ASIFA San Francisco, Newsletter March 1997

TIM HITTLE, ILM, AND PHIL TIPPET WIN OSCAR NOMINATIONS This year 4 shorts were nominated for Best Achievement in Animated Short Films. They were Canhead by Timothy Hittle and Chris Peterson of San Francisco, La Salla by Richard Condie of Winnipeg, Manitoba; Wat's Pig by Peter Lord of Aardman Animations, Bristol, England and Quest by Tyron Montgomery and Thomas Stellmach. Hittle, whose previous work includes The Potato Hunter, recently joined the staff of Pixar as an animator. A few days after the Oscar nominations were announced the New York Times honored him with an article about his career.
The Best Achievement in Visual Effects nominated films are Dragonheart (Universal), Independence Day (20th Century Fox) and Twister (Warner Brothers and Universal). Phil Tippet of Tippett Studios in Berkeley was nominated for Dragonheart along with James Straus and Scott Squires from ILM. Stefen Fangmeier, Henry La Bounta and Habib Zargarpour of ILM were nominated for their work on Twister.
Pixar wasn't nominated for anything, but they did provide visuals for Cosmic Voyage by Jeffrey Marvin and Bayley Silleck. The film was nominated for Best Achievement in Documentary Short Subjects.
Henry Selick's James and the Giant Peach (Buena Vista) with music by Randy Newman, was nominated for Best Achievement in Music.

SF FILM FESTIVAL TO SHOW TIM HITTLE'S CANHEAD AND RICHARD ZIMMERMAN'S BIRDHOUSE Program details for the April 23 - May 8 event haven't been announced yet, but Brian Gordan from the Golden Gate Awards called to say both film won awards and will be shown during the festival.


OUR OPEN SCREENING FOR COMMERCIAL COMPANIES WAS A REMARKABLE TWO HOURS OF AMAZING IMAGES When it comes to creative energy the Bay Area's animation studios are unequaled. The diversity and quality of work being produced locally showed off the genius of the creative people who work in many areas of animation - features, special effects, TV series, commercials, CD-Rom games, etc. Each of the 12 individuals and studios that brought work to the show was congratulated by the audience with lots of applause and comments about their brilliant work after the show. Over 200 people packed themselves into every available nook and cranny of the room and most stayed to the end despite the discomfort for those who arrived late and had to stand.
The evening featured the work of Cartoonland, Colossal Pictures, Curious Pictures, Fils-Cartoons, Industrial Light and Magic, Lucas Arts, Nic Phelps, Pacific Data Images, Pixar, Protozoa, Wild Brain and Xaos. The program began with a reel by Kevin Coffey that shows how he has progressed over the years from being an animator at Colossal and a special effects animator for ILM, to being a producer/director/animator at Cartoonland, his own studio. His reel showed off his many talents. The audience laughed a lot at the humorous ways in which characters killed each other in the excerpts shown from Star Wars Chess Game. Cartoonland produced it for Software Tool Works.
The other individual present who showed off his commercial work was Nic Phelps. He wrote music for the first season of the recent Felix the Cat TV series. Phelps is presently putting together a concert/film series at Venue 9 where local musicians will perform live to animated and live action films on the screen.
Each of the large studios presented reels that focused on a small part of their output. For example ILM could have amazed the audience with special effects reels for major features, but instead they showed 9 amazing TV commercials. There were elephants riding an escalator for Snickers, a BMW with penguins, the world's first commercial for an electric car (the GMEV1) and pigeons dive bombing a much too clean Nissan coming out of car wash. My favorite showed a Honda sports wagon driving under a newspaper from photo to photo. As the car entered each photo the newspaper images come alive. We see the Honda in action in different parts of the world and in different kinds of weather. Honda News and Nissan Pigeons premiered during the Superbowl.
Curious Pictures showed three humorous ads for Best Buy. What makes them stand out are the exceptional writing and the stop-motion latex puppets built over precision armatures. The animation team was headed by Paul Berry and the images were filmed at Henry Selick's Twitching Images Studio before it closed.
Colossal's latest reel is short and amazing. Their design work is exceptional. Their latest Coke ads are so dramatic that many people are unaware that one was done using cgi and the other is entirely live action photography without any special effects added. The visual impact is from the careful pre-production design work - it isn't how they were done that is important - it is the end results that count.
I ended up drinking Coke for several days after looking at the ads so I ran one at slow motion and discovered the Coke bottle shape is on the screen constantly (30 or 40 different bottles) and the product's name appears briefly on the screen about 15 or 20 times.
Wild Brain amazed the audience with a reel of commercials including several very distinct looking works for Coke and Nike. Among their Nike ads is one done in black and white with a cow jumping over the moon. For some reason that ad has stuck in my sub-conscious. I've seen it several times on TV and each time the artwork impresses me.
Wild Brain also showed a few minutes of an animatic for Ferngully II. It was refreshing to see a series of unanimated low tech drawings tell a story. It reminded me that too many artists try to create just the opposite - "it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and furry signifying nothing" (Shakespear's Macbeath Act 5, sc. v.). While Ferngully II will eventually be a fully animated feature, I assume it will not be an overdone production. I consider Space Jam an example of too much sound and fury.
The Xaos reel included work for Nabisco, Intel, NBC, MTV, the Sci-Fi Channel, Sega and other well known corporations. One animator said, "Xaos' work is utterly exceptional. It equaled or was better than anything else shown tonight."
Other fine reels were provided by PDI, Lucas Arts, Fil-Cartoons, Protozoa and Pixar. One producer called PDI's work "awesome" and another person said "astonishing."
"Child Soldiers" is a traditional cel animated work from Fil-Cartoons. The president of the company is a member of our chapter, the studio is in the Philippines. This good looking 30 second public service announcement was developed and produced in Manila. What was important about it was the subject matter - young kids in some parts of the world are still given guns and sent into battle.
Protozoa and Pixar provided the best laughs of the evening. Protozoa's short Chocolate, about a worm in a rocketship that goes to the moon to discover it isn't made of chocolate, is a delightful 4 minute short done using motion capture. It should win a prize or two if they enter it in competitions.
Pixar blew the audience away with one funny interstitial for ABC-TV after another. They showed 28 of them. If you want to see them again watch Saturday morning TV on ABC. The interstitials are the good things between the shows and the commercials. They normally say "we will be right back after this important message," except these interstitials didn't say that. All they did was keep the audience laughing. They are animation at its very best - short, outrageously funny moments. They are TV worth watching.
KC, with special thanks to Kevin Coffey, Tony Claar, Jeff Fino, Phil Robinson, Ron Seawright, Prescott Wright and other members of the audience for their comments about the greatness of this show.

EXPLORATORIUM STAFF AVOIDED TWO DISASTERS DURING OUR JAN. 29 OPEN SCREENING! Several people have suggested over the years we find a larger hall for our most popular events that result in stand-room-only crowds. One reason I'm reluctant to move these events is the support we get from Liz Keim and her staff. During the Jan. 29 event the 3/4" tape deck they were using died. Liz found a second deck in the building, loaded it onto a little red wagon and brought it to the auditorium where it was switched with the broken unit. As a result of her help, very few people were aware that anything had gone wrong. If a tape deck self-destructed at most locations we would have had a much shorter show...
The second problem that they solved was my fault. I gave them a reel that hadn't been cued-up properly and I didn't remember that until after the program had started. Due to the sophistication of their equipment, they were able to cue up the 1/2" reel on a preview monitor while a 3/4" tape was being shown to the audience. Again, they saved the day. KC

COLOSSAL PICTURE, MEDIA CONCRETE AND BRODERBUND CELEBRATE THE RELEASE OF KOALA LUMPUR: JOURNEY TO THE EDGE The comic adventure game CD-ROM for older kids and adults was created and directed by Jamie Baker, produced by Colossal's Pola Ayllon and executive produced by Media Concrete. Broderbund is distributing the work.
A review on the web says the work "delivers its mature themes, high-brow remarks, and twisted puzzles with the finesse of a seasoned Las Vegas lounge comedian. And their routine deserves a loud round of applause."

WELCOME RADIUM, A NEW DIGITAL EFFECTS HOUSE that was formed last year by Jonathan Keaton and Simon Mowbray, formerly with Good Pictures. The company has two Flames, a Flint, Soft Image and Alias. They were mentioned in our last issue for their work on two Lexus spots. They have also created work for Gallo, Baby Ruth, Stoneridge Mall and other advertisers. They are located at 2728 Hyde, Suite 200, in SF.

STORY ANIMATION DOES ANIMATION FOR A SEARS SPOT AND OPENS A SHOP IN SAN FRANCISCO The Sears ad will feature animation by Catherine Margerin who is working as animation director and creative director on the project. Carter Tomassi at Messy Optics will do the camera and technical work and Siri Margerin will provide art production. Story is also doing the live action portions of the ad using director Ken Davis and director of photography Rick Wise. Varitel will do the post.
To keep their animators from having to cross the Golden Gate Bridge each day and to give their clients a centrally located office, Story has opened a studio at 750 York in San Francisco. He will continue to keep his office in Mill Valley. (415) 642-0230.

CHRIS MOSER ON MS/NBC Moser, who works as an animator for Living Books, was interviewed on a news magazine show in January about the impact of interactive books. The topic was "will the internet and books on CD-Rom and other electronic formats replace books on paper?" No!

HAND-CRAFT CD-ROMS MADE TO ORDER At Allied, they rapidly duplicate small runs of CDs as well as videotapes. For information call (415) 777-1700. 620 Third Street in SF.

PDI SELECTS VIEWPOINT AS THEIR PRIMARY 3D MODELING SOURCE Viewpoint DataLabs in Orem, Utah, has been working with PDI on projects for some time as the creator of high-quality 3-D digital models. The new contract will last more than one year and will focus on the production of models for Ants, a feature being animated by PDI for DreamWorks Feature Animation. The agreement with Viewpoint calls for
improvements in high-speed network connections and video conferencing capabilities.
I asked PDI why they need a modeling service. It turns out Viewpoint does not create the models, but takes drawings, plaster and clay models created by PDI and digitizes them. It seems this is a long, slow process and many companies do not wish to tie up their staff doing this work in-house.

LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS is a new computer animation firm run by Betsy de Fries and Jerry van de Beek. They did the character animation for Colossal's recent "Pictogram" Coke ad and they had a great deal to do with the designing of it.
They opened their studio last June and have been busy creating the destruction of the Universe in 60 seconds as a prize for winning a game produced by Rocket Science. They have also animated a 30 second ad with John Hays of Wild Brain for Mainstay Financial Services. The artwork for Mainstay looks like animated black and white woodcuts.
The company is located at the Pier 29 Annex in San Francisco (415) 956-8699.

MSH ENTERTAINMENT IS ABOUT TO PRODUCE A 13 WEEK COMPUTER ANIMATED TV SERIES USING THE WINDOWS NT PLATFORM AND 3-D STUDIO MAX MSH Entertainment is a LA based company that has opened a production studio in San Francisco. The company is presently writing and storyboarding a 13 week TV series called Vanpires for Fox. The story has outer Earth beings living in vans in a junkyard and coming out at night to suck the gas out of luxury cars. The series will combine brief amounts of live action footage with computer animation made using 3-D Studio Max. (See employment listing for details about job openings.) MSH Entertainment (MSHE) is producing the show with Abrams/Gentile Entertainment (AG Entertainment) of New York.
Chris Haigh, an executive vice-president of MSHE, is developing the Max based Jethro management system. MSHE is also Bob Maertz, MSHE's founder, chairman and CEO; and, Jonathan Stathakis, president and COO. Intel has a hand in the future of the company.

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