On the next Ambassador Goodtime EarTango Radio hour, you will meet 3 of the last Hanna Barbera artists, known as "The 3 Tooners", who are Tony Benedict, Jerry Eisenberg and Willie Ito. They all loved to draw as kids and entered the animation industry when there were only a few studios like Disney and Warner Bros. They all worked for well known directors and producers and eventually all worked together at Hanna Barbera on classic cartoon series like "The Flintstones", "The Jetsons" and many more Hanna Barbera titles. Their work helped influence a whole new generation of artists to become animators.
Below is a link to a short documentary Tony made about his friend Jerry Eisenberg.
Listen to an interview with Jeremy Foley online at WU Radio starting Tuesday 10/23 to Monday 10/30, every night at 10pm PDT on the Ambassador Goodtime Ear Tango Radio Hour. Jeremy Foley began his career in front of the camera as a young actor. His first big film was "Dante's Peak" which lead to other films and TV series. He learned a lot while on set and eventually started to work on his own projects creating behind the camera. "Mobsters" was a web series he helped produce and direct, here's a link to it from his website. Eventually, he began directing his own short films, beginning with a script his soon to be wife Sarah wrote called "Fated". Its a very interesting story set in a world where people are watched over and helped out to achieve their full potential. But there are some people who will never be able to do this even with extra encouragement. My explanation only tells a little bit about the story, but see the film on iTunes and watch the trailer below.
After "Fated", Jeremy found his next film idea in a short story that his father wrote years earlier. "The Faceless Man" is a surreal story about a man who wakes up with a mirror for a face and has to deal with his new situation. Check out the entire film below.
What is AGETRH? Its 1/2 music on a theme with 1/2 interview based on that theme. Entertaining and Educational at the same time. You can hear the interviews by going to YouTube channel Animateducated. Subscribe to hear the latest ones as they are posted. Thank You!
The announcement of the Winners of the 2018 24 hours contest is below. Check out the top five films below.
First Place- 243 points ($10,625 value)
TEAM HIBAJI RINGLING COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, SARASOTA FLORIDA, USA : CSU Summer Arts $1400 scholarship to CSU Summer Arts for each team member
TVPaint Five life-time licenses of TVPaint Animation 11 Standard Edition for each team member
Pixar – Pixar prize pack for the winning team
CRC Press “Ideas for the Animated Short, 2nd Edition” book for each team member
Second Place– 239 points ($8125 value)
TEAM BRING THE GLUE RINGLING COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN SARASOTA FLORIDA, USA: CSU Summer Arts $1000 scholarship to CSU Summer Arts for each team member
ToonBoom 5 Harmony Advanced 1 yr license gift certificates for the winning team
DreamWorks - DreamWorks prize pack for the winning team
CRC Press “Ideas for the Animated Short, 2nd Edition” book for each team member
3rd place – 237 points ($6375 value)
THE ANI-MATES RINGLING COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, SARASOTA, FLORIDA, USA: CSU Summer Arts $750 scholarship to CSU Summer Arts for each team member
DigiCel 5x pro licenses of Digicel’s Flipbook software
Blue Sky - Blue Sky prize pack for the winning team
CRC Press “Ideas for the Animated Short, 2nd Edition” book for each team member
4th place – 235 points ($1000 value)
PHAM JAM SENECA COLLEGE, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA: Laika – Laika prize pack for the winning team
Stuart NG Books - $375 value 5 x $75 gift certificates for one winning team
CRC Press “Ideas for the Animated Short, 2nd Edition” book for each team member
5th place– 232 points ($850 value)
PEACH CRUMB CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS, VALENCIA, CALIFORNIA, USA: Cartoon Network – Cartoon Network prize pack for the winning team
ASIFA-Hollywood – 5x 1 year Associate Memberships to ASIFA-Hollywood
CRC Press –
“Ideas for the Animated Short, 2nd Edition” book for each team member
Listen in Tonight to WURadio in Burbank,CA, USA, planet Earth in the 3rd dimension and every night at 10pm PDT until next Monday! Follow this link to the show.
It sounds something like this...
This second show is all about Superheroes in songs and stories with a great interview by author J. R. R. R. jim Hardison about his comic book called "The Helm".
Find out how a comic book is made and the other books Jim has written so far. Check out his webpage. If you enjoyed this show, its just the beginning!
Subscribe to Watchcat Films or Animateducated Youtube channels. Recorded Interviews will be posted to the Animateducated channel at a later date for all to enjoy. Curious if anyone is actually listen in or not? If you have a creative friend or maybe that's just you, drop me an email at heyjimr@gmail.com. Let me know how you like the show in the comments section below. NEXT EPISODE: It's the Hand Episode with an interview with David Hale Hand about his dad, who was Disney's right hand man, David Dodd Hand.
A new podcast is about to hit your ear waves called, "The Ambassador Goodtime Ear Tango Radio hour" which can be heard on WU Radio. Click the below link to listen... https://woodbury.edu/academics/resources/wu-radio/ Listen in every night at 10pm PDT to hear this new show. Once a week, host JimR takes you on a tour ofa common theme in songs, stories and an interesting interview based that common theme, (hopefully). I'm getting a lot of interviews about animation which I plan on posting without the music part due to copyright issues. Once the process is figured out, I will post those interviews onto the new Animateducated YouTube channel. Why not save yourself some time and subscribe to it today. The first episode features an interview with Author Mindy Johnson and Animator Jane Baer about "Ink and Paint: The Women of Walt Disney's Animation." Each week we hope to have a special guest to talk about what they do or have done in the animation, comics or video game world. Here's the Mindy Johnson interview.
If you would like to be on the show or have a friend that would make a great interview, please email them to heyjimr@gmail.com
The 2nd episode was about Superheroes!
Songs and Stories about Superheroes and meet J.R.R.R. jim Hardison the author of "The Helm" and hear about the process of making a comicbook. If you have a theme or song requests, suggestions, got an interview or a theme song for the show? please email them to me at heyjimr@gmail.com
Its officially Summer and while I'm working on an animated project, I thought I would post my latest Jim Draws episode. Let me know what you think of it.
Also below, hear the words of animation wisdom from Brad Bird.
I went to the Career Day at CSUN in Northridge, CA where I met
several students and got to take a look at their work. I also gave them
Watchcat postcards and told them about my project.
Many are learning 2D animation principles, which is a great way to learn animation. However most want to remain in the 2D animation world. Unfortunately, all studios do 3D animation and students should focus on learning as many tools as they can in order to land their first production job out of school.
I also stressed that they should graduate with a film or two that shows what they can do. The more you can show a potential employer what you can do, the more interested the employer will be in hiring you.
We at Watchcat Films are hoping to
involve more students who want to work in 2D animation by the making of future episodes,
with the understanding that since we can't pay them at this time, we
could pay them in other ways. We would allow them to use the finished
scenes for their portfolios and would give them screen credit.
Its
not a lot, but to get a copy of an animation scene that you helped
create, might lead to more work for the both of us. We personally would love to be able to pay artists, but
presently we are in the hobby mode. That's the world where you have to prove that an idea is going to work or not. The only way is to produce
something that can be shown in the hopes that an audience
will want to see it and want to see more of it.
If you are interested in helping us out and use ToonBoom Harmony, please contact Jim at heyjimr@gmail.com.
Here's another short animation you can learn from. Please watch it first and see the review below...
Here's a film in CG animation, with a simple story, with good character design and fairly well animated. However, there are several staging and editing problems.
The fisherman character is a large, overweight American looking guy who sets up to fish at the end of a dock. Behind the fisherman, sits a seagull who spots an approaching shark.
The shark immediately hops up onto the dock and we see the Shark's POV through its vision, the large fat man at the end of the dock.
Without any thought, the Shark starts dragging itself along the dock towards the man. I don't know how many of you have ever been on a dock or have studied sharks, but sharks are pretty smart and wooden docks are full of splinters, just saying.
The shark is sneaking up on his prey, until he spots a seagull shaking its head. The bird points with its beak to screen right. We dissolve to a few fish that are playing in the water and then dissolve back to the same shot of the bird looking back at the shark, shakes its head and then flies away. This whole sequence was a little hard to understand, but I think the bird was showing the shark this fish? The dissolves were also distracting.
Cut to bird flying over to land on a harpoon looking thing where it joins another bird and they begin to argue with one another. The shark is watching all of this from behind.
Is this important? Not really. Just to reveal that this harpoon thing exists and will be used later. The shark sees the birds and then focuses on the man again in the distance. The shark is now thinking of what to do; get the birds who are closer or the fat guy that is far away. He shakes his head and decides to go for the fat man.
Seems like days have gone by since we last saw the fat guy wearing headphones waiting for a fish. But now, he is being bothered by a fly. And now, we start cutting to the shark's approach and the man been bugged by the fly. Back and forth, switching camera sides as the shark approaches the shark to see the fat guy sitting on a can. The filmmakers could have added a "Butt Crack" joke here, but instead focused on a more complicated set up to a harpoon joke.
The shark is right behind its victim, he smiles and we dissolve back to the arguing seagulls on the harpoon thing. All this business could be told as the shark was getting to the man. Maybe it would even be too much cutting from the birds, to shark to man to birds, but now, we have a long wait to see if the shark eats the fat guy on the dock.
Back to those arguing seagulls, who manage to turn on the harpoon device. On my first viewing I didn't realize it was a harpoon, I thought the seagulls were sitting on top of a pole on the dock.
But, first they argue, then a slap, then a karate kid moment which goes on way too long... Hey Mr. Shark, eat that fat guy and get out of this film!
But no, more karate slaps send the other bird to land on a plunger that starts up the machine. The harpoon flips both birds off it. As flashing lights and noise loud enough to alert the shark, the harpoon sets up and we dissolve to see the shark's tale sitting in a clamp. Cut to another angle of the clamp turning on and clamping onto the shark's tale.
We cut the Shark with its mouth open wide getting closer to the man's head. The man has no idea what is going on, hence the headphones. The shark stops, cut to Shark turning around to react to, not the clamp on his tale, but the harpoon shooting into the sky. Cut back to shark looking the opposite way. A bunch of screen direction problems here.
Shark tries to free himself from the clamp on his tale, but he spots, the rope running out, not his POV. Then a great wild animation take of the Shark's reaction. Shark turns to man on the dock, trying to grab him, but is yanked out of the scene.
Cartoon logic; a harpoon speeding away from Earth suddenly has enough force to pull a 1,500 - 2,400 lbs great white shark into the air? We pan away from the screaming shark in the sky to see a large ship in the distance. The man sees it too and comes to life again by doing his own animated take. Cut to the ship and a tiny blob headed for the front of the ship. We know exactly where its going to land by seeing the bow of boat from above, then we cut to the shark coming towards us, landing with a cartoon bang effect which goes to black.
One more joke for the big ending, the payoff. Fade up to close up of man looking around and then at the distant ship. Cut to a full shot of the whole ship as a familiar music score begins. We dissolve to a truck in shot to see the ship and a parody of the famous Titanic shot. But instead of two lovers at the bow, we see a distorted looking shark blinking at us as it goes by. The pacing was off in this film, unlike the snappy end title sequence. If you have any comments or learning anything new from this post, please let us know. Check out the first Bad Filmmaking 101
You can learn from good films, but I think you can really learn more from films that contain, "bad choices" and a great way to learn from other's mistakes. It could be a character design flaw, unclear storytelling, acting, a bad composition choice or editing problems.
I am in search of content showing examples of bad story and filmmaking choices in short animation films. If you know of any short films which contain unclear story or cinematic choices, please send me a link and let me know what's wrong with the film. Thanks, Jim heyjimr@gmail.com
Here is a short film on Youtube which has some examples of "Bad Filmmaking choices". This is a film about three bored baby birds who discover a cup cake and try to get it. Pigeons Enjoy this wonderful fun story of Disney/Pixar magic and then we will talk about it below.
First of all, this short was written and directed by 4 different people and is not from "Disney/Pixar" short. The
only thing Pixar about this short is that the filmmakers have slugged in a
lot of music from past Pixar films to create their soundtrack. And since the
Disney legal team hasn't gotten around to shutting this film down yet, let's take a look at how many things we can find learn from in this short and compare your notes with mine below...
Our story begins as we move up to the roof where sits a nest. It takes about 30 seconds to get from the main title to this first image.
Notice that you can see, bits of the yellow of the characters inside the nest already. And what are those detailed structures in perspective in the background? This is bad Staging. Take out the birds completely or introduce them from a different camera angle. Cut to the characters, three yellow bored birds in the nest.
The biggest of the birds yawns and stretches while the middle bird looks about. The biggest bird very slowly plops down again, and then there are lot of eye movements with all the characters and then they all laugh.
What happened here? Why are they laughing? A situation has been set up, its not clear what they are all laughing at. This causes your audience wonder and fill in the missing information.
I'm thinking the biggest bird farts and they are reacting to it, however there is no sound effect or music cue indicating this. I am coming up with a solution to why they are waking up and laughing. And they laugh a lot about whatever just happened, so much so, that a dissolve is needed to show that some time has past.
They are all waiting and looking bored. Starting a story about a bored character can turn into a boring story. We need to know more about why the character is bored in the first place. If they are waiting for Mama bird to return because they are hungry, we need to show them doing something that shows this situation.
What are they waiting for? Its called the "Inciting Incident" and before any story begins, we need to see our character or characters in their typical way of life. The "Inciting Incident" is the thing that occurs that changes the character's routine and it sets the story in motion.
In Pigeons, the biggest pigeon suddenly looks upward, screen left to see... What?!
AN EXAMPLE OF BAD COMPOSITION AND STAGING!
CUT to: Wide shot of the blue roof top, which you probably notice first. Screen right is the nest of French fries, but then you might have noticed toward the upper left near a window sits a cupcake.
This is not a Point of View shot from the Bird's perspective, but a wide establishing shot of where the white frosted cupcake is compared to the bird's nest of french fries. PLOT POINT 1: The birds make their exit from the nest which takes some time to do. Now we cut to this shot and Where does your eye go first?
I bet you noticed that the RED crushed (coke like) can. Why? Because your eye goes to the one thing that is different in a scene. My question is, why is the red can there? If its in the scene, it must be there for a reason. Somewhere in the story, it will be used because its there for a reason, right? Why is the cupcake there? We are in a very interesting and clean environment, yet someone likes to drink soft drinks and leave cup cakes outside on their window ledge. Are they diabetic and hiding their condition from someone else in the apartment?
All these thoughts could be flying through your audience's head as they are watching this film full of unanswerable questions. But let's continue; the birds arrive, ignoring the can, but really wanting that cup cake.
Sorry, audience here... How do these birds know what a cup cake is? I'm Sorry, I'm just thinking too much again...
So, the biggest bird looks sneaky...
... and then has an idea.
(Fade to Black)
Fade Up: Another BAD COMPOSITION.
Do you think we should see a little bit more of where that cup cake is? Right now, I think we are a little too tight in on this frame. Your eye is looking around at all that Sky area.
This is the beginning PLOT POINT 2 and setting up a joke (gag), because at the bottom we see the top of the bird's head enter and move about.
Then we show the joke; all three birds are working together, balancing on top of one another attempting to get that cup cake. Notice the red can is still there. Maybe the birds will use it to help them get the cup cake later, after all it must be there for a reason, right?
Then we cut back to a closer shot which should show the top bird grabbing onto the cup cake. But, due to poor character design, the bird has very small wings and so, nothing really happens in this shot.
They lose their balance and all fall down. Red can is still on the right.
They all look around and then, the middle bird turns around to look at the little bird next to him.
This
must be a joke intended for the birds, because the biggest bird just
looks at the little bird that moves a bit and then we FADE to Black
again. End of PLOT POINT 2.
PLOT POINT 3 is where we see this. Where did all this stuff come from? What, no red can? What do you think they will do next?
Of course, the two birds help the biggest bird to fly up to the cup cake above by jumping onto the plank. The biggest bird goes up and out of frame. We cut to this shot of the cup cake just sitting on the window ledge. We don't see the bird go up, but it does fall back down and past the cup cake and we Fade to Black again.
CRISIS: The lowest or highest point in the story. Fade In: The bored and hungry birds are now back in their nest again looking sad.
CLIMAX: Sounds of a Mama bird, a shadow zips by and the baby birds are all excited with wide mouths opened.
RESOLUTION: A worm drops into the next and the birds look disappointed.
Did you find anything I missed or something you didn't understand? Did you like this film or not? Anything you would have liked to see happen? Please leave your feedback or a comment below, because this isn't a horrible, just had a few things that could have been changed.
They all loved to draw as kids and entered the animation industry when there were only a few studios like Disney and Warner Bros. They all worked for well known directors and producers and eventually all worked together at Hanna Barbera on classic cartoon series like "The Flintstones", "The Jetsons" and many more Hanna Barbera titles. Their work helped influence a whole new generation of artists to become animators. 
