OCTOBER 2000

Table of Contents VOL. 5 NO. 7

4 Editor’s Notebook
You never know…

5 Letters: editor@awn.com

MERCHANDISING AND LICENSING

OCTOBER 2000
6 The Powerpuff Girls’ Phenomenal Merchandising Mantra
Looks like Cartoon Network has its first big time merchandising hit with The Powerpuff Girls. If you
haven’t seen the products, then you haven’t been outside of the house! Rick DeMott investigates.

11 Of Fords and Fritos: Animation’s Forgotten Ad Studios

While people are surprised to learn of America’s forgotten ad studios, they might be even more
surprised to learn who worked for them. Michael Mallory explains.

14 Dear Santa…
Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman tries to guess what the hot animation related toys will be this gift
giving season. It’s a tough job this year with a lot of television cancellations, un-merchandisable
features and racy Internet content.

18 Toy Stories: Merchandising Success Without TV or Movie Exposure

Michael Hurwicz investigates the ways some animated properties have been able to rack up big
licensing and merchandising success without the usual exposure of television or a feature film release.

24 Give Us Your Money: 4Kids Entertainment Attains Poké-Momentum

Brett Rogers goes behind the scenes to discover the group that brought us Pokémon and has
recently been called the fastest-growing company in America.

29 Hearst and Harvey: Reinventing the Classics

Joan Kim interviews Leslie Levine on her task at hand – bringing Harvey’s classic characters to
consumers in new, cool ways.

OTHER

31 When I Grow Up I Want to Be René Jodoin

Chris Robinson celebrates the long overdue acknowledgement of René Jodoin’s work in the
animation community and for the NFB.

THE STUDENT CORNER

37 Let’s Sketch on Location: Organizing and Creating Space

Renowned drawing instructor Glenn Vilppu continues with his third installment detailing tech-
niques for correctly creating space while sketching on location.

INTERNET COMPANY PROFILE

42 A Ride Worth Taking: Mediatrip On The Move

Lee Dannacher is on the case again! This time profiling MediaTrip.com, home of Ed Testy, Lil’
Pimp and the town of Creamburg.

© Animation World Network 2000. All rights reserved. No part of the periodical may be reproduced without the consent of Animation World Network.

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 2

OCTOBER 2000
Table of Contents VOL. 5 NO. 7
GAMING

47 There’s Humongous Rewards in Edutaining Little Kids

Jacquie Kubin describes how Humongous’ focus on story and characters has sold over 16 mil-
lion games and counting.

FESTIVALS & EVENTS

OCTOBER 2000
51 Since Hiroshima
After the 8th Hiroshima Festival, Prakash S. Moorthy and Dave Brunskill promised to make a
film for the next festival. While the film is uncompleted, the need for its creation still exists…

54 Simpsons Mania in Britain

Matt Groening and crew traveled to Jolly Old England this summer to celebrate The Simpsons.
Andrew Osmond reports on the festivities.

56 Imax Goes 3D in Real-Time

Cyberworld 3D is Imax’s next foray into animation. Eric Lurio reports that while the story might
not be there, the eye candy makes it all worthwhile.

FILMS

58 Moebius and Foster Journey “Thru the Moebius Strip”

Joe Fordham had a personal tour of the pre-production of Moebius’ first animated feature film.
Together with CG veteran Frank Foster, the film they are creating is sure to be carefully
watched by fans until completion. Includes exclusive visuals!

BOOKS

6 The Animated Film Encyclopedia

British animation historian Graham Webb has spent 30 years documenting every animated theatrical
cartoon, animated feature film and cartoon sequence. Now Jerry Beck reviews the final product.

63 Dog Locomotion and Gait Analysis

While this book was written with dog enthusiasts in mind, Jim Bradrick uncovers this text’s
excellent use for animators.

NEWS

66 Animation World News

Nelvana Purchased For $554M By Corus, BKN Int. Launches New Media Division, Pseudo: Another
Dotcom Downfall, Pop.com Closes Up Shop, Britt Allcroft Co. Transforms Into Gullane Entertainment,
Wild Brain Thinks Up Spots For Scandinavian Designs, Sideshow Motion Design Livens Up Olympic
NBC Coke Ads, The Hive Swarms For New Cable Channel SceneOne and much more…

13 Next Issue’s Highlights

68 This Month’s Contributors

Cover: Packing a merchandising wallop, The Powerpuff Girls are here to stay! © Cartoon
Network.

© Animation World Network 2000. All rights reserved. No part of the periodical may be reproduced without the consent of Animation World Network.

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 3


Editor’s Notebook
You never know…
W
i l l i a m G o l d m a n ’s
mantra in his book
Adventures in the
Screen Trade is “No one knows
anything.” And indeed this holds
true for not only the feature film
industry but also the fickle tastes of
little tykes. Since the dawn of com-
mercial animation the medium has
been tied to selling toys. This is
such a well-known fact that laws
have been passed monitoring the
situation. Vast resources and hours
of manpower are invested in
launching shows with “multi-plat-
form advertising and marketing
reach” all in the hopes of catching
lightening in a bottle and creating
one of those consumer must-have
properties. Marketing execs openly
talk of “owning” children, i.e. earn-
ing their brand loyalty by a young,
young age. All this planning and
plotting however is frequently for
naught as something inconceiv-
able and unsuspecting catches the
attention of the masses.
“Catching lightening in a
bottle” is just how Shelly Hirsch
from Summit Media Group, a
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Heather Kenyon
division of 4Kids Entertainment,
explained it when I sat down with
him back at NATPE in 1998. I
remember him saying that the
next big thing wouldn’t come
from one of the majors but rather
a smaller company that found and
distributed a property from outside
the U.S. system. Smart man. One
year later, Pokémon, a 4Kids prop-
erty, has become one of these
super-phenomenoms. In “Give Us
Your Money: 4Kids Entertainment
Attains Poké-Momentum,” Brett
Rogers takes a deeper look at
4Kids and the impact Pokémon
has had on the company.
I have received a lot of frus-
trated email from producers and
directors of domestic shows. They
strive for quality, meaningful
scripts, challenging plots and char-
acters that children can identify
with…when suddenly, a group of
pocket monsters hit the shores
reciting their names in various
incarnations. ‘And this is what the
kids flock to?!’ they cry. Their dis-
belief and incredulity comes
through loud and clear…just as it
did I am sure when Mutant Ninja
Turtles were all the rage.
For a long time, “girls”
shows were considered the kiss of
death. It had been statistically
proven said the network execs
that while girls will watch boys
shows, boys will not watch girls
shows and boys control the
remote controls of Saturday morn-
ing. Are girls really born that pas-
sive? Have we been trained to be
submissive by that early of an age?
Thank God the Powerpuff Girls are
here! Not only have the Girls
proven to be a tremendous suc-
cess, they have also caught the
attention and fancy of boys every-
where. I recently heard a story of
two little boys fighting over who
was going to be Blossom and
who was going to be Buttercup.
Now really could those naysaying
industry executives ever had
guessed such a thing would hap-
pen? Rick DeMott sheds some light
on this amazing trend in, ”The
Powerpuff Girls’ Phenomenal
Merchandising Mantra.”
And while some properties
seemingly become a hit overnight
others take time to gather steam.
Michael Hurwicz outlines several
of these types of properties in “Toy
Stories: Merchandising Success
Without TV or Movie Exposure.”
Really…talking vegetables that
teach moral values? Who would
have said that would be a suc-
cess? Kids hate vegetables and can
smell a “lesson” in their entertain-
ment faster than they can smell
cookies in the oven. But so far Big
Ideas has sold over 20 million
videos without major retail
backing.
I guess the only rule we
can follow is: make what you
think, put it out there and wait,
because no one knows what
these audiences are going to grav-
itate to next. And while Martin “Dr.
Toon” Goodman couldn’t pick one
specific item to become the must-
have-or-die gift…by December
24th it will be something. And if
you could guess what the crowds
are going to want correctly and
consistently, then you’d be one of
the richest people on earth and
have a very special talent indeed.
Until Next Time,
Heather
October 2000 4
 editor@awn.com
Hey! That’s Us!
For almost a year I’ve visited
the AWN Website for the latest
news. This morning I was really
surprised to read: “Ottawa Awards
Top Prize To Ring Of Fire.” The first
thing I did was to call Andreas
Hykade, the director of the film to
tell him the great news. He was
really, really excited. I was the assis-
tant producer of Ring Of Fire so
that is how I know Andreas.
Currently, I’m doing the festival
and publicity work for the film.
So, I just wanted to thank
everyone at AWN for their work.
With kindest regards,
Alexander Funk
Gambit
Koenigsallee 43
D-71638 Ludwigsburg
Germany
Tel. +49.7141.125-179
Fax. +49.7141.125-175
email: a.funk@gambit-film.de
http://www.gambit-ringoffire.de
Editor’s Note: Thank you for read-
ing! It always makes us proud to
know that professionals out there
are turning to Animation World
Network for the latest news…it is
also nice to know we surprise peo-
ple with good news every now
and then. Congratulations!
_____________________________
Film Review Thanks
Recently, someone from
the NFB sent me your article
“Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square”
(Furniss, 4.1). I was so grateful to
read it and I thought it’s the best
and most accurate writing on my
film of the same name. I am truly
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
honoured. Thank you so much shop on Saturday, September 23,
indeed. 2000.
I look forward to meeting In any case, thanks again
you in the future. for your very helpful article. If you
have any other pitching tips or
Best Regards, advice, I’d love to know.
Shuibo Wang (Wouldn’t it be a gas if I sold my
_____________________________ show using the exact advice I got
from your article?)
Pitching Help Well Received
Thank you so much for Best Regards,
your great article “Pitching Perfect: Rick Danenberg
A Word From Development!”
(Kenyon, 5.6). You provided me Editor’s Note: Then we get the first
with many of the answers I’ve interview Rick! Good luck. We
been looking for regarding the received a tremendous response
world of pitching. to this article – mainly folks want-
After various animation ing more info – so keep reading
writing assignments which have and we’ll try to elaborate on
included episodes of pre-existing the topic.
shows and many bible and pilot
re-writes, I just created my own
short, comedy series called The
Gert n’ Jer Show, about two
quirky, kvetchy husband and wife
seniors who are self-appointed
crime fighters. It was inspired by
the rather exasperating recent
experience of living with my par-
ents (both deep into their 70s)
during an extended visit.
In the past, others have
been responsible for pitching
material that I was hired to revise.
Now that I’ll be pitching my own
project, your article was exactly
what I needed to see!
By the way, an episode of
The Gert n’ Jer Show just won a
writing competition (one of 3
scripts so honored) sponsored by
Women In Animation. My short,
comedy episode was performed
by voice-over artists at the studios
of Klasky-Csupo, as part of an
intensive animation writing work-
October 2000 5
 The Powerpuff Girls’
Phenomenal Merchandising Mantra
he Powerpuff Girls presence
T
is undeniable. Every store,
from Toys ‘R Us to Linens ‘N
Things, across the U.S. has some
sort of Powerpuff merchandise.
From T-shirts to plastic dishware,
Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup
could be the most widely seen car-
toon faces in America. It is estimat-
ed that by January 2001 the mer-
chandise will have made US$300
million.
Here’s some facts. The
Powerpuff’s TV debut in 1998 was
the highest rated premiere in
Cartoon Network history. The
series has consistently scored the
highest rating each week for the
network across a wide range of
demographics — young and
old, male and female. For
CartoonNetwork.com,
PowerpuffGirls.com ranks in the
top five locations and the
Powerpuff games rank #1. In
February 2000, the girls were fea-
tured on the Cartoon Network
sponsored NASCAR racing car and
are also featured on the sides of
Delta planes. The Powerpuff
“Heroes and Villains” CD spent 7
Taking up the larger store-fronts at Warner Bros. Stores worldwide.
Photo courtesy of Cartoon Network.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
The Powerpuff Girls. © Cartoon Network.
weeks at #1 on the Soundscan
Kids Chart; hit the Billboard Top
200 chart twice; hit #1 on the
College Radio Chart (CMJ Top 200)
and is still in the top 15. Plus, The
Powerpuff Girls fanzine is selling
so well it has gone back to press
for a second printing.
The Powerpuff Girls are making it
onto the runway. Photo courtesy of
Cartoon Network.
What a phenomenon! So I
decided to find out, how a show
ends up in almost every store in
America and who decides what
gets made. These questions were
answered by Bob Bryant, Cartoon
by Rick DeMott
Network’s vice president of off-
channel commerce — the man
behind the development of the
Cartoon Network brand and relat-
ed character properties. “It always
goes back to the show,” Bryant
simply says. “We’re not going to
have the girls do anything that
they wouldn’t in the show.”
According to series creator
Craig McCraken, he talked to
Cartoon Network about the mar-
keting and said, “’When you’re
making these products you should
always keep in mind that these are
little girls who are superheroes.
They aren’t just some kind of pop
icons that you can plaster onto
anything and combine them
with...whatever girls or kids are
into right now.’ [Cartoon Network
has] been great at keeping the fact
that they’re superheroes and that
they’re little kids in with all the
products.”
Before The Toy There Was A
Student Film
To better understand the
marketing of the series, one needs
to understand from where the
series came. McCraken originally
created the Powerpuff Girls as
characters in his second year stu-
dent film at CalArts. “I’ve always
been a fan of superhero films,”
McCraken says. “I wanted to do a
superhero film, but I didn’t want to
have the same typical strong guy.
I’d drawn these three little girls
and I liked that initial contrast of
these cute little innocent looking
October 2000 6

Craig McCraken with his Powerpuff Girls.
© Cartoon Network.
things being really tough. And so
that was the core of the idea and
it’s still the core of the show —
it’s that contrast between cute
and toughness.” Originally The
Whoop-Ass Girls — Chemical X,
which gave the girls their super
powers, was originally a can of
whoop-ass — McCraken showed
his short to Hanna-Barbera and
Cartoon Network in 1992 with
great response.
While The Powerpuff Girls
wasn’t the first short to go to series
when Cartoon Network was look-
ing for new programming
(Dexter’s Laboratory , Johnny
Bravo and Cow and Chicken took
the lead), it certainly pulled ahead
once it got the greenlight.
O b v i o u s l y, t h e s u b s e q u e n t
response to the series has been
stellar. The show attracts a viewer-
ship from adults to teens to young
kids. Everyone seems to be caught
up in the little cute girls who can
play dolls one moment and break
the bones of a villain the next.
Regarding the phenomenal reach
of the series, McCraken says, “I
thought it would get on Cartoon
Network and college kids would
watch it and there would be a few
random T-shirts out there in the
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
rave scene or in record shops. But
I had no idea that it would take off
to this extent.”
And taken off it has — most
surprisingly with young boys. It
has been a longtime standard in
Hollywood that “girl shows” just
don’t attract a mass audience.
Long thought that little boys deter-
mined what a household of kids
watched, shows based on girl top-
ics were never made. However
that’s all changed. Since The
Powerpuff Girls has become a hit Bob Bryant, Cartoon Network’s vice
every channel is scrounging president of off-channel commerce.
around for their own “girl show.” Photo courtesy of Cartoon Network.
However Bob Bryant says, “It’s the Cute and Kick-Ass Spell
combination of superheroes and Merchandising Dollars
little girls that attaches the boy It’s the duality of The
audience.” Powerpuff Girls’ nature that makes
Regarding the boy audi- them a merchandising dream. The
ence McCraken says, “You know I initial line of products that is out
thought they would just com- now is geared toward girls, how-
pletely dis the show because it’s ever upcoming lines will feature T-
cute little girls and they would shirts for boys and adults. One
want nothing to do with it. But might question how do you mar-
they have really responded well, ket a series that has such a wide
they really like the show. I think aged fan base without alienating
that they just like the fact that either end of the spectrum. Bryant
there is this visceral action that answered the question with the
they can respond to.” same mantra: “It goes back to the
The Powerpuff Girls doing some Mojo bashing. © Cartoon Network.
October 2000 7
show. It’s the show that attracts
the different age groups. And if
the products come from the show
then you won’t alienate anyone.”
A perfect example is the
“Heroes and Villains” CD, which
features a host of alternative bands
performing songs that make up
the action of an episode of The
Powerpuff Girls. The idea for the
CD came from McCraken who
handpicked the bands who influ-
ence him and the series. When
asked whether there was any con-
cerns from executives about the
album being too old for kids,
Bryant says once again (let’s repeat
all together) it comes from the
series. Now the CD is a hit with
both kids and college students.
The influence of The Powerpuff
Girls is so powerful that it has
urged children to remove Britney
Spears from their Walkmans and
listen to Devo, Frank Black and
Shonen Knife. God bless Craig
McCraken, God bless him dearly.
Music as good as the series; the Powerpuff
Girls CD has no trouble succeeding.
© Cartoon Network.
But why has this series cap-
tured the hearts and pocket books
of so many? First off the cute look
of the character design attracts
female shoppers to buy Powerpuff
Girls’ key chains and what not.
Look at Hello Kitty. It doesn’t have
a hit TV series or a rock CD, but it
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Attracting a diverse audience, these key
chains can be found on more than
just little girls. © Cartoon Network.
makes millions each year in mer-
chandising. Frankly, cute sells and
that’s it. Then you add the
action/superhero factor into the
mix — you have the boys. It’s the
visceral action like McCraken says
that gravitates boys to play with
half-plastic half-plush action fig-
ures. The Powerpuff Girls are
superpowered heroes and boys
from the dawn of human exis-
tence have played superhero. The
Powerpuff Girls happen to be the
superheroes for the 21st Century.
Every boy has dreamed of saving
the world at one time in his life
and these young-aged super-
heroes give them the vehicle to
embrace that desire. Moreover,
The Powerpuff Girls encourage
girls to embrace the same fantasy.
Finally, one adds the series’ retro-
style and pop culture humor and
one has the adult audience. Just
like Ren & Stimpy re-envisioned
cartoons in the 1990s, Powerpuff
Girls is doing the same today. This
time the superheroes are reworked.
Thus, the floodgates are
opened for a merchandising
bonanza. Bryant says that the ini-
tial intent to market The Powerpuff
Girls didn’t come from the net-
work. “Retail stores called and
asked for merchandise,” Bryant
says. As the show became more
popular, the more the demand for
merchandise grew. McCraken and
his crew were involved in the cre-
The Powerpuff Girls in their latest
swim fashions. © Cartoon Network.
ation of the initial style designs,
sculpts and plushes. But the
Powerpuff creator says, “There are
so many things being made that
Cartoon Network doesn’t have the
time to keep me abreast of every
little notebook or pencil. The way I
find out about a lot of products is
looking on eBay actually. I’ll go
check it out and say, ‘Oh, I’ve
never seen that shirt or I didn’t
know they made erasers.’”
Keeping with the ‘it goes back to
the show’ idea, Bryant told of one
particular marketing meeting,
“About a week ago Craig and I
were in a meeting and they want-
ed to make a T-shirt of the girls
playing volleyball. And Craig says,
‘You have to remember that they’re
superheroes and that when
Buttercup spikes the ball there
should be an explosion of sand.”
Cute girl crimefighters,
who would have ever thunk it?
But they are here and they are
everywhere. When asked how
you build a short into a mega-mer-
chandised franchise, McCraken
says, “My job is basically to make
cartoons. It was never our inten-
tion to design a show that’s going
to be this massive thing. My goal is
just to make a good television
show. And the outside stuff is just
extra icing on the cake. It would
have been nice, I always wanted it
to happen, but it wasn’t ever the
goal. My motivation to make a
October 2000 8
show wasn’t to have a ton of
products. It was just to make the
best show that we could possible
make.” So if you ask yourself how
the heck did a Powerpuff Girl key
chain get onto the hardware store
shelf, just remember the Cartoon
Network motto – it goes back to
the show.

Rick DeMott is the Associate

Editor of Animation World
Network. Previously, he served
as Media Coordinator for
Hollywood-based Acme
Filmworks. He holds a B.A. in
Film/Video from Penn State
University with a Minor in
Comparative Literature.

Note: Readers may contact any

Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com. The Powerpuff Girls. © Cartoon Network.

Bonus HTML Features

Every on-line (HTML) issue of Animation World Magazine contains additional features not found in the
download or print Acrobat version, such as QuickTime movies, links to Animation World Network sites,
extended articles and special sections. Don’t miss the following highlights that are showcased
exclusively in this month’s Animation World Magazine HTML version:
• Dear Santa…
Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman tries to guess what the hot animation related toys will be this gift giving
season. It’s a tough job this year with a lot of television cancellations, un-merchandisable features and
racy Internet content. Take a look at the Aardman Angry Kid Quicktime Clip at:
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.06/5.06pages/pattenfeatures3.php3
• Toy Stories: Merchandising Success Without TV or Movie Exposure
Michael Hurwicz investigates the ways some animated properties have been able to rack up big licensing
and merchandising success without the usual exposure of television or a feature film release.
For trademark information go to: http://www.uspto.gov, and for copyright information go to:
http://www.loc.gov/copyright.
• Let’s Sketch on Location: Organizing and Creating Space
Renowned drawing instructor Glenn Vilppu continues with his third installment detailing techniques
for correctly creating space while sketching on location. See even more illustrations online at:
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.07/5.07pages/5.07vilppu4.php3.
• Moebius and Foster Journey “Thru the Moebius Strip”
Joe Fordham had a personal tour of the pre-production of Moebius’ first animated feature film.
Together with CG veteran Frank Foster, the film they are creating is sure to be carefully watched by fans
until completion. Includes exclusive visuals! Check out the gallery of Moebius artwork online at:
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.07/5.07pages/fordhammoebius3.php3.

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 9

 ®

ILLUSTRATED BY CRAIG MCCRACKEN, CREATOR OF THE POWERPUFF GIRLS CartoonNetwork.com

Of Fords And Fritos:
Animation’s Forgotten Ad Studios
P
op quiz time: name the ani-
mation studio of the 1920s
that was reputed to be the
world’s largest. Here’s a hint: it
wasn’t Disney’s or Fleischer’s. If you
guessed the Denver, Colorado-
based Alexander Film Company,
you are absolutely correct. You are
also one of the few people who
has ever heard of the Alexander
Film Company, a pioneering com-
pany whose obscurity has
remained constant in large part
because it dealt exclusively in the
field of commercials.
Alexander Was Ads
It may come as a surprise to
some to learn that decades before
the advent of television and its
reliance on product sponsorship,
commercials and public service
announcements were a common
sight in movie theaters, even in
the silent days. Among the first to
realize the possibilities of using the
then-fledgling motion picture
industry as an advertising tool
were two entrepreneurial brothers
named Julian Donald Alexander
and Donald Miller Alexander —
known to associates as J. Don and
Don M. As early as the first decade
of the century they were creating
advertising slides for exhibition in
nickelodeons, and by 1922 they
had built a self-contained studio in
Denver. After a devastating fire
destroyed the Denver facility, the
company relocated to Colorado
Springs in 1928 and constructed a
new studio, complete with a
soundstage and film processing
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
lab. From there Alexander turned
out literally thousands of animated
spots (as well as some live-action
ones) over the next four decades.
Many were national campaigns for
clients such as Pepsi, Borden
(whose trademark character Elsie
the Cow was featured in animated
spots), Colgate and Chevrolet, but
equally as many for small local
advertisers. The company even
produced spots for other coun-
tries. “These played in theaters
throughout the world,” says Linn
Winstead Trochim who, along
with her husband Bob, owns the
Alexander Studio’s artwork
archives. “We have stuff in differ-
ent languages. A lot of it was done
for South America.”
At its peak in 1951,
Alexander claimed
to have 24,000
accounts, with its ads
showing in 10,000
theaters.
At its peak in 1951,
Alexander claimed to have 24,000
accounts, with its ads showing in
10,000 theaters. “The theaters
showed a lot of animation for
commercial products,” Bob
Trochim says. “In the town I was
from we used to have cartoon
days on Saturdays, when they’d
show cartoons all day, and there’d
be commercials in between from
by Michael Mallory
local products and nearby towns,
and I did not realize they were not
done by the major [studios].”
There was a good reason
the work done by Alexander
looked like Hollywood-quality car-
tooning: in addition to the regular
animation staff that Alexander
employed in Colorado, a work
force of some 750 people by the
early 1950s, it also turned to the
majors in Hollywood for freelance
talent. Some of that talent was the
best in the industry, including ani-
mator Volus Jones, who free-
lanced for Alexander while work-
ing for Disney’s (as did Trochim
himself, who was then Jones’
assistant), Jack Hannah, who at
one point directed for Alexander,
and even the great Tex Avery.
Another Disney talent, T. Hee,
designed characters for the studio.
One of Alexander’s special-
ties was creating what it called
“playlets,” animated situations that
would change each week, giving
the client an option of having its
product seen in fifty-two different
“playlets” each year. By keeping
the playlets nonspecific to the
product, the company could reuse
them for different clients. “Pretty
much everything was so generic
that you could sell dog food and
screen doors with the same com-
mercial,” notes Trochim. “The con-
tent was the dialogue.”
Ironically, the company that
was built on the foresight of its
founders ultimately failed because
of lack of foresight. Believing tele-
vision to be a flash-in-the-pan, the
October 2000 11
studio never geared up for televi-
sion production, continuing to rely
on theatrical contracts, and even
though it turned out some black-
and-white spots for TV, its refusal
to take the new medium seriously
resulted in its closure by the late
1960s. (For the record, animation
was not the sole interest of the
Alexander brothers: they were also
the designers and creators of the
Alexander “Eagle Rock” airplane in
the 1920s.)
Other Competitors
Similar studios flourished
throughout the United States,
notably the Jam Handy Company
based in Michigan, which created
animated commercials and indus-
trial films. Mainstream Hollywood
even tried to get into the act for a
while in the early 1940s through a
company called Cartoons, Ltd.,
which was built on the remnants
of Ub Iwerks’ Beverly Hills studio
by a former Schlesinger and
Disney animator named Paul
Fennell. Two of Fennell’s young
staffers, Jerry Brewer and Ed
Benedict, began developing out-
side advertising ideas with the
boss’ blessing.
In the late 1940s,
UPA beat every
other studio to the
punch by turning out
a TV commercial…
“They were elaborate the-
atrical commercials, among the
first in Technicolor with original
music recorded live for the specific
project,” recalled Benedict, who
would later achieve renown as the
designer of practically all of
Hanna-Barbera’s early television
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
characters. “The Liggett & Myers
Tobacco Company had ‘the smoke
that satisfies,’ so we were going to
do ‘The Music That Satisfies.’ The
American Tobacco Company
owned Lucky Strike and they had
the Hit Parade, so we were going
to have ‘The Hit of the Month.’ We
had Esso Gas Corporation and
Sunkist Corporation, we never got
turned down once!”
Not by the advertisers, any-
way. The rejection, according to
Benedict, came from the
exhibitors. “We never found any-
body to release the pictures,” he
explained. “None of the studio
theaters would do it. There were
independent theaters, and they
would have, but there were not
enough of them. The clients were
willing to spend the money, but
they wanted a lot of theaters.”
Except for an unreleased ad pro-
duced on spec for Richfield Oil
and a Technicolor one-minute
commercial for a pension plan
called “Thirty Dollars Every
Tuesday” — a spot Benedict
described as “successful as hell”
when it was shown at Hollywood’s
Pantages Theater — the Benedict
and Brewer commercial collabora-
tion soon fell through.
Going Major
During the 1950s, major
animation companies began dab-
bling in animated television com-
mercials (in fact, for most of the
decade, commercials constituted
the only original animation on tel-
evision). In the late 1940s, in fact,
UPA had beat every other studio
to the punch by turning out a TV
commercial for Southern California
Ford dealerships, directed by Bobe
Cannon, which utilized Dr. Seuss
characters! At Disney’s, veteran ani-
mator and director Charles A.
“Nick” Nichols was in charge of the
studio’s TV commercial unit, devel-
oping such original characters as
“Bucky Beaver” for Ipana
Toothpaste and “Fresh-Up Freddie”
(who was a bird) for 7-Up.
Commercials quickly proved to be
lucrative propositions. “They [7-
Up] spent two-and-a-half million
dollars on their TV commercials,”
remembered Paul Carlson, who
was Nichols’ assistant in the unit. “I
think they did 26 one-minute com-
mercials at $100,000 apiece. And
we usually handed out the anima-
tion to the staff artists at Disney, but
they would do the work at home.”
Meanwhile at MGM, Bill
Hanna and Joe Barbera were pro-
ducing spots for such clients as
General Mills, Schlitz Beer, Proctor
and Gamble and Pall Mall ciga-
rettes, all done on the sly, without
the approval, or even the knowl-
edge, of the studio’s then-division
head Fred Quimby. Elsewhere,
animator Bill Melendez got his first
taste of working for Peanuts by
animating Charlie Brown introduc-
ing the 1956 Ford Falcon.
Cascade was the
starting place for
three young special
effects animators
named Ken Ralston,
Denis Muren and Phil
Tippett.
Amazing Cascade
Much of the most memo-
rable cartoon commercial work of
the 1950s and ‘60s, however, was
created by a small, independent
company called Cascade Studios.
Like Alexander, Cascade had a
knack for attracting major studio
artists who were in between jobs
October 2000 12
or simply trying to supplement
their incomes. Looney Tunes direc-
tor Robert McKimson went to the
studio for six-months in 1953 after
Warner Bros. had shut down its
cartoon unit while waiting to see if
3D filmmaking was going to
become the wave of the future.
(When it became clear that it was-
n’t, the studio reopened in
January 1954 and continued turn-
ing out cartoons in glorious 2D.)
In 1955, Cascade got a major cre-
ative boost when Tex Avery joined
its ranks, having just left the Walter
Lantz studio. Avery went to work
on some of the most memorable
cartoon campaigns in history,
including “The Frito Bandito” and
the disaster-prone cockroaches
that put Raid insect spray on the
map. Avery remained at the
commercial shop for the next two
decades.
In addition to the leg-
endary veterans that passed
through its halls, Cascade can
boast of another legacy: in the
1970s it was the starting place for
three young special effects anima-
tors named Ken Ralston, Denis
Muren and Phil Tippett. “When I
was at Cascade, Denis Muren had
a script, and just looking at this
script, it was the movie we always
wanted to make, but no studio
would make a movie like this
because it was just too hard,”
Ralston recalled recently. “But it
was made, and we got to work
with the guy who made it.” The
script was a little thing called Star
Wars, “the guy” was George
Lucas, and Ralston, Muren and
Tippett went on to become part of ANIMATION WORLD NETWORK
5700 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 600
the key creative core of Industrial Los Angeles, CA 90036
Light & Magic. Phone : 323.634.3400
Fax : 323.634.3350
Until recently, animated Email : info@awn.com
spots have tended to be over-
looked by those in the animation
industry and cartoon fans alike.
But commercials have long been a
major part of the animation land- editor@awn.com
scape, and even though such PUBLISHERS
one-time powerhouses as Ron Diamond, President
Alexander Film Studios and Dan Sarto, Chief Operating Officer
Cascade Studios are gone, neither EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
they nor the artists who worked Heather Kenyon
for them deserve to be forgotten.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Rick DeMott
Michael Mallory has written
over 100 articles about EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR
Joan H. Kim
animation, past and present,
for such publications as Comics CONTRIBUTORS
Scene, Animation, In Toon, Mike Amron
Jerry Beck
Daily Variety, The Hollywood Jim Bradrick
Reporter and Millimeter. He is Lee Dannacher
Rick DeMott
also the author of the book Joe Fordham
Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman
Michael Hurwicz
Heather Kenyon
Note: Readers may contact any Joan Kim
Animation World Magazine Jacquie Kubin
Eric Lurio
contributor by sending an e-mail Michael Mallory
to editor@awn.com. Prakash S. Moorthy
Andrew Osmond
Chris Robinson
Brett Rogers
Glenn Vilppu

OPERATIONS
Annick Teninge, General Manager

DESIGN/LAYOUT
Alex Binotapa

WEBMASTERS
Jeremy Keller
Alex Binotapa

ADVERTISING SALES
Jay Stokes

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 13

 Dear Santa...
Dear Santa:
This year I have been a very good
boy. I would like a Weekend Pussy
Hunt play set, and a Hard Drinkin’
Lincoln action figure with the
“Super Abe” accessories. Santa,
could you also bring me some
Space Puppies and please bring
my little sister an Elmo the
Aardvark doll. She’s kind of a brat,
but she always gives up the com-
puter whenever I want to watch
Angry Kid. Oh Santa, while we’re
on the subject of Angry Kid....
Aardman’s Angry Kid has been watched
by over 1 million people — an Internet
record. © and TM Aardman Animations
Ltd. 2000.
A
s we swelter through the
dog days of summer,
heading for the harvest of
new fall toons, we begin to check
furtively our Christmas Club status,
sift through the loose change in
our Xmas fund jars, and prepare
thick coatings of Teflon for our
overtaxed credit cards in the hope
that for once, the charges won’t
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman
stick this Yuletide. For those of us
confronted with kids, kids of kids,
or sundry progeny such as nieces
and nephews, we know what is
coming as surely as Acme rockets
find their way to mortified coyotes.
Then, of course, there are those of
us somewhat further up the devel-
opmental scale who love to give
— and get — animation-related
goodies for the holidays. As Fred
Flintstone happily sang, “Christmas
is my favorite time of year
because/Everyone can be a Santa
Claus!” Well, guess what, toon-
heads: Forget the present temper-
ature and barometric readings;
your turn is closer than you think.
Make A Prediction
So, my dear Santa manqué,
what will be in the sack come
Christmas Eve? While it might
prove interesting (if not downright
scandalous) to fill the order given
by our young do-gooder, it is
unlikely that much Web-based
product will be found beneath the
tree in 2000. To begin with, some
of the recent Web toons would
melt Frosty the Snowman in his
tracks. Some of the new charac-
ters most likely to break out into a
merchandising campaign have
only existed for some three to six
episodes at the time of this writ-
ing. Even bootleg product won’t
likely be found by Jesus’ next
B-day. The days of hastily tacking a
Mickey Mouse doll together and
shilling it in the local five-and-dime
belong to the sepia-toned days of
Olde Saint Nicholas. Today, tar-
geted niche marketing strategies
Powerpuff Girls.TM & © Cartoon
Network. A Time Warner Co.
All rights reserved.
and complex licensing agreements
guarantee that the elves will be
buying annuities before Rudolph
and company ever hit the skies.
The products that will result
in fistfights at the local Toys R’ Us
come December are easy to iden-
tify, even at this early date: simply
draw names out of a hat, use a
dart board, or cross the gypsy
palm with silver. In other words,
take your best guess. “Just a
minute!” you might say. “What
about the niche selling strategies
you just mentioned? And the test
marketing?” Quite so. Fact is,
none of it may actually work as
designed. The marketing strate-
gies and licensing agreements
may be solidly in place but the
series, like Clerks or Sammy, may
die on the holly bush or ivy vine
leaving your local specialty shop
holding a hefty bag of coal come
Christmas. Worse yet, companies
may make a major tie-in or invest-
ment with one “surefire” series
only to find that they have backed
the wrong reindeer; what if you
sank all of your candy canes into
Pepper Ann only to watch The
Powerpuff Girls performing a
October 2000 14
Holiday pageant on the shelves of
every Wal-Mart in America? A
merry Christmas indeed, Mr.
Cratchit! With this in mind, it may
still be possible to make some
guesses as to what might be
under the tree this year.
Fantasia/2000’s “The Steadfast
Tin Soldier.” © Disney Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No Slam Dunks
Sadly, this may be one of
the bleaker Holiday seasons in the
history of animation marketing for
the simple reason that few big hits
materialized either on the small or
big screens. If we examine the
past year in review we find that
animation-based products may
have more in common with the
Sahara Desert than the North
Pole. Disney’s Dinosaur cleaned up
at the box office but the early sum-
mer release date means that the
shelf life of the products is likely
spent by now. Also, the main char-
acters were dinosaurs, and the toy
market is already inundated with
scores of saurians virtually indistin-
guishable from Aladar and
company. Disney also released
Fantasia/2000, which had no
strong central character to market.
No one has been lining up for ver-
nal sprites or sinister jack-in-the
boxes, and it’s difficult to believe
that Santa will be dropping many
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
pink flamingoes down our chim-
neys come Yuletide.
The Road to El Dorado and
Titan A.E. produced little merchan-
dising of note, although the latter
film did come out with the obliga-
tory action figures. Look for them
at your local discount store or
rummage sale early this fall.
Hamilton Toys LLC had some suc-
cess with a line of plush Rocky and
Bullwinkle toys, as did Playmates
with a coopful of characters from
Chicken Run. However, the
Holiday prognosis for these prod-
ucts appears to be Ho-Ho-Hum.
The winner among movie-related
merchandise this Xmas will ride
the tide of two successful films and
a pre-existing marketing empire.
This year Santa’s elves will again be
bright yellow and carry electric
stingers in their baggy little pants.
The reindeer, I hear, have evolved
into a higher form and now wield
ocular laser beams. I would come
right out and say the “P” word but
the entire scene is depressingly
familiar by now. Besides, I tire of
importing the “é” from my
character map.
Even more depressing are
licensing opportunities lost from
the past year of TV animation. The
Primetime Slaughter of 2000 left
Chicken Run’s coopful of characters. © DreamWorks Pictures.
few animated series standing;
often, death came within a few
episodes and there was never a
chance to exploit any of the new
primetime shows in the retail mar-
ketplace. The most appropriate
merchandising items this holiday
season would be dreary sepul-
chers engraved with Home
Movies, Family Guy, Sammy, God,
the Devil, and Bob, Dilbert,
Downtown, Clerks, Mission Hill
and “This Space Reserved For Baby
Blues” (sort of gives the phrase
“under the Christmas tree” a
macabre new meaning, eh, Mr.
Grinch?). Non-adult animation
managed a few toy train wrecks as
well; Hardee’s Big Guy and Rusty
the Boy Robot toys hinted at the
promise these characters might
have had, but by the time they
were nestled in burger bags most
kids couldn’t identify them as the
show was inexplicably canceled
after a couple of episodes. O,
what Kris Kringle could still do with
Batman Beyond if only Warners
could make up its mind! Instead,
the show’s successful product line
may get a stake of holly through
its heart for Christmas.
Ya Need A Star…
Why is this year chillier than
October 2000 15

South Park is in demand. © 1997 Comedy
Partners, Inc. All rights reserved.
the Snow Miser’s heart? In order
for a brand to become successful
there must first be brand recogni-
tion. This can be achieved in sev-
eral ways. In the first example, a
product is heavily pre-promoted
months in advance. This was a
ploy popular with Disney in the
1990s. Long before the celebrated
summer animated blockbuster
arrived, there would be mall tours,
promotional tie-ins, early releases
of action figures, and even books
featuring characters that had yet
to hit the screen. A second sce-
nario is the “runaway” hit. Take
South Park as an example:
Merchandising had to play catch
up once the scatological scamps
went from cult hit to nationwide
phenomenon, but the buyers
were there when the goods
arrived. In a third instance, time
and endurance leads to expansion
of brand recognition. The
Simpsons are a case in point; as
the show continues to roll into its
second decade, the number of
licensees has steadily grown to
over 200. Much the same can be
said for Rugrats, which is quietly
toddling to its tenth anniversary
and second feature film. In one of
those depressing tests recently
administered to school-age chil-
dren by concerned social scien-
tists, Bart Simpson had a higher
recognition factor than several
famous U.S. Presidents. What the
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
researchers don’t realize is that few
children tote Thomas Jefferson
lunchboxes or FDR backpacks to
school.
At this point, marketability
ties into fashion-consciousness.
There are no products bearing the
likenesses of early heroes of
democracy or architects of the
New Deal because these luminar-
ies aren’t cool enough (translation:
“They won’t sell”). The important
image is the one that’s hot at any
given time, and not hot is not hip.
Thus, people will not buy mer-
chandise tied to shows that have a
low cultural recognition factor, are
unpopular, or not disseminated
widely enough to be accepted as
“Kewl!” Needless to say, no one
will be buying any merchandise
representing shows that lasted less
than five episodes. In a society
already infamous for its short
attention span, almost instant pop-
ularity is needed in order to assure
large (if short-term) profits and a
shot at long-term licensing muscle.
This year’s crop of animation has
had some artistic winners and cre-
ative triumphs, but may prove as
scrawny as Charlie Brown’s
Christmas tree in the actual retail
market.
Animated primetime shows
and much of the Saturday-morn-
ing and/or cable fare simply did
not survive long enough over the
past year to achieve recognition
by any of the roads described
above. The pre-promotion and
hype that originally accompanied
Family Guy could not make it a
runaway hit with the public.
Although there were some very
pleasant surprises this year, such as
Courage The Cowardly Dog and
SpongeBob SquarePants, neither
achieved the cult-to-hit status that
leads to marketing bonanzas.
Some of the Web toons truly do
hold promise, but probably for the
next holiday season. Finally, much
of the animated product market
was cornered by (oh, not that “P”
word again!) a certain Japanese
import that likely outsold all other
animation-related merchandise
combined.
Courage The Cowardly Dog. TM &
© Cartoon Network. A Time Warner Co.
All rights reserved.
Ah,The Evergreen
Ebenezer Scrooge pleaded
at his own graveside, “Oh, tell me
I may sponge away the writing on
this stone!” and thereafter got to
do just that. Much of this year’s
animation may have Tannen-
bombed just in time for the
Holiday season but animation
fans, like Scrooge, may still find
succor. This season may be one of
the best in recent memory for
“evergreen” products, a term used
to denote characters and items
which are proven, consistent sell-
ers. The most obvious example is
the Looney Tunes gang; at this
time, Taz and Tweety appear to be
the most prevalent of the bunch in
terms of licensing (although the
entire line continues to be a strong
seller). Love him or hate him,
Scooby-Doo will undoubtably con-
tinue his licensing resurrection
throughout the Holidays.
The best candidate for
future “evergreen” status can be
found in the aforementioned
Powerpuff Girls franchise; the
number of licenses presently stacks
up higher than Mojo Jojo’s turban
and is still growing. These ineffably
October 2000 16

The Tigger Movie. © Disney Enterprises,
Inc. All rights reserved.
cute products appear to have
“legs” (albeit tiny ones) as well as
crossover appeal to children of
both genders and beyond. The
CD has just made its appearance
as I write this, and there has even
been a licensing agreement with
Avon for the distribution of dolls.
Look for sales to blossom (so to
speak) this Christmas season.
There are other kisses wait-
ing under the mistletoe too.
Disney may not sell a lot of
dinosaurs or Rhapsody In Blue
playsets, but the success of The
Tigger Movie guarantees that the
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
ever-popular Pooh characters will
be snuggled by many tiny tykes on
Christmas Day. There are great
hopes being pinned on the Action
Man product line imported from
Europe, but my guess is that
another Japanese import may pro-
vide the most prevalent items
graced with a ribbon and bow this
Xmas. If you loved spending your
coppers on (No! I won’t type it!),
then get ready to cash in your pay-
checks for Digimon. This will
Sure to be a favorite! Digimon:The Movie.
undoubtedly be followed next © 2000 20th Century Fox. All rights
year by a series called Broke- reserved.
emon, which is what most parents Go online to:
will be by Christmas 2001. http://www.awn.com/mag/issue
So it seems most of our hol- 5.07/5.07pages/goodmansanta.
iday product this year will be as php3 to download a QuickTime
“evergreen” as our Christmas trees, clip of Aardman’s Angry Kid.
since too many animated TV series
and Web concepts were either Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman
axed or still a-borning while Santa is a longtime student and fan
was on vacation. Take cheer, how- of animation. He lives in
ever; sometimes a traditional, old- Anderson, Indiana.
fashioned Christmas is the
warmest and the best. Just ask Note: Readers may contact any
Fred Flintstone; he’ll be glad to Animation World Magazine
sing all about it for you, and then contributor by sending an e-mail
sell you a Dino doll. to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 17
 Toy Stories: Merchandising Success
Without TV or Movie Exposure
W
hen Disney starts
developing a new fea-
ture, toy manufactur-
ers and other merchandisers line
up and lay down big bucks for
licensing rights. A popular kids’ TV
program generates the same kind
of interest. Media success breeds
success in licensing and merchan-
dising — this is not a secret.
And while this is great
news for all those properties going
into development at Disney, what
if you have a property that has
licensing potential, but you don’t
happen to have a deal with
Disney or a top-rated show on
Nickelodeon? Potential licensees
don’t want to talk to you, because
they know that kids buy what they
see on TV and in the movies. As a
result, independents shopping a
property often don’t think much
about licensing until they’ve land-
ed a media deal.
That could be a mistake.
There are strategies that can lead
to success in licensing that don’t
depend on already having a
media hit. In fact, these strategies
can lead to success in the media,
too.
In the driver’s seat, Michael
Paraskevas, illustrator of The
Tangerine Bear. Photos
© Michael Paraskevas.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Toy Story 2 — another example of Disney’s merchandising success.
© Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Plush is a Plus
One basic idea, when it
comes to toys, is “think plush.”
While a typical molded plastic fig-
ure takes eighteen months to get
from conception to toy store
shelves, a plush toy can make the
journey in six months or less. Plush
toys don’t require huge, expensive
molds. They are unlikely to cause
injuries. And there are certain
types of plush toys, such as teddy
bears, that are perennially in
demand, with no TV shows or
movies to back them up. In every
way, they’re low-risk.
by Michael Hurwicz
Plush potential is no guar-
antee of success. But if plush does
fit your project, it’s definitely an
advantage as you pursue other
strategies.
The Tangerine Bear, a spe-
cial being aired this Christmas sea-
son on ABC, has demonstrated
this advantage twice.
Tangie-ble Results
“Tangie,” as some of his
friends call him, started life in
1997, in a children’s book. Tangie’s
creators already had a track record
in print media. In addition, mother
and son team Betty and Michael
Paraskevas, author and illustrator,
were talking to Nelvana about
another book-based property,
Maggie and the Ferocious Beast,
which has since gone on to top
the charts on Nick Jr., after its
debut in the summer of 2000.
Tangie, however, was a
new character, with nothing but
his touching story and sad expres-
sion to recommend him. Being a
October 2000 18
teddy bear, however, has its
advantages, and a plush Tangie
was able to make an appearance
in bookstores alongside the
HarperCollins hardbacks that told
his tale.
Another fun Paraskevas creation, Maggie
and the Ferocious Beast. © Nelvana.
“It was a great bear, and it
sold out,” says Michael Paraskevas.
Wait, there’s more: He’ll be
on hand at mall events across the
country, which will include special
screenings for kids, as well as
photo ops of kids donating money
t o t h e S t a r l i g h t C h i l d re n ’s
Foundation, a non-profit that pro-
vides entertainment for hospital-
ized kids. Tangie will also be the
star player in “bear drops” that
Starlight will do in hospitals.
Success can start with a storybook. The Tangerine Bear by Betty Paraskevas and illus-
trated by Michael Paraskevas. © Storyopolis.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Artisan is donating fifty cents to
Starlight for every video sold. The
deal is similar to one that brought
in over a million dollars for the
Make A Wish Foundation and
helped make Annabelle’s Wish the
number three selling video in
1997, under Ross’ guidance at
Hallmark.
The Power of Print
In addition to demonstrat-
ing the pluses of plush, The
Tangerine Bear illustrates the
power of print — it’s a lot easier to
get a start in bookstores than in
movies or TV.
Print media other than
books can also serve as a base for
media and licensing success. And
you don’t have to have a once-in-
a-century juggernaut like Peanuts
to make this strategy work for you.
For instance, Martha
Montoya, creator of the Latin-fla-
vored Los Kitos comic strip, started
building a base in newspapers in
1995. Today, the strip appears in
305 publications in the U.S.,
Mexico and 15 other countries.
From comics, she went into radio,
where she became creator,
producer and actor in “RadioKito”
o n t h e H i s p a n i c B ro a d c a s t
Corporation (HBC).
From this base, Montoya
has snagged some licensing deals
involving big names. For instance,
Bank America Corp., State Farm
Insurance and the Department of
Agriculture have all used the Los
Kitos characters when they want-
ed to reach a Hispanic market.
Sears Roebuck & Co. features Los
Kitos characters on a line of chil-
dren’s clothing. Wal-Mart started
selling a line of Los Kitos shoes in
1999.
All this is without any TV or
movie exposure. Meanwhile, the
Krislin Company has acquired ani-
mation rights to Los Kitos. At last
report, they hoped to bring an ani-
mated series to the television mar-
ket in the year 2000. While shop-
ping the property for broadcast,
Krislin is also developing straight-
to-video releases.
Not quite a “rags to riches”
story — yet. But that’s the whole
point.
“Don’t wait for miracles,”
advises Montoya. “Build a busi-
ness. Pay the bills. Build a reputa-
tion. They’ll eventually come to
you.”
Think Bits
Even easier to get into than
print is the Internet. However,
most observers agree with Lina
M a i n i , p re s i d e n t a n d c h i e f
operating officer of Mainiac
Productions and CEO of Howlin
Entertainment:
“The Net is more a market-
October 2000 19

Martha Montoya, creator of Los Kitos. © Los Kitos Entertainment LLC.
ing tool now than its own form of
media. It’s easy to copy Internet
content, and electronic rights is
still a new field. That combination
makes it hard to protect propri-
etary material. I view the Internet
as adding exposure, but I wouldn’t
launch there.”
However, there’s always the
Casper’s Haunted Christmas creators,
Harvey Entertainment, are striking into
new territory by acquiring Walter Miller’s
Home Page. © Harvey Entertainment.
exception that proves the rule. In
what may be a first, Harvey
Entertainment, of Casper, the
Friendly Ghost fame, has licensed
the rights to “Walter Miller’s Home
Page” and is shopping it as a
primetime animated TV series.
Prior to being licensed by Harvey,
“Walter Miller’s Home Page” had a
presence only on the Internet,
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
where it is one of the longest-run-
ning and worst-spelled comedy
sites, with a fanatical cult follow-
ing.
“The success on the
Website gives us a definite com-
petitive advantage when pitching
the show,” says Rick Mischel, presi-
dent of Harvey.
Think Niche
The Net provided a safe
haven for “Walter Miller’s Home
Page” until it achieved a following
that propelled it toward the big
time. Similarly, Montoya has built a
following in a niche that the big
players largely ignored, and where
her Latino roots gave her special
insight. (Montoya came to the U.S.
Julie Aigner-Clark, CEO and founder of
Baby Einstein, with her two girls. Photo
© 2000 The Baby Einstein Company
LLC. All Rights Reserved.
from Bogota, Columbia, at age 25.)
Niche marketing is a time-
honored strategy that comes in a
thousand flavors. Julie Aigner-
Clark, for instance, got her special
insight from motherhood. Aigner-
Clark’s first success in media was
Baby Einstein, a video of music
and nursery rhymes in English,
German, Russian, Spanish,
Hebrew and French. The theory,
backed by academic research, is
that exposing infants to foreign
languages makes it easier for them
to learn languages later in life.
There’s no indication that they
learn specific words, much less
syntax. More likely, hearing the
phonemes stimulates the brain to
be able to process those
phonemes. Visuals, including
brightly colored objects and toys,
as well as black and white pat-
terns, keep the infant focused on
the video.
Aigner-Clark ran across the
research that inspired Baby
Einstein in 1994, when she was
pregnant with her first daughter,
Aspen. During 1996, using a bor-
rowed Betacam, she shot the
video in her basement. She edited
it on a home computer using
Adobe Premiere.
The Baby Einstein video
was completed in early 1997.
Initially, Aigner-Clark sold the video
October 2000 20

Just a few of the many colorful and exciting products from Baby Einstein.
© 2000 The Baby Einstein Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
through specialty retail outlets,
such as Babies R Us, Toys R Us,
Imaginarium, Noodle Kidoodle,
Store of Knowledge, The Right
Start and Zany Brainy. She also
used Internet sites like
Amazon.com.
The project grossed
$100,000 in 1997, on an invest-
ment of $15,000. In 1998, with
two titles, sales totaled $1 million.
The third year, they did $4.5 mil-
lion, all without a shred of TV
exposure — and no advertising of
Baby Einstein’s holiday offerings include a special CD and video. © 2000 The Baby
Einstein Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
any sort.
“It was all word of mouth,”
says Aigner-Clark.
They project $10 million in
sales in 2000. The total employee
count is now six, including Julie
and her husband, Bill. They still
work out of their home. They use
a number of distributors, including
Artisan Home Entertainment,
which purchased 20% of the busi-
ness. They’ve expanded their
product line with more Baby
Einstein videos and other lines
such as Baby Mozart. As of
September, 2000, the Baby
Einstein Company was working
on three licensing deals, in toys,
publishing and apparel. All three,
independently, came to Aigner-
Clark, who had been too busy
minding the store to go looking
for them.
A i g n e r- C l a r k ’s a d v i c e :
“Focus on one thing. Build some-
thing fabulous and make it very
strong on its own. Then you’ll
have the opportunity to grow.”
Phil Vischer, Big Idea’s founder and CEO,
as well as the voice of Bob the Tomato.
Photo © 2000 Big Idea Productions.
“My Way”
Strategies such as those
pursued by the Paraskevas,
Montoya and Aigner-Clark provide
a solid base that allows you to
maintain the integrity of your
product. For instance, Big Idea is a
production company that makes
VeggieTales, videos that teach
Christian values to kids using ani-
mated vegetables.
The company was founded
in 1993 by Phil Vischer, a comput-
er animator and storyteller. He
started in a spare bedroom, as the
Big Idea Website explains, with
one computer, little capital and no
connections.
The first half-hour episode
of VeggieTales, “Where’s God
When I’m S-Scared?” was released
before Christmas, 1993. It sold
October 2000 21
130,000 units through 1995,
750,000 by the end of 1996, and
passed the two million mark in
1997. Initial marketing was almost
entirely through Christian book-
stores.
In the midst of this spectac-
ular growth, Big Idea was
a p p ro a c h e d a b o u t p u t t i n g
VeggieTales into mass market out-
lets like Target, Wal-Mart and K-
Mart. They loved the idea. There
were just one or two problems.
Bob the Tomato, Larry the
Cucumber and Mr. Lunt, the deco-
rative gourd, have sold over 20
million videos, and employ over
130 people.
On the creative front, Big
Idea has expanded into space
penguins. On the commercial
side, they’ve got books and music.
Fisher-Price/Mattel and Learning
Curve International have licensed
VeggieTales for toys. Hallmark
Cards has licensed it for stationery,
gifts, greeting cards and party
goods. Other licensees use
VeggieTales characters on chil-
dren’s pajamas, shoes, bed and
bath products, clothing and acces-
sories. Still others make
VeggieTales fabrics and wallpaper
borders, cardboard puzzles and
board games, dinnerware, cake
decorations and balloons.
Big Idea still has little or no
media exposure and operates
almost exclusively direct-to-video.
Doing the Right Thing
The Paraskevas are going
through a similar process with “Jr.
Kroll,” Betty’s favorite among her
own characters, as she’s demon-
strated by writing four books
about him. She sees Jr. Kroll as a
primetime TV show, in the same
class as The Simpsons. Major stu-
dios have shared that vision. But
there are always one or two prob-
lems, as Betty explains: “They ask,
‘Can we get him out of the dou-
ble-breasted blue suit?’ I say, ‘No.
Jr. doesn’t give in to peer pressure.’
They ask, ‘Can we give him a
Hispanic nanny?’ I say, ‘No. He

Right out of the produce section and

onto video, these good looking vegetables
have helped make Big Idea a huge suc-
cess. © 2000 Big Idea Productions.

“They wanted us to change

it,” recalls Diane Teigiser, Big Idea’s
toy and licensing maven. “Take out
the Bible verse at the end. Take
out the God reference.”
For some reason, Phil didn’t
want to do that.
“A year or two later,” says
Teigiser, “they came back and said,
‘Okay, leave the God in, but take
the Bible verse out.’”
Phil still refused.
Early in 1998, VeggieTales
passed the two million mark. “We
got so successful, they said, ‘We’ll
take it just the way it is,’” says
Teigiser.
By the end of 1998, they
passed the three million mark.
Today, Christian spokesmodels like © Storyopolis.

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 22

doesn’t have a Hispanic nanny.
He’s already in four books and a
toy in FAO Schwartz, and there’s
no Hispanic nanny. You can’t spoil
my character.’ About that time, I
get up and walk out.”
The Paraskevas were doing
just fine with children’s books (sup-
plemented by the occasional toy)
before they ever started talking to
the studios. That makes it a lot eas-
ier to do the right thing rather
than the easy thing when the
pressure is on.
Protect Yourself
One disadvantage of the
strategies discussed in this article is
that you don’t have the muscle of
a big media company’s legal
department behind you. It’s impor-
tant, whether you get your proj-
ects out through books, comics,
radio, the Internet, or direct-to-
video, not to send them into the
wide world unprotected.
“I’ve been hurt by being a
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
trusting person,” says Aigner-Clark,
“thinking that everybody was
going to be okay, and that people
don’t steal people’s ideas. It’s hap-
pened to us.”
“Be careful who you deal
with,” advises Howard Leib, a
Manhattan-based attorney special-
izing in children’s entertainment.
“Mass mailings of your project to
people in a directory is not a great
idea. Get references. Find out who
they’ve worked with, what they’ve
done. Find out if they’re reputable.
It’s easier to protect yourself up
front than have to fight down the
line.”
And register your trade-
marks and copyrights, adds Leib. A
copyright costing only $30 can
protect a collection of works. At
$325, trademark registration is
more expensive, but still within
reach for nearly anyone.
When asked what final
words of wisdom he would offer
to fledgling creative entrepreneurs
in children’s entertainment,
Michael Paraskevas’ immediate
response: “Get a lawyer.” (He did
laugh, but there was an edge to
it…)
Lawyers can be costly.
However, as Leib points out, you
can always find out how much it
will cost you to get a lawyer, but
you never know how much it will
cost you not to get one.
Go to our online version to
get all the links to help you get
started.
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.
07/5.07pages/hurwiczl&m.php3.
Michael Hurwicz believes in fairy
tales, cartoons, music, trees and
chocolate.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 23
 Give Us Your Money:
4Kids Entertainment Attains Poké-Momentum
I
t’s an anniversary many parents
would like to forget: two years
ago last month, the wallets of
North America collectively opened
to welcome the arrival of 151
pocket monsters to our shores.
Since then, Pokémon has grown
from what most people outside of
Japan knew only as a strange,
seizure-causing curiosity into a
multi-billion dollar juggernaut.
Seemingly, every aspect of
American life from Eggo waffles to
Radio City Music Hall has capitulat-
ed to the power of the Pokémon
franchise. How did this happen?
Who deserves the credit (or
blame)? Meet 4Kids Entertainment,
the fastest-growing company in
America, according to Fortune
magazine. Once a company
known only as a money-losing
licensing agent and production
company whose properties
included Mr. Men and Monster
Wars, 4Kids has successfully
turned Pokémon into an interna-
tional craze.
A New Beginning
In 1997, Alfred Kahn,
Chairman and CEO of 4Kids
Entertainment, promised his com-
pany’s shareholders that he would
boost the company’s flagging
licensing business by concentrat-
ing on fewer properties with high-
er potential and longer life spans.
With an eye on that goal, the com-
pany inked a deal with Nintendo
that year to become the exclusive
licensing agent for Nintendo-
owned properties (including
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Brett Rogers
A million dollar cast of characters. © Warner Bros. No other uses are permitted
without the prior written consent of owner. Use of the material in violation of the
foregoing may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.
While 4Kids has This small, New York City-
based company is actually several
never publicly
companies in one: Leisure
disclosed what its Concepts is 4Kids’ full-service
royalties are, esti- licensing agency, which serves as
a go-between for trademark own-
mates place the ers like Nintendo, and companies
number at about that license characters for con-
sumer products like clothing and
three percent of toys. This division is largely respon-
Pokemon’s sible for the explosive proliferation
of Pokémon products, signing
wholesale sales over 500 licensees like Topps,
outside of Asia. Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro
to lucrative deals.
Pokémon) in all territories outside Summit Media Group han-
of Asia. As head of marketing for dles 4Kids’ media buying and pro-
Coleco in the early 1980s, Kahn gram distribution services, placing
was the mastermind behind the advertisements for toy companies
Cabbage Patch Kids phenomenon on television networks airing chil-
that caused riots in toy stores dren’s shows. Summit handles syn-
across the country. Now at the dication of the Pokémon television
helm of 4Kids, Kahn was ready to show.
stage a repeat performance with 4Kids Productions is the
Pokémon. group’s television, film, music, the-
October 2000 24
atrical and home video production over $44 million, a 403% increase nition game for N64, at year’s end.
company, which has adapted the over the first half of 1999. 4Kids In anticipation, FAO Schwarz will
Pokémon and Pokémon: The signed 159 new Pokémon launch a “Pokémon Boutique” in
Johto Journeys television shows, licensees during April, May and its Fifth Avenue store, following in
Pokémon the First Movie: June 2000 alone, with everyone the footsteps of toy stalwarts
Mewtwo Strikes Back and from Toy Biz to H.J. Heinz of Barbie and Star Wars. And just
Pokémon: The Movie 2000 to Australia forking over millions of when you thought the live arts
audiences outside of Japan. A dollars for the privilege of placing were safe, a Pokémon stage show
third Pokémon movie is scheduled the visage of Pikachu or produced with Radio City
for North American theaters in Charmander on their products. Entertainment made its debut in
2001. September at Radio City Music
4Kids’ performance as Hall, with a planned 30-city North
agent for Nintendo has been American tour to follow.
lucrative, to say the least. In return In addition to Pokémon,
for planning and executing the which continues to receive
marketing campaigns that ensure extremely high ratings, Kids’ WB!
Pokémon remains at the top of will air the highly anticipated
animated programming and a Pokémon: The Johto Journeys
profitable product for licensees, starting October 14, featuring 100
4Kids gets a cut of Nintendo’s Pokémon, plenty of gold and silver. new Pokémon characters from the
© 2000 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved.
licensing fees. While 4Kids has Permission is hereby granted to repro- Gold and Silver video games.
never publicly disclosed what its duce this photograph for publicity, While weary adults may
royalties are, estimates place the promotion or advetising connected with groan at the thought of a contin-
the program depicted herein and for
number at about three percent of no other purpose. ued Pokémon onslaught in North
Pokémon’s wholesale sales outside America, let us not forget that
of Asia. In one area where Pokémon is only two years old in
Despite headlines that Pokémon sales slipped, 4Kids still Europe, where according to Kahn,
decry Pokémon as a fad that is managed to find a way to profit. 4Kids is “seeing excellent results…
plummeting from the peak of its While Nintendo’s Pokémon Yellow as the Pokémon phenomenon con-
popularity, Pokémon continues to and Pokémon Trading Card game tinues to gain momentum.”
accelerate, defying non-believers. titles dropped to the number two Company Chief Financial
Love it or hate it, Pokémon is actu- and three video game titles in the Officer Joseph Garrity expects
ally getting bigger. NPD U.S. for much of 2000, the 4Kids’ performance to be even
Group Toy Services number one spot was better in the third and fourth quar-
Firm, a research firm claimed by Perfect ters of this year as the Pokémon:
with relationships Dark, also a property The First Movie debuts overseas
with 60% of retail- represented for mer- and sales of Poké-merchandise in
ers in the United chandise licensing by Europe could top $300 million.
States, says that 4Kids Entertainment. All this may sound like great
Pokémon is “as Pickachu from Pokémon. news to a company like 4Kids, but
strong as ever,” © 2000 Warner Bros. All Rights A Rolling Franchise it has been a battle for Kahn and
Reserved. Permission is hereby
and that the Gold granted to reproduce this Pokémon is company to fight gaining a repu-
and Silver video photograph for publicity, promo- expected to repeat as tation as a one-trick pony. For
games will increase tion or advetising connected the top entertain- 4Kids, it’s all about maintaining
with the program depicted
t h e f r a n c h i s e ’s herein and for no other purpose. ment franchise for momentum. Children’s tastes are
momentum. the 2000 holiday inherently difficult to predict, mak-
Over $3 billion in season, as the Pokémon Gold and ing sustaining good growth year
Pokémon-related sales are expect- Silver video games debut in the US after year a tall order. As a publicly
ed this year, double Pokémon’s first on October 16, followed by traded company (NASDAQ: KIDE),
12 months of sales. 4Kids’ net rev- Pokémon Puzzle League and Hey 4Kids is under a great deal of pres-
enue for the first half of 2000 was You, Pikachu!, the first voice recog- sure to continue to perform.

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 25


Pokémon:The Johto Journeys.
© 2000 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved.
Permission is hereby granted to repro-
duce this photograph for publicity,
promotion or advetising connected
with the program depicted herein and
for no other purpose.
James, a trader in 4Kids
stock who wishes to remain
anonymous, observes, “Almost
ninety percent of 4Kids’ income is
derived from Pokémon. The only
way they can increase their stock
price is to convince investors that
there’s more to the story. Is it all
smoke and mirrors? Is all the good
news already out there? Pokémon
has been a blessing for them, but
if they don’t find other viable prop-
erties their stockholders will bury
them.”
Time to Diversify
Kahn insists that Pokémon
will remain a profitable property
for years to come, but acknowl-
edges that 4Kids needs to expand.
“What [Pokémon] has allowed
4Kids to do is to have a spring-
board into the whole area of chil-
dren’s entertainment. This is a busi-
ness of ideas. We are spending all
of our energies developing new
content and different ways of
intensifying our return on that
content. Corporations want to get
customers young and obviously to
do that you need kids licensing
which is where we think we’re at
the forefront.”
One property 4Kids has
acquired as a result of its success
with Pokémon is a European
licensing agreement with Marvel
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Enterprises to develop new oppor-
tunities for several of Marvel’s
superhero franchises, including X-
Men classic, Spider-Man classic,
The Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer,
The Incredible Hulk, Avengers,
Captain America, Iron Man and
Daredevil.
In a release describing the
new deal, Peter Cuneo, CEO of
Marvel Enterprises, says, “4Kids’
Leisure Concepts is one of the
world’s premiere licensing agents,
as evidenced by their success with
Pokémon and the WCW.
Furthermore, 4Kids understands X-Men. ™ & © 1996 Saban.
our business and has already All Rights Reserved.
proven to be a great partner to
our toy company, Toy Biz, who is
currently a Pokémon licensee.
Leisure Concepts has the man-
power and resources to help us
immediately build a powerful
international presence for our
superhero brands.”
Kahn has also returned to
his roots, with the signing of
Cabbage Patch Kids to an exclu-
sive licensing agreement. 4Kids
will renew the popular doll fran-
chise and export it using the same
patterns that took hold of the
United States in the early 1980s.
4Kids will also re-launch characters Fantastic Four.
from its WCW wrestling property,
which recently has fallen far short
of its main competitor, the World
Wrestling Federation. Additionally,
in a move that will surely please
Thundercats fans, 4Kids has
acquired the show’s merchandis-
ing license and will develop “a
whole slew of new [Thundercats]
properties and ideas.”
Capitalizing on its expertise
in marketing video game mer-
chandise, 4Kids has signed Perfect
Dark, a top-selling video game
from Rare Limited to an agreement
to represent that property’s mer-
chandising rights. According to Iron Man.
October 2000 26
Kahn, 4Kids is in negotiations on a
new Perfect Dark television series
and has had “a lot of interest” from
movie studios on Perfect Dark.
While the role of animation
in Perfect Dark properties remains
to be seen, in a move that may
change the face of American ani-
mation, 4Kids will look to Japan to
supply new exports to the US and
Europe. Kahn calls the Japanese
the world’s “preeminent suppliers
of children’s entertainment,” and
he intends to exploit successful
Japanese shows beyond Pokémon.
4Kids is using its Pokémon
profits to enter the game of inter-
nationalizing children’s entertain-
ment. The belief that good prod-
ucts can be developed or retooled
and updated for children across
national boundaries is driving
4Kids to find shows with a suc- Team Rocket: Meowth, James and Jesse of Pokémon. © Warner Bros. No other uses are
permitted without the prior written consent of owner. Use of the material in violation
cessful pedigree and introduce of the foregoing may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.
them into new marketplaces.
4Kids has purchased the properties in the history of the two become fast friends. What
rights to Tama and Friends, a Japanese animation.” makes Cubix unique is that aliens
show with over two decades of At press time, the identities have hidden a special energy force
popularity in Japan and previewed of the new anime properties are inside of him, giving him extraor-
the “completely re-imagined” still confidential while contract dinary powers. The show will fea-
series at the company’s annual negotiations continue. ture two running, intertwining
stockholder meeting in May. The In an attempt to produce plot devices: Bobby and Cubix bat-
show’s simple, cute character some of its own properties, 4Kids tling the show’s villains, Dr. K and
designs seem to be a perfect fol- Productions is collaborating with Charles IV, and the aliens’ quest to
low-up to Pokémon for a younger Korean partner Daiwon to pro- reclaim their lost power supply
audience. “The demand for [Tama duce 26 episodes of Cubix, a new inside of Cubix. Kahn says that
and Friends] has been exciting, CGI series set to debut on the Kids’ 4Kids is “hopeful that Cubix can be
and we want to treat it with the WB! mid-season schedule. a very, very exciting and very, very
kind of respect it deserves so we Anticipation is high for this show, profitable show and license.”
are delaying production until which features animation quality Donna Friedman, Senior
September of 2001.” that Kahn describes as “equal to Vice President of Kids’ WB!, says,
Expect to see other Toy Story.” “Cubix is a big idea that has big
Japanese animation programs on The show takes place in possibilities. Its distinctive CGI look
North American television, as well, Bubble Town, 2040, where robots combined with the network’s core
says Kahn. “We are looking at all are ubiquitous. Everyone on Earth ingredients of high adventure,
the most wonderful Japanese con- owns a robot, which can be pro- humor and heart make it a perfect
cepts that have been successful grammed to be good or evil, fit for Kids’ WB!”
over time in Japan and we are according to the tendencies of its The Cubix segment pre-
very close to a number of [agree- human master. A boy named sented at the 4Kids annual share-
ments] on those. These are some Bobby discovers Cubix, a one-of-a- holders meeting was impressive,
of the most exciting and successful kind prototype in a junkyard and featuring engaging animation,

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 27


Cubix. © 2000 Warner Bros. All Rights
Reserved. Permission is hereby granted
to reproduce this photograph for
publicity, promotion or advetising
connected with the program depicted
herein and for no other purpose.
plenty of anime-style mecha and a
techno soundtrack. After the pres-
entation, Kahn declared the com-
pany’s intention to launch Cubix in
Japan to “hit them with their own
strategy.”
A Volatile Problem
While Pokémon remains
hot and the strategy moving for-
ward seems sound, not everything
is rosy at 4Kids. The excitement
over Pokémon sent the company’s
stock soaring to over $93 a share
in November 1999, from less than
$2 only a year earlier. The panic
buying that boosted the stock
gave the company increased
notoriety, but it also set sharehold-
ers up for a crushing downfall.
Since November 1999, shares of
4Kids have plummeted to about
$20 per share, a 78% decline in
price and an $876 million decline
in the company’s market capitaliza-
tion. Short sellers, traders who sell
stock they don’t own in an effort
to buy it at a lower price and prof-
it from the decline, have targeted
4Kids in droves, believing that
when Pokémon slows, the compa-
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
ny’s prospects will dry up. Kahn,
the largest holder of 4Kids stock is
open about his disappointment in
the stock price’s recent stagnation.
Says Kahn, “My one disappoint-
ment is the decline in our share
price notwithstanding our out-
standing financial results.”
At the annual meeting,
Kahn allowed his anger to show
over losing an estimated $70
million in personal net worth as
4Kids’ stock price declined from its
highs, lashing out at whom he
described as “professional short-
sellers” targeting 4Kids’ stock and
calling the company’s shares a
“screaming buy.”
The future for Pokémon continues to stand strong,
4Kids looks bright, expanding into new territories.
© 2000 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved.
but its volatile stock Permission is hereby granted to
reproduce this photograph for publicity,
is a nagging concern promotion or advetising connected with
the program depicted herein and for
for the company. no other purpose.
licensing children’s entertainment
The future for 4Kids looks to attract future customers, we will
bright, but its volatile stock is a be witness to a changing land-
nagging concern for the scape for animation, a globaliza-
company. However, the creation tion that reshapes the relationships
of two new 4Kids divisions, between development, produc-
Technology4Kids, which creates tion, licensing and media place-
electronic children’s products and ment. Lauded as a profit machine
Websites4Kids, a developer of or vilified as poisonous to a com-
Internet entertainment sites such petitive, creative, entertainment
as girlsgymnastics.com, seem to market, the Pokémon model for
further indicate that efforts to children’s animation might be here
diversify away from Pokémon to stay.
dependence are progressing.
Animation will never be the Brett Rogers is a freelance writer
same, thanks to 4Kids and its and law student based in
efforts with Pokémon. There have Baltimore.
been Japanese imports airing on
American television since the Note: Readers may contact any
1960s, but Pokémon has opened Animation World Magazine
the world’s eyes to Japanese ani- contributor by sending an e-mail
mation in ways never conceived. If to editor@awn.com.
4Kids is correct in predicting that
large corporations of the 21st
century will increasingly rely on
October 2000 28

Hearst and Harvey:
Reinventing the Classics
© Harvey Entertainment.
O
n June 1, 2000
Harvey Entertainment
announced the launch of
its strategic alliance with Hearst
Entertainment for worldwide
merchandise licensing. Hearst
Entertainment, a subsidiary of the
Hearst Corporation, is a leading
producer and distributor of made-
for-television movies, animated
series and reality and documen-
tary programming for the global
marketplace. Hearst also markets
and licenses the ancillary con-
sumer products of these entertain-
ment properties. The partnership
will handle merchandising and
licensing for all the Harvey classic
characters including Casper, the
Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Witch,
Richie Rich, Bunny, Baby Huey
and The Ghostly Trio.
At the time of the partner-
ship’s announcement, Rick Karo,
Executive Vice President,
Entertainment Licensing and Family
Programming of Hearst
Entertainment, said, “This new strate-
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Joan Kim
gic alliance is the perfect marriage of
equity properties. We are thrilled
with the challenge and opportunities
these great classic characters and
their new filmed entertainment sup-
port activities provide.”
As Harvey’s new, all com-
puter-animated film Casper’s
Haunted Christmas is being
released domestically by Universal
Home Entertainment in October
2000, Leslie Levine, the
Vice President of Entertainment
Licensing at Hearst, shares some
of her thoughts on licensing and
merchandising, especially such a
well known character as you
know who…
Joan Kim: What interested you in
pursuing a career in this field?
Have you always been interested
in licensing and merchandising?
Leslie Levine: My career evolved
over the years beginning with
advertising, which is what I had
majored in at The University of
Texas. After 3 years with a Dallas
agency, I wanted to move to the
client side and became a product
manager for Hi-C Fruit Drinks, a
Coca-Cola Foods brand. Coke pur-
chased Columbia and my brand
was the first in the corporation to
tie-in with the studio. So, I had my
first exposure to licensing back in
the early ‘80s. The movie was
Annie. From that point on, I knew
licensing was what I wanted to do.
JK: Are there specific challenges in
trying to do cool, new products
with a classic character like Casper?
LL: Every property presents a
unique challenge. We are fortu-
nate that at this moment, nostalgic
product naturally associated with
classic characters and classic brands
is perceived to be cool by con-
sumers, retailers and manufacturers.
Casper’s Haunted Christmas.
© Harvey Entertainment.
JK: What kind of products are you
going after with Casper and other
classic animation characters?
LL: We are going after long-term
relationships with retailers to make
the Harvey characters synony-
mous with Halloween via video,
mass, supermarket and drug and
specialty channels of distribution.
We are concentrating on high
awareness (heavy advertising) rela-
tionships from new media, interac-
October 2000 29
tive games, direct-to-video promo-
tional tie-ins, packaged goods, as
well as the seasonal candy and
Halloween related products. We
are also tapping into the strong
interest by the apparel and gift man-
ufacturers, and retailers, to translate
the classic characters to cool, highly
collectible nostalgic products.
Hot Stuff alarm clocks.
Photo: © Harvey Entertainment.
JK: How do you handle matching
the new media to a classic charac-
ter like Casper?
LL: Because of the enormous
brand equity of these characters
and due to the unique demo-
graphic match among many of
the “new media” brands, classic
characters like those managed by
Hearst Entertainment and Harvey
Entertainment are highly sought
after by the new media. For exam-
ple, we have just licensed ABC
Entertainment the right to utilize
Harvey’s classic Little Dot character
as the host and downloadable
“dot” for their new ABC.com initia-
tive. We are having similar discus-
sions for their Richie Rich and
Casper characters.
JK: What are or were some prob-
lems you have experienced
regarding getting back the control
to not only do licensing, but
producing products for Harvey?
LL: We haven’t had any! We came
out of the Licensing Show run-
ning. Manufacturers know and
love these characters. We grew up
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
A Little Dot cover from December 1974
issue #156. © Harvey Entertainment.
with them; they are proven. I think
the community can see that
Harvey is committed to these char-
acters. The new entertainment ini-
tiatives — like 26 half-hours of
Wendy, 26 of Herman & Katnip,
new d-t-v’s on Casper, theatricals in
development for Hot Stuff and
Richie Rich — definitely prove this
is true.
JK: How did Harvey’s determina-
tion of new paths in product
licensing and merchandising make
it easy and/or difficult to produce
merchandise for Casper?
LL: Over the years Casper has per-
formed. Harvey and their agents
have consistently done a terrific
job in licensing the property
worldwide. They invested in the
property, providing state of the art
tools (style guides, downloads
from the Website, etc.) which
helped enable manufacturers to
create creative product. It has defi-
nitely made our job easier.
Richie Rich. © Harvey Entertainment.
JK: What are some successful
products that work across the
board? Are there any types of
products that you always go to
when you create merchandising
for properties?
LL: T-shirts usually lend themselves
to most properties, but we create
a unique plan for each specific
property every time.
JK: What are some Casper prod-
ucts that we can look forward to
seeing in the future?
Casper key Baby Huey,Wendy,
holder. Casper and the
Photo: famous Harvey logo
© Harvey on magnets.
Entertainment. © Harvey
Entertainment.
LL: Keep your eye out for Casper
junior apparel tops, highly col-
lectible metal lunch boxes, unique
plush, multi-platform interactive
games, more from the packaged
goods sector and more promo-
tions with retailers in multi-cate-
gories such as video, supermarket,
drug, etc.
Joan Kim received her B.A. in
English Literature from UCLA
and currently is the editorial
administrator for Animation
World Network. Previously as
a graphics consultant she
produced several company
reports and manuals and
continues to pursue an education
in computer graphics.
October 2000 30
 When I Grow Up
I Want To Be René Jodoin
by Chris Robinson

L
et me tell you how much I
admire René Jodoin. He is
80 years old, long retired
from his days as a producer and
filmmaker at the National Film
Board of Canada, yet here he sits
in his Beaconsfield, Quebec base-
ment in front of an Amiga com-
puter working on a new film. The
Amiga is an old system, but this is
no matter for Jodoin. He seeks a
computer that allows him to be in
control. It has taken time, but he is
now becoming the master of his
machine. You can sense the excite-
ment in his voice. A little boy dis-
playing his toys. However, unlike
most little boys, Jodoin is a mod-
est, humble and an incredibly per-
sonable man who loves to think
and loves to talk about what he’s
thinking. I’m 33 years old, take life
way too seriously, spend half my
time arguing with people, drink
too much, laugh at odd things,
can barely put my pants on, and
have no intention of buying a cru-
cifix (heh heh heh). There is no
doubt in my deviant darkened
mind that when — if — I reach 80
years of age, I want to be René
Jodoin.
‘So what?’ you say. ‘He’s a
nice old guy. I know lots of nice
and active old people.’ Well, let
me tell you a little about René
Jodoin. He worked at the National
Film Board of Canada for over thir-
ty years. He was handpicked by
Norman McLaren to join the NFB
in the 1940s, was one of the few
people to collaborate with
During the production of Sphere,
René Jodoin and Norman McLaren.
Photo © National Film Board of Canada.
All rights reserved.
McLaren, was the founder and
first director of the French anima-
tion unit, as director and producer
he encouraged many young
artists and notably women to
make their own films and working
with the National Research
Council, paved the way for com-
puter animation development. On
top of that, Jodoin was a painter
Sphere directed by René Jodoin. © National Film Board of Canada. All rights reserved.
and worked in Toronto as a book
illustrator and graphic designer. So
why has he been lost in the shuf-
fle? First of all, there’s McLaren.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. McLaren was
great. McLaren was a genius.
McLaren was a guru. We’ve heard
it all before. Unfortunately,
McLaren’s work and fame over-
shadowed many other talented
individuals at the Board. Secondly,
Jodoin was a civil servant and
how many famous civil servants
do you know?
NFB Beginnings
Like all NFB stories, this one
begins with founder, John
Grierson. In 1943, Grierson asked
Norman McLaren to start up an
animation unit. Not knowing of
any animators in Canada, McLaren
first turned his eye to L’Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Montreal. Because of

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 31

the draft, only two graduates
were available: Jean-Paul
Ladouceur and René Jodoin. “I
was finishing my school and we
had the choice to take exams or
go to the selection board,” says
Jodoin. “I got to the medical and
was refused because of ear prob-
lems.” McLaren saw the portfolios
of Ladouceur and Jodoin and
liked what he saw. The two men
were invited to move to Ottawa
and join the NFB. Jodoin did not
hesitate in accepting McLaren’s
offer.
Jodoin’s initial work
involved the designing of titles,
maps and diagrams for a variety of
documentary and war films. One
of these projects was a war bond
piece called He Who Laughs Last.
After a Hollywood studio proved
too costly, the Board was asked to
produce a fable about a crow and
squirrel. The Board took the job
and Jodoin was asked to direct the
film. “This was the first cel anima-
tion film at the NFB,” says Jodoin.
“[I] started ordering things like
pegboards and cels, which was a
problem finding someone in
Canada who knew what you
were talking about. So I made this
little thing and Norman was
coaching me through this. It was-
n’t imaginative. It was a learning
experience.” For awhile Jodoin
was in charge of the title depart-
ment, but was soon pulled away
to produce a series of folk-songs
called Let’s All Sing Together.
Jodoin’s contributions to
Let’s All Sing Together included
Home on The Range (which fea-
tures a slow pan across a prairie
landscape), Square Dance (featur-
ing very simple figures dancing)
and Alouette, which was co-direct-
ed with Norman McLaren. This
cut-out film consists of two parts.
In the chorus, a bird ‘bounces’
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
back and forth to the music.
During the verses, the text of the
song appears in various corners of
the frame. “I always thought that
part of the game was to use the
text in an interesting way,” notes
Jodoin. By highlighting the text,
the films actually encouraged
active participation from the
audience. “The people doing the
projection were always complain-
ing. They wanted the people to
sing these songs.” On the whole,
Alouette is awkward and primitive,
however the experimental chore-
ography of the lyrics remains quite
striking and provides a momentary
hint of Jodoin’s later more
accomplished work
Jodoin and
Grant Munro
decided
to travel to
Mexico…
Mexico,Toronto and Back
Following the war, all or
most of the people Jodoin
admired and learned from were
gone. John Grierson was in the
USA. McLaren was in China. After
failing to get a scholarship to
attend a film school in France,
Jodoin and Grant Munro decided
to travel to Mexico. During this
time, Jodoin and Munro met a
man named Castro Leal who was
setting up a Mexican film board in
the NFB’s mould. He invited the
two to Mexico to help them get
things started. However, when it
came time to work at the Mexican
film board, largely occupied by
business types who were not total-
ly convinced of the NFB’s artistic
ways, things didn’t quite pan out.
So after turning down a job to do
live-action editing, Jodoin and
Munro spent another year travel-
ling around Mexico painting
before Jodoin returned to Ottawa.
While Jodoin did not offi-
cially return to the Film Board, he
did begin making a film with
McLaren. “Norman and I met and
discussed ideas many times,” says
Jodoin. “We came up with a sim-
ple but attractive idea. If the two
of us where doing motion, what
would be the natural next move?
It was a bit like a mime and then
we applied this to the structure.
We were shooting under very
primitive conditions. It was an old
building. An old title stand that
was shaking. We found it rather
boring. The song was to be done
directly on the film. We worked on
that for a while, but we decided to
leave it.” Some years later, McLaren
finished the film, which was called
Spheres, to the accompaniment of
Glenn Gould.
After Spheres, Jodoin
moved to Toronto where he free-
lanced for various production
houses (like Audio Pictures and for
a time he even worked out of
Graphic Visuals, owned by former
NFB colleagues, George Dunning
and Jim McKay) before finding a
permanent job as the art director
for Current Publications, a publish-
ing firm that put out medicine and
health journals. In 1954, as fate
would have it, Jodoin, bored by
his work at Current Publications,
accepted an invitation to return to
the NFB, this time as a director in
the NFB sponsored film division.
Jodoin’s first works were a
series of training films for the Royal
Canadian Air Force. Taken as a
whole these films, with such lively
titles as Introduction to Jet Engines
and Antenna Fundamentals, are
quite dull. Nevertheless, there are
some striking scenes that seem
more tailored for an abstract film
October 2000 32

Dance Squared directed by René Jodoin.
© National Film Board of Canada.
All rights reserved.
than an industrial film. In Jet
Engines, for example, a scene
demonstrating the interaction
between gases and blades resem-
bles a bizarre Busby Berkeley
sequence as interpreted by
Oskar Fischinger. In Antenna
Fundamentals, radiation wave
p a t t e r n s a re d e m o n s t r a t e d
through a dance of blue and red
circles that expand and interact. In
both films, the use of colour, shape
and movement is quite extraordi-
nary and at once lays the ground-
work for Jodoin’s more detailed
explorations of geometrical figures
in his personal films.
His Own Voice
In 1961, Jodoin finally had
the chance to make his own film.
“I wanted to make a film about
something that doesn’t have pic-
tures. I jumped onto it. I needed
sound and square dance music
was ideal. I asked Maurice
Blackburn if he would find me
something. He found some old
square dance music that was
recorded at a party in Ottawa with
all sorts of noise. He cut all of that
out and restructured it for the film.
I had to do this in a basement with
a kind of Rube Goldberg arrange-
ment. I couldn’t move the camera
for any changes. I had to cut huge
copies of the square. This was in
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
the same room where Universe
was being done.” The result was
Dance Squared, an intriguing,
albeit primitive, film that explores
the geometrical possibilities of a
square. The film is at times too
slow and deliberate. Nevertheless,
Dance Squared is unique in
its attempt to integrate the
pedagogical into an abstract field
of expression.
It is this ability
to displace
delicate morsels
of complexity
under the guise
of visual and
aural candy
that makes
Jodoin’s work
so magnificent.
Notes on A Triangle is con-
sidered by many to be Jodoin’s
Dance Squared directed by René Jodoin.
© National Film Board of Canada. All rights reserved.
masterpiece. An extension of
Dance Squared, Notes examines
the geometrical possibilities of a tri-
angle. A single triangle splits and
rotates into a variety of different
shapes and colours. As with
Dance Squared, the music plays a
pivotal role in extending Jodoin’s
work beyond the pedagogical.
The waltz-inspired fiddle music of
Maurice Blackburn adds a light-
ness to the film that lures the view-
er far from the very precise and
logical constructs and into a world
of seemingly random bursts of
colour and shapes. It is this ability
to displace delicate morsels of
complexity under the guise of visu-
al and aural candy that makes
Jodoin’s work so magnificent.
One of the lauded
moments of Notes on A Triangle is
a brief zoom that occurs midway
through the film. During this
zoom, the shapes continue to
expand and move about. “With
computers today that would be
trivial,” notes animator, Pierre
Hébert, “but doing this with cut-
October 2000 33
outs on an old camera is really an
accomplishment.” Says Jodoin,
“There was a notion of something
going on forever. There were
maybe ten zooms, but you are
conscious of one. The whole thing
was designed exponentially, so
that you compensate for that fact
that you are approaching a flat
thing, you are actually moving
in space.”
The French Animation Unit
After the Film Board moved
to Montreal in 1956 and set up a
French production division, there
was pressure to establish a French
animation unit. “A few years after
the move to Montreal,” says
Jodoin, “there was an influx of
young people who wanted to do
animation. I wasn’t particularly
keen on it, but you had to put
yourself in the position of all these
younger people and that’s how
we all got together and proposed
the idea. The whole of French pro-
duction were enthusiastic about it,
so when I presented it to the direc-
tor of production he said, ‘Yes, on
one condition, that you do it.’” So,
in 1965, Jodoin became the direc-
tor of the French animation unit.
“It was primitive to begin
with. There was very little money
and no locale. Everyone [many of
the new animators were already
working at the Board in other
departments] stayed where they
were and we rented a bus for peo-
ple to work out of.” In getting
both respect and money, Jodoin
turned to his very roots as an
NFB animator and proposed
Contemporary Songs of French-
Canada, a series based on con-
temporary Montreal songs. The
roots of the idea evolved out of
McLaren’s initial Let’s All Sing
Together series, and it was a bril-
liant stroke. At once, the series
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
enabled Jodoin to get more
money for the department and,
like Let’s All Sing Together, provid-
ed an ideal training exercise for a
number of young animators. “[The
series] made it easier to get to the
next step which was getting a
room to work in.”
“We rented
a bus for
people to
work out of.”
— René Jodoin
“He knew,” says Pierre
Hébert, “that he had to prove
something and make something.
He delivered the films with a limit-
ed budget and it allowed the stu-
dio to have more money.” There is
no denying Norman McLaren’s
immense role in establishing the
Film Board’s international reputa-
tion, however it is foolish to under-
estimate the impact of Jodoin.
While the English studio lan-
guished in producing narrative
driven, cel animation, the French
studio, in part because of a low
budget, explored diverse avenues
Rectangle and Rectangles directed by René Jodoin.
© National Film Board of Canada. All rights reserved.
of expression. Under Jodoin’s lead,
the French unit attracted the likes
of Co Hoedeman, Ishu Patel, Paul
Driessen, Caroline Leaf and Pierre
Hébert, Francine Desbiens, Andre
Léduc and Jacques Drouin. The
result was some of the most strik-
ingly original films that the Board
had ever produced.
In achieving this, Jodoin
consciously avoided hiring experi-
enced animators. Instead, Jodoin
eagerly encouraged young artists
who were not yet formed as
artists, let alone as animators. It
was Jodoin’s goal to train them on
the job. Even more remarkable
was Jodoin’s openness to women
artists. It is a well-known fact that
animation, especially cel anima-
tion, has traditionally been a male
dominated medium. It is little
known that Francine Desbiens
was the first French-Canadian
woman to direct an animation
film. “At one time,” says Desbiens,
“there were more women than
men. After he left the department,
there was ten years where not one
woman was employed as a free-
lancer or as a permanent. The per-
son who was there [Robert Forget]
will tell you that there were no
October 2000 34

Rectangle and Rectangles directed by René Jodoin.
© National Film Board of Canada. All rights reserved.
women directors. There were
some, but none were chosen.
[Jodoin] was way out in front
of everybody.”
Computer Research and
R e t i re m e n t
Jodoin’s liberal attitudes
also extended to an interest in
developing computer animation
as an artistic tool for animators.
“The National Research Council
came around to visit and discuss
their problems and that they were
working on a project with CBC
and Radio Canada,” says Jodoin. “I
wasn’t too impressed with all that,
but finally they asked the Film
Board to cooperate. We went
down to see what they were
doing and I was impressed and
we realized that we could animate
line drawing.” Unfortunately the
Film Board was never really in a
position to follow through on their
early computer exploration.
“Things changed,” notes Pierre
Hébert, “because the NFB couldn’t
afford to keep up and the people
doing the same in the USA were
better funded.” Indeed, Jodoin
was not in total agreement with
the NFB’s aim to be at the forefront
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
of computer animation develop-
ment. “René favoured lighter
equipment that would be put in
the hands of the animators,” notes
Hébert. “This is what he had in
mind and of course, this is the way
it is today. René was seeing things
differently.”
In 1979, Jodoin resigned
from his position to work on his
own films. “When René left,” notes
animator, Paul Driessen, “I think it
A Matter of Form directed by René Jodoin.
© National Film Board of Canada. All rights reserved.
was a heavy blow to the depart-
ment. After that the people in
charge of the department where
much more commercial and didn’t
really stand for anything and you
can see that, it’s still like that.”
Between 1979 and his retirement
from the Board in 1985, Jodoin
completed two films, A Matter of
Form (1984) and Rectangle and
Rectangles (1985). A Matter of
Form is an intriguing and clever
film, but is really just a variation on
ideas previously explored. Three
dots interact to form a line which
expands from different points
to create various shapes and
colours. Echoing the thoughts of
Heraclitus, Matter of Form pre-
sents a world in a constant state
of change.
More interesting is
Rectangle and Rectangles, an
almost violent film that assaults the
viewer with an onslaught of
colours, shapes and an incessant,
disturbing flickering (the video
comes with a warning that it may
trigger epileptic seizures!). “The
aim was to show time. I tried to
October 2000 35
make a film with the absence of
almost everything so that you
could see time move and visually
you can become interested
through the play of colour and
motion.” It is a film that leaves one
with impressions, not absolutes.
There are traces of movement and
colour, but nothing definitive.
“I find it
extraordinary
that this man
of 80 is still
looking for
things he had
in mind in
the 1940s.”
— Pierre Hébert
Remarkably, Jodoin just
completed a new film, Between
Time and Space. For some, this
black-and-white film looks like a
primitive screen saver from the
1970s, but beneath the apparent
simplicity lie complex analytical
ideas about the nature of time and
space. Influenced by anthropolo-
gist Edward T. Hall, whose studies
of space, language and time are
seminal, Jodoin has re-contextual-
ized these ideas within the frame-
work of our experience of music.
What appears to be a primitive
interaction between white and
black objects is instead an insight-
ful investigation into the move-
ments between notes of music.
On the other hand, if you’ve got a
headache and just want to kick
back, it’s got a cool galloping
soundtrack.
“I find it extraordinary,” says
producer Pierre Hébert, “that this
man of 80 is still looking for things
he had in mind in the 1940s.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
There is a strong sense of necessi-
ty in him that has a lot of continu-
ity in what he did. I would like to
be like that.” It was Heraclitus who
believed that the universe is in a
constant state of change and that
“the beginning and end are the
same,” but like the words of all
great philosophers, they are little
more than abstract musings by dis-
tant voices. Jodoin has however
applied these words both artistical-
ly and institutionally throughout
his life. Oddly enough, Jodoin’s
determined exploration of the infi-
nite is deeply rooted in a tradition-
al belief (inherited from McLaren
and ultimately Grierson) in the
active function of the civil servant.
In age where we view the institu-
tional as ‘dead weight,’ the work
of René Jodoin, a man of the insti-
tution, suggests that perhaps we,
not our institutions, have become
stagnant and unchanging.
“When René
left, I think
it was a heavy
blow to the
department.”
— Paul Driessen
Over the past two years,
Jodoin has finally been acknowl-
edged by the animation commu-
nity. In 1999, the Ottawa
International Student Animation
Festival honoured Jodoin and the
National Film Board of Canada
released a two volume video of his
work as a filmmaker and producer.
This year, both ASIFA-Canada and
ASIFA-International honored his
work, and in November, the
Holland Animation Film Festival
will present a retrospective. It’s
about time.
Chris Robinson is executive
director of the Ottawa
International Festival and the
founder and director of SAFO, the
Ottawa International Student
Animation Festival. He is also a
board member of ASIFA
International. In his spare time,
Robinson writes a column,
“The Animation Pimp” for
Animation World Magazine which
will debut next month. Robinson
has curated film programs
(Los Angeles, Norway, Korea,
Holland, Estonia, Singapore,
Vietnam and several other places),
served on juries (AnimExpo, World
Animation Celebration), and
written articles on animation for
Animation World, FPS, Plateau,
Animation Journal and Take One.
He prefers writing over cartoons.
He also irks a lot of people with his
often-inflammatory opinions about
many things. He has a son. His
son likes him. But maybe it’s
because he’s only 2 (Jarvis — the
son). Maybe when Jarvis knows
better he won’t feel the same way.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 36
 Let’s Sketch on Location:
Organizing and Creating Space
by Glenn Vilppu
Glenn Vilppu.

T
his is the third in a new
series of bi-monthly articles
about sketching on loca-
tion. The articles are based on my
Sketching on Location Manual.
The manual was developed as a
series of lessons that I use on my
guided sketching tours of Europe,
and that I use as material in my
regular drawing classes. As such
the lessons can be part of a regu-
lar course or can be used by indi-
vidual students as a practical learn-
ing guide. If you have not seen
the previous lesson starting in the
June 2000 issue of Animation
Figure 1. All drawings in this article are by and © Glenn Vilppu.
World Magazine, it is recommend-
ed that you do. The lessons are middle ground and background
progressive and expand on basic (see figure 1 and 2). This is similar
ideas. It is suggested that you start to the front of the stage (down-
from the beginning for a better stage), the middle of the stage
understanding of my approach. If (midstage) and the background
you really want to begin at the (upstage) in the theatre.
beginning start with the lessons Start with thumbnails like
based on the Vilppu Drawing we used in the previous lesson,
Manual. but now separate the elements
into planes, as they are usually
A Sense of Space referred to. To show these planes,
In the last chapter we we can separate them by actually
developed the “Thumbnail using different materials for each
Sketch,” now that we have one — pencil for one, ballpoint for
learned to reduce our three another and ink for a third. Look at
dimensional world to two-dimen- the following illustrations to see
sional shapes for a two-dimension- the effect. Figure 2.
al surface, we will develop a series This concept of planes will The thumbnail can now be
of ways to create the illusion of be a basic element in the next les- expanded, blocking in the overall
three dimensions on a flat surface. sons. A plane parallel to the pic- composition, and then developing
The first step in creating this sense ture plane, in contrast to planes its parts and organizing the space
of space is organizing it. that recede into the picture, is one by the use of planes. In the exam-
The most universal of the basic elements in discussing ples, I have separated the planes
approach is to separate the vari- periods of art and individual works by using different materials for
ous elements into foreground, within these periods. each one. In the first example, I

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 37

 Figure 4.
have used pencil in the back-
ground, ballpoint pen in the mid-
dleground and a fountain pen in
the foreground, as I suggested
earlier. The different colors in the
originals give an even greater
degree of separation than the illus-
trations indicate.
Figure 3.
In figure 3 I have taken the
previous illustration and simply
outlined the middleground and
the foreground to give them an
even greater degree of separation.
This is a simple device that
has been used for hundreds of
Figure 5.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
years. In the Uffizi gallery in
Florence, Italy, look carefully at
Michelangelo’s oval painting of the
Holy Family and you will see that
the group of figures has been
carefully outlined to separate them
from the background. The Art
Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha,
and the many artists he influ-
enced, give us other good exam-
ples of the use of outline to sepa-
rate elements within a picture.
The above drawing (figure
4) was done using a ballpoint pen
for the background, fountain pen
for the middleground and soft
charcoal for the foreground.
In the animation industry
this simple method, which uses
different materials, including col-
ored pencils, is employed as a way
to separate various levels of ani-
mation in the developmental
stages of designing scenes.
Figure 7.
Other Techniques
In figures 5 and 6 I am not
using different materials to sepa-
rate the planes. In the one below,
notice that the foreground plane is
distinguished by the table that
recedes into the background, and
yet is not parallel to the picture
plane. You still get a strong sepa-
ration of elements created by the
scale differences of the foreground
and background figures. In the
drawing above, besides by the
emphasis of differences in scale,
you also get a strong feeling of
depth by the way the shadow and
general tones pass behind the
foreground.
In the drawing above (fig-
ure 7) I have used the strong con-
centration of light as a way of sep-
arating foreground from back-
ground, in addition to using the
well-defined horizontals to give a
sense of overlapping depth. In fig-
Figure 6.
October 2000 38

Figure 8.
ure 8, the sense of scale between
the figure in front compared to
those in the back effectively sepa-
rates the planes.
In figure 9 and 10, I have
used large open spaces to create
depth and separation between
the planes. In the drawing on the
top of the next page, you see the
combination of the strong diago-
nal of the wall with a horizontal
shadow, plus a large empty space
which gives a clear separation of
planes.
The segments of the wall
Figure 9.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
along with the strong perspective
carry the viewer’s eye from the
foreground to the background.
In figures 11, 12 and 13, I
have used the basic elements that
we have discussed earlier for cre-
ating and organizing space, with
the exception of using different
materials for the planes. In the
above, I used scale, where a row
of figures has passed behind the
foreground figures. In the drawing
here on the left, there is a clear
separation of foreground, not only
by scale but also by the use of
clear empty space between the
planes. In the drawing on the
right, space is produced by strong
horizontals created by the separa-
tion of the water and the bank, as
well as by the dark shadow pass-
ing behind the figure. This alter-
nating dark and light pattern (as
I’m sure you have noticed in the
previous chapter’s thumbnails and
in this drawing) is a strong instru-
ment for creating space. In the
next chapter we will go into
this further.
Figure 12.
See even more illustrations
in our online version at:
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue
5.07/5.07pages/5.07vilppu.php3.
Figure 10.
October 2000 39
 Glenn Vilppu teaches figure
drawing at the American
Animation Institute, the Masters
program of the UCLA Animation
Department, Walt Disney Feature
Animation and Warner Bros.
Feature Animation, and has been
sent to teach artists at Disney TV
studios in Japan, Canada and the
Philippines. Vilppu has also
worked in the animation industry
for 18 years as a layout, story-
board and presentation artist. His
drawing manual and video tapes
are being used worldwide as
course materials for animation
students.

Glenn Vilppu first wrote for

Animation World Magazine in the
June 1997 issue, “Never
Underestimate the Power of Life
Drawing.” His drawing manuals
Figure 11.
and video tapes may be pur-
chased in the Animation World
Store at www.awn.com.

Note: Readers may contact any

Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.

Figure 13.

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 40


A Ride Worth Taking:
MEDIATRIP On The Move
L
ast year, while mulling over
domain names for his soon-
to-launch Internet venture,
Austin Harrison (Chairman, CEO
and Co-Founder) was playing
around with the word “media”
when he happened to screen a
Doors DVD. He remembers listen-
ing to the interview with Jim
Morrison where the rocker, “was
just talking about the future of
music being a river of electronic
sounds and, you know, taking a
trip into a new generation of
music.” Facing his own imminent
trip into a new generation of online
fare, Harrison nimbly configured his
two key words into the perfect sym-
bol for his group’s bold new jour-
ney. Moniker now in hand,
MediaTrip.com was ready to roll.
The Trip Takes Off
Starting out as a platform
Austin Harrison, Chairman, CEO and
Co-Founder of MediaTrip.com.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Lee Dannacher
for alternative entertainment con-
tent, MediaTrip hit the Netwaves
last October with a library of inde-
pendent films including the now
infamous live-action comedy short
George Lucas In Love. Directed by
Joe Nussbaum, the very funny 9-
minute spoof proved an instant
online hit, quickly setting a record
for the most-watched online short
with 150,000 streams in the first
three weeks. MediaTrip later, in an
exclusive partnership with
Amazon.com, released the film on
video and achieved the number
one sales position on the e-trailer’s
charts. This deal, Harrison noted
at the time, “proves how the
Internet can successfully provide a
multi-platform revenue opportunity
for a filmmaker.”
Also included on
MediaTrip’s nascent site were fea-
ture-length films such as the
Academy Award winning docu-
mentary The Long Way Home and
Things I Never Told You starring
Lili Taylor and Debi Mazar. In addi-
tion to the film library, the new
dot-com premiered with — and
continues Netcasting — trailers
and clips from an array of current
movies, celebrity interviews, music
videos, streaming audio, artist-
hosted radio stations, entertain-
ment news and live concert per-
formance footage.
“We tried to provide some-
what of an eclectic experience
starting out,” Harrison says, and
therefore a fistful of original pro-
gramming was available at the
launch. In the live-action genre,
there were weekly shows such as
No Drink Minimum, featuring
short routines from up-and-com-
ing comics and Tattoo TV, a docu-
mentary series surrounding the
world of body art. On the anima-
tion side, MediaTrip garnered
instant Net effect with an original,
smashingly funny project from
Peter Gilstrap and Mark Brooks
entitled Lil’ Pimp, a Flash produced
Web series based on a street-
corner character whom the cre-
ators describe as a “polite, cute,
nine years old, and one heck of
a pimp.”
© 1999-2000 MediaTrip.com, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Rolling Forward
Traveling at Net speed into
the new millennium, MediaTrip
continued acquiring exclusive
online rights to innovative inde-
pendent films including the CGI
animated shorts Los Gringos and
Sentinelles. Increasing their line-up
of original shows, they soon pre-
miered two more animated Web
series to great audience response:
Creamburg, a second creation
from Gilstrap and Brooks, featur-
ing an out-there snack food
spokesfigure dealing in the cut
throat world of Tinsel Town and
Ed Testy, from creator John
Whelan, which follows the trials of
an angry white(trash) homeowner
after his personality is transported
into the body of a crash-landed
October 2000 42
alien. With increasing velocity, a
loyal Net audience in MediaTrip’s
targeted 18-49 age range began
gathering behind the site’s
burgeoning alternative fare.
© 1999-2000 MediaTrip.com, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Revving Up The Engine
Early in the New Year,
Hollywood executive/superagent
Arnold Rifkin joined MediaTrip’s
Board of Directors. With strong
relationships across the spectrum
of today’s entertainment worlds,
Rifkin brought what Harrison
describes as “key strategic guid-
ance” to the young company’s
evolutionary process. Bridging a
few “degrees of separation,” Rifkin
led the youthful CEO to a destined
meeting with Joe Roth, the former
Chairman of Walt Disney Studios,
who was just then announcing
the formation of his new inde-
pendent Revolution Studios.
At the beginning of last
summer, Harrison and Roth publi-
cized the formation of a long-
range strategic partnership. Their
unique industry relationship will
encompass a magnitude of possi-
bilities for creating formulas linking
the Web and traditional media’s
television, film, marketing, produc-
tion and publicity. To optimize
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
their association and facilitate
close cross-consideration for all
projects being worked on by both
companies, MediaTrip will move
under the same roof of
Revolution’s soon-to-be-completed
65,000 square-foot Santa Monica
complex early next year.
Picking Up the Passengers
In July, MediaTrip scaled
their site significantly by building
an interactive artist community
called “Show Off Your Own.” Their
intent in aggregating individual
Web pages is to promote the free
exchange of work and ideas from
artists and their fans worldwide.
The Netcaster will supply the tools
and will support the scores of sep-
arate pages so that, in Harrison’s
words, “Artists will be able to share
their creative vision on an interac-
tive platform — whether it’s music,
film, games, animation, acting or
producing.” The first examples of
this new area’s potential have
been seen in MediaTrip’s first-ever
online casting calls for Revolution’s
films Tomcats and the just
announced The New Guy. By
posting their pictures, resumes
and/or materials within MediaTrip’s
designated spots, aspiring actors,
actresses and musicians will have
the online chance to win featured
extra rolls in Roth’s current theatri-
cal productions (plus the potential
to connect with other influential
industry professionals along the
way). In the music arena,
MediaTrip has enlisted artist mas-
termind George Clinton to entice
musicians to upload their demos
for review by him and all other
viewers who want to post com-
ments. At the end of six months,
Clinton will select one artist as the
grand prize winner from a pool of
audience selected weekly winners
— for whom he will then produce
a demo album. In these new and
soon-to-be launched artist com-
munity areas, MediaTrip and
Revolution Studios remind partici-
pants they will be continually look-
ing at the most popular material
within the interactive pages to find
new talent and projects for addi-
tional Internet and offline produc-
tion/distribution possibilities.
© 1999-2000 MediaTrip.com, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Punching the Animation Tickets
Brought onboard as
MediaTrip’s Executive Producer of
Animation last May, Texas native
James Fino came directly from
Fox’s award winning series King of
the Hill. During his four years
there, he supervised all stages of
production, working as liaison
between Fox’s creative staff and
animation house Film Roman.
Fino considers the depth of that
experience extremely rewarding,
saying, “I was involved in every
single process which was exactly
what I needed when I came over
here to MediaTrip, to be able to
get projects in and basically start
them from the ground up.” This is
Fino’s first foray into Web series
and he admits, “It’s definitely a dif-
ferent animal going from television
to the Internet but a lot of the ani-
mators that I’m dealing with are
also making that same transition
so we’re able to take the problems
and irritations from the television
October 2000 43

Gary the Rat. © 1999-2000 MediaTrip.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
side and try to refine them on the
Internet side.” After a crunch peri-
od of learning online production
techniques, Fino is readily step-
ping up to the challenge of work-
ing with the writers and animators
on adjusting their creativity to
match the limitations of current
Web technology. At the same
time, he’s nudging them to
embrace the interactive features
possible in all their developing
works. Fino affirms that MediaTrip’s
goal “is to actually start involving
the viewer more and more
because that is the correct way of
using this medium now.” Whether
that means creating interactive ele-
ments within or outside the narra-
tive of a storyline, he feels, “We
definitely have to engage the
audience and build something
more than just a 3-minute cartoon
to hold them. What we’re actually
concentrating on doing is having
the core idea of the story and then
building an entire world around it
so that we have an experience
that the viewer can go to and,
after the narrative has played out,
can still hang around in that
world, find out more about the
characters, actually speak to other
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
people who are watching and
really build a full community
around each project that we do.”
Now Boarding
Fino is presently immersed
in MediaTrip’s next major original
animated series Gary The Rat, the
debut project of a partnership deal
announced last month with big
time actor Kelsey Grammer and his
production company Grammnet.
Created by Mark and Rob Cullen
and starring Grammer, the show
follows the life of a high-powered
Manhattan attorney who wakes
up one day as a six-foot rat and
finds that, while he has become
even more appealing to his clients,
he must consistently foil his new
nemesis exterminator Johnny
Bugz. Premiering later this fall, the
initial 13 Webisodes have already
been recorded, Fino says, in a
schedule that simplifies the televi-
sion model for episodic produc-
tion. “We didn’t want to have to
bring the actors together 13 differ-
ent times so we had the writers
basically write all the episodes
ahead of time. We were then able
to table them at the same time, do
notes on them…and we recorded
the whole series in a single day
over on the Paramount lot.”
MediaTrip is producing the anima-
tion with the outside independent
studio 3 Birds, a team of animation
artists well known for their previ-
ous 2D television work on major
network shows. Simultaneously,
the Netcaster will create a dynam-
ic audience environment for the
series called The Bug Cave, to be
built around Gary characters and
stories, that will feature the games,
contests and other interactive con-
tent they feel important to all their
new projects’ online success.
Along with his production
and development responsibilities,
Fino is focusing a lot of his atten-
tion on developing the animation
area of MediaTrip’s new communi-
ty pages. As soon as they go live
with the necessary tools allowing
uploads of up to 20 megs worth
of material onto individual sites,
Fino will reach out in earnest to
animation professionals and stu-
dents alike to begin streaming
their work under MediaTrip’s
umbrella. The company plans to
stage multiple events which will
give the participating creators not
only great exposure, but also serve
as a forum where students of ani-
mation can get important feed-
back on their work. “I really want
to create this whole mentoring-like
process for students,” he adds,
while continuing to use the
Internet and MediaTrip’s unique
positioning to incubate innovative
projects into both on and offline
hits.
New Roads to Travel
MediaTrip’s first home-
grown project to make the major
leap from the Internet to feature
films will be Lil’ Pimp. In August,
Revolution Studios announced its
theatrical pickup of the series after
October 2000 44

Mark Brooks and Peter Gilstrap,
creators of Lil’ Pimp and Creamburg.
inking the deal with co-creators
Peter Gilstrap and Mark Brooks —
who will write, direct and produce
the full-length, Flash-produced
motion picture at their Gifted Men
Productions. Gilstrap and Brooks
first met up while working as
columnist and art director, respec-
tively, on a major weekly newspa-
per several years ago. Brooks first
approached Gilstrap with draw-
ings and ideas he had on a con-
cept that would later become their
other hit MediaTrip series
Creamburg. Working with Gilstrap
at night, Brooks animated over a 7
week period to complete a 23-
minute pilot which was eventually
optioned by cable caster HBO.
Austin Harrison, aware of the
Creamburg tape, contacted the
duo about its availability for the
then forming MediaTrip.com. With
that show still tied up with HBO,
Brooks and Gilstrap went home
and quickly brainstormed the Lil’
Pimp concept. Within 24 hours,
they were back in MediaTrip’s
offices presenting their new series
creation. The Netcaster pounced
on the fresh idea and later, when
it became available, picked up
Creamburg for series, as well. For
a co-ownership stake, MediaTrip
has funded the two Gifted Men
projects and all parties couldn’t be
happier with the shared trajectory
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
of their relationship — especially
since Creamburg is also now
being seriously considered within
Revolution Studios as a television
cross-over property.
From art studies at
Colorado University to designing
album covers, Brooks has har-
bored a long-standing love of ani-
mation. “I really wanted to make
animated films,” he laughs, “but I
just didn’t want to draw that
much!” Once Flash became a real-
ity, he took to the new technology
with a vengeance. He and Gilstrap
have written, drawn, animated,
voiced nearly every one of their
characters and produced all of the
music for their various series (both
have a substantial history and cur-
rent place on the music scene).
B y t o d a y ’s d a t e , t h a t t o t a l s
approximately 26 Webisodes of
Creamburg, 48 Lil’ Pimps, as well
as six shows for their series
Adventure Men, which is running
now on iFuse.com. Accomplishing
all of this in only the past eleven
months, these two creators have
established themselves as walking-
definitions of major Internet enter-
tainment auteurs. Located at
Hollywood and Vine, their studio
will have to expand to handle the
creative and production aspects of
their first feature film. Brooks
acknowledges, “There’s just so
many parts (of filmmaking) that
we kind of gloss over when we’re
doing these 3 minute shows but
there’s stuff you need to pump up
if you’re going to put it onto a
screen that large.” Animating with-
in Flash but at 30 frames, Brooks
feels their work will transfer nicely
to the bigger medium, adding,
“The backgrounds will all be paint-
ed offline so it will have a painter-
ly look, almost like an old-school
‘40s or ‘50s cartoon.” More rele-
vant than the technical issues
faced in any production format,
Brooks believes, is the whole
entertainment approach one
adopts in any creative endeavor.
“The question is can you draw or
can you not draw, can you tell a
story or can you not tell a story,
can you act or can you not act. To
me, that’s more important than the
technology, really — just the abili-
ty to make stuff interesting.”
© 1999-2000 MediaTrip.com, Inc.
All rights reserved.
New Content on the Road
Gathering more steam,
MediaTrip announced in late sum-
mer its partnership with comedian
Adam Sandler and producer Jack
Giarraputo to develop an enter-
tainment destination called
Shnorff.com. Working together,
the two entities will create original
Web content including episodic
shows, animation, games and
shorts for sole distribution on the
new co-branded site. Joe Roth’s
Revolution, who helped facilitate
the deal, will have first-look rights
for Schnorff’s online creative prop-
erties. Still in the development
stages, this new venture serves as
an illustration of the opportunities
now presenting themselves to
Harrison’s still youthful Netcasting
company. And whether it’s with
known or newly developing
artists, Harrison feels one of
MediaTrip’s greatest strengths is
that, “We try to really get behind
the creative people we work with.
We’re definitely a viable place for
October 2000 45
artists to take their work to the
next level.”
Harrison speaks from a
wealth of experience as well, hav-
ing begun his new media career
as early as 1995 when entertain-
ment on the Net was just begin-
ning. In true pioneer fashion, he
produced online broadcast con-
certs for the famous Whiskey-A-Go-
Go before there was even any
appreciable audience booted-up
to tune in. He then did a two-year
stint as Director of New Media for
CARAT, the world’s largest media
agency, where he learned and
honed his skills in marketing and
advertising for emerging media
concerns. In 1998, he jumped
back to the content creation side
by taking the producing reins for
Hollywood.com. While there, he
was instrumental in raising rev-
enue to an all-time high, doubling
per month users and managing all
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
production staff and editorial con-
tent. Leaving there to start
MediaTrip’s voyage in May of
1999, Harrison’s new online jour-
ney has been both arduous and
highly rewarding.
The Trip Ahead
Though constantly investi-
gating the surplus of technical and
creative possibilities his company
and partnerships present — in
marketing, distribution to known
and emerging technologies, cre-
ative advertising and more —
Harrison says right now his main
focus remains “on building com-
pelling Internet experiences.”
Confident in the spontaneous
atmosphere of today’s entertain-
ment evolution, he continues to
show an unerring eye for finding
the creations that are attractive
across many different and compli-
mentary platforms. Harrison
makes his way into MediaTrip each
morning excited by that task. He
says with a smile, “It’s always like:
what’s another thing we can do
on our Website that is entertaining
to our users? Because that’s the
challenge, that’s the drive, that’s
why you wake up day to day is to
entertain people, you know?
That’s the real kick.”
Lee Dannacher, currently
based in New York, is a
supervising producer and
sound track director of over
350 half-hours of television
animated series, along with
numerous home video and
film productions.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 46
 There’s Humongous Rewards
in Edutaining Little Kids
by Jacquie Kubin
purple car. Putt-Putt and his
other Humongous Entertainment
friends, Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish
and SPY Fox, reside in richly
detailed animated worlds that
allow for a child’s interactive explo-
ration and learning. Each of these
worlds foster fun, companionship,
helping and other important life skills.
“One of the things that
makes us a leader is that the char-

I
t all began with an endearing
little car, Putt-Putt, envisioned
and created by a group out
of Seattle called Humongous
Entertainment, an Infogrames,
Inc. company. Like the Little Train
that could, Putt-Putt can do almost
anything and his first adventure
(1992) took him to the moon.
“Putt-Putt is the flagship title of the
company,” says Brad Carlton,
Design Director, Humongous
Entertainment, Inc. “He led the
way for the children’s adventure
game genre in a company found-
ed by traditional adventure game
designers Ron Gilbert and Shelley
Day, who recognized that the
market for intriguing, interactive
game play for children was there.”
acters are engaging, bringing the
kids into the evolving stories,”
Carlton explains. “The games draw
people in and both the children
and the parents have fun with the
products. We take our roles very
seriously here and we want to
teach our users how to be social
people in a social world.”
When creating a new story
driven adventure or sports titles,
the Humongous Entertainment
team begins with the story line
Putt-Putt winning the race in children’s
interactive game play for Humongous.
© 2000 Humongous Entertainment.
All rights reserved.
and script. The group uses movie
and comedy writers, which helps
provide entertainment value for
parents, while crafting a story that
is entertaining and exciting for
children.
In the development of their
soon to be released (Fourth
Quarter/October) The Backyard
Soccer MLS Edition, Humongous

Putting Story and Character First

The genesis of the compa-
ny, which has sold more than 16
million games to date, was to fill a
niche being ignored by other
game developers — story driven,
versus activity driven, game play
for kids. Their first character, Putt-
Putt is a caring, loving, helpful little Dressing up Pajama Sam in the interactive CD-Rom game, Pajama Sam’s One-Stop Fun
friend within the body of a Shop. © 2000 Humongous Entertainment. All rights reserved.

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 47


Sports has added the child per-
sonas of fifteen professional soccer
players such as Cobi Jones of the
LA Galaxy, Ben Olson of DC United
and Brianna Scurry and Brandi
Chastain from the U.S. Women’s
National Team, and winners of the
World Cup, to the game.
As with other Humongous
Sports titles, Backyard Baseball and
Backyard Football features a recur-
ring group of thirty children, boys
and girls, of various race, religious
background, physical and athletic
ability. These children include
twins Ashley and Sidney Webber,
who make a dynamic duo when
p l a y i n g t o g e t h e r, b ro t h e r s
Achmed and Amir Kahn, and the
s i s t e r- b ro t h e r t e a m o f V i c k i
Kawaguchi, who is an aspiring
prima ballerina, and Kenny, who
plays games with precision from
his wheelchair.
Adding real life athletes to
the game makes it that more excit-
ing for the children, providing pos-
itive future life role models based
on real live people.
“We did not just create
characters and given them real
sports stars names,” says Elizabeth
The Backyard Bunch: a line-up worth checking out. © 2000 Humongous Entertainment. All rights reserved.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Stringer, Director of Development,
Sports. “When playing the
Backyard Sports games, children
are as picky as they are in real life
and they will choose the Backyard
children that they best relate to.
Same goes with the professional
children, so we went to those
sports stars and asked them their
favorite colors, foods, music and
other things that children relate to.”
Brianna Scurry, former goalkeeper
on the U.S.Women’s Soccer Team,
is just one of the professional female
characters you can find on Backyard
Soccer MLS Edition. © 2000 Humongous
Entertainment. All rights reserved.
Complexity Through The Ages
The Backyard Sports games
contain as much complexity as an
adult game. They offer variations
such as single play, seasonal play
and the ability to track player sta-
tistics. Each Backyard Sports game
begins with an approximate 800
page script of positive and self-
esteem building comments and
the lesson that all children can
play, though each child has
different strengths.
A unique aspect of
Backyard Soccer is the inclusion of
female sports stars, something not
seen in football and baseball...yet.
“We have tried to build in
some important lessons, one
being that each child can con-
tribute, even Kenny who can ‘kick’
an extremely accurate ball from his
wheelchair,” explains Stringer. “It’s
exciting for me to be able to add
the professional female characters,
showing young girls that they can
also aim for a future in sports.”
Adding to the developmen-
tal challenges for Humongous
Games is that unlike a game that is
geared for one specific age group,
a Humongous Entertainment
game offers repeat play for chil-
dren over an extended life period.
For example, the recently released
game, Putt-Putt Joins the Circus
reflects an age appropriateness
from three to eight.
This is accomplished
through games that are not level
based, such as an adult first
person shooter game would be.
Instead the on screen inter-
activity is continually broadening.
Additionally the games are not
October 2000 48
one goal oriented, instead provid-
ing numerous concurrent goals,
which are attainable at different
developmental ages.
“Any one who has children,
or has worked with children,
knows that a three year old is very
different emotionally, physically
and mentally from an eight year
old,” says Stringer. “One of our
challenges is to be able to create
games that will continue to edu-
cate and entertain throughout this
growth period.”
© 2000 Humongous Entertainment. All
rights reserved.
Animation and Outlets
In addition to the writing
staff, creating any of the
Humongous Entertainment and
Humongous Sports titles also takes
a full compliment of at least seven
animators that create each frame
the old fashioned way...by hand.
For each game, this team is
required to create hundreds of
thousands of frames, even more
for the sports games due to the
multiple characters and hundreds
of possible on screen interactions.
A Junior Adventure game,
such as the new SPY Fox title
scheduled for release first quarter
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
SPY Fox. © 2000 Humongous
Entertainment. All rights reserved.
2001, may have two to three
times as many frames as a half
hour cartoon show.
“Our artists first animate tra-
ditionally and those drawings are
scanned in,” says Carlton. “The
computer is used to color, ink,
paint and animate, but the games
have the warm traditional animat-
ed movie feel because we use
movie techniques in order to
squash, stretch, overshoot or blur
frames.”
The company relies on an
animation software program they
developed, though they do use
Maya for some of the 3D anima-
tion on the sports games as it pro-
vides a real-time feel for the play-
ers.
“Everything we do is very
film-like in that each release is first
Backyard Football is expanding
its game play — Playstation and
Gameboy, here they come!
© 2000 Humongous Entertainment.
All rights reserved.
storyboarded — in effect played all
the way through before the art
process begins,” says Stringer.
The company employs
more than eighty artists who in
general all share a hand and have
strong animation backgrounds.
Releases usually take just under a
year to develop, in comparison
with the 18 months that adult/tra-
ditional games often take.
Another pro, Brett Farve, scoring
points for Humongous.
© 2000 Humongous Entertainment.
All rights reserved.
“There is a tremendous tal-
ent base here and we have all
gone through the learning curve
together so we are good at what
we do,” says Carlton. “There is a
misconception that we must not
work as hard on ‘children’s’ titles,
but in reality they are more difficult
because of the scripting. People
love this company; working here
even though it is difficult. Of
course, we are so good at it, it
doesn’t seem so from the outside.”
The next hurdle for
Humongous Entertainment and
Humongous Sports titles is the
transfer to Playstation and
Gameboy Color scheduled in time
for the 2000 holiday season. The
move to the console market is
October 2000 49
a result of the release of new gen-
eration machines, in particular
the Playstation 2.
“The children’s market has a
price sweet spot of around twenty
dollars,” explains Stringer. “In the
past, royalties to Sony made the
cost of developing for the console
prohibitive. With the new genera-
tion machine, those costs are dras-
tically reducing. Gameboy already
sells well into the children’s market
paving the way for our games.”
Putt-Putt Online
And the next frontier for
the game developer may very well
be cyberspace. The company
already has ver y child
friendly, game and interactivity
packed Websites that include ele-
ments of online gaming. At
Humongous.com, children can
play familiar games such as
Concentration, Tic-Tac-Toe and
Checkers featuring characters like
Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, SPY Fox
and, of course, Putt-Putt. The
Backyard Sports games Football
and Baseball both provide an on-
line multiplayer element that
Humongous Entertainment’s 6-year-old superhero, Pajama Sam.
© 2000 Humongous Entertainment. All rights reserved.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Freddi Fish, another interactive
friend fostering learning for Humongous.
© 2000 Humongous Entertainment.
All rights reserved.
allows for head-to-head cyber-
competition. Players of the sports
games will require both an
Internet connection and the game
CD-Rom. Both sites provide
community elements for the chil-
dren, including The Sidelines at
HumongousSports.com.
“We have more than thirty
thousand unique children playing
the on-line sports games,” con-
fides Carlton. “The sports site also
features The Sidelines, a place
where kids can meet and chat on
delayed bulletin boards, check out
player statistics, read game hints
and find downloadable goodies
such as wall paper, coloring
pages, screen savers and sounds.”
Those elements, but featur-
ing the Junior Adventure charac-
ters, also bring children back to
the Humongous.com site. The e-
commerce elements to the sites
allow easy shopping and products
from hand-held to box games can
be purchased. In addition, premi-
ums, such as a Pajama Sam lunch-
box or Putt-Putt T-shirt, can be
obtained when pre-ordering
upcoming releases. A next step
will be delivering games online, a
process that the company is
exploring.
“The backbone for this
process is in place, but the ques-
tion is whether consumers are
ready to begin looking for elec-
tronic entertainment products to
originate online,” says Stringer.
“We are also very concerned
about ensuring that the online
worlds we develop are safe and
secure for young children and
their families. So while this is an
important growth area for us, it is
one we are approaching cautiously.”
Jacquie Kubin, a Washington,
DC-based freelance journalist,
enjoys writing about the
electronic entertainment and
edutainment mediums, including
the Internet. She is a frequent
contributor to the Washington
Times and Krause Publication
magazines. She has won the
1998 Certificate of Award
granted by the Metropolitan
Area Mass Media Committee of
the American Association of
University Women.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 50

Since Hiroshima
© 1999-2000 www.artoday.com.
I
t has been two years since my
visit to Hiroshima and the
meeting with Tsunoi Tsuboi. I
was in Hiroshima for the 8th
International Animation Film
Festival. A few months before my
visit, India, followed by Pakistan,
tested many nuclear devices in a
spree lasting less than a month.
Tsunoi Tsuboi told me that
he was less than a mile away from
the epicenter at Hiroshima on the
morning of August 9, 1945. He
was a little boy, on his way to a
workshop. He was not the only
child walking around that morn-
ing; many were going to school.
Dropped by a war machine and
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Prakash S. Moorthy
driven by the general conviction
that the war would end, another
“little boy” also hurtled down from
above…
In my country, Islamic fun-
damentalists stormed an airplane
and killed a young passenger by
pushing a knife into his surprised
open mouth. An undeclared war
took away many lives on the bor-
der with Pakistan — a Christian
priest was killed using bows and
arrows; another missionary worker
was burned to death along with
his young sons; a young girl was
raped in Pakistan. Later, she was
killed by her own parents for bring-
ing a “bad name” to the family.
The reasons are similar to
why people painted Stars of David
on doors. For others, these rea-
sons are narrow, small and local. It
is, after all, how you look at
them…in what perspective…in
which point of view…
The filming of the story of a
teenaged widow sold to prostitu-
tion years ago in the holy Indian
city of Varanasi has been banned
because the film shows our
ancient culture in a “bad” light.
The self-appointed culture police
are “correct” and “justified” in their
perspective. They know every-
thing. They would like to read and
correct film scripts. They also want
to tell artists what to paint and
give poets ruled paper.
Children moved
about with their
skin peeling off
and tongues
showing…
Children who went to
school did not return. They moved
about with their skin peeling off
and tongues showing for a little
while before crumpling to the
ground…
Give me back the Berlin Wall,
Give me Stalin and St. Paul,
Give me Christ,
or give me Hiroshima.
Destroy another fetus now.
We don’t like children anyhow.
I have seen the future, baby;
It is murder.
— Leonard Cohen
It seems that there was a
bearded man and he was sitting
under a tree. From far he looked a
little like Jesus Christ. Suddenly a
group of wild and angry men
October 2000 51

Hiroshima after A-bomb devastation in October, 1945. © 1999-2000 www.artoday.com.
Sadly, we did not make the film in time for
the Hiroshima Animation Festival this year.
arrived and thrust a half-naked
woman at his feet and said in one
voice, “Look! She has sinned. We
caught her in adultery. We have a
tradition here; we must stone her
to death.”
The bearded man got up
and shouted at the crowd. He
said: “Hold it…let him among you
who has not sinned ever, throw
the first stone!” The bearded man
waited for the crowd to shuffle
around and disband.
Instead it seems, the crowd
shouted with joy and picking up
many huge stones, threw them at
the half naked shivering woman
who had sinned. Until she died.
Is this so much like the story
of Hiroshima?
But then, why did they not
bomb Hiroshima until Little Boy
was dropped in August, 1945?
Hiroshima was the biggest arms
manufacturing city in Japan dur-
ing the World War.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
ing on our jobs, with a view to
save up for our film. This is taking
longer than we thought. There
are a lot of friends who are
encouraging us onward. Dave
organized young children from all
over the world to paint pictures of
themselves going to school for our
film. There were a lot of people
waiting for this film at this year’s
animation festival in Hiroshima. It
is difficult to explain to them, as
there is also Tsunoi Tsuboi, an old
man with a scarred face looking
for his story.
Prakash S. Moorthy is an inde-
pendent animation filmmaker
based in Kerala, India.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
After meeting Tsunoi Tsuboi
and listening to his story, I went to
the Peace Museum again with my
friend Dave Burnskill. There we
made a promise — that we would
make a film, with the hope that it
would bring out the same kind
of feelings that Tsunoi Tsuboi’s
story did.
Animator Prakash S. Moorthy, Dave
Sadly, we did not make the Brunskill and Clive Walley in Hiroshima,
film in time for the Hiroshima Japan. August 1998. Photo by Ron
Animation Festival this year. We Diamond. © AWN.
have a script, but only pieces
of animation done in fits of enthu-
siasm. The demands of making a
film and generating the funds for
it took its toll.
Dave teaches in England
and I do set design for live-action
films in India. Dave tried his best to
organize funds from his part of the
world as I did from mine. Maybe
nobody liked our story idea. We
gave up our money raising efforts
for Of Fat Men And Little Boys
soon after and began concentrat-
October 2000 52
 THIS YEAR'S
INTERNATIONAL
GUESTS:
WENDY TILBY,
BRUNO BOZZETTO,
KONSTANTIN
BRONZIT,
PAUL DRIESSEN,
KOJI MORIMOTO,
JULIAN NOTT,
JAN PINKAVA AND
MANY MORE…

THE 4TH EDITION OF

THE
INTERNATIONAL
COMPETITION WITH
THE BEST SHORT
FILMS FROM ALL
OVER
THE WORLD!

THE NEWEST
ITALIAN ANIMATED
SHORTS
IN THE NATIONAL
COMPETITION!

THE FIRST
COMPETITiON FOR
ANIMATED
WEB SITES!

PRESTIGIOUS
PREVIEWS OF
BRAND NEW
PRODUCTIONS:
FEATURES, SHORTS,
TELEVISION SERIES
AND COMMERCIALS!

SPECIAL EVENTS,
CONFERENCES, LIVE
PERFORMANCES
AND… SURPRISES!

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

I CASTELLI ANIMATI - PHONE: +39.06.93955108 FAX: +39.06.9391577
E-MAIL: CASTELLIANIMATI@CASTELLIANIMATI.IT - WWW.CASTELLIANIMATI.IT

Simpsons Mania
In Britain
The Simpsons.TM & © 1997 20th Century Fox Film Corp.: All rights reserved.
“Why did Paul McCartney do
Wings?”
— Matt Groening on why he
followed The Simpsons with
Futurama
T
his August saw Britain
invaded by the First Family
of Springfield, as The
Simpsons and their creators
enjoyed several packed-out
engagements to celebrate the
longevity of The Simpsons. The
first was at the Edinburgh Fringe
festival where the show’s voice
actors appeared at the Assembly
Rooms, a venue which previously
hosted Disraeli, Gladstone and
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Andrew Osmond
Charles Dickens. According to the
Guardian newspaper, the August
14th show opened bravely with a
montage of Scot-themed clips
from the show. No surprise that
the focus was on Willie, the dubi-
ously-accented school grounds-
man. Luckily these shennanigans
were accepted by the locals in the
audience!
This was followed by the
actors performing a script from the
series. Unfortunately, Julie Kavner
(Marge in the series) could not
attend, but she was “ably substi-
tuted” by Tress MacNeille.
MacNeille, of course, voices
numerous Simpsons characters,
including Agnes Skinner and Bart’s
long-suffering Sunday School
teacher. A cartoon veteran, she
was the voice of Babs Bunny (Tiny
Toon Adventures) and Dot Warner
(Animaniacs) to name but two,
and figures in Futurama in such
parts as Hattie the landlady.
The other Simpsons were
voiced by their regular players:
Dan Castellenta as Homer, Nancy
Cartwright as Bart (sporting
Scottish regalia, complete with
sporran) and Yeardley Smith as
Lisa. Series creator Matt Groening
was present, as was Hank Azaria
(Moe the barman), Pamela
Hayden (Millhouse) and Harry
Shearer (Mr. Burns and his adoring
underling Smithers).
The show was followed by
question and answers with the
audience. Dan Castellenta, in
Homer persona, was asked if he
could say “no” properly and
replied, “Sure I can say
doh...DOH!” Festival attendees
wanting further Simpsons fixes
could catch comedian Rick Miller’s
unauthorized one-man show
MacHomer, which played through
the month. As the title suggests,
the show places the yellow-
skinned characters into a certain
Scottish play.
The bona fide Simpsons,
meanwhile, travelled down to
London for two further perform-
ances at the Playhouse Theatre.
These were held on August 17th
and 18th, with the second event
being a gala show attended by
celebrity fans. Earlier on the 17th,
there was a separate Simpsons
event at the National Film Theatre.
Groening was interviewed on
stage by Jonathan Ross, best
known as the host of the BBC Film
programme and a rabid animation
and Simpsons fan.
Among the topics covered
October 2000 54
was whether there would ever be
a Simpsons movie. Groening
replied, “There’ll be one, one of
these days, but the series will have
to be cancelled first. So if you want
the movie, stop watching The
Simpsons!” He also confirmed The
Simpsons would appear on DVD
at some point, in series order with
extra material. Groening also con-
fided other inside information like
the fact that Krusty the Clown
was inspired by a Christian-preach-
ing Oregon TV clown called Rusty
Nails. “He was actually a very
gentle clown, but with the creepi-
est name...”
Groening gleefully
read out his
favourite censor
notes from Fox…
On recent adult-oriented
animation, Groening praised King
of the Hill and South Park, and
noted they escaped factory-style
animation. “None of these shows
look anything like each other.”
Other topics of conversation
included The Simpsons’ origins,
the show’s anti-authority philoso-
phy and Groening’s embarrassed
confession that, as a one-time
music journalist, he panned
Danny Elfman’s group Oingo-
Boingo. Then again, Groening
had no qualms about offending
Simpsons viewers who didn’t “get”
the show. “It’s like we’re Daffy Duck
and they’re Elmer Fudd. When
someone reacts to us like Elmer,
there’s no feeling like it...”
In the same vein, Groening
gleefully read out his favourite
censor notes from Fox — “Where
we get our inspiration!” For exam-
ple: “Although it is only a dream, it
is not acceptable to show Homer
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
holding a sign saying, ‘Kill My
Boy.’” Or a highly specific directive
about Itchy and Scratchy: “It is not
acceptable for Scratchy to stab
Itchy in the gut, yank out his intes-
tines and use them as a bungee
cord.” Groening presented a mon-
tage of favourite Itchy and
Scratchy moments, along with
choice Simpsons extracts. The lat-
ter included Homer’s ill-fated effort
to skateboard a ravine, the gay
steel mill episode and a “full-frontal
nude” Bart from a European
commercial.
Midway through the ses-
sion, there was a surprise bonus as
Groening called down fellow
Simpsons creatives from the audi-
ence. These were supervising
director Jim Reardon; casting
director Bonnie Pletila; writer-pro-
ducer Al Jean; executive producer
Mike Scully; writer-producer
George Meyer; animation director
Mark Kirkland; stage director Ian
Maxtone-Graham; and Lisa
Simpson herself, Yeardley Smith.
Midway through
the session, there
was a surprise
bonus…
The funniest anecdote from
the subsequent discussion was
about a spoof corporate ad in one
episode. The steamy, meaningless
ad images were attributed, with
typical irreverence, to that well-
known corporation the Catholic
Church. After a storm of
complaints, Fox timidly suggested,
“Change it to Methodist?” On
another theological note, George
Meyer confessed he had no idea
why God had five fingers in his
episode “Homer the Heretic.”
Then again, perhaps that was
the point...
The session ended with the
team giving generally favourable
reactions to Blighty. Yeardley Smith
offered, “British reaction has been
overwhelming, and you have
great yoghurt.” Groening reflected
he was now walking three simul-
taneous treadmills — Simpsons,
Futurama and his Life in Hell strip.
He also had a cryptic comment on
what might happen when The
Simpsons finally does reach its
end. “I’ve always had an idea of
what the last part could be,” he
said. “But it’s rather twisted. I don’t
know if we’ll have the nerve.”
The funniest
anecdote from the
subsequent discussion
was about a spoof
corporate ad in one
episode.
The Simpsons-Mania Tour
2000 in Britain was organized by
the satellite channel Sky One.
British viewers enjoyed a special
weekend September 2-3, when
the channel delivered special
events celebrating ten years of
Simpsons screenings.
Andrew Osmond is a freelance
writer specializing in fantasy
media and animation.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 55

Imax Goes 3D
in Real-Time
Imax Film Distribution and
Spectrum Studios mixed live jour-
nalists and a virtual movie star at a
September 25, 2000 press junket
for Imax’s October release of
Cyberworld 3D.
Wired, one of the cyber critters in Phig’s
Galleria Animatica in CyberWorld pre-
sented by Intel, an Imax Ltd. Production.
© Imax Ltd.
I
t was kind of a cute idea. On
one side of the “airwall” there
was an empty chair and a cam-
era pointing toward another
empty chair, which was in front of
a logo saying “Cyberworld 3-D.”
On the other side of the “airwall”
there was a bank of powerful Intel-
based computers running a
motion-capture program with
actors Bob Smith and David Dixon
attached. Dixon and Smith would
manipulate the arms of a cartoon
character named “Wired” that
would answer questions from the
journalists on the other side of the
wall. In other words, the TV jour-
nalists would be able to present an
interview with a genuine cartoon
character on their shows.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
by Eric Lurio
So why are they arranging
interviews with ‘toons? What
exactly is this new film?
Same Thing, New Age
Well, back in 1952, there
was a strange documentary called
This Is Cinerama!, which intro-
duced a new kind of movie to the
American public. The new three-
camera process was put on display
with a dazzling spectacle of music
and color. While computer anima-
tion and Imax have been around
for a long time, this is pretty much
the same thing...a glorified demo
reel of some of the best of con-
temporary CGI with a hackneyed
story to stitch things together. Not
that there’s anything wrong with
that, by the way. I am sure many
CGI fans will flock to the theaters
to see the spectacle.
Our hostess with the most-
ess is Phig (voiced by Jenna
Elfman), a cyberbabe with a per-
fect torso and an attitude. Her job
is to take us on a tour of the
CyberWorld Galleria (version 5), a
museum of sorts where behind
each door is a different virtual
Phig, the saucy, synthetic hostess of
CyberWorld. © Imax Ltd.
world on exhibit, all of which but
one has been seen before in other
venues — but none like this.
According to producer
Hugh Murray, the various shorts
had to be partly re-done in order
to be shown in the best possible
way in the new super-sized for-
mat. For instance, Larry Weiss, the
CG supervisor of the PDI Antz seg-
ment and his crew, had to give Z
and Princess Bala feet and lower
torsos, which weren’t needed in
the 35mm version. Also, according
to Murray, they had to add several
dozen more ants in order to fill the
spaces of the immense Imax
screen. The rest of the older seg-
ments had much the same thing
done. “It’s expensive,” said co-pro-
ducer Steven Hoban, “but it’s a lot
cheaper than starting from
scratch.”
Jenna Elfman, recording the voice of Phig.
© Imax Ltd.
The opening segment,
which was done by Spin
Entertainment of Toronto, Ontario,
introduces us to Phig and the
Galleria. Aside from the size of the
Imax screen, there’s nothing really
new here. Colin Davies (3D CGI)
and Elaine Despins (2.5D SANDDE
animation), who were the overall
directors for the film, worked on
this and the other connecting
sequences. The plot, what there is
of it, is that at the end of the sec-
ond segment Phig discovers in the
most painful of ways that a trio of
2.5 D bugs named Frazzled (Matt
Frewer), Buzzed (Bob Smith) and
October 2000 56
Wired (Smith again) are eating the
code and degrading the system.
After discovering that tech support
(Dave Foley) is busy (ain’t that
always the case?) our hostess goes
into warrior mode (after the
inevitable bunny suit gag), and
near the end of the film manages
to send them into a vortex created
by Homer Simpson.
Buzzed,Wired and Frazzled swing to
safety in CyberWorld. © Imax Ltd.
The Sequences
The bulk of the film, how-
ever, is the shorts, which are in no
particular order:
Monkey Brain Sushi (1995),
directed by Brommbaer and
animated at Sony Pictures
Imageworks as a showpiece for
the SIGGRAPH conference of that
year, is quite pretty indeed, but
pretty forgettable.
Flipbook (1997-8) by
Satoshi Kitihara is a two-minute
segment of images taken from
two episodes of the Inertia
Pictures series and converted for
Cyberworld 3D’s Imax treatment,
and is of a CGI cityscape and flying
craft buzzing about looking cool.
Liberation (1994) is a music
video by the Pet Shop Boys brought
to life by Eye Developments. It’s most-
ly flying heads wearing dunce caps
as Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe fly
around and sing. While visually stun-
ning, the content is quite forgettable.
Krakken (1996) is directed
by Jerzy Kular of Paris’ Ex Machina.
Unlike the first two shorts, this has
something of a story and is remi-
niscent of the flying whale
sequence in Fantasia/2000, which
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
this predates. Based on the work
of Dougal Dixon, it’s about life in
the ocean of the far, far future.
Originally six minutes long, it was
cut down to four and re-compu-
ted and re-rendered for Imax.
The package
as one of the
Imax series is
a winner.
Joe Fly and Sanchez (1995,
2000) is directed by Peter Spans of
Spans & Partner, which is based in
Germany. Now here’s a story: Joe
Fly is sleeping on a leaf that’s cut
down by Sanchez, the athletic
scarab, in this slapstick comedy
about insects, which was highly
revised for this film. Mr. Spans
knows cartoon physics quite well
and it’s a cute film indeed.
Tonight’s Performance
(2000), directed by Paul Sidlo,
is the only “pick-up” created specif-
ically for this film. It’s basically noth-
ing but a character flying up
through a great deal of fantastical
circus architecture. It lasts two-min-
utes and is extremely busy. One
can barely make out exactly what’s
going on before it’s over.
Imax is high on
animation and is
already readying
several more Imax
animated films…
Finally, there’s the two
exempts from much longer works
rendered by Pacific Data Images.
The first one is the bar sequence
from Antz, and the infamous
“Homer3” segment from the 1995
“Treehouse of Horror VI” Simpsons
episode. This was one of PDI’s
greatest early triumphs and had to
be redone to make the 3D process
work properly. This segment does-
n’t really work as well as it might
have, but the use of the cel ani-
mation was necessary and unfor-
tunately very obvious…
The Real Big Picture
The package as one of the
Imax series is a winner. The forty-
minute length is the maximum
you can have for a work such as
this. There’s nothing here but spec-
tacle, and that’s why people go to
these things.
The use of animation in Imax
films isn’t exactly new; T-Rex: Back to
the Cretaceous has been packing
them in for quite a while now, and
that is quite animation heavy. The
same thing can be said for Alien
Adventure and Encounter in the
Third Dimension. But Imax is high on
animation and is already readying
several more Imax animated films,
among which are versions of
Gullivar’s Travels and Rumplestiltskin,
as well as a thing called Eddy
Deco and a special cut of
PDI/DreamWorks’ Shrek. Whether
any of these will do as well as
Fantasia/2000 is a question. That’s
why Cyberworld is so important. The
proof is in this pudding.
Eric Lurio is a New York-based
cartoonist and writer who has
written extensively on animation
for several years. His articles have
appeared in Animation Magazine,
Animation Blast, Animation Planet
and Animefantastique.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 57

Moebius & Foster
Journey Thru the Moebius Strip
A Moebius Strip design created in
Photoshop. © 2000 and courtesy Global
Digital Creations Group, Hong Kong.
T
o aficionados of the comic
book and visual arts
worlds, designer Jean
Giraud — Moebius — needs little
introduction. From his early comic
strips for the French satirical maga-
zine Hara-Kiri, through the cre-
ation of his Western hero
Lieutenant Blueberry and the co-
founding of Metal Hurlant maga-
zine in 1975, Moebius became
widely known for his elegant,
highly detailed visual style and off-
beat sense of humor. National
Lampoon’s Heavy Metal magazine,
an American version of Metal
Hurlant, brought Moebius’ art to a
wider stateside audience, particu-
larly with his science fiction and
fantasy stories Arzach and The
Airtight Garage. Moebius became
part of the design team
involved with director Alejandro
Jodorowsky’s legendary attempted
adaptation of Dune. The collapse
of that legendary mid-’70s project
led Moebius indirectly to a brief
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
By Joe Fordham
stint on Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979),
whose samurai-armored space-
suits bear a distinctly Moebius feel.
Tron (1982), The Abyss (1989) and
The Fifth Element (1998) followed,
though the animated feature Les
Maitres du Temps (Time Masters),
directed by René Laloux in 1982,
has been the only film Moebius
designed completely. On Aug. 23,
Moebius himself revealed to an
audience at the American
Cinematheque in Los Angeles that
this is about to change.
The Cinematheque audi-
ence had gathered to view the
first public screening in the United
States of Laloux’s French-language
science-fiction film, a thoughtful,
imaginative space adventure
about a rescue mission to save a
child lost on a hostile alien planet.
Moebius, a relaxed and eloquent
speaker with a mellifluous accent,
took pleasure in recounting tales
of the film’s production, which —
despite its TV budget and acceler-
ated schedule — held the audi-
ence’s interest with unexpected
twists of character and plot. “There
were one and a half years
between the storyboard and the
moment when I first saw the story
on the screen, so there were dis-
tortions and I first thought it was a
disaster,” Moebius recalled. “But
that feeling has diminished now.
It’s surrealistic to see it now
because we are seeing a movie
from another time. It’s not exploita-
tion. It has dignity. It’s not perfect,
but it’s timeless.”
Moebius’ charm and grace
are evident in Laloux’s film. The
artist also admitted there were
ironic parallels with the current
project that has brought him to
Los Angeles. Joining Moebius for
the conclusion of his interview,
director and co-producer Frank
Foster filled the audience in on the
status of Thru the Moebius Strip.
This completely digital, animated
80-minute film, conceived and
designed by Moebius, was in the
final stages of pre-production in
West Los Angeles. The project is
scheduled to move to full produc-
tion — with Foster directing
a team of 200 artists — at co-pro-
ducer Raymond Neoh’s Global
Digital Productions (GDP) in
Kowloon, Hong Kong. A Paris
premiere is planned for summer 2003.
Moebius & Foster.
© 2000 and courtesy Global Digital
Creations Group, Hong Kong.
A week after the screening,
on Moebius’ final day in the
United States, Foster displayed the
work in progress. Among stacks of
sketchbooks and rooms of layout
artists, colorists and digital model-
ers at workstations, a non-linear
animatic was emerging of the film
— scanned storyboard frames
edited to describe the beat and
rhythm of the animation yet to
come. “We’re using the DPS
Velocity software card, which is
designed specifically for animation
and visual effects people,” Foster
October 2000 58

Moebius holding a development vehicle model.
© 2000 and courtesy Global Digital Creations Group, Hong Kong.
said. “It’s a very efficient way of
assembling your dailies and creat-
ing animation. It gives us real-time
effects, such as dissolves, page
turns and titles, which helps us
estimate how many frames each
shot will wind up being. By the
end of pre-production, we’ll have
the entire movie in this animatic
form, so we’ll be able to cut it
down and start to add our first
temporary shots. This becomes an
evolving story reel that at any
moment allows us to see the level
of progress on any aspect of the
film. It’s a technique that my PC-
based department developed at
Sony Pictures Imageworks years
ago. We used it on a lot of proj-
ects, and by the time of Stuart
Little it had become the standard
method for viewing digital dailies.”
Foster was a founding sen-
ior vice president of Sony Pictures
Imageworks and is widely regard-
ed to have helped instigate the
use of previsualization in feature
film production. As director of
SIGGRAPH’s The Story of Computer
Graphics, he also documented
interviews with more than 60 dig-
ital imaging pioneers, tracing the
first 50 years of computer graph-
ics. He recalled how his associa-
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
tion with Sony led him to his first
encounter with Moebius and took
time with Moebius to elaborate on
their plans and discuss the genesis
of the project.
“Several years ago, I was
going through Asia, looking for
facilities that Sony could use for
offshore 3D animation,” Foster
said. “That was when I met
Raymond Neoh, who was work-
ing with Arnie Wong to set up the
feature project for Moebius in
Hong Kong. This is a project that
Arnie and Moebius have wanted
to do since they met 18 years ago
working on Tron.”
Moebius had his own asso-
ciations with Sony, dating back to
an early aborted attempt to film
his epic The Airtight Garage and a
return engagement designing
Sony’s San Francisco Metreon
entertainment complex. Through
this common ground, Foster
found himself privy to the embry-
onic realization of what had been
a lifelong dream for Moebius: the
creation of his own feature film.
In the beginning I had one
idea about an original kind of
spaceship and it gave me some
ideas for a story,” Moebius said.
“After I met with Raymond, he
became the central person in
charge of the money on the proj-
ect and finding most of the people
to work on the movie in France.
We started talking to Frank and
spent 10 days writing the story
together, meeting every day with
Frank taking notes.”
“Jean intuitively explained
the story in much in the same way
as a parent might tell a child a
story, to entertain them,” Foster
said. “My job was to listen and try
to help him piece together the var-
ious elements. It was magical the
way it came together. I drafted
that into a rough nine-page treat-
ment, then presented this to our
screenwriter, Jim Cox (FernGully,
The Rescuers Down Under), who
used that as the basis for his first
draft. Last spring that draft was
presented to Jean, who came to
L.A. for a week, and he worked
with Jim and me, making adjust-
ments. When Jim completed that
second draft, we started three
months of pre-production.”
The evolving tale, Thru the
Moebius Strip, tells the story of
physicist Dr. Simon Weir, who dis-
appears through a transportation
portal, where his family of space
travelers pursues him to a planet
inhabited by giant aliens. “It was
interesting what Jim did,” Moebius
said. “He connected my story to a
fairy tale, so it took on a classic
resonance.”
Foster emphasized that the
story will continue to evolve
throughout production, but his
primary intention is to capture its
author’s vision. “Jean has told me
many times that this is the first time
he has been involved with a film
project where he really feels that
his heart and soul is in not just the
images, but in the story, the char-
acters and the emotion of the film.
He has been in tune with what
October 2000 59

A sample of Moebius Strip’s production design.
© 2000 and courtesy Global Digital Creations Group, Hong Kong.
emotion a sequence conveys,
how the characters react to each
other and what the back-story is.
He came up with lots of detail on
why characters are the way they
are, why the technology works a
certain way. We may reveal
aspects of this in our upcoming
Web site that audiences may or
may not glean from the actual
movie.”
In his three months in Los
Angeles, Moebius estimated, he
generated approximately 300
designs for the film. He occasion-
ally worked in Photoshop, but
mostly worked by hand, sketching
rapidly in pencil, designing char-
acters, vehicles, props and set-
tings, as well as roughing out
pages of postage-stamp-sized sto-
ryboard frames. Production illustra-
tor Sylvain Despretz then worked
closely at Moebius’ side, leading a
team of artists who transformed
the original drawings into finished
renderings for approval and adap-
tation into digital models. “I have
known Sylvain for more than 15
years,” Moebius said, “since the
beginning of his career. We
became friends and he has grown
better and better — better than I
— so it has been a great surprise
to have him working on this film.”
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Despretz’s familiarity with
Moebius’ style became a crucial
touchstone for Foster. “I think
Sylvain will be instrumental in
maintaining the colors, artwork
and textures of the film,” Foster
said. “Sylvain also speaks French,
which is a big asset to me, not
only during pre-production, but
periodically through different
stages of production, to ensure
that we remain immersed in
Moebius’ world. He has the kind
of insight that when I have a ques-
tion, ‘Should this be red or pur-
ple?’ he seems to know what Jean
would do.”
Sylvain Despretz hard at work.
© 2000 and courtesy Global Digital
Creations Group, Hong Kong.
At the conclusion of his
California excursion, Moebius was
scheduled to return to Paris to
resume duties on his next
Lieutenant Blueberry book. Foster
planned to remain in contact by
sending video updates of the ani-
matic story reel while keeping in
touch with the animation studio,
GDP in Hong Kong, via an FTP
cable connection. “Their morning
is our night, so it has worked quite
well,” Foster said. “During the day
I can view dailies and leave e-mail
notes, then they can come in the
morning, work on those changes,
render them and put them out on
the site by the next morning.”
Working on pre-production layouts.
© 2000 and courtesy Global Digital
Creations Group, Hong Kong.
Foster has been visiting
GDP frequently, offering his assis-
tance to train animation artists for
the project through Shenzen
University in China while setting
up the technical requirements in
Kowloon. Foster hopes to make
use of the Internet connection in
the coming months — particularly
as he and his wife, Frankie, are
expecting their first child in
November — but he foresees fur-
ther visits as inevitable. “When it
comes to finishing the modeling,
and starting and approving the
stages of character animation, I
will be physically in Hong Kong,”
he said.
Voice artists have yet to be
assigned. Foster estimated casting
would begin in Los Angeles in
early 2001, although this was one
area in which Moebius had no
preconceptions. “The characters
must be alive and we need to con-
trol the speed of their delivery and
the silences, but I’m not familiar
enough with American stardom to
October 2000 60

Tweaking the film’s digital models.
© 2000 and courtesy Global Digital
Creations Group, Hong Kong.
choose somebody,” Moebius said.
“I will offer my suggestions, but
that is mainly something Frank will
do.”
Foster said the film will
depend heavily on key-frame char-
acter animation for nuances of
performance, but he also plans to
make strategic use of procedural
techniques and, occasionally,
motion capture to animate the
many martial arts sequences. “We
have a lot of crowd scenes in our
story, and scenes involving hun-
dreds of aliens and humans fight-
ing,” Foster said. “I’ve had quite a
long association with Biped soft-
ware from 3D Studio Max. This
was written by the husband/wife
An exclusive! A sneak peek at
Moebius Strip’s lead villain.
© 2000 and courtesy Global Digital
Creations Group, Hong Kong.
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
team of Michael Girard and Susan
Amkraut — who practically invent-
ed inverse kinematics for character
animation while they were stu-
dents at Ohio State University —
and we’ll be using that software
for animating crowd control. I per-
ceive that there are three main
ways of doing character anima-
tion as far as body movements are
concerned: There’s key-frame ani-
mation, procedural techniques like
Biped — for dynamics, gravity and
footstep-driven work — and then
of course motion capture. But it’s
important to remember that with-
out the intimacy of our character
scenes, we’ll lose the impact of our
big action sequences.”
But scale, Moebius empha-
sized, is a matter of perspective,
given the film’s $6 million budget.
“All of the CG movies that have
been made so far have been
made with almost an army,”
Moebius said. “It has become
crazy. With every sequel they
increase their staff, they have a lot
of money and the production
becomes a kind of monster. We
are absolutely not in that league.
We are human. We are a few peo-
ple, with not a great deal of
money, so we are trying to push
in every way we can with
our imaginations.”
Both Moebius and Foster
cited Japanese anime masters
Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro
Otomo as having perfected this
balance. “I admire what Otomo
did for ‘Memories’ (1996), for
example,” Moebius said. “It was
exactly like something I would like
to do: Realistic, with simple lines,
but with a lot of attention to the
precision of gesture and building
every character. My ideal wish
would be to do a movie, either in
traditional animation or in com-
puter animation, which would be
more intimate — no monsters, no
object-dodging, no special effects
— just focused on the people in
normal life. Miyazaki did that in his
animation. We have big monsters
in our movie, and I like that, but
the best part for me is the kind of
scene where the family might
arrive in the country, they start to
run around their new house and
the little girls go to play. It’s simple,
nothing special, it could be done
in live-action, but the animation
brings something more. I think
one day if we had a real movie in
computer animation with nothing
strange, nothing fantastic, it
would be an incredible experi-
ence, because then we could
really see the power of that
animation.”
Visit the Moebius art gallery online
at: http://www.awn.com/mag
/issue5.07/5.07pages/fordham
moebius3.php3 to see additional
full-color artwork.
Republished from VFXPro, a fellow
Creative Planet community Web
site, and on-line news resource for
the visual effects community affili-
ated with the Visual Effects
Society.
Joe Fordham is the editor of
VFXPro.com.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 61
 The Animated
Film Encyclopedia
As a cartoon buff, even a
casual browsing of this book
is dangerous…
R
esearching Hollywood’s
short subjects is a lot hard-
er than it sounds. And the
cartoons are even harder to trace.
Records weren’t kept very long,
and the films weren’t covered by
the press as well as the feature
films at the time. British animation
historian Graham Webb has spent
30 years compiling the data pre-
sented in this book. (It would take
30 years, and I ought to know
having done several volumes
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
book review by Jerry Beck
chronicling just the Warner Bros.
cartoons.) Webb decided to docu-
ment every theatrical cartoon, ani-
mated feature film and cartoon
sequences (i.e. Song Of The
South, Anchors Aweigh, etc.) with
credits, release dates and one-line
plot synopsis. The book is present-
ed in alphabetical order and each
entry is numbered (the final entry,
the Betty Boop cartoon, Zula Hula,
is #6900). An appendix listing films
by series title and an index are also
included.
This is quite an impressive
work. As a cartoon buff, even a
casual browsing of this book is
dangerous — I could spend hours
looking up my favorite cartoons!
As a fellow cartoon historian, I can
attest that this is a first class
research work, with a lot of solid
information that needed to be
published. Webb lists all silent car-
toons and much independent ani-
mation as well. Complete credits
for undocumented Disney shorts,
George Pal Puppetoons, Screen
Gems and DePatie-Freleng shorts,
as well as obscurities like Marty
The Monk join the popular MGM,
Fleischer, Paramount, Lantz,
Terrytoons and UPA films, among
others.
There are mysteries still to
be solved in animation history and
occasionally Webb hit a wall, post-
ing a “No story available” line
when necessary. But this is a must-
have work for anyone wanting
quick basic information on the
oft-neglected, under-researched
Hollywood cartoons.
The Animated Film
Encyclopedia, A Complete Guide
to American Shorts, Features and
Sequences, 1900-1979 by
Graham Webb. Jefferson, North
Carolina: McFarland & Company,
Inc, 2000. 634 pages. ISBN: 0-
7864-0728-8 (library binding,
US$125.00).
Jerry Beck is a cartoon historian,
animation industry executive
and producer. Visit him at
www.cartoonresearch.com.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 62
 Dog Locomotion
and Gait Analysis
A
nimation as we know it
can generally be said to
be a caricature of real-life
movement; if it works, it is because
it in some way resembles the famil-
iar movements of everyday life.
This is true even of animation with
extreme exaggeration, which nev-
ertheless must have some ground-
ing in the physics of the real
world.
Any serious student of ani-
mation should therefore always be
on the lookout for good motion
reference. The first useful works of
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
book review by Jim Bradrick
motion reference, which pre-
dated even motion picture film,
were the glass plate images of
Eadward Muybridge. His rather
murky sequences — showing
horses and other creatures from
dogs to tigers to elephants, plus
an extensive and imaginative
series of studies of human move-
ment — are still in use today, more
than a hundred years since their
creation.
More scientific in nature is
the work of Muybridge’s lesser
k n o w n c o n t e m p o r a r y, t h e
Frenchman, Etienne-Jules Marey,
who was the first to develop a
means of exposing a sequence of
poses on a single plate. More
recently, Harold Edgerton, inven-
tor of the stroboscope and strobo-
scopic photography, found ways
of capturing for us events of the
briefest duration. His work
includes such well-known images
as a drop of splashing milk frozen
as a perfect coronet, and bullets in
the act of penetrating an apple,
exploding a balloon and cutting
through a playing card edge-on.
Motion pictures and videos
viewed in slow-motion and stop-
motion, while they would seem to
be a wealth of information in the
study of motion, are often frustrat-
ing. Material not created specifical-
ly for motion study is often flawed
with the distortion of telephoto
photography, framing that crops
out lower limbs, or the confusion
caused by such natural obstruc-
tions as grass and other features of
terrain that obscure essential
detail. Moreover, the material in
films not designed for motion
study is not organized for it, and
therefore, the time and effort
involved in research can be bur-
densome.
Dogs and Animators?
My own personal library of
over a hundred books on animation
and motion reference is as compre-
hensive in its field as I have been
able to make it, so I was surprised
recently to discover the existence of
Dog Locomotion and Gait Analysis,
by Curtis Brown. However, it was
not through my interest in anima-
tion that I discovered it; it was
because of my love of dogs.
Searching the Internet one day for
Websites on dog breeds, I opened
the site of Hoflin Publishing. The
book’s title leapt out at me.
October 2000 63
 Dog Locomotion and Gait
Analysis was created with the least
thought of animators in mind. The
target readership was simply seri-
ous dog people: breeders, trainers
and dog show judges. Indeed,
there is far, far more here than the
animator as such could ever need
or want, including discussion of
such topics as the misguided stan-
dards specified by official kennel
clubs and breeder associations to
which show judges must adhere.
Yet there is plenty of materi-
al to satisfy the most exacting ani-
mator or CGI model builder.
Although the trot is the gait given
most coverage due to its extensive
use in shows and breed judging,
all the various gaits are shown and
considered, including rarely heard-
of ones such as pronk and pace-
like walk.
How does a short-legged
dog trot differently from a long-
legged dog? How does the gallop
of a dog differ from that of a cat or
horse? How does a dog change
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
over from one gait to another?
What is a diagonal gallop? A dou-
ble-suspension rotary gallop?
What are the advantages of a flex-
ible back [cat] as compared to a
stiff back [horse] in a run?
The author, Curtis Brown,
an engineer and surveyor by
trade, answers these questions in
clear, readable language. The text,
although concerned with pure-
bred dogs primarily, does also
compare their movement with
that of wild creatures, including
wild dogs, wolves, jackals,
and even elephants, bison and
jackrabbits.
Best of all are the illustra-
tions: photographs by the author
and others, and drawings by
Robert Cole. A relief from the dim
imagery of Muybridge, many of
Cole’s lucid line illustrations show
sequences of various gaits per-
formed by a variety of breeds,
from the long-legged saluki to the
bandy-legged English bulldog.
These sequential illustrations alone
are worth twice the price of the
book, and are a gold mine for any-
one wanting reference for move-
ment cycles, whether the inten-
ded use is realism or caricature.
A valuable resource long
known among people of the dog
breeding world, perhaps this book
will now take its place as a stan-
dard reference on the shelf of
every animator as well.
Dog Locomotion and Gait
Analysis by Curtis Brown.
Wheat Ridge, Colorado: Hoflin
Publishing, 1986. 160 pages.
ISBN: 0-8666-7061-0 [trade paper-
back, US$25 + $4 s&h ($8 outside
U.S. & Canada)].
Jim Bradrick is an animator
with Humongous Entertainment
near Seattle.
Note: Readers may contact any
Animation World Magazine
contributor by sending an e-mail
to editor@awn.com.
October 2000 64
 Shaping the Future of
Television Business
WHERE can you source year-round TV Business
Documentary Programme Screenings
31 March – 1 April 2001 • Hotel Martinez, Cannes, France
opportunities on a global scale? www.miptv.com

WHERE can you find a multi-platformed trading floor

MIP
International Television Programme Market
2 - 6 April 2001 • Palais des Festivals, Cannes, France
that moves with the seasons and with the technology? www.miptv.com

And WHERE is the best place for new contacts,

Youth Programming Screenings
6 - 7 October 2001 • Hotel Martinez, Cannes, France
co-productions, joint-ventures. And doing deals? www.mipcom.com

International Television Programme Market

for TV, Video, Cable and Satellite
Here’s where. And here’s how. 8 - 12 October 2001 • Palais des Festivals, Cannes, France
www.mipcom.com

MIP S I A
i ncorporating

CABLE S AT E L L I T E AS I A

International Film, Programme & Hardware Market

for TV, Video, Cable, Satellite, Licensing & Merchandising
December 2001
Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.mipasia.com

and all year long....

Just call us for more details, today!

The ultimate on-line platform for TV & film professionals
www.mipinteractive.com

HEADQUARTERS/FRANCE International Sales Director: Jacques Gibout International Sales Managers: Olivia Chiverton or Eric Villalonga
Reed Midem Organisation Tel: 33 (0) 1 41 90 45 80 Fax: 33 (0) 1 41 90 45 70
USA President TV Sales: Barney Bernhard Vice-President TV Sales: Andrew Lerman Reed Midem Organisation Tel: 1 (212) 370 7470 Fax: 1 (212) 370 7471
UK/AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND Managing Director: Peter Rhodes Reed Midem Organisation Ltd Tel: 44 (0) 20 7528 0086 Fax: 44 (0) 20 7895 0949
JAPAN Reed Midem Organisation Representative: Lili Ono Tel: 81 (3) 3542 3114 Fax: 81 (3) 3542 3115
ASIA/HONG KONG Regional Sales Administrator: Pauline Sim Tel: (852) 2965 1618 Fax: (852) 2507 5186

Reed Midem Organisation, 11 Rue du Colonel Pierre Avia, 75726 Paris Cedex 15, France
 Animation World News
Get your headline news first every day on-line at
http://www.awn.com/headlines
Plus, have industry news delivered to your e-mail every week in
the Animation Flash, AWN’s weekly industry newsletter.
Subscribe today at www.awn.com/flash/
Awards
l ASIFA-Hollywood’s Annie Nominations Announced
l Hiroshima Awards Top Three Prizes To NFB
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Awards
Business
l Stan Lee Media Slashes 19 Positions
l Pseudo: Another Dotcom Downfall
l iCast Buys Shortbuzz & Lays Off 30
l Animation Stock Ticker For Tuesday, September 19, 2000
l Nelvana Purchased For $554M By Corus
l Alvin & The Chipmunks Owners Sue Universal
l B2B Investor Beefs Up Heavy.com
l SGI Adds More Workstations To Disney Features
l Animation Stock Ticker For Tuesday, September 12, 2000
l BKN Int. Launches New Media Division
l Britt Allcroft Co. Transforms Into Gullane Entertainment
l Animation Stock Ticker For Wednesday, September 6, 2000
l Shockwave Moves From Toons To Games
l Pop.com Closes Up Shop
l French Authorities Kill Imagina
l Union Urges Members To Vote Down New Deal
l Pop.com Deal With iFilm Bursts
l DreamWorks’ Unlaunched Pop.com May Merge With iFilm
l Animation Stock Ticker For Tuesday, August 29, 2000
l Phil Roman Set To Turn RKO Pics Into Animated Features
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Business
Call for Entries
l International EMMA Awards Is Looking For Your Digital
l Media Artwork
l Deadline Nears For MIPCOM’s Net Scribe Awards
l Last Call For bit by bit’s On-Screen Art Honors
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Call%for%Entries l X-Men Take Over More International Theatres
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Compiled and written by Rick DeMott
Technology news compiled and written by Mike Amron
Commercials
lQuiet Man’s Johnnie Semerad Stains GE Weathermate Ad
lEditing Concepts Paces Super Hero Spot For Kids Footlocker
l Quiet Man Makes Gopher Scream For Planters Nuts
l R!OT Brings World War II To Malibu Beach
l Wild Brain Thinks Up Spots For Scandinavian Designs
l DMA Dances In The Sky With Delta Airlines Ad
l Computer Cafe Creates F/X Maze For Radio Shack
l Sideshow Motion Design Livens Up Olympic NBC Coke Ads
l Wildlife & Fugitive Creates New World For Sketchers
l The Hive Swarms For New Cable Channel SceneOne
l Editing Concepts’ Jesse Reisner Slows Time For Pillsbury
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Commercials
Education
l A More Solid Foundation
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Education
Films
l Scary Movie Holds Strong In IBO, Top Prems By Hollow &
l 60 Seconds
l After The Dust Settles, Leggy Cowboys Is The Top F/X Flick
l In The US
l Look! Creates Wartime Effects For Pavilion Of Women
l Tigger Bounces High In Sweden, Scary Debuts In IBO
l The Cell Slips Behind Live-Action Leaders
l Image Comics’ Powers Optioned By Columbia
l Ollin Studio Produces CGI Short That Looks Like Clay
l Derek Lamb & Jeffrey Hale Team On New Short
l Digital Film Snatches Opening For New Guy Ritchie Flick
l The Cell Gains Steam Over US Holiday Weekend
l Ghost Rider Reaches New Dimension
l Moebius Twists His Own CGI Feature
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Films
October 2000 66
 Events Licensing
l INDAC Has Grown Into An Animation Fest Worth Checking Out l ToyFare Magazine Names 25 Best Action Figures of
l Don’t Miss The Animated Cartoon Festival For Young People l All Time
l Week with the Masters Fest Brings Fine and Snowden
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Licensing
l To India

l BAFTA Hands Out Awards For Interactive Content

l MIFED Market 2000 Will Focus On New Marketing Straregies

l Savannah Film and Video Festival Is The Place For Up-
l And-Coming Talent
l San Luis Obispo Festival Highlights Indie Flicks
l Digital Media Innovations Conference Converges On Ontario
l Second Cartoon Masters Event Will Look At Which Tool
l For Which Markets?
l Leipzig Fest Celebrates Two Under-Appreciated Art Forms
l TDIF Is The 3D Fest For The New CGI Mecca
l CMJ FilmFest Highlights The Synergy Between Toons & Tunes
l Nan Desu Kan Brings The Art Of Anime To The Rockies
People
l Olive Jar To Represent Director Bruce Alcock
l Film Roman Names New Prez of TV Programming &
l Development
l Mondo Media Signs Gundam Designer
l Blue Sky Places Jewell At Director Of Publicity Post
l Aussie Animator Joins Computer Cafe Crew
l Discreet Names New Executive Vice President
l Blur Studio Promotes Shier To Producer
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=People

l Teen Comic Age Is An Opportunity For Young Talent To

Technology
l Find A Home
l More Fluid Motion?
l Burbank’s Children’s Fest Brings The Best In Kid Content
l Messiah Stands Alone
l To Toon City

l LIMA Exec Conference’s Keynote Speaker Is Commissioner

l Imaging With Live-Action
l Of Trademarks & Patents
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Technology
l DRAGON TALES Writer To Speak At WIA Writers’ Group Seminar

l CICFF Is The Largest Kids’ Film Fest In North America Television

l Toonz Conference Touches On The Challenges Facing Animators
l I Catelli Animati Festival: Toon Fest Italian Style
l Saint Gely Celebrates Short Films & Its 15th Anniversary
l “Three Zanders” Showcases Animator Jack Zander & His
l Talented Offspring
l WB’s Baby Blues Gets Second Season Pick-Up
l Nick Hits It Big With New Nick Jr Series Oswald
l Pasi and Nelvana Commit To Fry Comic Strip Toon
4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Television

l Animation Writers Caucus September Schmooze Features

l Union Prez Tom Sito

4 http://www2.awn.com/mag/news.php3?item=Events

Internet and Interactive

l VoiceAnimations Adds Text-To-Speech Feature To E-mail Greetings
l Toon In: Web Animation Guide For Friday, September 15, 2000.
l AlwaysI.com Goes Platinum With Comic Book Production Deal

l Stan Lee Media Buys Conan Rights

l Smarterville Creates Safe Learning Site For Kids

l iFilm Sets Up Web Screening Room For Agents

l Toon In: Web Animation Guide For Friday, September 8, 2000

l Spazzco Nets 3 Toon Deal With Cartoon Network Online

l Toon In: Web Animation Guide For Friday, September 1, 2000

l Locomotion.com Brings Latin Language To The Net

l Electronic Arts Land Coveted Potter Rights

4 http://www2.awn.com/magt/news.php3?item=Internet%and%Interactive

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 67

 Next Issue’s Highlights
Television, November 2000

O
ur November Television issue is huge! We are featuring a profile of veteran animation
director and producer Eric Radomski. We are also going to take a long hard look at
primetime animation and try to figure out what went wrong this year. In addition,
we will showcase five shows that are extra special for many reasons. They include Cartoon
Network’s Home Movies, France’s Belphégor and Oxygen’s X-Chromosome.
We are going to hear from DreamWorks’ Frank Gladstone about his recent trip to China.
Other articles will be an interview with Mark Dindal, director of Disney’s next upcoming fea-
ture film, The Emperor’s New Groove, and a piece from Robert Ramirez, co-director of
DreamWorks’ first animated feature-length direct to video Joseph: King of Dreams, who is
going to write on his story learning experience. We are also going to have many event reviews
including Cartoon Forum, MIPCOM, a drawn diary by Marv Newland from I Castelli, and an
extensive photo scrapbook from this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival care of
Gary Schwartz. We also have our usual Internet company profile, gaming column and more!

Upcoming Editorial Calendar

Television November 2000

Location-based Entertainment December 2000

The Year In Review January 2001

Stop-Motion and Motion Capture February 2001

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE October 2000 68