So, thank you oh so much for your readership, ( over 17,000 visits, wow!) and please keep coming back for more at http://studio-catch.com!

Régis

Happy New Year!

I welcome thee, 2010.

A little late, but it’s still good.

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This may just be the last post for 2009! OMG! So, happy holidays and have a happy new year if you don’t hear from me until then. I know you’re out there dear readers, so thanks for the support as always!

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Happy Thanksgiving,  Everyone!

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1.

Her Lion’s Jump” is a film about Sandy, a girl whose mother scolds her due to her failing grades and her fascination with nature, and that affects her very deeply such that she loses confidence in herself completely. But, an unexpected visitor named Fred, a huge talking lion, appears before her window and asks for her help to take him back home. It is through their serendipitous meeting that Sandy learns she is worth more than her mother had thought of her, and it is this lion who helps her take a leap of faith in life, or rather “Her Lion’s Jump.”

2.

Yes, this is my first film at VIFF and I’m incredibly honoured! “Her Lion’s Jump” has screened in many festivals in the US and Canada, and I’ve attended a few, but unfortunately, it pains me to say that I won’t be able to attend VIFF. I am after all, an independent artist working in animation, and I just can’t afford to attend. Sorry Canada! But I do love your country!

3.

Well, it’s ironic that my film is scheduled in a program called “It’s not Anime” when it is because of anime that I think I got into animation in the first place. I’m a huge fan of anime, but more specifically the works of Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki from the 1970’s and early 1980’s. There was a certain mood and intent from both a technical and story perspective in the works they did then that greatly influenced me to make a film with those sensibilities; but I didn’t want to simply copy what they did, but rather take what I felt when I watched their works and express it in film.

4.

When I was around 10, my response was philosopher. By 14, I wanted to be a musician. By 18, an animator. Now, as I’m nearing my thirties, I don’t wanna grow up anymore.

5.

This was my thesis film project at the UCLA Animation Workshop graduate program. It took me about 3 years (altogether, but with breaks in between) to produce the film from start to finish, and following the Animation Workshop’s motto of “one person, one film” I wrote, directed, animated, designed, and produced it almost entirely by myself. I had some help with post-production from my lovely fiancée Donna and dear friends who gave me a lot of their time for free to provide some help with sound and voice talent. The score was composed by my brother Marcel and another dear friend Richie Kohan, and performed by themselves and their friends.

6.

Since the mode of production wasn’t particularly complicated, and I had done a film prior to this one with a similar technique, the challenge wasn’t necessarily in how to make it, but rather to make it good. And since I just had myself to refer to in terms of taste or quality, it was very challenging. I’m usually very hard on myself.

7.

The film was done using conventional methods of hand drawn animation with pencil and paper, and computer coloring and compositing software. Mostly off the shelf software, with a few exceptions, and whatever other resources the UCLA Animation Workshop was able to provide me in order to produce the film. It was entirely produced at the Workshop’s studio facilities. As for the style, I really love how old Japanese Animation has a great texture to the drawings; by today’s standards that would be considered just “dirt” but I think it is that texture that makes that animation so alive and unique. So I just used pencil for both animation and clean up, to maintain that texture that hand drawn animation has.

8.

My film has mostly been screened at children’s festivals, and unfortunately the kids are a little too shy to ask questions, so unfortunately I don’t have any that particularly come to mind. Adults however have asked me whether anyone has approached to make a feature version based on this short, to which I replied not yet… but I have thought about it and there is definitely a bigger story to tell with these characters.

9.

As I’ve said before, my greatest inspiration for getting into animation is Japanese Animation. It’s something I grew up watching with as much exposure to, if not more, than Looney Tunes, or Tom & Jerry, so it feels very close to me, even though I didn’t grow up in Japan, but rather in Brazil. As for the follow-up question, like I said before, the works of Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki have inspired me greatly to do this film, particularly Panda Kopanda, Lupin the 3^rd: The Castle of Cagliostro, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. I never tire of those films.

10.

I think as an artist working in animation, one ends up wearing many hats, and it almost feels like multiple careers in one. But, outside of that, maybe I’d go become a musician, or writer. I think any profession that deals with characters, stories, and emotion would really interest me.

11.

I’d love to work (again) with Shane Acker. He was a great mentor and director to work with while I was a story artist on the feature film “9” and since we both came from the UCLA Animation Workshop, he was very enthusiastic about me making my thesis film. He definitely asked me the right questions when it came to story, and it made my film better, so I am incredibly grateful.

12.

With the way communication is these days, there is definitely a lot more criticism written, and so the landscape is saturated. Conversely, that saturation sometimes favors smaller films or productions because it seems there is always an audience, no matter how small or niche it is, and it becomes vocal and sometimes quite powerful when seen through the internet.

13.

I don’t know… I’m just happy that it’s been playing in theatres, period.

14.

Come for the laughs, stay for the tears?

15.

Perseverance. Believe in your ideas, believe in your art. My old animation teacher Dan McLaughlin was very adamant about students owning their films at the UCLA Animation Workshop, and I really respect him for that. I’m paraphrasing here, but he used to say once we completed our films that “no one can take that away from you.” I think “Her Lion’s Jump” was made very much with that sentiment, that no matter what criticism you get for your ideas, or whatever people may want your ideas to be, there is a place inside that is entirely ours, where our ideas lie, and no one can take them away.

16.

Princess Mononoke. I really love that film, so I’ll try and restrain myself from writing an essay here, but the film contains such powerful characters and ideals and complex social structures expressed in unique and sincere ways, without feeling stereotyped or thin. It also shows a very realistic portrayal of love for others in a very fantastical an unrealistic setting. It portrays flawed human beings with contradictions and morals, living in a world of amoral animals and nature, and trying to cope with that amorality. That expression of life is truly touching and brings me to tears every time I see it. I think Miyazaki still has a lot to say about the world, and I do hope he continues to tell his own stories. He seems to think in very grand terms, so I wonder if he’ll express it in another epic film.

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The hate part is the fact that the videos may or may not be in the best quality. I say “may” because I’m getting different opinions from different people about whether they see stretched pixels playing on some of them or not. I’ve uploaded and reuploaded “Her Lion’s Jump” and my animation reel to Vimeo multiple times, and I usually get the same problem in the same scenes, but whenever I see the uploaded files on my computer they play fine. I also downloaded the encoded mp4 file from Youtube (which when played in the Youtube flash player seems to have similar issues) and THAT too plays just fine on quicktime on my computer. It may be a flash player issue, I don’t know, but I know I’m tired of trying to get this to work and I’ve exhausted my strategies to figure out how to improve. So if you dear reader could let me know whether you see any problems with the videos and/or if you have any ideas on how to fix them, I would be very happy to know.

So, sorry, no images this time, but I guess I should leave something relating to this post… Well, I have another post about “Her Lion’s Jump” coming up so I’ll save it for that…

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It’s been a few months since his passing, and Yoshinori Kanada’s animation still influences me greatly. It’s a pity that I only really found out about his work in the last few years, but it obviously reached my sight and mind many years ago without my full awareness. But I guess art works in this transcendental way in which we tend to experience an artist’s work sometimes vicariously through another, or it just happens to exist in the world sometimes lasting generations, so ingrained in our culture, that it surpasses its original purpose. To many, Kanada’s animation is just that, and I’m very happy to have learned about his work, and I continuously keep searching for it.

It was in one Anipages article that his name first popped up to me. Ben Ettinger is of course an expert in the field of recognizing animators by their scenes, but he’s also a very astute animation critic. I had known of the work of Hiroyuki Imaishi  years ago through my familiarity with FLCL (of which he directed ep 5) and I could write a whole other essay on him alone, but I’ll save that for later; the fact is Imaishi’s animation made me notice something that I had seen before. Not necessarily a style, but a feeling; a feeling of timing and life that can only be found in Japanese animation. My young inexperienced mind then couldn’t understand how one pose in one drawing could be followed by a completely different one in another, and yet, in real-time it just worked. But, that is just one aspect of what Ettinger calls the “Kanada School” of animation.

Since Ben has written about it in a much more eloquent way then I ever could, I’ll leave it up to you to check the links to his articles – they are all very well written and translated (for instance this article translation of Hayao Miyazaki writing about Yoshinori Kanada.) However, what I can say in this modest post are my personal feelings and why Kanada’s animation affects me so much. The “thank you” drawing above certainly encapsulates a lot of my feelings on his artwork, and while I did it very fast and without over thinking too much, that is what I think must have gone through Kanada’s mind when animating. The poses and expressions just seem so free, like quick gesture drawings that flow on the page without the artist even looking. His figures move in a rather syncopated way, with such impeccable timing that almost feels like he’s improvising animation in real-time, giving it a sense of spontaneity to a very premeditated medium (and I’m paraphrasing Peter Chnug here – he’s written an article on AWN about spontaneity an animation years ago.) That freedom that he gives his characters makes it almost feel like the characters themselves aren’t just alive, but want to be alive in a “Kanada World” so to speak. It’s like they have to move that way to get the most out of their inner most feelings, as if nothing but that pose and that timing  cannot describe their emotions. And of course, that also translates to the camera and effects work. Kanada constantly played with the sense of camera in his works, creating something truly original and something very unique about hand drawn animation. Moving the camera the way he does in any other medium will just look bad, or a mistake, but somehow (again) when he does it, it just works. That is partly because he’s not merely moving the camera in extreme quirky ways, but he lets the emotion of the scene or the character guide the timing and movement, simultaneously, further emphasizing that sense of spontaneity. You don’t even notice the quick camera zooms because the characters often dictate the camera, and let you experience the motions through their emotions.  And the effects follow that philosophy as well in abstract shapes of light or smoke that often look like neither, but when timed just right, heighten that sense of reality in the drawings. (His “punch takes” or lightning frames are beautiful works of abstraction actually, and it is to no surprise that fine artist Takashi Murakami has talked about Kanada’s influence in his work.)

Kanada’s animation is really appealing to me because of that freedom that he gives his drawings; nothing feels heavy handed, overworked, or intellectualized. Sometimes I wonder if he just took all the fun out of animation for himself and didn’t leave any pieces left for anybody. But, then I think there must be a lot of that fun left because of the incredible work of the animators that followed in his footsteps and the new animation they leave for future generations. I’ll try in my own way to bring that sense of fun, that Kanada animation into my own work, even if I’m geographically far away from that school of animation… well, at least our love for animation can bring us just a little closer together.

So, in closing, just enjoy some highlights of his work on the following clips.

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Hipster Tennis  – she’s so ironic… she doesn’t even use a racket – inspired by my brother and sister-in-law’s shenanigans.

I tried to work on some character designs for my comic and ended up getting a little out of hand.

But I felt it was still worth posting about it.

Same goes for the toned version. And yes, I was looking at a lot of Street Fighter III art around this time.

I was very hesitant to post this one, since overall I don’t really like it, but it I feel that it’s still a worthy exercise… in something.

Woman at Embarcadero – Pitt brush markers on Fabriano Journal paper

Marcel, Profile – Oil Pencil on Fabriano Journal paper.

Santa Monica YWCA Figure Drawing – Oil Pencil on smooth newsprint paper – 2 min quick sketch

Santa Monica YWCA Figure Drawing – Oil Pencil on smooth newsprint paper – 5 min quick sketch

Santa Monica YWCA Figure Drawing – Oil Pencil on smooth newsprint paper – 10 min quick sketch – just imagine George Michael’s  “Careless Whisper” and you’ll get the picture.

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PS: (Of course, if anyone has a problem with having these here, just let me know and I’ll take them down.)