The Global Talent Web

These days the Animation Guild is getting immigration visas from game studios, visual effects facilities, and animation studios at a rapid clip. Animators, compositors, tech directors from overseas are coming into the country to work on projects on both coasts, but mainly this one.

The Guild reviews O-1 visas and supporting O-2 visas, then writes letters of objection or support. Sometimes it gets hectic. Sometimes we're cranking letters out like a small publishing house.

But the talent flows in two direction, there's a global animation industry out there, competing for talent, and not just on the artistic side. There is also a steady flow of executives some from overseas to the States, but most going the other way. Like for instance: ...

A former animation studio chief at Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. has joined Singapore’s One Animation to spearhead a push into original content creation, TBI has learned.

Industry veteran John McKenna will oversee One’s current slate, which comprises Oddbods and Insectibles, and look at developing new multiplatform IP.

“Development is my key priority,” he told TBI this morning. “We want to create the right atmosphere within our studio, where our people feel valued, which will cultivate a culture in which people want to create new intellectual property.”

McKenna career has seen him work on major television and film productions for major US studios, as well on projects in LA, Berlin, Mumbai and Paris. He ran London studios for Disney and Warner during the 1990s, and was senior VP and general manager of 20th Century Fox Animation between 1998 and 2001.

He joins another kids industry veteran, Bettina Koeckler, who joined One in July to lead a push into consumer products. She also has studio experience, having spells at Sony and Fox. ...

A lot of global companies have caught wise to the reality that the animation biz, done right, cam make said companies cargo holds full of money. Current thinking is that American execs with big-time animation experience on their resumes can increase the odds of success.

The theory's debatable, since a number of expatriates have tried and failed, over multiple decades, to boost this or that Asian/Indian studio into orbit. But offshore companies are ever hopeful, so the idea will continue to be tested.

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The Japanese Powerhouse

Japan has been strong in the animated content department for a long time, and continues to move briskly forward.

... Of all forms of content that have made it out of Japan, none have had as much of an impact as animation. Whether it’s the legion of animators who entered the craft after watching a Hayao Miyazaki movie or the millions and millions of people who were sucked into the Pokémon GO craze this summer, the widespread influence of anime in global pop culture is clear.

“Japanese content’s greatest strength is animation as it travels broadly all over the world from developed to developing countries,” notes Satoko Shimbori, the director of the international business department at TV Asahi.

The broadcasting giant has a strong record in animation distribution, with a portfolio that includes the megahits Doraemon, Shin Chan and Ninja Hattori.

One of Japan’s biggest anime production outfits is Toei Animation, which has been in business since the 1950s and boasts a catalog that includes the award-winning Saint Seiya and Sailor Moon. Among its newest highlights is Dragon Ball Super, a sequel to Dragon Ball Z. Ryuji Kochi, the president of Toei Animation Europe, is hopeful that the show will usher in a new period of dominance for Japanese animation in the region after having lost broadcast slots to content from other markets.

“I want Japanese animation to come back in the European market,” Kochi says. “We believe there is potential…. Japan has a huge comics market. We have a lot of the story writers, the [comics’] original authors. It’s competitive, so writers want to improve themselves. That’s why the stories are improving. The strength of Japanese animation is in the stories.”

Kochi also sees strength in the licensing business for Japanese anime. “Recently, games and apps have been growing the market. Also, anime fans like collector’s items, like action figures.” ...

While various foreign animated features do exceedingly well in Japan, the United States and other countries seldom return the favor. Your Name, the latest Japanese feature to break domestic box office records,
will likely do okay in selected foreign markets, but probably won't be a blockbuster.

Nevertheless, animated content out of Japan will continue to wield big influence on the style and stories that get made in the U.S. and Europe.

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Coming Attractions

As the new animated musical from Walt Disney Animation Studios wraps, the publicity rollout shifts to a taller gear. And Moana producer Osnat Shurer provided an interview:

Our movie was 85% FX, which in CG animation is quite a lot. There’s water, there’s lava, and none of the sets are static, they’re on a boat and always travelling. There were quite a few things that were invented for the film. There were a lot of smart people writing incredible programs. They wrote three different programs for the sea, one for distant water, one for midway water, and one for water very close up, and then a fourth program to stitch all those together.

Then, with the idea of water actually being a character in the film, we suddenly needed a huge collaboration between FX and character animation.

So aside from the programs written specifically to figure out water, they also had this incredible breakthrough where they created these buoyancy tests, to figure out the physics of when a boat is moving on the water and it leaves a wake. ...

[Songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda] is very fast in how he works but he also is a deep thinker, so we would always figure out the amount of time he needs for some thinking, so that we could collaborate back and forth.

We also had different people in different time zones all over the world, so some of the scheduling was challenging, and he was busy, but he was always available to us. This is first love. When we first interviewed him he came into the room and said to John, ‘I’m in this industry because of ‘The Little Mermaid’’...

The last couple of animated releases, one from Europe and one from Warner Animation Group, have under-performed at the world box office.

Disney is going to trundle out all its heavy guns for this picture, and it will likely have a profitable run from its November release to the middle of next year. Bank on it.

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New Director

This story came out yesterday, but we note it here because it's worth noting.

Inside Out co-writer Meg LeFauve is joining Tangled director Nathan Greno in helming Walt Disney Animation Studio’s Gigantic, THR reports.

Billed as “Disney’s unique take on Jack and the Beanstalk,” Gigantic was first announced at the D23 Expo in 2015, with Greno set to direct alongside producer Dorothy McKim. Prior to attempting to scale Gigantic, McKim was the producer for Disney short Get A Horse!, ...

Congratulations to Ms. LeFauve, who becomes Disney's second woman director of an animated feature. ...

Gigantic has gone through some reported story challenges, as animated features often do. (If there's one in memory that didn't have changes and alterations, we'd like to know about it.)

Gigantic will be Disney's second pass on the beanstalk and giant story. There was this earlier one:



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VFX Performance Enhancement

Actors in Westworld have gotten a little digital help.

Westworld takes place in a twisted theme park populated by incredibly lifelike androids and presided over by their morally compromised human creators. It can be hard to tell which characters fall into which categories until something breaks, which is where the computers come in. There are subtle tricks — twitches, stalls, inconsistent expressions — used to show what happens when robots perfectly designed to imitate humans malfunction and artifice can no longer obscure their nature. ...

In the first episode in which Old Bill, a first-generation robot at the park, drinks with Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) [the performance] wouldn’t have been possible without significant editing. Old Bill is rickety and moves like a looped Pirate of the Caribbean at Disneyland. While actor Michael Wincott has years of experience bringing characters to life, the VFX crew had to step in to help him give a believably “fake” performance.

“We changed his performance entirely, but it’s really subtle,” Worth says. “We gave him these little stopping and jerking things, his eyelids and hands and arms and how he moves. ...

With the heightened reality every self-respecting big-budget screen extravaganza is expected to deliver in the current era, it's unsurprising that Westworld 2016 have moved several leagues past Westworld 1973. Did it occur to anyone to put James Brolin into the Anthony Hopkins role? Would have presented a nice echo to an earlier, simpler time.

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Trying For Leverage

... but having a time of it.

Unable to get video game producers to meet their demands at the bargaining table – and unwilling to carry through with their threat to call a strike – SAG-AFTRA instead has “promulgated” a new low-budget contract and is hoping that some video game producers will sign it. Few are expected to, however. ...

The union’s chief demand all along has been for a type of residuals for voice performers based on sales. During the negotiations, the union was asking for backend bonuses for voice actors that would be triggered once a game sells 2 million units. ...

The issue before us, ladies and gentlemen, is one of leverage.

SAG-AFTRA has residuals for television and motion pictures because they achieved them back when the playing field was more level. Movie studios were high profile companies in the fifties and sixties, but not pieces of monster, international conglomerates. (That came during the age of the Great Mergers ... where all the movie companies were gobbled up by other companies and became bigger, and BIGGER, and BIGGER.)

And since Games is a new, gargantuan and unorganized part of the entertainment industry. SAG-AFTRA is having a bit of trouble getting an effective contract in place.

Here's hoping it gets better.

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How To Make a Half-Hour, Prime-Time Animated TV Show

This isn't a particularly deep or detailed newspaper article. But it was written 66 years ago, so maybe we should be gentle. ...

Actually, the step-by-step process hasn't change much.

Except now pre-production is digital (as is post-production).

And the animation and color are done outside California.

And there's one hell of a lot more animation being done now than in 1960.

Outside of those things, very similar.

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Weekend Foreign Box Office

... where there are a number of animated features in the mix.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)

Miss Peregrine's Home -- $36,500,000 -- ($65,000,000)

I Belonged To You --$33,600,000 -- ($44,900,000)

L.O.R.D: Legend Of Ravaging ... -- $29,200,000 -- ($29,200,000)

The Magnificent Seven -- $14,800,000 -- ($108,100,000)

Storks -- $14,600,000 -- ($77,611,274)

Finding Dory -- $13,600,000 -- ($985,200,000)

Deepwater Horizon -- $12,400,000 -- ($33,000,000)

The Secret Life of Pets -- $6,900,000 -- ($833,700,000)

Pete's Dragon -- $2,800,000 -- ($122,851,257)

Kubo and the Two Strings -- $1,400,000 -- ($61,300,000)

Finding Dory keeps rolling out in new territories and holding nicely in old ones. Shouldn't be long before it rolls into the billion dollar club.

Storks isn't burning up the box office track, but it is opening higher than Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and The Peanuts Movie in multiple markets.

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Aussie Animation

The trades tell us:

Netflix is amping up its animated slate with a new comedy, “Pacific Heat,” hailing from award-winning Australian company Working Dog Productions, Variety has learned exclusively.

The series, which landed a 13-episode order for its initial season, will debut on Netflix Dec. 2 in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Ireland. In Australia, the television partner is Foxtel and the series will premiere in late 2016.

“Pacific Heat” follows the exploits of a dynamic unit of undercover police investigators working on the glitzy Gold Coast of Australia. ...

The important (though unspoken) wrinkle here? Netflix is really focused on having lots of animation on its service. Kids' animation. Adult animation. Teenage animation. Though Netflix doesn't publish ratings and holds its future plans close to the corporate vest, it seems obvious that animation is attracting eyeballs in a major way, hence NF's enthusiasm for having multiple cartoon series.


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Your American Box Office

In the animated category, only Storks hovers in the Box Office Ten. But Tim Burton, lands his latest pic at #1.

TOP WEEKEND GROSSERS

1). Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children (FOX), 3,522 theaters / $9M Fri. (includes Thursday previews of $1.2M)/ 3-day cume: $26M / Wk 1

2). Deepwater Horizon (LG), 3,259 theaters / $7M Fri. (includes $860K Thursday previews) / 3-day cume: $20M / Wk 2

3). Magnificent Seven (SONY), 3,674 theaters / $4.6M Fri. (-64%) / 3-day cume: $15.6M (-55%)/Total cume: $61.5M/ Wk 2

4). Storks (WB), 3,922 theaters / $3.2M Fri. (-45%) /3-day cume: $14M (-34%) /Total: $39M/ Wk 2

5). Sully (WB), 3,717 theaters (-238)/ $2.5M Fri. (-40%)/ 3-day cume: $8.2M (-39%)/Total: $105.2M / Wk 4

6). Masterminds (REL), 3,042 theaters / $2.3M Fri. (includes $265K previews)/ 3-day cume: $6.4M / Wk 1

7). Don’t Breathe (SONY), 1,653 theaters (-785) / $670K Fri. (-39%) / 3-day cume: $2.3M (-39%)/ Total cume: $84.7M / Wk 6

8). Bridget Jones’s Baby (UNI), 2,055 theaters (-875) / $712K Fri. (-52%)/ 3-day cume: $2.2M (-49%)/Total Cume:$20.9M/ Wk 3

9). Queen of Katwe (DIS), 1,242 theaters (+1190) / $706K Fri. (+7802%)/ 3-day cume: $2.1M (+6072%) / Total cume: $2.58M / Wk 2

10). Suicide Squad (WB), 1,638 theaters (-534) / $459K Fri. (-43%) / 3-day cume: $1.8M (-42%) / Total cume: $320.8M / Wk 9

The Secret Life of Pets, now in a mere 462 theaters, has a cume of 364,680,000 after 86 days of release. Kubo and the Two Strings has earned $46,451,000 after 44 days in theaters. It remains in 560.

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Kidneys And The Stones That Hate Them

So why no post yesterday?

 Because right in the middle of a busy workday with grievances and prep for a guild election, I came down with a kidney stone attack, and my universe became one of pain.

Right now I'm flat on my back in a Burbank hospital bed, so posts might be ... Ahm ... Spotty. . Click here to read entire post

Getting Into Cartoonland

The Huffington Post gives its version of the road map.

... According to the experts at Spiel, it is good to learn how to handle criticism and the weight of reality. In order to get paid, people expect that you will have some working experience, and even if your portfolio is amazing, they might expect you accept an internship first before you can get a permanent position in the company.

To put it bluntly, it will be easier for you to work for free for some time, than to go from one place to another in order to find someone who will immediately appreciate your skills. ....

We're not big proponents of working for free, but many people do it as they struggle to get into the business. Lot's of striving artists ask TAG, "So what's the best way to get a job in the animation business?"

The answer from the grizzled old union rep is a wee bit different than the one found on the Huffington Post, but neither route is wrong.

The animation biz is ever-changing. There are feature-length cartoon studios where story artists, scenic designers and CG animators and technicians are employed inside four walls. There are studios where the front ends of half-hour animated shows get made. Their staffs consist of of script writers, storyboard artists, designers, timing directors, color stylists and animation checkerr.

To get into any part of the biz, it's useful to own high-quality drawing and/or tech skills, a ferocious work ethic, a knack for working well with others and the patience of Job. The L.A. cartoon industry is bigger than it's ever been, but colleges and art schools are turning out graduates with animation degrees at a record clip and the competition is as fierce as it's ever been, so you need calling cards: a strong portfolio, a boffo student film, the ability to give good interviews, familiarity with Storyboard Pro and the willingness to take job tests that often go nowhere are just a few.

Even with strong credentials artists will likely get rejected. But the more arrows they have in their quivers, the more employable they will be. When a twenty-two-year-old artist who's just gotten to town asks for instructions about how to land her first job, the answer given by the business representative is the scenario above, plus this:

To get into animation long-term you need.

1) Marketable Skills

2) The ability to do sustained, high quality work.

3) Luck.

It comes down to having the kind of job chops a studio is looking for, and to be standing at the door ready to go to work when they need you. Then, when you finally get the dream job, to have a talent for playing well with others so that you can keep the dream job.

It's also good to know that nothing lasts forever. (Unless you're a staff member of The Simpsons).


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Boffo Box Office

WB's Storks might be under-performing, but there's another animated movie that isn't.

Animated fantasy film charms Japan and soars to top of box office

Your Name, Makoto Shinkai’s fantasy about two teenagers drawn together by gender-swapping dreams, has been seen by more than 8 million people since its release in August, beating the hugely popular Godzilla Resurgence to become the highest-grossing film in Japan this year, and the ninth highest of all time.

It has earned more than 10bn yen (£77m) in box office receipts, an anime milestone previously achieved only by Miyazaki’s films.

The film has made the 43-year-old Shinkai an obvious candidate to continue the anime legacy left by Miyazaki, the 75-year-old creator of global hits such as Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle. ...

The lesson, at least in Japan, is that animation doesn't have to be CG to make a pile of yen at the box office. Hand-drawn features can also be high-grossers, but since very few are, very few get produced.

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Hail and Farewell

A long-running series is wrapping things up:

“Adventure Time” will end its journey in 2018, Cartoon Network announced Thursday morning. ...

Since its debut, “Adventure Time” has become a cult and critical favorite for its color animation, creative storytelling and quirky sense of humor. Among its many accolades are the show’s six Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.

The announcement follows one earlier this month that one of Cartoon Network’s other most recognizable properties, “The Regular Show” will end after its eighth season. ...

Cartoon Network will have 142 half-hours in the tote bag when Adventure Time ends its run, and the network undoubtedly thinks there are now more than enough episodes to syndicate and re-run into infinity.

For those keeping track, AT began life as a Nick project in collaboration with Fred Seibert's shop. But Nickelodeon decided the pilot wasn't there cup of entertainment, and let the produced short go into turn-around and Cartoon Network snapped it up ... much to Nick's subsequent sorrow.

So here we are, eight years further on, as the series ends its long and triumphant run.


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Jumping the Divide

Mr. Kaytis moves to the live-action side of the table:

Amblin Partners has acquired Deb Lucke’s YA novel The Lunch Witch, with Angry Birds co-director Clay Kaytis attached to make his live-action directing debut. ...

Kaytis comes out of Disney where he worked as an animator on such films as Frozen, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph before Rovio hired him to helm the feature animation adaptation of its touchstone franchise. Angry Birds grossed $346 million worldwide for Sony. ...

Congratulations to Clay for having the talent (and stamina) to go where Frank Tashlin, Brad Bird, Rob Minkoff and several other animation artists have earlier ventured.

(Mr. Kaytis also conducted a series of animation podcast in the not-so-long-ago. Find them here).

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2016 WAGE SURVEY

It took a bit of time, but TAG has now compiled the data for wages in the last half of 2015 and first half of 2016.

The total return of survey forms was 33% (1,518 returned and tallied out of 4,650 sent out). The 2015 return rate was 30%, if you're wondering. The 2016 survey and some highlights: ...

------ 2016 Member Wage Survey ------

------ Minimum ------ Median ----- Maximum -----

Staff Writers (TV) -- $1,000 -- $2,200 -- $3,750

Timing Directors -- $1,500 -- $2,000 -- $2,865

Production Board -- $1,238.40 -- $2,047.20 -- $3,605

Revisionists -- $950 -- $1,570 -- $2,047.20

Character Layout -- $1,054.55 -- $1,900 -- $4,000

Backgrnd Layout/Design -- $1,000 -- $1,950 -- $2,400

Art Directors -- $1,243.75 -- $2,210.90 -- $3,570

Tech Directors -- $1,200 -- $1,780.08 -- $3,203.50

Character TDs -- $1,270 -- $1,961.53 -- $3,472

Lighters -- $1,040 -- $2,021.05 -- $,769.23

3D Compositors -- $1240 -- $1,884.60 -- $2,600

3D Animators -- $1,500 -- $2,060 -- $4,346

3D Modelers -- $1,100 -- $1,826.92 -- $2,500

This year's data shows a wage decline in 27% of the Guild's job categories, and a hike in 73% of them. Many of the declines were small; the drop for CG lighters, to cite one example, was a whopping 71 cents.

The 2015 and 2016 wage surveys can be found here. Feel free to burrow through the various numbers.

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TAG GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING -- NOMINATIONS

The Animation Guild held its September Membership Meeting with a packed meeting hall.

The agenda might have had something to do with it. There was a proposal to raise the Guild's annual dues. There were officer and board member nominations. The results ...

On the question: Shall the Animation Guild raise annual dues $100? (To be phased in over the next four years). -- the vote was a unanimous yes.

The nominations for Animation Guild officer and executive board positions were as follows:

Officers running unopposed; elected by white ballot:

President -- Laura Hohman

Vice President -- K.C. Johnson (incumbent)

Recording secretary -- Paula Spence

Contested Elections

Business Representative -- Tom Tataranowicz, Jason MacLeod, Larry Smith

Sergeant-At-Arms -- Robert St. Pierre, Ray Leong

Executive Board (11 board members) -- Jeanette Moreno King, Zack Atkinson, Lauren Hecht, Mike Morris, Phil Weinstein, Brandon Jarratt, Myoung Smith, David Chlystek, Spencer Knapp, Candice Stephenson, Dominic Polcino, Bronnie Barry, Cathy Jones, Kevin Moore, Andrew Jennings, Jason Mayer, Steve Kaplan, Lisa Anderson, Dave Thomas, Llyn Hunter, David Woo, J.J. Conway, Mark Banker, Bill Flores, David Shair.

Ballots for the new slate of Guild officers will be mailed to the membership on October 11th, and ballots counted on November 12th. The new officers will be installed at the Guild's Executive Board meeting on December 6th.

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"South Park" ... Still Impish

The Simpsons isn't the only cartoon series with two decades under its belt.

In an effort to promote the 20th season, which premiered Sept. 14, mobile billboards have been placed in seven locations around the country depicting scenes that coincide with the trucks' placements.

The marketing ploy did not go over so well with three locations: the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Church of Scientology.

"We knew it was risky," Walter Levitt, chief marketing officer for Comedy Central told The Hollywood Reporter. "We knew some locations might not be pleased to have us out there, but we thought this is a perfect way to celebrate everything the series has covered in its 19 seasons."

The billboard in front of the White House featured a cartoon President Barack and Michelle Obama. The Scientology truck featured a scene from the infamous 2005 episode "Trapped in the Closet" in which the church and its most famous follower, Tom Cruise, were skewered. ...

What keeps the show fresh is the topicality and envelope pushing. And the fact that it skewers various sacred cows at all points of the political compass, which endears it to cynical millenials, also near-millenials (you know, everyone up to about ... oh ... 59).

If the show hasn't offended you on some level in the course of 19 seasons, then you probably don't have a pulse.

And we would still like the production company to sign a Guild contract.


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Box Office At The End Of The Third

We're speaking of the third quarter of this year:

TOP GROSSERS OF '16

1 Captain America: Civil War -- $1,152.8m

2 Zootopia -- $1,023.6m

3 Finding Dory -- $970.1m

4 The Jungle Book (2016) -- $965.8m

5 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice -- $873.3m

6 The Secret Life of Pets -- $821.8m

7 Deadpool -- $782.6m

8 Suicide Squad -- $731.8m

9 The Mermaid (Mei ren yu) -- $553.8m

10 X-Men: Apocalypse -- $543.6m

11 Kung Fu Panda 3 -- $519.9m

What's startling about the motion pictures above is that all but one (The Mermaid) is an animated feature or super hero movie layered with animated visual effects.

Think about this. In the history of moviemaking, animation has never been so dominant. Animated features sit at #2, #3, #4, #6, and #11. VFX extravaganzas occupy most of the rest.





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Star Wars Cartoon

Off in another sector of the Disney empire ...

... Ben Sherwood, the President of Disney-ABC Television Group, ... confirmed that there was development at Lucasfilm Animation at Disney XD regarding the next animated series set in a galaxy far, far away. Now some shuffling behind the scenes further confirms that some new Lucasfilm Animation projects are on the way, and with that also comes big changes at Star Wars Rebels.

... Dave Filoni is no longer the supervising director of Star Wars Rebels. The man who previously worked as supervising director on The Clone Wars hasn’t been fired from Star Wars Rebels though, as he will still act as executive producer and oversee the show. ...

The Star Wars properties created at Cartoon Network? Under Guild contract.

The cartoons made at Lucasfilm in northern California? Those, sadly, do not have the protection of a collective bargaining agreement, but there's no reason they have to continue that way. All it takes is a majority of representation cards. And sometimes a vote.

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