Music Video Pitch

Here are a couple of boards I did for a music video pitch (for Rob Szabo's "Family and Friends")

It's a live action video about a guy who hitch hikes across country to go to his sisters shotgun wedding. She's 8 months pregnant and marrying a burly biker guy he can't stand.

Now lets hope we get some cash and we can shoot it!

Horton Hears A Who 2

Here is the second image that Fox released for the film. House of Cool did some early development art for Blue Sky on this project and we are very happy to see that the look is similar to the work we initially envisioned.

Horton Hears A Who

As well as running House of Cool, I am also the head of story of Horton Hears A Who at Blue Sky. I am happy that Fox has finally announced that Jim Carey and Steve Carell are the lead voices on the film. I am very happy with both these choices because they are the type of talent that really enhance animation versus having a big star with a flat voice but a pretty face.

Building a Team

Some boards I did for Monsters Inc.

As a superviser at animation studios and as an owner of my own studio, team building is a skill that you have to learn. If you don't know how to put together a good team you run the risk of imploding your projects. Hiring the best talent you can find is an obvious way to build a good team but this alone is not enough. If you have deep pockets and you hired the absolute best talent money could buy for your animation department, this does not guarantee a good film. In fact I would waiger that the opposite would happen. It would be like starting a company and hiring Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos to run it. A disaster waiting to happen.

At Pixar, we would have lunch with prospective team hires to makes sure that they weren't a**holes. I really liked this practice because it made sure that everyone got along. The one weakness of this idea is that it tends to promote the hiring of similar types of people. Not that great for diversity.

When I build a team, I like as many different personalities as posible. I really like the way the personalities play off each other. I would hate it if everyone were to agree all the time. There are only three things that I require from every team member.

Passion for animation.
Passion for the studio or project.
Respect for other artists.

I'll give specific examples of my ideal team in future posts.

I'm a Geek

I got into animation because I'm a cartoon geek. Not the Disney Nine Old Men sort of geek but a Voltron, Glow Friends, Robotech, Ant and the Aadvark, Denver the Last Dinosaur, Mr. T and the T Force, Rocket Robin Hood, Barbapapa, Dr. Snuggles, Simon's Underground Railroad, The Littles, Force Five, Visionairies, Tiger Sharks, Belle and Sabiastian, G-Force, Puff the Magic Dragon, Bionic Six, Wizar of Oz, Hercules, Foofur, Getalong Gang, My Pet Monster, The Shmoo, Inhumaniods, Blue Falcon, Rubik the Amazing Cube, Simon in the Land of the Chalk Drawings, The Little Prince kind of geek. Only later did I figure out the finer points of the industry especially in feature animation. Still, I have a soft spot for crappy tv stuff.

Career Choices

Another image from Robin. I would love to show everyone some of the more recent stuff we are working on but they are top secret, so you will have to satisfy with our old crap.

I've been talking to a number of artists recently about choices to make in their careers. Do I go to a big studio and learn or to a smaller studio and hopefully to get the opportunity to supervise? Do I sign a long contract for security and more money or move to where the best projects are. I always advise to search yourself and find out what your ultimate goal is.

If your answer is "I want to be the best animator in the industry" or "I want to develop the most beautiful show on the planet", I suggest finding a very secure company like DreamWorks or Nelvana and hone your craft beside the most talented people you can find.

If what you want is "my own studio" or "to direct my script", you must be willing to make sacrifices. It is unlikely that you'll be able to do any of these things within a studio. "But Ricardo, I understand that I can't run my own studio working at another, but I surely have to be in a studio to direct". Well, the reality is that most studios do not promote their own artists to director and the few that do have long lines of very creative people ahead of you to fill the few spots available. Even if you do happen to fight your way into a director's position, it is very likely that you will be developing your project for years waiting for the much wanted 'green light'. My advice to anyone looking to own a studio or direct is save lots of money, make friends with influential people, get a good agent and quit your job.

Max loves comics.

Ok, ok, the pages were already loose from Max reading his dad's comic 500 times but i couldn't resist putting this together.

-Come visit again soon Max!

Flash

Reggie from Dog Tags.

At HoC I have been looking for ways to use flash to emulate our prefered organic style of designs. I find that most usages of flash is very slick. Not that I have anything against the slick look. Ghostbot does great work in a very clean style. Nelvana has a show called Grossology that we are boarding on that also has a good looking clean style using Toon Boom's Harmony. I'm just hoping to find ways of using flash's power to make organic design and animation easier. I'm also not willing to compromize the quality of animation for speed of production.

So far I've only found a ripping good illustrator/animator, Pascal Campion. If anyone knows of other good examples of flash used more like rougher classical animation, I would love to hear about it.

Developing

At HoC, anyone can present ideas to be developed for film, television or a short. We want to stockpile as many properties as possible so that we are always ready to pitch when we see an opportunity. The process always starts with a seed idea. This idea is often accompanied by a phrase like "it would be cool if" or "that's ridiculous, nobody will buy that". Next is a treatment. A treatment is basically a script without the dialogue. If the idea is still interesting at this point, we will start producing artwork. I'm a big fan of artwork that is as new and original as possible. If the idea is still compelling, we produce a bible and write a script. At this point it is time to call the agent and prepare to pitch to studios.

Shorty McShorts' Shorts

For those of you who have access to the Disney Channel, stick around after "That's So Raven" on Friday, July 28 at 7:55pm for a five minute short film. You will see the Shorty McShorts' Shorts show. This is a showcase of new original animated shorts by some very talented creators. Disney will be airing a new short every week and you will get to vote online for the ones that you like.

The Disney shorts program has been aggressively searching for creators who truly have cool new projects and a certain Canadian studio who's name starts with 'house' and ends with 'cool' just might, maybe, kind of have something cooking that possibly, perhaps may appear on said channel. Shhhhh, it's on the down low. We'll update soon.

Thanks to Ghostbot for the cool Shorty McShort design.

Breaking Even

House of Cool's own Cal Brunker directed an animated music video currently
airing on Much More Music (The Canadian MTV) and is a runnner up for the
top 10. Please go and cast your vote at:

www.muchmoremusic.com/top10
The song is Rob Szabo - Breaking Even

You can watch the video at the link below, or search Youtube for Breaking
Even.
http://www.calbrunker.com/Work/Work.html

Update:
Thanks to everyone who voted, Breaking Even was #10 in the countdown.

Credo

Another Robin Joseph illustration of The Dreaming.

Here is a comment from DanO that I thought I would share with everyone.

"well...
I would invite you to move to Los Angeles and witness yourself the multitudes of disgusting opportunists who routinely prey upon more creative people for ideas they can steal.

if it happened to you once, you could shake it off, but the second time you'd set aside the one "thousand more ideas" credo. its easy to say we all have many ideas because we do, but when you spend your money, sweat, time, and blood devloping an idea, you'll undertsand the sting of having it appropriated to someone else's project."

My reply:

well...DanO
I've spent many years in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Ottawa and New York working at many of the feature and television studios that harbor the multitudes of disgusting opportunists you are talking about. For my entire career I've freely let anyone listen to any concept I had. I have also spent innumerable hours and tens of thousands of dollars developing properties so I can confidently say that I practice what I preach.

Evidently you have had poor experiences when it comes to intellectual properties but I stay true to my credo. No matter how many vultures there are out there it does not out weight the benefits of a disciplined development program and positive exposure.

Tardy

I've been tardy with the blog lately. I apologize but my life has been incredibly busy as of late.
To make it up, here are two blogs in a row.

HoC is a preproduction studio. We have made a couple of short films but most of our work is in storyboarding and design. However, this work does not define who we are as a studio. It is the original ideas that we develop in-house that most represents what HoC is all about. Unfortunately, original ideas by themselves do not pay the bills. But if we are smart and take a long term view on the projects we develop, I believe that we will come out on top in the end.

We don't develop ideas based on what is popular or hip at the moment (that's lame), but I do spend a lot of time observing what is popular and hip. I do this so that I don't miss an opportunity to pitch one of our projects that we developed earlier if it happens to fit the mold.

Creative Rant

Artwork from our Vista project.

One of the problems that I have with people who want to produce their own properties is that they fall in love with every idea. I'm not saying that you shouldn't really like the ideas you come up with, but when you become so attached to your ideas you fail to grow as an artist. An example of this are people who sue major studios like Pixar and Blue Sky for stealing their ideas. I'm sure you've seen these cases before. "I'm going to sue because I came up with a story about a clown fish and no one else could be as creative as me". Or "I invented a one eyed green monster, and there is no possible way that an entire studio full of creative artists doing a film about monsters, could come up with a similar idea". Or "If I mix two rodents (a squirrel and a rat) and call it a 'Scrat', I own that idea forever". This type of thinking says to me that you are not a creative person at all. You are just a person with a single good idea, and are so diluted by your perception of your own creativity, that you cannot believe that anyone in this world of six billion people could have an idea similar to your own.

I believe that if you steal an idea from me you could not possibly do as good of a job with it as I could. Furthermore, you know that place where that idea came from? Well, there are a thousand more where that one came from. So I will never cry over a lost idea. I my opinion, the more you are willing to throw away good ideas, the more you are exercising your ability to create new and better ones. With that said, if you do steal an idea from us, we will hunt you down!

Hiring Practices

Kate's layout for Road to El Dorado.

At HoC I don't hire only based on talent. I want people who believe in the company as much as they love doing the work. Of course there is a certain level of talent required to work here, but I also want artists who have personalities which are compatible with me and the other artists at the studio. It only takes one bad artist to sour the pot. In general I prefer young talent because they are not yet jaded by the animation industry. I like the fresh ideas they bring to the studio. In return (other than a pay cheque) I try to provide the artist the best working conditions in the industry. I want my people to look forward to working every day as well as feel that their efforts are building something greater than just a business venture. So far my hiring practices have worked. As the studio grows I hope to continue using this technique to build apon the team that I have.