The Animation Options Blog

Been remiss in my blog posts and wondering what to jump back in with. “Delgo” suing “Avatar” over the definition of ugly? Nah. How about Disney buying Marvel! Now THAT’S big. Looks like Steve Jobs didn’t completely clean them out.

From Variety…

DISNEY TO BUY MARVEL FOR $4 BILLION

Deal requires antitrust review

LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Co. says it is acquiring Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing characters like Iron Man and Spider-Man into the Disney family.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters.

Disney said Monday that Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own.

It said the boards of Disney and Marvel have both approved the transaction, but it requires an antitrust review and the approval of Marvel shareholders.

“The Incredibles 2″ is going to be AWESOME!

With respect to my January 2nd blog post “On The Chinese Animation Market”, here is some equal time for the good ol’ U.S. of A.

THE AMERICAN ANIMATION INDUSTRY

The U.S. film industry is primarily based in Hollywood, California but has spread to other North American regions in recent years. In 1894, the world’s first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York. In 1938, Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was released during a lackluster period of filmmaking from the major studios, and quickly became the highest-grossing film to that time. Interestingly, “Snow White” was an independently-produced animation production that did not feature any major studio talent. The United States has been at the forefront of film and animation development ever since, with a well-documented history familiar to most, and too lengthy to fully recount here.

The Walt Disney Studios grew from “pioneering upstart” to become the defining and dominant force in animation, with an unparalleled record of animated features and short films. This success in animation ultimately grew to encompass live-action films, theme parks, broadcast television, publishing, and a wide spectrum of other revenue streams under the auspices of the publicly traded Walt Disney Company. The renaissance of animated features at the Walt Disney Company in the late-80’s and early-90’s, starting with “The Little Mermaid” and culminating with “The Lion King”, prompted a wave of aspiring studios to get into the game, usually with poor box office results. However, within the last decade the success of Disney’s animated feature films suffered from the inevitable ebb and flow of this cyclical industry, as Pixar and direct competitor DreamWorks made incursions upon audience territory formerly ruled by the Walt Disney Company. Disney’s purchase of Pixar in 2006 is widely regarded as a bold corrective measure, but at a cost of more than $7 billion USD, it is one which has yet to play out profitably. Meanwhile, the many other animation studios in the United States, large and small, make their marks where they can in film, broadcast, internet and wireless media.

The drive to produce a spectacle on the movie screen has shaped the American film and animation industry for better and for worse. Major studios such as Disney, DreamWorks and Sony depend on a handful of enormously expensive releases each year in order to remain profitable, relying upon high production values, star power and massive marketing campaigns to attract the huge audiences required. The average cost per film among the major U.S. studios was more than $106 million USD in 2007, with 1/3 of that amount dedicated to marketing costs. It is reported that at least 60% of the total budget for DreamWorks’ animated hit “Kung Fu Panda” was dedicated to advertising and distribution costs.

While a successful blockbuster can reap substantial profits, there is a considerable risk of failure. Most studios release films that both over-perform and under-perform in a given year. The major U.S. studios supplement their large-scale productions with independent films, created with relatively small budgets outside of the studio corporation. Independent films and animation projects typically emphasize a high level of creativity and innovation, leveraging on niche marketing and critical acclaim to garner an audience. A successful independent film can have a high profit-to-cost ratio, while a failure will incur relatively minimal losses, encouraging major studios to engage in co-production or distribution relationships with these productions in addition to their high-stakes releases. Some independent companies such as Miramax have in fact become well-financed divisions of major studios. The big studios can thus capitalize on the success of the “independent” distribution division, while the “independent” distributors maintain a certain level of autonomy within the larger corporate structure. The independent companies are able to produce animated films of comparatively smaller budgets for distribution in targeted viewer markets.

THE AMERICAN ANIMATION MARKET

In 2007, the North American domestic box office grossed over $9.6 billion USD on almost 39,000 screens, a revenue increase of more than 5% over 2006. Additionally, North American motion picture distributors generated more than $7.6 billion USD in worldwide revenues in 2007, an increase of almost 6% from the year before. Despite the growing popularity of foreign films, American productions still dominate the international film markets. While more than 60% of U.S. box office earnings come from overseas, non-U.S. films currently occupy less than 5% of the American market. In 2007, the domestic box office revenues for U.S. animated feature films totaled more than $2.9 billion USD, with “Shrek the Third” and “Ratatouille” accounting for more than $500 million USD combined. Internationally, U.S. animated feature films generated more than $1.8 billion USD. “Finding Nemo” has earned nearly $900,000,000 USD, over 60% of which is from overseas.

Movies continue to draw more people in the U.S. than theme parks and sporting events combined, with admission prices significantly lower than alternative entertainment options. The core consumer base for animated feature films is the family audience. Although family films in the U.S. (G & PG-rated) have historically outperformed more restricted content, the family market continues to be underserved. While the average profitability of G-rated U.S. films between 1989 to 2003 was $79 million USD, G-rated films accounted for only 5% of the market share during that same period. On a related note, an independent study of the U.S. film market between 1995 to 2006 showed that computer-generated animated films outperformed all other feature film genres by a 10:1 ratio ($153 million USD average domestic B.O. return vs. $15 million USD average domestic B.O. return). Also noteworthy is that while the overall number of movies released in U.S. theaters remained stable from 2006-2007, 18 more independent films were released in 2007 than in 2006.

The United States is home to dedicated children’s and animation networks that account for the majority of animation hours viewed. Formerly, the three broadcast networks of ABC, CBS and NBC dominated the television animation market with programming concentrated on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings, but this paradigm has dissolved in favor of cable channels such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network which run animation at all hours.

The Internet is an important source of movie information. A study conducted by the MPAA and Yahoo! found that 73% of U.S. moviegoers use the Internet to conduct research before going to the theater. Moviegoers who research films online are more likely to see a movie on opening weekend, go to the theater more often, and see some films more than once in the theater. Internet advertising expenditures continue to grow each year, but television advertising remains the largest expense at more than 1/3 of total marketing costs. About 25% of marketing costs for U.S. films is dedicated to cable TV, radio, magazines and billboards, while another 20% is spent on other non-media promotional outlets and on market research.

On the home technology front, one in seven U.S. moviegoers has invested to a great degree in content delivery and/or hardware for their households. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this segment of moviegoers goes to the movie theater more often than their lower tech counterparts.

WALL-E upgraded his hardware from a Los Angeles Film Critic’s Award to an Oscar with a win for Best Animated Feature Film at the 81st Annual Academy Awards, proving that a sufficiently strong start can overcome a weak finish.

Congratulations to the folks at Pixar on Y.A.L. (Yet Another Laurel)!

And kudos to Kunio Kato for “La Maison En Petits Cubes’” win in the Best Animated Short Film category.

Things can’t be too cheerful right now at Disney Animation Studios. It’s bad enough that the artists have had to endure ongoing layoffs, increased hours and pay cuts. But now, while waiting for the other shoe to drop after the unfortunate box office performance of “Bolt”, they’ve had that shoe thrown at them by “Disney Legend” Floyd Norman, the Andy Rooney of animation, who writes the following for mouse-dropping-sniffer Jim Hill:

What can Walt Disney Animation Studios do to save itself? Ditch digital

I’m going to apologize in advance for today’s column because I’m sure that it’s going to make a lot of people angry. I have a plan that some might call radical. But it’s a plan that I’m afraid we need. Tough times demand tough decisions, and here’s one to consider: Get rid of digital animation at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Yep. I said it. I think that WDAS should stop producing CG animated features and should instead concentrate on reviving hand-drawn animation.

Now, lest you think this is some kind of impassioned plea about the “purity” of hand-drawn animation — think again. This is not some geeky, fan boy rant about which is the better cartoon medium. Far from it. This is pure business stuff. Corporate strategy, some might call it. Tough things that you gotta do when running a business during tough times.

Animation has been going through a fair amount of turmoil over the past few years. Some “business geniuses” had the bright idea that animation was going through a paradigm shift. This was all because a new tool had been invented. A tool that gave us the ability to move objects in a computer. According to these suits, this brilliant new tool was what would move animation moving to the next level. Hand-drawn animation had reached its limit, they said. Digital animation was the new paradigm. Hand-drawn was dead, and rightly so.

Hold on a second. If hand-drawn animation is outmoded and passé, then how do you explain Disney’s ability to continue to sell “Pinocchio,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Peter Pan” in every new technology that comes along? How many times has Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment repackaged & resold the Company’s old hand-drawn features on DVD with new added features or new digital transfers?

Kids watch these movies over & over again not because of the film-making technology involved, but because they’re good. The problem here isn’t with the mode — it’s with the message. The reason that any one film fails at the box office isn’t because of the technology. It’s all about whether the stories are any good; whether the characters resonate with an audience. We have to care whether the hero wins and the villain loses. Unbelievably, it’s as simple as that.

So you see, this is not really a discussion of the merits of one film production method over another. Each has its points and that’s perfectly fine. I embrace both, of course, with the nod going to hand-drawn. But then again, that’s just me. However, we’re not here to discuss art. We’re here to talk business.

Serious question now: Does The Walt Disney Company really need a digital animation studio? You bet your megabytes they do. Luckily, they own the finest digital animation studio in the world. A company that consistently turns out some of the greatest animated features ever produced, and will — in all likelihood — continue to do so. Now comes the next tough business question: Are two such studios really a legitimate need?

The trouble is, Walt Disney Animation Studios is already getting lost in the crowd. That’s the problem with digital animation. There’s nothing that truly distinguishes one film from another. At one time, WDAS was unique. It was the premiere animation studio in the world. It was what everybody who aspired to be an animator wanted to work. Walt Disney, along with his incredible staff, set the standard and raised the bar so high, competitors could only dream of hopefully coming close. Once the leader in a business it completely dominated, Walt Disney Animation Studios is now reduced to playing catch up.

Walt never followed the competition. He was always too busy leading

In this ever-growing field of animated films from numerous competitors both foreign and domestic, The Walt Disney Company still has a hole card. A card that’s evident even now as work continues on WDAS’ first hand-drawn animated feature in years. A movie that could restore Walt Disney Animation Studios’ identity and remind audiences around the world that the Company they remember from their childhood is still very much alive. That it is already beginning to awaken from a deep digital slumber like some beautiful princess in a fairy tale.

Once again, this is not an artistic discussion. This is not a debate over which medium is more viable, or what audiences prefer. This is a business decision that will be made one day, and that day is quickly approaching.

From time to time, I’ve taken heat from angry CG guys for being too critical of their recent movie efforts. Most seem to think I was beating up on them because I had a vested interest in hand-drawn animated features. In truth, I was never taking issue with the medium — rather the poor films that were being made. I have little doubt that — with today’s column — I’ll once again be accused of “computer bashing.” As nervous technicians fear future downsizing and the loss of their jobs.

That said, I still think that it’s time that Walt Disney Animation Studios grew up. It’s time that WDAS realized that it’s not the cool young kid on the block anymore. Get over it! So you’re not young, hip, or cool. Big deal. You’re still the great grand-daddy of feature animation. And that’s a very good thing to be. In fact, that may wind up being the very thing that saves Walt Disney Animation Studios.

So what to do? I think that WDAS should capitalize on its own historic legacy, remind would-be moviegoers of those not-so-distant days when hand-drawn animation was still considered magical. When the animators who worked at Disney were looked upon as artists. And it took decades — not months — to master this craft.

Finally, I have a question for all you executives and managers who keep looking at the bottom line. Which do you think is more expensive? Software and workstations or pencils and paper? Servers and digital infrastructure or wooden desks? Yeah, I know. There’s always digital post, but you get the idea.

Hand-drawn traditional animation is Disney’s past. But it can also be Disney’s future. What Walt Disney Animation Studios really needs to do is lead a modern renaissance of hand-drawn animation.

And when they do that … Guess what? The magic — because it is magic — will return.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation (back when it was known as such) for 12 years, and that I am one of the “angry CG guys” that Mr. Norman has “taken heat” from in the past. Far be it from me to argue with a legend, but my Achilles heel is that I just can’t abide flawed reasoning - especially when it is presented in the guise of an objective, authoritative view that is in reality motivated by ignorance and prejudice.

Does Disney have its problems? Yes. Did the poor box office performance of “Bolt” help the case of the digital artists? No. Does it sting to have paid $7.4 billion dollars for a “quick fix” that is nowhere in sight? Unquestionably. Are the days of digital production at Disney Animation Studios numbered? Probably.

But shuttering digital on Riverside won’t “save Disney”, as Mr. Norman (and everyone else) will realize once it comes to pass. What will save Disney is a return to the fine storytelling tradition forged by Walt, fumbled by Eisner and intercepted by Lasseter. And the restoration of that tradition takes time, as someone who lionizes decades-long animation apprenticeships should know.

For someone who observes (correctly) that…

The reason that any one film fails at the box office isn’t because of the technology. It’s all about whether the stories are any good; whether the characters resonate with an audience. We have to care whether the hero wins and the villain loses. Unbelievably, it’s as simple as that.

…Mr. Norman spends an awful lot of time explaining how the expulsion of a particular media will solve Disney’s problems. Huh? I’m confused. If it’s the “message” and not the “mode”, then why are we focusing on the mode? Is it because the author of the article is a story guy, and that the real problem cuts too close to home? Or is it because of thinly-veiled prejudices, revealed through references to digital artists as “nervous technicians” (akin to someone claiming to have nothing against minorities because they respect “those people”)? Will shuttering digital help pull “Rapunzel” out of its seven-year story spiral? Doubt it.

Time will tell how audiences respond to Disney’s new 2-D effort, “The Princess and the Frog”. I hope it does well, and I hope the powers-that-be don’t make another snap decision on a par with the short-lived “traditional is dead” pronouncement. Mr. Norman likes to dress up his opinions in terms of a hard-nosed business stance, so let’s examine a few of these:

1. Does The Walt Disney Company need two digital studios? No. And yes. Does your family need two cars? No. And yes. “Need” is a very subjective word. If Disney finds that it makes business sense to keep making digital films in Burbank and Emeryville, then they indeed “need” two digital studios. The poor B.O. of “Meet the Robinsons” and “Bolt” don’t bode well on this front, but this will play out on a spreadsheet, without calling for CG heads on animation disks. Undermining Mr. Norman’s credibility on this front is how he conveniently flips from praising one digital studio as turning out “some of the greatest animated features ever produced”, and two sentences later goes on to pronounce: “That’s the problem with digital animation. There’s nothing that truly distinguishes one film from another”. Once again… huh???
2. The article uses the DVD home video sales of Disney classics such as “Pinocchio”, “Sleeping Beauty” and “Peter Pan” to justify the call for 2D over 3D, and to forecast the future success of 2D Disney theatrical releases. This remains to be seen. With all due respect to the classics (which I enjoy in my own personal collection of 2D, 3D and stop-motion animated films), “the kids” aren’t buying them. The parents are buying them… along with anything else they can plop a screaming child in front of for 90 minutes of peace and quiet. Will this pragmatic domestic survival tactic translate into box office gold? A princess and a frog are going to find out.
3. Mr. Norman maintains that traditionally-animated films are somehow cheaper than CG-animated films because servers and workstations cost more than pencils and paper - the same sort of simplistic thinking that caused animation executives to assume that CG-animated films would automatically be cheaper than traditionally-animated films. The reality is that 3D films can leverage on efficiencies far greater than their 2D counterparts, when planned properly. They can also burn through a remarkable amount of money when planned poorly. Or when the story department can’t get their act together.

Hand-drawn animation can truly be part of Disney’s future, but not as some “old-timey” relic of days gone by. As anyone who actually saw “Bolt” can attest, Disney Animation Studios has quite a bit to offer the digital world - a benefit not only to the folks up at Emeryville but also to the colleagues with pencils behind their ears down the hall in Burbank. Walt was not one to shy away from new technology, and never one to give up and concede defeat. Something every Disney Legend should know.

My best wishes for future success to ALL the fine artists at Walt Disney Animation Studios!

KG

Congratulations to WALL-E for its Best Picture win from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Who knew that a movie filled with trash could be so seductive? Of course, when assembled by the fine folks at Pixar, it’s hardly surprising at all.

A joke going around Hollywood (so I hear from Beijing) is that some of the Los Angeles film critics voted for the movie they saw in the first half of WALL-E, while the other film critics voted for the movie they saw in the second half of WALL-E. Clearly, this film suffered from a case of split identity, but I don’t think it was WALL-E’s sojourn into outer space that made it seem like two different films. Rather, I believe that it was something more fundamental: WALL-E is a weak hero - not in the “good” sense, but in a poor storytelling sense. And coming from the fine folks at Pixar, that is surprising.

In a good film, EVERYTHING should impact upon, and emanate from, an active hero. Unfortunately in WALL-E, we have a rather reactive “hero” from whom much is taken and little is given. Eve completely steals the action from WALL-E, who is left with little more to do than be in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time. But the biggest flaw in WALL-E is this: the REALIZATION moment of the film lives not with the hero (where it should), but with a secondary character: the corpulent captain of the Axiom. What does WALL-E learn? Apparently nothing. And how does WALL-E feel about humans after discovering that they abandoned him to clean up after the party? We’ll never know. As in Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.” WALL-E merely gets his memory back to square one, and is satisfied to finally hold hands with Eve while self-indulgent humans stand gleefully around a seedling that is sure to be wiped out in the next massive dust storm (forgot about those?). So, we can expect WALL-E2 to feature the humans ditching earth again after pizzas fail to grow on trees.

But, hey, at least the fire extinguisher gag was cute.

Questions about rendering are common to producers of CG content that is leveraged across multiple output media such as television, film and DVD. Let us assume for the sake of discussion that we are creating a hypothetical “backdoor pilot” of 75 minutes in length that may be released theatrically on film, broadcast on TV and ultimately end up on DVD. Let us also assume that we have settled upon an acceptable render time of 1 hour per frame, and have furthermore decided to work at a “film” frame rate of 24 frames per second.

FRAME RATE

Working at 24 fps is recommended for a number of reasons. In the first place, most animators are comfortable with it as a metric within which to work and to time movement (walk cycles, etc…). Working at 24 fps also tends to result in snappier animation than working at 30 fps (especially when “twos” are employed). While one might choose to animate at 30 fps (29.97 fps) for projects that are solely intended for video broadcast, 24 fps is generally preferred - even for projects with divergent final destinations. This is the case even when taking into account “3:2 pulldown”: the process of converting 24 fps material to 29.97 fps. While telecine conversion (which incorporates 3:2 pulldown) has been common to our industry for decades, it can result in troublesome visual artifacts – especially where lateral motion is concerned. And while there are ways to address these artifacts, that time and money is better spent elsewhere.

Simply put, the rule of thumb is: cater to your primary output medium, and adjust for the rest. For theatrical release, 24 fps is of course entirely compatible with the native frame rate of film, and also of digital projectors. Similarly for DVD, the MPEG-2 standard encodes source material at 24 frames per second. A flag is inserted within the MPEG-2 data stream that instructs conventional DVD players to perform a 3:2 pulldown in real-time (with the potential for artifacts). However, increasingly popular “progressive scan” DVD players react to this flag in a different way: creating high-quality, progressive video in real-time, with no degradation. These advantages should also translate to television as the Congressional mandate for 100% nationwide DTV broadcast takes effect on February 17, 2009.

FRAME RENDERING

There are two basic approaches to frame rendering: a global approach in which everything in the scene is rendered all at once, and a composite approach in which the scene is rendered in layers. Each approach has its pros & cons. The global approach treats the rendered scene like a live-action shoot in which everything is filmed at once, for better or worse. (Pixar has been one of the last notable adherents to this approach, but even they have turned to layered renders in recent films.) On the plus side, the global approach simplifies render organization and facilitates high-end, physically based global illumination. On the minus side, loading an entire scene into memory at once can result in a prohibitive footprint for complex environments. In addition, changes to any small part of a scene require that the entire environment be re-rendered. (In fact, the folks in Emeryville faced such prohibitively long renders on “Cars” that they ironically chose to address minor issues with digital “paint fixes” - just as one would on a live-action plate.)

The much more common layered approach distributes scenes to the renderer in layers defined by the artist and then assembled in a compositing package. While this approach requires careful organization, it also affords the ability to make targeted adjustments to specific elements without re-rendering the entire scene. Global illumination effects are either “faked” on the layers, or else are employed within specific layers (such as on Disney’s “Meet The Robinsons”, where global illumination was used in the background of certain scenes, with the characters composited atop). Either way, we should consider 1 hour of total render time per frame (on average) as a “reasonable” goal for an economical production – whether that hour is spent on one global render, or on a composite of layered renders.

RENDER FARMS

The fundamental components of a render farm are pretty simple: a collection of CPUs on a network for “cooking” the frames, a rendering application (such as RenderMan) to provide the “recipe”, a queue manager to distribute the scenes, and a network-accessible hard disk array for storing the data. As such, render farms can be created relatively cheaply from scratch, or purchased “pre-built” for a premium. But as with everything, the devil is in the details. Case in point: on “Cars”, Pixar saw their render times skyrocket to 10 hours per frame! And it turned out that the problem was not the CPUs themselves, but the NFS (“network file system”) server heads, which at only 1Gb of memory apiece were ill-equipped to handle the incredibly data-intensive scenes.

Moving to 32Gb server heads and replacing NFS with SAN (“storage area network”) - in which the devices appear to the operating system as locally attached - brought the “Cars” render times back down from 10 hours per frame to a much more reasonable 1 hour per frame. The moral of the story: not all render farms are created equal.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

So what does this mean to our hypothetical 75-minute backdoor pilot? At a frame rate of 24 fps, our 75-minute pilot amounts to a total of 108,000 frames. Assuming an average render time of 1 hour per frame, our project will take 108,000 hours to render: 4,500 CPU days, or a little more than 12 CPU years (the amount of time it would take one CPU to render the whole thing). At first glance, that may seem like a defeating number, but consider that 12 CPU years only takes four-and-a-half days to calculate on a 1000-CPU render farm, and a 3000-CPU render farm can render the entire project in only one-and-a-half days!

However, an animated film has never been made in which the entire project was forecast perfectly without preview and then sent off for a singular “first & final” render. Scenes are rendered and re-rendered many times in the troubleshooting of problems and in the pursuit of artistic quality. The more efficient this iteration is, the better. So truly, it is the WORKFLOW and not the hardware that makes or breaks a film.

And that is where production experience comes in.

The Daily Star reports today:

BATMAN actor MICHAEL KEATON will star in the forthcoming TOY STORY movie. Keaton will voice Barbie’s boyfriend Ken in the animated Disney film, which is slated for release in 2010.

A source tells Britain’s Daily Star newspaper, “There’s an embrace (between Barbie and Ken) but not kissing. Toy executives want to keep Barbie’s squeaky clean image.”

However, according to unconfirmed reports, Ken does a tongue tango with Woody in Act III… much to Buzz’s chagrin.

“If being anatomically correct is wrong, then I don’t want to be right!”

Today was the first full day of the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference in Los Angeles. One of the unexpected pleasures is this year’s Art & Design Gallery. My old friend Yoichiro Kawaguchi (pictured above) had an impressive display of new work including colorful, sea-creature-inspired resin sculptures done up in his inimitable surrealistic style. It was interesting to see how these have evolved from some crayon sketches that Kawaguchi showed at his talk in Taipei during the fall of 2005.

My favorite portion of the gallery was the “Design & Computation” area - examining analytical & generative methods for design, and exploring design & fabrication technologies. Rapid prototyping was in pervasive use, featuring structures that could only be expressed with the aid of digital technology. The curation was suitably low-key, letting the work speak for itself (very profoundly at that). Of particular note is the conceptual and aesthetic intersection between textiles and architecture (”woven buildings”), which was very evident in this show. While the work may strike some as impersonal, it is to me the purest expression of a thought possible. And given our daily interaction with textiles and architecture, very “personal” indeed.

After lunch, I joined most everyone else at the conference over in Hall B for Ed Catmull’s keynote address. Ed touched on a number of topics in his reflective, erudite address on “managing the creative environment”. One of the first things he brought up is the widespread lip service that everyone in our industry pays to the “Story is king.” mantra - whether they are creating good stories or not. (In fact, it was funny during a later talk to hear a speaker rattle off, “Of course, we all know story is king.” as though he just had to get that obligatory observation out of the way.)

Ed discussed many aspects of animation production that I cover with my consulting clients, including: how successes mask problems, how complexity is best addressed with rigorous organization but free communication, the importance of community, and the primacy of people over ideas. However, one thing I’d like a bit more information on is the creation of a “safe” creative environment for artists and directors. Ed made the point (which I’ve heard many times before) about how directors are not required to act on notes from their colleagues and/or executives - that directors are trusted to make the best decision for their films based upon a consideration of critical notes weighed against their vision for the project. So, what then brings about the removal of a Jan Pinkava or a Chris Sanders? Who makes this call, and based on what criteria? And if the precedent of the axe is looming, how “safe” can any creative ever truly feel? (I posed these questions directly to Ed and John at a meeting once upon a time, but never really got an answer.)

Inquiring minds want to know!