Sunday, June 01, 2008

Animation's Niche ... and Offshore ... Players

The Magic Gourd

Variety has put up a cluster of animation articles tied to the Annecy Animation Festival. Below, we provide links to a sprinkling of them ...

Indie producers have long been a staple of the live-action film industry. In 'toonland, although you could say all the cartoon pioneers began as small independents, there have been few successful indie animation producers recently. But maybe that's soon to change:

Not every budding animation company wants to be the next Pixar. In fact, a number are opting to do without the production pipeline altogether, preferring to follow the business model of independent live-action films: Develop a promising script, coordinate financing and distribution on a territory-by-territory basis, hire the right director, and then put together the best team to tackle the project...

With brisk production windows of just 18 to 24 months for each project, indie toon producers don't have the luxury of finding the story as they go along. "At the main studios, it's easy to start doing image development because there's always an inhouse crew, but then you end up finding an image you like and trying to back your story into it," [producer Max] Howard cautions.

Working under such disciplined conditions, even a modest hit pays for itself. As examples go, Howard points to "Hoodwinked's" $109 million worldwide haul. "If you place those numbers against a Pixar or a DreamWorks movie, it would have been seen as a disaster," he says. "But place it in the world in which it was done and produced, and it's considered a hit movie."

(Max Howard, if you don't know, had a long tenure at Disney Florida/Burbank before doint stints with Warner and DreamWorks Animation. Today he's the President of Exodus Film Group).

Patrick Frater writes about India's burgeoning animation industry. Disney, Sony and others now tap into its talent pool for sub-contracting work, but there's more going on:

.

"There is something going on in India today that may be the same as what was happening in Japan 30 years ago with Studio Ghibli," says Annecy artistic director Serge Bromberg. "There are more and more studios, there are schools, so they're producing talents, and major companies are making connections with the local partners."

Already, a string of modest locally made animated features are connecting with Indian auds -- a trend that began with the success of "Hanuman" and was followed by "My Friend Ganesha." Last month saw the theatrical release of "Ghatothkach," a 2-D story produced by Mumbai's Shemaroo Entertainment and Hyderabad's Sun Animatics ...

Success is attracting the attention of other Indian congloms and Hollywood investors. Local film giant UTV is ramping up its own full-scale animation pipeline and has announced three movies with budgets exceeding $30 million ...

Cartoon Brew's Jerry Beck writes about the world's first animated film:

... It was on Aug. 17, 1908, that Gaumont released Cohl's two-minute animated short. Though physical objects (J. Stuart Blackton's "The Haunted Hotel," 1907), chalk drawings (Blackton's "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces," 1906) and various "trickfilms" using animation for special effects predate Cohl's film, "Fantasmagorie" was the first to feature drawn cartoons on paper shot sequentially frame by frame on a makeshift animation camera stand ...

And this article about animation in China underscores how, while costs are important, there are other considerations that come into play:

On the animation front, Hong Kong's Imagi announced a partnership with Warner Bros. and the Weinstein Co., who together put up $27 million of the $32.5 million production costs on "TMNT" and have now agreed to distribute two new Imagi projects next year: the sci-fi ninja "Gatchaman" and the robot "Astro Boy." ...

For Imagi, the decision to work out of Hong Kong comes despite the fact the city is hardly a hotbed of animation. Hong Kong offers plenty of customers but is better known for world-class chopsocky than great animation classics, plus it is more expensive to produce there than in other parts of China.

Where Imagi has scored high is by recruiting former inkers from top studios, including some DreamWorks veterans, to take on top positions and train the emerging talent ...

Like always, animation is a global village. And producers look in all corners of the that increasingly interwoven town for the special something that will help them make a hit.

It isn't just about cost, but also talent.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Howard spends more time announcing projects he's involved in than actually making anything. This is the first film he just HAPPENS to be attached to since he drove Warner Brothers Feature Animation into the ground.

Anonymous said...

"then you end up finding an image you like and trying to back your story into it"

This is the SILLIEST comment about film making I've ever heard.

Anonymous said...

That line explains things like "Quest for Camelot" but it doesn't illuminate the many well-compensated years Howard spent hiding at DreamWorks.

Steve Hulett said...

This is the first film [Max Howard] just HAPPENS to be attached to since he drove Warner Brothers Feature Animation into the ground.


In fairness to Max, Warner Bros. Feature Animation was tottering along on rickety legs before he got there.

Site Meter