Brave

I finally got to see Pixar’s Brave and I really enjoyed it. By FAR the best animated film of last year. I can’t understand the many mediocre reviews I read about it. Perhaps because I am less a fanboy at my age and it takes me time to go see a film, I avoid the hype that accompanies such things. For instance the hype surrounding The Avengers completely baffles me. I thought it was a work of astounding nothingness. Endless fights that felt no more interesting than those atrocious last Star Wars films. Unless you really, really believe that seeing the Avengers in one film will change ones life in some fundamental way. But Brave worked for me. I expected so much less because of the constant talking down about it. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much. I had zero expectations. I enjoyed Wreck it Ralph, but the video game world isn’t that interesting to me. It worked well as a comedy and I was thinking it should have won the Oscar. But after seeing Brave, I don’t think there was a real contest.

And yes, it takes me a long time to see films these days. But I’m starting to catch up. My daughter and I are seeing more films in the theatre again after 6 or so years of hardly going.

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You can say it all with stick figures

Don Hertzfeldt’s back with a feature length animated film (or a combo of several shorter films that qualify as a feature for the Academy I guess). Don’s latest appears to definitively place him as the the Terrence Malick of animated stick figure films. And I mean that in a good way.

Click here to watch the trailer on Vimeo.

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SpongeBob in Stop Motion Pants

Good ol’ animation Monday. Back with a vengeance.

I hadn’t heard about this, but it sounds and looks cool. A SpongeBob Christmas special animated using stop motion. It looks pretty cool. A trailer plays on the linked page.

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Paddington Bear is in the house. Call the police.

It was just yesterday that I was telling my cat, why doesn’t someone take Paddington Bear (he who has kept the rain hat in fashion these past 60 years) and re-boot him? I mean it’s sooo old, like all watercolor and pen line stuff. So 19th century. What we need is some computer stuff on that bear. And a modern setting.

Maybe the holders of the IP need some cash, so maybe that’s good news. Otherwise I guess we will all be in for a treat when this gets made. I can only think this is somehow inspired by the Seth MacFarlane R rated film about a grown mans teddybear who is foul mouthed and angry. It’s exactly like Paddington!

Honestly who knows if this is good or bad. I enjoy the early Paddington material. Maybe this will introduce more people to that. Right? Disney tried the ‘re-imagaining’ of Winnie the Pooh in a 2004 TV show. It had a girl detective and they all solved mysteries. And it was a disaster that is never spoken of.

What’s amazing is that the kids books from 50 or 60 years ago are still worth this effort. This book originated in 1958 and still carries enough mindshare to be valuable. So if it is timeless, why make it more timely?

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It’s all about them…Characters before plot.

Character vs. plot. Like the friction between dogs and cats, liberals and conservatives, bakers and monkeys, there will never be a quiet moment between which is more important to fiction. Actually I think most people agree it’s character. But I liked my intro.

Every editor, every development executive, my mom – they will all tell you that characters are more important than plot. That a great book, a great TV series (for kids or adults) a great film – is about characters the audience likes and wants to spend time with. Those characters can be under the ocean, in space, in a desert, they can be dogs, humans or monsters. But the characters need to draw you in.

So recently I was a little surpirsed when friends were sharing ideas for kids books and they all started with the location/setting/plot device. I was introduced to strange worlds, bizarre underground caves, even an old western town – before I met anyone. It’s a lonely way to talk about a story. By placing that information first, the creators seemed to be admitting that character is taking a back seat to location and/or plot.

Whenever I am trying to flesh out a story I start writing about the main character, or one of the main characters. (writing 101, I know). I write a page about the character before I ever TALK about where they are or sometimes, what they are. And when I develop the story I try and look back at this start and remember that no matter where the story takes this character, the character comes first. Their failures, their desires, their resentments. Even in a picture book this can be helpful.

Now that I’ve written this, I will work even harder to make sure I follow it!

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Animation Monday – The Boy in the Bubble

This site was forwarded to me recently. I don’t know that much about it. But the trailer has some nice design and the short film is busy winning awards.

The Boy in the Bubble narrated by Alan Rickman and directed by Kealan O’Rourke. It’s very intriguing to look at, the 3D has a nice feel to it. The tone and look makes it seem somewhat inspired by illustration more than the typical 3D animation techniques. At the site you can watch some of his short films, live action and animated.

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Animation Monday- Paperman

Paperman is an animated short produced by Disney Feature Animation, I think.

I’ve heard a bit about it, and its blending of traditional and 3D, but I have not seen any art, but what’s on this poster. According to the article on Cartoon Brew it will premiere widely as a short attached to Wreck-It Ralph when it’s released in November. I do love that poster though…

More from Cartoon Brew here.

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Animation Monday

Mark Kennedy has an excellent post about using space in a drawing (he’s discussing storyboards) to create an attitude. How you design the composition of your scene can help define it for an audience as serious or funny, sad or happy.

It’s a great read and much of what he digs into works well when considering the composition of picture book pages as well. Why is one drawing ‘funnier’ than another? How do you design a scene (or a two page spread) to be as funny as it can? And what color palettes tip people off that something is supposed to be funny or not?

A lot of picture books go overboard using contrived and complicated angles in their drawings that don’t help tell the story. They often make things hard to visually understand and complicate the message of a given page.

He sums-up a similar point up the following way: “So flat visuals are great for setting a funny tone and visuals with depth are great for setting a dramatic tone.” And this point works not only in film but also on a page.

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About a Book Wednesday

Another one of my favorite illustrators is Michael Paraskevas. You might be familiar with his Ferocious Beast books written by Betty Paraskevas. They were also turned into an animated show.

Another one of my favorite books he illustrated was The Kids From Room 402. I saw some of the original art from this book at a gallery in Los Angeles years ago. It really inspired me. The book is beautifully painted and a funny read, but it’s not so easy to find a copy. If you see one, grab it.

He has illustrated a new book written by Sarah Maizes. It’s due out in May. It’s called On My Way to the Bath. Looks like plenty of silly bath-time fun.

Sarah’s Maizes website.

And check out the The web home of Mr. Parasekevas. Comics, paintings, illustrations, sculpture, green monkeys and more!

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Animation Monday

To continue a discussion from last week, there have been quite a few feature films based on picture books. At first this seems an odd combination. A picture book is constructed to be short, clean, almost zen like. These days picture books books longer than 900 words are rare.

Some picture books are high concept and speak a cinematic language. For instance, as was brought up in the discussion, Chris Van Allusburg books have been turned into live action feature films. Jumanji (Jumanji 2 which was not based on a book, but an extension of the film), The Polar Express and Zathura are big spectacle, Hollywood films. Am I forgetting one?

Visit Chris Van Allusburg’s site here.

And Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things are was another live action adaptation in the past few years.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was an animated feature that differed greatly from the picture book by Judi and Ron Barrett. But they kept the million dollar idea, food falling from the sky.

Then you have The Dr. Seuss film library. The Lorax is the most recent animated adaptation, but I haven’t seen it yet. So I can’t make fun of it or tell you how wonderful it is. Each time they released a trailer it looked better to me. But they were making Seuss films way back in 1953. The 5,000 fingers of Dr. T is not based on a book (I don’t believe) but The good Dr. wrote the film himself. I’ve never made it through a whole screening. He was wise to stick with picture books.

For many, including myself, the best adaptation of Seuss is still the Chuck Jones directed, animated TV special from 1966. That Grinch is the one and only Grinch to me. I am too scared by the posters to watch the Jim Carey version.

Looking at even smaller scale origins for feature films you can find many films and TV shows/specials based on comic strips. The comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz has been turned into numerous films and of course the TV specials still air and draw huge ratings. They also adapted Li’l Abner into a film and a broadway play. The list of adapted comic strips is pretty long from Little Orphan Annie to Garfield.

Titles like Prince Valiant (film released in 1954) stayed in the public eye all the way from the golden age of comic strips to the 1970′s.

And the list of comic books turned into films or TV shows…well you can research that yourself! 

So feature films have looked for inspiration from picture books, comic strips, graphic novels and of course comic books for a long time. It shouldn’t be a surprise to see them continuing to do it. And these days having a title with some preexisting market awareness probably trumps a lot of original but unexposed ideas in Hollywood.

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