Archives & Animators; Technology & Totem Poles

I recently attended ‘The Animator’, a conference held this June in Toronto at Corus Entertainment and Sheridan College, which threw up some interesting recurring themes and motifs across the various keynotes, panel presentations and screenings (as will be the case in any good conference) and I thought I'd take the opportunity of this post to reflect on some of these ideas. Don't expect anything tremendously conclusive, however. The event was a convergence point between several institutions and events at once; the aforementioned Sheridan College and Corus Entertainment, TAAFI (the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International), the centenary of Norman McLaren (the National Film Board of Canada’s most important animation figure) and the Society for Animation Studies’ annual conference.

As a child of the VHS generation I have no problem admitting to a collector mentality. Although many of the students I teach (and one or two people my own age) experience film and animation almost exclusively through streaming or downloading, I just can't help feeling a desperate desire to own something if I really like it or find it interesting. Just having access to it through the internet isn't enough – I can even be struck by a kind of OCD ‘collector anxiety’ if I find something that, for one reason or other, I just can’t own in some way. I actually avoid watching some online material through fear that I’ll like it, but be unable to buy it. And so one of the themes that ran through the conference, the loss and/or preservation of material, struck a definite chord for me. The inimitable Paul Wells discussed the sheer amount of production material that animation studios/companies simply throw out or destroy as a result of space limitations. This includes preproduction sketches, character concept art, storyboards and even maquettes and sets in stop-motion productions. Wells and his colleagues have taken it upon themselves – within the UK at least – to gather up and preserve as much of this material as possible.

The theme of preservation continued through to the end of the conference, where we were lucky enough to be shown the ‘pre-world premier’ screening of Norman McLaren's stereoscopic films. The films were highly impressive works of early 3D animation but, amazingly, the images were hand drawn and, as with many McLaren works, actually drawn directly on to the celluloid. How one sits down in 1951 and works out how to draw lines on a tiny cel the size of a postage stamp and make them three-dimensional in projection is beyond me. These short animations had long since slipped into obscurity and were even feared lost altogether, but thanks to the wonders of digital media, the restoration and preservation of this incredible material was possible.

Despite the ability of digital technology to rescue these films, another tendency that ran through the conference was a trepidation about just what gets lost in the new digital world. Vera Brosgol, a very lovely storyboard artist for Laika, stores her material (sketches and complete storyboards) digitally but admitted that much of the work that she produced for Coraline had drifted into obscurity, because she needed the room on her hard drive. While on the one hand, this seems exactly the same situation as with the physical materials that companies feel they must throw out for the sake of space, the difference is that there is no digital equivalent of Paul Wells to turn up and take it away to a safe haven. Digital material, once deleted, stays deleted.

Another, slightly more aggressive, attitude towards digital – and the changes it brings – also became apparent through the conference. Although there were several borderline vitriolic opinions expressed, most relevant for this discussion were the thoughts on how digital impacts upon storyboards and another similar art-form, the comic. David Sweeney argued that the problem with a digital comic is that the defining quality of sequential art (the fact that the images co-exist on the page and don't simply replace one another in a continuous stream), is lost in the process of adapting them into the partially-animated Motion Comic format. Chris Pallant mentioned a similar development in the way in which storyboards are used within the production process. While in the days of paper storyboards, the images were posted up on the wall and could be rearranged as story meeting progressed and, most importantly, seen at the same time, allowing for a better understanding of story flow. But now, at some studios at least, the storyboard has become an entirely digital process. Images are drawn directly into the computer by hand and then discussed one at a time, eliminating the dynamic flow between the images that the analogue process allows.

Thus, on one hand the risk of material taking up too much room and being destroyed or discarded is greatly reduced through the digital production process, yet at the same time, the way in which this material is used in production becomes altered and the risk of art being deleted forever is increased.

Listening to Vera Brosgol and speak and show us some of her artwork also heightened my collector anxiety. The material that we were shown (both her own and that of others) was fascinating but, even in the era of DVD and Blu-Ray extras, would mostly sit in obscurity seen only by a very tiny minority. One of my (many) fascinations with animation as a medium is the fact that – moreso than live-action film – every piece of work produced during the production process can be seen as a work of art in its own right. Every character concept, used and unused, each storyboard page, each colour chart, every piece of background art, not to mention the huge amount of hand-drawings, maquettes, real and virtual models and armatures, etc., that actually produce the moving character on screen can all be regarded as works with their own artistic merit (as far as I'm concerned). And for me, the tragedy is that you can't own this stuff! Even when 'Making of' featurettes on DVDs or 'Art of' books can give you a lot of material, it is impossible to get it all.

Of course, arguably, you could have access to it all, if a digital archive of it all were to be made. I was happy to find (albeit in low-quality) Vera Brosgol's graduation short Snow-bo on youtube, as well as many other graduate films from Toronto's Sheridan College and the world-famous Disney-founded CalArts. The earliest work of people like Tim Burton or Chris Sanders is available to see online even if it is nearly impossible to find a physical copy. This is the benefit of digital media like the internet, and I have to grudgingly admit the superiority of the internet to physical artefacts like discs and books; the sheer amount of material that one can find – if one knows where to look.

Most academic work focuses its energy on analysing and unpacking 'professional' work. Film and Animation Studies are concerned with texts that are available to most people, not least of all because your brilliant insights into a particular film will be lost on everyone if you're the only person who has seen the film in question. But does this mean that the vast mountain of work produced by amateurs and students – a lot of which is accessible to all – shouldn't be studied? If I want to tell my students about the importance of metamorphosis to animation, do I have to limit my examples to the Fleischer Brothers' masterpieces, or can I demonstrate the exact same principles by showing some of the brilliant student work that was screened for us at Sheridan College? On one level, the answer to the question is: stick with the Fleischers. Partly, this is because it is very easy for me to find many articles on the Fleischer cartoons that I can support my claims with.

Academia is, of course, a reliant activity – doubly so for Film and Animation Studies. We have to draw upon the insights of other academics in order to ground our own thoughts, but we also require artists to produce work in order for us to have anything to talk about. Paul Wells (who gets in everywhere) also suggested that the relationship between theory and practice in animation studies was one of dismissiveness and superiority. While theory regards itself as an intellectual pursuit, it also regards the actual practice of animation making as somehow a lesser activity, something that doesn't require the same kind of critical thinking or evaluative understanding. This, Wells says, is nonsense. The act of creativity is by its very nature one of self-reflexive consideration, of critical evaluation of its own processes. Theory needs to better understand its relationship to, and evaluation of, the practical processes of animation. Another reason my hands are tied in showing the Sheridan students' work is because, unless the student has uploaded their work online and (even more importantly) I can remember the student's name, how will I access the material to show my own students?

'Professionalism' functions a little like a gatekeeper – if a work has been produced by a studio, we can at least assume confidently that the work will possess certain levels of competence and artistic merit (when looking at the craft of animation, I mean – the finished film might be pretty bad). And work produced professionally is more likely to exist as a ‘product’ that can be owned. Work produced by an individual in their bedroom or as part of an educational institution does not come with the same kind of guarantees. How do we as consumers (not just academics but anyone interested in animation) trawl through the average and forgettable in order to reach the gold that some artists are able to produce? At the moment, there is no particularly workable answer. There is no online system that allows for the hierarchical arrangement of students' work. You cannot type 'best cartoons to come out of Sheridan' into youtube and hope for a legitimate result. And so it seems unlikely that any animation scholar will write a piece analysing any of the great pieces of animation that I saw while in Toronto.

On the final day of the conference I had the good fortune to begin talking with a group of the conference volunteers, who were all animation students at Sheridan. Although there were several more panels during the course of the day, I ended up missing them in favour of spending time with these Animators of Tomorrow. I was struck even more so than before at the sheer amount of creativity and material that these animators produced all of the time, from sketches, to paintings, from character design to full animation. My collector anxiety went into meltdown as we toured the College and saw all of the material produced by students of all ages and stages of development. Though I did take a couple of (poor quality) photos, the fact is that I saw many, many images that were beautiful and I'm absolutely certain I will never see again. Not just because I can't own them, but because I also have no method of accessing it online even if it is up on deviantart or youtube. The tragic ephemeral nature of animation is that 95% of the art that goes into it disappears, if not deleted forever, and then gets lost in the vast ocean of amateur material on the internet.

Probably the most memorable of these Sheridan students was Coco Cheung, not least of all because she spent the final day, for no discernible reason, dressed as a totem pole. I spent much of my time with her, discussing her desire to make character maquettes for stop-motion animation (and being told, in no uncertain terms, that having a PhD does not make me a “real” doctor), and it is from her I will take the totem pole analogy that will form my conclusion. Or, more accurately, my “conclusion”.

Coco Cheung (by Coco Cheung) flying through the internet on her totem pole trainers

Academia functions as the top figure on a totem pole; not only does this nicely reflect the ‘ivory tower’ mentality that we all slip into at some time or another, but it also demonstrates the reliance that we have on the work of others. Below academia sits the professional finished products – shorts and feature films by Dreamworks, Laika, Disney and so on – that are our bread and butter, without which we would just fall down to the ground. Below this is the development and production materials; the concept art, storyboards, maquettes and cels, which exist as distinct artworks from the films that they ultimately produce. Below this is the personal or amateur work of individuals within the animation institution (both the business and education sectors) – here we find Brosgol’s Snow-bo, the caricatures produced by Disney animators during slow days, the maquettes and sketches that we glimpsed while touring Sheridan. While in a perfect world we would be able to see all of this totem pole and appreciate each of its figures on their own merits and in relation to one another, at this exact moment in time it has sunk down into the mud, almost to the halfway point. Academia and professionally produced animation are still sitting pretty without much problem, but the production materials are slowly sinking out of sight, only glimpsed in DVD extras, and the personal material has completely vanished below. The internet has led to the creation of small tunnels, allowing access to tiny portions of this bottom figure, but the mud keeps obscuring our view (yes, the mud is an analogy for all of the mediocre amateur animation on the web – sorry). What we need is a serious excavation project – something akin to Wells’ efforts on a global scale – that can reveal the entirety of the totem pole for all to see. If the majority of audiences are only interested in the second figure down, so be it, but we should have the option to explore the bottom figures and – maybe one day – create a link between the top and foundational figures, between academia and the personal material produced by highly talented individuals.

For the interested, here are some links to the work of the students that I met:

Coco 'the Human Totem Pole' Cheung: http://cy1115.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Her sister Crystal Cheung: http://liyuconberma.deviantart.com/ 

Arthur Lim Banes: http://arthurbanes.tumblr.com/ 

Anna Starkova: http://annathegallant.blogspot.ca/ 

And to cover all of those whom I met but didn't retain their names, here's the general link to Sheridan College's students: http://sheridananimation.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/links-to-student-work.html 

                                                                                                          - P.S.