Script Notes by Chad Gervich - Animation

READER QUESTION/GUEST PERSPECTIVE: How Do I Break Into Children's Animated TV?

Chad — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:47:13 GMT

Hey, folks--

A few weeks ago, I was teaching a TV spec-writing class, and I recently received an email from a student asking if breaking into children's shows worked the same as breaking into primetime... did you still need specs, original material, etc.?

I've never worked in children's programming... so I asked my good friend Melody Fox, who has written and produced for Stuart Little, Teen Titans, Rugrats, and Dragon Tales (as well as adult shows like Flash Gordon, South Beach, and Skin).

Here's what she said...

"I started my career in animation and have a couple dozen credits. And yes, people usually write a spec animated script or two when breaking in. I only wrote one. Then after that, I used my writer's drafts of my produced eps as samples. Animation writers will often have a sitcom spec too, (or a Simpsons or Family Guy, which are animated sitcoms) and the showrunners will read that as well. I had a comedy feature.

"In my experience, getting in is all about contacts. Many animation writers don't have agents. You get work through contacts and referrals, and recommendations. But the good news is, YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE AN AGENT, you can make inquiry calls on your own and no one would think it odd or unprofessional. After a while, you get work off your reputation. There are a couple lit agencies that specialize in animated & children's.

"Most animated shows do not have staffs. Disney and Nickelodeon sometimes have small staffs, like three people. Most work is freelance. If you do a freelance ep for a show that has an order of 26 and they like your work, they will come back to you with more assignments. They want writers who can deliver.

"The showrunner who hires the writers in animation is called the Story Editor. The story editor may also be a producer on the show, but not necessarily. Production in animation has to do with the boards that are drawn, etc. and have specialized producers.

"If the student is in L.A. I highly recommend he/she take the UCLA Extension animation writing class. Not only will there great instruction, there are always guest speakers and that's how the writer can start making contacts. I took the class when I already had several credits and it was still useful and one of the guest speakers hired me to do 2 freelance eps. At least 3 other people in the class went on to get assignments, so the peers in the class are also great professional contacts.

"There's a book written by animation veteran Jeffrey Scott called How to Write for Animation. it's on Amazon and also at Bookstar on Ventura Blvd. (in Los Angeles). I haven't read it myself, but he has a huge number of animation credits.

"Also, [most of] this info only applies to children's TV animation. Feature animation is a whole different ball game, and more artist-driven. Also, [this info] does not apply to animated sitcoms (Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, etc.) Those are sitcoms that just happen to be animated. They are WGA and have writing staffs and writers rooms and are staffed like primetime shows.

"One more thing... I hope I didn't make it sound EASY to get into. It's professional TV writing and it's very competitive. It's enormously fun, so of course it's going to be competitive.

"Here's the downside... it does not pay anything close to what live-action union shows pay. There's no residuals. It's either non-union or covered by the animators union called The Screen Cartoonists Guild -- if it's a guild show then you CAN earn medical insurance."

MOVIE TALK: Coraline

Chad — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:11:30 GMT

Coraline, which opens this Friday (February 6), is the kind of movie critics love to praise. They’ll use words like “quirky” and “whimsical”… they’ll congratulate it on being a kids’ movie that dares to be “dark”… they’ll laud it for using old-fashioned stop-motion animation. And in their rush to appear smart or hip or highbrow or whatever they feel their praise makes them, they’ll overlook one small thing…

Coraline is underwhelming on almost all fronts: visually, narratively, emotionally. Perhaps most importantly—it’s just not that much FUN.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Coraline is famed stop-motion director Henry Selick’s (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Monkeybone) movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel (props to HalibetLector for catching my error-- it's not a graphic novel, as I'd originally said-- sorry!)… and the world’s first full-length 3D stop-motion animated feature.

The story follows Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning), an 11-year-old girl who has just moved with her parents to an old Victorian country house—known as the “Pink Palace”—in remote Oregon. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Jones (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are busy writing a book on botany and have little time or energy for their curious daughter, so Coraline takes it upon herself to explore her new world. One day, while out dowsing for water, Coraline runs into Wybie (Robert Bailey, Jr.), an odd, slightly misshapen neighbor boy who lives with his grandmother (who, as a girl, lived in the Pink Palace). Wybie and Coraline strike up a friendship, and Wybie gives Coraline a mysterious doll that he stole from his grandmother’s house… and happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Coraline herself!

As soon as the doll, “Little Me,” enters the Pink Palace, strange things begin to happen. Although Coraline never catches it in action, the doll seems to move by itself… and soon leads her to a secret crawlspace hidden in the walls, a passage to an alternate reality.

At first, this alternate universe looks almost exactly like Coraline’s actual reality. Her house looks the same, her garden looks the same… she even meets “Other Mother” and “Other Father,” who look just like her real parents (except for one unnerving difference—everyone in the new universe has buttons in place of their eyes). But Coraline soon discovers the supernatural wonders of this other world. Other Mother and Other Father are much more affectionate and loving than her real parents; they shower Coraline with attention, make her amazingly delicious meals, play games with her, and let her play in their magical garden of glowing plants, giant mechanical insects, and tickling flowers.

Over the next few days, Coraline is drawn back repeatedly to her alternate universe, which is a welcome respite from her drab, lonely existence at home. Where her real parents ignore and dismiss her, her Other Parents adore and celebrate her. Where her real world consists of subdued browns, grays, and dull blues, the Other World is vibrant and colorful.

Of course, not all is as it seems in Coraline’s other reality. As she soon discovers, Other Mother is actually an evil, spider-like monster who has simply created this fantastical world in order to trap Coraline… just as she’s trapped several earlier inhabitants of the Pink Palace (including Wybie’s great-aunt), keeping their ghosts locked in limbo. And when Other Mother kidnaps Coraline’s parents, Coraline sets out to rescue them… and destroy Other Mother forever.

Unfortunately, while Coraline has all the makings of an adorable Alice-in-Wonderland-esque adventure, it falls short on almost every level. It’s not a “bad” movie, at all… it’s just a continual disappointment.

First of all: the animation. While I know critics will gush about something that’s actually “animated,” using old-school techniques and not CGI, in a world where we’ve already loved The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, Coraline offers almost nothing new.

Secondly, its “3D-ness” is totally wasted. Much of the film, especially the portions in the normal world, have no visual elements that would make them interesting in 3-D… and when the movie DOES have segments that could look great in 3D, it fails to use it! Sure… these segments—like the madcap routines in the house of Mr. Bobinsky, an old circus acrobat, or Coraline’s final battle against Other Mother—have a bit extra depth, but depth isn’t what makes 3D fun… it’s seeing things pop off the screen, explode toward the audience, surround us and suck us into the world of the film. There are numerous times when Selick could’ve used his three dimensions to shatter that fourth wall, and he almost always chooses not to. In other words, Selick’s three dimensions remain as distant and separate from us as any regular movie.

Looking at Coraline from a screenwriting perspective, it has three weaknesses that keep it from being a truly satisfying emotional experience…

1) WHO THE HELL IS CORALINE? We never truly get to know the main character… what she wants, what she loves, what she fears, what she longs for, how she sees the world. The press materials describe her as “feisty, curious, and adventurous beyond her years,” but I’m not sure this is ever illustrated in the movie. I mean, Coraline does things… she delivers mail to her neighbors, dowses for water, explores her house… but it’s all done with a certain resigned sense of boredom. She seems to be doing things not because she lusts for life or is excited by people and things she discovers, but because her parents won’t have anything to do with her.

Similarly, we know almost nothing of Coraline’s old life. She keeps a photo of her old friends at her bedside, but we know little about those relationships. What did she and her old friends do together? Why are these friends so important? Why does she miss them? (Obviously, we all miss our old friends when we move, but HOW does Coraline miss her friends? Why these kids more than anyone else? What made them so special?) How did Coraline's old life fulfill her in ways this new life doesn’t? What parts of Coraline are now dying or missing? How would her life be different—both better and worse—if she were back in Michigan?

Coraline is ultimately a paper-thin character… and in a movie which—like The Wizard of Oz—is about an adventure that takes place mostly in her own imagination and psychology—there are few things more important than our understanding clearly who this main character is. She doesn’t need to be “complex,” per se, but she does need to be full-bodied and easily understandable… yet Coraline never pops.

2) CORALINE IS RARELY PROACTIVE. This stems directly from the first point. Because we—and, I think, the storytellers—never have a solid grasp of whom Coraline is at her core, she never has a single, driving WANT that forces her to take action. Thus, she’s RE-active for most of the story, simply responding to events and people around her. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t do anything; but it does mean she doesn’t drive the story. Rather, she bounces through it, propelled by other forces, and simply watches and wonders at things going around her.

Had Gaiman and Selick given Coraline a want—say, Coraline WANTS to go home to her Michigan life, or Coraline WANTS to make Wybie come play with her, or Coraline WANTS to convince her parents to let her help with their botany book—Coraline would have been forced to take actions that would drive the story, and all these incidents and side-roads would feel like obstacles or stepping stones on a forward-moving narrative path.

Unfortunately, even when scenes and characters are interesting—like the Other World’s magical garden, Mr. Bobinsky’s bizarre circus apartment, or the neighboring Vaudeville divas (Miss Spink and Miss Forcible)—they feel like uninspired tangents, diversions that are stalling any real story momentum.

I’m guessing, if Neil Gaiman or Henry Selick were here, they’d say that Coraline wants something like “validation from her parents,” or “a sense of belonging,” or “to explore her world,” or “acceptance.” And all of these are fine “emotional” wants—I think it’s necessary to have “emotional” wants… but it’s just as important—and maybe more important—to have TANGIBLE wants that can be physically accomplished.

(In Almost Famous, for example, William Miller wants to be considered and taken seriously as an adult [this is his emotional want]… but he has a physical want that is simple and tangible: TO PUBLISH AN ARTICLE IN ROLLING STONE magazine. If he can do this, he believes, he will be accepted and viewed as an adult. Thus, everything that happens is either a help or a hindrance to both his emotional and his “tangible” journey.)

(Also, to be fair-- Coraline does finally get a "want" late in the movie, when she must return to the Other World to rescue her trapped parents. This is the first time she genuinely takes action to achieve a goal... and the last third of the movie, once Coraline has this mission, feels like a much more solid, controlled story. It's also fun to watch the film's many disparate elements, like Coraline's oddball neighbors, come together in some creative ways during this final battle. Unfortunately, the film's sudden new sense of direction comes a bit too late to make up for its meandering first two thirds.)

3) CORALINE LACKS A SATISFYING ARC. At the end of the movie, after Coraline saves her parents from Other Mother’s evil alternate reality, Coraline realizes to appreciate what she has (or, as the movie's billboards all over town say: “Be careful what you wish for”). And sure—this is, in theory, a decent arc for her character. Here’s the only problem…

SHE DOESN’T SEEM TO SEE HER WORLD ANY DIFFERENTLY!

Coraline's parents still dismiss her. The “real” world is still nothing but grays and browns.

So Coraline hasn’t learned to see things in a new way, she’s just learned to appreciate the disappointing humdrum of her own reality! In other words, the movie seems to say, “the real world may suck, but at least it’s better than the dangerous, shitty OTHER world!”

…Which, again—in theory, is a definite character arc… it’s just not a very FUN character arc. (Which I’m sure will prompt critics to praise the movie’s subtlety, its adult themes, etc. But the truth is: celebrating boredom is still… at least for me… boring.)

The most disappointing thing about Coraline is that it could’ve been so much better than it is. I’m a fan of both Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick… and with those two imaginations working together, the movie should be transcendent. It’s not. It is tragically—like Coraline’s world itself—just less than ordinary.

CORALINE TRAILER

GUEST PERSPECTIVE: Ellen Besen, Animator - Part Three

Chad — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:35:10 GMT

Today we wrap up our chat with Canadian animator and author Ellen Besen, who’s been explaining the ropes of animation and offering advice on breaking into the industry…

ME: ELLEN, IMAGINE YOU HAVE STAR STUDENT WHO HAS JUST GRADUATED, HAS A TERRIFIC PORTFOLIO, AND IS ABOUT TO LEAVE BUBBLE OF SCHOOL. WHAT ARE THE FIRST, OR MOST IMPORTANT, THINGS YOU WOULD TELL HIM TO DO UPON STARTING LIFE IN THE REAL WORLD OF ANIMATION?

ELLEN: The first thing I would say is: where is your initial skill? Are you stronger in character design? Stronger in animation? People think when they say “I’ll do anything,” it’s helpful for recruiters; it’s actually harder work for recruiters, so be aware of where your initial skills are. Go in and say, “I’d like to start out in the layout department,” or “I’d like to start out in storyboarding.”

It’s also helpful to know where you think you want to go. Are you aiming to be a director? A lead character animator on a Disney film? Those paths will be different.

Have a super-solid portfolio. Show off your best abilities to create artwork, showing your ability to design characters, your ability to do layouts, a little bit of everything you can do.

[Have the right] attitude. Make it really clear you’re ready to get in there. I can’t over-emphasize how important the team-player aspect is. A lot of writing in animation is done by group, and you have to check your ego at the door. You can not worK in this field if you have a lot of ego issues; there’s just no tolerance for it. If you have five people around a table… one person [has] an idea, one person criticizes it, the next person tops it, and that brings around the next idea. Anybody who gets upset about that is going to have a hard time functioning in the field. It’s good to be a little detached from the work. It’s not about you personally—very important.

The next thing is, if you know where you want to aim for, know the studio you’re going to go for. Know their work, because there are different styles and attitudes. What Disney wants is different than what an anime studio wants. So being aware of differences in the kind of style you’re aiming for, and the kind of product they’re aiming for, is helpful.

It sounds vague, but that really is what it comes down to: you can draw, you’ve been to school so you have the outline of how animation works, you have that attitude where you go in and can be part of a team and take direction. That’s the starting point.

It’s that [whole] package studios are looking for. They need people. Every studio head is criss-crossing the world looking for pockets of talent.

SO, LET’S SAY I HAVE ALL THOSE QUALITIES… AND I’VE JUST STEPPED OFF A PLANE IN LOS ANGELES. HOW DO I EVEN BEGIN MEETING PEOPLE WHO CAN HIRE ME? DO I JUST SHOW UP AT STUDIOS AND HAND THEM MY RESUME?

If you’re in that raw position, the better bet is to be in touch with one of the major animation festivals. If you’re in North America, for example, the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), which is a yearly event [each fall], goes back to 1976 and is the major North American animation festival and one of the major festivals in the world.

I’m gonna put a plug in now for another festival I’m involved with: the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (KAFI).

The big festivals, of which those are two good models, actively invite studios to send recruiters, and studios come expecting to meet people. There will be actual formal activities set up where you can sign up to meet the various studios. In many ways, that’s your best way to make contacts.

Get your portfolio together. Make it look beautiful. Students have a terrible tendency to leave in stuff they did in first year. Strip that down, so it’s [only the best stuff]. Same thing with your resume. I had a really top student who was showing us his resume, and he won an award in the third grade and still had it on his resume! It was really sweet, but we had to explain… make sure you’ve taken that stuff out!

[Also,] if your school has any kind of co-op program, see if you can get an animation apprenticeship. It’s the kind of thing that’s do-able, and if you go to a smaller studio, they may be very happy to have a second pair of hands there. It’s a small field, and very inter-connected, so the sooner you make personal contacts and build relationships, the faster you’ll get work.

Which is, again, why I suggest going to animation festivals. Animation festivals are very low-key; they’re much more low-key than live-action festivals. People are very approachable; there are very few people who are stars like John Lasseter, Matt Groening. Most people are very regular folks in terms of attitude, so… chat up people. Begin to make friendships. That’s the best way to work your way in.

I’m going to say something that sounds really obvious, but it’s a mistake a lot of students make. They sign up [for recruiting events], but then they wait to be courted or they don’t show up on time. Again, it’s a grunt [business], and recruiters are on you in that sense. You have to be on time and highly respectful. [In the real world], you’re working too hard and deadlines are tight; if you can’t demonstrate you’re able to get in there and meet those needs, you’re not gonna make it. They just don’t have time for it. So on one hand, they’re strict about that stuff, on the other hand: remarkably accessible.

Most studios [also] have a website, [so] go to their employment [page]. You’re [probably] going to hear back, because they do need people. But if you’re in schools, most schools will do recruiting for you, and the good schools have studio connections.

[Also,] the big animation website is Animation World Network (AWN). It’s the premiere site in the world for premiere animation information. You can find all the festivals, all the available schools. It’s the professional site of sites, so I highly recommend that.

YOU LIVE IN CANADA. YET FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, THE CAPITAL OF FILM AND TV IS HOLLYWOOD (AT LEAST FOR NOW). SO FOR ANIMATORS WHO DON’T LIVE IN HOLLYWOOD, IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CAREER OUTSIDE OF L.A.? HOW CAN SOMEONE OUTSIDE OF CALIFORNIA BUILD AN ANIMATION CAREER?

There are a lot more smaller centers of animation than there used to be, so the first thing is to look in the phone book or go on the Internet and see if you have animation in your area. Toronto has a large-size area. In Canada, you also have one in Montreal. You have one in Vancouver. The same thing will be true throughout the States; you may find you have studios in town. If you want to stay local, your first thing is to approach local studios.

The other thing is—and this may take longer for you to build up, but it’s still part of it—a lot of work in animation—and this isn’t a recent, it’s been going on for years—is done in parts. So in Toronto, for example, there are a lot of studios that are subcontractors. They’ll work on Hollywood features, doing a piece of it in Toronto. I suspect that happens all over the States as well, so seek out studios that work for Disney or big studios, and do it locally as well.

I’ve known storyboard artists who are based outside of Toronto. I knew someone who for many years was based in the British Virgin Islands. [Storyboards are] relatively easily transmittable stuff, so you’ll get stuff shipped to you. So if you’ve built up enough of a freelance ability, you can work from home. You have to be fast, you have to be well organized, but it’s a significant part of the field nowadays.

The guy who did the illustrations for [Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writers, Filmmakers, Video Artist, and Game Developer Should Know], for example, is very individually motivated. He’s had a career for ten years doing animated inserts for other people’s stuff. He does opening sequences and animated bits for live-action shows. They prepare the script [and soundtrack] for him… then he, at home, creates the entire visual and sends it back and they insert it into the bigger production.

Part of why this is possible is because this is where the digital part is fantastic. What used to be an incredibly expensive process of having to send stuff to camera services and labs and editing and then back to the lab… what used to be half of your budget—one half was labor, the other half was outside services… now, is [much more affordable]. It doesn’t matter if you’re Mac or PC, you can get applications to get all that stuff very inexpensively. You can get professional quality quite affordably.

I know a number of people whose careers are based on doing exactly that, doing small jobs of various sorts. Again, the key to establishing yourself is to take a piece and finish it. Get it up on the Internet. Your short piece is your calling card. There are tons of sites that have online festivals where they get watched by other animators. AWN is a great source for that information. Enter various animation festivals, actual festivals. Word will get around. It’s a very accepting field; it doesn’t close doors on new talent. So if you’re organized and don’t want to go the studio route, it’s the smaller side of the field for people who do well at it, it can be a great thing.

Then, of course, there’s all the other oddball applications of animation: forensic animation, medical applications. Anything where people need imagery, animation is the tool. So look around for those oddball applications… go to museums, people who are teaching, medical schools. It’s very specialized and you have to bring a different kind of skill to it, but in fact, the technical end of animation is thriving quite well.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO CHAT, ELLEN! THIS HAS BEEN SUPER-HELPFUL AND INFORMATIVE. BEST OF LUCK WITH YOUR WORK AND THE BOOK, AND I HOPE TO TALK TO YOU SOON!

GUEST PERSPECTIVE: Ellen Besen, Animator - Part Two

Chad — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 02:44:31 GMT

Hey, screenwriters—

We’ve been chatting with Ellen Besen, an accomplished animator and author of the great new book, Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writers, Filmmakers, Video Artist, and Game Developer Should Know.

Last time, we talked about creative principles of animation. Today, we’ll learn the rules of breaking into the industry as a young animator…

ME: LET’S TALK ABOUT BREAKING INTO ANIMATION. IF I WANTED WRITE FOR TV OR FILM, I’D WRITE A SCRIPT. IF I WANTED TO BE A DIRECTOR, I’D DIRECT A SHORT. AS AN ANIMATOR, WHAT PRACTICAL TOOLS DO I NEED TO BREAK INTO THE INDUSTRY? JUST SAMPLE DRAWINGS? ANYTHING ELSE?

ELLEN: Certainly, if you want to be an animated script-writer, you come up with sample scripts. Fortunately—even more so in some ways than live action—the festival circuit; if you can put a film together, it’s an open door to enter, regardless of whether you’re a first-timer or have been animating for forty years.

The field is in flux in some ways; there was a fairly long stage before the full advent of the Internet where if you wanted to be in the industry, you had to get into a school. It’s very hard now to get a full-scale industry job. If you want to be a Disney animator [or anything commercial], it’s very hard now without getting into a decent school. The key, of course, is to know a decent school from a fly-by-night school.

Animation is a grunt business in that there is no getting away from having to work very hard. I’m saying this because there are quite a few schools that cater to the person who says, “If I can just get my hands on the equipment, I can fool around, figure it out, and put something together.” The person like that is never going to do well. You have to be willing to take direction. It’s an attitude.

I’ve done workshops that are a mix of actors and animators. [With the] actors you had to coach everything, and be careful… they’re delicate in how they feel about stuff. But with animators, you can be blunt, dump it on the table. It’s never meant personally… it’s about the work. That’s the first thing. You have to have the right attitude, love the field, be willing to work incredibly hard.

It still doesn’t hurt to know how to draw, even if you’re working digitally. In another generation, that may change, but at this point, knowledge of the feeling of pencil on paper, and being able to translate from the real, three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional drawing [is important]. There’s some primary learning that happens in there. The ability to do good quality life drawing… how the body looks, how it functions, not just for structure, but how structure translates into movement… those are all foundational skills people still find helpful and [employers] are still looking for.

So get into life drawing classes… not just drawing from photographs. That’s a different skill altogether because the photograph does the translation for you, which is why it’s so much easier to copy. You have to build up the ability to see the three-dimensional and how it translates onto a piece of paper.

The studying of action [and] learning the nature of good character design are important skills. I see a lot of bad design these days—overly busy.

You have to understand, for example, that when you’re… designing an illustration or a comic book, that frame you’re drawing is the final piece and how you are arranging it on the page is the final thing. That’s why comic book artists can do such wonderful things with their page layouts… in terms of how they ask readers to trace their thoughts around the page and follow the story. In animation, you have very little choice. It WILL be one frame replacing another on the screen; it’s the nature of the medium. So you have to build things for movement. You have to build things for that one frame they’ll see at any given moment. If you can’t make that leap into that understanding, you’ll get very confused when you try to figure what you should be doing in preparation. So the way characters are designed directly affects how they moved.

When they first were doing TV specials with the Peanuts characters… they were initially trying to make them like three-dimensional characters. When their head would turn from right to left, they tried to give it full rotation like a real head, with three-quarter angles… and it looked awful, freakish. The animators realized if you treated the head like a ball, with full three dimensions, you lost the sense of the characters; they changed too much. You couldn’t do a three-quarter angle on a character’s face; it didn’t look like a character anymore. There was something key to the nature of this environment that wouldn’t allow it to go there. So they had treat [the Peanuts’ heads] like coins, so they were flat. They could go from the front view, to the profile, to the front view and the head would flip around… and that actually looked like the characters. That was a design element; they worked better as if they were made of paper… if they were thin, rather than a three-dimensional character. So [you have to have] awareness of designing the character, knowing how they’d have to perform in the story, and knowing what kind of feeling you want.

Do you want realism, a Disney style of classical feeling? Or do you want something that deliberately looks abstract?

Did you ever see The Simpsons special where they suddenly threw them into the three-dimensional world? It was hilarious. It was one of their early ones from ‘93, ‘94, something like that. A couple guys who had worked on the CG part of it came to the Ottawa Animation Festival a couple years later and showed footage; they said it was really, really hard to make Homer three-dimensional. The characters didn’t translate that easily. He’s a crazy looking character anyway, but in three dimensions he was hideous.

Well, those are design problems you must anticipate in how you design the character. Learning to have that awareness is critical. Everything affects your final outcome, down to that final detail.

Animators tend to be extreme detail people with that kind of analysis. It’s a great place for disassociated people. You’re an actor who has to be able to act something spontaneously, then step back into someone who watches the action, then break it down into it’s tiniest component parts and anticipate all the problems. Then the artist kicks in to take that analysis and recreate it as drawings of what might not even be a human; your character [might be] an animal or a chair. So you have to translate the performance onto this other object! Great animators have three or four skills going on—it’s amazing to me.

I ALWAYS TELL PEOPLE THAT THE BEST WAY TO BEGIN A CAREER IN ENTERTAINMENT—AND YOU TOUCHED ON THIS-- IS TO START AT THE BOTTOM AND WORK YOUR WAY UP. HOW DO YOU DO THAT IN ANIMATION? HOW DO YOU TAKE THE FIRST STEPS IN AN ANIMATION CAREER?

You can come up through the production line, which is where most people are going to get work. It’s hard work, but if you love it, you love it… and it’s more stable than it used to be. It can be up and down, but the advent of specialty stations has been wonderful for animation.

The other way you go is totally as an individual, independent filmmaker with their own style. As long as you can make the thing move, there are a million ways to make the stuff work. There’s no limit on how many designs, as long as you come up with something that integrates properly. The nature of [“Animation Unleashed” is that the principles can be applied to any style of animation, it doesn’t matter what technique you’re using. If you can get a coherent piece together, make a film. Animation, especially with digital stuff, is so cheap now. You can get an application and do the whole thing from beginning to end, and if it’s good enough, if it looks good on the screen, put it on the Internet or send it to a festival. You can break in that way as well… and go to a commercial career.

The main thing is: get into a school, get your portfolio, and gather those commercial skills. [Or] if you feel you don’t fit—if you don’t like to follow those rules, if you hate being a team player, if you hate hearing blunt instruction on how to do things—then it’s not the field for you.

[Or if you have a genuinely] quirky drawing style, point of view... make a film. If you need to take courses to understand how to make a film, do that. If you can throw it together out of your own abilities, do that, too. But make a statement and get it out there.

Either of those routes, depending on your talents, can get you into the field these days.

IN THE WORLD OF TELEVISION, THERE’S A VERY SPECIFIC, STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS TO BECOMING A WRITER. YOU BEGIN AS A P.A., MAKING COPIES… THEN YOU BECOME THE P.A. FOR A WRITING STAFF... THEN A WRITER’S ASSISTANT… THEN, HOPEFULLY, AN ACTUAL WRITER ON THE STAFF.

HOW DOES THAT PATH WORK IN ANIMATION? IMAGINE I’VE JUST GRADUATED FROM ANIMATION SCHOOL AND STEPPED INTO THE REAL WORLD. WHAT’S MY FIRST JOB… AND THE NEXT STEPS AFTER THAT?

Basically, we’re talking about the person who wants to go into commercial production, probably at a studio, big or small. The first thing: you’ve got a great portfolio. You’ve used your time in school to get a great reel. You can show you can animate. You have a great portfolio that shows a variety of other skills you can do.

There are two different [pieces of knowledge] that are useful to have. One is where your initial skills are, an awareness of where they fit with the industry; and the other is where you WANT to be. Sometimes those things are quite different.

In the old days it was easy. You could go in and be a cell painter. Many people started as cell painters and got the animators to look over their shoulders. [Then, they would take] home a few drawings, become the animators’ assistant, et cetera. It’s tougher these days.

One thing people have to realize is—for better or worse—quite a lot of animation is done overseas.

More has come home with digital stuff, which has been good… but… there was a long period—certainly through the 80’s and much of the 90’s (pre-digital)—where what was happening with a lot of TV work and feature work [was they] would do all the pre-production here, but actual animating, coloring, shooting, even final background work was done in places like Korea, India, China. There are actually giant factory-like studios in the Far East and various countries where they churn this stuff out. [They] can do a three-week turnaround on a half-hour film, which is otherwise unthinkable. That’s allowed certain things to happen, but for many years it meant you couldn’t really animate here; you’d do pre- or post-production, but you couldn’t actually do production. Digital has shifted that and a lot of people are getting to animate again, which is a good thing, but… it may go overseas again.

So if you’re a CG animator here, you can actually be animating. But a lot of the work is pre-production, so the kinds of jobs that are possible are: you could start as an assistant animator, which means you’re working down the line, maybe directly with an animator. It might be with more of a breakdown team, depending on the level of animation you’re doing. You could be working as a colorist. You could be in the layout department, helping to design elements, or doing cleanup of someone else’s designs. You could be in production, working with whoever is managing the whole project, filing, keeping track of numbers. Or you are working in a smaller studio, assisting with flash animation.

[Also very important:] storyboarding. Storyboarding is an art and there’s always a shortage of people who can do it. If you’re a person who can lay down ideas… storyboard in animation is much more structured than in live action. It is literally the whole structure of the film; it’s every shot, every action in that shot, any indication to what the key sounds will be, editing decisions, camera moves. In real, full-scale animation storyboards, everything is indicated, everything is pre-planned. They may make changes as they go along, but this is a starting point. You look for a very tight shooting ratio at the other end, so basically you’ve pre-edited the film to a large extent. And people who can churn out small accurate drawings, getting the camera angle right, are very valuable.

TO BE CONTINUED…

GUEST PERSPECTIVE: Ellen Besen, Animator - Part One

Chad — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:20:29 GMT

Hey, folks—

We have a special guest with us for a couple days, animator and National Film Board of Canada director Ellen Besen, author of the recently released Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writers, Filmmakers, Video Artist, and Game Developer Should Know. I had read Ellen’s book and loved it… and thought it would be interesting to learn more.

I know very little about animation, and Ellen was incredibly generous in hopping on the phone with me and chatting about how animation works (both creatively and practically), how to break in, how digital technology is changing the medium, etc. It has been a great conversation and a terrific addendum to her book (which I highly recommend even for non-animation writers—it’s a great tool for thinking differently about story and characters).

So without further adieu, let’s dive in. Today, we’ll chat with Ellen about her career path… and some of the primary creative principles of being a modern animator…

ME: ELLEN, YOU’RE AN ANIMATOR, A TEACHER, AND NOW AN AUTHOR. HOW’D YOU GET TO WHERE YOU ARE TODAY? TELL ME YOUR CAREER PATH, YOUR STORY.

ELLEN: It’s a story that’s not uncommon from my generation, but it’s different from what people are experiencing coming into the field now. Going back to the late ‘60s, early 70s, animation, especially classic animation, was on the cusp of becoming a dying art. All the big Hollywood studios had shifted out of doing short productions. All they were doing was TV work, and Disney for some bizarre reason decided not to train any new people. They were still producing features, but there was no apprenticeship going on. If you tried to ask about producing animation for adults, for older audiences, [people would say,] “no, no-- it’s just for kids.” They had spent so long making it only for kids they had come to believe it was something inherent in the medium.

[Fortunately, there was] a bunch of kids who came up around the same time, retained an interest, and wanted [animation] to be for more than kids… and that coincided with the period where animation schools started showing up. So [once again] you could actually get trained, then go into studio jobs.

I came in having always loved the medium; I was made fun of when I was a kid for liking animation—it was a weird thing to still like cartoons when you were 16, 17 years old. I was [also] coming from a background that had some music and some art and some dance: a whole lot of different pieces that weren’t adding up to anything. One of the beauties of animation is that it takes all those things and uses them in balance, so it was like a prism that took all my bits and pieces and combined them into something that made sense. It was a very exciting thing to fall into.

Many people ended up in animation by falling into it; it wasn’t something you considered or thought about ahead of time because there was so little structure for it. It was exciting because it was a period where we were rebuilding, recreating the art. It was also a period where places like the National Film Board of Canada, which was a major center, was one of the keepers of the flame, and I was lucky enough to work there from 1977 to 1981, and then on and off.

I was actually at Montreal at the Film Board headquarters when they were producing the most amazing stuff in the world, and anyone who had any degree of interest in animation—like the old Warner Brothers directors—would show up. You’d walk through the waiting room and the old Disney animators would be hanging around, having a chat.

Gradually, I went from being a filmmaker to teaching other people how to do it, writing about it, being an organizer. [Then] the whole thing broke thru in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, when suddenly you had The Simpsons, The Little Mermaid. And then, of course, you had CG, which changed the whole world in terms of what animation is. So here I am, now having had twenty years of active filmmaking, and a number of years of supporting people and being a critic and analyzer of animation.

YOUR BOOK, “Animation Unleashed,” IS A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK ABOUT THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLES AND PHILOSOPHIES OF ANIMATION. OF COURSE, THERE ARE LOTS OF BOOKS ON ANIMATION OUT THERE. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THIS BOOK? WHEN YOU LOOKED AT THE WORLD OF ANIMATION AND ANIMATION BOOKS, WHAT WAS MISSING?

After I’d been teaching for a few years and a certain number of students had passed thru my classroom… [so] over the years, I’d seen certain patterns, certain common problems.

First, I noticed certain blocks people would have, quite consistently, in their thinking.

Secondly… animators really weren’t taught film analysis, so we were operating on instinct, but we weren’t learning how to “close-read” the films, or really look at other films to see the techniques that were there. The most important [technique] was having a very strong visually-based analogy underneath the film. If someone arrived at that analogy, not only was it a better film in the end, but it was an easier production process because there was some logical means for decision making. You have to control every element, and everything has to be decided. There’s no given [in animation], so the decision-making process can be excruciating and every decision can throw your story off if you are not super-careful. You need a reason to decide this or that… so certain patterns became obvious.

The other thing that happened was: we started doing intense film analysis classes. I had always liked Disney features, but had never had any real insight into what was going on. Suddenly, in that context, the scales come off your eyes and you see things you never saw before. Suddenly, it was, “Oh my God—look what they’re doing there! Look at this incredible storytelling! This is such astonishing craft!”

I even dare to say that—at a point where live-action was still figuring out a lot of their technique—Disney animators had figured out such a sophisticated style. The level of storytelling, the level of control over every element… they were controlling and working every bit so it added directly to the storytelling in a precise way. So [as] we had more of that kind of analysis, the more we’d see that certain principles were in play [and] specific to animation.

[What excites me now is that] we’re in a world where film is digital, and once you make things digital… they become animation. They suddenly have the same principles; the source material is different. And actually understanding what it means to be able to manipulate something—every pixel in every image in every frame of a piece—is the essence of animated thinking.

THAT’S AN INTERESTING NOTION. SO BASICALLY… EVEN A LIVE-ACTION DIGITAL FILM FOLLOWS THE SAME CREATIVE PRINCIPLES AS AN ANIMATED FILM? OR IS SUBJECT TO THE SAME RULES AS AN ANIMATED FILM?

You have that option. You’re not necessarily going to want to do that with all live-action, but you’re going to want to understand that the potential is there. And there will often be a great mix, now that extras in a scene may be animated instead of actual people. Certain effects will be digital. More films, even if they’re not obviously hybrids, are going to be hybrid films, so understanding that you need certain rules for playing with those tools becomes incredibly important.

All filmmakers now should be studying animation to understand these new tools they’re taking on. It’s an interesting and relatively new area. How do you marry the rules of live-action to these new rules?

A film like Amelie is an incredible example of hybrid filmmaking. You don’t think of it as using animation principles, but it totally does. You can actually break it down on a frame-by-frame level and see how [director Jean-Pierre Jeunet] controls it and makes decisions that are almost invisible when you watch it the first time. But when you go back and do analysis, you see incredible stuff. Jeunet is a guy coming from an animation background and bringing that sensibility to live-action filmmaking.

I had an interesting experience with that film; I was watching it with a guy coming from a theatrical background… and when we came out he said, “I know it looks like a fantasy, a fairy tale, but I’m not sure why.” He was certain it was because of the acting, but the reality was it was everything in that film. Jeunet actually took every frame, all the beautiful shots of Paris, and he scrubbed the film—altered the lights and colors and everything—in order to heighten, or make it the ultimate caricature of Paris. That’s animation: you can alter terrain, as well as characters, special effects… and marry it all for a very specific, controlled kind of effect.

I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE TODAY—MYSELF INCLUDED—STILL THINK OF ANIMATION IN TERMS OF OLD-SCHOOL, TRADITIONAL FORMS LIKE Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs OR EVEN The Incredibles. BUT THE WHOLE WORLD HAS EXPLODED OPEN… THERE’S BIG BUSINESS NOW IN COMICS, GRAPHIC NOVELS, VIDEO GAMES. HOW IS DRAWING FOR TV OR MOVIES—CREATIVELY, STYLISTICALLY, AND PHILOSOPHICALLY—DIFFERENT THAN DRAWING FOR A COMIC STRIP OR A GRAPHIC NOVEL OR A VIDEO GAME?

Video games come into the same territory as animation; once you insert movement into the process, it changes everything. That’s an important thing to realize. I’ve had students who come from a comic book background and have had the hardest time making the leap into animation; they can’t fathom why it’s different.

The key with animation is that every drawing is only a tiny piece of the greater whole, and what you are looking for is the combined effect, which is often quite different than any little piece. For examples, when you are drawing a background, a background isn’t just a landscape, it’s a place where action can happen. You have to actually build and affect what will happen with the action by what you do in the background.

There’s a beautiful section in Spirited Away, by [writer/director Hayao Miyazaki] where Chihiro, this girl who is being led into adolescence, is being led into this crazy fantasy park. It looks like she’s walking through a park—you just kind of look at it superficially—but if you really look, there are buildings pressing into the frame, blocking her ability to go backwards. She can only walk in one direction, and there are stone paths and all sorts of enticing things… which basically means she has to go a certain way. She can’t go another way. You think she’s operating on free will… but Miyazaki has made it so there’s no other way for her to go. There’s your background. It’s a location for action. You have to decide what actually needs to happen there, what supports the plot, what supports the theme, and build those things into the background.

[Here’s another] anecdote of sitting in on a live-action shoot of a script I helped develop It was supposed to be a hybrid, but a major piece was live-action, and they were doing a critical scene that happened in an alleyway. They had three or four alleys to choose from, and they were talking about the benefits of one alley versus another. I turned to my partner, the other animator on the team, and we realized that in animation this discussion would be completely different. [They were talking about] how long the alley should be, and they were trying to adjust the action to fit the alleys they had. This is one of the key obstacles young animators get into. They draw a certain alley, then try to stuff the action into it. They forget you can make the alley whatever length you need it to be. If you need it longer, you can stretch it. If you need to add a hidden passageway, put it in there.

It seems simple, but remembering you have that power is one of the critical principles. You can alter every element and make all the pieces fit together, not just adjust one thing against the other, like we would in the real world.

Also, very important, is that movement is created by this series of tiny positions… but have you ever actually taken a piece of great animation and watched it frame-by-frame? You’d be amazed at what the individual frames look like! The distortion of them... you almost can’t believe it, because when you run it, it looks like a fluid piece. But crazy stuff is happening in there: extra arms and legs, extra eyeballs, bodies are squishing and stretching—very bizarre looking things.

Understanding that piece of artwork—not only for the moment it’s the frozen moment in a piece of action, but that it must exist in relationship to what comes before and after, that it exists in the total flow of where the action is going—completely changes the nature of the drawing. You don’t [usually] see the individual drawing, you only see the flow, and it’s almost between drawings that the movement happens.

It’s actually a physical thing that happens. It’s the relationship of how your eyes work into your brain—a little thing called persistence of vision—that you play with in animation; you actually play with the gap and our willingness to assume there’s action there, even though there isn’t. Live-action does that in a mechanical way; your mind recreates action. In animation, you’re creating action that doesn’t exist under any other circumstances; it only exists in your brain. It’s a weird thing, but it’s important to understand: it’s all raw creation.

TO BE CONTINUED…

BOOK REVIEW: Animation Unleashed

Chad — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:44:43 GMT

Hey, everyone—

A few years ago, I wrote a screenplay which (unfortunately) never sold, but got me a bunch of meetings around town… including a meeting with the Disney animation department. It wasn’t an animated movie, but it had some elements that were very animation-ish, so they asked me if I’d be interested in coming up with some other animated ideas I could pitch. Which I did.

And none of them sold.

In fact, none of them were very good.

At the time, I think I kinda sensed they weren’t that great (except my idea for an animated Marco Polo movie, which I still think would be awesome), but I wasn’t sure what was wrong with them, or why they didn’t seem as fresh or exciting as they should’ve.

And now I know why…

I hadn’t read Animation Unleashed, a new book from Canadian animator Ellen Besen.

I’ll be honest: I’ve never been super-inclined to do animation. I enjoy it, and the past few years have given us some OUTSTANDING animated films (The Incredibles and Wall-E are two of my favorite movies EVER). But I think great animated writers “think in animation”… which is something I simply don’t do.

Having said that, Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writer, Filmmaker, Video Artist, and Game Developer Should Know is a terrific book not only for writers and artists working in animation, but for any writer or artist who wants to think about their own non-animated work in new ways.

Before describing what Animation Unleashed IS, let me tell you what it’s NOT. Animation Unleashed is NOT a book that teaches you how to draw. It’s not a book that teaches you how animated movies or comics get made. It also doesn’t teach you the rules of narrative structure or storytelling; you won’t get a beat-for-beat breakdown of Finding Nemo or Madagascar.

What Animation Unleashed does incredibly well, however, is explain the creative and practical principles of animation. The book begins by detailing some basic creative theories behind good animation: using analogy as storytelling, “simplifying and exaggerating” animated elements to let them be more representational, uses of caricature, etc.

Now, lemme say two things…

ONE: this is NOT an academic theory book. I’m not usually a huge fan of academic film theory, especially when it doesn’t serve to make people better filmmakers or artists… but Besen explains things in practical terms that make everything applicable to the creative process. She’s not interested in simply analyzing animation; she’s interested in helping people MAKE animation… and she succeeds 100%. (Like I said, I’m not really an animation guy, but Besen made me understand, appreciate, and think about animation in ways I had never before bothered to.)

TWO: I don’t think anything Bresen says is necessarily earth-shattering… yet what makes this book so valuable, at least for me (as a non-animation guy), is that it makes me think about how animation works differently from other kinds of storytelling. And in doing that, it forces me to think about animation’s unique techniques and philosophies and how to apply them to my own writing.

In her chapter about actual script-writing, for example, Besen talks about how animation tends to be a more visual medium than other kinds of filmmaking, so it’s often helpful to write action first… then add dialogue later. I think she’s absolutely right… but I think this also applies to regular movies and storytelling. Or, at the very least, screenwriters should be focusing as much as possible on telling stories visually, not verbally. Not necessarily a groundbreaking revelation… but by giving animated worlds and examples, Besen got me thinking about my own “traditional” writing in ways and contexts that I hadn’t before.

Some of Besen’s most provocative chapters are those about sound, timing, camera angles, and performance. These are easily the most “animation-specific” chapters, but they’re also the ones that made me think about my own work in the newest, most challenging ways.

In her great chapter about sound, Besen talks about using dialogue sparingly… and even how/when to use gibberish or pure silence instead of actual words. I don’t know if I’ve ever written—or needed to write—a character who speaks in gibberish, but Besen’s point is that genuine WORDS aren’t always the best vehicle for conveying emotional intent. It’s a point well-taken. As a writer, I think it’s easy to fall in love with our words—with actual letters on our page—but Besen does a great job of reminding us that words are far less important than characters' actions or the emotions behind them.

Ultimately, Besen’s book was a surprisingly engaging read, and I recommend it for two reasons:

ONE: it’s a great guide for helping animators think about everything from writing to shot composition in ways that will help them execute it practically. Again, it may not teach you HOW to write or draw… but it helps you think about exactly WHAT to write and draw (and WHY you want to write and draw what you want to write/draw-- which I is often key to doing it well).

TWO: whether you’re a screenwriter, novelist, playwright, or poet, I think you’ll find this book helps you view your own work from a new perspective. Next time I’m blocked when writing a scene or an outline, this will be one of the first writers-block-busters I’ll turn to. After all, what better way to crack writers block than to imagine how to tell your scene (or story) simply through sound design? Or with no dialogue? Or as a wholly animated sequence? That-- no matter what kind of writer you are-- in an indispensable resource.

So check it out and lemme know what you think...

In the mean time, I’ll be spending this weekend at the L.A. Chocolate Salon. Which means next time I post, I’ll probably be about fifty pounds fatter. Fortunately, you won’t be able to tell over the blog…

(Coming up: we’ll talk about how to register and protect your work, we’ll have new entries in the Script Notes pitch workshop, special guests, and more!...)

GUEST PERSPECTIVE: Charlie Stickney... Writing For Animation

Chad — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:31:54 GMT

Hey, screenwriters--

One area of entertainment I've never worked in-- but often get questions about-- is animation. And with all the booming animated projects out there-- Family Guy, The Simpsons, Drawn Together, The Incredibles, The Triplets of Belleville, etc.-- I decided to spend a few minutes with my friend Charlie Stickney, a screenwriter, artist, and producer here in L.A.

Charlie spent several years developing shows for Mike Young Productions, a successful production company specializing in children's animation like Growing Up Creepie, Pet Alien, and Dive Olly Dive! Charlie wrote and produced Horrible Histories, where he was also the voice director and directed voice talent like Billy West, Cree Summer, Jess Harnell, Steven Rea, and Billy Idol. He also developed Voom HD's Cosmic Quantum Ray, Junk TV at MTV, and the Irish series Dumped for Telegael Media. Charlie recently set up screenplays at Revolution Studios and Abu Media, and in what little spare time he has, Charlie works on his popular webcomic, Vince Germain.

Charlie has forgotten more about animation than I could ever hope to know, but he gave me a great intro lesson to the world of animation, how it works, and how to break in...

Charlie—I’m gonna be honest: I know virtually nothing about how animation is developed, sold, or produced. So my first question is: if you want to write animation, do you also need to be an animator? Can you write animation if you’re not also an artist?

The short answer is no, you don’t need to be able to draw, or animate to have the ability to write a kick-ass animation script. However, having a good visual sensibility (camera placement, movement, composition, etc.) is a huge asset in animation writing.
Whereas in a teleplay (and to some extent the screenplay) “directing” of the camera is frowned upon, in the animation script, the “calling of the shots” is often required.

Here’s an example from a show I worked on.

INT. HIGH SECURITY AREA - ON THREE CELLS

SMARTY-PANTS stands in a large cell sleeping (SFX: SNORING) - on a
floating cot. A SALAMANDER scurries across the floor in front
of the cell.

                            MAMA SMARTY-PANTS (O.S.)
                      (proudly)
                Yes, Little Smarty-pants! My precious
                little genius!

PAN TO MAMA SMARTY-PANTS AND ARTIE AMOEBA. Mama is incarcerated in
a high-security hamster cage (with running wheel), and Artie is in
a small Plexiglass cube with a small lock on the top. As they talk,
one of the Salamanders “investigates” Artie’s prison.

                            ARTIE
                        (pretends to be bored)
                In case you hadn’t noticed, your baby
                genius boy is in jail! What kind of
                genius gets caught?

ANGLE FAVORING MAMA as she angrily grabs her bars and glares at Artie.

                            MAMA SMARTY-PANTS
                He invented the greatest, most dangerous
                machine in the universe -- THE STRING-O-
                MATIC!!!

CLOSE ON ARTIE IN F.G. - MAMA SMARTY-PANTS IN B.G. Artie turns his
back to Mama Smarty-pants, smiles -- he’s manipulating Mama.

                            ARTIE
                         (sarcastic)
                Oooh, String-O-Matic -- that’s a scary
                name... like “custard,” or “puppy.”

ZOOM IN ON MAMA’S ANGRY FACE as she describes the String-O-Matic.

                            MAMA SMARTY-PANTS
                Like an angry spore knows anything.
                The String-O-Matic is a work of evil art.

As you can see, calling the shots ultimately means there’s a lot more work for the writer to do. Page counts for a 22 minute animated show can run as long as 35 pages. On the flip side, it gives the writer much more control in the visual pacing and look of the episode (a selling point for the writer who aspires to direct).

It must be noted that there are many exceptions to this rule. Some animation directors don’t like the script to impinge on their artistic freedom. Others don’t have the time to prep the storyboard artist on how they should visually break down the script, and will send the script back for revisions if the action is “under-called.”   Some shows start with a storyboard first and then hire writers to fill in dialogue to supplement the gags that the artists have already come up with.

A good rule of thumb is to always ask the showrunner before you go to script, to what extent they want the shots called. If you’re writing on spec, I would suggest trying to get an actual shooting script of the show that you want to write for so you can confirm the format. If you can’t get a sample, call all the shots. You can always take them out afterwards.

So… what’s it take to sell a new animated TV series? For example, if I want to sell a new “traditional” series, I put together a pitch that details the world of the show, the characters, and some samples stories or episodes. But animation has a whole other component: the animation. So if someone’s pitching an animated project, do they need to already have drawings of the world and its characters? Or could having completed visuals hurt the project, since a studio or network may want voice in that development? Does a writer pitching an animated show need to have an artist attached to the project?

Having designs aren’t necessary. Having a great idea is.

Equally important is pitching the right project to the right studio at the right time.
If the studios like your idea, they have the numbers for hundreds of artists on speed dial.

That’s not to say that having some hip designs won’t help sell the project. If the designs are finished, and the scripts are done, the studio has to sink far less money into development to get an idea of what the series would actually be like.

HOWEVER, for a couple of reasons, I would proceed with caution if you want to include drawings with your pitch.

Firstly, many studios like to be involved in the development process. Others have a style (see Klasky-Csupo) that they don’t like to deviate from. If they think you are too locked into a style of drawing they don’t think fits in with what they want to do, they might pass on your project.

Secondly, your pitch is only as good as it’s worst part. If the drawings aren’t up to par with the writing, you’re only hurting yourself. If the designs appear amateurish, your writing will appear amateurish.

Thirdly, unless you are a professional animator/work in the field of animation, you are unlikely to have good perspective on what qualifies as a professional quality drawing/design for animation. The Captain Jetpack drawing that your friend the aspiring artist did, that to you looks like it came straight from a comic book, may be impossible to animate on a television budget. Or worse yet, to the discriminating (read: snobby) eyes of the studio’s artistic director, Captain Jetpack’s design might be simply deemed not to be any good at all.

So if you have a partner who you objectively know “rocks the house” as an artist, then collaborate away. Otherwise, stick with what you know, i.e., the script.

If you’re developing an animated project, how do you approach it differently because it’s animated? In other words, do you develop characters differently when they’re animated? Do you tell different kinds of stories? Does the animation free you, or inhibit you, as a storyteller?

Animation definitely frees you as a storyteller. Budget isn’t the same concern. It costs the same to have someone draw a house on Mars as it does one in Los Angeles. But I think you’re right when you say that it might, or should dictate the kinds of stories you tell.

When developing an animated property, I think a good question to ask yourself, is if this particular project is best served by animation. If one looks at the best animated films --Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ratatouile, Monster’s Inc. – we see a group of subjects, toys, fish, monsters, rats, etc. that would be incredibly expensive to try to do as live action films. In fact, trying to make any of those universes seem realistic, might border on impossible. Yet, when animated we get lost in them. A world that’s completely inaccessible becomes second nature to us.

So when developing your show, think what about it needs to be animated. Use that as additional inspiration in shaping where you go with it. What do you want to show the world that only animation can truly make come alive? If you can’t find that need, then maybe your project would be better off as a live action program.

While I routinely get killed for saying this, King of the Hill always strikes me as a program that could have best been served as a sitcom. As funny as it is, it’s still a little flat. Imagine any episode of that show filmed with John Goodman as Hank, Ryan Stiles as Dale, Katey Sagal as Peggy, Neil Patrick Harris as Boomhauer… heck, let Brittany Murphy, who does the voice of Luanne, play her in real life. You’re telling me she couldn’t nail white trash?... please.

The truth is for all the advances in CGI (Computer Generated Images), the human figure/actor encompasses a world of nuance that animation isn’t even close to recreating. (Especially when it’s as flat as King of the Hill) Let actors do what they do best -- act. Let animation do what it does best --create new worlds and new ways of telling stories that we’ve never seen before.

Once a new animated series enters development, how does the process proceed? Walk me through the evolution of a series from the moment it’s pitched to the moment it debuts on TV… and how the writer is involved.

Unlike in television where the writer/creator is often the driving force behind everything, in animation the writer is more akin to the screenwriter; a piece of a large puzzle. Again, this is contingent on who the writer is, what they’ve done before, who the producing partners are, etc. So with all those variables, perhaps it’s best if I just walk you through the standard animation development process.

Once a studio has decided to develop a project, they will quickly hire a director/art director. This person will work on developing the look and the animation style of the show while the writer is fleshing out the series bible. (Note: The “series bible” is a guide to the world and the characters of the show, not a religious manifesto) These things are often done in concert with one another, as the style of the animation can often determine the scope of the stories and the world. (What’s easy to do in 2D cell animation isn’t the same as what’s easy to do in 3D CGI)

A quick example: Squash and Stretch animation, where the characters are, well, squashed and stretched by boulders and various taffy-pulling machines gone wild, is difficult to animate with a computer. If you had a show that required a lot of physical squash and stretch gags, (SpongeBob SquarePants) it might be best to develop it as a hand drawn cell animation show. Whereas Robot Wars the Final Battle definitely would be best served as CGI.

Once the bible has been finalized (both in terms of look and written content) the studio will then proceed to hire writers. This process is different than in television where it’s typical to hire a staff of writers to break down and script the episodes of the series.

Animation writing is more of an open call audition/pitch process. The studio will call the agencies and tell them that they are going to be giving out writing assignments on a new/new season of a show. The interested writers will then show up for a big group meeting where the producer/showrunner will tell all the assembled writers what the new series is about, what kind of stories they are looking for, and how many scripts they are planning to buy. Each writer is then given a series bible and sent home. The writers are then required to put together pitches for episodes that they would like to write. If the showrunner likes the idea, they get the job and the chance to write the script they pitched… if the showrunner doesn’t like it; it’s back to the drawing board. From a writer’s POV this is an incredibly unfair process, as you often have to pitch 3-5 one-page story ideas just to land a single writing job. (Or worse, you write up 5 ideas on spec and none of them get bought) But since animation writing isn’t covered by the WGA, *sigh* the studios are able to set their own terms.

(A quick addendum – there are a few exceptions to the writing process that I’m describing. Most notably, FOX's primetime animation programming (The Simpsons, King of the Hill, American Dad, etc.) is covered by the WGA. These shows run writer’s rooms more akin to that of other primetime live-action sitcoms.)

Once a script is finished, it is sent to the art department, so they can design all the secondary characters and locations that are in the episode. (The primary characters and locations have already been designed and were in the bible.) Writers often need to ask what locations they can use/create before beginning a script, as each new element will need to be designed for animation. Think of it like a television show. On Desperate Housewives they have standing sets (their houses) already built for each of the main characters. When an episode takes place outside those pre-existing parameters, a new set has to be built, which takes time and money. Studios don’t like to spend money, and hate wasting time (which costs money). So if you want to be hired again, really be sure to ask your showrunner what the parameters are before you begin scripting (If they want the shots called, how many locations/characters you can create/ what the deadline is, etc.)

The next step is to record the episode. This is a stage where the animation writer actually has a little input. The writer is often invited to the recording session to provide clarity, intent, and on the spot rewrites for the voice actors. This is not to say they get to direct the voice recording. That’s the aptly named Voice Director’s job. But if an actor is butchering a joke, it’s entirely acceptable for the writer to politely mention it to the voice director, so they can coax out a better performance.

For the writer, the recording session is usually the end of the line. As we are focusing on animation writing, I’ll just quickly gloss over the remaining steps of production.

After the script is recorded it’s edited for time. (The actually running time of the episode – 12 minutes, 22 minutes, etc.) It’s then sent to the director and the storyboard artists who break it down into visual beats. The animators are then given the finished storyboard and voice recording to work from. They animate (with computers or pencils), shoot/scan it, and send it to an editor who puts it together. A post-production mix later, the episode’s ready for primetime.

For those writers who are interested in animation, but may know little about its processes or production, where can they start learning? Are there good books or magazines they can study?

Off the top of my head I’d say Animation Magazine (http://www.animationmagazine.net/) is a decent source for finding out what’s kinds of shows are being developed/produced.
There are scores of great books on animation. Hit the library. It’s good for that.

How about animation software? Are there some good beginners’ programs that writers can use to start playing and experimenting?

Um… you can get free trial versions of Flash and After Effects from Adobe. These are two of the most used animation and compositing programs. Other than that, search the web. New shareware programs pop up every day.

It seems that right now, with TV channels like Cartoon Network and Internet content exploding, there are more opportunities than ever for aspiring animators and animation writers. After all, an animated short can be produced entirely by one person and posted online… something that can’t be done with a live action film that requires cameras, lights, actors, etc. As media continues to evolve over the next few years, how will we see the world of animation change?

It’s already changed a lot. Ten years ago, 90% of the animation was done by hand. Today it’s a shock when someone pitches a show that’s not designed for the computer.   This trend is mostly driven by cost considerations. It’s far cheaper to do quality animation by computer than it is to something comparable do by hand.

As for how it’s continuing to change, the technology will continue to become cheaper and more accessible. The state of the art effects that you see in Ratatouille, will be free shareware that you can use animate on your computer. So basically anything that you can imagine you will be able to recreate.

Any last words of advice for aspiring animation writers and filmmakers out there?

The important thing to remember is that no matter how good the technology gets, no one will watch it if you aren’t telling a good story with interesting characters. It all comes back to the writer. Tell a good story and people will notice.

Thanks, Charlie!

If you enjoyed Charlie's advice, be sure to check out his web comic, Vince Germain, at www.vincegermain.com!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here's a quick look at some fun animation projects out there...

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