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Today I attended mainly writing workshops
The first workshop was Scriptwriting for Animation which was a lively discussion about the difference between scriptwriting for live action, animated feature, tv and direct to video.

With animated features, there seems to be more emphasis placed on storyboarding than script. This may not always be the most effective way to work. One of the panelists Dean Deblois felt that in the case of Mulan, the storyboarding wasn’t working because not enough time had been spent scripting. This is interesting considering that Ronnie Del Carmen, the storyboard artist from the Pixar panel yesterday, felt that storyboarding was the major component of story telling.
I think the point to take away from all this is that each filmmaker need to find a balance between storyboarding and scriptwriting.
In Australia, the animated script is probably more important than the storyboards as this is what is required for a funding application with Screen Australia. Also, as storyboarding is a much more time intensive process than scriptwriting, I think you would require substantial funds before you have the luxury to create an animated film from storyboards alone.

In the evening, Tim and I attended a preview screening of Scott Pilgrim which was loads of fun despite Tim having to line up for several hours to get the tickets. He now has terrible sunburn. As an Asian person, I’ve never had sunburn so I’m finding the whole process interesting. He is bright red and peeling. He also seems to have some liquid exuding from his face at all times as if he’s melting.

Day 2 has been both exhausting and exciting. I’ve managed to squeeze in a record five workshops today and an hour of shopping.
The first workshop was on writing for the superhero genre. I thought the female panellists took themselves to seriously. There was a lot of serious discussion about how they like to create their superhero character with immense physical powers but flawed emotionally because….er the contrast would make for much more powerful storytelling. I think I enjoy the superhero genre because it’s fun and I don’t like to analyse it too much. There are a lot of seminars out here which I think over-intellectualise it by drawing in stuff like the feminine, gay and philosophical perspectives etc.
The second lecture was called ‘The State Of Animation Industry’ and was hosted by ASIFA Hollywood which was very useful in light of my current attempts to set up ASIFA Australia.
One of the panelists was Raul Garcia (producer of Lady and The Reaper). He pointed out that animation is no longer confined to the major hubs such as LA, London and Paris. There is a lot more international collaboration possible through Skype and ftps for animators situated in different countried to work on the same film -which I think happened on Lady and The Reaper.
Another interesting point made was how emerging animators felt that a career in games was somehow ‘less important’ than a career in film. The overall concensus was that one start out in games to train but the aim was to move to film once they’ve gained more experience. I think this shows the contrast between animation industry in Australia and US where the aim of an emerging animator is to get employed and that employment in  games studio is seen as a very secure and desired position.

The third lecture I attended was given by an artist and lecturer Marshall Vandruff on ‘How drawing masters invented creatures’. For more info, his website is www.marshallart.com  His talk was particularly relevant to animators and illustrators  as it was on finding the balance between drawing like an adult with technical execution and drawing like a child with charm and creativity. His argument was that everyone is born creative but as we grow up our creativity gives way to technical execution through criteria based judgements.

An artist who has brilliant draftsmanship is a copier and can create but this is limited by softening, heightening, sharpening and choosing what lines to put in or omit. An animator needs to build up both technical draftsmanship and creative drawing.

We looked at examples of brilliant illustrators -in a time when animation was in its infancy, such as Da Vinci, A. B. Frost, Heinrich Kley and Windsor McCay. Marshall pointed out that these illustrators were all able to create fantasy scenes of animals posed in impossible actions realistically and with emotion. This was done in a time before photographs or Google were available for reference. These artists combined the observational skills of a draftsman, the creativity of a child and the discipline of gestural drawing.

The two simplest methods he taught us was:-

1. Understanding of Anatomy. The important thing is not to memorise anatomy plates from medical books as it has too much information. His website has a listing of useful anatomy books for artists. He recommended always studying animal bone and muscle structue by comparing it against the human structure. This will allow you to understand the mechanism of action of the animal and interpolate it to draw the animal moving in impossible positions.

2. Perspective. Simplify the bone/muscle mass into basic forms. Draw these forms from different angles. We practiced a few drawing exercises in class.

Someone asked him his opinion of using references. His opinion was that references were good but don’t copy it. Always try drawing the reference image from another angle. ‘If you cannot draw a hand well without looking at a hand, then you can’t draw a hand well looking at it.’ This lecture inspired me so much, I rushed out and bought a stash of art equipment  which I will promptly take home but not actually use.

Fourth lecture was boring. I only went int to bags seat for the FIFTH LECTURE!

The fifth lecture was the Pixar Panel.  Ronnie Del Carmen the story supervisor of Up gave a talk about the storyboarding process for the film. The main points I took from this lecture was that at Pixar, the role of the storyboard artist was equal to that of the scriptwriter. They are not considered story enhancers, but are the story tellers. Storyboarding is a collaborative, team process. If you’renot prepared to be wrong, you’ll never be creative or original.

Other news from San Diego. Tim has been walking around speaking in what he thinks is an American accent. This ended abruptly when we ventured into an Indian restaurant and the waitress asked us outright where we us folks came from.

The Klingons have posted signs at the trolley staions (which are actually trams) declaring they have taken over San Diego during Comic Con. The  result is that the trolley timetables are now posted up in Klingon (though they have thoughtfully left English translations)

Just got back from a very productive and action-packed first day at Comic Con. Even though Tim and I had planned our entire schedule down to when our toilet breaks would be, nothing ever runs according to plan.
It all started when we got to the convention centre half an hour early- as in accordance with our foolproof ingenious plan and found out that the other 10 million people also had foolproof ingenious plans which involved getting there 3 hours early. Though how they managed to execute such a plan and still deck out in complicated rigged costumes is beyond me.
So Tim and I obediently joined the other 10 million people in the queue to be part of the first panel ‘Dreamworks Megamind’. Volunteers soothed nervous leather clad villains and unnaturally busty heroines by assuring them, that yes of course the hall could accomodate all of us into the audience. All 10 million of us.
Being logical (or disloyal), Tim and I decided to ditch the queue to go and watch the Question and Answer session by Danny Elfman.
On our way past, Tim caught a glimpse of Tina Fey arriving for the Megamind panel. Unfortunately, I turned too late and she had walked behind a private celebrity screen which concealed her top half. I can cheerfully report though that she had very nice shoes and very toned calves.

DANNY ELFMAN Question And Answer Session
-would have been a lot more interesting had people actually asked questions and not wasted their time by assuring Mr Elfman that he was quite the genius and that their mother/ father/ best friend’s androgynous lover etc played his music at every opportunity.
Though credit to Danny Elfman, he remained quite poised through the entire traumatic event and even thanked said audience members as if his career weighed heavily on the endorsements of people’s grandmother’s androgynous lovers . Even when some lovesick hopeful asked if he could do free work experience for him, he remained poised and pleasant.

SECOND LECTURE -CAPRICA, BATTLESTAR AND BEYOND

This was a very fun and informative panel made up of Michael Tayler ( the producer/ scriptwriter from Battlestar Galactica), Kevin Grazier (science consultant on Battlestar), Bear McCleary (the composer) and the actor who played the Chief. This was also a question and answer session but I think there was a lot less fan boying/girling which led to easier conversation. It turns out that Kevin Grazier is an astrologist, not a medical scientist which may explain a lot of medical inconsistencies of that show.

THIRD SESSION – Walt Disney Studios Character Creation.

The best session of the day was the Walt Disney panel who had on board Glen Kleane (character designer), Nathan Greno and Byron Howard (Directors) to talk about their new film Tangled. We saw some working concept art by Glen Kleane for the Rapunzel character. He said his initial concept was based solely around this larger than life character with so much potential but who was locked up in a tower. She was larger than life that  her hair would explode ( I guess sort of like the story of Monkey being irrepressible???) Anyway, the point is the hair was always the focus of this Rapunzel character and it showed from his initial sketches.

Tim and I also won limited edition lithoprints from the film so this session was definitely one of the best of the day.

FOURTH LECTURE-  THE PITCHING WORKSHOP

This was a very practical workshop for me and included in its line up a producer, scriptwriter, agent and a lawyer from the animation/ tv/ comic industry. It was made more interesting because the panelists argued amongst themselves about the best way to pitch.

The scriptwriter/producer was all for ‘Nobody sells yourself better than you’ and of course the agent was like ‘No. You are your own worse enemy and social ineptitude excludes most animators from delivering a good pitch’.

Another interesting argument was that the scriptwriter/producer was totally for ‘Pitch from your soul but not your heart’ meaning sell us one of your ideas but not your favourite one  because the studio will always screw you over. But the Comic publisher was like ‘Pitch from your heart because we’ll know if you’re not into it 100% and we won’t buy it.’

So key points

- Be adaptable – have five or six ideas ready to sell.

-A rejection is not a failure- each pitch is a meeting and is a stepping stone in a relationship

-Research who you are pitching at.

- Know when you are ready to pitch. You are ready somewhere in between ‘Hey I have an idea’ and ‘Hey I’ve done a five minute trailer’. You are also ready when you know the subject matter so well, it is like having a conversation with someone about it with no cue cards or props.

FIFTH LECTURE- Writing workshop with James Hudnall

We learnt about the fundamentals of story writing so not as interesting as it could be. He made one stand out point which I hadn’t heard phrased like this before -

You can have an unbelievable story that the audience will still believe in. The trick to this is to create believable characters. In order to do this, understand people’s motivations for acting the way they do. Human beings have two motivational factors – desire to have something or fear of loss of something.

Oh yeah- and somewhere during the day Tim, Nandi and I attended our film screening of Articulate! and answered some questions about our film and attended a networking session but this all paled in comparison to the awesome lectures and my Disney lithoprint.

End of blog.

PS a strange thing happened today -even by comic con standard. A rather big girl dressed in a tight black suit suddenly went down on all fours and shouted out ‘Quick! I’m a centipede’. Her friend took this as cue to spank her. I’m thinking this is a re-enactment of a comic or something I’m unfamiliar with. All this happened without anyone blinking an eye. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by such non judgemental, peaceful people here at Comic Con.

Through the eyes and ears of Tim

Okay… So today was massive. And now that I am back at the hotel exhausted… I can safely say that it will be hard for any day of this year to live up to the awesomeness of today.

After sorting out our bus pass issue at 9:30am we decided to try and see the Dreamworks panel on Megamind (starting at 10am) BIG MISTAKE… By the time we got to the end of the line, there were at least 6000 people in front of us and only 10 minutes to spare before it started… so we decided to ditch it… sad… but by complete fluke I got to see Tina Fey anyway. As we were exiting the line and heading back to the main hall (I should mention at this point that the line wrapped around the convention centre and went down towards the bay area and didn’t stop…) we walked past just as the whole discussion panel was hopping out of their cars and heading inside. I saw her for 2 seconds and then we saw her feet as she walked behind a gate next to us… nice shoes… at this point I thought that might be the best part of my day… if that first line was any indication of what was to come.

But alas my day improved with a seminar by Danny Elfman. Who was really interesting to listen to, up until all the fan boys and girls decided that it was absolutely necessary to tell him how much they loved him and then asked lame questions like “are you looking for free labour…” Seriously???

We then went to a “Caprica, Battlestar and Beyond” panel. Which had one of my composing idols Bear McCreary on it. So good. Although I felt a little sorry for the other panelists as it became very clear early on that the vast majority of the fan questions were being directed at him.

We then attended the first half of the “Walt Disney Animation Studios Panel for Tangled” which… was… awesome! Glenn Keanne! Need I say more. It was heart breaking to leave the room. But we had to in order to attend the screening of our film.

of which 40 attentive people showed up for! We were amazed and they stayed back to ask us questions post showing. And they were intelligent questions too… which is more amazing.

Up next was the composing pannel with 7 of the most talented composers in hollywood right now. Michael Giacchino (Up), Jim Dooley (Pushing Daisies), the guy who wrote the music for X-Men, the chicks from heroes, the guy from True Bood and the guy who wrote the music for the avatar cartoon. It was so inspirational to hear their stories of success and advice to people like myself. At this point I was very content with life. A bus could have hit me and I wouldn’t have cared… well I would have cause tomorrow is set to be just as awesome… Caprica panel here I come

Anyways, I am exhausted… so I shall head to bed to read the many comic books I may or may not have purchased…

Until tomorrow. Stay classy San Diego.
Tim

An insight from the eyes of Tim.

Not even day one of Comic Con and we are already exhausted. Many would put this down to a fatal combination of jet lag and weird American traffic rules… However, I would say it single handedly comes from walking the length of the Sandiego Convention Centre multiple times against a sea of people.

Pre Comic Con adventures.

Saw Inception… and it was good. If for no other reason than it made you think and had an excellent ending. And the pacing was awesome.

Task 1: Registration.

I don’t know how we did it, but we somehow managed to skip the giant cues and get our badges quite quickly… Our cute Australian accents can get us anywhere over here.

Task 2: Explore and Find the Articulate Screening Venue.

After making the bold statement. “Oh it’ll only take 15 minutes to get there”. Both Mari and I walked and walked and walked until we eventually found the screening room. Who would have guessed that the marriot hotel would have two towers and a ballroom between us and our venue, even before you got to the screening halls. Of which, I feel it is important to note, are located right next to the Anime Appreciation Room… Bahahahaa!

Task 3: Preview Night.

By the time we got back and sorted out some minor transportation issues… (3 laps of the building… urgh) It was time to check out what was on offer at Sandiego Comic Con 2010. Two words… Holy Crap. It’s everything Supanova promises… but this one actually delivers. Soooo many comic books and other things to buy. I have already spent money on all sorts of art books. I even got one for free There is just so much stuff everywhere that Mari and I got home, looked at the program and realised that we must have missed a whole section of it (and we spent a good 2 hours in there the first time). I got Mike Mignola to sign a hellboy book. Excitement!!! And I met Ragnar… The guy who swindled $50 from Josh Huff when he tried to buy me an art book… But he was so lovely I couldn’t say anything mean to him… plus I got him to sign my newly purchased Big City art book… Squee!

Other Sightings…

Felica Day: Red heads are never as beautiful in real life as they are on TV. And she is short… But also she looked absolutely lovely… But Mari nor I could be bother to wait in the cue for a signing… Speaking of which if we promised anyone signed goods… it’s not happening. Too many people and not enough time.

Cafe Diem: For those fans of Eureka out there. There is a Syfy channel themed restaurrant in down town San Diego. If nothing else… it was very novel.

Chuck Jones Gallery: Comic book art gallery Beautiful stuff in there. Including original sketches of the looney tunes and some beautiful paintings of the Joker and Herlequin (I’m talking to you Ashliegh Beevers… Oh and ashliegh they have limited edition Doctor Who merch over here… and a proper sonic screw driver… If i get the time I’ll try and line up for one for you… It may replace the broken heart left by an unsigned China Meiville book)

Anyways. Off to bed must get ready for an early start tomorrow.

PS Photos coming soon… Maris camera has no USB connection, and my computer doesn’t have an SD card reader

This is a blog I’ve started to share our first overseas film festival experience with our graduate film Articulate. Heading off to San Diego in 6 days….Counting down…..absolutely not excited and very sad to be going…..

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