The gigantic, rapacious corporation taking advantage of the struggling artist eager to see his creations come to life is a long-lived, durable cliché — but one with roots planted firmly in reality. The sad story of Superman’s cast aside creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster has given pause to contract signers (and work to intellectual property lawyers) ever since.
Jerry and Joe would no doubt be envious of their 21st century independent animator descendants, who live and work in more enlightened times. Nowadays, profit participation and ancillary revenue shares are decided before production even begins, making it highly unlikely a show’s creator will be shown the door over monetary issues. At the same time, the people paying the bills have come to realize that truly creative shows, the ones that attract audiences, come from producers who are respected and given the creative freedom to do their best work.
One thing hasn’t changed, though: by and large, the people — or corporation — paying the bills winds up owning the property.
“I’m trying to think of a good analogy... it’s my baseball but it’s their ball field. They’re letting me play on it, so I’m doing my best to give them a good game.” Butch Hartman, creator of Nickelodeon’s Fairly OddParents and Danny Phantom feels the trade-off of ownership for creative freedom is worth it. “When I pitched Phantom to them, I didn’t have the money to make the show. They did, and they gave it to me and they had a venue for me to show it on. I think it’s only fair that they get their piece of it — and I have a small piece of it as well; they definitely have been very generous with the piece I get.”
One might think a writer/director toiling in the bowels of a gigantic corporation like Viacom would feel like David swallowed up by Goliath, but Hartman has nothing but praise for Nickelodeon. “I’ve worked everywhere in this industry and I get more of a sense of family from this place than anywhere else. Because the show’s doing really well they trust me; there are parameters I’ve got to stick to, but they pretty much let me do whatever I want.”
According to Hartman, head-butting between himself and Nickelodeon over the show’s creative direction is all but non-existent. “I’m a very accommodating guy — I’m not always right. If I have an idea I think is fantastic, and the network goes, ‘I like the idea but what if you did this —?’, I’m like ‘that’s not a bad idea.’ Occasionally we’ll push the envelope a little bit — they asked us to keep it down to four Uranus jokes in an OddParents episode — but I’m really not an edgy person to begin with.”
Sometimes a little distance helps in a relationship too. Tom Warburton, creator of Codename: Kids Next Door, Cartoon Network’s number-one show last year, said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ when the network asked him to base the series at their Burbank studios where he had produced the pilot. He opted instead to continue working out of Curious Pictures in New York, where he spent the intervening year directing Mo Willems’ Sheep in the Big City.
“I started in animation in New York City and I knew all the artists here. I told the network I could get the best people in New York to work on the show, because I’d worked with them already on Sheep — I wouldn’t have to wonder if they’d be right for me. To pick me up and throw me down into a soupful of people I don’t really know and production processes I haven’t worked in before wouldn’t be the best creative situation to keep me going. I’d spend more time chasing my show down the street, trying to get storyboard artists into shape and designers doing what I want to do. Maybe if the show wasn’t doing well, they’d say ‘we’re bringing you to California.’
“We’re really our own little island here. There are so many great shows coming out of the Cartoon Network studio; sometimes I wish I were in a place with a lot of different shows going on so I could meet more artists and see what other people are doing. It would be fantastic being able to sit and talk with Craig McKracken or Genndy Tartakovsky, but at the same time it’s also bureaucratic — you have to play by the rules of a big studio where a lot of stuff is going on. There’s a lot of politics and when you’ve got multiple projects going on there’s a lot of jockeying for position: you need an edit room or you need this or that, and certain shows take precedence over others.”
Like Hartman at Nickelodeon, Warburton is also upbeat when discussing his employer. “I wouldn’t say ‘free reign,’ but I’m allowed to make the show my own way. If I get notes from the network it’s only to make the show better. I’ve never felt pressured by Cartoon Network — I feel like an independent. I get to do creative things and not just tell stories. Once a year we do an ‘art show’ in a totally different style from normal. One time we did an episode all in mime; another year it was in five different styles with different parts of it in CGI, comic book, crayon or whatever. Cartoon Network is always up for letting us try new things.
“My philosophy is that someone is always paying for your film — no one is truly independent. I don’t have $5 million to produce a season’s worth of shows, or any way to promote it on my own — I need the studio. Do I want a company of my own? If I worked that way, I’d also have to pay for my failures.
“Ultimately, you’re working for your audience; if you’re only making it for yourself, why bother?”
In terms of physical distance from Cartoon Network, Danny Antonucci goes Warburton one better: he produces Ed, Edd n Eddy in another country altogether. “I don’t sit in the land of politics — I’m out here in this small little Mayberry town.” Antonucci is speaking from Vancouver Canada where he and his CARTOON Inc. studio are based. “I guess it’s due to the weather — there’s nothing to do but sit inside and draw cartoons all day.”
Antonucci goes on to enthusiastically second Warburton’s feelings regarding their network patron. “I’m working on something that’s fulfilling and something I came up with; I’m actually making cartoons the way I want to. I’m being allowed that by this behemoth as you put it, although I never looked at Cartoon Network as a behemoth. They’ve been pretty supportive in my vision of the show and in getting it on-air. They’re one of the few networks that really respects the cartoonist and let him try new things.”
When asked if there have been any occasions when he and Cartoon Network have gone head-to-head, Antonucci scratches his. “There might be times when they might not see something I’m doing. I’ll say ‘believe me, trust me, I’ll let you see that it’s working.’ They let me go ahead and give it a shot, which is really brave on their part. There’s never been a conflict. I’ve been doing this for 25 years — they know I’m not going to jerk them around.”
Antonucci reveals some of the spirit that animates his work in the course of acknowledging the executives who have trusted him over the years. “Usually I’m pretty picky with the folks I work with. I go after the brave ones, like Abby Terkhule at MTV or Linda Simensky at Cartoon Network [she has since moved on to PBS Kids] — people who are looking to push borders and open new doors to animation, not just fill spots. If that kind of head-butting scenario came around I would basically say ‘f.u. and talk to you later.’ If you hired me to do something for you, you need to have some sort of trust and respect.”
In that spirit, Antonucci walked away from doing a campaign with ESPN in what he recalled as a ‘horrible’ experience with a nervous client. “I didn’t accept the job based on revisions they put forth — there’s 10,000 studios out there that can do that middle of the road stuff.” Even though it might put him in a temporary hole (“being an independent studio doesn’t mean being independently wealthy”), he prefers to stick to his guns. “People know what they’re getting into when they knock on my door. My thing is always about integrity first, cash later.”
As to Cartoon Network’s ownership of his creation, Antonucci says, “I get asked that a lot. I don’t have a problem with it because I still get to do the show. In my heart it’s always going to be my property even though legally it’s not. I’m not a stickler for holding onto things I come up. Once it’s over and done with I can easily wipe my slate clean and move onto the next project without any hesitation. I did it with the Grunts [MTV’s The Brothers Grunt] and when the time comes I’ll do it with the Eds.”
From his north of the border perch, Antonucci sees numerous co-production projects taking advantage of Canada’s film and TV production subsidies, but rejects that as a route for his own work. “Folks come up here with shows that they maintain rights to and end up doing co-pro deals where they have five people investing money from all over the world. Everything they do has to go through the boards of those companies. A guy who was selling tires is now an artist because he put his money into the show. I’m just not into that.”
“Doing a series for Cartoon Network is a perfect set-up for Danny,” said Bill Schultz, producer/partner, Mike Young Prods. All he really loves to do is make his show. He’s been working on it for a long time and any other network would be saying ‘we need these episodes quicker.’ Danny doesn’t work that way — he takes it one at a time. He’s not an ambitious businessman who wants to build a studio or a library.”
But Schultz is. The former head of Film Roman is now partnered with Mike Young and Mike’s wife Liz in the Woodland Hills, California-based Mike Young Prods. The studio is producing the new He-Man series for Cartoon Network — a show the network runs as an acquisition and not an owned property. In spite of the changing economics of animation production, Schultz sees opportunities for a studio to create and own its own properties.
“Cartoon Network runs 24/7 — they need programming. They can’t finance everything on the channel — there isn’t enough capital out there — and they only have so much library. They definitely acquire stuff, they have a need for it, but they don’t pay a lot. It might cost them $20,000 per episode for U.S. rights to a show they can run the hell out of over three or four years, versus $400,000 to produce it themselves and own it outright. Only so many shows can make their cost back in terms of merchandising and foreign sales, so they hedge their bets and mix it up a little bit.
“We have a show called Pet Alien. We created and developed it, we raised the financing and sold it to Cartoon Network as an acquisition — we keep all the rights.” Schultz outlines the steps that go into creating a Pet Alien: “We’ll present an idea to the networks. They might say ‘we like it and want to own it,’ and you make that deal. In other situations you take your idea to co-production partners, co-financiers, etc. You develop a plan where you can finance it independently, including some of your own money or your own sweat equity; you defer your fees, do whatever you have to do to get it financed.”
Schultz looks back at the birth of the Fox Kids Network as the beginning of the modern system of producing animation. “In the old days independent really meant independent; the ownership was independent. FOX was the first network to own the shows that were being produced for them. You still had ‘independent’ studios, but they were really just doing work for hire for the networks.
“Back then it was possible to get a pre-sale based on your presentation, but that’s happening less and less now. There’s no low-hanging fruit anymore. You basically have to have the show in production, have your financing in place and show the network at least finished footage if not actual episodes before they’ll buy it. It’s a challenging business model, but for the right people with the right skill sets and the right approach — there is opportunity to make a good show that can last and last. The holy grail for the independent producer is to come up with a Power Rangers or a Ninja Turtles.”
Even though his studio is Tom Warburton’s Kids Next Door home base, Curious Pictures’ exec producer Richard Winkler also endorses the co-production route. “We like a mix of different business models. The secret ingredient to whatever success we’ve had is diversity. We like to keep our eggs in multiple baskets.
“In a co-production deal, usually half the production budget comes from the sale of U.S. TV and home video rights, and the rest of the world makes up the other half.” Winkler works with a Canadian production partner to take advantage of that country’s production subsidies: “Their system is complicated and fairly restrictive, but set up right it can generate significant production financing for a country of thirty million people. You have to deal with an elaborate point system based on what country’s passport is in your director or writer or editor’s pocket, and you’re also required to spend 75% of your budget in the country.”
Unlike Antonucci, Winkler doesn’t look at working with production partners as inevitably leading to creative conflicts. “I was warned about that going into the process, but picking the right partners is like casting a film — casting is everything. If you pick the wrong partners who have suggestions in conflict with your vision, then you have a problem. If you and your partners are creatively in sync, then it works.”
Curious has worked with a single partner, Canada’s Blueprint Ent. on two projects to date: the 2D Hey Joel! (currently on VH-1’s shelf) and the stop frame sketch comedy The Wrong Coast for The Movie Network. “We have a strong history of mixed media — doing things in more than one format. Most of the cable networks with studios in L.A. are primarily 2D; we can do mixed media as well as 2D. That’s part of our collaborative approach: we’re not taking money out of their studio, we’re doing something they might not necessarily be the best at.
“On a certain level we’re competing with the networks’ in-house studios. They have a built-in incentive to feed their existing capacity and keep their development departments busy, but I prefer to look at it as an opportunity to collaborate, to take projects to them that we like or vice-versa, and develop them together from a very early stage.”
One long-time industry observer/player — who prefers to go nameless for the moment — takes a more acerbic view of the current power relationship between the networks and producers, particularly as to how it impacts on a show’s aftermarket: “Way back in the day Normal Lear said ‘There’s no such thing as independent producers — only dependent producers,’” this observer notes. “It’s very frustrating to be in the business today because the networks control absolutely the amount the pay you and the handling of all rights post network.
“I have a very fair deal with the people I’m in business with, but if they did not absolutely control the product, I might be able to do it differently and perhaps more effectively from my perspective. It’s very frustrating if you have some original marketing ideas that don’t fit into their strategy of the week. As wonderful as the often the people in the networks are, they’re wonderful from the standpoint of serfdom.
“With three corporations — Viacom [CBS and Nickelodeon], Time Warner [Cartoon Network and Kids’ WB] and Disney [Disney Channel and ABC] — the major exhibitors of animation on TV, you’re right back in the same situation as the 1960’s when it was ABC, CBS and NBC. And there are no independent producers at Disney — everything there is done in-house.”
Mr./Ms. X goes on to predict that the creative, collaborative atmosphere enjoyed by Antonucci and Warburton to date may be changing. “Cartoon Network was more hands-off than anyone during those years they were making those shows; that’s changing. They’re going to become much more interfering.”
In 2002, Queer Duck made a bit of a splash (as befits a duck) on Showtime’s Website. The brief, Flash-animated Webtoons followed the adventures a fey fowl and his friends Oscar Wildcat, Openly Gator and Bi-Polar bear; creating them was an adventure in itself for their director and designer Xeth Feinberg.
It all began back in the 1990s dotcom boom. Icebox.com saw Feinberg’s Fleischeresque Bulbo Web cartoons and invited him to animate for them. “I had a choice of early scripts and picked Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln by Mike Reiss [The Simpsons, The Critic]. It was the first series on Icebox — I did 13 of them before they could get their other stuff going.
“Mike came up with Queer Duck next, and we did five of them for Icebox before the dotcom crash. Showtime wanted to run the cartoons as a companion piece to their Queer as Folk series, but the property was tied up in Icebox’s bankruptcy. It took eight months of lawyers battling it out to clear things up.”
Feinberg went into high gear. While Reiss wrote the scripts and recorded the voices in L.A. Feinberg produced and directed each four-to-five minute episode in less than three weeks out of his one-man (and one assistant) New York City studio, MishMash Media. “There wasn’t a budget for a big staff, but the real reason I animated every frame myself was that the deadlines were so tight. They wanted the episodes to accompany their new season of Queer as Folk and it was easier for me to work like a maniac for a couple of months than invent a staff. I was sort of a miniature production company — I was hoping they wouldn’t realize how miniature I actually was.”
Feinberg was pleased by the response to the show, which included a New York Times article and an appearance on Time Out magazine’s Gay Pride week cover. Amidst buzz about a possible Queer Duck movie, Showtime asked Feinberg to produce another 10 episodes. Contract negotiations went on into the fall of 2002 while he storyboarded episodes. With a contract for the new episodes in hand, Feinberg was looking forward to getting back into production — until January 2003, when Showtime pulled the plug on the series. “No one ever told me directly, but I heard it was due to random budget cuts. A month later I was reading in the trades that Viacom was reporting record earnings.”
Although it took several months of effort to get Showtime to compensate him for his pre-contract work on the unproduced episodes, Feinberg says it was all worth it. “Just the exposure I got from Queer Duck led to other work, so I don’t feel I wasted my time or in the it was a bad thing.
“There was going to be more development time for those last ten episodes and I thought ‘okay, maybe I’ll have two assistants and take weekends off this time around.’ I guess that’s animation — feast or famine. I was happy to be feasting then, even though it was an insane lifestyle for four months or so. I’d be willing to do it again, too. The ideal for me is to be an independent doing creative stuff and being able to make a living at it. You’re always making deals with various devils to do that.”
Bill Plympton may be the best-known practitioner of do-it-yourself animation, with an array of features and shorts made completely outside the usual funding and distribution routes. His unique, homemade visual style is instantly recognizable and brings him regular commercial assignments. (The GEICO TV spots of hapless boobs springing booby traps upon themselves were dreamed up by the insurance company’s ad agency specifically for him to animate.)
As someone not particularly dependent on major-league financing, Plympton is hard-pressed to think of an occasion where a studio or distributor has taken issue with his work. “For some reason no one wants to get involved in the early stages of my films. Maybe I’m too independent, or too profane. My films are generally picked up for distribution after they’ve been seen at festivals. The only pre-sales I’ve made were with E.D. Distribution in France and they’re very supportive; they’ve never commented editorially and only ask for things like M&E tracks for dubbing.
“I’ve been very lucky dealing with ad agencies in that they know what they want. Their storyboards are fairly precise and I just follow them as closely as I can. It’s never been a problem.”
Except with Blockbuster. The video rental colossus had issues with four shots in Plympton’s 1997 feature I Married a Strange Person, an over-the-top sex and violence spoof. Blockbuster used its muscle to have the film’s home video distributor excise the offending scenes — not just from copies purchased by the chain, but from the duplication master itself. “They took out all the sex shots — not the violent stuff, and it’s a very violent film. But when the film came out on DVD they put the shots back in. I don’t know if I understand the logic of that.”
One could be forgiven for assuming that Plympton is a rebel who most enjoys thumbing his nose at the rules and regulations of the mainstream animation world. “No, I would gladly work within the Hollywood structure if I can get the right money. In fact, I’m surprised no one from Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks has called me to direct anything. I guess they’re afraid I’m too outrageous, or too much of — I don’t know, a maverick. But I’m not, I would love to work within the system. Maybe after they read this someone will call me.”
If Danny Antonucci offers potential advertising clients a ‘my way or the highway’ deal, Noodlesoup Prods. takes the opposite approach. “We can’t afford to lose any clients,” says Nathan Graf, the company’s coo/managing director. “We grumble and groan but we have to get it done and do it their way — that’s the nature of the beast.” The three-year-old company, founded by Disney veteran Jeffrey Nodelman performs service work for major studios and networks, creates and develops its own original properties and produces animated TV commercials.
Graf boasts of the variety of work the shop has taken on (including an anime segment for the Alias DVD release and animated segments for the Broadway musical Avenue Q), all backed up by a staff willing to work 24/7. “We have a lot of experience in producing on ridiculous time lines. We had to create two minutes of opening animation for two feature films, Duplex and My Baby’s Daddy; we had to do it from scratch in five weeks and deliver a traditionally animated, full-quality product at the same time. Our producer and director happened to be on cruise ships on opposite sides of the world — at one point we were setting up cell phone conference calls at 3:00 am. On another occasion we turned around a 25-second piece of animation for an Earthlink ad that will run theatrically with the trailer for The Bourne Supremacy in 10 days.”
Nathan freely acknowledges that advertising projects are an “advertising projects are very client-service oriented, but the budgets make them a lot more fun. One way we try to nip conflicts in the bud in our service work is to come up with accurate, realistic budgets before production starts. We work with several overseas partners to keep costs down. People come to us and say ‘I need 13 episodes in full animation for $100,000 each.’ There’s a lot of cursing and swearing but we do our best to oblige them.”
“You get tossed around a little bit being an independent animation producer, but our clients appreciate the premium value our shop adds — our creative input, our ability to turn projects around quickly while keeping quality high, and our overall level of service. Once you establish your reputation you start to get projects that are financially and creatively rewarding; that gets you up to a nice comfort level.”
And finally, Courage the Cowardly Dog director John Dilworth compares his experience as an independent animator working with the majors to that of, “The Earth circling the sun: one cannot get too close for fear of burning up, yet the sun gives us life.” Rather than be interviewed directly, Dilworth preferred to offer his reflections via E-mail: “Patronage has been the artist’s the artist’s second great burden. The first are the ideas... I have only been repulsed to Dante’s depth a few times by the corporate dogma of studios and mostly from the legal department... The executives on whole have been surprisingly good at their jobs. I have encountered the dim-sighted to the dazzling. And it is those Medici’s of animation executives that make the odd process of co-habitating cogwheels worth the turning.
“Fortunately I have not compromised much on my ideas working with studios. I mostly understand corporate morality and the invented values a studio must project to protect the profit stream from going dry. I have always found a way to express an idea within the confines of agreement.”
Websites:
Mike Young Productions Curious Pictures CARTOON Inc. Cartoon Network MishMash Media (Xeth Feinberg): Bill Plympton Studio Noodlesoup Productions Queer Duck (on Showtime Website): Joe Strike is a NYC-based writer/producer with a background in TV promotion and a lifelong interest in animation. He is writing a children’s novel.
http://www.mikeyoungproductions.com [14]
http://www.curiouspictures.com [15]
http://www.akacartoon.com [16]
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com [17]
http://www.mishmashemedia.com [18]
http://www.plymptoons.com [19]
http://www.noodlesoup.net [20]
http://www.sho.com/site/queerduck [21]
Links:
[1] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7432
[2] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7433
[3] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7434
[4] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7435
[5] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7436
[6] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7437
[7] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7438
[8] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7439
[9] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7440
[10] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7441
[11] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7442
[12] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7443
[13] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/7444
[14] http://www.mikeyoungproductions.com
[15] http://www.curiouspictures.com
[16] http://www.akacartoon.com
[17] http://www.cartoonnetwork.com
[18] http://www.mishmashemedia.com
[19] http://www.plymptoons.com
[20] http://www.noodlesoup.net
[21] http://www.sho.com/site/queerduck
