Rise of the Guardians is a major box office disaster for DreamWorks Animation.  How on earth could something with so many “right” elements go so “wrong”?  Ed Hooks does a post-mortem.

Rango signals a long overdue transition for U.S-made animation: animated features specifically for adult audiences.  A new generation of filmmakers is knocking at the door.

A few posts ago, someone asked me if I thought Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist would have been a better film if it had more dialogue.  At the time, I had not yet seen it and couldn’t give an opinion.  It finally opened in Chicago, I saw it and am ready to discuss it. Unfortunately, the film is a frustrating near miss.  The lack of dialogue is not the biggest problem. More significantly the girl’s character is not fleshed out.

This Disney Animation Studio flick came and went in a heartbeat despite being overseen by John Lasseter.  The published production budget was US$165 million, which means the real cost was close to US$200 million.  What the studio got for that investment was the sharpest CG animation in years from Disney and 188 merchandising opportunities.  The animation is brilliant, and the animators that did it deserve more applause than they probably received.  It's not their fault the movie is mediocre. 188 characters 'with names" in a single movie is bound to come up short because the audience can't keep up with them all. Neither Star Wars nor Tora! Tora! Tora! had so many characters.   Let's put aside the discussion about whether or not Wreck-It-Ralph is a variation on Toy Story, which I think it surely is.  The plot involves what happens when the character Wreck-It-Ralph decides he is tired of being the villain.  He goes on a game-jumping quest to be a hero, finally discovering that ("surprise!") one is never a villain in one's own life.  "To thine own self be true."  Ralph's journey includes plenty of maniacle careening around accompanied by loud video game noises.  If empathy was evoked for any character, the moment escaped me.  In other words, Wreck-It-Ralph is a concept in search of a worthwhile story.

The decision to be a professional artist is unlike any other.  There is no single well-trod path to success and, anyway, how is success measured when it comes to an art?  Is it a dollar amount?  Is an animator who worked on, say, “Up” more successful than one who worked on, say, “Waltz with Bashir” or “Triplets of Belleville” or the game “Fable II”?   Or perhaps you consider animation to be a craft more than an art?

Let’s talk about acting!  Animators do not perceive or apply acting theory the same way that stage actors do.  The primary variable is that stage actors work “in the present moment”, and animators work with an illusion of a present moment – 24 frames make a second. Animators need to know the connections between thinking, emotion and physical action; they need to understand theatrical structure, the way that performance relates to story and how both relate to the audience.

My least favorite thing to do is lecture.  I much prefer to discuss acting theory with you.  Ask me questions.  Challenge me.

“Show, don’t tell” is a proven guideline for screenwriters but, for some reason, feature animation is still playing catch-up.  Internationally, animated films tend to have too much dialogue and/or voice over narration.  In this article, Ed Hooks makes the case for telling a story through action, not verbal description.

For the past fifteen years, the Holy Grail for most new character animators has been a staff position with one of the major studios -  Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Blue Sky or Disney. Today’s new animators are encountering a rapidly changing industry landscape that includes entirely new production models.  Movies such as Chico and Rita, Rango, Coraline, The Illusionist, and Waltz with Bashir cost much less to make than, say, Brave or Madagascar 3, and they play for more demographically specific audiences. New channels of distribution and exhibition are emerging, and Hollywood’s big studios are feeling the sting that accompanies a mega-budget flop like Mars Needs Moms. Even lofty Pixar is having trouble sustaining its own high creative standard while producing three movies per year on an assembly-line basis.

We can do a better job of preparing the next generation of animators for the industry realities that await them.  We can do a better job of mentoring the next Miyazaki, Lasseter or Disney. Granted, the computer has largely replaced the pencil as a primary animation tool over the past twenty years, but drawing skills are a visible marker of aptitude for animation in general.  Take that away and you are basically left with analytic computer programmer/operator potential.

Few topics stimulate as much discussion in my workshops as the “willing suspension of disbelief.”  What is it? Why is it important? … Actors, audience members, tech crews all come together at the same time in the same place for a common purpose.  Their meeting is not any more random than meetings at church, synagogue or mosque. … There is an implied contract between actors and audience, and the terms of that contract are fragile.

Empathy is receiving a lot of academic attention lately. There are 131 books on Amazon.com that have the word “empathy” in the title. There is a website that is dedicated exclusively to discussions about empathy and compassion:  http://cultureofempathy.com/.  The subject is being approached from every possible perspective - psychological, social, political, artistic and neurological.  Since the illusion of life for an animated character is a quest for empathy, Ed Hooks weighs in on this critically important subject.