What is the "Creative Commodity"? Summary

Up until now, we've just been ranting. Let's finish the discussion.

There is a universal law – a law, not a theory – called the Law of Entropy, which states that “the entropy of an isolated system … will tend to increase over time.” ‘Entropy’ is a measurement of disorder. ‘Isolated’ means nothing outside of the system is acting upon it. The ‘system’ could be almost anything: a mass of organic matter (like a plant or animal), a box of carefully arranged marbles on a table ... or a cartoon studio. So the law – the law, not the theory – states that disorder or chaos in any of these 'systems' will increase over time, eventually leading to complete chaos.

In the case of a plant, the living plant, over time, by itself, is just dying. Certain things outside the plant will keep it alive for a time: nutrients from the soil, sunlight, and water. If the plant does its job right, it can use these outside energy sources to reverse the Law of Entropy; that is, to keep it alive. When that process stops, the structure of the plant decays, and it ends up a chaotic mass of organic material … with no ‘system.’ Entropy will have reached its maximum capacity.

In the example of the box of marbles on a table, if you lay 16 marbles in four perfect rows of four marbles each, over time the rows will become disordered or chaotic. Part of that is due to the nature of the box itself, which will decay. And as for the nature of the table, it will be bumped. As these things happen, the marbles will roll in various directions. Over enough time it will not be apparent that the marbles were arranged in any particular order at all, and in fact the box and table – and marbles – will all eventually blend into a pile of dust. A triumph of Entropy.

With a cartoon studio, the system is the production of an animated project. Otherwise, it’s just a building with chairs, desks, animating equipment, office equipment, and people. Over time a cartoon studio, by itself, is simply a business in the process of going out of business. If the studio does its collective job right – and this is a matter of not just artists but also managers and administrators applying creativity to their respective tasks – the studio can postpone its day of closing for many years.

However, if everyone simply does what he/she is told, without adding good new ideas to it, a film project devolves significantly and rapidly into something mediocre and not at all what was intended.

The exec producer commissions a writer to write a script about a specific idea. With the writer’s creative input, you end up with a wonderful written plan for a great film. Without his creative input, the script may end up tedious, confusing, and pointless.

Next a board artist must translate this written plan into a visual blueprint. It’s not a given. Without his creative input, many of the story points will lose focus or worse. Furthermore, many entertaining possibilities will be lost.

Creativity is required all the way down the line. The animation processes differ depending on the medium (2D, 3D, Flash, or motion capture), but the goal is the same: take what was passed along to you by the previous department and add enough good new ideas to it to keep it fresh, entertaining, and focused.

And yes, all the while, the CEO is carefully monitoring the creative input of his management staff, just as the director is monitoring the creative input of the artists. The definition of ‘good idea’ must be defined by one person, not by anyone and everyone. He/she has to be sure the team understands the task and that they are capable of executing it. Otherwise you simply have a new form of Entropy. But those people in charge must not only be open to creativity (new good ideas), they must encourage it. The animation studio must – absolutely must – be an environment where creativity is readily applied to every aspect of production.

Creativity is the energy that improves the animation product. It prevents Entropy. It’s an awesome energy that only creative people can provide. Committees can’t provide it. Lawyers can’t even define it.

That is the Creative Commodity – the smart application of good new ideas that adds value to a production and postpones the shut-down of a studio. Sadly it is what’s lacking in many, many cartoon studios around America. Animation artists can supply it, and BS artists can't.

What is the "Creative Commodity"? Part 2

So we were talking about feeling undervalued as artists, and one way to feel more valued is to get paid more money. Keeping in mind that the more the boss pays out, the less profit he makes, and that's the reason most of the work is being done overseas. Asians do it cheaper.

So now most of the jobs in TV animation are non-animation jobs. But they still need to tell the Asians what to do.

So sheet timing is still done here in the US. Recently I did a sheet timing test for a big west coast animation studio that makes very ugly shows. The instructions for the test were very specific (which was a good thing) but a couple of issues raised my eyebrows.

For one thing, they had developed a pointlessly redundant but nonetheless new (and therefore better?) lip sync system. On their sample mouth charts, they showed an 'A' mouth (closed) and also an 'M' mouth ... also closed. In fact, identical to the 'A' mouth. Several of the vowel sounds were similarly doubled up, occasionally with minute differences, still unnecessary. Their new, improved lip sync system - for this very ugly cartoon - had 18 or 20 mouth positions, most of which were useless. The old system had 6 standard mouths with 2 optional additional mouths. With those eight mouths you could get through virtually all your dialogue.

Also, this west coast mogul had a glossary of sheet-timing terms they wanted us to use. These days, it's more important to standardize the language you use on exposure sheets than it was back in the StarToons days, because I could depend on my animators to A) understand the nuances of the English language, and B) understand the cultural nuances of and the entertainment opportunities of the specific situation. But these shows, of course, were all going to some Pacific Rim country. Anyway, among the terms were: "S.I." ("slow-in"), "settle," and "cush." ("cushion"). These three terms were painstakingly differentiated, as follows:

• "S.I.: is to slow into a held pose from movement"
• "Settle: is to cushion to a stop after moving"
• "Cush (cushion): a very specific way of slowing down into a pose"

No kidding. Those definitions are all worded differently more or less but the meanings are the same (they didn't try to define the "very specific way of slowing down into a pose" ... they just thought it was fine to explain it like that). It reminds me of high school, when I was trying to BS my way through a test. 2D animators use all of those terms - slow-in, settle, and cushion - interchangeably. But of course, the guy writing these rules in the glossary isn't an animator.

I've said it before: Hollywood has fired the Animation Artists and replaced them with BS Artists. And these BS Artists are now running the industry.

And the BS Artists are making more than the Real Artists did. So the execs running the studio aren't going to pay Real Artists more money - that just affects the bottom line negatively, as far as they're concerned.

Is there any value in artistic skill, storytelling techniques, and production efficiency? I think there is. This is what the "Creative Commodity" is - .a commodity (or a value) inherent in artists if they are allowed to be creative, allowed to do their jobs the way they know they need to be done.

Can we change the world - I mean, the animation world? Can we show the executives that we American animation artists could replace the BS/Asian Combo? Will executives listen?

These are the hurdles we have to overcome ... if we're serious about maintaining a future American animation industry at all.

What is the "Creative Commodity"? Part 1

Before I got into animation, back when I was a young meat truck driver, every weekday morning I drove downtown to an office in the Fulton Market area, called my customers (butchers at small independent grocery stores), took their orders, called my suppliers, ordered the meat, collected it, and delivered it to the customers. Hey, it kept me out of jail. Sometimes I got orders for slab bacon or salt pork. Both of these items came from pork bellies. On the radio, I would hear reports on "commodity trading," and pork bellies were always among the commodities listed. It made me feel more important: I wasn't just delivering meat, I was delivering commodities!

(By the way, I still don't understand why pork bellies are a commodity, but e.g. beef loins are not a commodity ... anybody out there know why that is?)

Those years as a meat truck driver/salesman taught me, in a very concrete way, the basics of business. The idea was to bring in more money for my boss than he had to shell out. The boss had to pay my salary and my taxes, he had to pay the suppliers, he had to pay for the truck, he had to pay for the gas in the truck, he had to pay rent on the office, he had to pay for the phones. Sometimes crazy stuff would happen, like when my truck caught on fire - he lost the truck and all the meat in it. If, when all was said and done, there was money left over from sales (most importantly, collection of the bill payments), then the boss was profitable. With lunkheads like me working for him, it was amazing he ever made a profit.

Business is risky! Don't I know it?! With everything I learned from meat-sales, my first company - StarToons - still went bust after 13 years. Having great artists was a great commodity, and I was lucky to have collected a really talented bunch of creative and hard-working guys and gals around me. But a successful animation studio also requires good marketing, networking, a good long-term strategy, and more. We got by doing great animation, but we lacked a very important commodity: business savvy.

A commodity is anything that is "of use, advantage, or value." Pork bellies are an important commodity in the agricultural field. What are the commodities in the animation industry.

So with that in mind, I have this to say about my current vocation: Knowing what goes into actually producing a cartoon, and knowing the way Hollywood executives think ... as an artist and a director, I feel undervalued.

Is getting a raise the answer? Not sure. You'll see what I mean in the next blog.