Family Guy Flash!

Over at Cold Hard Flash, I tipped Aaron Simpson off to an interview Howard Stern had with Seth MacFarlane and who both agree Flash is synonymous with bad animation.

I’m a big fan of Family Guy. But I don’t think of Seth MacFarlane as a cartoonist or animator. I instead admire him as an absolutely brilliant comedy writer. In particular the very thing most people, like Southpark’s Matt Stone and Trey Parker, criticize him for; his use and over use of the “cut away” gag.

“The Cut-Away” makes Family Guy scripts modular, where any gag could be placed anywhere in any script. That comes in handy for script by committee, which is how animation is done in the big leagues. I imagine a scenario where an executive suit at FOX says something aggravatingly vague like, “Page 18 is not funny enough. Punch it up.” Seth pulls out a note book chocked full of non sequiturs like “Peter fights a chicken for 5 minutes” or “Hitler with an Oprah-like talk show”. Then he picks one gag, changes the script to something like, “Peter comments on the action and says, ‘Hey, that’s strange… almost as strange as that TV show I saw last night’” and we cut away to the Hitler talk show. BAM! Instant fix! Less work!

This story writing fix is like playing tennis without a net. The rules of writing go out the window! Forget writing gags that have something to do with the story or character! But before you give Seth an “F” in writing, remember it’s the incongruity that makes it funny! The longer the Peter verses chicken fight drags out, the funnier it becomes! I’m one who find this to be both brilliant and economical as well.

But to writers like Matt Stone and Trey Paker, this guy Seth is screwing everything up! I also am a big fan of Matt and Trey’s South Park. Again, I do not think of these guys as cartoonists or animators, I admire them as brilliant writers, but even more so than Seth. First, if you take a look at South Park credits, these two guys write EVERY episode. Is that even humanly possible? I imagine these guys to have mushrooms growing under their eyes from never stepping outside in 10 years. And South Park has been consistently funny for over a decade! For a season you could say it was luck. But by now, these guys are proven geniuses! I have no idea how they’ve written so much so well for so long, but they have.

As far as the art is concerned, while Seth cheated writing scripts, Matt and Trey cheated visually, making “breaking the rules” a style instead of an error. If your animation style is so difficult that only a few guys can do it, you’re pretty much stuck hiring them, even if they’re assholes. But Matt and Trey are able to hire who they want rather than who they need. Plus they can keep the whole production local rather than ship jobs overseas where the pay is lower. (Check the ending credits of Family Guy. NO ANIMATION is done in the US!) Plus, if an executive calls for last minute, ridiculous fixes, (a complete impossibility, I know, but let’s try to imagine it) these guys can make the fix in a couple of hours. Impossible to do otherwise without filing chapter 11 by the end of the month. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are  brilliant!

One guy not mentioned in this, but I’m going to mention for contrast, is John Kricfalusi. This guy is perhaps the best living cartoonist, who can draw that silly style better than anybody! Certainly a real deal extraordinary cartoonist and animator. I imagine his productions having difficulty though. First, John draws his scripts. Seth, Trey and Matt have one up on him already, since you can write faster than draw. If John draws “100 hippos dance” and they write “100 hippos dance” they’ll submit the idea to the executives, who’ll make gratuitous changes like “Make the hippos, cats”, they could make the changes three times over before John even finishes the first round of rough drawings!

Second, since Kricfalusi is slopping over with God-given talent… is there anybody on earth who can do what he does? And do it faster?! I’d imagine John to spend lots of time “teaching” his crew and even saying, “Oh.. screw it… just give this to me.. I’ll do it.” And the deadline and budget is blown or Mr. K becomes frustrated, I’m not sure what’d be worse. In contrast, Matt and Trey have a style so simple that anybody with a pulse can do the work. In fact, even two guys who are genius writers with no cartooning ability what-so-ever can push the animator aside to “show them how it’s done.” (Matt and Trey both admitted in previous interviews that they preferred their style to be so basic so as to keep creative control in their hands.)

Seth’s style may be more complex than South Park, which is not saying much, but it’s simple enough that 100% of the animation can be shipped to Asia, where labor is so cheap the executives can afford to give each other big bonuses. That may be a crappy thing to say to American animators, but seriously, every animator dreams of becoming Seth, not working for him. While it’s not what the Democrats want you to say, the Republican outsourcing trick is what makes that dream possible. The other scenario is to cut Seth’s recent 100 million dollar deal to 100 thousand dollars so you can afford American labor. Still yet another scenario is the one Kricfalusi faces; get it done half-ass and on time or do it right and file bankruptcy. John Kricfalusi’s other worldly talent must be both a blessing and a curse.

And lastly as far as Howard Stern, this is another guy I’m a big fan of! Not involved with animation, he’s a classic real life underdog who worked his way up to success, millions and a hot wife! He kept his loyalty to his fans and the other underdogs who worked with him along the way. (I think that’s something more of an achievement than his phenomenal success.) But I do have to defend my friend Mark Marek who did Stern’s pilot. Mark is the least “Flash” guy I know. So I’m bewildered by MacFarlene’s compliment to Stern on his “good eye” for recognizing bad animation as Flash animation. Mark’s work was not bad animation. If it was, Flash had nothing to do with it. Anyone’s “eye” could see that.

In the end, the way I see it, the only comedy writing rule is to be funny, tennis net or not. If you want to make lots of money on your cartoon, keep your animation over head low. If you want to keep the animation work in the United States keep your overhead even lower. Flash offers a solution to do both, but you need to be a cartoonist or animator to understand how.  Other options include outsourcing your work the Republican way or to become an executive /  creator willing to take a significant pay cut and “spread the wealth”.

Syndication Idea v. Syndication Investor

The Pixel Pintura, a YouTube user, sent an interesting comment on my YouTube channel about my Family Pants syndication idea.   I couldn’t answer it entirely in the small YouTube comment box, so I’m posting an explanation here.

Basically Joel said the Family Pants online syndication idea sounded good and wondered why I wasn’t doing it.

There’s been a few ideas so far on making money with online cartoons:

1) Find a sponsor like TV.
Say, Pepsi pays for a Family Pants cartoon provided in the middle of it they stuff a commercial.  This works, but more successfully on TV.  So why would Pepsi bother messing around online?  Now the harsh reality.  The internet is not TV.  It may look like TV, but it’ll never be TV.  Stop trying to think it will be TV!  It’s like trying to make the book publishing industry like the radio industry.  There might be cross overs… a radio personality writes a book, or books about radio personalities, but the industries are different and always will be.

2) Have people pay a tiny fee to see the cartoon online.
Most people pay enough for broadband to begin with.  Would you pay 10 cents to see a Family Pants cartoon?  I’ve had a hard time getting people to pay for a Family Pants DVD.  I’ve recently I’ve offered it for free on YouTube, hoping to gain interest.

3) License cartoons online.
You, the viewer doesn’t pay.  Sponsors like Pepsi doesn’t pay.  Instead websites pay for “instant content”.  Let’s face it, making web sites more attractive costs money.  Instant content is a logical and cheaper solution.  These days the websites who are looking for “instant” content and get “user generated” content.  So say I make an application that allows YOU to make Family Pants cartoons yourself.  Poof!  I get 100 cartoons done for free and with little effort!

But having other people make cartoons is not what makes being a cartoonist fun.  I want to do it!  So my idea was taking a comic strip syndication approach.  Make the cartoon.  Sell it cheaply, but many, many times.

The question is Joel, is online animation syndication not around because it’s a bad idea?  Or is that because nobody important has invested in the idea yet?  Lots of fine human beings like yourself have said, “Hey man… that sounds pretty good!”,  I’m still looking for investors!

Anyone have a rich uncle?

What Makes a Good Producer? or What Do Producers Produce?

There seems to be lots of animation blogs out there vent frustrations about producers who make the lives of animators intolerable. But you’ll hear the same complaints from designers and other artists. In fact, I’ve heard similar complaints from construction workers about architects! Whether animation, design or website producer, it’s an eternal conflict between the producer and talent.

What is a producer anyway? If they don’t actually draw or do the work, how can they rightly be called “producers”? Well a producer’s job is not to make something, but to sell the artist’s work and allocate time for the artist to produce more work. They work with the artist. Together they are team mates for the company they work for.

In some cases, the artist’s work is so good that, as they say, the work sells itself. Here the producer takes the work into a client meeting and presto, the client is instantly happy. In this case the producer gets the Super Bowl ring just for showing up to practice.

But in other cases, the artist may create work that is not up to snuff. It could be that the artist is simply not talented enough to tackle the task at hand or that pressing deadlines distracted the artist from doing a perfect job. In this case, teamwork comes in, as when the artist drops the ball, the producer picks it up and runs it in for the touchdown. Imagine a meeting where the client says, “Well, this is not what I really wanted.” A good producer bounces back with, “Really? I kind of like it this way. In fact I think it’s much better than the original idea we talked about.” His purpose is to sell the artist’s work.

Too often producers mistakenly believe they work for the clients. They’ll side with the client in such cases. “It’s not really a nice color” says the client. “Yes, I agree. And this area needs to change as well. In fact, this whole second half needs to be redone,” says the producer. It may seem like the producer has the client’s best interests, but it’ll only mean disaster for the company, because at the end of the week, when the beans are counted they’ll find the artist doing 80 hours of work, but only getting paid for 10. The client doesn’t care if the company it employed goes bankrupt so long as they get their “product”. But If the company fails, the artist and the producer both get canned. (Which goes first depends on how many artists versus producers the company is currently employing. If you have 10 producers and 2 artists, you can bet a couple of producers will get the boot. And visa versa. (Why you’d need 10 producers for only 2 artists I’m not sure… but I have seen it. I’d imagine those artists would have a red cape and a big S on their chest.)

In addition to selling the artist’s work, producers allocate time for the artist to produce more work. Here honesty is the best policy. Again, that’s teamwork. “The client needs this by Friday,” says the producer. “I can’t finish it until next Tuesday,” says the artist. “Well, I’ll have to either push the meeting to Tuesday, change the client’s mind as to what he wants to see on Friday, or get you the resources you need, if possible, to make that deadline” the producer should say.

Often producers make the mistake of being under the impression that they are above the artist. They’ll tell the artist what to do and expect the artist to jump. That’s not teamwork or working together. Sometimes they’ll belittle the artist by requesting work before the deadline. “If I tell the artist I need it on Friday, I won’t get it until next Tuesday. So instead I’ll lie and tell him I need it by Wednesday, so I’ll get it by Friday!” That’s not only dishonest but also disrespectful by putting undue pressure on the the artist. It not only ruins the art itself, the very function of the company, but also ruins the notion of teamwork. Eventually this will hurt the company by creating a workplace filled with mistrust, dishonestly and selfishness. That’s not a good environment for a companies’ prosperity.

I’ve been pretty lucky in working with great producers who work with artists and trust them. I don’t know if those producers played high school football, but I believe school athletics could help in teaching people how to work together. I played high school football, and frankly sucked at it. About the only thing I could do was run full speed into a guy. I can say with pride that I gave a kid on the other team a concussion. But I lacked skills of actually playing the game. I did, however, learn about teamwork. There were lots of guys on the team I didn’t like and perhaps didn’t like me, but we trusted each other on the field. We were a team. Because, if I did well, the whole team took credit and if I did poorly, the other guys shared my shame. There’s comfort in that. There’s security and teamwork. That’s what I’d imagine a company that makes animation or web design or rolls of toilet paper to be.

So I say, some producers should be required to play football with the artists to learn basic trust, respect, teamwork and how to cover each other when one drops the ball. And that way, even in the worst scenario, an artist could vent his frustrations by running full speed into his pain in the ass producer, giving them a concussion at least!

Spicy Cricket Animation and 3-D!

Family Pants and I got a great write up on Thinking Animation Book blog the other day! Angie Jones is an accomplished 3-D artist running that blog as well as this site selling flowers for your hair!

Thanks Angie!

Although I’m a 2-D-Flash-kind of guy, I always wondered what Family Pants would look like in 3-D…

Here’s a question for you 3-D peoples. Is 3-D advantageous over 2-D?

I’d think, it would be easier to pair talented, yet totally differently styled artists together yet still keep the production consistant. In other words, if you take a guy like me and a guy who’s great at drawing Spiderman and put them next to each other in a production, we’d have to adapt our styles to match each other to work well together. (Hey, that’s animation… I’d think this difficult aspect is why some animation productions opt for a “crude” style. They’d call it “hip” or “minimal” and some would call it “bad art”, but really it’s a practical way to make it easier to adapt to.)

But, in 3-D, since we’re manipulating a 3-D model, our “styles” wouldn’t matter. You can hire the guy or gal you want, rather than the one guy who works well in your style or spend time training a person to adapt.

I mentioned this to a couple 3-D artists and they countered with the time you save “training to adapt” would be spent building models.

But still, after the model is built, wouldn’t it be faster to manulipulate a model than draw frame by frame?

I guess the only real way to settle the debate would be to buy the book Angie wrote, learn 3-D, make something then compare!  It’d be a kind of animation John Henry race!

How to write a funny picture. It’s called the “Animatic”!

I recently read this debate about writing for animation from Something Old, Nothing New blog by Jaime J. Weinman.

Many animators are frustrated by dealing with writers who aren’t cartoonists. Some think that all writers in the old days drew while others say, only some did. Well I can’t say for sure either way, but I do run into trouble with explaining my animation ideas to the people paying for them. Before I can get the idea out and before the client even understands what I’m saying, I’m being revised. It can be frustrating, but ultimately it’s their budget. Hey, making stuff my way?  That’s what Family Pants is for!

(I wrote this in the comment field on Jaime’s blog, but then thought, what the hell, I’ll put it on my blog as well.)

Take a 3-Stooges episode. Watch it. Write it. It won’t be funny to read. Funny to watch, but not read. Writing is the first step of the very long and detailed process of animation. To make judgements on a cartoon based on whether or not you laughed at a script is wrong.

Reading an animation script requires skill. You just don’t read the words and evaluate what you’ve read. You actually have to imagine a finished cartoon, fully animated, with sound effects, in color in you head, then make judgement based on that image.

The previous blogger mentioned Tex Avery worked with real writers. Tex had that skilled tool, called imagination, to evaluate a script, not based on the words he read, but the finished cartoon, 20 steps away, in his head.

Many people in the animation industry as well as clients who hire you to animate for them, do not have this skill. Clearly if they did, they wouldn’t hire you! Often times, they could be holding the greatist cartoon script in their hands and wouldn’t know it.

This is why lots of cartoons today are “wordy”. It requires no skill at all to read a funny piece of dialogue and say, “Hey, this is funny.” But if you read a paragraph describing a funny physical gag, you may not see the humor in it.

You may argue why write at all? Writing is faster than drawing. I could write “100 monkeys dance” much faster than I can draw it. And I could correct it to “100 HIPPOS dance” faster than I can draw it. Unless I had a photographic memory, writing helps get the idea down quickly. A skilled individual, like Tex Avery, looks it over imagining the finished piece, makes some changes, then draws it.

Even without a script, I’ve found clients without the skill of imagination can’t read a story board either. They look at panel 3 when you’re talking about panel 1. They see the board as a comic strip, not a finished moving colorful cartoon with sound.

So, how do you hand feed the client or unimaginative individual your idea? You could film your story board, so the client can only see one panel at a time and in the pacing and tempo you set up. You can add sound effects, dialogue and even music to complete the picture. It’s like “automatic animation” or “animation automated” or an “ANIMATIC”!

Scripts and story boards are very important to the process of animation but should only be seen and used internally by those who know how to use them.

While comic strips and novels are great things, (I’m a comic strip cartoonist at heart) they are only a small part of a bigger thing in animation.

D

Can You Make a Living with Independent Internet Animation?

So what about money? Without the “suit” that all animators fear, how could an independent internet animator possibly earn revenue? What helped inflate the dot com bubble in regards to animation, was the thought the Internet would be the evolution of television. It would work much the same way TV does where good content brings an audience that would drive advertising space. You put a good cartoon on your web site and Coke will pay you thousands to put their banner ad above it for your audience to see. But the idea didn’t work very well, as banner ads aren’t worth the cost to create good cartoons. Then there was the short-lived pay per view model. But people weren’t willing to cough up dough for an Internet cartoon, even if the price was only a few cents.

There are a few shining examples of cartoonists and animators that have made a living solely from their independent Internet content, but there is no existing business model, other than that of the pornographic industry, who, content subject matter aside, you have to respect as true independent film makers! There, pay per view and banner ads more than compensate for the cost of content. (I’ve even thought of adding some dirty scenes to a typical Family Pants episode to see if it could fall into that business model! But strangely enough, dirty films is one thing, but dirty cartoons seem even dirtier!)

A business model I have created with the help of Jason Sawtelle was the Family Pants Plug a few years back. (Note the non-holding line technique). Here I attempted to sell short cartoons like clip art to other sites looking for good cheap customizable animation. Think of it as comic strip syndication meets 20th century Internet animation. Although artists were interested, paying customers were not. Perhaps my price was too high at $100 per cartoon. Perhaps this idea’s time hasn’t come or like other Internet content models, it never will.

Alas, a market that does exist and has grown is the direct to DVD market. Technology has made it increasingly easy to make your own DVD and even licensing your material. So for now, I’ve chosen to go that route. I feel I’ve made the best cartoon I could and hope for the best by reverse-marketing it now that I’m done!

Can Animation Be Made via Commette?

Why isn’t Family Pants on TV? The fact is I never pitched Family Pants to TV! I made it to sell directly to home video through the web to gain creative freedom.

The biggest frustration facing cartoonists, animators and comic strip artists alike, is the art committee or more commonly refereed to as “the suits”. Before WWII and American consumerism, cartoons were created much like all products, the manufacturer created a product and the salesman sold it. This offered the artist creative control with little outside interference, other than requests for the work to be done on time or asking for “more funny ones like that!” They worked together as the better the cartoon, the easier it was to sell. Likewise the better the salesman, even the worst cartoon earned a profit.

From the late 1940’s on, marketing became more prominent in manufacturing. Selling is one part of marketing, which confuses most artists that a marketing person is just a salesman, but in fact they are quite different. The salesman convinces the consumer his product will meet their demand. He makes them want the artist’s cartoon. In marketing however, he researches the client’s needs, then convinces the manufacture to make a product that matches the consumer’s needs. In this approach, the “suit” makes the artist create a cartoon the client wants. This offered little creative control for the artist. And at times, the “suit” seems to work against the artist rather than with him.

This might be the best way to keep consumer interests at heart for making a better nonstick frying pan. But does an audience know what they want to see before they see it? Did Van Gogh conduct research to find that 8 out of 10 preferred the night sky over day before he painted “The Starry Night”? Or is art simply made by letting the artist and salesman “do their best”?

I feared “suits” would reject Family Pants citing trends and statistics. Would they say, “We really like Family Pants, but could you make Frank a girl? If you make the lead character a young girl, in high school dealing with boys and the pressures of fitting in, then girls will relate to it. Plus you’ll have to make her sexy and give her some super powers… something with outer space robots and kung fu fighting to get the boys interested. This way the action will secure future possibilities for licensing the show for video games.” And so on. Although those things are great, I didn’t want to make “Family-Space-Robot-Action-Samurai-Teen-Girl-Power-Force-Squad-Anime-High School-Future-Pants”.

Another basic problem of art by committee is slow decision-making. Ask someone what his or her favorite color is. You’ll get a response in seconds. Get any 10 people in a room to collectively come up with a favorite color and it’ll take hours. Plus, if the vote is close, say 6 for red and 4 for blue, the head of that committee will have no confidence in their decision. Do you make the character’s shirt red or blue? A compromise to do a little of both would surely cover the bases. But that would make the character’s shirt purple. Purple didn’t even place in the vote! And so the artists animate the character red, then blue, then purple, then back to blue. They become frustrated and go over budget and over schedule. Slow and indecisive decisions wreak havoc on tight production schedules. If art is to be done by committee, then the budget must be inflated to accommodate a committee’s slow command. When that happens added pressure is added on the projects success. It must be a huge success to cover it’s loses. In addition, money is diverted away from the artists to cover expenditures.

Can art be run by a democracy? Or is it more efficiently run by a monarchy? One person with a clear vision will always outmaneuver a committee. While a democracy will make the less talented feel more a part of the creative process by allowing them say in the production, it lowers the moral of the more talented artists and slows production which inflates the budget. More money spent puts more stress on the project’s success and siphons money from the artist’s pockets. Most importantly, does it make better art?

I wanted Family Pants to be something that I wanted to see. It became my oasis from frustrating projects that cost more and took longer than they should have. It became my proving ground for how Flash could really be used and to see if I could write, voice, score and direct a show.