonzo Digimation in Tokyo during
our Anna Sui fragrance launch in Japan, Sui
says. We had just done a comic book collaboration with Dark Horse Publications in the
United States and the use of my original designs made the characters quite fashionable.
When Gonzo Digimation approached me with
the concept of combining forces, this seemed
to be a natural progression to go from the
printed page to a full-motion video animation.
Designing period costumes, set in the future but looking back to the 19th century,
continued on page 20

Hakugei:
Legend of the
Moby Dick

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IGPX

IGPX
West Meets East
continued from page 18

FEATURE

was the biggest challenge for Sui. The emergence of the so-called dandy with the top hat
and cane made use of accessories as fashion
statements. The widening of dresses, the
gathering of fabric, the use of rufes and the
belted waist all contributed to a new look.
The third series, now showing in Cartoon
Networks Toonami block, suggests yet another future: giant robots in a three-on-three
roller derby on a 60-mile ever-changing track.
This concept, and entire idea for IGPX, the ac-

ronym (kinda) for Immortal Grand Prix, was

developed in 2003 by Sean Akins and Jason
DeMarco originally for a ve-part animation for
Toonami. The CGI was done by Production I.G.,
the studio responsible for the classic Ghost in
the Shell. In 2004, DeMarco recalls, We went
back [to Production I.G.] and said, What if we
made a show with you guys? Akins and DeMarco collaborated with director Mitsuru
Hongo, mechanical designer Kenji Teraoka and
Production I.G. writers to create the 13-episode seriesa rare case in which Americans
participated in the creation of an anime, not

merely in post-production. Hongo praised his

collaborators, who traveled to Japan monthly
for meetings: Sean and Jason are big fans of
anime and they really like what I make. Its actually much easier to work with them than
companies Ive been working with in Japan.
Will west-east cooperation be the way of
the future? Stay tuned Q
Patrick Drazen is a Chicago-based writer who
specializes in anime. He is the author of Anime Explosion! The What? Why? & Wow! of
Japanese Animation ($18.95, Stone Bridge
Press).

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April 2006

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Look Out, Godzilla.

Here Comes Negadon!
New lm brings CG to the classic Japanese monster movie.
by Ryan Ball

www.animationmagazine.net

in Japan. The 20-minute ick was

picked up by ComixWave for worldwide
distribution and was recently acquired
by leading anime distributor Central
Park Media for theatrical and home
video release in North America.
As with any overnight success,
Negadon was a long time in the making,
28 months to be exact. Awazu did it all
himself on a PC using Autodesks 3ds
Max 5.1, Adobe/After Effects 6.5
(Professional Version), and a few choice
plug-ins including Digimations Shag
for hair, Red Giant Softwares Knoll
Light Factory for reection effects and
RE: Vision Effects Twixtor for framerate tweaking.
Awazu says the hardest part was

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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modeling and animating the human

characters, since hed had little
experience with photo-real people. He
tells us he wanted to bring a degree of
exaggeration to the models without
going to the extremes that Manga
often does. It was difcult to nd the
well-balanced point, he notes. It took
a lot of trial and error to get it right.
Though hes surprised by all the
attention Negadon has been
getting, Awazu feels a lot of it has
to do with a growing public
curiosity with Kaiju, an old concept
but a new buzzword to many. The
genre has been recently parodied
in music videos and live Kaiju
wrestling matches have become
popular in certain hipster circles,
but he believes that Japanese
giant monster movies have slipped
into a state of decay and fans are
looking for the next big thing to
jumpstart things, much like
Godzilla needs a jolt of nuclear
power every now and then.
Whether or not Negadon kicks
off a new era in Kaiju, it has
captured the imagination of
science-ction and animation fans
around the world who have caught
glimpses online and cant wait to
see more. The movie seems to
have tapped into something
Awazu identies as Kacchoii, a
Japanese word meaning cool. He
remarks, Kacchoii is a primitive
feelingone which Japanese kids use
as the most important criteria in
selecting toys and TV programs.
Released theatrically in Japan in
October of 2005, Negadon won the
Outstanding Production Award at the
20th Digital Contents Grand Prix and
was named a Jury Recommended Work
at the 2005 Japan Media Arts Festival.
Set for release in the U.S. theatrically
this spring and on home video this
summer, the lm is sure to open many
doors for Awazu, who hasnt yet
decided what he wants to do next.
Judging by Negadon, however, we can
be sure that whatever it is, its going to
be totally Kacchoii. Q

April 2006

FEATURE

f youve seen Godzilla: Final

Wars or any other recent
entries in the giant monster
genre known as Kaiju, youve
no doubt noticed a lot more CG
animation and digital effects
creeping in to augment the
traditional man-in-suit monster
brawls. But when Hollywoods
attempt at replacing the clunky
rubber costume with a CG
Godzilla failed, it seemed fans
would accept no substitute for
good,
old-fashioned
suitimation. That is, until
Negadon: The Monster From
Mars invaded the planet.
Negadon is the brainchild of
animator Jun Awazu, who set
out to use computer animation
to capture all the style and
nostalgia of a 1970s Japanese
monster movie, even though he
feared resistance from the
faithful.
Regardless of recent progress
in visual effects by CG, many
Kaiju fans have a strong affection for
traditional suitimation, marionette-like
props and miniature work, Awazu tells
us. So, I thought they might either
welcome this all-CG work as the birth
of new Kaiju movie, or criticize it as
blasphemy to the tradition. The result
was that many of them accepted it
because the CG reproduced the
excellent points of the traditional
techniques.
This mixture of old-school charm
and the latest advances in Japanese
animation paid off for Awazu as word
of his lm quickly spread around the
world with help from fanboy websites
and enthusiastic reviews from those
fortunate enough to catch a screening

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Viewtiful Joe

A Cultural Give and Take

The real world could learn a few lessons in harmonious coexistence and blending of cultures from animated series
that glide easily between Asian and Western traditions.
by Charles Solomon

FEATURE

slacker dude in cargo shorts

and multiple earrings gets a
magic watch that transforms
him into a superhero; two Japanese
pop stars pursue their careers in
brightly-colored, stylized animation; a
boy learns to control the elements of
re, earth, air and water to fulll his
destiny and restore balance to the
world; a beat-boxer with an Elvis pompadour proclaims his imminent rise to
famein Tokugawa, Japan.
Which shows are Japanese and
which are American?
The rst and fourth, Viewtiful Joe
and Samurai Champloo, are Japanese;
the second and third, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi and Avatar the Last Airbender,
are from the U.S.A. All four illustrate
the cross-pollination between American and Japanese animators thats
producing some imaginative hybrids all
over the digital landscape.
The scruffy hero of Viewtiful Joe
sports a goatee, a backwards baseball
cap and a demeanor that suggests a
California skateboard park, rather than

April 2006

Tokyo. Viewtiful Joe is a perfect example of cross-pollination, starting

with the title, which was conceived in
English, says Grant Moran, head writer
on the English version of the series.
Most of the iconic movie realms Joe
visits are American. Theres a ton of
English in the original production, including his catchphrases, henshin a
go-go, baby and cheeseburger,
please.
When the Japanese animation industry began taking off in the
60s, many of their characters
looked like theyd been hired
from Hanna-Barbera: Speed
Racer resembled a young Tony
Curtis. The current dialogue is
more reciprocal.
People are recognizing
that
cross-pollination
doesnt lead to an Americanization of Japan, comments
Ian Condry, assistant
professor of Japanese
cultural studies at MIT.
The Japanese take

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

things and transform them into something uniquely their own. It dates back
to borrowing their writing system from
China in the 700s and extends to poetic forms and Buddhism, as well as
music, lm, comic books and animation.
Japan and America are borrowing
from each other: its happening both
ways. I think its a product of importing
anime shows and having them become
hits, agrees Bob Higgins, senior VP of
programming and production for Cartoon Network. Pokmon and Dragon
Ball started the trend; as they became
successful, you saw American producers taking inuences from them. Conversely, youre seeing more Americanized storytelling and character design
in Japanese animation. If you look at
Dragon Ball, then at new series like Naruto and One Piece, you can see the
difference.
The heroines of Cartoon Networks
Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi are based on pop
stars Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura.
Anime was just the beginning of Japanese culture to come to the United
States. Now J-pop culture and music
are poised to be the next big thing, asserts series creator and executive producer Sam Register.
In the cartoons, Ami is upbeat and
resourceful; Yumi is cooler and more
cynical. As they tour the world in their
elaborate bus, they encounter everything from overly enthusiastic fans to

Hi Hi Puffy
AmiYumi

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Avatar: The Last

Airbender

www.animationmagazine.net

Courtesy: Nickelodeon

in Edo-era Japan. Jin, a taciturn

ronin, is an icy, deadly swordsman. Low-life vagabond Mugen
is equally dangerous, but his
moves incorporate break dance
spins and ips. Ditsy waitress
Fuu compels them to help her
search for a mysterious samurai
who smells of sunowers.
Many of the trios adventures
are set to a hip-hop soundtrack.
I believe samurai in the Edo
period and modern hip-hop artists have something in common.
Rappers open the way to their
future with one microphone;
samurai decided their fate with
one sword, Watanabe told the
The New York Times. Ive been
interested in hip-hop since it
rst appeared: the fact that it
was born not in the music industry but on the street, the idea of
using a turntable as an instrument, singing vividly about reality instead of typical love songs and its
links to grafti and dance.
Condry notes that the cross-pollination has largely been restricted to the
graphics and tone of individual series;
Samurai Champloo takes the cultural
mixing much further.
Watanabe used the idea of sampling and remixing as part of the storytelling technique in Samurai Champloo, he concludes. In Episode 8, when
the beat-boxer Nagamitsu talks about
the famous samurai he could beat (including Jin), hes actually sampling the
names and images of actors from 70s
TV shows. Watanabe takes the idea of
sampling and remixing from hip-hop,
but he does the same thing the DJs do,
which is reinvigorate the work of an
earlier era. In this case, its not music
but television. I think it represents another way of thinking about cross-pollination, not in terms of look and feel,
but in terms of technique and even
ideas of what creativity and originality
can mean. Q
Charles Solomon is a Los Angelesbased animation expert and the author of The History of Animation and
The Disney That Never Was.

though it doesnt look or feel like any

of the other Nick cartoons. Paramount
released a rst volume of episodes
from the rst season on DVD in January and will deliver a second package
on March 28.
The most intriguing and complex example of the trans-Pacic
cross-pollination is Samurai Champloo, from director Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop). An outrageous mixture of martial arts
combat and hip-hop irreverence, Champloo
brings
together
three
misfits

Samurai
Champloo

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

April 2006

FEATURE

vampire Goths and psychotropic sushi. The elegant,

minimal designs owe more
to the UPA cartoons of the
50s than to Japanese sources. A dubbed version of Hi Hi
Puffy AmiYumi now airs on
Tokyos Oha Star block and
on Cartoon Network, so the
cycle is complete.
If Puffy AmiYumi suggests a Japanese series
with American visuals, Nickelodeons Avatar the Last
Airbender feels like an
American series in Asian
trappings. A century after
the Fire People began a war
of conquest against other
tribes, Katara, a young Waterbender, and her brother
Sokka nd a boy with a
shaved head frozen in the
ice. When Katara revives
him, she discovers his name
is Aang and that he is the last Airbenderand the long-lost Avatar.
Although Avatar features a lot of pseudomartial arts mumbojumbo, the characters are pure
21st
century
America. Katara,
the
l a s t
member
of her tribe to
possess
Waterbending skills,
is an assertive
smart-mouth;
ineffectual doofus
Sokka supplies comic
relief. But the character
designs, the look of the series
and the basic premise reect
the inuence of anime.
Co-created and exec produced
by Michael DiMartino and Byran Konietzko, both of whom are fans of Asian
anime, the show premiered on Nickelodeon on February 21, 2005, and has
developed a strong cult following, al-

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All Eyes Focus on

Animated Japan
Despite the shrinking air time on Japans terrestrial channels,
anime continues to cast its global spell. by Tad Osaki

FEATURE

TOKYO Although on Oscar night Hayao Miyazakis magical feature Howls Moving Castle
faces tough competition from the claymated
heroes of Nick Park and Steve Boxs Aardman
feature and the otherworldly creations of Tim
Burton, the movie has already proved its nancial staying power. The lm was released
in Japan in November 2004 (followed by a June
2005 release in the U.S., courtesy of Disney)
and has topped the 2005 Japanese box-ofce list with $166 million in ticket sales. That
means Howl is following in the footsteps of
Miyzakis Oscar-winning masterpiece Spirited
Away (2001), which brought in $257 million
and was the best-selling movie (in all genres)
in Japan.
This year in Japan a new movie is poised
to capture the same kind of attention. This
years hit sensation is Nippon Television Network Corp.s Always: Sunset on Third Street,
directed by Takashi Yamazaki (Returner, Juvenile), based on a popular manga published
in the biweekly magazine Big Comic Original
by Shogakkan pub house. Perhaps because
manga fans have been familiar with the comic
book since 1973, the movie has generated
over $28 million at the box ofce since it was
released by Toho last November. It ranked seventh in the list of Japans most popular movies
of last year.
The original manga by Ryohei Siagan chronicled the everyday lives of common people in
downtown Tokyo during the late 1950s and
was so popular that it inspired 45 volumes,
which sold millions of copies in the country.
Not surprisingly, the lm has been nominated
in 14 Japan Academy Award categories including best picture, director, screenplay, actor
and actress.
A graduate of Tokyos Asagaya Art College,
the 40-year-old Yamazaki told Variety last
month that he believes his lm is a new type
of CG-animated feature. The CG supports the
storyits not what people come to see, he
explained. Its like the music or the color cin-

April 2006

Flashback: Takashi Yamazakis blockbuster

feature Always: Sunset on Third Street
relies heavily on CG effects to recreate
1950s-era Tokyo.

ematography. People do go to see Hollywood

lms for their CG effects ... but we cant imitate the Hollywood style, he says.
Always wasnt the only manga-based property capturing the attention of Japanese audiences last year. Kozueko Morimotos Gokusen

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managing director of TMS, one of the top

three anime houses in Japan.
The company produced three top-rated series in 2005 and increased its annual revenues
by 20 percent to a total of $138 million. TMS
is preparing to market one of the three new
projectsMushikingto American audiences.
Based on the popular Sega game, The King of
Beetles, the 52x30 series centers on a brave
group of forest beetles who ght against evil
spirits in a futuristic setting. The company will
offer Mushiking as well as two other anime titles Angel Heart (airing on Yomiuri TV in Osaka
since last August) and Fighting Beauty Wulong
(TV Tokyo) to the MIPTV market next month.
The key to success in todays fragmented market is the anime houses ability to increase synergy of manga, anime
and gaming to win the hearts of overlapping
demographic groups, observes Yoshida.
However, this convergence has generated its
own challenges. Satoko Sasaki, deputy director of leading anime house Toei Animation Co.
says that game-anime conversion has made
determining merchandising rights a much
more complex eld.
A case in point is the Dragon Ball series,
one of Toei Animations hit properties, which
started its life as a video game, then was later
re-made after it hit the U.S. market. Determining the rights of a property in the gaming/anime/TV series arenas remains a challenging
task. Sasaki adds, Broadband distribution has
made the rights issue even more time consuming.
Toei Animation, which is celebrating its 50th
anniversary this year, has 156 TV series and
202 anime features (a total of 4,300 hours) under its belt. Its now aggressively promoting the
current hit, One Piece, which airs on Fuji TVs

The lines that divide anime, manga and gaming are

more blurred now than ever.
Satoji Yoshida, TMSs managing director

series, which was adapted to a Nippon TV

drama series in 2002 and 2005, inspired a new
animated project (by Madhouse), and garnered
high ratings on TV.
Some observers of the animated culture
scene in Japan note that its no longer easy
to classify genres and media. The lines that
divide anime, manga and gaming are more
blurred now than ever, says Satoji Yoshida,

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

Sunday 7-7:30 p.m. slot, to the U.S. market.

The show has found a devoted following both
on 4Kids TV and Cartoon Network in the past.
Other Toei titles doing well Stateside are Zatch
Bell and Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (both on Cartoon
Networks sizzling Saturday night Toonami
block) and Magical DoReMi (on 4Kids TV).
Another major anime player in the country
is Nippon Animation, which is known for its

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Big in Japan: Among the countrys hot animated titlesclockwise from top leftare Magical DoReMi (Toei), Angel Heart (TMS),
Cosette (Nippon), Mushiking (TMS), Gokusen (Madhouse), One Piece (Toei), Fighting Beauty Wulong (TMS), Penelope tete en lair (Nippon)
and Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (Toei).

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Kurusu points out that anime houses are

venturing into more co-production ventures
to hedge the costs. We need to nurture good
overall producers who are capable of planning,
coordinating with other nancial resources
such as advertisers and co-producers and
combining all the necessary resources like
video and DVD sales, he says.
Besides the shortage of anime outlets on
local TV, animation houses are also worried
about the next generation of artists. While Korea has over 130 college courses on anime and
manga-related subjects, there are few institutions in Japan that offer similar training. Unlike many other Asian and European countries,
there are very few government subsidies and
protective measures for the local anime industry in Japan.
To address this problem, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government recently launched a new
program to nurture young anime creators, in
association with the content-developing venture, Think Corp. The new Anime Innovation
Tokyo will prepare a $2.5 million fund to produce and globally distribute pilot versions of
new projects by young animators. Tokyo Met
Government will foot one-third of the fund
while Think will operate the program and secure remaining coin from nancial companies,
recruiting anime for the project, developing

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

sales channels and also forming limited liability partnerships (LLP) so creators can participate in prot-sharing with small investments
of their own. The project will run for four years
beginning this month.
Yuji Mori, president of Think, explains that
he developed the LLP idea based on examples
in the U.S. when he produced, with his executive producer Hiroaki Takeuchi (former editor
of Shonen Jump comic magazine,) a 22-minute
project titled Hoshi no Koe for satellite TV in
2002. Thats when we realized how important
the market test is for anime, adds Mori. Helping Mori with his project is former L.A.-based
Warner Bros. and phuuz executive Ken Duer
who has overseen the launch of titles such as
Animatrix, Lupin the Third and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel
Monsters in the U.S.
More announcements about future animated projects and features will be made at the
Tokyo International Anime Fair (March 23-26),
which is estimated to bring 220 international
and local businesses and organization to the
citys Big Sight venue. You can read more
about the event and new Japanese projects
in the pipeline in the May issue of Animation
Magazine. Q
Tad Osaki is Animation Magazines Tokyobased correspondent. He specializes in animation and Japanese entertainment.

April 2006

FEATURE

Chibi Maruko Chan series of anime sitcoms

and childrens picture books. Masao Kurosu,
the companys international director, believes
theres a scarcity of animated fare created for
preschool audiences on Japanese TV. Thats
one of the reasons he is preparing a series of
ve-minute episodes titled Penelope tete en
lair, based on the books by by Anne Gutman
and Georg Hallensleben, for release later this
year. Also in the works for 2007 is Miko and
Mimiki, another ve-minute series based on a
German picture book by Brigitte Weninger and
Stephanie Roehe.
Nippon hit a snag in its attempt to co-produce Cosette, (an anime project based on
Victor Hugos classic Les Miserables) with
Chinas CCTV a few years ago because of the
SARS epidemic in addition to complex Chinese
regulations. The company plans to produce 16
episodes of Cosette on its own for a Japanese
network and satellite TV and for distribution in
Europe by this fall.
Many of the animation insiders in the country, however, note that its difcult to secure a
spot on local terrestrial TV outlets for familytype anime shows. Even TV Tokyo which has
34 anime slots a week (mostly in primetime)
has lowered the price it pays anime houses by
more than half of what the price used to be
in its peak.

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ZodiacThe Race
Begins

Is Singapore the New

Toon Power Spot?
by Patrick Drazen

FEATURE

ingapore connoisseurs have long praised

the beautiful island nation for its impressive skyline, its Esplande building, its exquisite multicultural restaurants and its topnotch shopping centers. These days, however,
the country located at the southern tip of the
Malaysian peninsula is out to make its name in
CG animation, with three pricey features leading
the charge.
The Singapore Economic Development Board
(EDB) is investing $1 billion towards developing
the animation industry through 2018. The EDB
will push ahead with key strategies such as attracting more top-tier digital media companies
to set up shop in Singapore and encouraging local players with high growth potential to export

their content, building a world-class talent base,

investing in leading technology R&D activities
and encouraging nancial institutions to manage
their digital media funds from Singapore.
Consider Cubix Pictures, makers of Singapores
rst CG animated feature, ZodiacThe Race Begins. The movie, made in 18 months at a cost of
$2 million, is a loose retelling of a centuries-old
tale about the twelve animals of the Chinese lunar calendar racing to see who would be rst in
line. The lm was offered at the Cannes Film Market in 2005 and, on the strength of a ten-minute
trailer, deals were in place on the second day for
distribution to countries as varied as Portugal
and Israel, Greece and Thailand, as well as the
Chinese mega-market.

We received numerous offers from world

buyers and we are still
negotiating
other
deals, said Benjamin
Toh, CEO of Cubix International, the parent
company of Cubix PicBenjamin Toh
tures. We are condent
that we will be able to
successfully market the movie globally.
Zodiac isnt alone. On the strength of the interest shown at Cannes, Cubix Pictures and Singapores Media Development Authority entered
into a ve-picture deal worth $18.4 million. The
second picture, Legend of the Sea, based on a
Chinese dragon fable, is already in production.
Singapores Economic Development Board has
also entered into a ten-year, $593 million commitment to expand Singapore as a center for
digital animation in television series and games
as well as feature lms.
Some heavy hitters are already taking notice.
George Lucas has opened LucasFilm Animation
Singapore, a major CG production house and Lucas rst outside the U.S. Its expected to grow
to a staff of 300, producing lms, television series and computer games. Japanese game company Koei has also recently set up shop in Singapore, specically to develop the online role-playing games Nobunagas Ambition and Uncharted
Waters. Koei has to live up to its own impressive
catalogue of CG games. So does American
gamemaker Electronic Arts, which also set up a
Singapore studio, mainly to adapt its catalogue
of titles to the Asian market.
Still, consumers will have the last word on the
success, globally or locally, of Singapore animation. ZodiacThe Race Begins opened, appropriately, on the Chinese New Year weekend in Singapore, and, despite CEO Tohs prediction that
every Singaporean will leave the theater enlightened, entertained and proud, reviews were
hardly unanimous. Angeline Chui of the Singa-

Cubix Pictures Zodiac-The Race Begins

follows the birth of the Chinese zodiac.
The feature was released on the Chinese
New Year weekend in Singapore.

April 2006

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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A Chat with Gecko Master,

Nickson Fong
Tell us how you came up with the idea behind Kungfu
Gecko.
Nickson Fong: Growing up in Asia, I have always been
fascinated by martial arts movies and ancient Chinese
craftsmanship. This interest, coupled with my many
years of work experience in Hollywood animation and
visual effects, led to the creation of this lm project.
The story goes back a thousand years ago to Ancient
China, capturing romance, adventure and humor in the
worlds of the creatures and the humans. There is also
an amazing integration of architectural structures
into natures landscapes. My hope is to use this rich
background to unfold the adventures of these adorable
animated characters. Our goal is to develop a clear
and unique project, to distinguish ourselves from U.S.
mainstream movie efforts. In short, we want to create
wholesome family entertainment by blending eastern
and western cultures using state of the art animation.
In the end, we will breathe life into these characters.
Regardless of whether they are insects, reptiles or
animals, they will be characters that the audience will
believe and remember.
When did you start working on the lm?
Fong: We were working on multiple projects at the
same time. So actual time spent on Kungfu Gecko
would be around 12 months.
How are you securing the nancing for the lm?
Fong: The project is currently in pre-sale. We are
presently in discussion with various distribution
companies and are exploring different kinds of nancing
such as co-nancing/co-production agreements, as
well as possible lm grants.
How many people are working on the project?
Fong: Presently, we have a production team of 50
people, and we are slowly expanding to meet our
growing production requirements.
What kind of CG software do you use?
Fong: Alias Maya, mental ray, Shake and Maxons
Bodypaint.
What is your biggest challenge right now?
____________
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Fong: First, it is the need

to nd and train real talent
to produce feature-lm
quality work. Thats not easy
because school doesnt teach
you inspiration, creativity and
the relevant skills sometimes.
Nickson Fong
Also, putting together a
production pipeline in Asia
comes with multiple challenges, because although the
sector is growing rapidly, there is still a lot that needs
development. Third, I am embarking upon the project of
setting up a renderfarm with Fujitsu primergy servers,
and integrating all 3 OS Win/Mac/Linux in production.
Running an animation studio also has its complexities,
where I am overseeing all the nitty-gritty of the business,
as well as the technical aspects of the production.
Q. What do you think about the animation climate in
Singapore right now?
Fong: I am hoping to work more closely with local
schools to train more CG artists and animators.
Manpower can be an issue, because its not easy to
nd real talents who are technically adept as well.
Also, our company, Egg Story, is pioneering in an
almost-unheard-of industry here. So we want to tell
people if you have a dream, you have got to pursue it
and just do it.
Who are some of your inuences/animation heroes?
Fong: Spider-Man, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Akira Kurosawa,
Pixars The Incredibles, Sam Chong, Michelle Yeoh, Chow
Yuen Fatt, Zhang Yi Mou, Quentin Tarantinoreally too
many to list!

FEATURE

When did you realize you wanted to be an animator?

Fong: Long time ago, I was always doodling stick
gures in the Bible during Sunday school and, with all
due respect, the Bible makes a pretty good ip-book.
Do you have any other projects in development right
now?
Fong: There are several other projects being
negotiated as we speak, but they are still in the early
stages. However, we will keep our fans continuously
updated on the progress of our developments. For
these updates, you can check our website _____
at ____
http://
www.eggstorycp.com. Q
April 2006

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By the Numbers
A few facts and gures from some of the major Asian animation markets:

CHINA

THE PHILIPPINES

350,000 minutes: Amount of animation broadcast across

47 channels with three dedicated cartoon channels.

Blooming Industry Estimates:

CCTV (China Central Television) estimates:

Year

Workforce Revenue (USM)

2004

2,800

2005

4,000

2006

6,000

111

2007

10,000

185

2008

17,000

315

2009

27,000

500

2010

41,000

759

Total Investment in Animation for 2004: $36.2 million, an

average investment $155 per minute

Number of series applying

for production permission

*Source: The Philippines Board of Investments

JAPAN

Approx. 430 anime production houses

FEATURE

Annual demand for original content: 79,000 minutes

Potential airtime: 1.8 million minutes

Anime Market Size (Film, TV and Video)

2000 159.3 billion yen
2001 186 billion yen
2002 213.5 billion yen
2003 191.2 biliion yen
*sales estimated to have grown in 2004 with the release of
Howls Moving Castle

Around 60% of the anime shown worldwide is made

in Japan (according to a METI report issued in January
2004

Japans rst anime vocational graduate school is

scheduled to open in April 2006

April 2006

163

424

= 260%
increase

Actual animation output for 2004 = 23,800 minutes, only

15% of approved animation was actually produced.
*According to 2006 China Media Yearbook and Directory (published
by China Media Monitor)

KOREA
Amount of money invested in
animation: Approx. $ 325 million
300: Estimated number of companies producing
animation

New Product

Film

Sell-Through
33

Annual Exports: $76 million

* data for the 2003 Korean animation industry courtesy of KOCCA

*data from the Japan External Trade Organizations Japan

Economic Monthly

2005

In 2005 over 90% of applications were greenlit and total

approved national production reached 575,718 minutes,
thats 370% increase from 2004

A 30-minute TV animation production generally costs

around 10 million yen
Many animators are reportedly earning annual
incomes of 10 million yen

2004

Compiled by Sarah Gurman

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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Adam Parrish
King

Brooklyn Blues
First-time animator Adam Parrish King impresses the
Sundance crowd with his haunting stop-motion short, The
Wraith of Cobble Hill. by Ramin Zahed

www.animationmagazine.net

TV shows and lm projects. He also worked

on an interactive project at the Getty Museum in L.A.
My background is in painting and sculpture, says Parrish King on the phone from
his home in the hipster-cool Silverlake
neighborhood of Los Angeles. I just love
the feeling of creating by myself, with
good music on, in a small studio space. I
really enjoy the process, the sculpting, the
way light hits the textures and the fabrics,
putting the things on the wallall of it.
King says as a kid he was deeply affected by the Rankin/Bass classic Rudolph
The Red-Nosed Reindeer. As I grew older, I
discovered the Brothers Quay in high
school, he adds, and I loved the way
Aardmans Creature Comforts combined
documentary audio with animation.
The script for Cobble Hill was completed

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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in the winter of 2000 and the voices were

all recorded by the spring of 2001. However, it took the patient artist almost ve
years (and about $10,000) to realize his vision. I was still putting the nishing
touches on the sound design a week before Sundance this year, says the animator. I got the lm to them just before the
nal deadline. The hardest part was creating the sets. Building the store alone took
me ve months.
Surprisingly, King is not a native of
Brooklyn, himself. In fact, he grew up in
the suburbs of Knoxville, Tennessee. However, he lived in New York for a number of
years and that experience fueled his project. I was always interested in the little
glimpses you got of your neighborsthe
sounds you heard through the oorboards,
the passing images through windows of
the apartment across the way. I wanted
to structure the story on one of those moments. The world of Brooklyn always intrigued me. Its so full of history and
ghosts. Like the main character in the
short, I also had a bunch of friends who
were mischievous when I was growing up.
Its always interesting to see what a
new talent takes away from the Sundance
experience. King says the whole festival
thing was much better than he had expected. Im not into the business aspects
of lmmaking, and I thought it was going
to be a lot of slick producers, wheeling
and dealing. But it was a lot more down to
earth than I expected. By the end of it, it
was all about being around a community
of cinephiles, all appreciating each others
works. I fell in love with a lot of the other
shortsBrent Greens Hadacol Christmas,
Bruce Alcocks At the Qunite Hotel and
Anthony Lucas The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.
King says hes in the early planning
stages for his next project.
He wont divulge the details, but he gives us a
clue. Unlike Cobble Hill,
which is all black and white
and greys, my next lm is
going to have the vivid colors of life in the suburbs of
Tennessee in the 1970s.
Hmmm, something tells
us this one is going to be
autobiographical! Q

April 2006

SHORTS

he Sundance Film Festival has a reputation for showcasing personal and

quirky tales about bewildered underdogs who nd themselves at odds with
the world at large. So it wasnt a surprise
to see Adam Parrish Kings painstakingly
claymated 15-minute short, The Wraith of
Cobble Hill win the Jury Prize for Short
Filmmaking at the fest.
Parrish Kings black-and-white lm centers on a neglected teen named Felix who
faces a moral challenge when the owner
of a neighborhood convenience store
leaves him in charge of his shop and his
dog. Not only does the animator bring a
certain 50s-era neorealistic quality to his
lm, the character design will remind viewers of some of the darker Aardman
shorts.
A graduate of USCs Film School, Parrish
King shot the lm on 16mm and
constructed the characters from
plasticine, latex, steel armatures
and clay molds. He hand-constructed the sets and every item
used by the characters (from ice
cream and canned goods to whiskey bottles and comic books) in
miniature. It took the animator
more than ve years to complete
the project while he pursued his
day job as a sound designer for

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Japanimation Hits Home

Our reporter catches up with some of the top anime DVD
distributors in the U.S. to get their take on whats hot in
2006. by Thomas J. McLean

he rst part of animes journey

to the global cultural force
is complete. Having evolved
out of the niche of small fan clubs
and conventions to cable network
staple and perennial DVD success, the
industry is poised to face the next set
of hurdlesmany of which it shares
with the larger entertainment industry.
Facing attening DVD sales, the
coming of high denition home video,
new media and possible television
overload, anime companies have a lot
on their plate for 2006 and beyond.
Checking in with execs at top anime
companies reveals that while they
share many of the same concerns and
see many challenges the same way,
they also each have taken their own
path to success and have their own
points of view about what the future
will bring.

ADV Films

and it has a cool, completely unique

visual style that stands well apart
from the norm for anime. Another is
Diamond Daydreams, an anthology
series following the stories of six young
women in Hokkaido.
Greatest hits to date: Apart from
Neon Genesis Evangelion, ADV may be
best known for Robotech. Bubblegum
Crisis 2040 is another signature title.
Spriggan was a huge hit and Lady
Death, which we produced ourselves
and released in the fall of 2004, was a
denite home run. Chrono Crusade was
another all-time leader.
Hot titles to look for in 2006: Were
very happy with our release of Macross,
one of the three original Japanese series
on which Robotech was based. Were
presenting this classic to American
audiences for the rst time with an
English dub.
Gilgamesh

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Thoughts
on
animes
global
popularity: Its generally understood
that Japan has become a net cultural
exporter, rivaling the U.S. in its reach
and inuence. Anime is only one
conspicuous example.
Biggest Challenges in 2006: Media
fragmentation, new technologies, the
on-demand revolution. However you
choose to frame it, we face the same
challenges as any content provider in
the digital age.
Favorite anime hero/heroine: Sosuke,
the hero of Full Metal Panic, because he
never loses sight of his mission.
Best use of anime in mainstream pop
culture: The original Matrix incorporated
many elements of whats made anime
popular and did it awlessly, which is no
mean feat for a live-action movie.
How has TV exposure on outlets like
Cartoon Network and [adult swim]
helped the anime business in America?
Now that more outlets are carrying
anime, and the consumer no longer has
to work so hard to nd it, thats brought
us a whole new kind of fan. In fact, I
dont think its a stretch to say that
anime has become mainstream and
theres an incredible unmet demand for
anime on TV.

Central Park Media

Exec interviewed:
John
Ledford,
president

Exec interviewed: John ODonnell,

managing director

What
are
your
biggest sellers and
why? Neon Genesis
John Ledford
Evangelion.
Thats
hardly surprising, since
EVA is widely considered to
be the greatest anime series
of all time. More recently,
our best selling series have
been the action thrillers
Gantz and Elfen Lied and
the comedy series Full Metal
Panic? Fumoffu.
Which of your titles do
you think is most deserving
of wider recognition and
why? Gilgamesh is the rst
Goth-inected anime series
to come to the States,

What are your biggest sellers and

why? For 2005: Grave of the Fireies,
because it is one of the nest animated
lms ever produced; Yu Yu Hakusho:
The Movie Poltergeist Report,
because of the incredible
success of the Yu Yu Hakusho
television series; Kakurenbo,
because of its unique and
original graphic style.
Which of your titles do you
think is most deserving of wider
recognition and why? Doggy Poo
has received dozens of awards
from lm festivals, childrens
programming
groups,
and
incredible reviews. No one who
has seen it has failed to be moved
by the heartwarming story.

April 2006

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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Grave of
the Fireies

Greatest
Hits
to date: Record of
Lodoss War, Grave of
the Fireies, Project
A-ko, Dominion Tank
Police, M.D. Geist.
Hot
titles
to
John ODonnell
look for in 2006:
Animation
Runner
Kuromi 2 was the big winner at the
Tokyo International Anime Fair last
year. Munto 2, the rst OVA was so well
received, that the fans in Japan prepaid
for the DVD of the sequel a year ahead
of street date, to allow the production
company to produce it! Negadon: The
Monster From Mars, a tour-de-force CGI
homage to Japans man in rubber suit
monster movies of the 50s and 60s.
Thoughts on the animes global
popularity: After decades of American
culture sweeping the globe, the time
has come for non-American cultures
(Japan, Korean, etc.) to claim
their share of world attention.
As the world becomes more
connected via the Internet, this
sharing of local cultures will
only increase.
Biggest Challenges in 2006:
Getting ready for the launch of
High Denition DVD formats.
Favorite anime hero/heroine:
Parn in Record of Lodoss War. As
the leader of a ragtag group of
warriors, he must unite the group

www.animationmagazine.net

most deserving of wider recognition

and why? Fighting Spirit. I am no boxing
fan but its such a great title that
appeals to the part inside all of us that
wants to succeed and be the best.
What are your greatest hits to date?
Samurai Champloo, Tenjho Tenge,
Trigun, Appleseed and Hellsing.
What are the hot titles to look for in
2006? Viewtiful Joe, Elemental Gelade,
Law of Ueki, Hellsing Ultimate Series
and GunXSword.
Thoughts on the animes global
popularity: The reason that anime has
GENEON
such a global appeal is that it targets
Entertainment
a broad spectrum of people and is not
Exec interviewed:
constrained by the notion that animated
Jason Alnas, marketing
features or cartoons are for kids.
manager
Biggest challenges in 2006: One
What are your biggest
of our biggest challenges is to nd
sellers and why? Appleseed was our
new ways to reach out to potential
No. 1 title for 2005 mostly due to its
consumers.
theatrical release. Samurai Champloos
Favorite anime hero/heroine: Vash
run on Cartoon Network led to its
the Stampede from Trigun. Hes a man
success, along with its soundtrack
who tries his best to leave his past
and visual mix of Japanese tradition
behind him by changing his motto to
and modern hip-hop that appeals to
Love and Peace and living his life as
the current teen audience. Trigun is
carefree as possible. But in the end, he
a mainstay in anime and has held its
has to come to grips with who he was
own for close to ve, years due to the
and stop running away from his past in
incredible story and its ability to appeal
order to save his friends and himself.
to core and non-core consumers alike.
What do you think is the best use
Which of your titles do you think is
of anime in mainstream pop culture?
Helsing
The best use of anime to date was
Robotech! How many of us watched
that on TV and had no idea it was from
Japan?
How has TV exposure helped the
anime business in America? Cartoon
Network has done wonders for anime
in America. Once people sit down and
watch anime they realize how good it is.
Tenjho Tenge I dont know how many parents
Appleseed
I have talked to when I attend
anime conventions who tell
me that they themselves got
hooked on anime because
their kids were watching it on
TV.

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Yu Yu Hakusho: Poltergeist Report

so that they can save Lodoss Island.

Best use of anime in mainstream
pop culture: Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and The
Animatrix.
How has TV exposure helped the
anime biz in America?
It has given the genre
credibility, and raised
the prole of anime to
the point where mass
merchants are willing to
carry the products.

Manga
Entertainment
Exec interviewed:
Kaoru Mfaume, managing
director

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What are your biggest sellers and

why? Titles like Ghost in the Shell, Ninja
Scroll, Blood, the Evangelion movies, X
and Akira (in Europe) sell very well as
they represent the best of theatrical
Japanese animation, besides the
Miyazaki lms.
Which of your titles do you think is
most deserving of wider recognition
and why? Dead Leaves, for its amazing
animation production and fresh outlook
on Japanese anime; and Kaidohmaru for
its artistic style of portraying the Heian
era beautifully with its pastille look.
Hot titles to look for in 2006: Karas
will be our strongest title for the year,
but as Naruto will be released by Manga
in the U.K., I feel excited about this as
well.
Thoughts on the animes global
popularity: Animes popularity is growing
annually but I feel that some anime
distributors are playing to the same crowd
too often. Manga will
try to broaden the its
fan base by releasing
high-quality animation
that appeals to not
only the anime fans,
but also mainstream
audiences.
Kaoru Mfaume
Ninja Scrolls

Ghost in the Shell

April 2006

Biggest Challenges in InuYasha

2006: We havent been as
proactive with our fans
and I feel that its time to
revisit and restructure this
particular area. Another
challenge that we all
face in this industry is the
fact that DVD sales are
slowing and new media is
an area that Manga will be
actively involved in.
Favorite anime hero/
heroine:
Kinnikuman,
because of the meat on his forehead!
Best use of anime in mainstream pop
culture: South Park, episode 801 (Good
Times With Weapons) is hysterical.
How has TV exposure helped the
anime business in America? It has
helped it considerably but I think there
will be a limit to how much anime can
be aired in the U.S. because anime
isnt the only option out there for the
broadcasters.

VIZ Media
Exec interviewed: Anthony Jiwa,
director of marketing
What are your biggest sellers and
why? InuYasha. Rumiko Takahashis
storytelling style and compelling
characters are big reasons for the
success of the series. Fans also respond
to the fantastic animation style.
Which of your titles do you think is
most deserving of wider recognition
and why? Saikano merits more
recognition. The animation is beautiful,
the characters are gripping and the
dramatic storyline and political message
make this an epic series.
Greatest Hits to date: The
InuYasha movies have been
our biggest hits to date.
These have all sold over a
quarter of a million copies
each. Some of our Pokmon
titles also sold exceptionally
well.
Hot titles to look for in
2006: Based on the success
of the rst three InuYasha
movies, we have very high
expectations for InuYasha

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The Movie 4: Fire

on the Mystic Island,
that will be released
on DVD in August
2006.
Naruto
is
also a new title that
will denitely be hot
Anthony Jiwa
in 2006. We will be
launching the rst
DVD volume in March, as part of the
Shonen Jump Home Video line. The rst
uncut box set is slated for July. Finally,
we will be launching the rst Shojo Beat
Home Video titles this year.
Favorite anime hero/heroine: Kakashi
from Naruto: Hes a top-notch ninja, but
he is also enigmatic and mysterious.
Sango from InuYashanot only does she
wield a massive boomerang, she also
has Kirara, a ying re-cat creature.
Best use of anime in mainstream pop
culture: In Japan anime is mainstream
pop culture! Even in North America,
titles such as Pokmon, InuYasha,
Dragon Ball Z and Miyazaki movies such
as Howls Moving Castle and Spirited
Away have demonstrated that anime is
not purely a niche market
How has TV exposure helped the
anime business in America? Cartoon
Network has been very supportive of
anime, programming shows such as
InuYasha, Naruto and Zatch Bell! has
greatly helped all of these properties
nd broader audiences here. This
increased exposure has developed a
fan base that has grown to seek out
new anime series. Q
Thomas J. McLean is a Los Angeles-based
journalist who specializes in animation,
visual effects and comic-books.

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All 26 Episodes! Nearly 11 Hours!

Special Features
The Gruesomes Road to Bedrock:
A Closer Look at a Classic Season Five Episode
Gemstones: Flintstones Rarities Unearthed
A Stone Age Parenting Guide:
Child Rearing in the Stone Age

Own Season 5 March 7

Seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4 Available Now

CLASSIC COLLECTION

First Time on DVD!

Over 12 Hours as Originally Aired

Special Features
The History of Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt
Original Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt
Voice Actors Share Memories
Stills Gallery with Previously Unseen
Treasures from the Hanna-Barbera Vault

Available for the First Time on DVD March 7

GOLDEN COLLECTION

warnervideo.com

classiccartoonsdvd.com

THE FLINTSTONES, SCOOBY-DOO, DYNOMUTT and All Related Characters and Elements Are Trademarks
of and Hanna-Barbera. 2006 Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Samurai Critic:

Reviews of this months hot new anime titles on DVD

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Illustration by Dan Hoffstedt

by Charles Solomon
Howls Moving Castle; My Neighbor
Totoro; Whisper of the Heart
(Walt Disney Home Video: $29.99
each; 2-disc sets)
This month, three outstanding DVD releases (on Disney Home Video) remind
viewers why Studio Ghibli has become
synonymous with the best in contemporary animation: they each offer warmly
human characters, gloriously animated
visuals, skillful lmmaking and masterful
storytelling.
Howls Moving Castle
Whisper of the Heart
Whisper of the Heart (1995), the least My Neighbor Totoro
ture, My Neighbor Totoro, was only available
Sophie into a 90-year-old woman. In her aged
well-known of the three, is a coming-of-age
in a pan-and-scan transfer with an unremarkguise, Sophie discovers her hidden potential.
story that began as a manga by Aoi Hiiragi.
able English dub. Parts of the story are based
Once inside Howls castle, a ramshackle strucHayao Miyazaki wrote the script and storyon Miyazakis own childhood. While their
ture that looks like its about to fall apart, Soboarded the lm, then turned it over to Yomother is in the hospital, 10-year-old Satsuki
shifumi Kondo. Kondo was clearly an artist of
phies straightforward determination wins the
and four-year-old Mei move with their profesgreat promise whom Miyazaki was grooming
affection and respect of Howls young apsor father to a rickety old farmhouse in the
as a director; sadly, he died shortly after
prentice Markl; the fussy re demon Calcifer;
Saitama Prefecture, which was an undevelcompleting this gentle lm.
and Heen, a wheezing dog. She also wins
oped agricultural area in the '50s, when the
Junior high student Shizuku Tsukishima is
Howls love, and ends a destructive war.
lm is set. Miyazaki did much of his growing
a voracious reader and a loyal friend, but she
The work of the Studio Ghibli animators
up in Saitama when his mother was hospitallacks focus. When she meets a delightfully
has grown increasingly polished, and they
ized.
snooty cat on a commuter train, she follows
infuse the voiceless characters with clear
The story of Totoro is familiar to viewers
him to an antique store in the Tama Hills area
personalities. The mute scarecrow in Howl
around the world: Mei and Satsuki befriend
of Tokyo (the setting for Pom Poko). Seiji
can only hop and spin, yet the viewer unthe King Totoro, a benevolent forest spirit,
Amasawa, the kindly proprietors grandson,
derstands whats going on inside his turwho watches over the sisters and takes
is a student at her school who wants to be a
nip-head. The artists milk every drop of
them on magical adventures. Dakota Fanning
violinmaker. Seeing Seijis determination to
physical comedy from the scenes of Soand Elle Fanning capture the love and excitefulll his dream galvanizes Shizuku: she realphie lugging the obviously heavy Heen up a
ment Satsuki and Mei share; as their gentle
izes she wants to become a writer. A mysteseemingly endless staircase.
father, Tim Daly sounds appropriately parious statue of a cat in the antique shop inAll three lms overow with eclipsing vitient and understated. My Neighbor Totoro
spires her rst story.
suals that range from panoramas of skies
may be the most charming animated feature
Like Kiki in Kiki's Delivery Service, Shizuku
and mountains to intimate views of the natever made, and that charm is more apparent
is a richly realized adolescent. Her rst meetural world. When Satsuki and Mei wait in the
than ever in this new letter-boxed edition.
ing with Seiji feels awkward and she marches
forest to bring their father an umbrella, the
home repeating stupid jerk under her
shots of a frog in a puddle and droplets fallLast year, Howl's Moving Castle passed
breath like a mantra. As their unstated affecing from pine needles vividly convey the
Princess Mononoke to become the number
tion grows, Shizuku wonders if shes good
sensation of being caught in a rainstorm.
three box-ofce champion in Japanese histoenough for him, only to discover hes wresBut what really sets these features apart is
ry, behind Spirited Away and James Camerons
tling with similar doubts. As the voices of
the depth of observation and honesty of
Titanic. Nineteen-year-old Sophie has decided
Shizuku and Seiji in the lms rst English
portrayal that makes the characters come
shes too plain to do more than work in her
dub, Brittany Snow and David Gallagher offer
aliveand show just how supercial the
familys hat shop. Her shy charm attracts the
warm, believable performances.
wisecracking nonentities in many recent
dashing Howl, an immature wizard, which
For years, Miyazakis acclaimed 1988 feaAmerican features have been. Q
causes the Witch of the Waste to transform

April 2006

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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M A G A Z I N E

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Parodies, Looney progeny and Pooh take the edge off

residual winter chill. by Sarah Gurman
Robot Chicken, Vol. 1
[Turner Home Entertainment,
$29.98]
The brainchild of Seth Green and Matt
Senreich, Robot Chicken s ADD relishing stop-motion satire is one of the
treasured jewels in the animated crown
of [adult swim]s latenight offerings.
Inspired from the Twisted Toyfare Theater feature that appeared regularly
in ToyFare magazine (Senreich was former editor of the magazine), the show
features action gures taking center
stage in pop culture parodies. Robot
Chicken (named after a dish served at
a local Chinese restaurant) has attracted a high-caliber collection of celeb guests to lend their voices to the
toy melodramas, including the entire
cast of That 70s Show, Sarah Michelle
Gellar, Burt Reynolds and Rachel Leigh
Cook in a knockout take on what really
happens after the camera stops rolling
on those anti-drug PSAs. Fans will be
happy to know that the two-disc set
comes stocked with 20 episodes and
eclectic bonus features like scene
comparisons showing the contrasts
between the FX/Wire to animation

stage and the animatic to episode

stage, audio commentary on each episode from the creators, deleted scenes
and a pee gag reelall your favorite
characters, all peeing their pants.
Come on, you cant call yourself cul-

www.animationmagazine.net

tured if you havent seen Michael Jackson Classic duke it out with Michael
Jackson Modern!

Baby Looney Tunes,

Vol. 1 and 2
[Warner Home Video,
$14.98 each]
Hmmmmm,
while
youre
watching
R o b o t
Chicken
you might
w a n t
to
pop
in one of
these
Baby
Looney Tunes
collections for
the kiddies. (The
pee gag reels humor could prove
elusive for some.) And if youve ever
wondered what Bugs was like before
he reached full-blown rabbit maturity,
you might consider cuddling up with
directors Michael Hack and Jeffrey
Gatralls tot-sized Looney Tunes.
Each of these discs holds 48 minutes
of Warner Bros. original irreverent
toons in toddler form living together
in Grannys big house and discovering
the nuances of the world. Targeted
at the preschool audience, Baby
Looney Tunes allows the little ones
to learn life lessons about everything
from bbing, to school, to leaving
the precious blankie behind, in the
company of junior pranksters like Baby
Daffy, Sylvester and Tweety (and you
thought he couldnt get any cuter). A
seasoned crew of vocal talents like
Ian James Corlett, Bailey Devlin, June
Foray, Janyse Jaud, Mariko Kage and
Ellen Kennedy provide voices for the
loony babies. Over the years Warner
Bros. has explored various generations

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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and life stages for Bugs and co. Now

as the babyboomers get ready for
retirement, dont be surprised if the
studio greenlights a Senior Folks Home
Loony Toons one of these days.

Poohs Grand Adventure:

The Search for
Christopher Robin
[Walt Disney Video, $29.99]

HOME ENTERTAINMENT

Spring DVD Fever

Directed by Karl Geurs, this 1997 direct-to-video feature is a little darker

than your typical Pooh fare, revealing
a more mysterious side to the famous
100-Acre Wood. Picking up where Disneys 1977 classic The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh left off,
Poohs Grand Adventure nds Christopher Robin ready to start school. However, he doesnt know how to tell his
Pooh that they will be separated, so
writes him a note instead. Pooh and
the gang end up misunderstanding
the note and believe that the boy has
been kidnapped. Before long, A.A.
Milnes popular honey-lover pulls together a rescue party with the help of
Rabbit, Tigger and Piglet, and theyre
off
to
Skull
to
nd their
friend.
Though it
doesnt
match its
predecessor, this
Pooh movie is no
slouch,
thanks in part to Disney recruiting the
original voices of Piglet and Tigger,
John Fiedler and Paul Winchell (both of
whom passed away last year), as well
as the incomparable Jim Cummings
delivering a lovely take on Poohs gentle rasp. And theres also some honey
at the bottom of the pot for the DVD
buyer: The release includes the original Academy Award-winning short
Poohs Blustery Day, the Adventures in
100-Acre Wood game and the Poohs
Symphony feature for the melodyminded folks. Q

April 2006

M A G A Z I N E

TELEVISION

M A G A Z I N E

A KOCCA Star is Born

by Sarah Gurman

April 2006

ally imports and distributes Japanese

animationstepped up and made the
strongest offer.
Its not hard to see why Mighty Media was drawn to Barunson and G&G
Entertainments wrestling-lled comedy creation. MaskMans playful ani-

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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mation delivers the

super-powered adventures of a courageous band of ghters from the Mask
Planet. This rough
and tumble crew
has joined forces to
foil the evil plans of
Darkman and his
minions.
KOCCA selected
MaskMan out of a
large pool of candidates in 2002 based
on its originality,
quality, marketability and its potential
to increase the
worldwide presence
of Korean content.
Serving to develop
and promote Korean content industries globally, KOCCA
honors Korean properties with the
Star Project Award each year to bolster shows with global promise. We
had tremendous condence in MaskMan when we recognized the property with our Star Project Award, notes
VP of KOCCA Sang Gill Lee, and we
are especially pleased by the signicant strides made by the producers
with MaskMan since accepting the
award.
After MaskMan earned the KOCCA
honor in 2002, the Seoul-based character development specialists at Barunson and G&G Entertainment produced 39 half-hour episodes of the
show and built a substantial licensing
program geared toward global expansion for their brand.
Now, on the heels of clinching successful licensing and broadcast
agreements for MaskMan in Korea
and Taiwan, Barunson and G&G Entertainment are planning to bring the
property to Southeastern Asia with
their sights set on Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia. The producers are
also trying to introduce MaskMan in
France, Spain, Austria and the U.S. Q
For more information visit:
www.maskman.co.kr

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Larry Schwarz

An American actor makes it big as an anime hero in

the Animation Collective/Nicktoon series, Kappa
Mikey. by Ramin Zahed

ew York-based Animation Collective CEO and founder Larry

Schwarz knows a few things about
creating quality kids toys and entertainment. After all, Schwarz was the man behind the childrens multimedia operation
Rumpus (Remember rumpus.com and
_______ and award-winning toys such
Zeeks.com?)
as Monster in My Closet and Harry Hairball.
(We should also mention that hes a former
child actor and a stand-up comic as well!)
These days, Schwarz is overseeing so
many toons that its getting impossible to
keep them all straight. Not only is he the
creator and exec producer of Thumb Wrestling Federation, Leader Dog and Tortellini
Western for Nicktoons and Ellens Acres,
HTDT and Princess Natasha for Cartoon
Network, hes also the man in charge of
most of the content seen on KOL and RED
(America Onlines Kids and Teen channels),
including SKWOD, Kung Fu Academy and
Gene the Boy Genie.
On February 25, his latest brainchild,
Kappa Mikey made a big splash on Nicktoons Network. With a catchy theme song
by the popular Japanese band, Beat Crusaders, and sporting a visual look thats a
clever pastiche of anime and western tra-

www.animationmagazine.net

ditions, the show has the distinction of being Nickelodeons

rst global acquisition. Beginning in May, the
26x30
min.
series will roll
out
across
Nicks international channels
in Asia and Europe. Its also
one of those cultural bellwethers
that points to the
huge impact of
Japanese animation
on the global pop culture
in the past few decades.
We took the two popular styles of animation and combined them in a new setting, says Schwarz. We then added all
kinds of silly and goofy stuff that the kids
could relate to and added numerous anime
references and pop culture asides that
adults can enjoy as well. Nick gave us the
freedom to make the show we wanted to
make.
The cable company is promoting Kappa
Mikey as the only anime television series

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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created and produced in the U.S. Although

that statement is open to debate, the
premise of the show is quite original: Its
based on a struggling American actor
Mikey Simon, who nds himself in hot demand when he joins the cast of a oncepopular anime show in Japan. For a variety
of reasons, Mikey is soon able to restore
the LilyMu show to its former glory, but, as
a result, he also has to learn to adapt to
Japanese culture and deal with the downside of fame.
Kappa Mikey is the kind of show that
supports our mandate to deliver our global
audience the best compelling entertainment available, says Keith Dawkins, Nicktoons VP and general manager. Its also a
very quirky and great looking show, and we
know that kids and adult fans of anime are
going to love the kind of fun it has with the
conventions of the genre.
Like many other Animation Collective
projects, Kappa Mikey is created using
Flash technology. However, the studio
also employs After Effects and Maya to
esh out the CG backgrounds and vehicles.
We dont really have a studio style, visually, Schwarz points out. What unites us at
the studio is a certain comic sense. Were
trying hard to invest in our staff and build
up on our team so that we can keep the
same creative team on different shows.
Of course, Schwarzs ties with AOL has
also positioned him well to explore new
ventures in the multi-platform universe.
Its a wonderful opportunity to create content that works differently on various platforms, he notes. There are different ways
to take advantage of each specic medium and that gives you the ability to
offer new material for cell phones,
web toons or Google videos. Of
course, were an independent
company, so were excited
to see how eventually we
can monetize these different platforms. You
have to remember that we
are a New York indie shop and dont have
government subsidies for animation like
they do in France or Canada. Or Japan, for
that matter! Q
Kappa Mikey airs on Nicktoons Saturdays at 8 p.m., as part of the networks Three-Headed Monster programming block.

April 2006

TELEVISION

A Sushi Out of Water

M A G A Z I N E

TELEVISION

M A G A Z I N E

When Classroom
Pets Dig Show Tunes
Three musically minded animals are the stars of Nick Jr.s
inventive new show, The Wonder Pets! by Ramin Zahed

ways top composers. The

ts a rare show that
projects music producer/
can appeal to brightsupervisor is Grammy-wineyed preschoolers,
ner Jeffrey Lesser, who
show tune fanatics, anihas worked with the likes
mation acionados and
of Barbra Streisand, Lou
lovers of soft and fuzzy
Reed, Joni Mitchell and
animals all at the same
Linda Ronstadt. Tony-wintime. Were happy to
ning composers Robert
report that Josh Seligs
Lopez (Avenue Q), Andrew
(Little Bill, Oobi) brilliant
Lippa (Youre a Good Man,
new series The Wonder
Charlie Brown), Jason RobPets! accomplishes that
ert Brown (Parade) and Migreat task and more.
chael John LaChiusa (The
The inventive new offerWild Party) are among the
ing, which debuted on
Josh Selig
top-notch talent deliverboth Nick Jr. and sister
ing music for the pets.
outlet Noggin on Friday, March 3, is bound
The shows origins go back to a series
to attract a diverse group of fans on the
of interstitials featuring Linny the Guinea
strength of its visual panache and its conPig that our animation director Jennifer
tagious music.
Oxley created for Nick Jr., says Selig, the
Centering on three delightful classroom
founder of New York-based studio Little
pets (Linny the Guinea Pig, Turtle Tuck and
Airplane. The shorts, which were set to
Ming-Ming Duckling) which come to the
music by Tchaikovsky, did really well, so
rescue of baby animals in distress, the
when Nick approached me to do a pre20x30-minute show is also billed as a minischool show with superheroes, we decided
operetta, because it showcases music
to make Linny one of the Wonder Pets!
written and developed by some of Broad-

April 2006

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Selig says he was fortunate to have

Lesser on board as music producer. We
have some of the heavy-hitters on the
Broadway scene because Jeffrey was very
well-connected.
The shows animation is created inhouse by the 55-person team at Little
Airplane studio, and as Selig points out, it
certainly has a unique visual quality. We
wanted the pets to look like real animals,
but I didnt know how to execute that, so
I brought these 2D pictures and showed
them to Jennifer.
We call the technique Photo Puppetry,
explains Oxley. It involves taking photographs of the real animals, and manipulating them, doing head and arm and body rotations using [Adobe] Photoshop to create
these movable puppets. Our style is different from simple cut-out animation. We want
the pets to look like real animals and to incorporate more uid soft movements.
Also helping the team with the storylines
is research director Dr. Laura Brown, who
makes sure the show offers preschoolers
lessons on teamwork and problem-solving.
In the premiere episode, for example, the
Wonder Pets travel to Hawaii to rescue a
young dolphin caught in a shermans net.
They also adopt their yboat for space
travel to save a baby chimp lost in space
and journey to the South Pole to give a
lending paw to a baby penguin stranded
on an iceberg.
Im especially happy with the love and
care that we put in the creation of each
episode of the show, says the 41-yearold Selig, who actually starred on Sesame
Street when he was a young boy and has
won 11 Emmys for his writing on that inuential PBS show. Im really proud of the
fact that we do the series here in New York
City so that we can draw upon the wonderful animators and musicians the city has to
offer. They really pour their heart and soul
in every episode.
Although the show is made specically
with the preschool audience in mind, Selig
and Oxley say theyll be thrilled to see their
brainchild develop a cult following (a la the
Teletubbies). As Selig notes,We love making preschool shows, but wed also like to
entertain everyone who happens to meet
the pets. Q
The Wonder Pets! airs on Nick Jr.
weekdays at 11:30 a.m.

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The Padded Cel

Theres Still No Dirge

for the Urge to Merge
It Continues to Surge (On A Rhyming Dictionary I Did Splurge)

www.animationmagazine.net

Illustration by Eric Brandenberg

er/acquisition, the pet projects of the

vanquished become the kitty litter of the
conqueror. The de rigueur announcement reassuring employees that there
will be absolutely no layoffs is followed
within days by the executive who made
this announcement being laid off. So
begins a virtual tsunami of unemployment. (In case youre wondering, such
a reassessment of corporate policy is
legally permissible according to a highly
technical statutory loophole in employee
law known as the CEO Fingers-Crossed
Exemption.)
Its not just employees who are at risk

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

in a merger/acquisition. The public suffers as well. Less choice. Less competition. Less diversity of product. Fewer
advertisers available to Animation Magazine, resulting in the discontinuation of
certain marginal monthly columns. I think
we could safely credit such an eventuality to editorial Darwinismsince not
even Pat Robertson has been able to
detect a single sign of intelligent design
anywhere in the vicinity of this page.
In thinking about Disney/Pixar,
one worries that the canary may
have swallowed the catwhile
Dr. Heimlich is on the golf
course. One can only hope
that John Lasseter and all
the wonderful talents at
Pixar can maintain their
creative compass and perpetuate the magic they have
conjured with such unerring consistencyrather than see it vitiated and
homogenized by the entrenched culture
of a Hollywood conglomerate. At least
DreamWorks Animation has managed
to remain independent from the mother ship for now. And, to be fair, the
world will not exactly clamor for the
return of shows like Cuts, Eve or Britney
& Kevin: Chaotic from the must-ee-TV
schedule of UPN. But still, the seemingly
endlesssssssss consolidation of the media business remains very troubling. Im
running a little low on ofce supplies
On an unrelated note: special thanks
to the many hundreds of readers who
wrote in urging me to do a column poking
a little good-natured fun at the Prophet
Mohammed. And the one reader who
simply suggested I go play in trafc. Q
Robbie London is an animation industry veteran who has seen his share of
mergers.

April 2006

TELEVISION

o cite the most profound and intelligent quote ever associated with
former President Ronald Reagan: Now there you go again! I direct
this sentiment to the perpetrators
of the three latest blockbuster
merger-acquisitions: UPN and
The WB; Paramount/DreamWorks; and Disney/Pixar.
I cant remember exactly
when all this merger fever
started, but I actually do remember a time when, if you went to work
for a media or production company,
chances wereif you werent caught
stealing ofce supplies or photocopying your own butt (that was what it was
called in those days)you might actually
be able to remain at this same company
for quite some time. And if you were
caughtyou had a real shot at becoming CEO!
In reecting on this bygone, mergerfree era of workplace stability (technically known as The Neolithic Age) it
seemed as though entertainment companies actually focused the bulk of their
attention on entertainment: Characters, storytelling and showmanship.
Actually, its probably a good thing the
latter doesnt exist today since if it did,
it would have to be called showpersonship. Which almost makes synergistic
sound good.
In any case, does it ever strike you that
for a long, long time now, so much energy seems to be devoted to corporate
restructuring, merging and the resultant
wondering and worrying? Wondering if
you still have a job. Wondering if you still
have a boss. Worrying that theyll change
the locks on the supply closet and the
photocopier.
And of course, with most every merg-

by Robby London

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Crossing Borders

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Sunwoos Mixmaster

Korean character and animation properties are

gaining visibility outside their homeland. by Karen
Raugust

LICENSING

etail sales of licensed goods in

Korea have been growing at a
rate of 10% per year since 2000,
according to KOCCA, the division of the
Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism
that is charged with fostering growth
in the creative content industry. Yet
even with these robust increases
which occurred during a slow period
for the economy as a wholeKorean
licensors are looking outside their
home territory for future growth.
The Korean domestic market has a
limit in its size, says Sang-Gil Lee, executive VP of KOCCA, which promotes
Korean companies involved in animation, character licensing, music, games
and mobile and Internet content. Korean licensors, animation producers,
character developers and other creative content providers have no way
but to expand toward the global market. At Licensing Intl 2005, the trade
show held in New York last June, 21 Korean rms showed their properties to
retailers and manufacturers from
around the world, in an exhibit coordinated by KOCCA.
Meanwhile, as Korean companies
turn their focus abroad, there has been
increased demand for Korean properVancouver-based Studio B
is producing a show based
on Voozs Pucca character.

April 2006

ties in Europe, Latin America,

North America and elsewhere
over the last several years. This
is largely due to the continued
worldwide popularity of Asian
properties in general, particularly
Japanese anime and manga.

Pucca Leads the Way

One of the rst Korean characters to become established overseas was Pucca, licensed by
Vooz. It appears on a variety of
womens and girls products in
72 countries across Asia and Europe, and is being developed into
an animated series. Vooz and another Korean company, Gravity
Corp., best known for the massively
multiplayer online role-playing game
Ragnarok, recently entered into a strategic partnership to create a Pucca
online game for global distribution.
The success of Pucca in Europe and
elsewhere has set the stage for other
Korean properties to do business
abroad. Examples include Barunson
with MaskMan, Ocon with Dibo the Gift
Dragon, Iconix with Pororo the Little
Penguin, Sunwoo
Entertainment with
Mixmaster, Rainbus
with Alexander the
Great,
Character
Korea with Jongno
7, and Characterline with Ddung,
Ayap and Chichi.
Characterline introduced Ddung to
global markets at
MIPCOM 2005, and
has done a deal
with QQ.com, a 180-

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

million-member Internet portal in China, for online games, news, mobile

character downloads, avatars, wallpapers and other interactive content.
Characterline is developing a series of
18 Flash-animated episodes and plans
to license Ddung in Japan, Taiwan and
Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, Characterline and several other Korean companies are following Pucca into the European market.
Characterline has been targeting European territories actively, participating
in trade fairs such as MIPCOM, the
Frankfurt Book Fair and Brand Licensing London. Last year, it signed a deal
with Portuguese licensing agent TBZ,
which brought its characters into Europe for the rst time. (Ayap and Chichi
are also licensed in Brazil and the Philippines.)
Character Koreas Jongno 7 has
moved into the European market
through a licensing agency, The Licontinued on page 42

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licensing
continued from page 40

censing Factory. The Jongno 7 animated series airs on the Korean Broadcasting System domestically, and had already expanded into Taiwan before
entering Europe.
A character-driven apparel line from
Sieun Design called Western Macaroni
is doing business in Europe through a
licensing agreement with Dutch manufacturer Bremtex, which distributes
its products throughout Europe and is
also the European clothing licensee
for Pucca. Sieun is developing a Western Macaroni animated series; in Korea, several products aside from the
clothing line, including toys, are on
the market.

LICENSING

Licensing at Home
According to KOCCAs 2005 Character Industry Report, retail sales of licensed goods in Korea reached 258.8
billion won (about $267 million) in 2004.
Homegrown Korean characters accounted for over 40% of the domestic
market that year.
The countrys top character in the
early 2000s, KOCCA says, was Mashimaro, a cute, mute rabbit created in
1990 and licensed by CLKO Entertainment in conjunction with agency
ePhoenix Networks. In 2003 and 2004,
the top property was Little Dinosaur
Dooly, which was created in 1983 and
has about 1,200 licensed items on the
market from 70 companies. In 2005,
Pucca was the top character property
in Korea, while Sunwoos Mixmaster
was the number-one property from
the realm of animation.
A key licensing trend in Korea, as
elsewhere in the world, is that properties are increasingly developed with
more than one media sector (licensing,
animation, online, mobile, etc.) in mind.
The line between the genres is getting unclear, Lee explains, noting that
KOCCA calls this strategy One Source
Multi Use, or OSMU. Sunwoos Mixmaster, for example, was developed simultaneously as animation, an ofine

April 2006

trading card game with an online version, and as a property appearing on a

range of licensed products.
No matter where they originate, look
for more Korean properties to cross
geographic borders as consumers
around the world continue to demand
Asian character merchandise and entertainment, and as more Korean licensors attempt to meet that demand by
working with manufacturers and
broadcasters around the world. Q
Karen Raugust is the author of The Licensing Business Handbook.

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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0,53'ETYOURDAILYANIMATIONNEWSWITH
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V for Visual Vigilance

Dan Glass and his team of vfx artists use CG technology
wisely and sparingly in the big-screen adaptation of Alan
Moores graphic novel, V for Vendetta. by Ron Magid

VISUAL EFFECTS

he Wachowski siblings are

backsort of. The Matrix architects have returned as screenwriters and second unit directors on
V for Vendettahelmed by The Matrix alum James McTeigue. The lm
is adapted from David Lloyd and Alan
Moores graphic novel about a mysterious, masked, swashbuckling vigilante
known only as V (Hugo Weaving),
who uses terrorist tactics against the
fascist state of Greater Britain after
Germany has won a future World War.
When V saves Evey (Natalie Portman)
from torture, she joins his quest to
bring freedom and justice back to a
society fraught with cruelty and corruption.
The fact that the story mirrors aspects of America circa 2006 was not
lost on the lmmakers and visual ef-

fects supervisor Dan Glass (The Matrix

Revolutions, Batman Begins). Its very
political in a way, and poignant, Glass
observes, and I think its very important that it comes out now.
Interestingly, V for Vendetta was
shot in Berlin, that hotbed of WW II fascism, which undoubtedly colored the
lmmakers experience. The project
attracted other The Matrix contributors, including production designer
Owen Paterson, and that shared history made working with the enigmatic
Wachowskis easier. It was like a reunion on the other side of the world,
Glass says. You dont have to learn
each others strange and subtle gestures, especially the Wachowskis,
whore not phenomenally expressive.
They were around almost the whole
time, ended up directing most of the

The V for Vendetta effects

team makes Big Ben go out
with a bang.

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second unit big action bits and left

James to the dialogue and acting. We
were all wondering how it would work
out, but it worked out very well. As the
Wachowskis are great action directors, in a lot of ways it was sensible for
James to encourage them to do that.
As was the case in all his previous
projects, Glass campaigned to do as
much practically as possible. I like
a mixture: I like trying to push for as
much upfront, in camera with miniatures or special effects, and I use the
backend for what its really needed
for.
While V for Vendetta was never a
huge vfx-driven project, its original
120 shots exploded. We ended up
with just shy of 500, Glass says, but
its not as bad as it seems. It never
set out to be a visual effects extravaganza. The original breakdown mainly
dealt with the explosions. The other
shots came up and grew and evolved
in quite a natural way as we put the
lm together. Luckily we had the opportunity and the backing to go ahead
with those.
In Vs 1984-ish future, information is
communicated via ever-present video
screens, which comprised the majority ofif not the most complexvfx
shots. Among the most difcult were
Vs supposed destruction of two London landmarks, the House of Parliament and the Old Bailey, which Glass
predictably asked Cinesite to blow up
using vast miniatures. We had a twoand-a-half week shoot just dedicated
to miniatures, Glass says. Old Bailey
was about 20 tall and constructed
very similarly to the real building,
whose base is made of
these very large stones
that were laid in piece
by piece so we built
each stone out of compressed plaster, which
gets you the closest you
can to reality. The idea
is to match structurally using materials that
match in scale. Big Ben,
continued on page 46

April 2006

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to me and said, Can you help

us? To credit Adrian Biddle, he
continued from page 44
did a fantastic job of providing
us the perfect reference and
the House of Parliaments clock
it ended up being a complete
tower, stood about 26 tall, with
mixture of his photography
a full roof faade that was about
and visual effects.
10 tall.
But it certainly wasnt staWhen models are that intritus quo for the 30-plus mask
cate, do you get a take two? In
shots. We decided halfway
shortno, Glass laughs. We built
through [production] that a
two models of the same thing, so
digital intermediate was going
we had two takes. We also had
to be necessary as a visual tool
a two-day test, set up by Jose
to put things together, Glass
Granell, the director of models at
continues. That process beCinesite, where we tested varicame this gray zone between
ous frame-rates, and from those
strict visual effects and digital
tests we made the decision to
intermediate. So we scanned
shoot at different rates for each
the mask, then tracked that
of the models. We were mostly
shape back on the face, but
shooting at 72 frames per secrather than compositing the
ond. We shot some stuff at 120.
shadows we generated into
Very often people overcompenthose mattes or alpha channels, we
ist to sketch it, then took that to Cisate with miniatures so that the shots
were able to control the lighting in
nesite who tracked the knifes motion
come out looking slightly slow motion.
the digital grading using digital efand generated these CG textures that
Thats what we didnt want to do: We
fects. We could then layer in shadows
were composited to create the trails.
wanted to keep it very raw and in real
to bring back the contours and detail,
Theyre quite subtle, and I really like
time, even if that meant sometimes
and in some cases, take it to a very
themtheyre not overly in your face;
youd miss bits of the action, to give it
high contrast to knock out one side so
its just a graceful element to this
a rougher, more realistic edge.
it becomes very dark and shadowed
quite horric scene as hes slashing
To complete the illusion, Cineversus the bright side. It was a really
and gouging blood.
site merged live-action plates of the
good hybrid cross which allowed us to
Then there was the perennial issue
Thames and backgrounds tiled from
cast shadows at a very subtle level on
of lighting Vs scorching white mask,
stills into the miniature shots. While
his mask. Because the masks a static
which drove the late cinematogramost things in visual effects are
shape, its relatively straightforward:
pher Adrian Biddle (Aliens; The Prinplanned, some come up spontaneIf the actors face had been painted
cess Bride; V for Vendetta, his last
ously, as with a knife ght between V
white, it wouldve been much more
lm) to distraction. Vs mask is very
and a dozen SWAT ofcers. Larry and
complex.
white, and his clothing, cape, hat and
Andy wrote that sequence almost as
we were shooting, which beDan Glasss less is more apcame quite a big chunk of adproach to visual effects is a reI like trying to push for as much [shots]
ditional work, Glass explains.
freshing change from the wholeThe whole scene was shot
sale CGI that plagues some lms
upfront in camera with miniatures or
slightly slow motion, at 72 fps,
these daysand it bodes well for
special effects, and I use the backend
to show how fast V moves.
his next project, the long awaited
In most cases, the stuntmen
remake of Logans Run. That is a
for what its really needed for.
were moving slightly slower
preference of mine, and perhaps
Visual effects supervisor James Glass
than Hugo. The ofcers re at
its why I get involved with the
him until their guns are empty,
lms I do, but it was certainly aphair are very black, which has got to
and in the time it takes them to reload,
propriate for V for Vendetta. We used vibe a director of photographys worst
he takes out all twelve.
sual effects only where it was extremely
nightmare, Glass agrees. Adrian tried
Glass recalls that the knife was movnecessary. Q
to retain some shadow information in
ing so fast that as V twirled and wieldRon Magid is a Los Angeles-based jourthe blacks, but the mask became this
ed his knife it generated these wisps
nalist who specializes in visual effects.
singing bright white object. Having
and streaks. The idea was a cross
V for Vendetta opens in theaters on
watched a few dailies, James talked
between motion blur and streak, he
March 17. For more info, visit vforvto Larry and Andy about it, then came
notes. So we got a visual effects artendetta.warnerbros.com.
___________

VISUAL EFFECTS

Vendetta

April 2006

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Mk Haley | Bostonian | BFA University of Massachusetts |

MFA Cal State Los Angeles | Technical Advisor, Walt Disney
Imagineering Creative Development, Glendale, California |
18-year SIGGRAPH attendee

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Masa Inakage | MFA California College of the Arts | Professor,

Keio University Media Design Program, Kanagawa, Japan |
22-year SIGGRAPH attendee

5-days of real-world, real-time

graphic, interactive twingularity

The only conference and exhibition in the world that twingles everybody in computer graphics and
interactive techniques for one deeply intriguing and seriously rewarding week. In Boston, where thousands
of interdisciplinary superstars nd the products and concepts they need to create opportunities and solve
problems. Interact with www.siggraph.org/s2006 to discover a selection of
registration options that deliver a very attractive return on investment.

The 33rd International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
Conference 30 July - 3 August 2006
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Exhibition 1 - 3 August 2006

Boston Convention & Exhibition Center

IMAGE CREDITS: limosa 2005 Brian Evans; moo-pong 2005 Jun Usu, Daisuke Uriu,
Naohito Okude, Keio University Okude Laboratory; 2005.1 2005 Kenneth A. Huff

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Hair of
the Dog
Tippett Studio puts the
Wow! in bow wow for
Disneys The Shaggy Dog
redo. by Ryan Ball

VISUAL EFFECTS

ome prosthetic fur, strategic cutaways and basic dissolve shots

transformed young Tommy Kirk into
a uffy sheepdog in Disneys original The
Shaggy Dog feature. And while that may
have done the trick nicely in 1959, the 2006
remake required a bit more sophistication in
the vfx department. To put a little wag in star
Tim Allens tail and unleash a host of other
bizarre beasties, Disney this time turned
to the creature effects experts at Tippett
Studio, the shop behind the giant bugs from
Starship Troopers and other groundbreaking
feats of digital wizardry.
The new The Shaggy Dog is actually more
like the mutt offspring of the 59 original and
the 1976 follow-up, The Shaggy D.A. Allen is
Dave Douglas, a workaholic deputy district attorney who takes on a case involving an animal laboratory and ends up with more than a
little hair of the dog that bit him. With an experimental serum coursing through his veins,
he nds himself looking at re hydrants, cats
and his family in a whole new light. Along the
way, he makes some new friends in various
animals that have also been given the genetically transforming cocktail.
Some of the original challenges were
technical issues like how we were going to
animate a snake slithering while barking and
wagging its tail, says Tippett lead animator Jim Brown. It started out very serious,
we were going to keep these things totally
photoreal and all that stuff. But as the show
went on, [Disney] saw the ability in some of
our animators to bring out the humorous
sides of these animals and they let us go in
that direction.
For visual effects supervisor Thomas
Schelesny, there was nothing funny about
shooting reference footage of a real-life king
cobra. After photographing the well-trained
sheepdog and some cute bunnies, the Tippett team watched as two trainers picked
up a big, heavy box and put it on the table.
48

April 2006

Then one of the trainers looked at everybody

and said, I want everyone to look behind
yourselves and know your escape route. If I
yell run, run for your lives. Schelesny tells
us that no amount of Discovery Channel
viewing could have prepared him for what
happened next. I can tell you unequivocally
it was the most dangerous thing I was ever
part of in my life, he states. The head rose
up out of the box and we all went, Oooh, ahhhh! Then all 12 feet of that snake slithered
out of the box, off the table, onto the oor
and straight toward us.
The actual snake can be seen in the background on a few shots in the lm, but most

sure it didnt intersect stuff, he notes. We

wanted to keep the scenes light so we could
actually animate because if you have the fur
visible, it really slows down your animation
scenes. So the puppet department came up
with a really nice, low-res geometry that we
were able to see in our scenes and get a representation of where the hair was at least
going to be.
The crew animated with Maya and rendered with RenderMan, but used their own
in-house fur system dubbed Furocious. The
application was put to the test late in the
production when it was decided that the
sheepdog would have to surf. One of only

of the on-screen slithering was done by a

fully CG serpent. Our technical supervisor,
Matt Robinson, came up with an idea to have
scales on there that would contract and
expand, and slide along the skin like a real
snakes would, Brown remarks. But [the rigging] became very heavy with the puppet.
Our painters did an excellent job of painting
the snake so we didnt really have to use specic geometry for scales. They just painted
that thing like crazy and it looked phenomenal.
In the story, the snake develops a furry
dog tail and a penchant for panting. Brown
says the tail created the biggest fur challenge for the animators. We had to make

a couple shots involving a fully CG dog, the

scene required the poochs hair to interact
with wind and water to extreme degrees.
We pretty much just used joint chains and
surface-constrained the hair to the geometry, says puppet department head Eric Jeffries. Then we put the joints on top of it and
built a simple interface for the animators so
they could control each hair.
Schelesny hastens to add that hair, rather than fur, is indeed the optimal word when
dealing with their shaggy title character. He
jokes, The sheepdog has more in common
with Cheryl Tiegs than it does a rat. Q
Disney lets The Shaggy Dog out in
theaters nationwide on March 10.

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State of the Art

Its a Virtual Jungle

Out There
Weta Digitals vfx experts used a variety of CG tricks to
recreate the environmental shots of Skull Island for King Kong.
by Barbara Robertson

VISUAL EFFECTS

ast months question was originally

about the cemetery scene in Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but we
killed that one when they didnt give us permission to run the photos! Willi Geiger saved
the day with new questions about King
Kongs Skull Island: How was the environment shot and put together? How much (if
any) was shot on location in New Zealand?
How heavily were green/bluescreen, miniatures, CG, etc., used? And, nally, how was
everything integrated?
For the answers, we ew over the phone
wires to New Zealand to talk with Weta
Digitals Eric Saindon, digital effects supervisor. First thing to know is that almost
nothing was shot on location. Second,
green/bluescreen elements were used,
particularly of Naomi Watts who played
Ann Darrow. (Ann was was also often a
digital double.) Sets were built, but few
turned out to be useful; most were replaced with digital environments.
In other words, Weta Digital handcrafted
Kongs homeland using miniatures, digital
paintings and 3D elements. Think about it.
All of the islandfrom the village, to the
jungle, the brontosaurus stampede, Kongs
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April 2006

ting on a rocky ledge watching the beautiful sunsetall were handcrafted.

The Skull Island terra-formers started
with miniatures: Two miniature units created around 15 large miniatures in sizes ranging from 10 feet by 10 feet to 50 feet by 30
feet. They were our ground planes and
starting points, says Eric.
The village relied the most on these models. We did some digital extensions for the
big wall that goes off into the distance,
says Eric, but for the most part, the village
was all done with miniatures. To help make
the miniature village seem real, the digital
effects crew added volumetric atmosphere
in RenderMan that was composited into the
shots. When Kong reaches for Ann, you can
see his shadow in the atmosphere. These
subtleties help bring the shots to life.
The jungle relied more on CG. Again,
though, the digital crew began with footage taken of a miniature. We took the camera move from the miniature and brought
that into animation. Then we added Kong,
the Brontos and other characters. From
there, we tried to dress in the things they
would interact with.
For trees, the crew used 2D tree elements as starting points. The trees were
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shot with high-speed cameras,

sometimes on their own, sometimes on miniatures. If you shoot a
miniature tree at high speed, it
looks like a large-scale tree moving
in the wind, says Eric. Sometimes,
these 2D trees were used in the
backgroundnotably in the Kongversus-T-Rex ghtwith 3D trees in
the foreground.
An in-house system called Plant
Builder based on Autodesks Maya
6.0s hair system generated the CG
trees and other plants. The digital
botanists started with one hair onto
which they built a piece of geometry that
represented the trunk. Then, they repeated
the process to create branches by connecting pieces of hair to points on the trunk and
adding detail to the geometry to make it
look like bark. They grew more branches
from those branches, and so on, adding ner and ner details depending on the plant.
We were able to create any plant we
wanted, Eric says. There are lots of new
widgets and things in Maya to create
shapes in new ways. By playing with the
numbers, which determined how we grew
hairs on the geometry, we could grow ferns,
oak trees, pine trees, whatever the environment called for. And play they did: Skull
Island was a fantasy, so none of the plants
had to be botanically accurate.
Because the plants were built using
Maya Hair, characters could interact with
them. We used the hairs for dynamics and
collisions, Eric says. We could have wind
blowing through them, plants moving as
creatures walked by and interaction between characters and plants.
Collisions are notoriously CPU-intensive,
so the team came up with a trick to help
speed the simulation: If anything got within
a certain range of colliding geometry, it
crushed the geometry straight down. When
a Bronto stepped on a tree, rather than calculating all the collisions with all the hair
branches in the tree; the software simply
crunched it.
To further create the fantasy jungle and,
in one dramatic sequence, give Ann and
Kong something to swing from, the crew
used a custom program to procedurally
grow and drape vines on, over, around and
hanging from any piece of geometry. The
program started with a curve, and then extruded a circle along the curve. We ran a
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Beauty and the Beasts: The vfx team created a

custom program to procedurally grow and drape
vines on, over, around and hanging from any piece of
geometry in the recreated fantasy jungle.

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digital New York City. Basically, we were

able to model the cliff and, as the brontos
came running toward it, used this software
to break it apart and crumble it away, Eric
says. We then textured that data with the
textures photographed from a miniature.
We also used it to shatter the ground under
Jimmy as he was running. I think he was one
of the better digital doubles in the lm.
For the beautiful sunset scene on the island shared by Kong and Ann, the crew
modeled and painted a rocky ledge. Once
the animation got into the scene, the camera moves from the miniatures didnt match
what Peter [Jackson] wanted, Eric says.
We dressed the rocks with Paint Effects,
texture maps and some procedural shaders, but a lot of it was hand modeled and
textured to work at the correct scale.
Putting all these pieces together required
constant interaction between compositors
and technical directors. Every day, the TDs

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

would hand new rendered elements to the

compositors who would t them into the
shots with 2D elements. Then, every night
the TDs wrote a one-line script that grabbed
the latest animation, all the new elements,
the lights and the latest compositing script.
In the morning, the shots would land in the
projection room. And, that made it possible
to fabricate the island.
We were able to get so many shots out
because we could script all the information, Eric says. Wed see the shots every
day in dailies and decide what needed to
move into 3D and what could stay in 2D.
Were happy to report that award-winning journalist Barbara Robertson will be
launching an exciting new column in the
next issue of Animation Magazine. Barbara will be focusing on some of the revolutionary visual effects work done in commercials, short form projects and TV series in her new monthly outing. Q

April 2006

VISUAL EFFECTS

simple noise function through the geometry to add details like bumps and knots, and
then used a shader to add procedural information, says Eric. The closer you got, the
more details were added by the shader. We
didnt have to model any of the vines; we
could procedurally dress the whole scene
with this simple Maya program.
Last, to help give miniatures the correct
scale, the technical directors used Maya
Paint Effects to add small ferns, debris and
other plants. These plants didnt hold up
close to camera, but they worked well for
dressing the background, says Eric. Special
procedures moved the Paint Effects geometry into Pixars RenderMan for rendering.
In addition to the jungle, the team also
created the cliffs that crumbled under the
weight of the brontosaurus stampede. For
this, they used BlastCode software from
FerReel Animation Labs, a Maya plug-in that
helped Kong break through the theater in

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Calling All

Robotech Fans

VISUAL EFFECTS

t might be a small part

of the record industrys
total revenue, but you
can bet that music execs
never saw that downloaded ring tones would become such a nice bit of
change for their ailing industry. In 2005, according
to a report in USA Today,
ring tones (and related
downloads) accounted for
$600 million of the industrys $12 billion revenue,
20% more than had been
projected the year before.
While hip-hop themes
form the bulk of the downloads (2005s leader was
50 Cents Candy Shop),
there are lots of niches to
ll. Enter Airborne Entertainment, which recently
signed a deal to bring the
famed anime series Robotech to a cell phone
near you. Content for sale
will include ring tones, ring
back tones and personalized wallpaper. A mobile
game will soon follow. Airbornes deal is with Harmony Gold USA, Inc. I dont
think (ring tones are) a
fad, says Phil Leigh, president of Onlines Inside Digital Media in the
USA Today piece. Those who lived without it think, Why do we need it? But I remember when T-shirts were white. People
want to make a statement. And ring tones
offer that. I think well see growth.
For its part, Robotech content will be
made available across major cell carriers
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April 2006

wireless community and the general entertainment world becomes tighter, we

strongly believe that successful narrative
franchises like Robotech will continue to
cross over to mobile genres, says Andy
Nulman, Airbornes president. The companys branded properties include Family Guy,
Maxim ToGo, SPEED TV Mobile, NHL Mobile
and Donald Trumps Real Estate Tycoon.

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by Chris Grove

Softimage Animates
the Southwest: On the
software front, meanwhile, comes news that
the Canuck division of
Digital Dimension has
selected Softimages
XSI software as the
main 3D production
tool for The Legend of
Secret Pass.
The upcoming fulllength animated feature, produced by JC2
Entertainment, is set in
the American southwest and features a
large cast of computergenerated animals and
humans. Digital Dimension execs say XSI got
the nod due to the
softwares advanced
non-linear
character
workow, customizable
rendering tools and the
extended memory capabilities of the 64-bit
version 5.0 with its
faster rendering times.
(Its) the newest and
most exible 3D architecture available today,
says Luc St-Onge, 3D
supervisor at Digital Dimension, Canada. The non-destructive
character environment enabled our programmers and artists to start work as soon
as we began building our CGI animation
pipeline. This allows us to make changes
and updates to the character models anytime we need to. The powerful character
continued on page 56

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Tech Reviews

Wacom Cintiq 21UX

by Chris Tome

so much better. Youll wonder

how you lived without it after
you bought it.
The Cintiq offers 21 inches
of screen real estate and
comes with a nice stand to sit
it on a desk. The calibration
software built into the driver
allows you to set the display
for the best pen-to-screen accuracy, and the pressure sensitivity of the pen, along with a program
like Corel Painter, lets you use the natural
media brushes in ways that truly approach
their analog counterparts.
I also found it very handy to use in programs like Maya or LightWave. Selecting
polygons, drawing splines or painting textures, it just seemed so much more real to
me. Of course I know were talking CG here,
but its the difference of using an application versus feeling as if youre inside of it.
I have the Cintiq set up on my PowerMac
G5 as a second display, and although I dont
always use the pen/display combo, I can
easily use my mouse across both displays
just as if it were a regular monitor. When I
do want to do some artwork though, I simply pick up the pen and create as if I were
putting pen directly to paper. Its a very liberating experience.
If what I have written so far hasnt convinced you, you may want to know about

The Incredibles director Brad Bird used

Cintiq to critic his features dialies.

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some of the crew over at Pixar (now Disney/Pixar of course) who use them on a
daily basis. Mark Andrews, story supervisor for The Incredibles, for example, now
draws his storyboards pretty much exclusively on a Cintiq, whereas before he
did it all with pencil, pen and paper. Brad
Bird also utilized a Cintiq to critique dailies.
(The footage viewed in the mornings after the previous nights rendering.) When
the footage was viewed, if Bird didnt like
a pose or position of a character or element, he could use the Cintiq to draw over
the frame, which would be superimposed
on the image projected to the big screen.
Then all the animators could instantly see
what his vision was, the data could be
saved off and the animators could go back
to their work spaces and have a visual cue
about what to change.
Going back to the paradigm shift, I
predict that not too long from now every
screen will be touch and pressure sensitive. Its a natural evolution, and one thats
not hard to imagine at all. Its more natural and intuitive, and Wacom has truly led
the way in this space. Even my four-yearold daughter, who never stops drawing or
painting, ghts me for access to the Cintiq, which is why I went ahead and actually
purchased my loaner unit, because shed
throttle me if I sent it back. Once you have
used one youll understand the appeal, and
you might just have to max out a credit
card or two. I know I did!
Website: www.wacom.com
Price: $2,999 Q

April 2006

VISUAL EFFECTS

There are times in the computer and

technology industry when a product is
worthy of being dubbed a paradigm shift
in the way people think about and use their
tools. Although Wacom wasnt the rst to
come out with pressure sensitive drawing tablets (Calcomp and SummaGraphics
were the rst), the Vancouver, Wash.-based
company was the rst to, for example, create a cordless and battery free pen with
much higher levels of pressure sensitivity
than before.
Fast forward almost 20 years, and we can
witness the forementioned paradigm shift
with the Cintiq 21UX. Its an LCD screen
that is pressure sensitive, and comes
with a pen using 1,024 levels of sensitivity, which you draw or paint directly on the
screen with. Although Wacom has had other displays like this, their size, resolution
and price were, in my opinion, not worth it.
The Cintiq 21UX changes all that.
Hooked up to my G5 and running at
1600X1200 resolution, this is one fantastic
artistic tool. At $2,999 its not as cheap
as a regular display, but what it offers in
exibility for CG artists more than makes
up for the price. Working with the Cintiq
gives you a kind of a rush youll never get
otherwise, and it makes drawing and painting in programs like Photoshop or Painter

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Frederators My Life as a Teenage Robot

Is That a Toon in Your

Digital Pants Pocket?
Todays savvy animation producers dont expect instant
riches as they prepare content for tomorrows platforms.
by Chris Grove

NEW MEDIA

f you attended any of the TV or

new media confabs in the past
six months, you know that the
buzz about new media platforms has
become deafening of late. However,
perhaps because the moguls of media were so badly burned during the
heyday of the dotcom boom, not everyone is waxing eloquent about the
obsession du jour: Podcasting. How
many people really want to get video
on a tiny screen when they already
have TiVo or a similar service from
their cable company or DirecTV? Rupert Murdoch opined in Newsweek
last month. How many will want to
pay $1.99 on Monday morning if they
missed Desperate Housewives the
night before? Whats been announced
so far with iPod and Disney and NBC is
very small-time at the moment.
Maybe. But just because youve built
one of the biggest media empires in
history, doesnt mean ones exempt
from getting ones facts straight. The

April 2006

vast majority of podcasts are free,

not a buck ninety-nine. So, as it turns
out, those with video-enabled devices
(whether iPods, MP3 players, a Mac, PC
or otherwise) are downloading like so
many caffeinated college le-sharers.
According to gures supplied by the
Pew Research Center For the People &
Press, 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use
the Internet. And for those us who actually have to ride the bus, commuter

us, narrating his

day into his cell.
(Podcasting)
is
not a gimmick,
says
Richard
Doherty, director
of the New Yorkbased high tech
consultant
rm
E nv i s i o n e e r i n g .
John Evershed
Snatch-and-run
is a whole new
business model.
And its not a
new distribution
system that has,
despite rst appearances, a generational
divide.
While toons from
Frederator Studios,
Fred Seibert
Mondo Media, the
Walt Disney Company and others big
and small are hot pcast properties, its
important to note that among the top
downloads on podcasts.yahoo.com, for
example, are snippets of the 40-plus
skewing National Public Radio magazine show All Things Considered. In the
last two months of 2005 NPR recorded more than four million downloads.
If there is a divide, its between early
adopters and the rest of us, says Fred
Seibert, president of Frederator. In addition to overseeing the creation of
many Nickelodeon hits (Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone, My Life As a Teenage
Robot and more), Siebert has a storied
past launching brands such as MTV,
VH-1 and Nickelodeon itself. Down-

TV execs have always been the gatekeeper that prevented

so many talented people from getting their stuff seen.
Podcasting is one more way around the distribution monopoly
of the major entertainment companies.
John Evershed, CEO and co-founder of Mondo Media, producer of Happy Tree Friends

train or subway once in a while (or sit in

the airport lounge) a little small-screen
entertainment can go a long, long way
to blocking out the guy across from

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

loading to hand-held devices will, he

says, eventually be something thatll
have practitioners from every demographic group. The narcissism of baby

www.animationmagazine.net

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One Man
Band

Pixar shorts can be downloaded on iTunes for

$1.99 each.

www.animationmagazine.net

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

and others have yet to come up with

an independently veriable way to
count heads and trafc in the podcast
space.
But says Troy Snyder, president and
CEO of San Diego-based Nine Systems,
at this moment in the revolution that
doesnt matter so much: The tools
are here now to provide interactive
content catering to specic communities of users. Which, he continues,
bodes well for smallish to mid-level
animators who can now target their
material to communities of consumers
with shared interests. Nine Systems
streams video and audio to over 175
million unique users monthly for clients including Universal Music Group,
Amazon.com, the Sundance Festival,
Fox and Anheuser-Busch.
continued on page 56

Happy Tree
Friends

NEW MEDIA

boomers is so complete that we cant

stand the fact that advertisers dont
think were important.
Because many media companies
are run by said baby boomers, Seibert
believes that therell be a lot of content aimed at and used by the over 50
crowdanimated, live-action, news
and sports and more.
For its part, Channel Frederator is
dedicated to discovering and distributing the work of animators worldwide.
As far as independent content providers are concerned, podcasting is one
of the biggest developments since the
onset of the digital video revolution in
the mid 1990s. TV execs have always
been the gatekeeper that prevented
so many talented people from moving
forward and getting their stuff seen,
says John Evershed of Mondo Media.
Podcasting is one more way around
the distribution monopoly of the major entertainment companies. Mondos Happy Tree Friends is currently
the fourth most popular download on
iTunes.
But wait a minute. Wheres the money? I have no idea, says Seibert. As

in the early days of the Web, free

content is a good thing. Paradoxically, by charging nothing for iTunes
downloads, Apple chief Steve Jobs
is making iTunes more valuable
than ever. Its a great marketing
tool, Seibert continues. When you
command the loyalty of tens of
millions of users the pay-off down
the line can be huge. Just ask the
guys that founded Google.
Currently there are four business
models that may individually or in
combination provide a long-term
raison detre for podcastingad
supported content; promotional
support (podcast shorts acting as
promotion for a big screen lm, for
example); selling best of DVD compilations of web-only content; and
nally, using podcasting as a tool
for audience-building for properties that do generate revenue.
In many ways, podcasting is
analogous to the syndication of the popular Peanuts
comics strip in the 1960s
and 1970s. The syndication didnt yield Charles M.
Schultz nearly as much
money as the TV shows,
lms, plush toys and other
consumer products made
possible by the mass audience the daily strip put
together. If we have to
do this with micro-transactions of ve cents per
download that will be
ne, says Evershed. A
nickel may be peanuts
to Murdoch, but multiply
that times a million and
pretty soon youre talking
real moneyat least for a
struggling animator.
The current scope of the
podcast universe is hard to
measureboth in size and
ratings. Doherty estimates
that there are currently 25
million video-enabled devices smaller than a PC enjoying video from podcasting. To
this point, Nielsen Net ratings

April 2006

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Podcast
continued from page 55

With wireless data transfer rates

continuing to grow exponentially and
the affordability and storage capacity
of portable data transfer devices (such
as FireWire and USB drives) becoming
ever more astounding, Doherty has
three words for podcasters to look
forward to in the next 12 months: High
Denition Podcasting. Among other
things, IBM is reportedly ready to introduce a 60 GHz router thatll download data 50 times faster than WiFi. At
that almost ridiculously fast rate, itll
be possible to download a one-hour
movie in 15 seconds.
Fifteen years ago a portable comput-

er with a 40-megabyte hard drive, four

MB of RAM and a 28baud exterior modem
was considered stateof-the-art. In 2006, says
Doherty, were in the era
of the digital pants pocket,
where me media is king, as
in: My media, my time, at the
place of my choosing. In such
an environment, Doherty continues, Rupert Murdoch is asking
the wrong question. Its clearly not
whether consumers want entertainment on a tiny screen, its how do we
get it to them and how fast can we
meet that need. Q

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Aardman has made

35 episodes of
its Morph series
available
for mobile
phones.

Digital Magic

The Legend of Secret Pass

features CG work by Digital

rigging and animation tools, the integraDimension.
tion of SyFlex cloth and mental ray rendering technology, plus the customizable render passes, made choosing XSI
an easy decision.
Scheduled for release in late 2007,
The Legend of Secret Pass is an international production with teams in several countries collaborating with Digital
Dimensions studios in Montreal, the director and design/storyboarding team
in Sydney, Australia, and post-production operations in Los Angeles.
Brit Cels Try Out TDtv: And one more
blast over Rupert Murdochs bow, who
more people will be downloading and podtrashed podcasts earlier this year by quescasting to their hearts content. According
tioning how many people were really interto IPWireless execs, TDtv will allow mobile
ested in watching entertainment or news
operators to deliver up to 50 channels of
on a tiny screen. IPWireless has announced
TV for standard cell phone screens or 17
plans to make British-based cell phone
higher-res channels. Unlike current unicarrier Orange the rst UMTS operator to
cast mobile TV services, which take addiBeta-test the new IPWireless TDtv techtional network bandwidth for every subnology later this year. The software is a
scriber, TDtv will allow an unlimited nummobile TV and multimedia solution based
ber of customers to watch the same chanon the 3GPP Multimedia Broadcast and
nel or use the same network bandwidth.
Multicast Services (MBMS) standard.
With TDtv, Orange would also be able to
Why is this a big deal? Because itll make
deliver digital audio, multicast or other IP
it possible for cell phone carriers to stream
data cast services to enhance their sermore content at higher resolutions, which,
vice offerings. We believe that the unin turn, makes it more likely that even

April 2006

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

LSP Character Copyright JCZ

NEW MEDIA

continued from page 52

matched combination of performance and

economics has the potential to put Orange in the lead in the emerging mobile
multimedia market, says Dr. Bill Jones, IPWireless COO.
The companys TD-CDMA technology
has become a leading global standard for
wireless broadband. The company says TMobile, Orange, Sprint, PCCW and others
will soon be deploying the standard in their
systems. If they get any better at this stuff
and they start making a lot of money for
their clients, IPWireless may nd itself to
be an attractive take-over possibility. Even
by the Murdoch-led News Corp. Q

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tel. +39 06.37498315
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The Toast of Sundance:

left to right, back row:
Konstantin Abadjiev, Ariel
Alvarez, David Chai, Wally Der
front row: Tim Heitz, Lauren
Andrews, Sophorn Sin

School Project
Shines at Sundance
San Jose State University puts its best Foot forward.
by Ellen Wolff

OPPORTUNITIES

umi and the Bad Luck Foot might

be one of the more enigmatic titles shown recently at Sundance,
but it also shows that the animation program at San Jose State University is on
solid footing. Fumi, a traditionally animated short that presents a
comic twist on the power of
superstition, was directed
by SJSU instructor David
Chai. But it reects the efforts of 20 studentsfreshman and seniorswho spent
55 summer days producing
the seven-minute lm.
Having Fumi selected from
among 4,000 short lms
submitted to Sundance was
all the more remarkable
when you consider that it
was made in one room at
San Jose State. Chai admits,
People were amazed that
we did it there. We used our
laptops with Flipbook and
little web-cams taped to
sticks.

April 2006

Hardware donated by HP was in the

process of being set up at the school,
but the looming Sundance deadline
meant Fumi couldnt wait. Chai recalls,
For the most part, we scanned our drawings by bringing in machines from home.

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It was as bare bones as you could get.

Some participants earned intern credits,
while others just worked for the experienceand the free pizza supplied by
Chai.
One major technical advantage was
that a previous Chai-organized SJSU
short, Neighborhood Roots, had been a
nalist in the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. That earned the school
multiple copies of Adobes Video Collection, which included Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore DVD and
Audition. Because Fumi used Adobe
products, the company sponsored Sundance presentations given by Chais students. (Adobe even found Park City hotel
rooms for them so they wouldnt have to
bunk in a friends basement.)
The ability of these students to handle Fumi presentations with aplomb is a
direct result of SJSUs approach to education, believes Chai. Our students are
used to presenting their ideas well because they participate weekly in the
ACME long-distance learning component
that we have.
That program, created by Dave Master,
presents online sessions with industry
pros from studios like Pixar, DreamWorks
and Disney. Chai explains, Its a very
symbiotic part of our curriculum. Profescontinued on page 60

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Corey Tom (left) and

Andrew Ho (right), ip
away their summer!

I would never want to exploit them, so

whenever Thunderbean gets assignments that I can refer students to, its
sional animators look at student work
one of the greatest rewards to be able
ranging from story to layout to animato pay them.
tion. Its been instrumental in raising the
bar at San Jose State.
Which is quite a stretch from the free
Chai, who graduated from the school
pizza pipeline that fueled the making
with an illustration degree, stresses the
of Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot. San Jostrides that SJSUs animation program
ses animation program itself has also
has made during its 10-year history. One
ourished since the one-room Fumi
cool thing is that the main people runproduction last summer. It now benening itBunny Carter and Courtney Grats from a variety of industry-donated
nerboth have illustration backgearfrom Electronic Arts and
grounds. So drawing is a huge People were amazed that we did it
DreamWorks Animation as well
part of our program. Its really a
as Adobe and HP.
there [in one room at San Jose State].
testament to their dedication
All of which has Chai thinking
that weve had such strong re- We used our laptops with Flipbook
big about future student lms.
sults in animation. Our graduand little web-cams taped to sticks! Id like to see them pick up the
ates work at ILM, Blue Sky, Pixar,
baton and have ten projects
Film Roman, DreamWorks, Discoming out every summer. We
David Chai, San Jose State University instructor and
director of Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot
ney and gaming companies like
have so many artists with crazy
Electronic Arts and Sony Games.
ideas. They even have a cool aniThat opportunity could actually arise,
For such a small school with a limited
mation club (ShrunkenHeadMan.com)
since Chai is a partner in Thunderbean
budget, its amazing that we have such
that shows what a great creative culAnimation (which he calls a wall-less
a high success rate.
ture we have. Of course when you have
studio) that has worked on projects for
Chai also thinks that one of the
no money, you have to be creative! Q
Disney, Warner Bros. and Hasbro. If a job
strengths of the program is its diversity.
Ellen Wolff is a Los Angeles-based jourcame in through Thunderbean, I know I
Our Fumi crew had Bulgarians, Canadinalist who focuses on visual effects
could pick students who would do it well.
ans, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Camand related academic programs.
bodians and Argentineans. Its really a
Team Fumi: left to right, back row: David Coffman, John Paul Balmet,
melting pot here. Since its a state colMegan Kelly, Amie Chan, Konstantin Abadjiev, Ji-Hea Yang
lege, the tuition is cheap compared to
front row: Wally Der, Ping Wei Luo, Patrick Roth
lots of private schools.
Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot

While SJSU offers classes in both traditional and computer animation, Chai
says, We dont try to push either one.
What we do impress on students is that
the way they work in our curriculum is a
direct reection of how they will work
professionally. I think group projects provide crucial experiences for students,
especially in their younger years. And
working on Fumi and Neighborhood
Roots, I could tell the guys Id want to
hire right off the bat.

OPPORTUNITIES

continued from page 58

April 2006

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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Not

All Magic
Involves Being

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Inside a Coffin
Underwater
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Writing for Animation?

Draw on Experience.
A toon biz veteran offers some practical advice on how to
create the right scripts for cartoons. by Fred Crippen

OPPORTUNITIES

aving worked in animation for over half a century,

Ive learned a thing or two about the processevery part of the process. Ive worked with UPA,
Hanna-Barbera, Disney, DIC, Sony and countless others in
my years in the business.
Ive been an inbetweener, assistant animator, animator,
animation director, director and a series creator. When it
comes to 2D animation, theres not a single aspect of the
business I havent done. And I continue to work actively
even today. Yes, after 50 years in animation, I have not yet
drawn my last breath as a working animator and director
(pun intended).
While there has been a lot written in these pages about
the art and science of animation, there is one job in animation that doesnt get much play. That would be the art of
writing for animation.
There is something thats not often examined when learning the art of animation, and
that is the challenge that inexperienced writers can pose to animators themselves.
Not all animation projects have the seemingly unlimited resources of a Disney, Pixar or
DreamWorks. In fact, the vast majority of animation work is done for television or DVD release. On these projects, budgets can be tight.
Writing for animation is not the same
as writing for live-action. You have to remember that when writing scenes for animation, everything has to be drawn. Every
character, every movement, every prop,
every element of every scene has to be
brought to life by the animators.
So, when a writer not accustomed to working in this
eld suggests a character run into a house of mirrors in a
scene, he or she would be quite unaware of the enormous
amount of work it would take.
I remember an episode of Skyhawks that was done by
a fairly new writer. There was a scene where the writer had
a circus train crash and he had all these zebras, leopards,
tigers and giraffes and so on running around the train. If
youve done any animation at all, youll see the problem
immediately. All those spots and stripes running hither
and yon were a bit beyond the animation budget of Skyhawks. Ive had hundreds of similar experiences in my
many years in the business.
On the ip side would be something like the project Im

April 2006

currently working on, an educational animated TV series

for preschool children called Betsys Kindergarten Adventures. Its a delightful series with some of the best voice
actors in the business today. Just as important, if not
more to me, is that the project is employing the talents of
top-notch writers who are veteran writers for animation.
The stories they are turning out are rst class in terms
of being entertaining while educating. Even better, their
experience in writing for animation saves me signicant
time in pre-production. With skilled writers on board, taping and pre-production move much more quickly and painlessly.
You see, writing for animation is a skill best acquired by
being involved in the business over a long time, learning
the ropes. Remember, all the scenes a writer might envision have to be drawn, one frame at a time. The more

complex the scene, the more time spent in animation.

As an example, in one scene of a show I was working on,
a character and her mother were going to the park and the
writer had a carnival going on with lots of people, rides, attractions and so on. Hed gone into great detail on this
carnival scene, and it was a really nice one. But the writer
didnt realize the amount of extra work that would be required to animate the scene.
Since the scene was not really central to the story line,
I simply cut it and turned it into a simple shot of mom in
the car announcing they were now at the park and then a
cut to an exterior shot showing the car drive under a Park
sign.
This is a mistake typical of writers new to animation.
Its easy to get carried away with adding lots of details

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

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that are not central to

the story. It is important
to really know the project you are working on.
Focus on the key objectives of the project and
wean out those things
in the script that arent
essential to telling the
story.
Fred Crippen
Another sign of the
new animation writer is seen in character motion. In liveaction, moving a person from point A to point B is a fairly
simple process. In animation, motion is naturally more
complex. A writer can add countless hours of animation by
having characters doing unnecessary walk-ins and walkouts. Knowing when these are needed and when they
would be unnecessarily costly is the mark of a real pro.
New animation writers will also have trouble with script
length. Being a little over or under is generally no big deal.
But, if you as a writer are submitting scripts several minutes over or under, know that this does add work for the
director and can lead to costly delays. There is no cuttingroom oor in animation. You dont draw more than you
need and then cut from there. Timing is critical, and a good
animation writer has a good sense of timing.
Giving clear direction in the script is
also very important. For example, in one
daydream scene on another project I
worked on, the writer had a character
standing on a clock and then being
swept off by the moving hands. Unfortunately, the writer failed to describe
where on the clock was. Was the character on top of the clock, or was the
character on the face? What did the
writer actually envision here? So, if you
are writing a scene like this, picture it in
your mind, and then convey that in the
script. A little direction can save the director valuable time.
Finally, Ill leave you with this one tip I give to all new
writers I work with. Watch cartoons, all kinds of cartoons.
Watch as much as you can. And as you watch, look at how
the various scenes are done. Ive gotten great ideas on
how to cut work, without cutting quality or story integrity,
by watching others work. You can learn much from observing the work of the many animation pros who are applying their hard-won experience to this industry. Q
Fred Crippen is an animation veteran whose
career stretches from UPA in the early 50s
to the lms he produces at his studio Pantomime Pictures today. His numerous credits
include Roger Ramjet, Hot Wheels, Square
One TV and the upcoming series, Betsys
Kindergarten Adventures.

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Art: Top Left: LaRoyce Jones, Media Arts & Animation, Student, The Art Institute of Las Vegas Top Right: Carly Bosanko, Graphic Design, Student, The Art Institutes International Minnesota
Bottom Left: Jaclyn Threadgill, Graphic Design, Student, The Art Institute of Phoenix Bottom Right: Zion Breton, Media Arts & Animation, Graduate, The Illinois Institute of Art Chicago

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ADVERTISER INDEX

Advertisers in Alphabetical Order

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Vancouver Film School
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Warner Home Video
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Congratulates the 2006 Gamers Rad Pack Winners!
Thanks to all the readers who participated in our online poll for the best games of the past
year. Gamers and industry pros logged on to www.animationmagazine.net and picked this
years winners in various categories. Look for interviews with the winners in the next issue of
the magazine.

Best Console Game (Tie)

Best Handheld Game

Best Character Design

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One

[Activision/Treyarch]
Resident Evil 4
[Capcom/Capcom Production
Studio 4]

Nintendogs
[Nintendo]

Ultimate Spider-Man
[Activision/Treyarch]

Best PC Game
World of Warcraft
[Vivendi Universal Games/
Blizzard Ent.]

www.animationmagazine.net

Best Cut Scene Cinematic

Animation
Ratchet & Clank: Deadlocked
[Sony Computer Entertainment
America/Insomniac Games]

ANIMATION MAGAZINE

Best Overall Game Animation

Peter Jacksons King Kong: The
Ofcial Game of the Movie
[Vivendi Universal Games/
Ubisoft]

April 2006

M A G A Z I N E

A
A DAY IN THE LIFE

M A G A Z I N E

BEMaGS
F

eeping with the Asian focus

of the issue, we asked the
fun-loving folks at Singapores
Peach Blossom Media to give us
a little show-and-tell. Among the
toon houses credits are Tomato
Twins and the upcoming series
Tao Shu - The Warrior Boy.
Mini-Lingun takes the hot seat when Big
Lingun goes on his frequent L.A. trips.

Seans designing an e-card for his mother.

Now hes got to get her a computer.
Lingun Sung, CEO of Peach Blossom, shows us his
Linli, our producer, visits the medical shop
favorite dance move, The Running Man.
downstairs wonders which chinese remedy shell try
today. Yesterdays seahorse and black fungus soup
just didnt quite cure her cold.

Noor, our production assistant, having her

daily chats with her best friends in the ofce.

Yippee! Found it. Lingzhi Mushrooms and

Dangshen...apparently its good for the spleen
and the occasional nose bleed.

Toon, our business manager, sits and ponders his

lunch options, chicken rice, satay or laksa?

Sean, our animator, reveals his true feelings

for inatable dolls.

Andy, our writer, with his version of curling up

Hmmm, all I need now is a hammock and a sexy with a good read.
thong...

Our modest, tiny patch on the Wall of Fame

April 2006

You see, in paragraph four, section 2(b), it clearly

says that employees can bring in furry pets.
ANIMATION MAGAZINE

Danny, our animation director, brainstorms

with some of our other colleagues.
www.animationmagazine.net

M A G A Z I N E

A
M A G A Z I N E

BEMaGS
F

______________________________

M A G A Z I N E

A
M A G A Z I N E

____________

BEMaGS
F

________

_____________

M A G A Z I N E

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