Anymotion. Animation.

In a previous blog post I had mentioned how I don’t really know much about animation. And I’d also mentioned how I was yet to see an animated movie with a tragic ending. For lack of any other source of entertainment, I did my homework in this regard. I finally got down to watching A Scanner Darkly this weekend and reading up on effects and techniques and all that jazz. So this post is really just about the movie based on Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel. However, this is not going to be a movie review. So you’re not really going to be reading stuff like “The screenplay turns choppy in places” but something more like “So they do all these weird things and then it ends up looking super cool”.

Wiki says that the movie was first shot digitally and then animated using interpolated rotoscope (this is where the “cool” bit comes in for us low-lives). Apparently, each minute of animation took approximately 500 hours to complete. Now for a 100 minute long movie, that’s a lot of work for something that wasn’t necessary in the first place. By which I mean the plot didn’t really call for any animation except for maybe the creation of the scramble suit (which is some science-fictional thing these undercover agents in the movie wear and it goes through a whole series of changes by the second… which again is a lot of work when it comes down to creating it). So the director, Richard Linklater, was basically just indulging his whims when he decided he wanted to animate this film simply because there wasn’t enough animation for adults out there. This again takes me back to my previous post where I said there’s no hope for you if you’re not cuckoo in the head. Given the fact that the story is set in this Orwellian, dystopian society, the movie might have turned out well enough even without all the animation. But then again, maybe well enough was not good enough.

In an interview with The New York Times, Linklater says how the whole process meant making the movie twice, literally. Things like just getting Keanu Reeves’ beard right took a whole lot of attention to detail. This meant creating a “Style Bible” for each of the characters for the sake of consistency in style and features. And to think Dick’s daughters weren’t exactly kicked about having Linklater make a “cartoon version” of the book which dealt with the serious issue of drug addiction, something Dick had undergone himself.

Although the technique used in the animation process of the film isn’t exactly new, the results achieved went on to create a style that digital artists would now try to mimic just to get the “Scanner Darkly effect”, which is probably a big deal in itself. This reminded me of a conversation I had with our animation director the other day who was really depressed about the state of affairs in the Indian animation industry. Even with all the optimism about the animation movies we have lined up in the near future, it makes you wonder if they’ll ever achieve the cult status of A Scanner Darkly. Or if they would at least initiate something new that is to stay. If it does, then there’ll be that much more to know and learn about animation. If it doesn’t, then it’s going be animation dystopia of a completely different kind for us.

The Afterword: Apologies to Sal who was more offended about being called an Englishman than he was about being called flaky.

Shikha Gupta

So one evening, I was called by Mr. H (sounds all Kafkaesque, no?) to his desk and asked to “sit”. This, at Mr. H’s desk, is code for “there’s work coming up”. The work in question this time was writing for this blog every once in a while. As I sat there nodding along to what was being told to me, I quickly scanned my brain and tried to make a mental list of plausible topics that I could write about. I came up with precisely zero. Because here’s the thing - I don’t know squat about animation. I guess my saying this doesn’t do much for the credibility of the blog but I’d rather come clean than carry the burden of lying (successfully at that) through who-knows-how-many blog posts.

My saying this also allows me to do one more thing. It lets me talk about all the things I have learnt about animation, tiny as they may seem. This is my pick of the top three lessons I’ve learnt.

• Of Montreal is a good enough source of inspiration- The first time I sat down to write a script for Candy and Toothie, it reminded me of an Of Montreal song which went something to the effect of “Let’s pretend we don’t exist. Let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica”.  This is not so much because the show is about some sublime existentialist philosophy (although it is slightly surreal) but mostly because you have to go through an entire process of unlearning and negation to be able to abandon whatever cynicism you’ve held on to so dearly all this while. And it’s not exactly the easiest thing to do.   
• “Hakuna Matata!” is more than a song- It’s the most sacred law there seems to be as far as animation is concerned. Nothing can go wrong!  Ice age coming you say? Ah, no worries… we’ll just throw in a quirky sloth with a grouchy mammoth and make sure everyone gets their ha-has for the day. Even ogres are allowed happy endings! And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I haven’t seen one out-and-out animated movie or show with a tragic ending. Maybe watching A Scanner Darkly will change my mind. But until then…
• If you’re not slightly cuckoo in the head, there’s no hope for you- Over my past few months of association with ThinxWorks, I’ve worked with an Englishman, a New Zealander and a Punjabi. They’re all “slightly” flaky and some of them are even immensely proud of it.  This just goes to show that what I’m saying is true. No matter which continent you come from, your Cuckoo Quotient is in direct proportion to the success of your creation.

Now as I recount my lessons learnt and wind-up this post, I’m already worried about what is to come. Sure, I’ve learnt some things but I doubt it’s enough to keep the blog alive. Because when I said “This is my pick of the top three lessons I’ve learnt”, I actually meant these are the only three lessons I’ve learnt. So yeah…

Shikha Gupta

It was around four months back that I signed up to take up a job as a copywriter. I was all prepared to come gallivanting into the world of advertising and get my hands dirty. Really dirty. And writing for three year olds was definitely not on the agenda. Or so I’d led myself to believe.  

But then, one of the most important things I’ve learnt over my really long career as a copywriter is this – the thing about writing is that you never quite know where one form ends and the other begins.  Copywriting, scripting, po-tay-to, po-tah-to… same difference. If you can write one thing, you just as well can write anything else.

This is not to say that writing scripts is just like writing copy for ads or writing this blog post. Hell no! Writing for kids is really a whole new ball game altogether. And this is a fact I’ve been familiar with since my days of creative writing in college. If there ever was a genre I struggled to find my way around, it was writing for children. Adults are relatively easy. We’re so used to watching a whole lot of nothing that one more preposterous show on television really won’t disturb our comfortable level of intellectualism. Kids, on the other hand, are a completely different story. For starters, most of them actually seem to care about what you tell them.

So there I was. With no escape in sight, I sat face-to-face with my biggest fear as a writer – an animation director who rubs his hands in glee and asks you if you would write scripts for an animated show for pre-schoolers first and then gets to the not-so-important things (like asking you your name, for instance). See, this is what you get for saying “I like challenges” during your interviews.

Having said that, there’s no denying the fact that after treading warily through the first couple of scripts, you actually begin to enjoy the process. And it definitely gets easier once you’ve resumed breathing normally. More than anything else, writing about a chocolate girl, her friend who is actually a little tooth and a whole lot of other out-of-the-world characters just gets you to stop taking yourself so seriously. And everyone knows how important that is. Because that’s undoubtedly the only thing that keeps you from crying your eyes out when the plot of an episode is changed after the script has been written and rewritten and rewritten yet again. Ah, sense of humor… it’s funny to think it’s that ridiculous sound we make while laughing that keeps the world going. And it’s not just the world of animation either.

Shikha Gupta

Shikha is a writer at Thinxworks and ReZonant. Shikha brings scripts to completion, handling both story writing and screenplay.

What’s that? Is anyone really happy while animating, so one may ask. After all, by the time you are done with preventing your clay model from toppling over and getting his nose quashed for the umpteenth time, your back may need a double-strength orthopaedic band. Or sample this. After having worked out your story in utmost seclusion after consuming countless carbon credits at night - short for ‘burning the midnight oil’- all that your director does is to change the plot without ever blinking an eyelid.

All that said and done, the joy of seeing ones own creation walk, move, talk and fly wipes away any apprehensions the animator may have had about the sustainability of his back. And if the story telling addresses the needs of a certain audience, then we have a winner.

Whether or not the skeptics believe in the fruitful gains of simple storytelling, I do. Well, I firmly do. After all, storytelling is something that will never run out of fashion. Or commercially put, will never head into a recession. Having grown up on a staple diet of Pixar and Aardman, all that we needed to do at Thinxworks was to get the priorities right. Tell a story well. And thats what we have set out to do.

MP Hariharan