say-jon....., thanks for the great report on the winners of the film festivals. i was wondering ...if? -there are any sites which actually showcase all the various "winners"? i need to see more of these shorts,and the impression ..... is; one has to actually "GO"...to the festival to get any idea of all the entries,and there appears to (be) sooo many of these festivals that one needs some of kind of "guide-book" on the whole scenario? am wondering if ..YOU have considered doing such a "guide-book"? last week, i tried using this site"s "links" about comming anmation-shorts festivals,and there were so many(pages and pages) that i began to wonder how IMPORTANT all these so-called competitions ...ARE!? my impression is; some festivals are "self- appreciating" with certain 'commercial-entertainment-draws made to benifit the local economy? i see entries having to spend a lot of research and time(= s lost creative time) if one is new on the scene. it appears "anything-goes" in terms of concept and characters+ affects+styles+types of various ways to animate? like 300 mghz. ....P C? i have created over 200 characters and plan to animate them with multiple- several characters-as the 'cast", and this comes to another conceptual question: are the "judges" of these competitions using conservative standards or are they LOOKING for somthing completly new and origional? i can see a LOT of time,money-resources ...wasted on these "judges"...IF one does not actually KNOW their intent. in other words,... i feel as-if i"m looking at a "gauntlet" of just where to began...if one wants(sanley)to enter any animation competition. i would like to se more writing on "multiple-character" concepts and discussions about the "one or two" character ,scenarios,such as disney"s "lilo and stich" which is consistantly keeping -story-telling stagnant,and boring! currently, we have -spiderman-shreck-etc., as winners,with many other major studios comming out with ...MORE "single-character-story telling scenarios." will it ever stop?..and are these "JUDGES" at animation festivals?...keeping this "system" alive?...by picking this as the winner!? monsters,poke mon,muppets, etc. are the exceptions,and they have succeesfully demonstrated this multiple -character scenario... works! dawk.......

Tiny Planets has become my 3 year olds favorite show. We love to play the games on the interactive site while dancing to the music. I'm just waiting for the soundtrack to come out??

DreamWorks needs A LOT of work when it comes to their story department. I don't care if you have the nine old men animating the movie...if the story is weak then the movie as a whole will suffer. When you think about it, there is hardly a story to be told in Spirit. A horse gets caught, more than once, then wants to escape. Hmmmm. The only obstacles in his way are all physical; not emotional or intellectual. Spirit does nothing in the movie that shows us his inner self. It was the equivalent of watching someone jumping over hurdles in the Olympics. There's no suspense or real motivation to his actions. He just does things because he's written to do them. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare but DreamWorks should at least adhere to some of the classic storytelling principles. DreamWorks is so concerned with the aesthetics of a film that they forget about the story (with the exception of the 2 animated features not produced at the Glendale facility: Shrek and Chicken Run....coincidence? hmmmm). It's a shame that they have all that talent over there yet they can't seem to learn that reinventing the storytelling wheel doesn't work. Disney has created classic after classic because they focused on the story first then the animation second (I'm speaking of the films made mainly with Walt). Now Pixar is copying that same old method of storytelling. Their movies reflect it. Well told story with very appealing characters. DreamWorks could take a lesson or two from Pixar. I bet Pixar could tell a story with paper cutouts and make it more interesting than Spirit. Let's hope that they do something different with Sindbad. Oh wait. They're Katzenberg's DreamWorks. They already animated a lot of the poorly developed story...I've seen it.

Great, depthy analysis--especially the Merchant-Ivory reference. Bravo.

Heard great things about the movie. I love to ride horses. can't wait to see it.

Its hard to say how "Spirit" will do. Considering that I haven't seen it yet, and I scared about how bad it might effect the animation world. Considering that Disney is closing their doors in five years to go completly 3D, the studios out there have to come up with a BETTER story. Come on, the horses dont talk, and thats what attracts the kids attention. "Shrek" was a great film, because of the story, and the characters. If studios continue to pump out films that dont have great storys, and characters we can attract to, then 2d animation for feature is doomed. Cheers!

Spirit sucks.....period.

My hat is off to Dreamworks for taking another step in a new direction. Beautifully animated without trying to be to hip, and without innuendo, or undertones, or topical gag humor. Its a clean film, and beautiful, and as 3d steps overtakes this industry, its quite possibly the last of its kind.. If you need a break from all the fast cutting, digital/phasers/explosions, then give this simple film a try. I think you'll be quite impressed. As an audience member, you need to choose carefully what type of film you want to support. Especially at the dawn of this digital age, your movie ticket dollar really plays a roll in which films will be offered in the future.. So I ask that you NOT give any studio exec, reasons to someday greenlight a Scooby Doo IV, or a 'Bullwinkle Babies', or "Hunchback of 105 dalmations returns to Jungle never-never land III". If you want more originality, or experimentation in your feature animation choices, then support films like 'the Waking Life', or Nightmare before Christmas, or any of Myazaki's work. Support Pixar's brilliant story crew, and Aardman's originality, and Shrek. And if you dont know who Hogarth is, meet him and his metal man in "Iron Giant." Go to local festivals and support those independant animators, and they will blow you away with humor and content and creativity at levels that Hollywood just cant factor in their formula spreadsheets.. (I tell you there is some FANTASTIC talent out there..) Great films are original films. Please support creativity and craft,, not crap. Viva animation!

Hi Pamela, I'm really glad finding your advices and I know you are totally right on that. Actually I didn't know exists a post like yours, I know it only since few days. We have a small animation studio in Hungary and I'm just trying to find any job from other countries as in Hungary this kind of business is still very little. My friend is working in this studio and was upgrowing in front of the computer... working since 6 years with Lightwave and learnt everything alone, trying out the programs' buttons whitout English knowledge! Most of the animators asking him if they are failing to make something. Specially we are looking for yob could be done from Hungary and I really don't know how we could get it. What do you think? Ml, Melinda

having only seen the trailer-visuals,i can probably agree with most folks who have seen this artistic movie,that is done with great "scenic"and "old west-indians-cowboys"...perfection, but did the "committe" deserve any "credit" for this? no-no-no,and no; because this "idea" about doing an animated story with all the "old-west" players ...has been DONE...over and over and over! the true folks taking (orders) from the "comitte" deserve all the credit+ the story teller. currently the western states are experiencing a severe drought; and...our movie-going folks are..ALSO dying of THIRST...for somthing to "drink"...which is not sickeningly-pittifully- insanley-redundant! this committe has taken upon itself to...continue ...THE DROUGHT! they do not care if audiences are LEFT to see a feature that has been done-probably hundreds of times. the least the comitte-controled dudes should do..is to apologize forlack of imagination, for not looking for somthing ..ORIGIONAL! do they use a "dart-board" to select the .."next production"? 10-20 years from now , the "drought" will continue..unless all the audiences get tired of being denied "a drink" of fresh water-animation. my apologies...for writing this in such redundant manner,and hope you-all reading this learn to recognize..REDUNDANCY, because the movie going audiences are still "buying" bottled-water,with NO WATER...IN THE BOTTLE! DAWK

Invader Zim is the best show in the entire world!!! Zim is so retarded that it makes me laugh uncontrollably, and GIR is the biggese freak ever!! They're both soooo funny!! Oooh and I like Ms. Bithers too!!! She reminds me of me in my bad moods!!

This movie should have been called "Skip-it: Go To CinnaBon"! I didn't care about Spirit as a character. The herd of horses may as well not have been in the movie, since they didn't seem to care about Spirit either. The best character in the film is the blacksmith. The bit where he tries to shoe and brand Spirit is the most clever part of the film... but it's not that clever. The whole movie plays like a Bryan Adams video, because that's basically what it is. We see many diferent types of animals in the intro, but never again in the rest of the film. It would have been nice to see them somewhere later on. I hope "Lilo & Stitch" is a decent film. If not, 2D animated movies will be much more like "Hey Arnold" and "Recess" than the classics we've all enjoyed. Too bad. If you still want to see "Spirit", you better hurry up. It won't be in the theater long.

After seeing ads about the art and animation I could hardly wait to see Spirit. It was not what I expected at all and it upset some children to the point that they wanted to leave and did leave. The children that stayed left in subdued moods asking lots of questions. Most of the kids were in the 2-5 age group. As an aspiring animation scriptwriter with just one script under my belt I offer this humble opinion. The story line had too many messages, it did not clearly target it's age group and for the age group brought to the theatre it was way,way too rough. Children cannot stand to see animals treated badly under any circumstance. I hope Dreamworks keeps up the wonderful artwork and amazing animation but decides on a story line right from the start. Michelle

Glad you liked the article, Daniel. Motion-capture is an interesting case -- like rotoscoping, it at first seems un-artistic, as it appears to be more a mechanical process than a creative one (though you might've gathered from the article that the mystique that seperates the mechanical from the creative is, in my opinion, more hocus-pocus than actuality. The fuss over David Hockney's theories about the use of such devices as the camera obscura by painting's old masters is a testament to how deeply felt that mystique can be.) Motion capture, it seems, is less about animation than it is about costuming and set design -- and, of course, about the physical performance of the person being "captured." In the same way that digital technology has re-invigorated (or at least re-casted) some ancient arts (3-D animation, for instance, being more of an extension of the art of puppetry than of traditional 2-D animation), I think motion capture has great potential to re-invent performing art. To date, there has been no real way to preserve the art of dance, in a fashion that retains the essence of the performance. Filmed dance is usually a very pale shadow of the experience of the performance itself -- the camera is always confounded by the opposing desires to take in the entire body of the dancer, while at the same time wanting to zoom in on the expressive details of the body (the face, the hands), which get blurred out in a full-body long-shot. While the technology isn't there yet, it's possible to imagine a dance being recorded by a motion-capture device, and then being projected afterwards, in three dimensions. In this way one could produce a transcription of a dance that retains the "spatiality" of the original performace -- a viewer could even enter into the dance space, transforming the choroegraphy into a sort of moving sculpture. This of course wouldn't be the same as the performed dance itself (eliminating, as it does, the very present physicality of the dancers, and the risk of failure that's always present in live performance), but it does perhaps point to some genuinely "artistic" possibilities of the technology. If the article was a "challenge," I sincerely hope you take me up on it...

jhonen i love your books and i love you!!!

Wow, wow, wow. This was a wonderful essay, toucing on so many ideas in animation and film as well: rotoscoping's status as the scourge of animation technique, the history of ethnicity in film, etc. When I saw Waking Life, I felt like it opened up possibilities in animation that hadn't been seen before; at least not by as large an audience as Richard Linklater can attract. In conjunction with the film, this essay provides a fascinating indication of where those possibilities could go, while leaving their ultimate results unsaid, almost as a challenge to artists who read it. It could, and maybe even should, be included in future reissues of the Waking Life DVD, in order to tgive the film's audience even more to think about. Speaking of Snow White's rotoscoping: does anybody get a similar feeling watching Motion-Capture footage, like in Final Fantasy, or motion-capture work from SF's Protozoa?

I agree! Invader Zim is the best show nickelodean will EVER HAVE! *Does a evil zim laugh*. Sorry! Jhonen Vasquez is a pure genis! I love his work. I love JTHM! I live for it! Squee Shmee is awesome! Jhonen, I LOVE YOU! You're hot! E-mail me sometime! PLEASE! I'M A BIG FAN OF YOU'RE WORK!!!! If you've never heard of JTHM you suck, you should read it!

You have an amazing and in depth mind that i dont think i could even begin to understand...but that is what makes you a genius in my point of veiw...keep disturbing the children.

HELLO SIRS, JUST TODAY I WENT THRU THIS WEBSITE,AND IT REALLY CONTAINS AMAZING INFORMATION ABOUT VOICE CHARACTERIZATION,ITS A VERY INFORMATIVE WEBSITE.

I am just so amazed by Jhonen Vasquez. I first read his work last year. It was the director's cut of JTHM. I fell in love with it. It's so damn profound in an artistic sense. I'd screw Jhonen in a second. I saw him at comic con. damn. he's hot. but whatev. I'll die a virgin.