Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Trailer

I spent the summer working at MPC with a great crew at MPC in Santa Monica, LA (many of which I'm still working with, two movies later). It's astonishing to me to see a trailer for this so soon. There's a lot of talented people working very hard on this right now. I can't say much about it yet... just watch the trailer. What I will say is that I very much liked the 4pm tea and biscuits routine the company had (British company in the middle of La La Land... it felt very eccentric).

Sir Billi - Animated Feature

It's been a seven year wait but finally... I had the DVD in my hands.

Back in 2006 I took an enormous risk to quit my seven and a half year tenure at Rare, a large character focused games studio owned by Microsoft, to work on a little known animated feature in Scotland, called Sir Billi the Vet (later renamed Sir Billi). I spent six months there, ultimately supervising about 30 minutes of the animated footage and pulling together a respectable animation crew that thrived during a very troubled production.

I finally watched the film... It would be very easy to criticize it (and many have) but watching it has been quite enlightening for me. It's possible I've grown my first patch of grey hair doing so, and I may have a permanent frown from the wind changing while I was watching (old wives tale). But it was interesting. It holds up as an excellent example to filmmakers... of what not to do. I think it could be used in classes to highlight many typical flaws that most filmmakers only skirt past without ever really doing so badly that they'd get called out for it. But here it's all on display as though it knows it and can't help but act as a lesson to future filmmakers.

I could pick on certain things that let it down, but that would point fingers at fellow crew members that I'm sure did the best they could in a rough working environment with limited resources. Besides criticism is best left for films that were nearly good except for a few obvious flaws, or filmmakers you would have expected better from. This is neither... so there's no point. As the film started I was actually wondering if it was going to be better than expected as it flew just short of mediocre. But as the half way mark passed, and the questions begin to form in your mind, it degenerates into.... well you get the idea. It's beyond saving.

I was amused to see just how much of the film hadn't changed since I worked on it, but I'd only seen the first half back then. There was no second half, the script was still in development. Now, that might sound terrible, at the time it certainly seemed it, but in hindsight I've worked on many productions for which that was the case. I've gotten used to the idea that these things evolve a lot in production. You hope for more, strive for it, and just pray that when it does all get shuffled there's not too much damage to the artistry people have already put in. Typically you expect some improvements as the film progresses, even to work that can be quite good, in aid of making a better film. But for this film there simply wasn't the money or the man power to replace much work and the original flaws were never removed.

Still, it did act as a huge marker in my career, highlighting what I've learned since 2006. I knew a lot before going into it and quickly realized how valuable I could be to the film, but establishing your right to contribute creatively on a production is the biggest battle. It was a small studio so I had better input than many other bigger films I've worked for, but every studio has it's politics. I'm proud that I managed a few meager improvements while I was there but I would have had to have been around for the long haul if I was going to make a bigger difference and that wasn't an option at the time. Still, I see so many things I'd do differently that even then I didn't spot, and that makes me feel good about how much more I've learned having moved on and had other experiences.

I have some good stories from my days working on the film, and I've made some lifelong friends. Many people passed through this production, and as time has passed we've gotten to know each other even if we weren't on the crew at the same time. It just shows how small this business is. I'm glad the film is finally out on DVD for the sake of the artists that needed something to show in their portfolio, but it has been so long since many of us worked on it I don't expect to see it turning up in many portfolios.

I think the thing that's most informative about this is what I've learned about privately funded budget features. This isn't the only one I've been involved with but it's been a huge lesson. Not entirely bad. I can honestly say I see ways to make this sort of project work really well, and it's all about building on the right foundation of story, talent, funding and production expectations. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to make that happen someday.

Divergent - Trailer shots

I worked on Divergent very briefly at Third Floor as a Shot Creator (or Previs Artist), and I'm stunned to discover that a couple of shots from my sequence made it into the trailer. They've probably been revised a million times since I touched them, so I won't get too excited. That's what happens when you're not the last man standing on a project... plus of course they can always shoot it differently on the day. But still... I wasn't paying attention in the cinema, then suddenly I realized I was looking at some very familiar shots. I almost dropped my popcorn!

Musicals Un-Frozen

Frozen comes out soon and with it, I think, a reboot for Musicals. I liked Tangled a lot but the songs in Frozen are, to my taste, much stronger. Growing up with Aladdin and The Lion King... animated musicals have a lot to live up to with me, but I think Frozen was definitely a step in the right direction and it's comparable with Beauty and the Beast. I love animated musicals... not for every single animated feature, it's great to have seen the medium pull away enough to try other things, but there's plenty of room to go either way now that we've cleansed the pallet for a few years, if they're done properly. (Actually there's even room to diversify further in animation but that's a different blog post.)

The songs in Frozen were largely memorable, well performed and integral to the story. I didn't know much about the film when I arrived in the theater so it was a bit of a shock when the first story based songs started. But once you realize what you're watching it's pretty good. The film does skew towards a young female audience, but that's ok. This is definitely feeding the Disney Princesses franchise.

I actually wanted to make my short film, 'Devils, Angels and Dating', a musical. I was about a year into production and the importance of trying to sell the characters inner thoughts was a big issue. I'd ruled out dialogue earlier on. I was confident about the characters performance range with the rigs, and the animation quality I was aiming for. But there was so much resting on the ability of the audience to understand what the characters' were thinking about each other that it was a worry that weighed on my mind. When I saw 'Dr. Horrible' for the first time it just clicked and I realized that songs would be a great way to voice the characters' inner thoughts without turning it into a full dialogue based film.

When a character breaks out into song in a film you're basically reminding the audience that they're being given a little more information than they would really get if this was happening for real. It's a bit like a side step from reality. This is also one of the reasons musicals fell out of fashion as they can take you out of the moment. But in this case that's a useful film-making device as it allows us to tell the audience exactly what the characters are thinking while continuing to allow them to exist in the same space and not hear each others thoughts. I.e. the audience hears their thoughts, but the characters don't hear each other despite the fact they are voicing them right next to each other.

I reached out to a number of musicians, composers and song writers back in 2009/2010 and met some very interesting people including one of the original song writers for some of the Peanuts holiday specials. But it was a hard sell to someone that didn't know me, to prove that I could get this film made without any funding, and most people in the music world had very little knowledge of CG animation and how long it takes, so it wasn't an easy start. To most, I'm sure it looked like a lot of work, with no guarantees (or pay) and a very long wait before it turns into something. Eventually I came across two talented song writers that were interested in working with me. Larrisa Ness and Andrea Perry both brought a great deal to the project at different points and in different ways and we created a number of tests, including an animated Devil singing one of the lines. Michael Covey and Kyle Robertson also helped us perform, record and mix the tests.

Ultimately we didn't make the film a musical. Larissa made some great short pieces that we used to help make the podcast more professional. While Andrea created a track for the film that we liked so much we ended up using it over the credits. Later it would prove very popular on YouTube, with regular requests to make the track available for download and she eventually adapted a version of it for her new album.

At the end of the day it's hard to pin down the main reason for not going down the musical route. Probably the biggest factor was that the song writers would have preferred to have been more creatively involved in the story writing at the early stages. But I already had the concept and story locked down with a large team of people already creating assets. So we couldn't change it much. It was more like we were presenting it in a different way, but that probably wasn't enough for everyone involved. So the enthusiasm waned. Combine that with the fact no-one other than myself knew it would ever get finished and other life priorities inevitably took precedence (I'm putting myself in their shoes, they were too kind to ever say it). Things took a long time to get done and eventually I had to honor the ever growing visual side of the team that were making good progress. So I had to take the painful decision to abandon the idea of the film being a musical, in order to get it actually made.

In many ways making it a musical was the missing piece that I felt would have brought it all together, but if you're not Disney, with Disney dollars and Disney reputation it's a hard road and one that we had to abandon. Later on I'd use a narration to help resolve the issues I was most concerned about, but it wasn't the same.

I'd actually wanted to make a musical of my student short way back in 1998, inspired by 'What's Opera Doc'. My, then musical collaborator, Craig Bradbury created other styles of music for the film but resources were even thinner on the ground... it was just the two of us, and there wasn't much of an internet to reach out to for help.

So it's been a long time passion of mine to create a thorough-bred musical at some point and hopefully it'll happen. Of course I worked on Happy Feet, but I wasn't animating performances or getting involved in the film-making side of things so I don't feel like it counts. I animated on one of the Happiness Factory short film musicals which was a great experience but that only lasted a couple of months. It remains an un-scratched itch. I continue to keep my fingers crossed and maybe I'll find the right collaborators to create a new project from the ground up as a musical. It should be a lot easier this time around.

I'd really love to see a different flavor of musical. There's a very valid place for the princess led 'I want' songs, and I love them. But I can see a great value in bringing other musical flavors to the screen. An animated Phantom of the Opera seems like it would have some amazing potential, especially with a little fantasy imagination applied to it. Perhaps the Phantom conjures up imagery in his mind outside of the realm of possibility that would take full advantage of the strengths of the animated medium? Batman the Musical anyone? Super Heroes the Musical even? Too much spandex perhaps? Actually I've had an idea in mind to make a musical themed game for a decade or so. There's still tones of potential for new ways to spin the animated musical.

In the mean time let me take this opportunity to introduce 'Love in the Time of Advertising' from my friends David Bokser and Matt Berenety. They came up with the song for this film way, way back when they started the project and probably had no idea how many years it would be before they finished it. But it's a spectacular film and I'm really rooting for their success. It's not a pure musical as the characters don't break into song, it's the narrator that sings, but it's a fantastic spin on the genre.

Animated Bird Movies

With the release of Free Birds I thought I'd do a little research on animated movies focused on birds. They have a patchy track record and I have some theories about that. But here's a good list of the most memorable ones of recent years.

Year - Title - Studio - Rotten Tomatoes - Worldwide Gross
2000 - Chicken Run - Aardman - 97% - $224,834,564
2005 - Valiant - Vanguard - 31% - $61,746,888
2006 - Happy Feet - Animal Logic - 75% - $384,335,608
2007 - Surf's Up - Sony Animation - 78% - $149,044,513
2010 - Legend of the Guardians - Animal Logic - 50% - $140,073,390
2011 - Happy Feet 2 - Dr D. Studios - 46% - $150,406,466
2011 - Rio - Blue Sky - 72% - $484,635,760
2013 - Free Birds - Reel FX
2014 - Rio 2 - Blue Sky

Happy Feet (which I was lucky enough to work on) was a bit of a surprise hit at the time, and even went on to win an Oscar. It racked up a lot more money many than I think most people expected. I don't remember Rio being considered a huge success at the time (maybe I had my head under a rock), but it does seem to have earned pretty good money. There was a lot more competition by 2011 and most animated features were being treated as a failures if they didn't do over $600 Million. Both secured sequels though.

I animated my first character performance with a bird back at university on a short film. The bird was a stylized Raven, and I found out then just how hard it is to pull off a full range of relate-able human emotions with a beak, eyes that are typically on opposite sides of the head (not seen side-by-side), and wings instead of hands. Not all of these films are about flight, but flight can have it's problems too. Being in a vast void with nothing nearby can make it hard to establish speed, obstacles, relative positions to other characters etc... and it takes away many of the more common crutches most films have to establish tension during action scenes.

I hope Free Birds does well, for the sake of broadening the animated film market. But it's a very hard sell convincing a broad audience to watch a movie about Turkeys. I predict some obvious headlines. Fortunately Reel FX has a few features in development so I think it has a few shots at establishing itself as a major player in features.

I do, actually, have a secret agenda here. I hope Free Birds earns some good box office numbers as I have chosen it for this season's movie draft (like fantasy football but with movie box office, and no money involved).

Frogs

For some reason I was inspired to design frogs last week. Don't worry the compulsion has passed. I just keep adding doodles to my website gallery. I've started going to a regular sketch group again. I used to attend a really good one in Austin, Texas on Wednesday nights in a Cafe. I'm in Los Angeles now so I began my hunt to find a good alternative. There's actually several and it may come down to where I'm working as to which one I frequent at any given time. But for now I've been going to the 'Drink and Draw' in Casey's Irish Pub in Down Town LA on Thursday nights.

Updates - Character Designs and Film Credits

I've been drip feeding my portfolio website with new entries and content lately. There's some new sketches for some pet projects in the gallery. 

Some more movie credits in my filmography.

Even a little animated project I did while I was freelancing a few months back.

While I'm at it 'Devils, Angels & Dating' will be awarded an honorable mention at the Santa Monica Independent Film Festival this weekend. I'll be going along on Sunday the 22nd of September to absorb the atmosphere, see who there is to see and swap notes with the other filmmakers there. Fingers crossed I'll meet a few Devils team members while I'm there.

Dating for Animation and VFX Artists

It's hard to openly talk about the topic of dating, but as the guy that developed his short film around the topic, 'Devils, Angels and Dating', I felt it was my duty to expand on it for all the past, present and future lovelorn creatives it was aimed at.

The Animation and Visual Effects Industry has been plagued with issues for some time, and many of those issues are only now being exposed and discussed. There are a lot of problems that have compounded over time and there are no solutions that address them all quickly. There are plenty of other better writers out there that you can read up on to find out more on the industry. But I wanted to talk about something that makes a huge difference to an individuals life, that we all can do something about.

When I started my first job as an animator I had a 9 to 5 job. To many that sounds wrong. That's because most jobs I've worked in recent years the core hours are either 9 to 6, 10 to 7 or even 10 to 8. This may be a big city thing, a US thing or I suspect... a recent thing. More and more companies expect you to work longer days by default. Note that I'm not talking about the overtime you put in over the top of the primary hours. I'm talking about the core hours, around which you can not go home and spend time developing your personal life. This is critical. Right now I am not in crunch but I'm spending 10 hours at work a day, plus (until very recently) around 2 hours commuting. Throw in 8 hours sleeping and a few hours for food, and general maintenance and I'm left with very little free time... and that's time when I'm tired. So that leaves roughly 8% of my day left. Remember that I'm at work for 42% of the day.

When I was a kid my father raced home through what ever traffic he had to face in order to be with the family for an evening meal around 6pm. Then we'd usually retire to the living room and watch TV together. Undoubtedly that's changed, and kids of certain ages will go up to their rooms to surf the net, go out with friends, whatever... the point is there was an effort made to get together as a family and share time together. In the Animation and VFX industry, as long as you're working you can only expect to eat at home very late, or you only have time with the family on the weekends.

Up to this point I've talked about the family but for far too many a family is a pipe-dream as they haven't figured out how to get into any sort of relationship, let alone start a family! And this is where individuals can do something about it and give themselves at least a fighting chance of that normal life they grew up to expect.

Now that I'm in my mid 30s I've had some good luck and some bad as far as relationships go and that's a lot more than I can say for my mid 20s. Many people that know me now may find that a surprise as I'm quite open about talking about relationships and dating now. It's become a passion of mine to share and help others with understanding this topic. More than that it's become a mission to help people loosen up, try new things and break out of a routine of doing nothing.

Why do so many Animation and VFX Artists do nothing in the dating world? There's three factors. First this industry attracts a lot of people that aren't very confident in the first place. That's why they're animators and not actors, creating their performances with tools that abstract their feelings, instead of exposing them. Secondly the industry attracts specific types of people, largely males and often females that can handle a largely male workplace so the types of people you will meet day to day are not diverse enough for natural encounters and mixed friendship groups. Thirdly animation industry professionals are very focused on optimism for a better future in their careers, but in reality their circumstances are very rarely all that good right now. So artists work hard to get to that perfect future, sacrificing the now. The idea of attracting someone is easier when you have the perfect job, the perfect home and enough money to entertain, feed and support the ideal lifestyle of a couple. Meanwhile the idea of attracting someone is hard when your working and living conditions are poor, you've got no stability and you don't know where the money to pay your next bill is coming from.

All those people waiting to start dating need to understand one very key thing about dating. It's a numbers game. No, I'm not saying it's a game... but I am saying you have to take it seriously for a long time, in a very open minded way and more importantly keep at it. If you are waiting to date, then you're reducing your odds of finding the right person. If you're not spending money on dating, and you're too proud to try a dating service (thinking you'll find someone naturally), then you're reducing your odds of finding the right person again. Lets face it, even if you do find someone it's rare that the first person you form a relationship with will be the one that lasts, so you're going to have to work at it longer than you might plan for. If you think you'll find someone naturally remember that 42% of the time you're at work where the options are limited and you've only got 8% of your weekday left to make an effort. You'd better make the most of it.

Half the battle I see in this industry beyond the problems I've listed above is that most people think they're an island and don't want to talk about it or reach out for help. I don't mean you should expect others to do it for you... believe me that doesn't happen. But just sharing with friends and opening up about it, will help you realize you're surrounded by people in the same situation that can support each other in making efforts to break your current patterns. And change is good. Putting yourself slightly beyond your comfort zone regularly will multiply your options exponentially. So go out, throw parties, make friends outside of work, go to meetups, join dating sites, try speed dating, drag like minded friends to singles events. But make an effort in that 8% of the day you have left so that someday you can return to someone that cares about you everyday and build that life you dreamed of together. Then when she complains you work too long hours, let her chew out the boss at the company event someday!

My apologies if this sounds a bit male-centric... I am a guy. But if there are ladies reading this with opinions on dating while working in this business please feel free to comment. I'd love to get your perspective.

Off-Site vs On-Site

Working remotely requires a strong capacity to trust other people. By default, meeting good reasonable people in person builds trust. Getting to know someone immediately in front of you will generally result in much stronger bond of trust than working remotely. I've noticed that the further away from 'in-person' you are from a relationship the more people instinctively demonize each other, or 'them'. Regular video chat can be helpful, talking on the phone is almost as good, instant message is the next step, email is convenient but its the absolute limit of a modern day working relationship. Anything less and the other person becomes the enemy.

What's alarming is how two sets of reasonable people with the best of intentions assume flaws, fault, laziness, selfishness, and all kinds of other issues upon each other as the communication methods reduce down to email. Cultural differences throw up defenses even faster.

I've caught myself making the same assumptions at times, but I push through it and try to see the other side's perspective. The less you know about the other person though, the harder it gets to relate to them, so it's only natural for us to demonize the unknown.

Different personality types handle it quite differently. The more trusting and laid back someone is the more likely they can work well with others remotely, but equally the more likely they are to be taken advantage of. The more of a control freak they are the less effective their ability to work remotely. I've seen both character types in my working life, and they bring very different strengths to the table.

I am definitely more inclined to be a control freak, so when I chose to make 'Devils, Angels and Dating' through a virtual studio (I.e. remote artists collaborating on the internet) it went completely against my nature. I am very capable of chilling out and delegating, and I do it all the time, but it gets harder the more I care about the outcome. I had to give up control in bite size chunks for years in order to work with over a hundred artists that contributed their valuable time and talents to the film. It wasn't easy for me. Some people that were close to me through the experience will be able to tell you that I expressed frustration on many occasions as I had to wait for work to come back, slow responses to my messages, and often when I'd see someone do something in a way I wouldn't have done it myself. But adjusting to it, has given me an extra-ordinary level of empathy for others for future projects.

Since finishing the film I have encountered many artists that crossed my path during the making if the film. Some asked to work on it and ultimately couldn't due to other commitments. Similarly some started and had to leave before they could finish. Both types of artists tend to apologize, and I always have a very understanding approach and all is forgiven without fault, as I know how much life can get in the way. I'm simply very grateful for the help and support I did get.

I tend to make lots of tiny efforts to get to know my co-workers experience when I work with them in person. These days it's very easy with portfolio websites, showreels and LinkedIn. But it's a common event in our business to talk about previous work experiences as well and in this way you gradually figure out who you're working with. Who has the answers. Who knows what they're talking about, etc... When you can't have those little conversations all you have is what's online so it's critical that what is online is complete and available. I've worked at a few studios now where I've been handed the reigns to supervise sub-contracted studios, often without me being told much at all about the studio or it's crew. I can literally be handed a point of contact that has no studio name, no resume, and no portfolio. The assumption is that someone else has done the vetting... but that simply leads to an enormous potential for mis-trust. I've tried to push through it and give them the benefit of the doubt, and I know for a fact that in some cases they have been mis-handled so they couldn't be blamed entirely for failing to deliver. But the next time it comes up I'm asking for everything I can get about a studio or artist I'm asked to supervise. Eliminate those questions, and understand who you're dealing with!

Conversely I've also been on the other side working remotely. Often there's a layer of people between me and the person that's actually meant to be directing me. Each person says a little bit less than they need to until the direction I get is so vague as to open up the work to massive changes in interpretation. Sometimes I've been lucky and they weren't fussy but usually they will know better what they don't want and I'll be set back on a path to creating something else, but again the brief is often not specific enough for me to get it right first time. It's all about communication and I try very hard to make sure I'm clear, but I've not always been as fortunate in the written briefings and responses I've had back. Often broken English, poorly chosen spell-check results and bad grammar. At best all I can do is return the message asking for clarity, but even that can be taken as an insult as they remember what was in their head when they wrote it, they don't often re-read their messages to see what I saw (this is where task specific conversation threads or forums are better than emails).

Curiously I've worked in studios that completely lock down outside communication to the degree that there is no internet or email, so this would definitely be considered 'on-site'. But that doesn't necessarily mean that communication internally is better. If someone isn't a good communicator in person then sometimes the written word can be more effective. Lets face it this industry attracts plenty of people that aren't the best communicators in person, so perhaps more access to systems that work well remotely in the written word will help those personality types.

People tend to fall into one camp or the other, most in the 'on-site' camp. But in the real world we're getting closer and closer to a society that's capable of, and might even prefer, the ability to work from anywhere to keep life quality up and living costs down. So I'm in favor of a smart blend of both. I can envisage a great production pipeline that has a few pools of on-site people working quickly together for key departments, and a well connected web of off-site workers dealing with skills that require less communication. The two come together to lower costs where it's needed, increase life quality and improve communication. Further to this vision I've written about Virtual Studios.

Note that pictures were from the short film collaboration, The Ocean Maker, that experienced both extremes of on-site vs off-site work.

Virtual Studios and Remote Collaboration

For Siggraph 2013 my friends and I put on a presentation along with a question and answer session to talk about remote collaboration. The following is a summary of the introduction I gave and two videos containing the audio, slide shows and clips we showed at the event.

The speakers included:
David Andrade and Mark Olson from http://www.theoryanimation.com
Matt Berenty and David Bokser from http://www.loveinthetimeofadvertising.com
Kenny Roy from http://collabs.arconyx.com
Michael Cawood and Shane Davis from http://devilsangelsanddating.com

The United Nations predicts that by 2050, 70% of the world's population will live in the cities. Can you imagine that? In terms of mankind, as one big machine, cities are essentially more efficient. But on the individual level, they're expensive and you can expect a lower quality of life for your earnings. I'd like to challenge that prediction, and suggest that the U.N. hasn't accounted for the increasing development of remote collaboration, and in the case of our industry, Virtual Studios.

I'm going to use animated features as an example for our discussion, but many of the principles apply to visual effects, TV series, commercials, games and many other industries. Let's jump back in time first to remind ourselves of some of the biggest changes that have occurred in the animation and visual effects industry since it began.

Style - Traditional 2D dominance has stepped aside for 3D CGI and Stopmotion

Talent - Once rare animation talent has become abundant

Quality of life - Medium to High quality of life has dropped to Low and Medium quality

Quantity - The number of animated feature films per year has risen significantly

Studios - The number of animation and VFX studios has gone up

Cost - Features cost a lot in the past, and even adjusting for inflation they still cost a lot today. But do they have to?

In the past we've had one studio working in one location with a large number of people involved. Production gets a great deal of efficiency out of this. However to find that amount of talent in one place you tend to have to setup your studio in a major city.

As time goes by studios have looked to cut costs by bringing in cheaper sub-contracted studios. These are medium sized creative studios that plug into the larger studio adding small inefficiencies that tend not to be accounted for alongside the savings. They are just tolerated and the blame for the inefficiencies is cast on 'the other guy'... you know, the one that's not in the office with you that's easy to blame.

As we extend this trend productions take on more cheap studios, but each time we add a new outside studio the complexities increase and the inefficiencies exponentially increase. Now there are more middle men moving information and assets around, delaying the creative process and in those delays are wasted man hours as the information doesn't move up and down the pipeline in time to stop people going down the wrong paths. Every-time someone invests themselves in something that is then cast aside because it wasn't wanted, people get bitter and less invested in their work.

Further to these issues is a sense that 'the other guy', the one that's not sitting right next to you, is not pulling their weight, or doesn't know what they're doing. Cultural differences can multiply this effect but putting that aside it's simply natural to trust the person in the room with you more than the person you can't see. Body language, eye contact, tone of voice.... there are so many factors that help us trust each other and when they're masked, delayed or taken away completely it's natural to view every failure as systematic of laziness or incompetency.

Switching to another issue, different areas cost different amounts to live. The cities have the highest cost of living and the lowest quality of life for your earnings. The towns have a medium cost of living and the potential for most people to consider buying a home, with a reasonable quality of life. Then there are the low cost of living areas where interesting projects in our industry may not be as abundant but buying a home is affordable and you can have a high quality of life for your earnings.

Most people in our industry aim to get into the cities where the work is, to increase their job prospects and gain higher earning potential. But as they do so they're raising their cost of living, the number of hours they're working and commuting, reducing the chance they can purchase their own home or spend time with their family.

When we overlay the studio structure with the cost of living what we see is that most of the people in production are in the high cost of living areas, farming out some of the work to people in medium cost of living areas.

Occasionally projects add the odd independent contractor, or freelancer, to it's project, working from home. It's easier than ever before these days to do this but it still adds to the inefficiencies of the production as information passes around slower and resentment about 'the other guy' builds up.

This is where I want to introduce the concept of a 'Virtual Studio'. An online set of tools for creating and communicating between team members. A way to track assets, shots, versions and staff. A system designed to keep everyone informed of the project's progress, let them see where their work fits into the project quickly whilst keeping them informed of changes that would affect them. It's as much about keeping up moral, showing steady progress and making them feel a part of the process as the day to day file sharing.

This sort of system is often developed in-house to cater to the minority of workers offsite. But once it's complete and covers enough of the pipeline it doesn't matter where the system is developed, and the tools and storage itself can be off-site, just like a great deal of the rest of the pipeline.

Once everyone gets used to depending on the online system it makes it easier to consider working from home, and then from a cheaper, nicer home in some other town... and so on, until most of the production is working more manageable hours in nicer working conditions, living in better homes with families and social lives, with pensions, healthcare and savings.... ah there's the dream. Well maybe it won't solve all of those issues but it certainly would be a big step in the right direction.

You're still always going to want to have your key decision-makers working as closely as possible, i.e. directors, producers and some leads and supervisors. This means they'll be the few team members that will want to stay close to each other in the cities. But if the high cost areas don't have to house the entire team, then the cost of living goes down there too and even they can live better lives.

In truth anyone that's been in production enough knows it's not as simple as that. All too often the top decision-makers want to see the people making their products on hand, in the same office. But this can sometimes have more to do with their own insecurities than the actual results. It feels better to see the people you pay getting on with their work. So the next big step in making remote collaboration a success is going to be some sort of tool that can give everyone in the pipeline the re-assurance they need that everyone is getting on with their work and they're going in the right direction.

The biggest innovation that my short film 'Devils, Angels and Dating' brought to virtual studios was the Facebook-like news feed on the front page. With this no matter what time someone checked in they could see new progress being made in all departments. It was very re-assuring (a lot like Facebook is for your social life). But it's only part of the solution. That works to ensure that the ones that are working, are doing something. But it doesn't reveal anything about the ones that aren't, and that's what would worry the decision-makers the most. Enough to avoid remote collaboration.

I've heard of productions keeping a Skype window up and active during work sessions, which creates the feeling that you're both active. But that requires a lot of bandwidth and only works for small teams. If you've seen the TV show 24, you may remember the small vertical video chat devices they all seemed to have beside their computer monitors. If we could get used to these being turned on more often, without feeling the pressure to fill the void with conversation then we could get to a place where everyone can see each other working. To reduce the bandwidth maybe we could have some software that only updates the image when it changes significantly, i.e. it doesn't send changes to the image if someone is barely moving in the frame, which is often the same when they're working. But wave a hand or say something and it activates more bandwidth so that the image updates smoothly again. Ultimately though this is an implementation of current tech, and I suspect it'll be a new tech that changes our habits more and really brings the change we need.

Virtual Studios have a long way to come to really make an impact, but most of that distance has more to do with perception than what's possible with the technology we have. It'll only take one big success story to start a wave of copy-cats. Proof of this has already occurred in the collaborative short film making market. When I started making my short film, hardly anyone was doing it anymore. There had been so many failures people were pulling away form big volunteer projects in favor of smaller portfolio pieces. I pushed through the naysayers, created a unique new platform and lead the way to where we are now. And where are we now? With more short film collaborations in production than there's ever been, using a variety of tool sets either similar to mine, or in a few cases even directly copied from mine. I'm quite proud of that, and it's likely the biggest accomplishment my little project can boast to. To this day I'm a big supporter of other collaborative projects, helping the team leaders with tips and tricks to make it work for everyone involved.

To finish off here's the Question and Answer session from the Siggraph presentation, which went on quite a while and brought up some very interesting issues for discussion.

Kickstarter may... not... be... for Animation

Kickstarter is not suited for most animated short films. Ok that is a little bit of an over simplification. What I want to say is that Kickstarter isn't the right platform for raising money for projects you aren't prepared NOT to make. Kickstarter is really just generating drama for it's audience and animated filmmakers are providing the fuel for that drama for free. What do I mean by this?

Animation is a staggeringly labor intensive medium so when someone finally gets to the point they are ready to spread the word about a project and potentially impress someone enough to give them some money.... they've usually invested so much time, effort and resources that there is little chance they are going to abandon that concept if they don't make the money they would like to get. This is a pitfall I'm seeing far too many short animated filmmakers going into. They post their projects on Kickstarter because that's the current popular buzzword and assume their idea is so strong that they will meet their target. But you have to remember that Kickstarter doesn't take the money if you don't meet your goal. So you can put in a lot of effort attracting visitors to your Kickstarter page, spend a great deal of time making the intro video and designing the perks, only to get nothing at all in return if you don't reach your target.

The truth is most of these filmmakers are planning to make their film anyway. They may fail or they may succeed but the outcome of the Kickstarter is unlikely to be the factor that changes that one way or the other as any amount on Kickstarter is likely to be very small relative to the effort put in to get the project done. So really there shouldn't be a goal. There should just be an open call for funds and any amount raised over the course of the making of the film is appreciated and helps the film to be of a higher quality (or it gets done faster). IndieGoGo is a better platform as it pays out even if you don't reach your (fictional) goal. But even that insists on an end date. When IndieGoGo started it didn't require either an end date or a target value, but presumably the business model works better for them to copy Kickstarter's model, which is a shame as it's not well suited to short animated filmmakers with passion projects.

I have been developing, making, distributing and promoting my film 'Devils, Angels and Dating' for over six years... It's still doing festivals to this day and gaining recognition. The funding required to do that came from two places. 1) Three crowd funding efforts, and 2) My own (and the team member's) pockets in the contributions of time and effort (and in some cases... cash). The crowd funding efforts were limited to such small windows of time as to amount to only two months of that six year period. Really an open call for funds throughout the production would have been more suitable. The trouble is it's a huge drain on the team to be constantly asking for charity, so in some ways the narrow window of a month of crowd funding does limit that. One thing is clear though most animated filmmakers can't really know how much money they are capable of raising, and they certainly can't raise enough to cover the real cost of production, so setting a target doesn't fit their model well at all.

If you're working on a passion project, please consider alternative methods of funding, from Kickstarter. I really hate to see filmmakers wasting their precious effort on goals that can't be reached, then getting nothing. All you're doing is attracting your carefully earned audience to Kickstarter in the long run, rather than benefiting your project. Kickstarter has been very smart, in that by setting a deadline and a goal that might not be reached they are creating drama that draws people to their site. That's great for them in the long run, but very often not for the projects themselves that essentially put in all the time and effort providing Kickstarter with free content to fuel their drama.

Here are the success stories you hear so much about on Kickstarter. But what you're going to notice is that Kickstarter does a very good job of making it hard to find the graveyard of campaigns that have failed... and there are a lot! IndieGoGo actually has much better search tools to research other projects so you can find the failures as well as the success stories, which is good as it's a resource for figuring out how to do your own campaigns. Here are some of IndieGoGo's success stories... maybe not as glamorous, but remember the key difference... these small projects raised some money, the ones that didn't reach their goals on Kickstarter made no money at all.

I will say one thing for Kickstarter. If you are only interested in aiming high and you're ok with failing big for a gamble at raising big money then Kickstarter does have the audience. With so many other high profile projects on the site they attract more eyeballs that might not otherwise have found your campaign, and maybe you can convince them to part with their money... but you are in competition with those high profile projects... remember that.

I ran two IndieGoGo campaigns and one Kickstarter over the course of making my film. This is the campaign that was the most successful. Remember that when I was doing this most people had never heard of crowdfunding so it was still a new thing and very much an uphill battle.

Parkour for Layout and Previs

Some time ago I animated this Parkour piece as a one off exercise and it's been in my animation reel for a while. You can read about it here. But as I was thinking about doing new pieces for my layout / previs reel I realized it would be a great piece to build on. Originally I kept the camera very plain so that the focus of the piece was the animation on the character. There were no cuts, as that could have been perceived as a way to hide cheats in the animation. But for this new piece that wasn't important. So I could cut as often as I liked, explore angles and even use slow motion.

It's a work in progress and I intend to come back to it. I want to spend some time playing with the layout of the buildings, improve the textures, add motion blur, depth, focus, foreground elements passing the camera and possibly even light and render it. I had fun playing with Maya's new Camera Sequencer to put this together which made speed changes very easy. It has a great tool for batch playblasting what ever shots you select in the sequence which speeds things up. But I was a little disappointed to find that there isn't an easy way to render from the camera sequencer, so for now I only have the playblasts. Rendering it will be quite an involved process so I thought I'd post what I had so far before I get to that.

Here's the original animation without the camera work.

Animated Filmmaker groups on Linkedin and Facebook

I've started two groups for like minded Animated Filmmakers to share and connect with each other. The first is on Linkedin and the second is on Facebook. There's currently quite a good list of great animated shorts posted on the Facebook wall. Feel free to add your favorites.

The Ocean Maker - The Insider Story - Part 4

Continued from Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

The first screening went very well and over the coarse of our production we had a lot of similar screenings. My memory of all the screenings on the island blend into each other. But ultimately there was a lot of cheering, respectful compliments and constructive feedback. Note giving is an art into itself, and so is taking notes. The results can be very different in different settings and mediums. We sent out versions of the film through Dropbox links to key filmmaking friends of ours to get feedback. You get very different responses that way. The remote feedback ranged from solid filmmaking notes to complete mis-understandings of certain concepts, and this was the best feedback of all as we could make sure to address big oversights. If something important was missed by even one of our friends you can bet that a much larger number of people with no knowledge of the animation process will fail to understand the same things, so it was crucial to find those oversights and make sure they were clear.

The team feedback was really good as we could see exactly what they did and didn't understand. Standing in the same room as someone viewing your work reveals so many different things that you can't get through written feedback alone. You see all the reactions, the unspoken truths (which you have to skillfully inquire about without putting words in their mouths). Since they were all part of the team they also had a big stake in the project and it was important to address any major concerns. But I was surprised at how laid back the team was allowing Lucas and I to really decide what we needed to do to make it work. It takes a great deal of faith, patience and commitment to give a director who isn't paying you the freedom to do that. For that I'm very impressed and grateful to the rest of the team. These were real professionals!

We plotted out a bit of a strategy of who to show it to over the coming weeks as we progressed. It was important not to blow all our best people too soon as we were going to need to have a fresh set of eyes for each major update. We're still to this day holding back on showing many people as when we have another round of story notes to implement, there's lots more animation to put in and of course when it's all rendered with the final score it's going to be a whole different experience. Although we'll be needing the support and a pat on the back at that point, that's when it'll still be vitally important that we have a few objective people with good notes to make sure we've not overlooked anything.

As we proceed to improve the story, leaving behind early solutions and evolving the film to try new ones it's easy to see how simple familiarity can breed contempt for perfectly good story beats. As we've shown it to new people old issues have begun to come up again. What's happening is that in a couple of spots in the film there are opportunities to setup and pay off any number of larger story beats, but you can't do them all, you can only pick one or two. So we've been upgrading each story beat as we've found better ones, but over time you realize that you can easily lose sight of other core issues solved by older solutions from previous versions. It's a tricky balance picking what stays and what goes, and one that's still going on now. There's little doubt that what we have already is very strong, but the battle to make it the best it can be will continue... usually until someone takes it out of your hands, but in this case probably when time and money runs out!

Issues like this you can only learn about when you've done a lot of this kind of film-making and no first timer is going to learn how to deal with it in one project, but our team has quite a few projects under our belts now and after a while it's like looking at the code in the Matrix... you can see multi-layered hidden issues coming down the pipeline in the future... before anyone else can anticipate them and you can start to plan for them.

I'm going to take this opportunity to plug the class that Lucas is planning to run that teaches these advance techniques. Check out the perks on the IndieGoGo page for our film and you'll find two ways to get your seat in the class. Here's a video in which Lucas explains more about it.

Of course when the work was getting intense, it was nice to be able to take a break away from our laptops. Remember this wasn't a job, in an office, with fixed hours. We could start and stop work when we wanted and set our own hours. We all have strong work ethics so Lucas and Christina weren't worried about us pulling our weight (or if they were they did a great job of hiding it).

I got into a routine of starting early, usually before most of the team were up, when it was nice and quiet, and actually we had to be quiet in order to avoid waking Henning/George in the exposed loft area (no wall or door). Often I'd find Lucas was already up working on his laptop, we'd exchange silent greetings, put on headphones and do in an hour or two of work as the rest of the team gradually filled up the main house. I'd often take a break around lunch to swim a few lengths and sit in the sun for a bit. If I waited too late in the day the sun went behind the trees and I couldn't get my vitamin D for the day!

The pool was a good release and brought me back to my laptop relaxed and filled with solutions to problems I'd been facing in the morning. I'd do a few more hours work before we'd start talking about food and figure out what the plan would be for the evening. Sometimes it was a group cooking session, sometimes someone would offer to cook for the team, and we'd clean up, sometimes we all went out. But ultimately we were all bonding and getting to know each other.

Through out all of this Christina took charge of planning excursions for us. Everything from snorkeling with Sharks, Manta Rays and Turtles to Cave Tubing, climbing Mayan Temples, Crocodile Hunting and Canoeing around the island (I'm getting Nam-like twitches just remembering that one... it was epic!). All very memorable stuff and we're all extremely grateful to her for planning the 'regime of fun'. Generally speaking we  worked five and a half days a week. Half a day would be put aside for an event and one whole day was dedicated to something special. We didn't have to do everything though. We were given a per-diem each week that covered the expenses, events and any special things we wanted to buy on top of the main shopping trips. That way we could choose to skip an event if we just wanted to chill out or work, without feeling like we were missing out. Everyone needs a chill day at some point or another!

I'll be bringing Part 5 to you in the near future to tell you how it all played out. The film is still in production at the time of writing, but I'm back in the US and working in Los Angeles. So progress is a lot slower for the time being while we all recoup our costs and pay our bills. In the mean time check out the campaign which includes other videos about the project. Please feel free to share the story.

The Ocean Maker - The Insider Story - Part 3

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.

So the team set to work on the film. As the point man put in charge of documenting the production I was encouraging everyone else to take pictures and videos... to get coverage while I sunned myself in the corner and watched them work their socks off! ... Ok, not quite... I actually set myself the task of interviewing each team member so that we got everyone's initial impressions. Not an easy thing for everyone to do as we're not all comfortable with the camera and it was something that we all had to get used to. But we got through it and captured a few great conversations as we got to know the team.

While I was doing that, everyone else was setting up. Tray went to task setting up a way for us all to share files. Essentially his laptop acted as the server, and we each pressed a sync button on our laptops that sent all our changes to the server then downloaded any chances to our machines. It was a lot more data than we all really needed but on a local network it worked fine. A dirty but perfectly functional system. There was also something distinctly satisfying about watching the graph of the data uploading and downloading, it acted as a nice little break from the work.

This syncing process also allowed Lucas and I to play tag with the edit. Essentially we had what we started with from our sessions in New York and we told each other who had the latest edit every few hours. Each of us making changes then syncing when we were done. It was an experiment and it could have gone very wrong, having two animation directors putting their mark on the edit. Since it was his project I had to accept that he had the final say but it was important for me to showcase my ideas too and make sure they got a chance shine. Some ideas I put in there didn't fit in with what he wanted, and other things I did were better than what he'd planned for. So it was a give and take. I could also bring workflow techniques to the edit that I'd picked up from years of studio work. Ultimately we got a lot out of it and I feel like the film was a lot better for both of us having had a chance to bat it around and try things out. Some ideas that I put in that got shot down early even came back later on after other approaches had failed, so every little thing you try has a chance to shine eventually.

Getting back into Softimage XSI (the 3D Software) was a challenge for me, and there were a lot of questions flying around between the animators about how to do things. For a while it acts like a creative block, stopping you from greeting your ideas to the screen quickly, but time passes, you stick with it and the barrier lowers and the creative flow speeds up. Eventually we were working at quite a fair pace churning out shots. Now that I'm back from the island and using Maya again for most projects it can be difficult getting back into XSI mode again. It makes you realize how valuable that solid block of time was to focus on one workflow. Switching workflows regularly just slows you down and requires a ramp up time for each, so you tend to get less work done overall when you have to do things that way.

Our Asset/Shot Tracker

Anyway, back to the island and Lucas was having to focus on rigging polish for the main character so that the Animators could get started. So I had a bit of free reign to work on some big sequences on my own, creating the shots in 3D. This is essentially the Previs and Layout stage. I put very little time into finessing the details of the animation and focused instead on the shot setup, the way the shots cut together, the camera movement and what was needed in each shot to tell the story. I'd move on as quickly as I could to get enough footage in the timeline so that we could review the film. Our goal was to get the entire film roughed in over the first couple of weeks and we came in pretty close.

Once the Animators were up to speed and the kinks were out of the character rig, Lucas was able to join in the shot creation process again and we sat on the sofa working side by side. The efficiency in this can not be stressed enough. We bounced ideas back and forth really quickly, saw what each were doing and quickly got on the same page making shots that complimented each other in a similar style. It was a big bonding moment for each of us, I think. We'd circled each other as filmmakers for years and swapped stories but it was really incredible to be working side by side like that for the first time. A very memorable moment for me in my career and it made it all worth while.

I have a pretty large collection of film soundtracks so we had plenty to choose from to flesh out the temporary score. With that and a few key sound effects in place we soon had our first watchable animatic. There were still a few storyboard panels representing the character shots, which could be a bit jarring to people not used to seeing the jump in styles but we converted them over to 3D in due time. We had a TV mounted on the wall and a long HDMI cable so we gathered the team and put it up on the big screen. This was a great chance to record the event and capture everyone's reactions so I would recorded video discreetly while everyone watched the film for the first time. The lights went down and we hit play. Hearts were pounding as we waited to see where all this was going. Was it worth the trip? Were we stuck on an island with a mad man for another month with no way to escape? When were we going to get to see Netflix again? Was it worth missing the latest season of [insert favorite TV show] for? Was my hamster starving for nothing? [kidding].... Patience... all will be revealed.

Part 4 is coming tomorrow and will detail some of the greatest challenges film-making  In the mean time check out the campaign which includes other videos about the project. Please feel free to share the story.