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T H E B U S I N E S S , T E C H N O L O G Y & A R T O F A N I M A T I O N

April2008

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Volume 22, Issue 4, Number 183, April 2008

6 Frame-by-FrameApril Animation Planner ... Books We Love

6 Feature6 Cinching a Seussical Sensation. How co-directors Steve Martino and

Jimmy Hayward and the top-notch team at Blue Sky Studios came up

with a great-looking CG adaptation of Theodor Geisels Horton Hears A

Who! [by Ellen Wolff]

10 An Adventure Tale Served with a Twist. Shinji Takagis 40-minuteSOS!

Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next puts a new spin on the familiar boys

adventure story. [by Charles Solomon]

11 Making it in Malaysia. Toon veteran Terry Thoren and his Rocket Fish

Studios explore new horizons in Kuala Lumpur and beyond.

12 Ahead of His Time. Innovative Japanese helmer Mamoru Hosoda

discusses his award-winning animated feature The Girl Who Leapt

Through Time. [by Patrick Drazen]

14 The Mini-Boom Continues in Singapore. Thanks to the initiatives spearheaded by the countrys Media

Development Authority, the regions animation and tech industry is showing healthy signs of growth. [by

Thomas J. McLean]

16 Home Entertainment16 The Third Harvest of Appleseed. Our reporter uncovers the true nature of Shinji Aramakis acclaimed reboot

of the Appleseed saga, which comes out on DVD and Blu-ray this month. [by Patrick Drazen]

17 The Samurai Critic: Reviews of the latest anime titles on DVD. [by C har le s Solo mon ]

18 Television18 Anime Comes Up for Air. Whats hot, whats not, and whats having a heckof a hard time surviving in the Japanese TV animation landscape in 2008. [by

Tad Osaki]

34 VFX20 How to Manufacture Mammoth Mayhem. Vfx supervisor Karen Goulekas

discusses the wild and wooly world of Roland Emmerichs 10,000 B.C.[ by Ron

Magid]

22 Digital Magic . The last word on the Super Bowl ads; Ro RaosLaika spot. [by

Chris Grove]

24 Liquid Gold. Smirnoff and Bacardis award-winning TV spots push CG

technologies and deliver moments of poetic beauty. [by Barbara Robertson]26 Tech Reviews. Taking Poser 7.0 for a test drive. [by Todd Sheridan Perry]

42 Opportunities28 From CalArts Straight to the Annies. How CalArts graduate Hyun-min Lee created her Annie-

nominated The Chestnut Tree . [by Ellen Wolff]

Cover: Dr. SeussHorton Hears A Who! 2008 Twentieth Centuer Fox Film Corporation. Dr.Seuss, Horton Hears A Who! and Dr. Seuss Characters TM & 1954, 2008 Dr. Seuss Enterprise, L.P. AllRights Reserved.FICCI Frames/ Hong Kong Filmart Cover: Kahani Worlds Raju the RickshawAsian market editions include a special Asian Animation Directory and Toon Titans editorial focus.

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. A N I M A T I O N M A G A Z I N E . N E T

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A s we were preparing this special issue devoted to Asiananimation, we came across a quote by Ivy Ho, HongKong-Asia Film Financing Forums director, which nicely sumsup whats happening in Asia today. Nowadays there are nopurely Hong Kong productions. Nearly every lm these daysis made with Chinese or Asian partnersor with Europeans oreven Americans, said Ho to Varietys Patrick Frater last month.

Thats a model that the Europeans have had for years. Nowadays, Asian audi-ences are looking for good productions and new talent. They dont hesitate toreject something local if it is not good enough and are increasingly watchingnon-local productions.

Although Ho is referring to all kinds of productions, the statement also en-compasses animated fare. The growth of this sector of the industry in China,Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, India and Malaysia in recent years hasresulted in more companies seeking co-production partners and more projectsseeking nancing from governments in the continent. Thats why we thought itwould be a timely resource to provide an overall directory to animation com-panies in the region with this issue, as well as offering our rst 40 Toon Titans ofAsia selection for your perusal. If you or your boss didnt make the list, pleasedont send us angry emails. Consider this issue just a start. We promise to revieweveryones accomplishments and offer a sequel in the near future!

Ellen Wolffs cover story on Horton Hears a Who! may not have a directAsian connection, but since Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martinos movie hits

theaters this month, we just knew that a lot of our readers were hungry to learneverything about this much-anticipated CG adaptation of the Dr. Seuss clas-sic. Ellen was lucky to get full access to the directors for her story, and Im sureyoull enjoy her insightful piece on this Fox/BlueSky release.

Of course, no Asian issue would be com-plete without some mention of everyones fa-vorite master, Hayao Miyazaki. I recently readsomewhere that although hes a workaholic,Miyazaki insists on taking a nap every day be-tween 1 and 1:30 p.m. I dont know why, butI nd this quite fascinating. Maybe the worldwould be a much better (and productive)place if everyone followed the example of the

great director, whose new feature Gake no ueno Ponyo (Ponyo on a Cliff) will be released inJapan this summer. The directors 17th featureis about the friendship between a ve-year-oldboy and a goldsh princess who dreams of becoming human. We promiseto give you the full scoop on this exciting production in upcoming issues. Nowback to our nap!

E D I T O R S N O T E

ANIMATION MAGAZINEApril 2008

Vol. 22, Issue 4, No. [email protected]

President Jean ThorenPublisher Jodi Bluth

Accounting Jan BayouthWebmaster Eric Brandenberg

EDITORIAL [email protected] Ramin Zahed

Web and Gaming Editor Ryan BalContributing Editors Chris Grove, Ron

Barbara RobertsonEditorial Assistant Mercedes Milliga

Animation Art Advisor Ron BarbagaDigital Reviews Editor Todd Sheridan P

Contributors Thomas J. McLean,Charles Solomon, Ellen Wolff, Patrick

Tad Osaki

ADVERTISING [email protected]

Sheri Shelton

PRODUCTION Prod@animationmagazineArt and Production Director Susanne R

CIRCULATION Circ@animationmagazineCirculation Director Jan Bayouth

Circulation Administrator Alexis Bee

TO ADVERTISE:Phone: 818-991-2884

Fax: 818-991-3773Email: [email protected]: www.animationmagazine.net

List RentalQuantum List Marketing

480-860-6036ANIMATION MAGAZINE

(USPS 015-877/ISSN 1041-617X)

Published monthly by:Animation Magazine

30941 West Agoura Road, Suite 102Westlake Village, CA 91361

Periodicals postage paid at Thousand Oaks Post Ofcand additional mailing ofces.

POSTMASTER:SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO:

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Animation Magazine 2008 Animation Magazine

Prior written approval must be obtained to duplicate any and all conteThe copyrights and trademarks of images featured herein are the property of th

owners. Animation Magazine acknowledges the creators and copyriholders of the materials mentioned herein, and does not seek to infringe on th

Printed in the U.S.A.

Ramin [email protected]

Quote of the Month

How are salad plates like TV animation

writers? Theyre both the rst things that are

taken off the table!

Tom Kenny, (voice of SpongeBob SquarePants) at the 35th Annual Annie Awards, in

reference to the Writers Guild negotiations with the studios.

Miyazakis Ponyo on a Cliff

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The An ima t ion P l anne r

April

1Youreno AprilFool today if you spend yourmoney wiselyon the newAppleseed: Ex MachinaHD/ Standard DVD combo pack.Also out today:DinoSquad Volume 1and 2 .

3-5Catch some raysas well as cool toons at theSouth Beach AnimationFestival in Florida (www.southbeachanimationfestival.com).

3-16The city ofbrotherly love becomes toon-obsessed this month as thePhiladelphia Film Society andthe Univ. of the Arts presentThe Philadelphia AnimationFestival (www.phillyfests.com).

4 Jodie Foster, Gerard Butland Little Miss Sunshine sAbigail Breslin are all wellcast in the female-skewingIndiana Jones-type adventurpic,Nims Island . Auds insearch of a good scare may ofor Carter Smiths adaptatioof the best-selling yarn,The Ruins .

4-8Taipei is the hot spottoday as theTaiwan IntlChildrens TV and Film Festivalkicks off with a slate of newtyke faves and networkingopportunities (www.tictff.org.tw).

7-11TV production and

distrib pros will nd theirway to the French Rivieraonce again for the springmarket known as MIPTV(www.miptv.com).

10-13Its not Positanobut Salerno, Italy will do justne,grazie! Itstime foranothereditionof thepicturesqueCartoons on theBay festival (www.cartoonsbay.com).

18A young boy travels back

in time to ancient China in themagical kung fu adventureThe Forbidden Kingdom , which co-stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

18-20Big Apple toon

and fantasy fans get a sneakpeek of cool upcoming projectsat the New York Comic-Con(www.nycomic-con.com).

To get your companys events and products listed in this monthly calendar, please e-mail [email protected].

8Out on DVD today:Ben 10:Race Against Time , CartoonNetworkslive-action

moviebasedon

its hitanimatedshow!

15Dont forget to pick up

three new DVDs out in storestoday:SpongeBob SquarePants:Pest of the West , Woody Woodpecker and FriendsClassic CartoonCollection Vol.2 and TeenageMutant NinjaTurtles Season 6 .

21-25Danbury, CT ho

the seventh annualAniFestcomputer animation festival(http://cs.wcsu.edu/cgr/ festival08).

24-May 8ThisyearsSan Francisco IntlFilm Festival has a healthyanimation sidebar (www.sff.org/festival).

25Ok, soHarold and KumarEscape from GuantanamoBay may not have any obviouscartoon con-nections, butwere sureyoull wantto check itout in the-aters thisweekend!

11-17Its time to head

over to Vegas for theNationalAssoc. of Broadcasters tradeshow, which will showcase tech tools and gadgets (wwwnabshow.com).

22If you know a kid wholovesanimation,you can tellthem aboutWonder Pets: Savethe Beetles

and ban Star-Racers Vol. 1 out on DVD today.

29Gothsandotakuscanescapethespringtime sunshine bystaying in and watchingDeath Note: Volume 4 which comesout today.

30-May 4Onceagain, youre invited to weayour best alien costume andhead over to the U.K. for theSci-Fi-Londonfestival (wwwsci--london.com).

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Books We Love

Manga and anime fans already know that some ofmost imaginative and hauntingscience ction of the modern era hasbeen created by Japanese artistsand authors, especially in the periodright after the Second World War.Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams , therecently published collection fromthe Univ. of Minnesota Press, offersa timely look at the contribution ofJapanese masters of the writtenword. Its easy to trace the inuencesof these authors on hugely inuential animated TV series andfeatures such as Astro Boy, Akiraand Ghost in the Shell . Usingan eclectic team of contributorsfrom academic scholars toleading Japanese criticsthe book gives readers a healthyblueprint of the origins of these robot dreams, and chartstheir inuence on global pop cultural phenomena such asThe Matrix. Forget the blue pill vs. red pill dilemma! If youwant to learn about real groundbreaking sci- visionaries, thisis the book to take to heart.

Scholarly, critical and fan-based writings also makeup the fabric of the second volume of Mechademia , athoughtful collection edited by Frenchy Lunning, a professorof liberal arts at the Minneapolis College of Art of Design.Subtitled Networks of Desire , this new volume looks at thewide manifestations of sexual and social desire as well asfar-reaching topics such as political nostalgia, animalistic

consumptions andwhat youve all been waiting for! techno-carnal fantasies! If youwant to read more about therevolutionary ideas behind theidealized same-sex romance of TheRose of Versailles , curious aboutRanma 1/2s weird and wonderfulfan ction writers or want to explorethe visual and political dynamics ofBlood: The Last Vampire youll ndthis volume absolutely indispensable.You also wont want to miss our writer

Patrick Drazens excellent essay titled Sex and the SinglePig: Desire and Flight in Porco Rosso . Aaaah dont youlove the way Japanese animation can really get peoplethinking, talking and dreaming?

by Ramin Zahed

Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: JapaneseScience Fiction from Origins to Anime

Edited by Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. and Takayuki Tatsumi

(Univ. of Minnesota Press; hardcover: $60,paperback: $20)

Mechademia 2: Networks of DesireEdited by Frenchy Lunning

(Univ. of Minnesota Press, $19.95)

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Director Steve Martino re-members vividly the rsttime that he and fellow di-

rector JimmyHa y wa r d

made thetrip fromN e wYo r k s

Blue Sky Studios to the California home ofAudrey and Theodor Geisel, the late Dr.Seuss. It was an epiphany, says Martino.On the walls were his sculptural works.We looked at how he had translatedwhat he drew in 2D into a dimensionalrealm.

The experience convinced the veteranCG artists that there was a clear path tofollow in transforming Seuss belovedbook Horton Hears A Who! into CG ani-mation. The Fox Animation lmwhichstars the voices of Jim Carrey as the giantelephant Horton and Steve Carrell as themicroscopic Mayor of Whoville he be-friendsrepresents the rst completelyCG-animated Seuss adaptation.

Hayward and Martino were also the

rst directors admittedto the Seuss archivesat the University ofCalifornia, San Diego.We held his originalartwork, recalls Hay-ward. We studied hisdoodles and paintingsand over 20 manu-scripts forHorton Hearsa Who! Looking atSeuss brushwork,notes Martino, Wethought about howwe would need tocapture each littlewrinkle when we mod-eled this world three-

Cinching a Seussical SensationHow co-directors Steve Martino and Jimmy Hayward and the top-notch team at Blue

Sky Studios came up with a great-looking CG adaptation of Theodor Geisels HortonHears A Who! by Ellen Wolff

Jimmy Hayward

Steve Martino

Horton as seen in the originalillustration from the 1954 book

by Theodor Geisel

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dimensionally. Wed need to create adesign bible for the shape language of

the lm.They also uncovered additional clues

in Geisels extensive memos to ChuckJones, who had directed the 1970 Hortoncartoon for CBS. The directors cameaway convinced that they needed togive their lm an illustrative quality tomake it feel like Dr. Seuss. We had an op-portunity to stretch the animation andpush facial expressions into crazy places,says Hayward. If you look at the book,Horton isnt really on model. He changes.

So we had to change the way we did rig-ging. And the fur had to be groomed oncharacters with furry arms that stretch 30

feet long. Hayward, whose ani-mation credits include Pixars Finding

Nemo, Monsters, Inc . and the Toy Storylms, likens this challenge to what 2D ani-mators face. They dont get being onmodel for free. They have to sculpt everyframe. My motto with our animators wasGo too far and then pull back. Its got tobe entertainingly correct.

There was frequently no substitute forhands-on work, especially in the case ofthe lms feathered villain Vlad, a crazedRussian eagle voiced by Will Arnett. Vladhad sticky feathers that kept falling out

requiring a painstaking animation pro-cess. Vlad lives in what Martino calls thenasty part of the Jungle of Nool. From

a design standpoint its the only placethat breaks away from Seuss pleasant

plant forms to a place with more angular-ity. Its still within the Seuss palette. Younever get straight lines with Dr. Seuss! henotes.

The look of the worlds inHorton Hears AWho! was a special focus for Martino,who previously earned an Annie nomina-tion for his art direction in director ChrisWedges Fox/Blue Sky lmRobots . In aDr. Seuss world you have shapes that areplayful and otherworldly, like wild stair-cases that ow upward. Whats wonder-ful about doing this in computer anima-tion is that we could apply material treat-ments like stucco in such a way thatmakes this place feel real.

Blue Skys ability to populate theseworlds in rich detail was particularly im-pressive for Hayward, who had worked atthe studio once before when he directedscenes for Robots . We wanted Horton tobe a big epic. In one scene theres a eldof clovers, and I thought wed get 100,000plants. But they gave us a half-billion

We had an opportunity to stretch the animation and pushfacial expressions into crazy places. If you look at the book,Horton isnt really on model. He changes. So we had to changethe way we did rigging. And the fur had to be groomed oncharacters with furry arms that stretch 30 feet long!

Horton co-director Jimmy Hayward

D r . S e u s s H o r t o n H e a r s A W h o ! 2 0 0 8

T w e n t i e t h C e n t u e r F o x F i l m

C o r p o r a t i o n

.

D r . S e u s s

, H o r t o n H e a r s A W h o ! a n d D r .

S e u s s C h a r a c t e r s T M

& 1 9 5 4

, 2 0 0 8 D r .

S e u s s E n t e r p r i s e

, L . P .

A l l R i g h t s R e s e r v e d

.

Just What the Dr. Ordered: Accordingto the animators at Blue Sky, one ofthe main challenges of the movie wascreating the connection between thetwo main characters, who never seeeach other because of their size.

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and each clover has 100,000 hairs on it!But the central challenge in the lm

was visualizing how a giant pachydermlike Horton communicates with the Mayorof Whoville, who resides inside a spec ofdust on one sprig of clover. Martino ex-plains, We needed to make the audi-ence understand the connection be-tween two characters whonever see each other. Therst time we go into the specof Whoville, we literally trav-el with Hortons voice saying

Hellooo We take a ridethrough layers of detail, -nally breaking throughclouds and having the worldof Whoville revealed to us.

Like a comic take on thefamous Eames lm, Powersof Ten, this ride carries usalong with the sound echoing in Hortonsthroat and past his teeth, notes Hayward.Were inside the rings of sound. Then wego back from the Mayors mouth all the

way up to Hortons ears athigh speed. We take thislong way once, andthen we short-handthe process so that

pretty soon we just cut back and forth. Itsstaged like a telephone conversation,but the line of action was really rm be-tween them. We always maintainedwhich side they were on.

This approach made the sound mix ab-solutely crucial, and Martino and Hay-ward worked at Skywalker Sound in Cali-

fornia with Randy Thom, whos won Os-cars for his work on The Incredibles andThe Right Stuff. Hayward recalls, Whenwe pitched the movie to Randy, I said:This movie is awesome for youthe twomain characters can only hear each oth-er. The conceit of that idea was so cool.Its a real stretch to believe that the May-or is the only guy in Whoville who canhear Horton. But you dont want thewhole town to hear him because itwouldnt give you the opportunity for thetownspeople to think their Mayor is nuts.

The give-and-take between the voicesof Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell is a keydriver of the humor in Horton Hears A

Who!, even though the actors never re-corded lines together. Fox executive pro-ducer Chris Meledandri was instrumentalin attracting the lms A-list comic talent,which also includes Seth Rogen and Car-ol Burnett. One of our requirements wasnding great improvisational actors whocould nd the cadence for their charac-

ters, says Martino. He observesthat a lot of the little asides inCarreys performance of Hor-ton came from the actor jam-ming in the moment. We

would spend some of our re-cording sessions with Jim justtalking about what wed envi-sioned for the animation. Thenwed riff on it right there. It wasalmost like a table readingwhere he would act the thingout and wed throw ideas back

and forth. Out of that emerged the char-acter that we have on lm.

Remarkably, Horton represents Car-reys rst foray into voicing an animatedcharacter. Jim provided a lot of greateye acting and facial expressions, notesHayward, who says they ran lipstick camsof the actors faces during the readingsto show to Blue Skys animators. But wedidnt go nuts. From an improvisationalstandpoint, wed work it out and thenscript it and record it line by line. Hortonisnt Ace Ventura in an elephant suit!

Fox/Blue Skys Horton Hears A Who!begins its U.S. theatrical run onMarch 14.

Kangaroo Conict:Weve had quite enough of your bellowing bungle!

And Im here to state, snapped the big kangaroo,That your silly nonsensical game is all through!

And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, Me, too!

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Animation entrepreneur Terry Thorenis certainly no stranger to exploringnew territories and avenues of

growth. After successfully launching an in-die toon distribution company in the 80s(Expanded Entertainment), a popular ani-mation festival/confab (L.A.s World Anima-tion Celebration) and an 11-year stint asCEO of Klasky Csupo were he oversaw theproduction of TV series and features suchas Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrysand As ToldBy Ginger , Thoren has been using his knowl-edge and expertise to develop and pro-duce new animated content in Malaysia.

Launched in January 2007, his RocketFish Studios recently created the ani-mation for the buzz-generating Pandaspot for SalesGenie.com, which randuring the much-coveted SuperBowl telecast a month ago. HisKuala Lumpur-based studio also trainslocal animation talent and has producedanimation for several new TV and DVDprojects, including Cartoon Saloons SkunkFu! and DICs Warren Buffet release The

Secret Millionaires Club .According to Thoren, there are numer-

ous reasons why K.L. is the ideal spot for hisnew venture. The Malaysian governmentwants to promote the animation and techbusiness in the region, he says. Theyfunded our training programwe recentlyhad our rst graduating class. Then youhave to add that Kuala Lumpur is a beau-tiful city, and it has a talent base thatspeaks English and has a wonderful,friendly culture. Weve discovered that theartists work ethic is intense, and they reallywant to make it in this business. Thentheres the proximity to the Philippines, In-dia, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan; itseasy to see why the location proved to beso attractive for us.

Thoren says he tries to hire as many of hiscompanys graduating students as he can.We offer them an intensive course in Flashanimation and bring them into our systemand let them work in entry-level jobs. With75 staffers working In K.L., Rocket Fish is also

setting up a satellite studio in the Philip-pines. The minute we push the button, itsa turn-key operation. We have the resourc-es, but we have to make sure we have theright projects.

Seeing Rocket Fishs goals come to frui-tion in such a short time has made Thorenoptimistic about the future. Its funny, I built

ka-chew! the advertising division of KlaskyCsupoand we always dreamt of havinga Super Bowl commercial, and that neverhappened! he says. Thats why its reallyrewarding to come out of the gate with thePanda commercial that we did for Cre-ative Mint which got this great exposureduring the game. We are basically sendingthe message that Yes, we can make cre-ative-driven animation at a great price.

One of the reasons new ani-mation houses like Rocket Fishare able to deliver the goods totheir clients at lower rates is thegood economics of Flash-basedanimation. Its a very competi-tive eld out there, so you needto have an edge, Thoren points out. Ioversaw the production of over 600 epi-

sodes of traditionallyanimated shows likeRugrats . After research-ing Flash technologiesextensively and seeinghow the prices frombroadcasters had fall-en, I knew that if we

were to be competitiveand build content for new platforms andmobile media, we had to have a produc-tion protocol in Flash.

Thoren says classic Hanna-Barbera toonsremind him of Flash-based productions, be-cause they reuse their backgrounds overand over again. With Flash, you build thedatabase for your assets upfront, so that bythe sixth or seventh episode, you begin tosave money, he adds.

In addition to Flash, Thoren says RocketFish will have Toon Boom and Mojo seatsand also offer a combination of Flash withMaya CG backgrounds. In the next fewmonths, the studio will also be working on anew 26-episode co-production with the

government of Terengganu titled Back-yard Buddies . Terengganu artists willbe supervised by professional ani-

mators from the U.S., Canada andthe Philippines to work on this new venture.

It may seem like a lot of work, but Thorensays everyone whos been to Terenggannuwants to go back to the tropical paradise.

Were located here on the South ChinaSea, right by the beach. All the Americaninstructors are dying to come back! Healso has a lot of praise for Kuala Lumpur:Its not overcrowded or polluted like someof the other Asian territories, theres no lan-guage barrier, and everyone is friendly.You know Thoren is on to something whensuddenly you feel like dropping everythingand booking a one-way ticket to the Ma-laysian hot spot.Thoren founded Animation Magazine in1987. His former partner Jean Thoren isnow the president and sole owner of thispublication.

Terry Thoren

Making It in MalaysiaToon veteran Terry Thoren and his Rocket Fish Studios

explore new horizons in Kuala Lumpur and beyond.

For more info, visitwww.rocketshstudios.com.

Hot Slate: Cartoon Saloons SkunkFu! and SalesGenie.coms Panda

commercial are a two of Rocket Fishsrecent projects.

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Time waits for no one, says a bit ofwisdom on a high school blackboardin the animated Japanese lm Toki

wo Kakeru Shjo(The Girl Who Leapt ThroughTime). Yet, the time is completely right for thelms director, Mamoru Hosoda. A veteran ofToei Animation, Hosoda worked on popular ti-tles fromSailor Moonto One Piece toDigimon.When 20th Century Fox took the rst threeDigi-mon movies (Hosoda directed the rst one),chopped them up and stitched together anew lm for theatrical release, Hosoda tells us

that he was horried. Regardless, his latestoffering, a sci- romance, has been earningawards and delighting audiences around theworld since its 2006 premiere.

Expectations forTokiKake (the lms Japa-nese nickname) were originally rather low. Al-though based on a beloved novel by YasutakaTsutsui (whos already in anime news with thelm version of another novel of his,Paprika, di-rected by Satoshi Kon), the book was pub-lished in 1967 and has already been lmedthree times and turned into a comic book.Word of mouth spread quickly, however, andHosodas featurebrilliantly animated byMadhousewent from art house status tosleeper hit, winning the Japan Academy Prizesrst award for animated feature.

Originally, this movie was supposed to beclosely based on the novel, Hosoda saysthrough a translator during an interview at the2007 Chicago International Film Festival.However, in exchanging ideas with screen-writer Satoko Okudera, it transformed in an-other direction. Of course we tried to capture

the spirit of what the novel wanted to convey:the atmosphere, also friendship and the feel-ings you have toward someone you can relateto. We brought the new story to author Tsutsui,and his rst response was, Wow; this is a totallydifferent work. But thats why I like it!

At the rst press announcement of themovie, in March 2006, author Tsutsui said, Thiswork is a genuine second-generation of myoriginal work. This compliment surprised ev-eryone because he hadnt seen the complet-ed animation; he got this impression just by

reading the script.One connection between the anime andthe original version is the character known asAuntie Witch (Majo Obasan); readers of Tsut-suis novel realize that this character, KazukoYoshiyama, is the grown-up version of the orig-inal books Time-Leaper. Now shes an art his-torian, and spends part of the movie restoringan ancient painting that is pivotal to the plot.The work of restoration itself is a time-leapingactivity, because after you restore it, the oldwork suddenly becomes fully alive in the pres-ent day, Hosoda remarks.

The painting in the movie isnt based on a realpainting, but was commissioned for the lm. Thedirector notes, I asked a colleague at Mad-house and explained what type of paintingwould be required, and that Kazuko Yoshiyamasenses that someday the boy she met long agowould come back and see it. She keeps workingon restoring the painting for a boy she will prob-ably never meet because the boy lives so far inthe future, centuries ahead of us. But she some-how senses that he will come back and see the

painting. The painting isvery meaningful in bridg-ing her generation andthe future.

TokiKakes internation-al success was a surprise.We never thoughtabout it, admits Hosoda.

We focused only on Ja-pan because the novel is such a popular nov-el, but basically in Japan only. Its a classnovel read generation after generation, butonly in Japan. So when we decided to makean animated feature based on the novel, wedidnt think about marketing the lm at aoverseas. Honestly, this is the truth!

He adds, However, I worked with Kadokwa Publishing Company, which has its own production house, and they know how to distribute lms overseas. To my surprise, I nimagined audiences would respond like Japa-nese audiences. My impression was that teenage girls and boys overseas would probablyreact in a different manner. However, they responded exactly the way Japanese teenag-ers responded. This surprised me.

Hosoda attributes the lms success to thmagic of the medium. The power of animation can reach out and not just be targeted toa younger generation. Animation is wonderfuif we create it with wonderful content, we canapproach and we can entertain and we canshare what we have with an older generation.

What we can share is reminding you that yoalso leap through time; trace back your ownhistory and you remember those old facesheartwarming memories. Thats probably whthe movie is so appealing to so many differengenerations and different cultural backgrounds. How we all treasure memories something that never changesits eternal.

The director says he has too many favorianimated movies and TV shows, but he singloutMy Neighbor Totoro, Night on the GalacticRailroad and DisneysBeauty and the Beast .When asked about his next project, he is typcally enigmatic. Its based on Japanese literature, is all he tells us. In time, well ndmore details!Patrick Drazen is a Chicago-based writer whspecializes in anime. His credits include AnimeExplosion! The What? Why? & Wow! of Japnese Animation (Stone Bridge Press).

Ahead of His TimeInnovative Japanese helmer Mamoru Hosoda discusseshis award-winning animated feature The Girl Who Leapt

Through Time. by Patrick Drazen

For more info aboutThe Girl Who Leapt Through Te, visitwww.kadokawa.co.jp/tokikake. Bandai Entand Kadokawa Pictures USA will release ththeaters and on DVD in the U.S. this year.

Mamoru Hosoda

2006 TOKIKAKE Fi lm Partners

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F E A T U R E S

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By most any measurement, Singapore is asmall country. A tiny city-state, perchedon an island off the southern tip of theMalay Peninsula, it is home to fewer than 5 mil-lion people. But that hasnt stopped Singaporefrom becoming one of Asias most technologi-cally advanced economies, with aggressivebusiness development policies that it has usedto encourage the birth and growth of a vitalanimation industry.

Perhaps the most visible sign of Singaporesanimation boom is the arrival of Lucaslm,which put its animation studio in the city andwas the primary facility on the upcomingStar Wars: The Clone Wars 3D animated seriessetto premiere on Cartoon Network this fall after atheatrical release in August.

But much of the credit for the growth ofanimation in Singapore has to go to the MediaDevelopment Authority, which has investedheavily in developing the industry. That, com-

bined with a well-educated and tech-savvypopulation, Singapores proximity to the vastmarkets of China and India, its facility with East-

ern and Western sensibilities and some of themost stringent intellectual property laws in theworld have primed the city-state for an anima-tion boom.

A survey of animation studios in Singaporereveals an industry very much in the early phas-es of development. There is enough technicalprociency for studios to compete on the inter-national stage for work on commercials, musicvideos, mobile content, video games, HD doc-

umentaries and animated TV series.I believe with the Singapore governments

support and the excitement that is brewing in

a local animation con-text, Singapore will bea perfect location foroutsourcing because oflanguage, attitude andcost, says Jason Low, as-sociate director of YellowBrick Road, a boutique

agency that works oninteractive and educa-tional online projects.

So far, much of thework is technical ratherthan creative, with manyhouses operating withsmall staffs of animators.Most Singapore studiosare nding talent eitherlocally or regionally, andaugmenting their school-ing with on-the-job train-ing. The demand is stillhigh for both all-aroundgeneralists and those withspecic skills.

We still lack manytalents and do hope to see more young artistscome out and create good work both for 2Dand 3D animation, says Low Jun Jek, creatidirector of Yolk, which has produced animatiofor MTV Asia and MediaCorp Singapore.

Technical directors are really lacking. Efects, animation and rendering TDs are almo

non-existent in the open market, says ToSealy, managing director of Intense AnimatioStudio, which operates a school as well as do

The Mini-BoomContinues in Singapore

Thanks to the initiatives spearheaded by the countrys

Media Development Authority, the regions animationand tech industry is showing healthy signs of growth.by Thomas J. McLean

Luxaslms Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Aldric Chang

Calvin Tng

Jason Low

Intense Anima-tions asset forTiger Beers Chi-nese New Year

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ing commercial work forSaatchi & Saatchi, TigerBeer and Sony Ericsson.

Max Lim of 3D graph-ics and animation houseSixtrees says people withgame creation skills arehard to come by.

Many credit theLucaslm facility withdrawing attention toanimation in Singaporeand inspiring morepeople to seek out ca-reers in the eld. WhileLucaslm pulls upon thetalent pool, local execswelcome the attention

the company brings to the industry.Calvin Tng, business director of Light & Shad-

ows, a veteran animation house in operation for

13 years, says having Lucaslm in Singa-pore does three things for the local in-dustry. First, everyone knows about, ormore of, Singapore and her animatorspotential, he says. Second, the gen-eral skill sets and knowledge (includingmanagement) will improve. Third, theinterest level of nanciers, studios anddistributors would increase.

Developing the industry into onethat can support itself and thrive bothin the technical and creative worlds

over the long term is a tougher issuethat remains to be resolved. Crackingthe competitive international market

especially selling original IP to U.S. clientsre-quires keeping costs down and developing adeep pool of talent both from within Singaporeand from abroad.

Everyone has a plan for entering the U.S.market with original content, but because ofthe high competitive barriers there, the suc-cess rate has been quite low, says Tang ChiSim, managing director of Omens AnimationStudios. However, getting reasonably payingcommercial work from the U.S.A. market hasnot been too difcult. For a studio like ours, weget about 50 percent of our work from U.S.A.clients. The two-year-old studio has produced3D animation and cinematics for game makerslike THQ and EA, as well as for commercials andDisney TV series.

We are committed to developing our ownproperties, says Sealy. The markets we are in-terested in are the European and U.S. marketsas our properties are distinctly Western in style.

TV commercials and facilities-basebusiness is not a long-term strategy fIntense.

Developing a skilled labor force is onthing; keeping them may turn out to beanother. With India and China nearbyits likely that cheaper labor costs wlure away some of the animation jobSingapore is trying to develop.

There seems to be more facilties-based work being done lately, but this shortsighted as the labor costs in Singaporwill always be higher than India or China, saSealy.

There are some signs of locally originatcontent. Vividtree is working on content it plato sell at this years Cannes market and Medafreaks has produced its own preschool serieKatakune .

Where and how the industry will grow frhere is a tough question to answer. The government funding and support only goes so far

reach maturity, the industry must grow into trole it sees for itself on the international mark

Right now, we are receiving a lot of suppofrom the Singapore government. But it is clethat this support cannot last forever, says AldChang, founder and managing director of Mediafreaks. The answer may not be in animatioitself, but rather in areas related to animation such as character development and licensing.

Jacqueline Chan, GM for Southern Star Sgapore, also expects a change in emphasis.As the industry matures, we expect to see greater shift toward pre- and post-productionbeing done here, she says.

But the optimism and exibility of Singapobusiness community evokes high hopes for tfuture. I hope to see Oscar-nominated productions coming out from Singapore in vyears! says Tng.Thomas J. McLean is a Los Angeles-based journalist who specializes in animation, visueffects and comic books. He also writes thecomic-book blog Bags and Board (http://we-blogs.variety.com/bags_and_board).

Tang Chi Sim

Tony Sealy

Light & Shadows TV series OddSox

Wizard of Oz characters by Yellow Brick Road.

Omen Studios original mini-series Aegis Faction .

Mediafreaks Katakune.

Southern Star SingaporesThe Adventures of Bottle Top Bill.

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Its not a sequel, and its not a remake; maybewe should call it a remix. Whatever it is, App-leseed: Ex Machina (Ekusu makina) extendsthe story of Olympus, the post-Apocalyptic city ofthe future where humans live with cyborgs andbioroids, everyone deals with terrorists and per-fection isnt what its cracked up to be.

Released in Japanese theaters in 2007, Apple-

seed: Ex Machina arrives on these shores in Marchthrough Warner Home Video. The movie contin-ues the story of feisty future-cop Deunan Knute,rescued from the wasteland with her partner/lov-er Briareos, whose body was so far gone he hadto be turned cyborg. These Olympus outsidersdefend the city on orders from the elusive mayorAthena, without always knowing exactly whattheyre defending or why.

Its no surprise that such questions should comeup. Appleseed was one of the rst manga suc-cesses of Masamune Shirow, who asked similarquestions in his hit mangaGhost in the Shell. Therst Appleseed anime was produced in 1988 by afairly new studio named Gainax;Evangelion wasstill years away, and its Old School roots still show.In 2004 a CG-animated Appleseed feature hitmovie screens, and, despite the radically differ-ent look, anime fans responded favorably.

Appleseed: Ex Machina was directed by ShinjiAramaki, who made his directorial debut with the2004 lm. However, hes long been a familiar an-ime name as a mecha designer. Not a common job title in western animation, the mecha design-

er is responsible for the look of vehicles, armor,weaponsand sometimes combinations of someor all of the above. Aramakis designs have beenseen in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA (which gotfolded into theRobotech saga on U.S. television)and both the made-for-video Bubblegum Crisis(1987-1991) and its rebirth as a weekly TV series,Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 (1998-1999).

Meanwhile, Aramaki began experimentingwith CG. Back in 1985 or so, I purchased a per-sonal computeran NEC 9801, he notes.Compared to theabilities of moderncomputers it was al-most like a pocketcalculator. It couldonly display eight col-ors on screen. Eightcolors! But it had aprimitive wire-framegeneration program,an early version ofmodern CAD pro-grams. I taught myself to do some wire-frameanimation, and eventually I was able to applythe things I learned to my later lms. He saysone reason he directed the 2004 Appleseedwas because at that point the technology hadnally caught up. I think that if you look at fa-cial expressions, at what were now able to con-vey with those, were denitely a step further.You shouldnt look for it in the big action scenes,

but rather in the way people appear, the waytheir face looks Its now far more detailed.

This time around, Shirows manga world wreworked in a script by Kiyoto Takeuchi. Besithe bothersome problem of zombied citizens attacking Olympus, Deunan and Briareos gecaught up in a messy triangle. The third playerTereus, a bioroid whos not only based on Briar

oss DNA but looks disturbingly like the pre-cybBriareos. Its the kind of clever twist that wouldat home inGhost in the Shell.

I had Masamune Shirow offering advice oone side, and [the lms producer, action lm gant] John Woo on the other, and of course I hadmy own vision of how the lm should be as wellthe end, however, both of them respected myposition as director and left the nal decisioncompletely in my hands.

Musically, the movie looks to the 198reuniting the inuential Japanese synthopop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra (includiRyuichi Sakamoto, whose score forThe LastEmperor won an Academy Award). Also ohand are Japanese deejay Towa Tei, spinmaster for the pop group Deee-Lite, andavant-garde singer/musician Cornelius. Iteasy to think of this score as retro-future.

Thelms score also led to a costume changeThe lms music producer, Shin Yasui, kneJapanese clothing designer whose work waadmired by superstar designer Miuccia PradaConsequently, Deunan gets to drop the bodyarmor and wear two Prada originals designed

for the movie. Everything just fell into placAramaki laughs; even I was surprised. Whthis coming together so easily?

The Third Harvest ofAppleseed

Our reporter uncovers the true nature of Shinji Aramakisacclaimed reboot of the Appleseed saga, which comes

out on DVD and Blu-ray this month. by Patrick Drazen

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment wirelease Appleseed: Ex Machina as a single-disc Standard Edition ($24.98), a two-disSteelbook Collectors Edition (which featureaudio commentary by the filmmakersand a detailed look at the CG animationtechnology, $34.98) and on HD and Blu-ra($34.99).

I m a g e s : 2 0 0 7 S h i r o M a s a m u n e / S E I S I N S H A -

E x M a c h i n a F i l m

P a r t n e r s

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T subasa Reservoir Chronicle (2005)was one of the most eagerly antici-

pated shojo (girls) series of recentyears. A blend of mystery, enchantment,romance, adventure and self-sacrice,this picaresque tale offers new ad-ventures for characters adapt-ed from the popular 1998 of-fering, Cardcaptor Sakura .

That show followed10-year-old Sakura Kin-omoto as she recap-tured the magical cards cre-ated by the great wizardClow Reed. Taiwanese ex-change student Syaoran Liinitially vied with Sakura forthe cards, but as the seriesprogressed, he became herally, then her boyfriend.

Tsubasa preserves thelooks and personalities ofthe characters, but the rela-tionships have shifted. Saku-ra and Syaoran have beenredesigned as teenagers:Shes the Princess of the

Kingdom of Clow, hes thehard-working son of a fa-mous archaeologist. Saku-ras older brother Toya rulesthe kingdom, with his best friend Yukitoserving as magus/advisor to the king.

When Sakura visits an ancient templeSyaoran and his father have been exca-vating, a mysterious power takes controlof the princess. Her spirit manifests itself asa pair of graceful white wings that shat-ter, sending the feathers of her memoriesying through time and space.

The enchanted feathers must be re-stored to the princess or she will die.Syaoran asks Yko the Dimensional Witchfor the power to travel to other dimensionsto capture the feathers. In return, Ykodemands he sacrice what he holds mostdearhe can restore all of Sakuras mem-ories except the ones of him. Yko launch-es him through space and time with Saku-ra and three new characters: Kurogane,a hot-tempered warrior; Fay, a rather fey

wizard and Mokona, a rabbit-like creaturewho can be insufferably cute.

As the characters move from one worldto another, they discover the power ofthe enchanted feathers. Tambal, an ar-rogant ex-magician, uses one to rule theLand of Nayutaya. After defeating Tam-

bal, Syaoran sees the dark side of his

bargain with Yko. When he presentsSakura with the feather, she cant see himat the birthday party she recalls, only hisempty chair. But his dedication to thequest never wavers.

is ions of a ightless WorldVisions of a Sightless WorldIn the demon-haunted country of

Outo, Syaoran asks Kurogane to teachhim to use a sword. His rst lessons in-volve learning not to rely on vision buton the inner senses hes developed tocompensate for being blind in one eye.When Kurogane blindfolds Syaoran, thelmmakers effectively suggest his sight-less world with reversed colors andevocative music.

During their rst adventures, the quin-tet battle relatively minor foes that holdpower in a single realm. But as the rst

season nears its conclusion, the artistssuggest more serious threats lie ahead: A

princess they rescue warns, Someone isalways watching you. Fei Wang Reedand his assistant Xing Huo, whose powersare only hinted at, watch every moveSakura and Syaoran make. They andtheir friends may be nothing more than

pawns in a struggle betweenFei Wang and Yko.

The lmmakers clearly hada much larger budget forTsubasa Reservoir Chroniclethan they did for Cardcap-tor Sakura . Director KoichiMashimo and his artists em-ploy fresh and imaginativevisuals that maintain the lookof the original manga by thefour-woman studio CLAMP.In Outo, Syaorans spirit isembodied in his kudan , awolf-like guardian spirit thatrecalls the Patronus protec-tors in the Harry Potter books.Syaoran uses it to battle amonster that resembles a gi-

ant Chinese doll, rather thana standard-issue animemonster. In the Country ofJade, the adventurers follow

a legend through images that suggeststained glass windows.

Some of the most striking visuals occurat the end of the rst season, when theve seekers encounter Seishiro, a humanSyaoran had known in the Clow Kingdom.Using one of Sakuras feathers, Seishirocauses Outo to implode, revealing thatthe world of the demon-hunters was justan elaborate virtual reality game.

Although theres a strong romantic ele-ment to Syaorans devotion to Sakura,Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle disproves thereceived wisdom that boys wont watcha series about girls. Who can resist a talethis intriguing?

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle,Vols. 1-6

[FUNimation: $29.98 each]

by Charles Solomon

T h e S a m u r a i C r i t i c :R e v i e w s o f t h e L a t e s t A n i m e D V D R e l e a s e s

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TOKYO After taking quantum leaps fordecades, the Japanese animation indus-try is in a quandary, or at least experienc-ing a watershed period where key playersare re-examining their market perspec-tives and directions.

One of the major factors affecting the TVanimation business is the slashing of availableprimetime real estate for serial anime on free-to-air terrestrial networks. As variety showscontinue to get more viewers and ad reve-nues continue to slip, the average viewer hasseen fewer anime titles on commercial net-works of late. Most of the anime shows grab-bing top ratings are long-running family sit-com-like titles such asSazae-san which rst

began as a manga in 1946andChibi Maru-ko-chan, another anime featuring a sarcasticgrade school girl (is there another kind?),which both air on Fuji-TV on Sunday nights.

While anime distribution to cable, satelliteand mobile media is in fact on an upswingwith Kids Station subscribers nearing 8 millionand Animax exceeding 7 millionrevenuesfrom these non-traditional media have yet tocompensate for the loss suffered from oncelucrative network slots.

Tokyo Metropolitan TV (MXTV), Tokyosonly UHF station, is recently known for itsaggressive display of anime shows, with34 shows a week, though most of titlesshown on the channel are reruns of oldshows, or material that is not strongenough to be bought by networks but iswithin the tighter budget of MXTV.

As Masao Kurosu, exec producer of Nip-pon Animation, points out, Even the late-night slots that offered low purchase pricesbut were used as the venue to promoteDVD/video fare are now getting difcult to

secure because of the recent slow move-ment of DVD sales.

The situation is not quite promising in over-seas markets, either. Kurosu says the U.S. mar-ket is now a buyers market as companiesare taking advantage of the abundance ofJapanese titles that ooded the States ter-restrial and cable/specialty channels to getget lower prices. In China and several other

Asian and European countries, the govern-ments preference for locally producedshows is gradually taking its toll on Japaneseimports. At the same time, heavy protection-ist policy in these countries is encouragingmore domestic anime houses to come outwith their own, indigenous shows for their ownmedia, Kurosu adds.

Undaunted by the adverse situation,however, both animation houses and net-works are grasping for ways to revive theglory of Japanese animation. TV Tokyo, thehome of global favorites such as Pokmonand Naruto, is still maintaining its uniqueformat of 35 anime shows a week13weekend morning shows, 12 eveningprime-time shows and 10 late-night pro-grams, all of which are heavily promotedby TV Tokyos anime website, AniTele.

Although many of these shows are familiarfare such as Pokmon, Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh!, TV Tokyo has high hopes for its upcomingnew showSoul Eater , which will premiere inApril. The half-hour Square Enix anime, written

by Atsushi Okubo for the manga monthGanGan since 2004, is unique in that itshown twice a week: rst on Monday at p.m., then on Friday at 2:15 a.m., explai

Yukio Kawasaki, manager of internationalcensing for animation business at TV TokThe show is set to run for 52 weeks, in hopefollowing the successful footsteps ofFull Metal Alchemist, according to Kawasaki.Soul Eater is a retelling of one of the four great Chineclassic novels set in the Song Dynasty, but icontemporary setting.

TV Tokyo also continues pushing its oseas plans. The outtsNaruto , the 2002 blockbuster ninja anime, has swept the world withe exception of very few territories such North Korea and Mongolia. Other new titinclude Blue Dragon (created by Akira Toryama of Dragon Ball fame), which is set topremiere on Cartoon Network next month.

While other commercial networks aresticking with tried-and-true anime titles,Nippon TV delivered rocking ratings withits new toon Yatterman , which has beenone of the top ve most-watched showssince it debuted in January in the 7 p.m.slot. The series is a remake of an originalFuji TV series (1977-1979) penned by the

AnimeComes Up

for AirWhats hot, whats not,

and whats having a heckof a hard time surviving

in the Japanese TVanimation landscape in

2008. by Tad Osaki

Yatterman (Nippon TV)

The Flowers of Hard loodThe Flowers of Hard Blood Fuji TV(Fuji TV)

Soul EaterSoul Eater TV Tokyo(TV Tokyo)

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Ever since Steven Spielbergs Ju-

rassic Park rst roared upon the

silver screen in 1993, moviegoershave become accustomed to seeingrampaging dinosaurs on a regular basisat the movies. But what about thoseother very real horrors of the pre-historicera? Mammals nally get the respectthey deserve in Roland Emmerichs lat-est, 10,000 B.C., whose title echoes thefamous 1966 Raquel Welch showpieceOne Million Years B.C. This time its notscantily clad cave people vs. bronto-saurs, but scantily clad cave people vs.mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, terrorbirds and more.

Herding the mammoth mayhem isvisual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas,an Emmerich collaborator since 1998sGodzilla who later worked on the hel-mer/producers Eight Legged Freaksbefore tackling the directors last out-ing, The Day After Tomorrow, for whichshe won a BAFTA.

But bringing Stone Age creatures intothe digital age required even greater

will and bleeding edge techniques.One of the rst casualties: storyboards.

Goulekas hired UK-based boutiqueNvizage to start digital pre-viz in Octo-ber 2005 after the movie was greenlit.Soon the pre-viz, which could respondrapidly to script changes, made story-boards obsolete. Roland and I woulddiscuss the new script pages, then Iwould break it up into beats from abirds eye view and start blocking cam-

era angles, Goulekas says. I wouldshow Roland the results and he wouldhave lots of ideas on camera anglesand beats that we would address. Thenmy editor and I would start cutting it to-gether and it would just get born.

When Goulekas insisted that Nvizageprovide 13 talented character anima-tors, three or four asset builders and a

visual effects editor, Their jaws aboutfell to the ground. She says, We pre-vized until we left for our shoot in April2006, so we had pretty complete se-quences that were fantastic becausewe did them over and over.

Goulekas then took half a dozen pre-viz artists to location. Why? Like any ani-mated, character-driven lm, how doyou actually put an edit together with-out having some animation in there?she asks. We used our pre-viz as post-viz,we had ve animators and a composi-

toractually my husbanddoing cam-era tracking and so on. That way, asEmmerich and editor Alex Berner begancutting plates, they could see the actiondevelop within each shot and sequence.I built up a big in-house team of Nvizagepeople to continue doing the post-viz,which became something we couldsend to the vendors.

Post-viz is nothing new for Goulekas,who rst coined the term on Day AfterTomorrow when blocking that lmscomplex weather interactions, and thedoubling up is more comparable to celanimation, where pencil tests are thequick and dirty means of getting ideasacross before the nal animation is done.Twice the work (arguably) creates in-

How to ManufactureMammoth Mayhem

VFX supervisor Karen Goulekas discusses the wild andwooly world of Roland Emmerichs 10,000 B.C.

by Ron Magid

In pre-viz, we made our mammoths gallop, which lookedreally cool, but then we learned elephants dont gal-

lopthey run! Karen Goulekas, vfx supervisor, 10,000 B.C.

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nitely better results. Its an evolutionarything, Goulekas believes. Post-viz waseasily a year and a half, and was still go-ing for another four months during post-production in London.

Five effects houses wrangled 10,000B.C.s 641 digital shots, including TheSenate (105), Machine (104) and in-house wire removal and compositeteam 10 BC (192). The most complexwere split evenly between Double Neg-ative and Moving Picture Companywith 150 3D shots apiece. Two pre-vizartists became Goulekas animationsupervisors: Greg Fisher worked

with MPCs visual effects supervisorNicolas Aithadi, while Robert Hemmingsoversaw Double Negatives work underSwedish vfx supervisor Jesper Kjlsrud.Wed already worked together forover a year, so they knew what I want-ed, Goulekas says.

The opening mammoth-hunting se-quence, with over 300 18-foot-tallpachyderms covered in lanky dread-locks, was orchestrated by MPC. Somerenders topped out at 15 hours, andthe semi-procedural hair program oc-casionally produced some outrageousresults. They were a little poofy looking

at rst, Goulekas admits.And unlike dinosaurs, real life was

sometimes at odds with the dra-matic animation of the characters.In pre-viz, we made our mam-moths gallop, which looked reallycoolbut then we learned ele-phants dont gallop, they run,

Goulekas sighs.But 10,000 B.C.s toughest chal-

lenge fell to Double Negative: cre-ating a believable saber-toothedtiger, trapped with the hero, DLeh,in a pit in pouring rain. The tiger isstruggling, pinned under logs andbranches, so we had close-ups ofthis animal thrashing in the risingwater, Goulekas says. We had tomake its fur interact with the water.Double Negative would decide,shot for shot, if they wanted to re-place all the water on the surfaceor just part of it, depending onwhether the water was interactingwith our actor.

Both the digital water and hairwere procedural, so the odds ofsomething going horribly awrywere, well, hairy. The trick was hid-ing the intersection of hair and wa-ter with foam and spray. AsGoulekas explains, That way,youre just seeing the hair get slick

when his head goes under andclumpy when it comes back up. Ittook a while to get there, but noth-ing blew up on us. I always said thatwas going to be the hardest part ofthe movie, and it was.

In the world of 10,000 B.C., justcreating great animation wasntenough. The nishing work on the

mammoths, the saber-toothed tigerand even the ostrich-like terror birdswas always waiting to sabotage the ef-forts of Goulekas team, whose crea-tures were never really out of the woodsuntil they were rendered. It was a nail-biter, Goulekas says. Everyone de-nitely had their hands full, but theypulled it off.

Warner Bros 10,000 B.C. will open inU.S. theaters on March 7 and roll outin various European, Latin Americanand Asian territories throughout themonth.

Pre-Historic Achievements in Pre-and Post-Viz: Double Negative andMoving Picture Company eachcreated 150 complex shots for thevfx-laden 10,000 B.C. Some of themost difcult sequences involved thedepiction of the saber-toothed tiger,which is trapped in a pit with thehero, DLeh, in pouring rain.

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Im not sure exactly when analyzing SuperBowl commercials became a nationalobsession, but I think it was way back in

the day when the Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola ad caused such a stir in 1979. That wasve years before the much-discussed touch-stone of Super Bowl advertising, 1984s AppleBig Brother spot.

The good news about this years crop: Norocks were thrown at peoples heads. Thebad news: Super Bowl XLII was so good mostpeople I watched with just wanted to get backto the game and skip the hype. But even if thegame had sucked, it would be hard to arguethat the 2008 crop yielded any classic, pop-cul-ture phrases such as in past years (Nothin butnet! Im going to Disneyworld! etc.). Andonce again it was ads that featured someheavy CGI work that were among the bestworkFederal ExpresssPigeons , BudweisersRocky homage, Coca Colas Balloons,E*TRADEsBaby and Bridgestone TiresSquirrel.Complex dialogue, as Jeff Goodby, co-chair-man at Goodby Silverstein & Partners said re-cently, is the enemy of a successful ad. And the

Squirrel spots extended scream is both simpleand funny. If they didnt have enough businessalready, Dallas-based The Richards Groupshould get even more action from this. Samegoes for Santa Monica-based Method Studioswhich did all the CGI work on the spot. In thewords of legendary ad man Jerry Della Femina:Make us laugh, or well kill you.

Putting Laika in OrbitZune-Arts.net continues to be a destinationfor animators either wanting to showcasetheir work or see some of the best experi-mental stuff out there. Case-in-point, thenew short Laika animated by Curious Pic-tures Ro Rao. Its a fanciful take on the fateof the rst dog in space. Launched on a So-viet rocket 50 years ago, mission controlsoon lost contactwith the vehicle.Raoslm is a fantasyabout the fate of thebrave dog. It incor-porates a range of

2D and 3D photographic elements andtextures.

The lm begins with archival footage of Lai-ka, integrated with Raos signature graphicstyle into what appears to be a Russian news-paper. We liked the idea of using the real storyof Laika as a springboard as well as starting withthe last documented second of her lifethemoment her rocket disappeared into the ether,says writer Charlie Stephenson of ad, designand branding agency 72andSunny.

Far from meeting a horrible death, the lmimagines Laika traveling through clouds of dogbiscuits and landing on a magical planet. Wewanted to take the realistic story from the rst 10

seconds and go into a land of pure fantasythe idea of the ultimate dog planet, says Rao.Laika lands on a brilliantly colored world lledwith everything a dog could wanttrees madeof meat covered in Spanish Moss made frombacon, a river of peanut butter, ferns that tossFrisbees and hands that grow out of the groundat the right angle for easy belly rub action.

The lm was created with a combination ofstop-motion and After Effects work. We spenta day shooting stills of tons of dogs, Rao says.We covered them in various poses, doing awide range of activitieswalking, jumping, run-ning, romping and sitting. To create the dogbiscuit rings around the planet, Rao attached adog bone to a drill bit and then shot it in stopmotion to create an organic look. The lm is setagainst a rock and roll soundtrack by the band

The Aliens. Ro did agreat job of turninga melancholy topicinto an inspiring storyabout sharing andfriendship, says Ste-

phenson. Plus hes the rst Zune Arts artiscreate a tree made entirely out of meat.

Gameloft Corners the Touch-ScreenMarket

On any given day theres lots of news abouthe burgeoning mobile game world. Soheres this months pick: Gameloft is aggresively expanding its mobile games made especially for iPhone-type touch-screen handsets. Using the companys expertise fro

developing stylus-based games for the Nintendo DS, Gameloft has sought out ways to besutilize the touch screens which, the companclaims, transform game play into a more intutive experience by removing the limitations ofsmall keyboard.

The hype for 2008 will focus on the emgence of these new handsets, says MicheGuillemot, president and CEO of GamelofThis is a new step in terms of development, othat leads us to rethink how we approach ougame controls so that players can interact directly with the screen and get a greater gam-ing experience. Touch-screen games are per-

fect examples of how modern technology canadvance the gaming industry.

Gameloft already has more than 15 touchscreen games in its catalogue, includingBrainChallenge 2 , Chessmaster ,Paris Hiltons DiamondQuest , Sexy Poker Manga ,Deal or No Deal, Shrek theThird, Real Football: Man-ager Edition and CSI Mi-ami. These games weredeveloped for the rsttouch screen mobilephones available on the market. Gameloftstouch-screen games were initially developed iJava, though some will also be developed onthe Windows Mobile platform. The creation touch-screen games is part of Gamelofts overall effort to make all of its games accessible tevery commercially available phone model onthe market.Chris Grove is a Los Angeles-based actor and journalist who specializes in visual effects annew media.

by Christopher Grove

D i g i t a l M a g i c

Super Bowls Screaming Animals and Zunes Dog in SpaceBridgestone Tires Squirrel ad

Ro Raos Laika

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Two enticing commercials for com-

peting distillers of mood-enhanc-ing liquid refreshment, Smirnoffand Bacardi, made a giant splashamong the Visual Effects Society nomi-nees this year.

In Bacardis Born in the Sun spot, abeautifully lit curl of liquid lmed againsta dark background transforms into aglowing dancer who slowly unfolds,turns toward camera and releases a bril-liant sun spot that explodes with goldencolor. Sparks shoot out from the sun areand streak across the dark sky pullingsilvery, watery trails behind. Each sparkbecomes a shimmering dancer and wesee thousands of dancers oating be-hind a large, central watery gure. Then,they all slide deep into space; spots ofgolden light that coalesce into a giantsun. The sun becomes a highlight on abottle of Bacardi. The tag line: Born inthe sun. London-based Moving PictureCompany handled post-production onthe Blink Ink spot, which Michel Meteni-

er of Pleix directed.

MPC started by painting two nearlynaked dancers coated with blackmakeup and lming them in a Majorcacar park at 2,000 frames per second. Itwas a strange sight, says Robin Carl-isle, visual effects supervisor. We threwbuckets of water on them as they didthe dance moves.

Back at the studio, modelers be-gan with laser scans of the dancersto create 3D models that they riggedin Maya. Animators then manipulatedthe 3D models to match the slow move-ment of the dancers on the lm, whichthey played back at regular speed.Then, they lled a shell inside the ani-mated 3D models with digital Bacardiand used RealFlow simulations to movethe liquid inside as the digital charac-ters danced.

By compositing the resulting liquidcharacters with the splashes of waterlmed on location, they gave the edgesa watery look. When we painted out the

black bodies, all we could see in Flamewas the water spray that we compos-ited onto our 3D models, Carlisle says.No one wanted a dened silhouette.

The digital water matched the pho-tographed elements thanks to HDRIlighting reference taken on set andwater shaders rendered through men-tal ray. Ive found that any time youhave something real in a plate, even

if its only 10 percent of a shot, it helpsmake everything real, Carlisle says.To create the sparks and the glow-

ing trails of light behind, the crew useda combination of RealFlow simulationsand Maya particle effects. The thou-sands of liquid dancers at the end weremostly spritestiny renders of the liquidcharacters attached to particles. Com-positors added the brilliant lighting ef-fects in Flame.

All Clear NowSmirnoffs Sea starts with a shing

trawler in a dark and stormy sea. Thesherman tips a can to get the last drop,crushes it with his hand and tosses it intothe ocean. The can ies back out of thewater and hits him. The water boils. Thecamera dives to the bottom of the seato show us why: Dozens of vortexes areshooting coins out of the water.

Liquid GoldSmirnoff and Bacardis award-winning TV spots push

CG technologies and deliver moments of pure poeticbeauty. by Barbara Robertson

continued on page 26

Epic Effects: Framestore CFC artists tted the 3objects and water simulations into plates shot in

New Zealand and along the White Cliffs of Doverfor the award-winning Smirnoff a

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Back above water, we see an oil-rig, again in a dark and stormy sea. Aworker watches in amazement as aWorld War II-era airplane lifts up frombeneath the water followed by morewar craft, helicopters, containers, ap-

pliances, nuts, bolts, an ancient statue,a stone foot. Debris lls the sky; detri-tus litters the White Cliffs of Dover. Thecamera pans past a battleship tossedagainst the cliffs. The sky clears and thesun comes out and the camera cranestoward the ocean, which has becomecrystalline blue. The words Extraordi-nary Purication, Ten times ltered, Tri-ple distilled overlay the water rst, andthen a bottle of Smirnoff and the wordsClearly Smirnoff appear as the waterbecomes nearly transparent. It all hap-pens in 30 seconds.

The scale was epic, says WilliamBartlett, vfx supervisor at FramestoreCFC, which handled the post-produc-tion for the J Walter Thompson spot di-rected by Daniel Kleinman. We had todo wall-to- wall lm style effects on acommercial budget.

To stay within budget, Bartlett rstsorted out how best to create theshots. For example, rather than hiring ahelicopter to shoot a real oil rig in theNorth Sea or building a miniature or 3Dmodel, Bartlett cleverly assembled therig in Inferno from bits of photos he tookon location in Auckland, New Zealand.The shot didnt need much perspec-tive change, he says, and it wasnttoo close, so I cobbled the shot out ofbacks of boats and cranes.

On the other hand, the water in allthe shots and the junk shooting out ofthe water is nearly always CG. DanSeddon handled the post-productionat Framestore CFC, tting 3D objectsand water simulations into plates shot inNew Zealand and alongside the WhiteCliffs of Dover.

We modeled a little bit of every-

thing, he says. Spitre planes, a Lan-caster, a battleship, crates, old cars,bits of boats. We had to texture upand smash so many 3D models thatwe looked for models from previouscommercials for the smaller bits furtheraway. And then of course on top ofthat, we needed dynamics to throwthings around.

For dynamics, the crew used Houdini;for the models and some of the watereffects, Maya. We used a range of

techniques for the water, Seddon says.Drew Whitehouses Houdini OceanToolkit, Maya particles, RealFlow.

The Houdini Ocean Toolkit helpedthe crew replace the seas. Wed takea at plane and distort it into the shapeof the sea with this toolkit, then run thesame displacement at render time at ahigher level of detail, Seddon explains.To add foam, they mapped on lmedelements as moving textures.

Maya particles sent water running offthe surface of planes, RealFlow helpedblow the containers out of the sea. Tothrow the containers and other debrisout of the water and onto the cliffs ofDover, the crew applied rigid body dy-namics in Houdini. We could randomlyassign any model to a particle and pickan end point for the trajectory, Seddonsays. Houdini started number crunch-

ing when it lands on top of the cliff oronto something else. From a 3D personspoint of view, it was a cool thing to do,smashing things into each other.

For other shots, the crew used sim-pler techniques. Wed give the In-ferno guys a model spinning from onecamera angle that we rendered out,Seddon says. It looked 3D, but it wasactually 2D. We also made a little tor-nado effect by instancing lightweightgeometry to create thousands uponthousands of little objects. We used allthe tricks.

For the nal shot in which the waterbecomes nearly transparent, the crew

rendered numerous lighting passes inMantra of the Houdini-generated 3Dwater. Mantra enables you to dropout umpteen textures and environ-ment reections from one render, sowe could try different ideas, Seddonsays. To simulate caustics, the refrac-tion of light bending through an object,they projected the sea onto a groundplane that they then used as a texture.We projected the same displacementshaders that made the sea onto thesurface, and created the effect with-out ray tracing.

MPCs clever planning and sophisti-cated work resulted in the spot winningthe VES Award this year for OutstandingVisual Effects in a Commercial.

The project was quite good, Sed-don says. It enabled guys to do thingsthey hadnt done before.Barbara Robertson is a Los Angeles-based writer who specializes in visualeffects and CG technology.

Commercials

continued from page 26

[Houdinis] Mantra enables you to drop out umpteentextures and environment reections from one render, so

we could try different ideas. Dan Seddon, post-production director on Framestore CFCs Smirnoff Sea commercial

Shiny Dancer: To create theBacaradi ad, MPC began by

painting two nearly naked dancerscoated with black makeup and

lming them in a car park at 2,000frames per second.

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Smith Micros Poser 7

Iremember back in the day whenPoser was rst released and everyonewas promoting it as the best new thingin 3D. Created by artist and program-mer Larry Weinberg as a software re-placement for artists mannequins, ver-sions 1.0 and 2.0 were published byFractal Design. They allowed the userto quickly create CG depictions of hu-mans and position them, and essen-tially do what would take days in amore robust 3D program. There waslots of excitement, but there was also acertain degree of resistance in the in-dustry from people who thought thatthe software just wasnt production-ready yet. (Yes, I was one of the thosepeople!) However, Im glad to reportthat it has grown up a lot in the last 10years, and with the help of a prettyenormous client base, has developedinto something far more robust.

Now heres the thing: It still isnt pro-duction-ready, but this is coming froman animation and visual effects studio

standpoint and not from the othergazillion people out there who createbeautiful imagery every day. The peo-ple at e frontier recognize this, andhave been very smart in targeting theirprimary demographic, and not tryingto create a niche in the already crowd-ed world of 3D software for lm, TV andgames.

That being said, lets go through thekey advances theyve implementedinto Poser 7: First, new third-party con-tent has been added into the alreadysubstantial library. New gures, poses,wildlife, motion-capture data, textures,etc. give the artist a denite founda-tion to start.

Animation has been in Poser for atleast the last three iterations, now newfunctionality has been added includinga robust lip sync engine called Talk De-signer, tools for creating customize morphtargets and animation layersallowingme to mix and blend animations to cre-ate new ones, or isolate and save ani-mations on different parts to be reused.

In Rendering and Lighting, Poser hassped up its engine and made it moreefcient, but what really makes it likeone of the big boys is the incorporationof High Dynamic Range Imagery tolight the scenes.

In my eld, I probably would neversee Poser used by one of my artists. But

that doesnt take away from the pow-er the tool offers. If were having aconversation with someone in any oth-

er industry, I would certainlyput Poser in the packagesto consider. When you havea piece of software thatdoes most of what youneedstoryboards, ne art,medical illustration, webdesign, etc.and it setsyou back $249 rather than$3,500, then you can easilysay that Poser is well worthits weight in gold.Website: http://graphics.smithmicro.com/go/poserPrice: $249.99

Todd Sheridan Perry is theco-owner and vfx supervi-sor of Max Ink Productions.He can be reached [email protected].

by Todd Sheridan Perry

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It sounds like a script for a happily-ever-aftermovie: A edgling animator lands a place inthe Masters program at CalArts and meets ateacher whos impressed by the students ideafor a very personal lm. Within months of gradua-tion, the students lm gets a top-drawer produc-tion polishthanks to her teacher and his friendsat Disney. The nal result is so beautiful that itearns two Annie nominations: Best AnimatedShort, and Best Animation Artist for the studentherself.

It may sound like a fairy tale, but thats ex-actly what happened to Hyun-min Lee and her2D-animated lmThe Chestnut Tree. Lee, whograduated from CalArts last May, actually hadlittle animation experience when she beganstudying there. She had only arrived from SouthKorea in 2000 to get an undergraduate degreein painting from Wesleyan University. But at Ca-lArts she had the good fortune to take a charac-ter animation class taught by animator Bert Klein(The Simpsons Movie, Fantasia 2000). Klein lovedthe clarity of Lees drawing, and he intro-

duced her to veteran Disney animator EricGoldberg. I was doing a lot of work at thetime with Eric on theme park projects, Kleinexplains. Hyun-min was so talented that Igot her involved.

This assignment gave Lee professional ex-perience, but it also cut into production timefor the student lm that she was making intribute to her late mother. Klein promisedthat he would help her fully realize her lm,The Chestnut Tree, even after graduation.Its a rare, emotional lm, and we felt itshould be taken as far as we could.

The we is Klein and his wife Jennifer Car-don Klein, whose own animation credits in-clude The Iron Giant. Under their Picnic Pic-tures banner, the Kleins set about producingthe highest quality version ofThe ChestnutTree that they could. Lee even moved inwith the couple for several months, using thecomputers in their living room to scan her draw-ings into Adobe Photoshop.

The hand of the artist is central to the appealof The Chestnut Tree, whose elegant line draw-

ings swirl from one memory of a girl and hermother into another. Even after Lees drawingswere scanned, they were hand-painted oneframe at a time and then composited with Ado-be After Effects. Hyun-min couldnt just clickand ll, says Klein.

Lee also took the distinctive approach of cho-reographing the visuals using the sheet music ofthe Chopin piano piece that serves as the lmssoundtrack. I made the notation on the sheetmusic where I wanted things to happen, and thepianist played it accordingly, says Lee. Shethen transcribed the music on to exposure sheets,so the musical beats became the dialoguethat drove the animation.

This is where the input of Eric Goldberg wasespecially helpful, notes Klein. He and I previ-ously worked together on the Rhapsody In Bluesegment of Fantasia 2000, where the visualmovements matched what you heard in the mu-sic. Nobody can visualize movement to music aswell as Eric, so we got him involved. Hyun-min

had the music recorded and we looked at thestory reel and brainstormed about how to bestmatch each shot to music. A lot of times peopledo the animation rst and then put the music on,so this was kind of a throwback.

Fortune smiled again on Hyun-mins lm whthe Kleins bumped into Don Hahn, the Oscarnominated producer of DisneysBeauty and theBeast and The Lion King. After seeingThe Chest-nut Tree in progress, Hahn offered his help. Hhad worked previously on two Oscar-nominatedshorts that had been set to music,LorenzoandThe Little Matchgirl, so Hahn brought an experi-enced eye to this project. Don scrutinized eversingle frame and he could see when we wereeven a couple of frames off, says Klein. Hchanges made a big difference.

Lee also notes, Don Hahn helped us gothrough post-production in a professional way.Thanks to his Disney contacts,The Chestnut Treebeneted from top-notch post-production ser-vices at Technicolor, Buena Vista Film and Digi

and Buena Vista Sound. It was amazing,

marvels Lee.So Picnic Pictures came away with pri

tine prints ofThe Chestnut Tree that are nowmaking the rounds on the festival circuit. Leis currently collaborating with the Kleins onnew Hahn-produced shortthat is, whenshes not busy as an apprentice animator toEric Goldberg at Disney. Word has it that Lis the rst Asian woman on Disneys 2D fture team, and Klein asserts, Shes a risinstar.

Everyone involved withThe Chestnut Treeknows that the planets rarely align this wafor a rst-time director. Having taught at ClArts, Ive seen lots of student projects andknow a lot of things can go wrong, sayKlein. And its expensive. I dont think Jenfer and I would have embarked on this fo just any lm. Aside from how much we lo

working with Hyun-min, we knew this lm served to be as special as it could be.Ellen Wolff is a Los Angeles-based journalist wspecializes in education, animation and visualeffects.

From CalArts Straight to the Annies:

The BreakthroughSuccess of Hyun-min Lee

By Ellen Wolff

caption

Hyun-min Lee

A young HyuA young Hyuwith her late mwith her late mofor whom she mfor whom she m

hestnut TreChestnut Tree

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Toonz Animation CEO P. Jayakumar was kind enough to offer us a passage to India this month. With aslate which includes the new Wolverine and the X-Men animated show, the Geet Mahabharat TV seriesand the Hanuman 2 feature project, the Kerala-based studios animators have a lot to keep them busythrough the day!

8 : 3 0 a. m.

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s t o s t a r t t h e

d a y w i t

h a c r i p p l i n g

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9:13 a .m .

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l, the s tud io

g e ts d o w n to bu s ine ss.

1 0: 25 a .m .

Kn ig h ts o f t h e sq u ig g l y ta b l

e : De v, Ba i ju ,

P ra sa nna n a nd Ha r i Va r

m a e ng a g e in

so m e ve rb a l jo us t ing .

11:08 a .m .J i t h i n , Bi no y a nd Ph i li p r e ll t h e i

anm №4 (april) 2008.pdf

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