Has 'Sesame Street' Really Done Any Good?

As you've probably heard, Sesame Street is celebrating it's 40th Anniversary this week.

While the program's impact on education has been debated, it's influence on animation can not be contested.

Here's an article from an October 1976 "TV Guide" entitled "Has Sesame Street Really Done Any Good?"

A title like that is why I love language. Can there be any other answer than "Of course not! Harumph!"?

Great illustration!

 

On this last page Joan Ganz Cooney makes a few terrific statements. Here's the pull from the article:

"There have been other proposals that the show be made 'more black', showing a ghetto street as it actually is and helping children cope with the horrors and hazards of their actual lives. 'That would be something called The Poor Children's Hour,' says Mrs. Cooney. 'If someone wants to produce that, fine. I think they'd get maybe five viewers in a city. I think ghetto children have enough of the reality of their neighborhoods. They out to see what a better world might look like.'"

TV Guide, not surprisingly, looks to television to educate children. Clearly that's foolish. What Sesame Street offers is television which, at the very least, doesn't make you dumber.

Fire

Here are some color models for The Buddha.

This is for a sequence based on Buddha's "Fire Sermon". It's sort of like the Christian "Sermon on the Mount", but instead of a litany of "blessed are's" we're given a list of thing which are ablaze.

Everything, it turns out, is in flames.



Even the oceans. Everything you see, hear, smell, touch or think is on fire.

This sequence is mostly animated by Ed Smith. It's a far cry from "Moonbird".

Then again, not too far, I hope.

Aragones on Animation

We're doing a series of short films for The Sundance Channel which use footage of Sergio Aragones and Al Jaffee which was shot last year.

This clip won't be included in any of the segments.  He talks a little about the animation he has worked on and the different process compared to comics and cartoons.







I couldn't find any of the "Laugh In" segments he referenced, but if we can dig them up I'll post them.

The Worst Book About Animation Ever

Not to sound too full of complaints, because really, who needs it?

We just got in "Historical Dictionary of: Animation and Cartoons" by Nichola Dobson, part of a series edited by Jon Woronoff for Scarecrow entiled "Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts."

Other volumes include "American Radio Soap Operas", "Japanese Traditional Theater", and "Sacred Music".  In this light  "Animation" is a broad subject.  I'm glad the editor understood the value of the field's inclusion.  The value of this volume, however, is minimal.

It's a sad waste of a possibility.  Even worse than no volume at all.

Whenever I look I look at an animation history book, I flip to the index and look for "Tissa David", I'll then look for "Blechman".  Maybe it's West Coast centric, so I'll see what they say about "Bob Kurtz" or "Fred Wolf" or "Bill Littlejohn".  OK, what insights or information do they have on "Frederic Back"?  How about "Harry Smith"?

How about "none"?  Not even "Bill Melendez".  Not even -I shit you not- "Richard Williams".

This book references none of them -and more!

It's a dictionary, insight isn't required.  Just a simple: Fierlinger, Paul (1936 - ) director of numerous independent and commercial shorts including "Teeny Little Super Guy" for CTW, "Amby & Dexter" for Nickelodeon and "Drawn From Life" of Oxygen.  He is best know for his longer films including "Drawn From Memory", "Still Life With Animated Dogs", "A Room Nearby", and "My Dog Tulip." These are marked by strong narration, often by the animator himself, and deep personal revelations.

There.  Was that so hard?  No.  I did it in two minutes while talking on the phone.

Quizzically, there is an entry for J. J. Sedelmaier Productions.  Good for him, I know he works hard to get his name out there.  But there's no Curious Pictures, no Passion, no Filmteknarna nor Jonas Odell, no Duck Soup, no Wildbrain nor Colossal.

Does this same series' "Historical Dictionary of African American Theater" exclude Ntozake Shange, Derek Walcott, August Wilson or Suzan-Lori Parks in favor of page after page of Al Jolson and blackface "mammy" shows?   Why, then, would the volume on animation  -ANIMATION AS ART - exclude dozens of men and women responsible for making this craft an art in favor of entries on Trey Parker and Matt Stone (who's work I love), The Muppet Show, and Jonny Quest?

Yet no Suzan Pitt, no John Canemaker, no William Kentridge.

Nichola Dobson's "Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons" is a terrible and insulting book.  A wretched, horrible waste of time.  If you come across it in a bookstore, bring it to manager and tell them to ship it back to the publisher.  The world would be better if it was never published.

I'm often reminded of the Winsor McCay (he made the book!) quote "Animation is an art.  That is how I conceived it.  But as I see what you fellows have done with it is making it into a trade.  Not an art, but a trade -bad luck."  Dictionaries and histories like this will forever relegate the technique of animation to a second rate pornography for children in the eyes of the public.

Tear It All Up!

Here's the conclusion of our multi-part post on paper tears.

This is what the tear finally looks like.




It was shot with a still camera, photoshopped like mad and ultimately composited. There's a Flash version which simply pops from no rip to fully open for bandwidth sake. The swf file for a banner ad needs to be below 30k so its an exercise in economy.


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While looking for our Infor ad on the Wall Street Journal, I found this article about Disney's new hand drawn feature film, "The Princess and the Frog".

 

Frog legs, tres cher

The article estimates that the film costs about $150 million to produce and that's in line with CG fare as well.

Pardon my French, but HOLY FRIKKIN COW PEOPLE!  I have no doubt that the production value is terrific and infants will love it -but $150,000,000!  How much paper are they going through on this project.

That budget, I'll add, does not include overhead or marketing.  Are the animators getting paid $1000 a foot?  Even so, that's only $8.1 million dollars tops.  Considering that I was taught to target 10% - 15%
 of a budget for the "lead" animator Disney must be paying upwards of $2000/foot to their guys.


Here's an idea for Disney, if they really want to make a profit, forget these grotesque behemoths and contract 20 films for $7 million apiece.  Look at the cash those Tinkerbell movies rake in.   Heck even, "The Triplets of Belleville" made $7 million in its modest theatrical release.  Can "Brother Bear" claim to have recouped its budget?

Not only are these studios being run by men of questionable creative merit, their business decisions don't even make sense.

Down With Big Erp!

As advertising is in the throes of a punctuated equilibrium evolutionary period, so is illustration.

The technique of animation -often used in conjunction with illustration in advertising -has experienced fallout from this.

Broadcast commercials have all but disappeared -those that remain are either Flash driven neo-retro (enough already with warmed over 50s style!) or high end graphics styles. The latter is interesting visually, but limited in terms of narrative possibilities, a :30 commercial pretty much represents the creative apex.

For illustration, the magazine and newspaper market has withered. If the rise of the internet was the death knell for illustration, those publications that continue on after the economic collapse as surely the walking dead.

Today a campaign we worked on for Infor "launches". It's running on several websites, including the Wall Street Journal. Additionally we did some components for their microsite.

These are mostly Flash-based as well. Click HERE to see one.

Steve Brodner was approach by PJA in Boston to create print advertising. He suggested making the drawings move. That's essentially what this series of banners amounts to: moving illustration. The work (apart from the constant attention demanded by advertising clients and the arm's length list of web deliverables) is nothing that a tech savvy illustrator couldn't do. The next generation of illustrators, they may lack the broad intellectual scope of David Levine or Richard McGuire or Mirko Ilic but they'll bring a facility with media which will further cut into the traditional advertising client base of the animator.

Subway

A piece of the daily drive.