Animation Merger?

The CEO of Dreamworks recently mused on a possible merger between Dreamworks and Paramount pictures. There are currently no plans for an actual merger, solely an equity partnership, but if one did end up coming about it could mean another step towards total media integration.

If Viacom (the parent of Paramount, and thus the would be parent of Dreamworks) were to absorb Dreamworks I think that it would be a dangerous step towards content control and conflicting interests. Because Viacom already owns a large majority of distribution and production networks, if they were to get another content source under their control this would mean less variety for all of us and a further expansion of Viacom's control.

Whether this would lead to better content due to increased funding, who knows. I have never thought that conglomeration and consolidation are good things, and if one of the few independent-ish big-ish animation studios were to be absorbed I think it would be for the worse.

Read the original story here: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/jeffrey-katzenberg-paramount-dreamworks-animation-1201719568/

Creating Wallace and Gromit

Nick Park started creating Wallace and Gromit in 1982. The first film was A Grand Day Out.

He came up with the name Gromit from his brother, an electrician. A grommet is a rubber device used to insulate wiring. He was originally going to be a cat, but once he found it was a lot easier to make dogs out of clay, Gromit became a dog.

Park had never written a script before, and his first version of A Grand Day Out would have been four hours long. Aardman took Park on and helped him cut down his ideas to make them better and makeable in a shorter amount of time. A Grand Day Out took seven years in total.

The next film, The Wrong Trousers, came out in 1993. The train chase in the film is something that they had never seen done before in stopframe animation, and none of them knew how to do it. They built a 20 ft long living room wall, 2 ft high. They fixed the camera to the train and filmed on a long shutter speed to make the background blurry.

In an interview with The Guardian, Park talks about once they made The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Dreamworks: "We made The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Dreamworks, and it was often a struggle to keep things as we wanted. They'd say: "Why do they have to have an Austin A35? Can't they have a pickup truck or something cool?" But I love it because it's not cool. We were going to call it The Great Vegetable Plot, but research showed that vegetables were a negative with American kids, and they didn't know a plot is a place where you plant vegetables."

Co-founder of Aardman, Peter Lord, says, "Nick manages to convey in animation what Wallace and Gromit are thinking – and that's something most animators can't do. The lack of sentiment is the most charming thing about them: their affection is never saccharine, never obvious, just kind of real. I love their Jeeves and Wooster thing: the master being such a dope and failing to properly value his lower-status companion – I won't say servant – who is so much more intelligent."

Nick Park ends his interview by saying, "Digital animation is getting better all the time – they can make it look so much like clay now – but for me, there will always be a difference."

Stop-Motion Animation

When someone mentions animation, the first ideas that come to mind are works by famous companies such as Pixar and DreamWorks. Movies like How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek, and Finding Nemo have illustrated the power of graphical animation by developing complicated and concise fictional worlds. But, animation doesn't just stop with cartoon movies. Stop-Motion Animation provides an alternative approach to animation that utilizes all forms of media to create a polished project: still images, sound, video, clay figures (actors), set modeling, and the story-boarding process. One of my favorite stop-motion films, as a child, was Aardman Animations' Wallace and Gromit. Not only did the British stop-motion comedy consist of four short films, but it also included one feature-length film. The academy-nominated relationship, of the two main characters, grows over the course of the series as Wallace's new ideas are constantly met with Gromit's "unimpressed" body language and humorous facial expressions.

                 

This stop-motion graphics artist (below) decided to take the "Wallace and Gromit approach" a step further. With the recent release of Warner Brothers' The Lego Movie, YouTube user, "cheesybricks," takes a stab at his own version of stop-motion animation with the Lego theme in mind. In this short video, watch as the artist "paints with lego."

                     Video Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxy1fkrXmCI#t=85

This video really opened my mind to the possibilities that one can achieve in animation as a field of study. Perhaps, it will be something that I will pursue in the future. But for now, I'm just going to enjoy its prestige!

How To Train Your Dragon 2

"How To Train Your Dragon 2" has become one of my favorite animated films released from DreamWorks last year. The film won Best Animated Film at the Golden Globe Awards last year (amongst other awards and nominations) after the rumored controversy between "How To Train Your Dragon 2" and "The Lego Movie." The amount of craftsmanship and immense detail put in by the animators truly shows from the scales of each individual dragon to the stitching on each dragon rider's armor. I was very impressed with the versatility in camera angles used, despite it being animation, it showed how much effort and time (A LOT!) was put into this film. I may not know much about animation but if you can watch the same animated film more than 5 times and still notice new things, it has to be a great!

Watch it, you'll love it. 

Lights, Camera,Spinifex!

Spinifex brings motion graphics to a new level by creating graphics at a scale that is larger than life. Ranging from Olympic opening ceremonies to "MOVIE" experiences, Spinifex truly puts entertainment in a different perspective. The team uses their environment around them as a canvas for breath taking designs and incorporate performers to dance across their artwork. Spinifex proves that art is a action, not just an object. 

"Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony" 

"How to Train a Dragon"

"Dr. Who Live Light Show" Sydney Custom house

"Lighting of the Sails" 

"Vivid Festival 2013"

To check out more of their amazing work, go to www.spinifexgroup.com

The Croods

DreamWorks recently came out with a new animated movie called The Croods. Although I haven’t seen it, it’s been leading the box office along with Olympus has fallen. The Croods is a 3D animated movie about a pre-historic family and the misadventures they get into. This movie took 80 million hours to render, and is said to have taken more compute cycles to create than any other movie they’ve made. Kind of ironic it’s about prehistoric era. Also there’s a pet sloth in the movie, so you know it’ll be good.

The Best Intros

Since I'm doing a production company intro for the first project, I began looking at all the intros for the major production companies for some inspiration. The first one I always think of is Dreamworks. http://youtu.be/0ISey9fC0bI (Sorry it wouldn't let me imbed it) I love how the reflection of the water is disturbed by the bobber and how we move up through the clouds to see the boy on the moon. The sequence is just very fitting with the name Dreamworks.

Another sequence I think is very cool is Lionsgate.

All the moving pieces in the lock in conjunction with the creaking sounds gives such a distinct feel. Then the zoom out at the end to reveal the door and it opening to the logo is pretty epic.

The intro to Miramax is a another one that is very well done.

The color is so key in this intro because it starts out during the day and you can see the colors change as the scene descends into night finally coming to the skyline where the logo appears in the building lights. It's a very distinct intro and gives a really smooth feel.

We are all familiar with the intros to Universal,

20th century fox

and Disney

and they too are great examples. None of these intros do anything too flashy but they are all very unique and memorable. The other thing that I noticed is how important the music is to the feel of the intro. With the exception of the miramax intro, we associate certain songs with certain companies. Within the first few bars of the song and the first image we see, the audience can immediately identify the company. Having a lasting impression on the viewer with your opening is key. I feel like it makes your company have a special air about it.

Madagascar

Madagascar is a very popular Dreamworks film. This animation took three years to make. The animators had their work cut out for them trying to make the animals look real and furry and making waves crash on the beach. Technology triumphed and the animators were able to make the characters come to life. They looked real but they still could make them stretch for a comic affect.

This movie is full of affects. The biggest affect they had was the jungle because it was in so many scenes and they had to make the whole environment move and look natural. All the hp products they had really helped the animators create this. They got hp's utility rendering service which helped them make chances more easily.

The link below will bring you to a video that shows you how the movie was made and how technology really made this movie happen.

Madagascar

Pixar & Dreamworks Technology

The last post about Pixar got me thinking about something I read about a month ago when I was looking through Pixar and Dreamwork's websites. When I was looking at Dreamwork's paragraph about the kind of technology they used (a part of the site that for some reason I can't find now), it said that it has its own unique animation software that's built, maintained, and used in-house. I tried looking through Pixar's technology blurb to see if they also had a unique system, but they only mentioned that they've made ground-breaking advancements in animation technology and design. I think it makes sense that Dreamworks has its own software because it definitely has its own style- if you're watching a Dreamworks movie, you can tell that it's Dreamworks through the design of the characters. I believe that it's the same for Pixar as well, which made me think that Pixar might have a customized system.

Just to compare the two, I found the trailers for Kung Fu Panda, a Dreamworks film, and Finding Nemo, a Pixar film.

I don't exactly know how to describe the difference between the two styles. I want to say that Pixar's style seems more realistic, and that Dreamworks is a little more exaggerated and cartoony, but I'm sure there are exceptions.