2d Or Not 2d?

Just a short note to wish the very best of luck to all the organisers, delegates and competitors - it's a crucial time for alerting people all over the world to the need to continue apprentice-style learning of these (and all other) movie-making and animation skills.

At the present time many American and European studios are finding it difficult to turn a reliable profit by focusing on hand-drawn animation techniques and this already-delicate balance is being further upset by the staggering number of colleges offering (sometimes highly questionable) graduate courses - where the lack of experienced teachers, able (and available) to pass on the practical skills means that the only "animation" to be found is in the title of the course in the on-line prospectus.

I've struggled over the last few years myself, both with the expensive and awkward transition (in middle age) from a portfolio of traditional skills and credits to a viable grasp of the latest 3D technology - and have added to that struggle by attempting to contribute usefully to the teaching of animation, only to find that college policy often runs counter to the needs and demands of the students for a broader, more comprehensive and industry-savvy training.

Far too often these days "training" means little more than buying a bunch of inexpensive education-cost licenses and then leaving your paying students in a room full of computers - with the expectation that they will simply teach themselves from the user's manuals and on-line tutorials.

Which - I reckon - is nothing short of a disgrace, wherever it happens (and I have ample reason to believe that it happens a lot....).

At a time when so many students the world over are parting with "tuition" fess but receiving little or no genuine tuition (from living, breathing, experienced animators and technicians), for somebody to kick-start a non-profit organisation like this is both admirable and practical. I only hope that similar Animaticus events can be staged (and promoted as heavily as possible) here in Europe as well.

Having recently begun reading James B Stewart's excellent "Disney War" book (since we're plugging good books....!), I couldn't help smiling when I read that Disney originally passed on the opportunity to buy up Lucas' share of Pixar (prompting Steve Jobs to snap it up instead). To me this indicated that - right at the beginning of the 3D "revolution" - many of the major players in American studio management didn't know the value of what they were looking at, an error which they went on to repeat (in reverse) when they chose to make 2D skills the scapegoat for poor financial returns (once Pixar had moved firmly ahead in terms of box office).

As Joni Mitchell so rightly said all those years ago "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone....". What you've done here, Tony - both with your amazing book and now with this ambitious and creative progamme of events, is to act just in time in order to protect the continuity of something precious which was in danger of being lost - or at the very least damaged and hindered - by a quite unnecessary "palace revolution". 2D - contrary to popular "wisdom" - is NOT dead, nor is it anywhere near being an exhausted "seam" or resource.

Ther are whole new worlds of story-telling, communication and invention to explore using these hard-won skills.

Somebody give this man an Award for leaping to the rescue like this and for making such a dedicated and concerted one-man effort on behalf of so many other people worldwide.

Well done! Only sorry I won't be able to attend this time around myself,

Fraser MacLean
Scotland

Okay, not really. More like excited!

Finally, I can attend something of this caliber in my general vecinity!

This may explain your absence from these boards, eh?

Tony you've been a very busy man...!

Count us in!

Splatman:D

bump......