The Buzz: October 2007

Rata-2D?

Included on the DVD release of Ratatouille, (coming out Nov. 6th), will be a short that combines some very unusual animation techniques for this CG studio powerhouse including 3D animation, hand drawn 2D animation, stop-motion animation and even some live action segments. The film, entitled "Your Friend the Rat", follows Ratatouille's star Remy and his brother Emile as they describe the history of the rat in the hopes of convincing their human viewers not to kill quite so many rodents in the future. The film's director, Jim Capobianco, describes the short as being reminiscent of 60s-era educational film, old UPA shorts and classic Ward Kimball animation from Disney. The short represents the first time Pixar has experimented outside 3D animation in their short films and the end result should be interesting to see.

posted: Oct 31, 2007 by athena

Interview with Disney supervising animator, Dick Zondag

It is my pleasure to welcome back Keyframe guest writer, Steven W. Beattie, who brings us a great interview with Dick Zondag, supervising animator of villainous "Bowler Hat Guy" from Disney's summer CG film Meet the Robinsions. Canadian-born Zondag offers up insight on how this unique villain was created and some tips to aspiring animators.

Disney animator Dick Zondag has been in the business for a while, although his name may not be immediately recognizable.

Originally hailing from New Westminster, British Columbia, in 1982 Zondag earned a bachelor's degree in Feature Animation from the prestigious animation program at Toronto's Sheridan College. His most recent job was as Supervising Animator for the Bowler Hat Guy, the villain in Disney's Meet the Robinsons, which has just been released on DVD.

Now living in Los Angeles, Zondag is fairly sanguine about making the transition from Canada to the U.S. "I've been kind of all over the place," he says. "I actually lived in Ireland for four-and-a-half years, then several years in London. Sheridan produces top, grade-A animators, and always has, but the nature of the beast is that you have to go where the work is, and the work can be anywhere in the world."

While jumping in feet first with Disney may seem like a daunting experience, Zondag (who has also worked on films such as An American Tail and Land Before Time for Steven Spielberg) finds that the closely knit group of animators on each film helps prevent him from feeling at sea. "Each film you work on is kind of its own little company," he says. "You become friends and almost family with the group of people you're working with on these particular projects until they end."

In the case of the Bowler Hat Guy, it might be more accurate to use the term "extended family" to describe the team that Zondag worked with. "Probably everybody on the production who was actually animating at some point touched the Bowler Hat Guy." However, at any one time, "it was probably never more than about four or five people."

The process of creating the Bowler Hat Guy's unique performance involved Zondag and his team fulfilling the vision of Director Stephen Anderson, for whom the story of an orphan trying to find a family to adopt him had a personal resonance (Anderson was himself adopted). In creating the Bowler Hat Guy, Anderson wanted to craft a villain in the classic Disney mould - someone like Captain Hook, who would be evil, but in a loveable way.

Anderson devotes much of his DVD commentary to the movie's theme, "keep moving forward," and he was particularly interested in this aspect of the character when it came to performance. The Bowler Hat Guy is the antithesis of the movie's stated theme: he's the one character who is not moving forward, remaining instead completely stuck in the past. "Thematically, that was an important situation," says Zondag. "That's why when you look at him, his design is almost retro compared to the other characters." Indeed, the character's cape and hat and exaggerated moustache bring to mind the kind of stereotypical villain from the silent era.

Zondag and Anderson collaboratively view the character as something of a man-child, who acts not in an authentically villainous way so much as in the way he might perceive a stereotypical film villain to behave. This was the inspiration for the moustache twirling, Snidely Whiplash quality the character displays. "He's a full-grown man with the mentality of a child. The villain part of that character was something that the child had conceived. It's like, 'Here's what I think a villain would be.'"

The character's childlike aspect extends even to the way he moves, his hands and arms kept in close to his body in an almost introverted way. Inspiration for the character's movements came from watching videos of Paul Reubens as Pee Wee Herman and Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean, two other overgrown little boys whose influence can clearly be seen in the Bowler Hat Guy's performance. The character's grandiose movements owe a debt to Jim Carrey as The Riddler in Batman Forever, another film that Zondag studied.

The Bowler Hat Guy's exaggerated gait and stylized facial expressions seem ideally suited to Meet the Robinsons' 3-D animation, a form in which Zondag adores working. "I love the idea of bringing inanimate objects so much to life that the audience forgets that they're looking at something completely fictitious."

Despite his evident love of digital animation, Zondag is adamant that, to be successful, up-and-coming animators need to be aware of the history of animation in all its permutations. "You certainly want to go back and look at some of the old classical movies and try to analyze what they did or did not do. And even if you're going into CG, you should really make sure you've got drawing skills at the same time, because slowly but surely you're beginning to see the realm of drawing and designing merging more and more with digital animation."

Although the cutting-edge tools of the trade may be digital, Zondag underscores the importance of young animators learning and perfecting skills in life drawing as a means of developing their craft. Animators need to strive toward what Zondag refers to as "the golden pose," which could appear in any shot, but which is always the hardest to get. The golden pose is reminiscent of sculpture in the way it appeals to the eye and in the way the pose itself articulates a particular emotion, and it is only achievable, Zondag argues, via a mastery of classical skills.

Zondag refers to one of his favourite films, Disney's The Jungle Book, to describe the effect that artistically appealing drawings can have on a viewer: "These characters are so much fun to look at and to watch, not just because of their great performance and personality, but because they are artistically really, really appealing."

In the age of CG, Zondag insists, classical training is as important as ever, if not more so. "The people who think that it's not are wrong and they'll actually be hampered by it," he says. "Simply going through the motions of making things move is not what animation is about."

posted: Oct 24, 2007 by athena