YES! So, as I mentioned previously, I’m starting up a new Precinct short animation, the goals of which are:
to give viewers a bit more of the story we’re dealing with in the series
to reveal a bit more about Det. Ackersley’s personality
to show lots more ACTION and fast cutting
to shamelessly wallow in my John Farnham love and persuade him to get involved with the show
Since the production of Precinct episode 00a, “Good Friends”, was short and fast, and I was planning for MIPCOM and working a full time job then, I didn’t blog about the process at all. This time I want to post a lot about how it’s going, to (a) get the word out about The Precinct and (b) keep me motivated to finish.
Since I knew the point of this cartoon was mostly to show a little animated Farnham singing, the first thing I did was decide which of his songs I’d use as backing (yes, this cartoon will be packed with delicious copyrighted music, so I probably won’t be able to legally put it online).
I sat down with my Farnham collection and decided on a montage of the Precinct theme song with “Break The Ice”, which Mr. Farnham sang for the movie RAD, and the Little River Band chestnut “Playing to Win”. The three tracks are all synthtastic and in the same key, so they mix well.
Once I’d sequenced the backing music I wrote the opening scene, a short bit set in 1986 which features Ackersley getting yelled at by his angry boss. It concludes, slightly cheesily, with the words “playing to win”. At which point the song bursts forth.
After doing a few thumbnail panels on the tram, yesterday I started the storyboard/animatic properly. Here’s what I have so far!
I haven’t “written” the whole “Playing to Win” sequence that’s coming up, because it has no dialogue. Instead I’ll just keep doing thumbnails of the montage images.
More soon!
EDIT: I worked more on this today. Now we’re almost up to the “Playing to Win” bit.
This blog post by animation artist Eddie Fitzgerald made me think!
Also, I uploaded some Precinct art I did for an exhibition last year to RedBubble so they can be purchased as little greeting cards and nice art prints:
I’ve bought a couple things myself so I can see what the quality’s like. I’ll let you know. The T-shirts I got in the past were quite nice. I expect the papergoods will look even better. Remember, every Precinct art object you purchase assists with the care and feeding of me, and the development of the upcoming, Farnham-centric, Precinct cartoon.
First, something unrelated: in case you didn’t know, Tony Martin and guest writer Justin Heazlewood both have new writing on The Scrivener’s Fancy, a website which appears to have popped up out of nowhere to make me happy. Good for them!
Secret proj
I alluded in an earlier post to a “secret project”. There’s not really anything secret about it. The very important person I want to have involved in The Precinct is, clearly, John Farnham.
Maybe you’re wondering why. I’ll tell you why. First, watch these videos:
The man can sing absolutely anything! He is an astounding talent, and funny, too. I didn’t know until relatively recently that he’d sung songs for a number of American movie soundtracks in the ’80s, Fletch being the only one of these movies I’d actually seen.
Some of these songs aren’t that brilliant (that Fletch one in particular does nothing for me), but Farnham’s voice MAKES YOU BELIEVE! I can’t think of another singer who could sing the lines “black leather angels on a midnight ride / soft on the surface but trembling inside” and get away with it.
That’s why I wrote The Precinct’s title song, “Blind Man’s Bomb”, with him in mind. It is my fervent hope that he’ll sing that theme song for my show. Also, I wrote him in as a character in the first episode, so it’ll bugger the script if he won’t do the voice. Because who can impersonate him? Nobody, that’s who.
So the “secret project” is a new short Precinct animation telling a bit more of the series’ story. Most of it will be montage, and that montage will be set to LRB’s “Playing To Win”.
I like how Good Friends turned out, but watching it back I feel like it’s not representative of the pace the show will have — The Precinct should move at a lightning clip. Lots of fast cuts. Tell the story quick!
My pacing is not such a problem, but I’m not always very dynamic in my camera setups and moves (I like long, locked-off camera mid shots), so I’m going to work extra hard to make this new animation punchy in that way.
And I’ll be animating John Farnham himself into it, singing the song. So I’m going to have to watch more of these clips. You know, to study his moves.
Last month, my friend Saul’s little boy heard jokes being told and thought he’d tell us a few of his own. They cracked me up!
Q: What do you give a sick statue?
A: Meat!
Q: What do you give a flower?
A: Building!
Q: What do you give a rabbi?
A: Rabbi hair!
Mostly he came up with the jokes by looking around and spotting things he could name, but since there were no rabbis around at the time I reckon he might be talented.
I asked Dave if I could submit my own blog post for the show, the idea being that I could draw in interested parties that know me, and not Dave, and to introduce my own voice to existing followers as the other creative party at this point. So allow myself to introduce myself.
I’m Adam Wajnberg, and I’m the co-writer of The Precinct. I say co-writer and not co-creator, because this has been very much Dave’s baby from the start. Dave and I have been mates since high school, and it has seemed inevitable for years now that we’d end up working closely on something together. It was usually me insisting upon a partnership, because Dave has a much better work ethic than I do, and I wanted to take advantage of that.
My own training is in screenwriting. I completed RMIT’s Professional Screenwriting course in 2006, a feat which has led to much call centre work with some of Australia’s largest corporations. I have also previously worked with Dave as a voice actor and general sounding board on Herman, The Legal Labrador. Dave has animated a short I wrote called Badlands, which has won much praise despite (or because of) it’s 40-second run time.
Dave was already up and running with The Precinct when he asked me to come aboard. I was unsure if I could add much. I’m a fan of cop shows, but not to the obsessive degree Dave is. Moreover, I recoil at the procedurals and prefer the narrative (so I’ll devour The Wire, and never sit through a whole episode of say, Law and Order). But a couple of walk-and-talks revealed that I had an angle on determining a plot thread that Dave had never really had to do before.
For those who are interested, the working relationship between Dave and I looks like this: we both fall into the “misanthropic, out-of-shape Jewish man” type, a figure riddled with redundancies. Thankfully, we differ in the details. Dave is calm and workmanlike, I’m hyper and lazy. I can burst with a good 15 minutes of productive ideas and then fall asleep, Dave will concentrate for 2 or 3 hours before needing to take a sip of water. Dave agonizes over each beat, I prefer a quick and dirty approach.
"Either we get this scene right or we watch some Daily Show"
More to the point, Dave insists on creating as much realism as possible, while I move more towards creating a cartoony wonderworld. This goes back to Herman, where I insisted on characterizing the voices (ie. making them higher pitched) while Dave wanted the voices to be normally pitched. Dave gets his way most of the time, which is fitting as he’s the director. But if I make a particularly good case, he’ll go with my suggestion. That doesn’t happen often, because I’ll be dozing and/or playing darts rather than articulating why I think a scene should work a certain way.
Beyond that, it boils down to strengths. I’m better at creating plot, but Dave is better at keeping an eye on continuity. We’re both natural dialoguists, but Dave is better at keeping things succinct. I usually err on the side of fewer swears to give them greater impact, while Dave likes to whip them out with impunity. Dave likes a challenge, I prefer praise — so Dave gets encouraged by a scene that doesn’t work, with the mindset being “this needs to be better”, and I prefer to be egged on when things are working. Dave gets stuck with a lot of the re-drafting, because I lose faith when things don’t work right STRAIGHT AWAY.
But overall, we work well together, and much of that comes from the friendship and very similar world-views. I think we’re both looking forward to when we can work at it on a daily basis, in an office, with rolled up shirtsleeves and suspenders and a big whiteboard with random mugshots and scribbles bestrewn on the surface. And mustaches. And steamy parmas.
This week is a big week: it’s ANTI-PROCRASTO WEEK.
My workload lightens up a bit this week so I’m setting myself some tasks to take care of, the stuff that gets pushed back when I’m being paid to draw talking penises or animate moustache demons.
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1. Precinct scripts
We now have three scripts at complete first draft stage, and two more itching to be polished up to that standard. This week I’m going to make eps 3 & 4 presentable.
2. CYOA scope
Our cross-platform strategising is going swimmingly. We had two extra long “break-the-back-of-it” meetings last week, which have got us well on the track to finishing the strategy document and report for Film Victoria. What I need to do this week is write up an informal scope document outlining the brilliant Precinct Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game/project/experience so Eskimo can write up a budget for the thing.
3. Secret proj
I invented myself a NEW EXCITING SECRET PROJECT based on our strategy talks. There’s someone very important we need to get involved if this series is going to work, and I’m going to make that happen by blowing his mind with some custom animation. I won’t get it done this week but I will make a start.
4. Nakedfella Productions website
Not Precinct-related, except that I need to keep work flowing in if I’m gonna take time to work on my own thing as well. So I gotta set up a lovely but simple new site promoting ME, the animation gun-for-hire.
5. Herman pitch materials
Since going to MIPCOM, I’ve known something very important: kids shows are stupid, and usually based on stupid premises. You wouldn’t believe some of the crud that gets on TV, unless you have kids and you’ve been forced to watch it.
So it’s not impossible that a semi-decent kids show or movie could be made starring my character Herman, The Legal Labrador.
He’s a dog who’s a lawyer. I made a twenty minute short about him and his sad-act owner, Chuck. It was reasonably successful despite its length. I think it’s got legs, personally. So I’m going to start pitching it in earnest.
Lately I’ve been hearing two concepts that disturb me. They’re related.
One is that artists in the very exciting 21st century need to “engage”* with their audiences using various Web 2.0 methodologies and mass marketing principles. It’s not enough to make something, you have to Facebook it. You have to expose yourself.
The other thing, more disturbing but stupider, is that writing as I know it is DEAD! This refers to the idea that, thanks to all this technology, audiences will no longer stand (or sit) for a story that is simply told to them. They must be given the chance to “interact” with it. They must be able to affect the story themselves.
I was at a talk on these themes, and a rather silly man bluntly told us writers in the audience that it’s the FOOCHA, and we’d better get with it or die on the vine. Drop that novel and start programming an interactive online distributed story quick, before a fifteen-year-old with a Twitter acount steals your readers!
I was just reading Justin Heazlewood’s “Laptopping” newsletter. Justin, the comedian known as the Bedroom Philosopher, uses his newsletter not just as a means to update his fans on his upcoming gigs but also as a virtual psychoanalyst. He pours himself into the newsletter, telling personal stories which sometimes don’t reflect well on him or could be embarrassing. He writes about his persistent problems with procrastination and negativity, and obsesses over gigs that didn’t go so well.
Now, this is all in keeping with what we might call his “art practice”. As he points out in the latest edition, part of his schtick is going out on stage and acting like he doesn’t know what he’s doing and looking confused. Fucking with his guitar strap. Mumbling.
At a good gig, this gets him sympathy, and big laughs when he reveals he is in fact a competent (even inspired) funnyman. At a bad gig, people just assume he is yet another crap comedian (yes, there’s a couple around) and lose interest. Clink glasses. Talk over him.
Anyway, I bring his newsletter up because it exposes, for me, a problem with this blog you’re reading: it’s not sure what it wants to be when it grows up.
If it’s a “personal” blog, or an “artist” blog, then I should be writing more stories about the day-to-day minutiae of developing an animated series. More setbacks. More worries.
If it’s a “promotional” blog, then the stories should all be upbeat and focus on exciting things that are happening with the show. Nothing personal or off topic.
Obviously it’s at an awkward place in between, where it’s occasionally candid, frequently glossy (as in, “glossing over things”) and not updated often enough — because, do I talk about our setback? Do I reveal our awesome idea? I know this would be more interesting if I did, but it might not be beneficial for the project to lay it all out in public.
So we come back to the original topic — I’m not sufficiently “engaging” the audience, i.e. you. Otherwise there’d be more of you.
(See? Right now I know that’s not the correct thing to say from a “promotional” standpoint. Ignore what I just said. THIS BLOG HAS A MILLION READERS)
On one level I’m not concerned by how many people read the blog, because (a) it’s partly just a diary exercise for me, albeit a self-censored one), and (b) the larger audience for it will come once the project’s further along and has a bit more “public profile”.
But I’ll continue to struggle over what kind of info gets posted here. Maybe it just needs more pictures.
Oh, and the talk about how writers of the future must change their ways and go digital multiplatform? Total shit. The dope I heard speak insisted that “platform”, not “content”, “is king”.**
Maybe he was just trying to spark a bit of fire in a room full of muddleheaded technophobe wanna-be authors with nothing better to do at 10am on a Thursday, but I reckon those muddleheads are being severely misled. Now they’re probably all learning PHP because they think it’ll help their writing career.
Write good. Then worry about adapting yourself or your work to platforms.
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* A friend who works at a museum told me they are made to use the word “engage” in reference to the work they do giving lectures and talking with school groups (”we want to engage with audiences”), because the words “teach” or “learn” imply that the audience will learn or be taught something. And then they’ll be disappointed if they don’t. Easier to say everyone was “engaged” and leave it at that.
** Anyone who says anything “is king” is probably a wanker. Unless they’re talking about an actual king.
Episode one in a series highlighting shitheels with skills far beyond mine. Today: Scott Vandenbosch. Check out his beautiful artwork, and tell him, from me, to go to hell.
PS: I changed the look of this blog to something much sexier and Precinct-appropriate. And now that I’m running Wordpress 2.8, it has widgets and a navbar. Nice, clean design by Eric Crooks. Cheers.
I’m animating freelance on one episode of an animated TV series. The way this works is that I receive an allocation of shots to animate, and refer to the storyboards for a guide as to how I go about it.
The board artist on this episode is lazy. The drawings are good (very good! better than mine would be), consistent, on model. But the characters’ posing is pedestrian, boring, useless.
Let me show you how the artist has interpreted one particular exchange. I’ve redrawn it and changed the dialogue so as not to embarrass the production or get me in trouble:
I think this is a representative scene from the episode. Essentially, any time an action has not been specifically noted in the script (i.e. “the guys jump across the river”, “Dr Frankenjosh raises his fist in anger”), the characters stand up straight, in a row, and hold out what I now call the “beggar hand” at each other.
Clearly this gesture, used over and over, is meant to stand in for more appropriate ones, such as a subtle head tip, a furious fist waggle or a confused head scratch. Approximately ninety shots out of the 200 in the episode contain at least one beggar hand, and usually more. And there’d be even more of them if the characters didn’t happen to be holding objects in their hands at times.
I don’t mean to roast this one person. He or she (I don’t know who they are) are not the only one to do this. That’s the problem. Many board artists do the EXACT SAME THING constantly.
See, I’m not suggesting board artists hurt themselves trying to come up with a wacky, crazy gesture for every single line the characters say. I’m realistic about how TV cartoon production works. There’s a certain amount of “cheaping out”. Plus the scripts are often uninspiring. And I’ve been told “Why come up with elaborate, thought out acting for a scene when the animators are just going to do it their way anyhow?”
But we can think, just for a few moments, about what a character might do while they say a line of dialogue. Would they really hold their hand out in front of them? Maybe drawing a more appropriate pose, or not moving the character at all but drawing in a more apt facial expression would be the way to go.
True, the animators might not decide to use your acting, but the fact you put the effort in might at least cause them to think a bit harder themselves about what the character should be doing.
Let me state again that this artist’s drawings are good. Better than what I can do. When I draw boards, I don’t stay on model without great effort. My layouts are often not very good. My perspective drawing is garbage.
But I try harder when it comes to the acting, and as far as I know, the bosses above me and workers down the line appreciate it. When they’re not cussing me out for the lousy background perspective.
So please, storyboard artists: lose the beggar hand! And anyone else who’s privy to the board artist’s work on a production: when you see them draw a beggar hand, shame them into removing it. They’ll thank you one day!
The title references my interior monologue when I consider what I should post about. I’ve been putting off talking much about the show because there’s always lots of small developments happening but rarely anything real big and awesome to talk about.
Disturbing things in the animation industry lately. Our friend Gene over at Fatkat just shut his company down, and he’s not the only one having trouble by any means.
But over here at Cop Action Video (”No Overheads ‘Cause We Got No Employees And We Sleep In Our Studio”), we’re warming our hands over a flaming barrel, looking to the skies and plotting away.
We’ve continued our cross-platform strategy planning. I’m really happy with the great ideas we’re busting out in our meetings over at Eskimo, so much so that I’m not even telling what they are. That’s right, they’re so bloody good, I’m keeping my fool trap shut so we don’t find out six months from now that Barbie.com stole them.
I continue to be a bit skeptical about TV networks, who, in turn, seem a bit skeptical about us (if they’re aware of us, that is). I’d love to say I’m expecting to grasp us fully to their bosoms, but they’re probably selling those bosoms at the moment to pay for more “reality” shows. This is more reason than ever to be thinking fourth-dimensionally, as Doc Brown says, and consider ways to (a) just go ahead and make your own animated series without massive cash injections, and/or (b) develop the series idea into something a more than a “TV show”, rather, into an interactive project.
I’m talking about the stuff I was proposing in this post. That’s what we’ve been planning. Only the new ideas have made it much more fun, interesting and — yes — interactive.
Adam and I are continuing to write episodes. These are going well, especially considered as first drafts (which they are), but we should be hoeing into them faster than we are. I especially have been slack, occupied with things like paid work, putting on comics events and doing wedding planning (if you didn’t know, I’m getting married to some hot chick).
