Working on Tiny Planets as Head of Digital Production was a fantastic experience. Not only were we making (probably) the most technically advanced pre-school CGI series ever, but also creating wonderful characters having adventures on wonderful worlds. The combination of high-quality animated graphics and quirky, educational stories will almost certainly set a precedent for years to come. Tiny Planets is yet more proof that CGI TV can be made at a quality level most people are used to seeing on the big screen. The real question is when are we going to see CGI projects of this calibre developed for the adult market? There is little doubt of the appeal; Shrek & Toy Story etc were able to bridge the gap between Adult and Child, capturing a huge audience - and huge profits. Cost has always been prohibitive, but with advances in both technology and skills it is just a matter of time before we see a new generation of programme making for an ever-demanding market.

Good article - most of us tend to read such articles, and not do anything about them - I have resolved to focus on the goals and things that I want to achieve short and long term.

Mr. MicDiddy, you go girl!

It took HOW many creative "geniuses" to come up with this? Give me a break. This looks like a couple of chimps threw together the power puff girls and dexters lab and shat it back out.

Excellent article!!! I agree with your comments, if you want your dreams then you have to work hard at them and start right away. That is what I am doing. I've always wanted to be an animator so this year I said "Why not me?" So I have enrolled into an Art Institute and I am going to start April 1st. I am finally going after my dreams of becoming an animator. I am also going to follow your advise and start drawing at least 1 hour everyday, never thought of that before. I am really pumped about drawing and everything that I will learn. And I can't wait to see where it takes me. Thanks again for the great information.

The one thing I need to work on is my daily practice of not "taxing" myself. My bi-weekly splurge is buying one DVD per paycheck as a reward of hard work. But I also finding myself paying for little small things which add up to a huge hunk on my paycheck, then complain and wonder about why I'm not getting paid all that much.

tisk-tisk-tisk....how SAD, to see this article ..lauding the works of "atomic" folks in b.c. if these people only knew..how bad a concept they have developed...COMPARED to ANY new concepts which will be soon comming to light! first- trying to make thes badley "knocked-off" characters look like "animie"..is sickining! the japenese are not going to be happy-seeing their art form "plaguerized"! and animie is ALL-OVER the place! next- the main character LOOKS like "betty-jetson" right down to the skinny body and hair! are these dudes on canadian ganja!? the "giant" ..looks like a knock-off of a recently produced "iron giant" production,which was another knock-off of a former "GIANT" film. did phil roman..."smoke" somthing ?...from canada..with these dudes-while deciding to "do the production" with them?? and the story "premise"!!! baarrfff!!! it is so redundantr-right down to the actual words..of star wars "jargon"!!! she has a "MARTAIN"?????!!! companion?? EH ? EH? EH? is that an "origional" concept?? then these dudes proceed to "knock-off"..chuck joneses stuff...by saying they admire him??!! if this is ALL...phil roman has seen latley...AS the best concep...then phil is to blame. what a waste of talent-as the rocket folks are talented-for sure! i have developed 0ver 200 characters-single-handedly,for my project and i can literally ...KICK-ASS on this .."crap" everyone calls "the best concept" when will hollywood get their heads screwed on -enough to actually..FIND these new concepts. they sit in their ivory palaces-thinking every one will come "to them!" animation blast just did an article on my characters and did i get any "CALLS" ...from roman-pixar( steve jobs picture+article was directly below my new-concept-article-on the blast) and it is like jerry beck wrote me...after i sent him an e-mail,asking him.."do you think there are any VISIONARIES..left in hollywood-who would be interested in my project?" jerry was kind enough to e mail me back...saying "forget it, you may as well do it yourself-as there only a bunch of IDIOTS, left in hollywood!" the really sad rip-off is for the audiences to be DENIED some wonderful new concepts..simply because hollywood...IS_NOT LOOKING for origional concepts! i probably have to do my concept -myself-...but when you the audience sees my characters on the big screen...keep in mind what i am talking about...YOU are being MANIPULATED! and I..can prove it.

dawk

FACT - You sir, are seriously f**cked in the head. Atomic Betty OWNZ and you know it.

- Peter Stiffer

Dawk is right. I watched the Atomic Betty animation short and then compared it to Dawk's Stone Clone site and there is no comparison! Dawk is obviously the one with all the talent. I urge AWN readers to take the Stoned Clone challenge and compare for themselves.

Although there was no real animation to speak of on Dawk's site and no actual story development, his skill at sculpting meat into characters is truly a unique gift. An artist with this skill and vision is just what my company, Mangrove Anime, is looking for!

We have a show called "Meat Characters" about a little meat-boy named Maximum Meat Monroe who travels deep into a large man to find his meat friends trapped inside him. This is the kind of originality Dawk and I are talking about!

Dawk, if you are reading this, please contact me and we'll sign you on ASAP, Baby!

Yeah, an animated short/feature about devi would be great. i mean, it's another great project by jhonen and rikki, so it definately has potential - though it seems jhonen is quite reluctant to start another animated project - understandably. it could be more mature though - by that i mean gross - it wouldn't have to be restricted to a younger audience the way zim is.

I wanted to know if a dual processor motherboard would be better than the one you mentioned? I have a Brand New Alton Dual Socket 370 266-1.13GHz Mainboard w/Sound, Supports Dual Pentium III Processors Up to 1.13GHz or One Celron to 1GHz Would this be a good system? Thanks amadorl

Where do you plug in the pencil and paper?

Cool article, and very informative. I, however still do 2D work and for that I use a stone stock Amiga 1200 (firing off at a scremin' 14.2 MHz with 2 Mb of RAM) running Deluxe Paint 4. Why, you may ask, is someone using such an antique system? Because it still works, and outputs to video automatically. And the OS is rock sturdy. This allows me to put all my elements onto whatever format tape I have, insert audio and then edit either linearally or non-linearally. But to each his own. Like I said, cool article and very informative. keep more of them coming, like maybe software choices and such like that.

WACKY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for an inspiring and ejoyable article on Tom Snyder and his company. More industry profiles of this quality please!

I think I want to marry him now. Just kidding, really, but (and I'm going to sound juvenile now) dude...he is so COOL. I mean, he likes anime and hates scooby doo, AND has an awesome and twisted sense of humor. What more could you want in a man?

I only discovered this show recently on Toon Disney and was delighted with it- and although I honestly find the animation repugnant the writing is witty and original, the characters very engaging and fun.I'm surprised something like this is still hanging on-will the website for it ever be revived?

Good article. But I have to disagree with your recommendation of the Oxygen GVX-1. Although the card may seem a good choice for a mid range board, It's the worst piece of crap I EVER bought. The driver implementation stinks, It can not display DivX/Mpeg4/DVDs at a resolution higher than 1024 at 70hz without flickering (making the video unwatchable). The 3dlabs tech support is a farce. You can NOT use the card for gaming (not even a little Q3 afterhours), because it will crash on any occasion. The onboard coolers will start failing about a year after you bought the card. (newer boards may have passive coolers though) So all in all 3dlabs products stink (exept the wildcat series, which wasnt developed by them anyway) Just my 0.02$ Vincent Filter

To Joel Snider: Indeed, you have clearly seen how much one can be distracted from doing what one entered art school for by being thrown at so many layers of (so called) knowledge. Form, composition and line quality are all taken care of if one remains focused on one's vision (or on the developing/uncovering of one's vision). Focus on form, composition, and line quality, and most often, poof, there goes the connection with the vision. At the core of my presentation is a belief in what Philip Guston called "inherent composition," which seems to be true also in animation as "inherent animation." (I will likely talk more about that in the next installment.) I think it was John Holt who once said that if kids had to be taught by schools how to speak and walk, we would be surrendered by millions of deaf people moving about in wheelchairs. I very honestly do not believe for a moment that you have lost a piece of yourself, your reading into my article is far too lucid to warrant that kind of worry. These are hard, even insane times, so determined we seem to be to invent a simplistic picture of the world, of life itself. Art has always been about the complexities, about the paradoxical nature of human thought, and our times are not too keen on complexity, on paradox. As for animation, 3D or other, it can play a role in helping us renew a conscious connection with our own unknown and become a precious tool for discovery, or it can unfortunately be one of the forces that will give our unknown more control over us because our unknown gets stronger the less we look at it. Socrates is now more needed than ever, schools ought to renew their primary vocation which is not one that makes people "job ready," but one that supports what is possibly the most important task that we can accomplish and contribute to the world: "know thyself."

Mr. Detheux, I am a fledgling animator who is sharply determined to live up to a process of vision very similar to yours. I am finishing the last year of my film/animation and to be honest. . .my animator community is quite depressing. For the past two years, I have gone into working privately (with no more than two friends--not animators--helping me at a time). I don't regret it, but I feel a bit jealous of the other flourishing art communities in my city. Painting circles, performance cliques and, hell, even grafitti artists encourage each other to challenge that medium's "fundamentals." In the end, this will make me a stronger artisan (if not the most expressive), but it saddens me to see that I will not help strengthen some type of community or movement right here around me--especially when I go to a school THRIVING with skillful animators. I have no useful contributions to your viewpoints, but I do see this inner-pilgrimage of vision at some point confronting the Pimp's anti-highbrow sentiments. Here's a supershort tidbit for you, Mr. Detheux: A year ago, I found myself at a techniques workshop with many other student animators at my school, Columbia of Chicago. Many of them were indeed discussing techniques, but they were all geared towards dealing with techniques that would compliment Pixar's or Disney's toolset. Most techniques were (as you said) aimed at doing what the studios were doing, only faster and inexpensively. Personally, I think streamlining these big-name studio methods is wonderful! Imagine the freedom and instant feedback while attempting to re-interpret the vision of reality you see in your head! I spoke this out loud, encouraging others to break FREE of the mundane callings of the Disney machine--to use their toolsets (or completely new toolsets) for the purpose of illustrating new inner voices. I said that animation is lacking that which other visual arts have: realities that encourage the depth of unique/personal realities, and not the IMITATION of OTHER realities. I said that we need to strive to present our own points of views, even if it takes a bit longer than other artists. We can no longer afford to be the bastard little sister of film, when we have the means to be oil painting's distinguished brother! At this point, banging atop the table, I had excited six other animators to ask questions like "What about money? How will I buy my next Nintendo as I work?" and "How are we supposed to get kids into art?" Yes, things were looking gloomy, and then the toilet seat fell. Someone who, in my opinion, echoes the Pimp's post said: "Come on! Give us a fucking break!!! We're only people! Our audience...they're ONLY people! Who the hell do you think you are? Get off your pedestal--any of us here would KILL to be involved in the next South Park!" I laughed in disbelief and looked around the room to see that he was right: in this community of animation, the personal notion of high-art is irrelevent. After all, the act of inbetweening itself is enough "art" for the whole project. To say the least, I was heartbroken, but I hid it well. Every now and then, other collegues are interested in my work, but I've never again discussed my theories or screened my work with an animator; only other types of artists. (Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I studied cinematography and THEN switched over to animation?) I would like some more opinions on this notion of "South Park and Rembrandt" as it could help at least one future creative leader. -Z