Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Apes


No animation here, brothers and sisters ...



... just a whole lot of "digital makeup".

5 comments:

Floyd Norman said...

Why should we be surprised? Animators have never been a group worthy of respect. Kicked to the curb for years in animated films, animators are now the new whipping boy in live-action. Though these "faux films" could not be made without the work of animators - it would appear their hard work is little more than "digital makeup."

The bloated egos of live-action filmmakers will never allow animators any respect as long as they control the process. Sad.

Celshader said...

Well-said.

Steve Hulett said...

Absolutely correct, Floyd.

"Gravity" is an animated feature (with a teensy bit of live-action.)

"Avatar" is half animated feature. Ditto "Planet of the Apes" and numerous others. But you'll never get a live-action big shot to admit that publically. We all live in the animation ghetto, and it's best to pretend we're invisible.

Bob Foster said...

Animators are actors but they don't belong to SAG/AFTRA so they don't get screen credits as actors. Their names are relegated to the gargantuan credit crawls at the end of a movie, and who hangs around to read those?

"Real" actors get up-front credits and become familiar, household names because the audience knows who they are. Even those who's actual faces are never seen on screen get up-front credits.

Live action actors who provide voice talent for major characters in an animated feature always get up-front screen credit for providing the voice of the character and always wind up on the talk show circuit to promote the movie and demonstrate their voice talent by showing a clip of their character talking with their voice. Again, their face is directly connected to the animated character they provide a voice to, but the real actor behind that character, the animator, rarely appears on any kind of talk show to promote any animated film or any of the characters they may have animated, or provided the acting for, and the audience never gets to know who the real actor is because of this.

Once in awhile you'll see screen credits for animators who were the primary animators for key characters, but we never see their faces. And if an animator or any other production artist who worked on an animation feature ever appears on a talk show for any reason, it's to demonstrate how quickly and easily he can draw Hector the Happy Hedge Hog.

If animators got as much exposure and publicity, free or otherwise, as live action actors did, there's be a whole new world of celebrities to keep the paparazzi happy for years. Animation actors deserve more credit. Maybe a picture of their faces in the credits, along with an animation clip of their work would help the audience identify the real actors in the future.

David said...

”Maybe a picture of their faces in the credits”

The only time I’ve ever seen something like that is on the end credits of Bill Melendez’s feature film “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eajbvrk8l0#t=464

(the version linked on YouTube is the Spanish-language version of the movie)

Richard Williams’ credits for “Raggedy Ann and Andy” gave individualized credits to the lead animators , noting what each animator did in the film -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQXlAi_-nW4#t=173


Of course both Melendez and Williams were animators themselves and had enormous respect for their crews.

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