Thomas D. Moser

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First of all, congratulations to Happy Feet, the winner of the Oscar for best animated film. It would have been my second choice behind Monster House, were I given the privilege of voting.

I want to address, however, a much bigger issue regarding the Academy Awards ceremony. Yes, it is four hours long. Yes, speeches are a laundry list of pathetic thank you’s to agents, lawyers, and spouses. And yes, the host’s jokes often fall flat or are non-existent. And all I can say to that is, “more please.” Seriously, the Oscars could go on for another four hours and I’d be perfectly content.

Let’s get something straight. The Oscars are an INDUSTRY award. That’s why they don’t skip over short documentaries or sound editing awards for people that no one outside the industry has ever heard of, just to appease the viewing audience. These awards are for industry people, by industry people. And if you don’t like it, then don’t watch. There were Oscars before there were televisions, and they will go on whether there is a TV audience or not.

One of the reasons I don’t watch the ESPN awards, and would probably find them boring, is because I’m not that into sports and wouldn’t know a good manager from a bad one. I don’t blame the ESPN awards for this. Why would I? It’s not for me. So if watching the often overlooked and under-appreciated behind-the-scene guys finally getting some due recognition isn’t your thing, then just watch something else.

Finally, in the category of damned-if-they-do-and-damned-if-they-don’t, the Oscars simply can’t win when picking a host. If the host is too controversial, then everyone complains. And if the host is not controversial enough, then everyone complains. People have even complained this year because the theme was conserving the environment! You know you live in a society that simply makes shit up when conserving the environment is too controversial for the sensitive ears of the viewing public.

To end on a high note, congratulations again to Happy Feet and to The Danish Poet for your much deserved awards.

Yes, it’s a shameless plug for myself. I will celebrate the day by working on a pencil test for a new cartoon and working up sketches for a new CG show I’m working on. I work at home, so I will also be playing with precious one-year-old daughter Madeline.

Life is good.

Two of my animated films, Dottie - The Little Girl With The Big Voice and A Life Of Death, have been invited to play at the Malta Arts Festival this year. Dottie was my first collaboration of many with my good friend Dawn Westlake.

Both films have won several festival and animation awards and we are delighted to be playing in Malta.

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I don’t think anything could better exemplify the post-9/11 hysteria that still exists better than Boston’s reaction to an ill-conceived marketing campaign. And I say ill-conceived simply because the perpetrators underestimated how paranoid and hysterical the reaction could be to a Lite Bright Of Unknown Origin (or LBOUO).

Needless to say, I don’t think that anyone who phoned this in deserves a pat on the back. They deserve a bucket of ice water over their heads. Calm down people. There were several other cities that were part of this marketing campaign, and not a single other city reacted by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on SWAT teams and law enforcement.

Now some might say that we’re better safe than sorry. But I think there are limits on just how safe you can be before you’re truly sorry. Do you lock yourself away in your house and throw away the key? Do we lock up anyone who looks at us funny just because we think they might someday commit an act of terrorism? Of course not. No, you go on with your life and try to live it as normally as possible. And you learn the difference between a potential threat and a light kit that gives you the finger.

Right now the two guys who created the campaign are in jail, although I can’t imagine on what charges other than vandalism, which I seriously doubt carries the kind of punishment the city of Boston would love to impose for being made to look ridiculous. I fully expect t-shirts pleading for their freedom within days.

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I admit it. I used to make fun of anime. In my defense, it was ten years ago and I was but a wee animation student. To me, animation was Disney, Frank and Ollie, squash and stretch, ones and twos. To me, anime was bad lip sync (even in Japanese) and glorified story boards.

Chalk it up to “youthful indiscretion.”

My view has certainly changed. Even then I loved Akira. It set a standard for anime that I’m not sure has yet been matched. I also loved Mayasaki’s work, well before I knew who he was. But I really think it was Ninja Scroll of all things that started to win me over. Over the years I’ve gained a great appreciation and admiration for anime, what it is and what it isn’t. And in that time, anime has gotten so popular and so pervasive that my pointing it out now seems kind of trite, like telling everyone how I’ve finally embraced compact disc technology.

So why bring it up? For one thing, I’ve just landed a gig doing an anime-style cartoon. I’m very excited. I’ll be doing a lot of stuff I’ve never done before, like fight scenes, cel-shading, and CG animation for an actual project.

As soon as I get the word, I’ll try posting some clips or stills from the project. At the very least, I’ll post links when it’s done.

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I wrote an entry in defense of Monster House for Best Picture. But as Roger is a professional movie reviewer, I’ll let him take it from here:

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Prediction: “Cars”
Preference: “Monster House”

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I remember about ten years ago, discussions with several different animators who they were getting tired of Disney musicals. They wanted to do more adult-oriented films, like the Japanese were doing. And in anime, the characters just don’t break out into song. They even tried putting the burden on the audience, saying the (then) waning box office was because audiences were getting tired of kiddy musicals and wanted something different.

That onus was as misguided as their bosses who claimed that the success of Toy Story and failure of Treasure Planet meant that audiences wanted more CG - instead of, oh I don’t know, better stories and more engaging characters.

But instead of a healthy sprinkling of musicals, adult-oriented dramas, and kid films, we lost the musical altogether. And ironically, it was at a time when the live-action musical was about to make a surprising comeback. Were studios simply filling a void?

There was a time when the songs from an animated film were as well-known as the film itself. Audiences love singing along, and studios loved selling as many soundtracks as home videos. So what happened? I think the artists themselves just got burnt out. Well, let’s hope they’ve recovered.

I think the time has come for musicals to make a come back in feature animation. It would be fresh, exciting, and no one is really doing it. And by musical, I don’t mean memorable songs - like You’ve Got A Friend In Me or one-off numbers like Move It in Madagascar. I mean characters dancing and singing the songs themselves in order to push the story forward.

The embedded video isn’t working for some reason, but you can follow the link below.

Click here to watch the episode.

UPDATE: Thanks to animationblogspot, the embeded video is now working!

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This is great news, courtesy of THR:

Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, said Thursday in Orlando that he and John Lasseter, chief creative officer of those same entities, intend to bring back traditionally animated movies. The news comes little more than two months after Disney eliminated 160 jobs from its staff of 800 at its Burbank animation studio that deals in movies and TV shows.

I am certainly not the only one who lamented the bone-headed move to get rid of hand-drawn animation at Disney. I think the former Feature Animation building in Orlando is now a Papa John’s pizza or something. I often wonder where decisions like this come from. Is it possible that any one person takes the credit/blame?

I actually feel the same about the end of animated movie musicals. Unlike killing off traditional animation, however, that decision seemed to evolve from the animators themselves instead of the executives, who didn’t want to monkey with their musical cash-cows and the soundtrack sales that came with them.

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On the heels of an announcement partnering Disney with the filmmakers behind Polar Express, there’s an interesting discussion going on over in the AWN Forums about whether or not motion capture is animation, or whether or not it’s even tolerable as a story conveyance.

I’m no purist. In the strictest definition of the word, motion capture is animation in that the technology “brings to life” the characters on the screen. This is as true of the characters in Monster House as it is of Gollum and King Kong, both of which used extensive motion capture.

But even if you are a purist, I think a film should ultimately be judged on the final result. Does it work for you artistically, story-wise, character-wise, etc?