The Next Wave: Animation on the Internet
At
this year’s ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Expo 2000, held March
3 - 4 at the Glendale Civic Auditorium, AWN’s very own Dan
Sarto moderated a two-session panel discussion on the prospects
and future of animation on the Internet. The short version of the
five-hour seminar is altogether unsurprising, but nonetheless encouraging:
broadband, Flash and you./p>
Weighing in at the event, with
their collective, experiential expertise, were representatives from:
Shockwave, AtomFilms,
Film Roman/Level 13, Mondo
Media, Spunky Productions, Harvey Entertainment and Toon Boom
Technologies. (Stan Lee Media hailed from the audience.)
I am told that a similar discussion
took place about two years ago, with various studio executives from
around town. The question has been, abidingly, "How are we
to make use of the emerging medium of the Internet?" I can only imagine that with
insouciant shrugs and a lot of hand-waving, the studio executives
of two years ago casually talked of ‘re-purposing existing
properties’ for exhibition on the Net… Now, we see that the Internet
is a bit of everything -- a place to exploit and reinvigorate old
properties and a place to test new materials, a kind of proving
ground before expansion into other media. The honest and amusing truth
is, nobody knows the answer. Everyone is trying to figure out what
works, exactly. In some cases, as with AtomFilms, people are basically
inventing a marketplace for themselves; in others, as with Film
Roman/Level 13, they are bringing old business models to bear. The Future Is Lurking A lot of the actual animation
being produced right now is "dumbed down" for today’s
technology, but everyone is anticipating the future. Shows are currently
in development with the promise in mind of what fiber optics and
broadband will allow. Philo Northrup, director of content acquisition
at Mondo Media, says that their episodic shorts are all designed
with the intention and ability of increasing in production value
as the technology improves. Just as the laying down of phone lines
in the middle of last century revolutionized communications for
that day, so too will broadband technology usher in a revolution
for ours.
For the most part, in one form
or another, we have been sitting around our campfires and hearths
for the last several thousand years, telling our stories. Our televisions
and computers are the modern fires around which we gather at nights,
to share ourselves and to invent our world. With the Internet, this
kind of cultural mythmaking becomes more mutual and participatory.
Are we inherently passive listeners and observers? How long will
it be before a new generation of audience emerges; before we accept,
as a society, the transformation of our televisions into an interactive,
co-created medium?
Karl Kronenberger, president
of Spunky Productions, says that he wants his company’s programming
to be different than that for television: "We want a very customized
entertainment experience." What that means, in translation,
is: with the technology available to us constantly and exponentially
improving, it is possible to create characters and storylines that
conform to the user’s preferences and circumstances. (There
is a slightly intimidating, technical word for this -- "non-linearity.")
The idea is that, depending on the context or data of the situation,
an animated character could be customized, say, to look or to sound
like us. (If we are from Texas, perhaps the character articulates
with a southern twang.) Or depending on our interactive actions
and behaviors, a character could be customized to respond to us
appropriately. (Perhaps the animated character makes some timely
quip or suggestion regarding our on-line selections.)
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