Moho Forum

Yuk! Makes me want to spoon my own eyes out.

I'm really disappointed in some of you guys.

What a bunch of old fuddy-duddies.
Thank goodness some old fart didn't rip into
me like that when I got interested in animation,
it might have scared me off.

You guys should know better.

Madrobot,

Ahem - I think it's *you* who should know better. But maybe I'm mistaken -- could you please post me the link to your own full length feature animation. That way I can know how wrong I was.

Actually, that's really what you ought to do for the kid -- it will encourage him to know that most of us here are wrong and his dream is easily obtained. So, by all means, point us to your feature length work so we can judge it on its own merits.

Good on you Mkelly,
keep up the good work, champ.

How many of us would have thrown in the towel years and years and years ago if we did exactly what everyone said who told us not to do something? Or told us "it will be so hard you shouldn't try."?

The key to asking for advice is that you will get a lot of responses. Some will be encouraging some won't be. Some will be "pie in the sky" and some advice will be like listening to Eeyor from Winnie the Pooh.

If you ASK for advice. Ask for help or make a statement that elicits a response then you should take those answers in the spirit of the asking. You asked for free advice. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. There is no right or wrong answer in these discussions.

You do want to take the responses seriously. Consider the response based on the experience of the people who make them.

Would it be better if we all said:

"Oh you are right! What was I thinking? I should go do a full length anmimation right now! Thanks for pointing out the obvious!"

Or would it be better in the long run to at least HEAR from people who MIGHT know a thing or two about the BAD things that can happen?

-vern

Yep that's fair enough Heyvern.

I guess what I'm getting at is that while he said the word "feature",
and that became a focus of a lot of responses,
I'd like to think we could take into account the guys age
and take the youthful naiveté as a positive thing
worth encouraging.

Which some people have done.
The kid's talking about some nuts and bolts getting his mates
to record voices or whatever - thats a world apart from
some of the requests we see on here from people wanting
to get shows up.

He did ask for help, yes, and everyone has the right to
respond to that as they see fit. I'm not arguing that point.
All I'm doing is suggesting that it's ok to say
"Dude, you want to make a feature? Those are long.
In the mean time record your mates, and make animation."

The key point to get across to young would-be animators is
(in my opinion) START GENERATING ANIMATION RIGHT NOW.
You know what they say, you do 1000s of bad drawings before
you do a decent one, so start drawing.

The rest of it frankly (in my opinion) is not relevant to someone
starting out, especially at a young age. They don't need horror stories,
it's not simply that it's not constructive - it's not relevant.
They're young. Let them sort it out.

Bitter old blokes (and I include myself in that category) talking doom
and gloom is like a different language to a 15 year old.
What it ends up being is a conversation between the adult posters
rather than a direct response to the initial request for advice.

I hear what you're saying about them getting the harsh word
sooner or later, and that's fine (to hold that view),
I'm just expressing a different sentiment I guess.
(And before anyone gets emotional, let me stress that point,
I'm expressing a sentiment. There is no leader board for that.)

And now back to our usual program,
where I shut up and get back to work...

Madrobot,

I don't know if it remains in this thread (because either this or another thread was started by this kid at the same time and they got kind of confused) but somewhere most of us gave the simple advice to start small.

In that place (wherever it exists here) he was still asking about feature films, but we were telling him it was far better if he just started off with a 30 second animation and learned all he needed there. That's the trouble with you coming late to this party -- you didn't follow all his threads so you are making a judgment on the advice offered that is incomplete.

But in this thread (which was clearly focused on why those of us who are familiar with AS just haven't jumped up and made features) I think the opinions expressed by the professionals were all valid (and that includes GK, who I disagree with). Most of us were trying to explain the actual question -- the other thread tended to be more specifically about what this kid should do to proceed.

There is no way to come to a thread at the very end and get a sense of how it is progressing -- but if you are going to do that then I think you are fair game for any backlash for your ignorance.

This whole obsession with making "feature length" films is beyond me.

Over on the Hash forum Martin is doing the same thing. He had some money to invest. He had a bunch of talented people... but the project was huge... took a few years and burned a lot of people out. At the end they got it done but because so much effort by so few was spread so thin the results weren't as good (in my lowly opinon) as what could have been achieved focusing the same talent and money on a super high quality short format production.

When I asked Martin Hash about choosing this long format instead of a short film he said "I want to make feature length animations. A lot of people are making short animations. I want to make 'movies'. I can't tell the stories I want to tell in a short format."

So... there it is. There is some kind of... status tied to making a "feature length" movie. Some people seem to think that short films aren't as "important". I don't think this is true to be honest but there it is.

Maybe it's the money. You can't market a short film like you can a feature length film.

-vern

Not to sound like the jaded capitalist, but all of the animation work I've done revolves around a business model/objective - ultimately to generate cash.

Animation is usually a means to an end of a larger goal and is often used as a sub part to a larger effort. Feature length films are certainly a "product" but other things such as merchandising weigh heavily on decisions to even make an animated feature.

ASP works great in my studio for creating animation that goes in commercials on television and web - they attract attention to sell stuff.

However, "Product" animations like the Simpsons or Yugio are built around either an attitude or a merchandising theme that can fund them. Find the attitude or merchandising to support it and the actual tool becomes irrelevant. (Greykid's work for example - ASP is a tool to fulfill broader marketing requirements)

The art mercenary,
Mark

A "Feature-Length" film is something that makes you valid. Think of the experience- pay a bunch of money to sit in a theater and watch something that's 30' tall. It's a big undertaking, it's got a history of glamour instilled in it. If you make one, you've undoubtedly fulfilled some personal bit of importance, and compensated for your shortcomings.

Yeah, so what. I agree with Vern. That desire is beyond me too.

for 25 years, the majority of my income has come from commercials. Done a couple of 'features' in there, and I could happily live without that experience.

What happened to Jackass, anyway?

I think, when we were all mere kid, we sat down in front of a TV or in a movie theatre and watched Disney's "Snow White" (the first feature length animated film), and said, "I want to do that!" So we went to school and practiced drawing and animation. Some of us were given a 8mm movie camera to help express our ideas. I was one of those kids.

Then one day I woke up and found that I have created a 'Feature-Lenght' film. But it wasn't what I had expected. I have hours of animations, in short 10 to 60 second clips, disconnected from each other without a coherent story or style. And I said, "Wow! Imagine what I could have done if I were more focus."

It's been a long time since I was fifteen, but I started a large "Feature Length" project. If nothing more than to see if I can do it.

Jackass - so stay focus and take it one bite at a time. It may not be a great piece of work, it may be the worst thing since "Plan Nine From Outer Space", but it says something about you for tackle such a project and completing it.

F.C. Snow

P.S. - Good Luck

Mkelley,

You'll find the "retroactively dignify post" button on your forehead.
Press it by belting your head against the desk.

Well, at least we now know where Jackass went to (he just changed user names :>)

Mkelley and Madrobot,

That's some of the funniest flaming I've ever read. Great to see sense of humors are it tact.

jackass wrote:Why don't very skilled anime pro users make thier own flim? It way cheaper than other animation programs. They have nothing to lose since they don't have to make back the money spent making it. You have the tool and skills to make something that will look better than snow white at the cost of 100$.

I don't know, probably because it is easier to make 1-2 minute shorts. Plus a feature film requires a screenplay.

But hey, we made a feature length film. (see link below)

http://vimeo.com/areyouguystwins

Of course our film is no where near "Snow White" quality in any stretch of the imagination -- but we did it -- and we did it mostly in Anime Pro. And yes, we wrote the screenplay and did the audio ourselves.

I suppose most people would say our film is pathetic beyond belief -- BUT like you - we always wanted to make a film. We wrote three feature length film screenplays a few years ago, entered a few screenplay competitions and lost. So we decided to animate one of the screenplays ourselves.

What the hell. It's cheap and we had the time. It took a little over a year to animate the film and 3-4 months to write the screenplay.

If you have the time and the means to work on a feature length animated film I say go for it!

It's refreshing to see someone excited about animating with hopes and dreams about taking on the "big guys" in the industry. That's cool.

Do it while you are young, because when you get older life has a way of taking away all of your energy and creativity. Then you end up like us, old and miserable, and wondering why we can't get a "real" jobs to pay the bills after we spent the last three years of our lives drawing cartoons.

I wish Anime Pro, powerful desktop computers and the internet were available when we were both 15 years old, way back when in 1981. Who knows where we could be now?

Umm...don't answer that question.

http://iguessineedajob.wordpress.com/