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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 4.8 - NOVEMBER 1999

Hollywood in Ohio
(continued from page 1)

An animator working on The Indescribable Nth. © 1999 Character Builders.

5) Communicate
If you were spending millions of dollars on a movie, you'd be nervous about giving it to somebody across the country, wouldn't you? The only way to get around this is to talk to everybody you're working with as much as you can. Offer comments whenever you think of them. Make long lists of questions and ask them. Take nothing for granted. Your clients won't mind the phone calls, and chances are good that eventually, you'll ask a question or point out something that will save time and money. Always find out the basics -- what kind of paper to use, what field charts, how to write exposure sheets. This prevents the, "Oh my God, didn't anybody tell you?" reaction when they get your first shipment which includes sixteen-field animation and they needed to scan it all as twelve-field.


A storyboard meeting. © 1999 Character Builders.

6) Get Used to Airplane Food
Put your studio in Ohio, Alaska, or on a cruise ship on the Caribbean if you want to (we do) -- if you're going to keep busy, you're going to be in Los Angeles a lot. Our producers travel back and forth sometimes as much as three weeks a month, meeting with clients, supervising people who subcontract for us, and drumming up new business. It's usually not too big a deal to add a few trips to see the client (and at least one for the client to visit Ohio) to a budget, and it makes everybody more comfortable.

7) Use Technology
Sure, it can be scary and expensive, but hey, we're starting a new century here. It's important to find the new and better ways to share your work with others. We've found that laying out the money for a video conference when our director is handing out animation makes a huge difference in how close the final product is to what was expected. The call might cost a ridiculous amount of money -- but that's only compared to a regular phone call. When you consider that it might save your animator a week of work redoing a scene, it becomes pretty cheap by comparison. We also swear by sending animation tests and other artwork digitally, either by direct modem or over the Internet. It might mean buying a freelancer a computer, but the director can see rough tests in a half-hour instead of a day later.

8) Deadlines
Anybody who makes movies knows how important deadlines are; when every change or error involves a lag because you're across the country, you've got to be even more careful to do what you have to do to complete your assignments on time. You've got to play "worst-case" a lot more: expect that your computer will crash ten minutes before FedEx leaves; assume that half of your key assistants will catch that flu that's going around; and plan on having to redraw those drawings that were destroyed when the roof leaks. It's important not to be hysterical about things, but let's face it, if somebody's paying you to do their animation and you keep putting them off because you're not finished, you're not going to be the ones they call next time. So don't make promises you can't keep, and let whoever you're working for know what you're doing.

At the same time, if you've got freelancers or another studio working for you, keep on top of them. Make sure you know exactly what they're doing and how fast they're going -- and that you can believe what they tell you. Nothing's more frustrating than finding out at the last minute that a piece of animation is going to be late and that it was something you could have had under control if you'd known about it earlier. Encourage everyone you work with to be honest and realistic about what's going to be done.

Bone, a comic book created by Jeff Smith, one of the original founders of Character Builders, is being developed by Character Builders as a feature for Nickelodeon. © 1999 Jeff Smith and Character Builders.

9) Stay Nimble
Large studios often have difficulties moving their resources around -- an animator hired for one project might have little to do while somebody down the hall is in the middle of a deadline crunch from hell. It's one of the reasons they need to subcontract work out in the first place. If you as a subcontractor can respond to sudden needs or changes, you'll be that much more valuable. For example, if you're animating a sequence for a client who suddenly tells you that they need somebody to clean it up, and you can shift around some artists and call in a few freelancers, you may win a few more months of work for your studio.

10) Xerox Everything
Thankfully, it doesn't happen often, but no matter how careful you are in shipping things, packages can be lost or destroyed. Keep copies (if they're animation drawings, preferably ones you can re-register later) of everything you send out, along with lists of the items in every package. Trust me, you'll be thankful for it someday.

Ron Price. © 1999 Character Builders.

The Real Reason
Of course none of this actually answers the question why. It's only an explanation of how. The why question is harder, because people who ask it seriously will probably never understand anyway. The answer, though, is simple: This is where we are. We started here, most of us are from here, and it's a place we're all happy to work. We're working on movies, which is what we want to do, and we're doing it where we want to do it -- a place where we have trees and seasons and a big new building. And since nobody's making us move to Hollywood, we don't plan to. We'll stay here where we like it.

Anyway, not everybody thinks it's that odd -- the second most frequent question we get when people find out we're in Ohio is, "Really? Got any openings?"

Ron Price is a film editor at Character Builders.

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Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.