2006 Year End Review Conclusion

No doubt 2006 was an amazing year of learning, finding new tools and new ways of doing thing. Anigen was fun and a great accomplishment having built up a lot fo fans and greatly increasing my web traffic. My alexa rating is in the top 2% during the Anigen period, but based just on the last week or so, it is in the top 1%. So where does one go for here.

THE PLAN

It may seem strange, but the plan is exactly the same as last years end plan, but with a few minor changes. One thing I learned in 2006, was what I really want to do, and what I really don't want to do. If I were to do a 2D show right now, it would be in Anime Studio. Vectors are too powerful to ignore. This doesn't mean I don't want to do a raster image based styled show such as can be done in Mirage. I just can't get the speed I need to be creative at the moment.

I see Machinima becoming big. No as wee see it now. I think some combination of XBox or PS3, with graphics on that level, andthe tools going to the masses will produce results that approach older CG Tv shows like Roughnecks. Will these become marketable? Will people make money, say, charging a small fee for a show creating like this on X-Box live? I don't know, but something's gonna happen. I know that we can't be far from Skeleton Man being done entirely in realtime like Machinima. The one thing we haven't really seen is what happens when the pro artists get in there with the ability to create skins of their own, they know how to shoot, edit, do sound and tell a story. We will see that before long.

I know I want to create in freedom. I also know that I like to do training type materials and tutorials. I want to do more, expanding beyond the weekly Anigen shows and into longer videos, perhaps on DVD or for direct download from Content Millennium, and covering many more possibilities.

I do know this. There are no more excuses in 2007. I would also say that time is running out, Get established on th enet. The big guys may never be bale to shut you out, but they can make such a presense and be so loud as to see that you arent't heard.

2006 Year End Review 02

The months rolled on and I began to even question whether or not I liked 3D. I did the 2D test above and really liked what I saw. Much of this was prompted by all the trouble I was having trying to build a 3D character for Ruin. It was around this time I really began to mess with voice changing software. I also discovered the amazingness which is Katsuhiro Otomo's Freedom Project.

The EA lawsuit was settled, which I am sure made many of us who suffered there very very happy. I also saw one of the most inspirational films I have ever encountered. That film is Hustle & Flow. I continued thinking and experimenting with the Nomad, knowing I wanted to draw so badly, but concerned about the speed at which a project could be made. Taking a break, I made my return to the theatre after years of boycotting to see The Da Vinci Code.

My cel shading improved, even though I also saw great benefits and took much pleasure in drawing with the Tablet PC. I was torn as to which way to go. In June I had created some cool stuff by experimentation, but had not gotten any closer to the formula I needed. But I had plans in my head, and decided to get out from my outmoded web service and get on 1&1 where I am today.

I went back and looked at Skeleton Man and J4A to see if I could find answers to my problem. Everything I was doing was leading down a path to things taking longer and loger and becoming less and less fun. So thinking in terms of my future setup, I got this awesome monitor.

Little did I know at the time, that it would never get a chance to be used for its intended purpose, as an edit output monitor for my Sony Vaio.

Just days later, that monitor would play hst to my very first Apple Macintosh.

Just days after that, the Sony Vaio died for good. Amidst my tests of cel shading my way back to the life and fun of Skeleton Man, my main system kicked it, putting an end to all that. No data was lost, they were transferred to external hard drives. But I had no main system. Just a a Tablet PC to draw on and my new Mac, which I hadn't even learned.

Learning the Mac was quite an experience though. Throughout July I saw old equipment heading to the dust bin as iLife and other tools on the Mac, or that worked with it like the Samson USB Mic, replaced all my previous tools. Just like in my studio, digital was transforming the entire world, especially in regards to animation. China, Korea, everyone was stepping up to the digital plate and learning a new way. Then it August it began.

In September my time was mainly consumed by creating Anigen and I didn't post much, but I did begin to find something. I just wanted to create. I saw a demo of I-Clone, a machinima like tool that let's artists "just do it", and I wanted that kind fo power. Of course I didn't want my stuff to look like that, but I wanted to create with that kind of freedom. I thought perhaps Poser might come in handy in that regard.

October continued much in the same fashion. I still looked fondly at Machinima, at least they were cranking stuff out. I continued on Anigen and ocntinued watching how Asia was growing and growing in animation and digital production.

In November, I learned how Phil Nibbelink created a one-man Disney style theatrical feature. Took him three years of animating in Flash and Moho (now Anime Studio) but he got it done. NaturallyI don't want to spend that long on a project unless it's 50 epsiodes of my long series being done in that kind of time. Still, there's hope for us all there.

I bought Anime Studio Pro 5 and made a final decision to get Poser 7 (though I didn't do it until yesterday). I had to learn new ways to get the kind of productivity I needed.

In December I actually marvelled at Brave Story from the Japanese DVD box set. No doubt one of the most amazing anime features I have seen, on par with Ghibli works. The big guys were doing what Idreamed of, but it took them years to get anything done. In fact, the same amount of years it took Nibbelink to do it by himself!

So I began writing some articles, plotting and planning, rebuilding my website for the next phase.

2006 Year End Review 01

Okay, I'll keep this short. I don't think a review is really necessary to know this to have been agreat year, but I will go over things anyway. Chief among things I want to observe is how things shaped up since the plas made the previous year. How has my thinking changed? It may be an interesting journey. 2005 ended with me writing this:

Who could have known how much what I do, how I do it, and even what I am interested in doing would change?

The reality is, there are many things from the past that I just don't want to do anymore. The interesting thing I also see recently is that I actually have little reason to look negatively on even those previous years. Looked at as part of a whole, they played their part to build something which I can see clearly now. I have been fed this year. Fed to the point of bursting. That bursting is going to result in some astounding animation.

THE PLAN

Make a show! With the Mirage Nomad in hand and Vue 5 at my disposal I will make a show that will look so much better than I could have even come close to looking in previous times. Moreover, this show is truly going combine my talents and interests into that which I will truly enjoy doing the most. This show will focus mainly on the Asian market, and contain a lot of Japanese dialogue. My music will be a big part of it.

This show will contain a lot of drawing. This show will use 3D as 3D. The wealth of knowledge I gained at UFO in terms of particles, hypervoxels, using dynamics to blow stuff up and high end compositing FX will be put into play to create dynamic sequences far beyond anything I could have done before. And the great thing is, these complex scenes will be calculating and rendering all the while I am drawing on my Nomad.

The key is to actually be making the movie. I recently looked at the Japanese edition of Howl's Moving Castle, which like all the Japanese Ghibli releases contains the full storyreel on one of the discs. The drawings are so rough, and Miyazaki draws so fast whole sequences could have been boarded in no time at all. Such sequences I can take into Vegas and cut to temp voices, temp music and sound FX so that I am actually working on the movie, not like mind animation which spends too much time on the finer details of a single scene with little concept of what is around it.

So just how closely was this plan followed? Well I can say that some of these things, from a technical standpoint were tried and I found that they just didn't work for me. I am not a studio, and trying to do things the studio way just holds me back. I had to find my own way of creating. In fact, I had to find a creative way to get my ideas on the screen and not hinder that creativity.

So I got this Nomad at the end of 2004 and it was supposed to change everything. In January I was fast at work trying to develop a pipeline around its use. I immediately set out to do what I wrote in 2004, storyboarding some scenes of Truth Explorers and attempting to cut them together with temp voices and music in Vegas. That didn't last very long. Although I didn't know it then, the reason is clear to me now.

When I have a story and really have something to say, it is like a fire burning and it must come out. Now even doing rough storyboards, and editing these to temp music tracks and temp voices takes considerable effort. When I do this and get it "to the screen", though it is not in the final format, I've told that story, and the fire goes out. The process of turning that rough version to final becomes drudgery to me because I have already done what was "needed" in my mind. Thus it fades away.

January was also the month in which I found and fell in love with the Sony HC-1 HDV camera. Although I never got it, it's little brother, the Sony HC-3 eventually fell into my hands as was covered in an episode of Anigen. January also saw the Disney/Pixar merger and concluded with me learning the value of RSS. I'm actually surprised. It feels like I've been doing the RSS thing for years. Maybe it just takes years off your life.

Mobile devices were really on my mind in February. After all, some exec at MIPCOM said:

The chances of an independent getting a TV show on the air are slim and none. The existence of hundreds of cable and satellite channels is deceptive -- most of those channels are controlled by a very few major companies. Videogame producers have known the hard facts of life for years. The truth is that there are three things more important in real life than "Content is king,"” and they are, "“Distribution, distribution and distribution."”

I saw the popularity of mobile video as a road for the indie. DVD was also viable, even self published like Pale Cocoon from Yasuhiro Yoshiura in Japan. The industry was changing, lay-offs were happening. All the while scientists were discovering mist shoruded lost worlds in remote parts of the globe, just asking to get eaten by something. I began creating the building blocks of next generation production.

March began with Sketchup being officially added to my toolset. I also began thinking bluetooth thoughts for communications on my tablet PC. Then I learned of the amazing Brave Story from Gonzo, Warner Entertainment and Fuji TV. Exit, the game of games for the PSP came out, though I couldn't find it at Fry's. My desk chair broke and I had to put a more lounge like chair in its place. I saw The Promise on DVD and was amazed at the possibilities digital technology brought to other film markets. Then it happened.

George Lucas all but predicted the end of the blockbuster, the summer tentpole movies that he and his buddies were a big part of bringing into existance. Movies were having such a short shelf life on DVD in retail and at the box office. Those which didn't perform instantly were booted in both cases. But other avenues were opening. I first heard of Second Life because of a group making a movie entirely in that virtual world.

Still I had my own problems. Global illumination and trees were killing my plans for next generation production.

THE LAST EPISODE

Ok, maybe not the last episode, but the last episode of the year for Anigen is up and just in time before it all comes to an end. Later I will write my year end review here on this blog and that will wrap up a pretty cool year. Still, next year holds such promise I almost can't wait. Luckily it's only hours away!

IE PROBLEMS

Apparently since the redesign of my page it became unviewable in IE 6, causing a browser ending crash. IE 7, Firefox and Safari seemed to be unaffected. Since I only have IE 6 on my Tablet PC, and even there use Firefox if I browse on it at all, I never caught it. Anyway, it should all be wrapped up and working again now. If anyone does notice any problems, please contact me and let me know.

Concept to Reality: The Series?

A lot of what I am going to mention here I am sure I have written about before, but I want to start with the state of DVD. There was a day when the extra features on big movies were looked forward to almost as much as the DVD release of the movie itself. Recent releases such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and the extended edition of King Kong show that it still occasionally happens, but on the whole, most DVD releases have been very disappointing. A good example would be Superman Returns.

I love the film. Seen it three times, but the extra features, though there be hours of them, it seems, leave something huge to be desired. That is post production. As soon as prinicpal photography with the main actors stops, so too do the extra features. Aside from a super quick blip on how they revived Marlon Brando to play Jur-El, there is not one frame of anything to do with editing, the score, and certainly not CG visual FX. If they're saving it for an uber-release later, I wouldn't complain, but the disc seems so complete aside from that little oversight, that I can't imagine another version coming.

I first saw the potential, and still believe it to be one of the best examples of what a DVD should be, when I watched Contact. Those extra features were so amazing I took the disc to work the next day and showed the team I was working with at the studio saying, 'This is what we should be doing." Those were the days when DVD's inspired. They put power into the hands of the viewer. They brought us a little closer to our dreams as creators.


So what does any of this have to do with a Concept to Reality series? Well, we don't really have a flourishing OVA (Original Video Animation) market in America. You see, in Japan, a smaller studio can create a series one 30 minute episode at a time and release it on DVD that way, sometimes for as much as $40 or more per disc, and the series can pay for itself as it goes along. Some series which started this way, like Tenchi Muyo have gone on to become huge franchises. When they tried to release Blue Submarine NO. 6 this way in America, it did sell well, but fans and critics were in an uproar about the pricing structure and getting on a 30 minute episode on one disc.

Today the market may be a bit more open. An indie title like Kakurenbo: HIde and Seek was released as a single 25 minute episode, or short film, with 50 minutes of extra features on DVD for $20 and is doing quite well for itself. The same goes for Voices of a Distant Star, both put out by major labels. This is really the same strategy by which Anime: Concept to Reality was put out by TOKYOPOP, but more importantly, it is also what I did on my own when I released Understanding Chaos and subsequently, Shadowskin on DVD.

Back then it may have been as tough a sell as Blue Submarine No. 6, but today the market may be more lenient to such a concept, and in a world of direct downloads and instant gratification, they may just embrace it. What this means is that it may open the door for us as creators, who desire to longer form series work, to have a strategy by which we can support the release of our series and sustain it over time. That strategy being to release a 30 to 45 minute episode and include with it a healthy dose of extra features to round a package of nearly 2 hours of viewing. These extra features wouldn't be the fluff of Superman Returns,, but straight to the point teaching. The extra features become a series unto themselves teaching your craft to your fan base, who likely has similar desires to create their stories. So why do this?

DEFY ALL CONVENTIONS!

If you do this, you don't have to worry about being fit for TV. You don't have to wrry about commercial breaks. You don't have to worry about the exact to-the-second length of the video or every scene. You don't have to worry about ratings boards or trying to keep it PG-13. You only have to worry about you and your viewers, and creating something they will love and love to keep seeing again and again as the series unfolds. You can keep your vision pure and make what you truly desire without any commitee saying what will and what won't work. You can even involve your fans in the process. Have contests, let them vote on the outcome of something in the story. My point is the sky is the limit. Or well.. if you're doing digital downloads, then your bandwidth.

Content Millennium

I decided to put this armored soldier Lightwave 3D model in the Content Millennium web store to make available to anyone interested the technique used to do this kind of cel shaded anime style. This model is a combination of a few different elements that I have done previously and some new work created in modo. It comes completely rigged with a simle IK system and ready to go. All cel shading with the original Super Cel Shader is in place.

I may put more models in the Lightwave 3D content section in the days ahead but I also have many ohter things to create as the year winds down. I hope everyone is enjoying a great holiday season.

HO HO HOOOOO!!!

Merrry Christmas and happy holidays to all! I hope everyone has a safe and fun holiday season.

A new Anigen is up for you to enjoy in this joyous time of year. As we approach the end of the year I suppose it's time for another year end review, though I don't really need one to know this was a great year.

One more Anigen to go before the year is out. I can't wait to see where things go next year!

Finance Your Movie in the Game

I know a lot of people who spent years of their life pitching their grand film project to studios to no avail. I also know many who went to prominent film schools in the hopes that they would work their way through the system into making their own movie. Unfortunately, none of them has yet to actually make anything. It's a sad fact, and many are unaware, that the chances of an independent or outsider getting a film into the studio system, through production and into distribution are slim to none.



With the advent of digital film making technology, there are many who have chosen to go the independent film route, creating their own film projects out of pocket or with small private investment. Too many would be creators, though, have grand dreams. They desire to make huge films that will cost a lot of money no matter how you look at it. So how does one go about getting a larger project financed?

We all know that the internet has, in the past, been put to great use to gain marketing buzz for a movie or even, in some cases, get a movie financed, but with our convergence mentality, where movies, video games and the internet seem to blend together more and more everyday, there is one avenue to financing an independent film that I am surprised many seem to overlook. That avenue lies in the economy of online multiplayer games.

Ailin Graef is a player in the massive multiplayer online experience Second Life. She started nearly three years ago with a mere $10 account and, in that time, has used her skills as a designer to create a considerable amount of money. In that online 3D world she owns 36 square miles of virtual property, which a player can build houses on and rent to other players. She also owns virtual shopping malls and numerous in-game brands. All this amounts to holdings worth $1 million in real world money!

The currency in online game worlds has been quickly gaining value against the real world dollar, just like comparing dollars to yen. A lot of this began years ago in one of the first popular online games known as Everquest. People were selling high level characters they created, magical items and even stashes of in-game gold for thousands of dollars in real money on Ebay. According to IGPlace.com, a piece of gold in the massively popular World of Warcraft game is worth 18 cents. Players will actually camp in a spot where they know the greatest monsters appear. They kill the monster, get its treasure, sell it for a large amount of in-game gold and then sell the gold for real world money. They do this all day just like having a job. Economist Edward Castronova discovered that Everquest players earned more than $3 per hour in real world value just by playing the game.

The key for the independent film makers is that there are many roads to "cash out" of these online experiences and pocket the money. Imagine playing a multiplayer game all day and developing a high level character with stashes of gold and tons of magical items worth thousands of dollars in the real world! What could be more fun than killing orcs and dragons as a way to raise the money you need to get your independent film project done?

BACK TO THE BEGINNING?

Word is that Disney may be headed back to their 2D greatness of old. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull seem to be teaming up in an effort to make the Disney animation studio in Burbank use traditional animation again.

We all know the story, covered in just about every step on this blog since 2004 when the huge layoffs began and then Disney fuhrer Michael Eisner eleiminated 2D animation from the Disney world altogether. We all know the many "2D is dead" debates that propogated many a forum in the wake of said disaster. We all also knew that 2D wasn't dead!

As of 2008, Disney will no longer be a part of the 3D animation arena. Having merged with Pixar, it seems they realize the futility of trying to duplicate the effort of the greatest 3D animation house around. Pixar will, of course, continue to do 3D films. I'll be keeping my eye on how this one turns out for Disney and 2D. Maybe I'll run down there and show them how to do it cheaper!

Small Business: The Passion of Creators

I was once asked "What did you love as a child?" It made me think back to what made me really happy as a kid. "What did you pretend when you played make believe? What games were your favorites? Were you a creator?"

I don't know where I got the idea, but I was all about small business when I was a child. I used to draw comics and sell them to other kids in the school yard for a few bucks. I was drawing all the time, in class, at home, anywhere a pen and pad could be found. People were genuinely interested in what I created, so why not make a few bucks off it if I could? Well, my parents really frowned on that idea.



My parents grew up during the industrial era. In that day, you could enter into a good company at a young age, work your way up and eventually become very prosperous or even rich inside that company. Some even gained a stake in the corporation itself. Before the industrial era, small business made up the bulk of the American economy, but at the turn of the century, people flocked to jobs in factories and huge corporations overtook the economic scene. This was not without its consequences.

We all that day is over now. Job security is but a myth. Companies really caring about and taking care of employees is a rarity. These days if you want to make your way in the world, small business is a serious consideration. Today we live in what is called the information age and he who controls the information becomes an island unto himself.

I never really lost my taste for enterprise. In the year 2000, not unlike on the schoolyard, I created an animation called Understanding Chaos, self published it on DVD and sold it off my own website with good results. No venture capital was involved, no investors needed and no major studios helped out. Just me, just like with a pen and a spiral notebook. This time, though, it was through the magic of the latest computer technology, firewire and DV.

So if you look back into your childhood, what do you see yourself doing? Are the seeds of your future business to be found there? This is one possible road to your true passion, the thing you would do for hours on end even if there was no pay involved. I was drawing all the time and I loved to draw with people and help them draw. I see my passion from my own past. Does your past show you the right track?

FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE

There is a great article over at Cinematech which gives some powerful insights, to those interested in independent film making, on why the system is closed to us, and how it was set up that way from the start. It also lets us know that we are responsible for changing things and that the tools available to us now leave no room for excuses. The web can be our home and opportunities here are without end and limited only by imagination.

From its very start, the movie industry in America has been tilted against the independent filmmaker, and designed to exclude the entrepreneur.

In 1908, with projected movies still in their infancy, Thomas Edison, Kodak founder George Eastman, and nine other titans of the young industry formed the Motion Picture Patents Company, which prevented anyone else from making or distributing movies without paying fealty to the MPPC. Independents couldnÂ?t even buy film from Kodak;

That just a bit of what it says and to show why you need to go and read that article. How different are things today? Only very recently have things in the independent film making worldand the world of animation really opened up. To this very day you cannot go out and buy a Panavision camera and own the means of productions. Before widespread use of computer technology, and software like Flash or Mirage, how much did it cost to even think about making your own animation? It wasn't enough to know how to draw anime, you needed expensive equipment just to realize it on paper, to say nothing of shooting it to film.

Today you can make your own anime or independent film, with a Dolby digital 5.1 soundtrack and master it DVD or ready it for output to film all from your desktop. Of course, even getting to that point, in order to get it seen, people have to know it exists. That's still one aspect of the puzzle the major studios have a handle on. Or do they?

In the old days, studios produced big films and those films were taken to the people via distributors who handled all the promotion and marketing and took the lion's share of the profits. This hasn't really changed. In fact, it's gotten worse, as many of these distributors have merged with the studios. Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Disney and many others have their own distribution and if you want to get in, you have to pay to play. Even a animation powerhouse like Pixar needed Disney to get their movies seen. Studio Ghibli thought the same thing. We know from the recent Pixar/Disney clashes before the merger, that Disney ended up owning all of Pixar's characters and creations and took the largest percentage of the profits. This is the price of entry into their world. Yet so many indies still want to walk right in it.

If you truly want to get your independent film seen, or make your own anime and have total creative control, consider finding your audience the same way you make your movie. On the desktop. YouTube phenomenon LonelyGirl15 shows that finding a large audience entirely in the wired is not only feasible but potentially profitable. It's almost 2007. Are we going to let a system set up in 1908 keep us from realizing dreams?

FINDING THE STORY

I learned a lot over the course of a brave weekend that, quite surprisingly, relates to something talked about in the comments on the previous post. You see, earlier in the year I preordered, and then forgot about, the special collectors edition box set of the Fuji TV, Warner Entertainment Japan and Gonzo epic theatrical feature Brave Story, based on a novel by Miyabe, Miyuki. It arrived early last week and I simply awaited the arrival of the weekend to begin the festivities.

I'm not here to talk about the movie. You can see that for yourself when it arrives in your country. But you may not get a chance to see some of the extra features in this four disc box set. I mean hours and hours of extras covering every imaginable facet of the film. It gives us a great glimpse into the process of a big major studio, yea multiple studio, project and just how different an approach it is from what an indie will experience.


A producer from Fuji TV had an idea. The company was going to enter the brave new world of animation and they wanted to enter it in a big way. Now Fuji TV doesn't do animation. They don't have animators on staff or a studio waiting in the basement to take on such an epic project. So where to begin was the big question. Producer Chihiro Kameyama decided to call up producers over at Pixar to get some information.

In speaking with Pixar, Kameyama was told, after explaining what they were trying to do, that he should expect it to take five years. Naturally he was shocked. "We don't have that kind of time." he said. The producer at Pixar told him that its not the making that takes so long. It's everything that goes before it. All the development and preproduction. Either way, Kameyama didn't plan to spend that kind of time to create the vision for Fuji TV.


So the question Kameyama faced was, who do you team up with to get such a project off the ground? Who can even pull such a project off? Kameyama found his answer in the the popular anime studio Gonzo. The producer at Gonzo didn't have to think for even a full second when asked if he would like to do this big theatrical project. The last partner in on the distribution side is Warner Entertainment Japan, which is clearly reaping the benefits of their entry into the Japanese film market with consecutive hits Death Note and Brave Story.

They all knew what they wanted. A family oriented story with big adventure and very emotional, so they set out to create just such a story, in the tradition of Pixar, known for great original storytelling. Many months went by working with writers and attempting to develop characters with nothing quite coming up to expectations. It simply wasn't working. Eventually they abandoned the idea of creating a story and thus began a search for the perfect story for this project. It was in this search that they came across Ms. Miyabe's novel, Brave Story. Just a few pages into the novel, Kameyama knew they had found their story. The producer from Gonzo said, "What have we been doing for the past year? From the beginning it had to be this!"


Now with a solid story and all production and distribution partners in place, the project could really begin. The Brave Studio was built up and populated for an advanced hybrid of traditional and digital workflow. Machines featuring 30" Apple Monitors running Shake composited images drawn with a pencil on paper in the same room. Maya artists created complex 3D digital elements to add to the film and in a small screening room in the back, the director could watch it all come together. Through this process, with over a year and a half of actual animation production and anywhere from 700-900 staff members, Brave Story was born!

I hope this glimpse into the process gives some idea of just how wide is the gap when a major company like Fuji TV sets out to make a film and when an indie like, say, Phil Nibbelink sets out to do the same. We live in totally different worlds, not just different price ranges. When the vision is right, creativity and magic can still happen either way.