T-U-R-T-L-E Power

Tonight I finally went to see the new TMNT movie, which I'd been really interested in checking out. First impressions are, it's about what I expected. It succeeds at giving some fun action sequences, and bringing the turtles back together (in the world of the movie, and in ours). The story left something to be desired, but it was fun, a great nostalgic ride down memory lane for those of us who grew up with the saturday morning cartoon and 3 live action movies.

I was actually pretty impressed by the animation. When you compare it to other animated versions of the Turtles, especially the 80's cartoon, it's leaps and bounds ahead. From the trailers I could tell that the martial-arts and action would be the strong points--the timing and weight really are great, and they pull off some very complicated stunts that surely would have had me scratching my head if I had to sit down and animate them. I was surprised to see that there were also a few times where the acting, even on Casey and April, were very expressive and hit the emotional core of the dialogue straight on, and those moments entertained me more than anything else in the movie, (often spurring a slight laugh of appreciation from me, probably confusing the people sitting around me). Now the lip sync and mouth shapes of the characters, were definitly weaker. The ironic thing was that in the human characters the mouth shapes weren't exaggerated enough, and in the turtles I thought the mouth shapes were mostly over-exaggerated. But it still beats the lip "sync" of those Henson costumes in the old movies ;)
So all in all, I had a good time because there was enough for me as an animator to appreciate, in the action and even in some of the acting. The movie's biggest downfall is of course that it really fails to bring any heart into the story. It has potential for it, because the movie centers around an emotional divide between Raph and Leo (Mikey and Donnie don't really do much), but most of the plot lines and emotional changes are explained away in dialogue in an obvious attempt to talk down to the kids. The interesting thing is that when movies are made "for kids", there are these visable attempts to make sure every plot line is absolutely clear in words. Ya know what, I think kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and if you give them a story with a strong emotional core, they will react to it and appreciate it, whether or not they fully understand the deeper meanings. But honestly, had I seen this in my Ninja Turtle fan days, I know I would have absolutely loved it.
The humor attempts to retain the one-line zingers that the Turtles are known for, but it didn't succeed in giving me more than some chuckles. Not so long ago I watched the original Turtle movies, and they still made me laugh more than these jokes did (Don: "Yeeah...Yea-Yeeeeaaah!" in the 2nd movie). Overall there is a consistency that picks up from the other movies (Raph and Leo don't get along, Casey and Raph are friends), and even a nice nod to the other movies at the end--(if you look closely, on Splinter's shelf you can see the cracked TGRI ooze canister). What they need to do for the sequel, and yes I'm sure there will be one, is to take the believability from the live action movies--put the characters in our world, one we can recognize, not a generic cartoon world--and give recognizable traits to the human characters (make Casey Jones the tough and not so sleek guy he is here, and April more than jack-of-all-trades sidekick). And don't forget the other characters! Michelangelo and Donatello really don't deal with anything personal.

I can't end yet without talking about one crazy shot at the final battle sequence. I don't know how long this shot is, but it starts with the camera behind the Turtles, April, Casey, and Splinter heading towards the huge crowd of Foot Soldiers (yes, another CG crowd), and continues to follow them as they kick and fight themselves around and through the crowd, leaving one character and picking up on another as it goes, until they finally end up on the other side of the crowd. The camera is constantly moving and following the action, and it never cuts! I can only imagine the meetings about this shot, not only in terms of logistics of animation and camera work, but also in terms of rendering the incredible number of characters. What a headache!

Go for some entertaining animation, cinematography, and nice renders, just don't go in with high expectations for an engrossing story. Enjoy the walk down memory lane, and the fact that the turtles actually look pretty good!

Eric Volz

I'm not a politically charged person. I usually don't even pick up on things like this because I never know if I can trust the source, when it comes to random things on the internet. While I really want this blog to be about animation, it is a blog after all, so allow me to deviate from the plan for this. Read on to the other posts to see what I normally post about.

**I should explain a bit. It's about an American who supposedly was wrongly accused of a murder in Nicaragua. His family and friends have pretty hard evidence and many witnesses.



This is a pretty insane story. There's a group on Facebook and a MySpace page devoted to the cause. Here is the official site: http://www.friendsofericvolz.com
I don't know all the facts. I just think it's something worth spreading around.

Brad Bird is crazy

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4617804532425813974

I can't remember where, but somewhere in my news reader I found a link to this video. It's a panel of Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, Andrew Stanton, and Brad Bird, talking about the origins of computer animation (and consequently Pixar), and much more. It's long, but if you have an hour to kill sometime this weekend, come back and watch it! Watch it in shifts if you have to, but it's really great.

Brad Bird is the craziest animator I've seen :P He's sort of like Robin Williams in the spontaneous way of how he talks. I can't help but crack up whenever I see him interviewed! In some ways I can imagine how hard it must be to work under him, I'm sure he's every bit as picky as Walt Disney was. On the other hand, I can see his talent as a director by how he communicates his thoughts with such specificity and physicality. The guy knows how to communicate a story, whether it's The Iron Giant or the meal he ate last week.

AWN reports on Framestore NY, Geico

Check out this article about Framestore NY on AWN! It's instigated of course by the VES Award that FS-NY just won for last year's Gecko spot, "Chat", but they go on to talk about making the spots they made this year too. Two of the ones they talk about, "Local" and "Seconds", were ones I worked on. I see "Seconds" on TV quite often now, (the one where he's riding an escalator, talking about how little time he has to say everything he has to say in a commercial), it airs back to back with "Puma", which I did not work on.

It's nice to see Framestore NY get some recognition. I was surprised when I found out that they really haven't been in New York for that long, and have been doing 3D in commercials for even less time than that. Sometimes they seem to have the "little brother syndrome" when compared with Framestore in London, I met people around New York who didn't even know that Framestore had a studio here! But let me tell you, they do cool projects, everyone there is friendly and extremely talented, and they care about the quality of what they produce--(in terms of both animation and lighting/rendering). Oh, and there's the "little" fact that I never once had to work a weekend for them in 4 months (and I think I only had to work late once). This is a testament to the production management and scheduling, and staffing up of crew to meet the demands of production. It was not a slow time at the studio at all.

I finished that gig at Framestore last Friday, but not before scoring 66,909,000 points in Simpson's Pinball, and consequently landing 2nd place on the scoreboard (if you've ever played that game, you know how hard it is)! I think people thought I was a pinball nut, cause I played that every day at lunch with other guys there (and sometimes after work). Don't get me wrong, pinball is not all that I care about, but it was another element that added to the enjoyable work environment. Here's to a great four months, and to all the friends I made there!

Freelancer's Guide #3: Health Insurance wake-up call

So I subscribe to the Freelancer's Union blog in my feed reader, and they posted a link to this article, from the New York magazine, which talks about how many young workers in New York are uninsured, and a few horror stories from people who found out the costs of not having it. It's quite a wake-up call...one of those stomach twisting articles that make ya realize you've been ignoring something important. It's 7 pages long, but if you're uninsured and working like me, you'd better read it. The last page at least offers some further info, places in NYC that offer low-cost help to uninsured, as well as some lower cost insurance options (such as through Freelancer's Union, which I'm going to be checking out).

There's really nothing more I can say--just read it.

Ratatouille, new US trailer

While the Asian trailer tugged at the heartstrings a little more than this one, I still can't wait to see the movie! Pixar, Pixar...thanks for always giving us something to look forward to!

Freelancer's Guide #2: Estimated Tax Payments

*UPDATE 2/14/10** Much of my previous information on freelancer taxes, business tax deductions, and estimated payments are quickly becoming outdated, or may no longer apply to many freelancers in the animation/vfx industry.  See this post for more information:  http://kylemohr.blogspot.com/2010/02/freelancers-guide-goodbye-1099.html


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Estimated tax payments were almost a complete mystery to me, until yesterday when I was completing my return on Turbo Tax Online, and their handy help files had some info on it. There's no direct link to those help files, but I found a couple pages online from Turbo Tax's tax tips. They should clear up a lot of your questions (and mine!)

Estimated Taxes FAQ
Determining Estimated Tax Payments

If you'd rather have every possible info on the topic, which is not a bad idea just to be sure, check out what the IRS has to say about it here. That page seriously outlines the whole thing in detail, lucky there's a table of contents that you can sort through to see where the main info is at.

If you are brand new to this whole idea, estimated tax payments are generally required of you if you are freelance, because taxes are not taken out of every paycheck. This means that you estimate the amount of taxes you will owe for the current year, based on the past year's return, and pay quarterly estimated payments. If you don't do that, you get an underpaid taxes fine at the end of the year. That is about all I knew about it until Turbo Tax taught me more! Turbo Tax apparently even has a service dedicated to helping you make your estimated tax payments, which I will probably be using. Note: If you plan on using it to pay your taxes at the end of the year, you need the Home and Business version. It's more expensive, but has everything you need. If you use Turbo Tax Online, you don't have to pay for it until it is complete and you are ready to file and/or print your return. So far, the federal parts of the service seem more helpful than the New York state sections, but it still beats trying to figure out how to read the forms.

A lot of people have an accountant, which is actually not a bad idea, especially when you get to the point of buying a house, etc. But until then, tax software is probably the best bet to help you get them done.