Hans Rijpkema

Friday is field trip day at the Red Stick Festival – It seems as if half of Baton Rouge’s school population has been bussed in to take part in the festivities. I share an elevator With Walt Santucci of Duck Studios, on his way to lead an all-day animation workshop with the local school kids. I bump into him again at days’ end; his group produced some 9 anti-global warming PSA’s, with some of the best work done, he says, by kids with no previous animation experience. If you teach them too much at once they start worrying if they’re doing it right or not…

Red Stick brings animation vets to Baton Rouge - (l-r) Scott Johnston, Stuart Sumida, Doeri Welch-Greiner and Rachelle Lewis.

Day 2 of Red Stick, and the multiple events begin. Oh for the power of Dr. Manhattan to split myself up into several Joes so as to cover everything, but all I can manage is to run to and fro, capturing a taste of this and that.

In an upstairs classroom at the Shaw Center Chris Williams and Dougy Pincott are handing out modeling clay to middle school students who are about to learn the rudiments of stop motion animation. Chris and Dougy are visitors from Animex, Red Stick’s partner festival in Middlesbrough England. “We’re similar towns,” Dougy explains, “we’re both post-industrial and regenerating ourselves” through a focus on digital technology and animation. He adds that their town also features a bridge running across a major river, like the one carry I-10 across the Mississippi just south of the Shaw Center.

Zap Squad in pitch contest.

Red Stick began today for real, sort of. An abbreviated session wrapped up around 4, in time for people to go out and enjoy the warm Louisiana sun – which they needed to do after spending the past several hours in the sub-zero temperatures of the Shaw Center’s Manship Theatre. (Don’t they know this is Earth Day, you’re supposed to cut back on the AC and all that?)

First session was dedicated to ‘New Business Models,’ which are actually combinations of old business models and guess what, the internet. Animation distributors and networks are on the lookout for “content that people are already connecting with,” according to panelist Leah Hoyer of the Disney Channel, adding that videos that spread virally (what they used to call ‘word of mouth’ before there was an internet) turn the internet into an ad-hoc focus group; if a comedy or animated video gets 500,000 hits in a few days, a major distributor can safely assume a lot more of that demographic will be interested in seeing the video too. Phrases like ‘branded entertainment,’ ‘monetize on-line content,’ ‘user-generated content’ and ‘DRM’ [digital rights management] were bandied about by all present. The takeaways: high-definition content is in demand – and practice your pitch on your friends before you go into a for-real meeting.

Comet Ent.'s Santa vs. Claus

You can (almost) always tell an animator by their t-shirt, so I figured the young lady in the Supergirl tee waiting for the hotel shuttle at the Baton Rouge airport had to be in town, like me, for the Red Stick festival. The Supergirl fan turned out to be Carmen Llanos from Comet Entertainment, soon joined by her partner Raquel Benitez in a Chinese dragon tee. (Me, I’m wearing my Comic Book Legal Defense Fund shirt with the tough, healthily-chested cat babe pointing her gun right atcha and politely inquiring “who you tellin’ to shut up!?!”) Last year Carmen and Raquel were here with their Santa vs. Claus feature, the screening of which I missed due to an early departure. This year I’m staying to the very end, which means I’ll get to see their new one, Around the World for Free, which they tell me started as a TV pilot, became a feature and will spin itself off into a TV series after all.

MIPTV is always a draw, but how has the economy affected this marketplace?

Wow, was it easier to get from meeting to meeting this past MIPTV. Considerably smaller in scale both booth wise and in attendance, it was a noticeably quieter MIPTV. “Yeah, well, this is what it looks like when several trillion dollars disappears overnight…” a seasoned market-goer told me. While there is no denying that the world is in the midst of a major fiscal re-order, a lot of the people at MIP weren’t necessarily crying the panicked, frantic song they were at last fall’s MIPCOM. The sky is no longer falling, business is just slow…really slow. “I am only here for a few days and only meeting with the people that I might actually do business with,” I heard over and over. I also heard, across the board, in every meeting, the words, “new media” and “diversify.” New media is the given, with not only producers unveiling elaborate cross-platform ideas with every pitch, but also a number of new players coming to the event and starting some interesting, brain-bending conversations. And “diversify” came into play as players scramble to have as many arrows in their quivers as possible to stay afloat. An animation producer with a new board game? An animation company plunging into live-action? A television producer suddenly pitching a feature? An animation production house moving into online world creation? ‘Why not!’ is the attitude right now. When times are slow, you have to start thinking of other places to sell.

Portofino is just one of three locations for the event.

Opening on April 2nd and closing on April 5th, Cartoons on the Bay debuted in their new, more post-MIPTV friendly location. Now held in the three towns of Rapallo, Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino, the festival is just one jaw-droppingly stunning ride away from Cannes. Hugging the coast, we went past such varied sights as Monte Carlo and its harbor of yachts, vineyards, old churches and towns clinging to cliffs and tucked in private valleys with sea views. Going, we were in a bus…and that took a few hours… but on my way back to the Nice airport I was in a car and that drive, my friends, was very fast courtesy of a driver. Even including the coffee stop, I think we made record time! The festival is mainly focused in Rapallo with only one location in S. Margherita, a grand old building on a hilltop surrounded by a garden.

Origins returns BioWare to its roots.

There’s no better way to start a day off, then with a panel of well-known press members presenting with attitude! My first stop was “Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant.” The ideas represented by the press members in attendance were both refreshing and thoughtful. N’Gai Croal, formerly of Newsweek, opened up with a presentation on the term “Hardcore Gamer” and noted that we had to stop using it and other words like “Casual” to describe styles of play. The reason being, the game industry’s audience adapts to changes in the industry rapidly, and we as developers, journalists, and consultants need to do the same.

David Crane (l) and Steve Cartwright.

I was off to an early start this morning – the good news being the hearty breakfast I wolfed down when I learned more about Adobe’s new Director 11.5 release. Dr. Allen Patridge of Adobe ran the presentation, and he went over some of the things users can expect from the new Director software. He approached this from three angles: Dominate, Accelerate, and Impress.”

Diner Dash's Flo is on the go to consoles.

The first thing on today’s agenda was to head over to the W Hotel to meet with Hudson Entertainment. I got hands on with “Military Madness”, “Diner Dash”, “Water Warfare”, “Help Wanted”, and some other new titles in their portable library. All titles besides "Military Madness" are meant for anyone to play, both hardcore gamers, and families alike.

GDC gets serious about Serious Games.

The Game Developers Conference 2009 featured several specialty categories of videogames with strong potential for new types of creative expression and careers (read: “jobs for animators”). The GDC’s Serious Games Summit was an object lesson on how many areas of the world can be affected by games—and how effective Serious Games can be in teaching, affecting opinion, motivating exercise, and medical healing, to name but a few. A Serious Game is one where entertainment is not the primary objective—though the game still needs to be entertaining, as many developers pointed out, else no one will use it.