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Rumour has it that the animation suffers not because of the animators but because the quota was pushed from two to thirty seconds per week, 1/4 way into production. Animators shouldn’t take the fall for bad production calls. But then again, since when do they get any credit for good animation? It all goes toward the grossly overpaid (by comparison) voice talent.

For those who don’t know, an animation quota for a feature film, esp. in 3D, is 4 seconds a week average.  Quota for a TV Flash show is 30 to 40 seconds a week.  BIG difference!  That kind of quota won’t look too pretty in 3D.  I’ve never worked in 3D but any animator can see exactly what happened by just comparing the first quarter to the rest of the movie.  Budget cuts.

Who cares?  The animation isn’t the problem.  The “producer” and middling executives are.  And it would probably be a good idea to have a director who can tell a story, and producers who support the director, instead of retreading cliche’s from more than 10 years ago.

No, the animation isn’t the problem. The lack of a good story and good STORYtelling is.

I am a refugee from Vanguard Animation, and got to see most of this film get made.

In case you’re wondering how a bunch of people I generally like and respect turned out a wreck like this, we’ll explain how mid-level film-making works, and perhaps all will become clear.

In the beginning there is the script.  The script in this case was not a great script, but few great scripts start out great.

Then comes the happiest day in any filmmaker’s life.  It’s January 2006.  The project is greenlit.  Money is released to actually pay for people to work on this and make a great film, and the project comes to life.  With this money comes an ultimatum:  A film will be delivered to the distributor by March of 2008, or there will be blood.

Two well-regarded directors are brought in to head the project up.  A bunch of top-flight story artists sit in a room to put some meat on the bones of the script.  A committee of brilliant people is still a committee.

Eight months, and thousands of story boards later, a first draft of the film is shown in storyboard form.  It’s interesting, it’s off-the-wall, it’s different from any animated film I think I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, nobody liked it very much.

There’s a split at this point between Art Film and Commercial Film.  Art Film is made with 10 of your friends after-hours in front of a convenience store for $7,000.  If you have a weird wacky script and 10,000 people think it’s great, you’ve made a buck or two and get to do it again.

Commercial film (and 3d feature animation is a VERY expensive process, don’t kid yourself) does not work on $7,000 budgets.  The backers have released $35 million, they’re seeing a weird midnight movie script, they’re alarmed, and they should be.  If you don’t gross 70 million bucks on a 35 million dollar film, you’ve lost money.  Count how many art/cult films make that sort of money in the theaters.  If you’ve filled up two hands, you’re better than I am.

Directors are fired, a Very Famous Guy From Hollywood You Have Heard Of is brought in to salvage the film.  Emergency triage is done on the script.  It is now December of 2006.  The producers have set a deadline of December 2007 to finish the film.  Half of that time is gone.

Did I mention a lot of modelers, layout artists, animators, and so on were hired expecting there would be work to do, but there’s nothing but storyboards and good intentions?  Payroll is well over $500,000/month now and there’s no film.

Needless to say, people are getting nervous.  The producers are out a lot trying to get more money (i.e. more time) to finish the film.  Not much is happening there.

Animation which started a few months before gets stepped up because it’s clear no extensions will be granted.  A stable of brilliant animators might be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  Vanguard has an idealistic, well-intentioned, and did I mention, cheap policy of taking people who might not be the most seasoned individuals, giving them more responsibilities than they’ve ever been given, and asking them to step up to the plate.  When the fæces really hits the fan, the wisdom of this strategy may be reconsidered.

Animation shots are being finished and should be sent to lighting.  Unfortunately, the lighting pipeline is not ready.  Again, a pinch-hitter has been called in to retool the original pipeline.  A layman can probably appreciate losing 10 months on a script.  Losing 4-5 months of lighting time to glitches is far worse.  Trust me on this.

It’s August and shots are finally being cranked out.  The producers insist to their dying breath that yes, the film will be finished in December.  Really, no kidding.

Eyes are starting to roll in the studio.

As lighting fires up, there’s more fun!  This ingenious system for running shots through takes up INCREDIBLE quantities of disk space.  A drive array a thousand times larger than the one on your home computer is filling up.  Even assuming there was money to add more disk space (there isn’t), it won’t happen.

As production lurches to a close in January and February (December is gone, and someone’s personal bank account is being tapped to keep 150 people working), more and more time is being spent doing cleanup to keep the entire facility from seizing up with the words “Error on Drive Z:  Disk Full.  Please free up a few terabytes before continuing”.

The credit card has been redlined, and time’s up anyhow.  The film could have used another six months of cleanup, but due to the realities of commercial cinema, that would never happen.

Who expected a hack typer like kirk de micco to be able to direct his way out of a paper bag?

And john williams is about as much a producer as barry sonnenfield is an animator.  NOT AT ALL!

GOD this film looks awful.  The only saving grace appears to be the layout/cinematography.

Did anybody ART DIRECT the technical crew?

Who expected a hack typer like kirk de micco to be able to direct his way out of a paper bag?

You seem to have some pretty strong opinions.  Were you on the set?