Month: November 2015

Weekend at the CTN Animation Expo

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I had a great time this weekend at the CTN Animation Expo.  This was my second year attending and I could not believe how much it had grown since last year.  I heard in the last few years this animation expo has doubled in size.  It shows there is a desire for this type of an event, and you almost wonder if more will be springing up.

It was so crowded many of the panels, and workshops were hard to get into, and this was a little disappointing.  Often by the time you got to the line it was around the block and there was no chance you would make it in.  In addition to all the panels, and workshops there was also and exhibit floor where artists, schools, and studios had booths.  When I was not able to make any of the panels this was normally where I spent my time.  I really enjoy meeting artists, and seeing their work.  I was surprised by the number of concept artists there was this year.  Maybe artists with other disciplines did not get booths as much, but the majority of booths were of concept artists.

I thought the highlight of the event was the Rat’s Nest Reunion.  It brought together the Disney legends who all once worked together as animators.  They explained the origin of the name which came from the conflict between the old guys and the new guys.  A summarized version of the story is that after Walk Disney died the studios innovation slowed to a crawl.  According to the gentlemen in the Rat’s Nest, management was trying to think of what “Walt would do”, instead of being innovative.  As the senior A-team animators started to leave the studio the senior, but less talented B-team started to run the studio.  The Rat’s Nest was a small group of new animators that wanted to push the innovation to get things back to how it was, while the older animators did not want to rock the boat.  They continually discouraged pushing the limits, and kept creativity at an all time low, The difference in opinions was causing a divide between the two groups. As the older animators started to leave the Rat’s Nest(a name they were called by the older animators) started to have more influence in the movies Disney was making.  They are often credited for bringing the quality of Walt Disney animated movies back.  These animators included; Brad Bird, John Musker, Jerry Rees, Henry Slick, Bill Kroyer, and Dan Haskett.  Even if you don’t recognize their names you will know their work.  Click their names to link to find out more information about each.

Rat's Nets

L to R: Henry Slick, Jerry Rees, John Musker, Bill Kroyer, Dan Haskett, Brad Bird, and moderator Tony Bancroft.

It was great hearing them all tell stories about their times at Disney, and seeing old photos and sketches. It was over 30 years since they were last all together, so it made it a very special event.

There were many other great events I was excited to see.  I saw some scenes from Kung Fu Panda 3, and it was extremely funny.  It was good seeing and reconnecting with directors Jen Yuh Nelson, and Alessandro Carloni.  I have not seen them since I left DreamWorks Animation.

I was also excited to see the panel of Tonko House.  It is an animation company which was started by two guys who used to work at Pixar.  Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi is one of the co-founders, and he was the presenter. They started by creating the animated short The Dam Keeper, and decided to start the company after they released it. I first heard of them last year at CTNX when they screened their short film The Dam Keeper.

Another very interesting workshop was presented by my friends Kate Finan and Jeff Shiffman who are co-founders of Boom Box Post.  Their workshop was called The Art of Animation Sound.  They showed how they add amazing sounds to their client’s project, and also gave an in-depth history on sound used in animation.

Overall this year’s CTNX was a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal.  I also got to meet a ton of really talented people.  Now I just need to find the time to go though this huge stack of business cards to reach out to all the people I met.  I did download an app on my phone which you can take a picture of the business cards and it pulls the data out and creates a contact.  It will save me a lot of time by keeping me from manually entering them into my computer.

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.

Eric Miller Animation November 2015 Update

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It’s time for my November 2015 Update to let all of you know everything we are working on.  I’m really good at keeping myself overworked, and extremely busy.  No matter how productive I am each day I never get to a point where I feel I’m caught up.  You may have noticed from my failure to post to this blog each week that I have not been able to keep up with everything.  While continuing to write weekly posts is very important to me sometimes I’m just not able to find the time in my schedule.  So while I might not post every week please don’t give up on me and this blog.

Business:
Recently I have hired a marketing consultant to do some research, and strategizing for my business’ marketing plan.  There are two areas we are working on with this plan.  One is branding and marking the company as a whole, and the other is planning the release of the animated short we are working on.  I feel these are both things which will help grow my business, and hopefully get us more client projects.

I have also been doing a lot of research on foreign animation service companies.  One of my biggest challenges is the cost to do animation in the US is much higher then it is in other countries with cheaper labor or tax credits.  My plan is to find out how much these other companies are charging for each service, and then finding ways to lower my costs to compete with them.  I know I will not be able to get costs as low as them, but if I can get close I feel I will be able to win clients through other things we can offer.  For example being local makes it a lot easier for clients, so being in Los Angeles gives us a huge advantage.  Having amazing quality that is better then our competitors.  I hope to show this level of quality with our animated short.  Customer service, I want to make working with us as easy and comfortable as possible for our clients.  I want them to be so happy they not only return to  work with us again, but also tell other people about us.  Hopefully these other benefits will be enough to get the clients to pay a little more  in order to work with us over our remote competitors.

Short:
The short always tends to take the majority of my time each week.  So far we have had 14 people working on the short, so we have had a decent size crew.  We started working on it in May of this year, and plan to be working on the first 30-second episode until early next year.  While it is taking a long time to complete I’m very excited with how things are progressing.

All the assets for the first episode are modeled and currently being worked on in surfacing.  We have also finished character rigging, and we have started working on camera and rough animation.

Here are some rough poses done by our animator Jacob Gardner to test the rig, and get something more appealing then a t-pose for surfacing to work with.  It really gives you a sense of Bink’s personality, and where we can take it.

Bink Poses

As we continue to move forward on the short I will send more updates.

CTNX:
This weekend I will be attending The Creative Talent Network Expo in Burbank for the second time.  I went last year and had such a great time I wanted to go again.  You can read about my adventures last year at CTNX here… “An Amazing Experience at CTN Animation Expo” .

The first year I went to see what it was all about, so this year I’m hoping to take full advantage of what the expo has to offer.  It is a great place for networking with artists, animators, and anyone involved in animation.  I plan to attend some really great panels, and also hoping to learn some new things.  Next year I’m considering getting a booth for my company, and maybe even participate in the job fair to find talented artists to work with.

Facebook Network:
My Facebook network is continuing to grow, and we now have over 4,000 Facebook likes on our company page.  The larger our network the better chance we have of getting the short to be seen my the right people.  If you have not liked our page you can do so with the link below.  Also I always appreciate when you share my blog posts, or other social media sites with your own network.

Eric Miller Animation Studios

 

Paris Attacks:
I wanted to end by briefly commenting on the terrorist attacks in Paris, and other places.  It is disheartening people resort to violence towards innocent people to make their statements.  My thoughts are with all of you who have lost loved ones, or have been effected by all this violence.  The animation industry has a very large and talented French community, and I hope you and your families also stay safe.

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.

The World Animation and VFX Summit

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Last week I attended The World Animation and VFX Summit which was held at the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey.  While it was my first time attending it was actually the 4th year the summit has been held.

I have been to a few different conferences now, and I found this one to be very interesting.  The reason I found it to be interesting was because its attendees were mostly producers, executives, and/or founders of animation companies, so all the discussions were geared towards topics I was interested in.  Most events I find are either for artists in animation, or producers in live action films, but not producers for animation.

This was a 3 day event, but I only attended the first two days.  The 3rd day was only classes, and I choose to start small this year to see if it was worth it.  It was a much smaller conference then I have attended and you did not have to choose which panel to attend since only one was going on at a time.  This was great, since you never felt like you were missing something, and you got to know the other attendees a lot better.

They had some really great panels through each day such as “The New Reality of… New Virtual Reality Revolution”, Animated Movie Spotlight: The Peanuts Movie”, “The Business of Show Business”, “Understanding the New Hybrid Studio Model”, “Understanding the Evolving Ecosystem of Global Feature Co-Productions”, “Building Your Company and Your Brand”, “Charting the Future of the Small Screen”, and others.

For breakfast and lunch each day you could sign up to eat with one of the panelists which was a great chance to talk and ask them questions you might not have asked in front of the group.

At the end of each day they had a cocktail party which gave us all another chance to meet and network with each other. I was surprised by how many people there were from all over the world.  I met people from Russia, South Africa, China, Malaysia, and all over South America to name a few.  Many of them looking for co-productions deals with US production companies.

AwardsOn Monday after the cocktail party they had the Awards Gala where they gave out 4 awards.  They were The Trailblazer of the Year Award, The Lifetime Achievement Award, The Creative Visionary Award, and Breakout Studio Award.

The Master of the Ceremonies was Candi Milo who did the voices for Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory, Sweetie Bird from Tiny Toon Adventures, and many other characters over the years.

It was entertaining to see Danny Jacobs (voice of King Julian) present the award for Trailblazer of the Year to Head of Television for DreamWorks Animation Margie Cohn.  I recorded a quick clip of it which I included below.

The Creative Visionary award went to Charles Schulz who created the comix strip Peanuts. The award was presented to Schulz’s daughter Jill Schulz by the director of The Peanuts Movie.  While at the cocktail party before the awards I was talking to Charles Schulz granddaughter.   I was a little shocked when she mentioned who she was, and I did not know what to say.  I responded something stupid along the lines of “I’m sure you liked your grandfather”.

Besides that moment of awkwardness it was a really great event, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend.  I hope to attend again next year. To read more about the Awards Gala check out the Animation Magazine article.

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.