CGI animated commercial for Disneyland's 50th

[FloydBishop]

That was really nice. The Genie and Stitch didn't look the greatest, but the rest of the characters looked pretty good.

Mickey all squashed up in the car seemed out of character though.

Nice work!

[rwijaya]

thx for the link!, . . personally , i think it looks stunning first time i saw it on TV.
i wonder who did the cg . .

[Bentagon]

Yeah, mickey's squash was a bit wrong. And the animation on the genie was awful, knowing how he moves in the film. I loved Donald Duck though, he only got a few seconds, but his character was totally there.

Great job!

- Bentagon

[angus1965]

thx for the link!, . . personally , i think it looks stunning first time i saw it on TV.
i wonder who did the cg . .
Digital Domain

[krisr]

Digital Domain
Ant Farm and Orphange were involved as well. This is a pretty massive character spot....only a large place like DD could pull it off under normal "commercial" time. Very good work.

[Tim Miller]

The job had originally been awarded to blur....because they loved all the stuff we did for the "Mickey's twice upon a Christmas" film. But we pulled out after the 2nd meeting with the director of the live action. He didn't treat others involved in the process with respect and we didn't want to put any of our folks in the line of fire. We felt that it was sure to be a painful process and thought it wise to walk away when we could do so with our honor and dignity intact. It's a shame--we really wanted to do it from a creative standpoint. But no job is worth having somebody feed you a shit-sandwich everyday for breakfast.

We heard later that the job was awarded to DD. If there are any DD folks on the forum I love to know how it went for them. I hope they didn't suffer too much.

[rwijaya]

thx guys for the info,

Tim : Yea i know how's that feel, LOL. *I* Have to deald with it sometime, but better way is to walk away.

and if there is any insight from the production people at dd i really wanna hear their story. if its not as much as a company secrets. ;)

*edited part. hehe missing an I just realized a second ago.

[krisr]

The job had originally been awarded to blur....because they loved all the stuff we did for the "Mickey's twice upon a Christmas" film. But we pulled out after the 2nd meeting with the director of the live action. He didn't treat others involved in the process with respect and we didn't want to put any of our folks in the line of fire. We felt that it was sure to be a painful process and thought it wise to walk away when we could do so with our honor and dignity intact. It's a shame--we really wanted to do it from a creative standpoint. But no job is worth having somebody feed you a shit-sandwich everyday for breakfast. LOL....you are referring to Joe Pytka of course! He has a reputation in the commercial business. He is the equivilant of Steven Speilberg in the commercial industry in a way. Sounds strange but its true. We've worked with him before :). Everything he's involved with ends up looking great usually though.

[Tim Miller]

"Have to deald with it sometime, but better way is to walk away."

Well.....I don't want to go into the details of what happend but I'll say that beyond a certain level you should NEVER just "deal with it" IMHO. Unless it meant losing my job and watching my child go hungry or something I doubt there's much that would make me sit there and get crapped on without fighting back or at least simply walking away.

Truthfully, I think that the fact that many people DON'T fight back enables the assholes of the world to thrive (I'm not suggesting that YOU wouldn't fight back....I'm sure you meant your comment in a general sense).

If someone jerks your chain when you don't deserve it--give 'em both barrels! Of course that's a philosophy that has put ME on many an "asshole" list.... :)

[Tim Miller]

LOL....you are referring to Joe Pytka of course! Yes he is a very difficult person to work with sometimes but has a reputation in the commercial business. He is the equivilant of Steven Speilberg in the commercial industry in a way. Sounds strange but its true. We've worked with him before :). Everything he's involved with ends up looking great usually though.

Talent wasn't the issue....but is a great looking commercial worth the personal cost? Maybe your experience has been different but what I saw during our second meeting was enough for me to know I didn't want that energy around our studio. Life's too short! :)

[rwijaya]

"If someone jerks your chain when you don't deserve it--give 'em both barrels! Of course that's a philosophy that has put ME on many an "asshole" list.... :)"

not really tim, back then we got offered doing a commercial, but their budget is SOO small , and they want it all in 3 weeks!! with 12 characters, and apparently the person acted a little of what your explaining above. hehe, but my boss "kindly" rejected the works, and still walk away with dignity and respect. hehe.

not saying that we have to deald with it all the time, i don't like working on a project with people ranting behind me myself.
im personally think, that i do more far better model when i love the project and the people that im working with.

and DD proved that they manage to handle this guy quite well, by taking and finishing the project.

but again this is my just my opinion.

-rw-

[drkollossus]

If there are any DD folks on the forum I love to know how it went for them. I hope they didn't suffer too much.
I wasn't on the Animation Team, and I think a few of them may tell a different story, but I did do color and lighting for significant number of shots, and I have to say that despite "the director" and Disney’s input, it was actually one of the smoothest projects I have worked on at DD. I know there may have been some chaos in the conference rooms but our producers and supervisors did an outstanding job keeping every thing under control. A project this large could have spiraled out of control very easily. I still have not seen the spot on the air yet, but I'm glad it's getting positive reactions. By the way thanks Tim. I was wondering why they hadn't taken the project to you guys. :thumbsup:

Brad Hayes.
Digital Domain,
Commercials.

[Apoclypse]

Can you imagine what a traditional animator will be worth in afew years. They'll just be so rare ( in ameica anyways). That commercial actually depressed me to no end. I love cg ( though interest has been waining due to sensory overload -and over marketing) but that is no reason to wipe traditional animation to nothingness. A lot of users on this very forum have complained vehemently agianst anime ( arguments which are better left for another time) but anime is still for the most part still some guy animting in the traditional manner ( though even there we start to see even more cg projects as software and productions costs get cheaper) So to see dissney characters which I have loved and herished since childhood and that have a familiar look to them turned to cg characters that for the most part don't even retain the same silhouette is very disheartening. Would it have been so bad to showthe disney characters as they were intended instead of feeding into the 3d hype? This commercial and the fact that almost all major studios in hollywood have closed down their traditional animation studios for 3d ones, is why i hate and loathe hollywood sometimes. Disney must be turning in his grave to se all the hardwork that he put into his craft and into the animation craft in general supplanted by marketing and hype.

The genie says it all ( he doesn't even look like the damn cartoon for freaking sakes)

[Tim Miller]

Thanks for the update Chris, I'm glad it went smoothly for you guys. Things were pretty tense when we were awarded the project....it was originally due in Sept. It looks like the schedule shifted back a bit which was a very good thing. We would have made it look great but it would have been tight.

I'm glad your producers caught any of the shrapnel for the team too (at least I'm glad for YOU...if not them) I would have been on the front line for blur along with our producers (and MORE than happy to go toe to toe with the director--in fact I secretly enjoy an opportunity to fight for justice!) but the way blur is structured--big open environment with no cubes or offices--it would have been tough to contain the blast if things got out of hand. I think we were better off putting our energy elsewhere. :}

I haven't seen the spot on TV, but the web version looked pretty cool. Cheers!

[rwijaya]

Apoclypse : you are forgeting the motion stop animators. and i am wondering if in near 5 years from now, new ways of doing animation arise that will kick CG completly , i wonder if we will have this same type of complain come from 3d artist ? go wonder! :D

[Apoclypse]

well i'm not a traditional animator by any means, but I respect the form. Just like I respect traditional means of art ( painting, drawing etc) I guess its the old fart in me ( though I am not old by any means, just letting the ladies know) My problem is not that cg replaced the traditional method but that any trace of 3d animtion has been wiped out of disney entirely, thats a sad day, because you can clearly see that disney can still be the masters ( Lorenzo) but all their marketing team is doing is moving along with the hype. By thw way tht is not to say that the work wasn't admirable just not the same as the drawn characters (as is proned to happen with 2d to 3d conversions). But i am going to just give up my rant and look elsewhere for my fix and wait a few years when we have a renaissance and every major studio starts looking for old school animators. Kind of like when the white stripes and the strokes came out except relevant.

[Lorecanth]

Great spot guys, beutiful animation....But come on who else thinks its kind of odd/sad for disney to hand over their charachters to another company to animate (2d 3d argument aside)? ...the irony.

[mattmos]

Great spot guys, beutiful animation....But come on who else thinks its kind of odd/sad for disney to hand over their charachters to another company to animate (2d 3d argument aside)? ...the irony.
Actually quite a lot of disney work is outsourced, especially commercials and 3d work. They just tie everything up in NDAs so you don't hear about it/can't publisise it if you do work on something for them.

Apocolypse: I thought someone would bring up this argument, but I think going the 3d route in this case is justified as the integration with live action works a lot better imo. Roger Rabbit is the only 2d/live action example I can think of which works well, most of the time it looks pretty dodgy...

[WillRyan]

For a little while anyway, this seemed like the direction Disney would go for the foreseeable future: Vanguard, Core, and Pixar for all of their features. But I've talked to a couple people who have seen good things from Disney's new all-digital team. Chicken Little and a Day with Wilbur Robinson are supposed to be coming along well, and Chris Saunders' American Dog is a knockout, at least at the storyboard level. I wouldn't count out the artists still at Disney out yet, despite their entire production slate being exclusively 3D right now.

[Per-Anders]

it's a nicely done spot. though i agree with some of the earlier posters about certain characters animation, though stitch seemed ok to me (then again it's a tiny tiny player window, so hard to see much of what's going on).

i do feel that what with it being disney and those characters then 2d might have been the way to go, but it still came off pretty well in the end, so well done to all involved.

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