Minding Your Movie Business: Animation, a free workshop for emerging filmmakers featuring special conversations with industry leading animators. Moderated by Craig Emanuel.
Panelists
- Bonnie Curtis, Producer – My Father’s Dragon
- Julie Lynn, Producer – My Father’s Dragon
- Robert Blake, 3D Technical Artist – Peenpoon
- Paul Young, Creative Director – Cartoon Saloon
- Nora Twomey, Creative Director – Cartoon Saloon
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Transcript:
God will God as the greatest demonstration
[Music]
the thing is you right and as you as you know you
thank you
[Music]
foreign I am truly honored to serve on the board of the March on Washington film festival
and to be moderating for the third year in a row a series of virtual workshops
designed to give value valuable advice to emerging writers directors and producers today we have some
extraordinary panelists who are highly successful in their own areas of the business who are going to talk to us
about their connection to animation an art form that has existed for many years in the early days of Disney cartoons it
was an area that was very much focused on the Children and Family Market but today animation content is being created
for every age demographic and platform imaginable it is an art form that has
changed significantly by the growth and development of computer technology and has become popular in both 2D and 3D
formats each of our panelists is involved in different areas of the animation world and it gives me great
pleasure to give a brief introduction to each of them let me start with Julie and
Bonnie from Mockingbird pictures Julie and Bonnie are Partners in Mockingbird pictures a company that was
originally created by Julie in 1999 and was then joined by Bonnie in 2011. Julie
started her career in Hollywood California as a creative executive for the producer Mark Johnson but before
moving to Los Angeles Julie practiced Laura at the Thomas Jefferson Center for the protection of free expression in
Charlottesville Virginia she serves on the board of the Virginia Film Festival the LA advisory committee for americares
an incredible organization and is an active member of The Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Science early in her career Julie co-produced
HBO’s presentation of Margaret edson’s Pulitzer Prize willing play wit and
supervised the horse racing segments on Gary Ross’s well-known film Seabiscuit for many years Julie has produced almost
all if not all of the films directed by the incredible director Rodrigo Garcia which was when I was lucky enough to
start working with Julie Bonnie was born in Texas and graduated as valedictorian
from Abilene Christian University with the ba in journalism and moved to Los Angeles a number of years ago to fulfill
her first love which is film Bonnie found production work on the film’s Dead Poet Society and Arachnophobia before
being hired as Steven Spielberg’s assistant in 1990 embarking on what would become a 15-year professional
relationship with the acclaimed director after the films hooked in Jurassic Park Bonnie became a production associate on
Schindler’s List and serves as an associate producer on the Lost World Jurassic Park and Amistad in 1998 she
produced the Blockbuster Saving Private Ryan for we which she received the producer a year of the war of the Year
award from the producers Guild of America Mockingbird pictures is currently in post-production on director
Tom Harper’s film had a stone starring Gal Gadot for skydance media and Netflix
they released two films last last year the first being Rodrigo Garcia’s Raymond and Ray which was financed by Apple
starring Ewan McGregor Ethan Hawke Maribel Verdu and Sophie ocanito the
second film they released last year was their first animation film My Father’s Dragon inspired by a beloved book and
which was directed by Nora Tumi who is a co-founder of the Academy Award nominated company cartoon Saloon which
we will talk about a little bit later other recent Productions through mockingbird’s First Look deal at
skydance include the well-reviewed terminated dark face as well as the AMC Television series diet land and the Sony
feature film life thank you Bonnie and Julie for taking the time to be with us
today our next panelist Robert Blake describes himself as a 3D artist and multimedia
designer who believes the digital art is the most accessible modality of the expression he grew up in the small town
of Tallahassee Florida where he developed an interest in creating performing live visual at music
festivals around the southeastern United States after working as an exhibit designer out of University Robert
continued to hone his skills as a 3D artist and eventually found his artwork all over the world through his art
practice Robert has found a means to fully Express his imagination and seamlessly connect with others who share
his passion when we begin asking Robert some questions we’re going to share with you an extraordinary piece of work that
he recently created that will give you a greater insight into who he is and what is possible to create thank you Robert
our final two panelists Nora Tumi and Paul Young Who are the co-founders and
creators of cart turns to learn Nora is an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated director in a career spanning
over two decades Nora has worked in a number of capacities on cartoons saloons
creative output from the Studio’s early years directing award-winning short films and commercials Nora went on to
co-direct Tommy Moore’s Academy Award nominated The Secret of Kells while also guiding the development processes on a
number of series including the preschool show Puffin Rock she was head of story and voice director on the academy
nominated song of the sea and directed The Breadwinner which was also nominated
for an Academy Award in Golden Globe as indicated earlier Nora most recently
directed my father’s direct and produced by Bonnie and Julie
Paul is the other co-founder and creative director at cartoon Saloon Paul is an if the winner and Oscar Emmy and
bafta nominee he produced animated features including my father’s dragon wolf Walkers The Secret of Kells song of
the Sea and the Breadwinners as well he has done a number of award-winning TV
series including Puffin Rock dog Van Dango and Viking School screech’s reach is a Star Wars Vision
short film still soon soon to be released on Disney plus and has also been directed at cartoons to learn by
Paul thank you to the two of you for joining us today so let’s get started
with our first two panelists being Julie Lynn and Bonnie Curtis
[Music] born a long time ago good morning
everyone morning he lived in a world that seemed like it would go on forever
[Music] times got hard
and he was a child like any other prone to scraped up knees and Flights of
Fancy why is everything so hard this is where I can
Hind to me I’m going to return that kindness to you Elmer just sitting there
on this little tiny Island an amazing spectacular real live
oh dragon my name is Elmer my name is Boris not as
cool but it goes with my face my father would soon set foot in place as no child
had ever been before dangerous Wild
strange places that’s what I’m going to look like after I get my fire when I
save the island you save Wild Island you’re pulling my
leg stop pulling my legs you already saved the island I saw you
do it no that’s the way seiwa made me do it but it can’t be right because it just sinks worse the next time there must be
a way to figure it out I brought this Dragon to us we will track him and the child
what do I do now Elmer don’t worry because I’m coming with you we’re gonna do it together
you always know what to do come on we have to get on it you don’t seem to be scared of anything
I’ll look after you
this really was my lucky day [Music] and tomorrow’s gonna be even luckier
oh [Music]
Julie I’m going to start with you we’ve been working together I think for more
than 18 years when I look at your past films and I think I started working with you around the time of Nine Lives
um other than your work as a producer on the last Terminator movie which obviously had a high level of visual
effects almost all of your work movies have been dialogue driven and adult
themed movies so I’m curious what made you want to make the leap and develop and produce an animated film especially
given that for many years animation is a world that certainly in the United States has largely been dominated by the
majors you know it’s funny Craig you’re right animation is really new for us but I
have been Consulting for Pixar for more than 20 years now and it started off
just working with them on story working with their directors and their writers on developing The Narrative that they’re
going to bring to life later with animation and over the Decades of doing that I think I got really excited about
animation and uh and wanted to be part of it or part of an animation movie from
beginning to end and then we came to my father’s dragon because my father’s
dragon was my husband Doug you know well his his favorite book as a child and
also the wonderful meglofove and John Morgan our writers came to me at the same time and said we also
love this book let’s let’s try to go find it and then um from there for us it was all about
trying to get in touch with cartoon Saloon which of course I can we can we can talk about later but really the
chance to work with the premiere 2D artists in the world was really really
exciting um thank you Bonnie the development of an animation movie obviously has a
different development track you know than a feature-length movie can you talk a little bit about the development
process on you know my father’s dragon and then perhaps you can walk us through what the timeline of an animation film
is including the green light process which is also different in animation than on a feature-length movie
um yeah I uh I had a very good interviewer who told me he was going to ask me this question and
um and I’ve been thinking about it Craig it’s interesting because I think the development process is different on
every single movie you know uh yes of course the the process and animation
the calendar is much longer you know you you can be involved in finding the style
of the the animation the thought you know what the character designs are going to be all these research that
you’re doing research and development and and drawing drawing and drawing and creating out of nothing something is is
somewhat unique to the animation development process but I’ve been involved because unlike Julie I was
involved in heavy heavy visual effects movies in the beginning you know years of my career and we would have
years-long development processes you know it those dinosaurs didn’t come out of nowhere we spent 18 months
researching and and working with three different artists to try to bring
dinosaurs to life and I remember the animatic which was these running Raptors that
made Steven go oh I believe that that I believe that and that was over a
year till we got to that so and I had also been at Steven’s side when he was
um a creative force behind amblimation so I had watched him in The Land Before Time An American Tale sequels I had
watched him do a lot of storyboarding so the process wasn’t totally unfamiliar to
me much a different way than it was an unfamiliar to Julie’s but um to Julie but I it it all took a very long time
but but as a producer in animation I didn’t behave differently I feel like
what Julie and I spent our time doing of course working on story story story story always story but we just wanted to
learn Nora we wanted to understand Nora’s process as she was our director
and Nora was so great about sharing with us what her process on Breadwinner had
been and that helped us provide her the tools that um that she would need to
create my father’s dragons so it was I think every every single project has a
different development process what’s fun about that animation development too is that one of the
things we often think about is if you’re gonna tell a story in animation it’s
often wonderful to tell a story that could only be told properly in animation and that’s definitely true of my
father’s dragon Julie when did cartoon Saloon and
Netflix you know get involved on the project and and why why both of those companies well it’s interesting because
right after we had uh put the put the book under option and started exploring
it I remember very clearly Meg Le fove and I were sitting in my living room at at my house and a lot of people had come
after us saying oh we’re animators and we’re interested in doing my father’s dragon and I looked at Meg and I said
well what if instead of just listening to people coming to us who do who do we most want to do it
and as Meg opened her mouth and said those people who did secret of
the Kells I wrote had written down on my yellow pad of paper secret of the Kells
and I flipped up I flipped it up and showed it to her and uh then what happened was I I asked
some people who knew the folks at cartoon Saloon to make the introduction because I knew that I was going to be in
Dublin for Albert knobs was going to play at the Dublin Film Festival of the first movie that Bonnie and I did
together as producing partners and I asked them to make an introduction and so I met with Nora and Paul and we met
in the lobby of the Westbury hotel in Dublin and about halfway halfway through
the meeting as uh Nora was showing some amazing art
I think I looked at her and Norm Paul will correct me if this was wrong but I think I said are you pitching me on why
you people should be doing my father’s dragon because I’m here to pitch you on why you should do my father’s dragon so
maybe we should just get going and make the movie and then from there we developed for a while with
with Megan and John and we had some funding from the Irish film board to do that development work and then we
pitched at a number of studios and it was Netflix that really hopped on board actually
um I think they right after seeing our pitch or hearing seeing and hearing our
pitch both because there were visual elements they uh they said they wanted to make the movie and we chose them
um and did you find that that was a collaborative process with Netflix did they give you a reasonable amount of
creative you know Freedom oh I think there was a tremendous amount of creative freedom I by the way I think
different than what cartoons had before because they had made their movies independently with full creative freedom
and now all of a sudden there’s a studio and Studios have opinions uh and our
but I I really think that this Netflix reputation at least at times and in
certain projects of deferring to the creatives was was very
much in play here and I think there was so much respect for Nora and for the
whole artistic team at cartoon Saloon that I felt Netflix were really really good collaborators it is inherently
different to make a movie for a studio um and and all and I don’t mean that in
just like we have deadlines to meet and finances to to Harbor but I also mean in
the support and in knowing sort of that we would have a home for it right from the beginning and that they could be
thinking about marketing it right from the beginning um so it was a really terrific
collaboration and I Nora can speak to this more specifically but I think Bonnie and Paul and I felt like Netflix
was incredibly respectful of of her and her process and and the look and feel of
the film thank you Bonnie what were some of the challenges that you experienced along
the way that perhaps you you know you hadn’t anticipated
well it’s a talk about Netflix you know one of the
challenges um of course the pandemic let’s all be honest that was its own ball of wax for
everybody who was trying to create art at the time but you know Netflix it was
interesting because when we pitched it we were purchased by their live action just their creative Executives in one
department and then Netflix was growing and growing and they expanded and and
formed an animation Division and brought over several people from Dreamworks
Animation to run it which was convenient for us because I knew a couple of them from my amblin and DreamWorks days but
that Evolution continues and that that’s one of the the you it’s just a challenge it’s not a
problem but one of the challenges of working with a studio that evolves and
grows as much as a Netflix does that was something that I think Julie and I found
uh we could give we could help with you know we’re based here in Los Angeles we knew a lot of the people at the studio
and so that was that was sort of a uh something that we could we could provide
the production and um there’s this great phrase I heard a long time ago about
um in horse in horse racing you don’t bet on the horse you bet on the jockey so when we would when we would get you
know this pressure from the studio to deliver at certain times you know Julie and I just kept looking at each other
and saying we will bet on Nora you know cartoon saloon has proven again and again and again what an incredible
productive Elite Studio they are and we were just so excited to be in business with them
and because we didn’t have an enormous amount of animation production experience we would ask them are we okay
and they would say we’re okay and we would say okay we were also really far away right body
that was new yeah we’re usually elbow or armpit deep in a movie oh and drowning
we can’t even find us we’re so deep in it um Julie uh if one of the people in our
audience was interested in barking in in doing a project and animation what would
you recommend to them should they start off with a short film what would be your advice to them the things to help them
you know get started obviously the two of you have had long careers and have a lot of experience but maybe you could
share some advice uh for our audience I always say find the people who are
doing the work that you most admire and try to insert yourself into their process in any way that may mean
bringing them the best coffee that it is within your capacity to bring to them with exactly the right additives and at
exactly the right temperature um it used to be I used to say make making copies but nobody makes copies
anymore or running scripts and nobody runs scripts anymore but uh I think it
is about finding the people you admire and doing whatever you can do to be in
their orbit and learn from them and that might mean working on a short it might mean working on a feature but I I think
it is all about learning best practices and best habits and
um and working towards your ideal is that an okay answer for you is that is or is
that not concrete enough no no absolutely great well listen I really appreciate the two of you taking this
time I wish we could do this for hours and hours and I’m sure there’s a lot more we could learn
um but thank you both one last question Bonnie are you going to do this dance again
oh absolutely if if cartoon Saloon will let us
we’ll we’ll ask them when you’re off screen on this Craig put them
on thanks guys I really appreciate it thank you for having us thank you bye-bye
[Music]
[Music] thank you
[Music] foreign
[Music]
[Music]
[Music] foreign
[Music]
I thank you both Paul and Nora for joining with us um this evening Nora I’m going to start
um with you cartoon Saloon came into existence about 22 years ago based in
Kilkenny Island which truly one of the most beautiful parts of the world that I’ve been lucky enough to visit then you
can talk a little bit about how the company came into existence
um we all met in college in we were in body Pharma College which is a college that
was set up by Don Bluth who had a studio in Dublin at the time and uh there had been set up to kind of feed animators
and cleanup artists into that studio by the time we all graduated I think the
studio had gone from Dublin so we kind of had to make our own our own jobs
um uh Tom Moore who’s a our the the third partner in cartoon Saloon
was and continues to be incredibly um uh I guess just enthusiastic about
animation you know and absolutely enthusiastic about it he had a project at the time uh based around uh the The
Book of Kells this beautiful ancient manuscript that’s housed in Dublin uh it’s still in existence and he had a
um he had an idea about making a film around that and so while we were doing
bits and pieces of work I think Paul and Tom started making um was the CD-ROMs Paul I think things
like that that you started out with and then uh I started doing again cd-rom’s uh for another client uh while we were
going to college it started to kind of very kind of informal um uh way into animation I think he
Incorporated the company poll around the time around 98 yeah 98 99 actually me
and Laura were working on a show which was going to be my final year at Barstool remember back in brown bag in
fact that’s when I we all knew each other from college but we were doing different jobs but we incorporated in my
flat myself and Tom carton Saloon as a kind of way to earn money so there happened to be this is in the first sort
of Internet bubble so it was like a cards uh CD-ROMs and then when we
finished College 15 of us when we graduated moved to Kilkenny to do the trailer for what would become the secret
of Kansas I mean I mean it’s interesting because I think I mean Paul back then
um certainly in the English language area um animation was you know largely
dominated by Disney and Pixar and Sony did a little bit and fox dabbled a
little bit um so when you looked at you know where that business was coming from where did
you see the market you know for cartoon Saloon because it must have been quite challenging yeah do you know it’s really
interesting I just started to make it’s an interesting connection there because Bonnie talks about working with Steven Spielberg on the things like Land Before
Time and um The Land Before Time in American Tail
things like that which were on which were partly animated in southern Bluth in Dublin or some of those films so
actually that college that we went to was began because as Nora I think you said it was sort of as a feeder school
for Solomon so when we started we all thought oh we’ll wind up working in that
big studio in Sullivan Booth or some of us might wind up working in Disney France was what was I think what
happened was when we graduated the everybody got employed in the computer games over in the UK at the time and
Tomb Raider was the big game so games were becoming the big booming industry and but the 15 of us that wanted to
continue doing storytelling animation like like uh uh fictional storytelling
animation I guess or character animation it weren’t that interested in the computer game so we said well this there
wasn’t much other options there was maybe two other studios in Ireland there was Terra glyph that our current
managing director Jerry Sharon was running with a friend and they did co-productions and features so there’s a
mini skill industry that was independent in Ireland Sullivan Booth had gone there
was an opportunity maybe to go to Paris I don’t want to think Nora was Paris was the Disney Parish Studio even sort of
shutting down by the time we do it we missed we kept missing the boats we had to make our own boat for sure yeah
so we we said I we’ll just give it a go for a while we give it a go we’ll give
it a year and do this trailer and we had to jump in the deep end a bit and kind of figure out how do you actually make
an animated film and where do you get the money so we had the film board the Irish film board which is wonderful gave
us some money to do shorts Nora did our first short from Darkness but while we were doing that they also we we came up
with kind of a little graphic Bible and a first treatment for a story that would become the secret accounts and then the
film board gave us more development money from that and we use that money to travel
um and figure out how you do European co-productions so we were able to then find partner in France partner partner
in Belgium over the years like Didier Bruner from the Zama Church who was quite a successful European film
producer who did kirikou and the Sorceress these are interesting movies you should check out and Bellville
Rendezvous anybody interested in listening and at that time he was like the best guy he had putting together
indie films in Europe and you did it by partnering with different countries and
using their funding schemes and distributors in those countries to pull your Finance together what we used to
joke talk about Frank and finance you sort of piece these things together and then it’s alive so we did secretary and
the breadwinner like that although the breadwinner was our first Canadian co-production and so yeah so we just
started to learn as kind of XR animation students how the industry works
yeah and did you have distribution in advance as to before you made those
films it was the idea that you’d put it together with European co-production money and then hope to screen it
someplace so the part of the financing was I think the on secret accounts we
managed to convince Disney Buena Vista in Ireland to theatrically distribute the film and DVD so that was a at that
time a small amount of money like 50 000 but we got this pre-sold it to a French
distribution in France and then we also got about a half a million investment from a sales agent which was cellular
dreams still in existence and Anna mengela or not um
yeah and uh so so uh um so we we sort of put together with
these pre-sales and also television pre-sales as well um things like that
um and so so we use sort of distribution advances as well as the self money
was like a five point five point eight million dollar
so but it looked like a 10 million dollar film well you’re very kind Greg
um nor when when you look at animation it’s obviously gone through a tremendous amount of
change over the last you know 50 years um and some of that presumably as a
result of growth in in computer technology but unlike in the live action
space where there seems to be a greater level of uniformity in which the way people make movies you know putting
digital effects aside you know in the animation world you can have traditional animation 2D animation 3D animation
motion capture stop motion hybrids what do you think is it what is it about
animation that kind of manages to is continue to exist and I think actually
Thrive um in in all of these different platforms yeah I think audiences are
um very sophisticated and literate when it comes to um you know graphic imagery and being
able to kind of uh understand uh how something like drawings or characters
that are made for the the screen how they can give another level to the
storytelling I think um you know whether you’re using animation for documentary or you’re using it
um you know for a very low budget uh film uh to the you know the films that
cost 150 million um they each have their own kind of Worlds it’s it’s a fantastic medium for
which to build worlds and uh I think we really are only scratching the surface
of what it’s capable of I think that when we come out from kind of under the covers of just you know expecting
animated films to only um you know feed up a family
um audience you know and see the the full breadth of what animation can offer through all of the the different
techniques that you mentioned I think that’s when we’ll really see um audiences being really fulfilled by
the the medium I think it’s incredibly exciting I love that at the moment
seeing even you know 3D films kind of turning and looking at you know what uh
animators did 50 years ago or people who studied movement uh you know to it to a
an incredible degree looking at their work you know you see it in spider verse where
um you know there’s a beautiful understanding of movement and how that adds to the storytelling it just adds
layers and allows your audience in uh all the more so I think it’s uh it’s
it’s incredible but even as as Bonnie had said you know um where do you draw the line you know a
lot of films have a lot of Animation a lot of live action films have or could be 90
um animation and yet they’re not considered um the animation you know even though you have an animation crew
working on them uh so yeah I think we really have only just scratched the surface of of what animation can can
offer and I think if you look at the history of Animation in Europe um and in Japan you see see that you
know it can offer um all kinds of audiences all kinds of experiences and just needs people with
skills and Imagination to pop on board I mean one of the things that I find interesting is you know I’m going to be
64 this year so um when I kind of grew up I mean animation was you know Disney movies and
and cartoons and and some fairly simple you know animated
um series on on television um and I remember just being blown away when my parents took me to see Fantasia
and to listen to the music and see that visual imagery but it’s interesting to me today how really you know animation
really as I said earlier does now played almost every demographic in film in
television to children to preschools to you know you know R-rated
um yeah and adult content uh which is which I find you know fascinating
um I mean you mentioned that you think that we’re only just you know scratching the surface what are the things that I
that excite you about the possibility is you know over the next five to ten years that you can see you know coming down
the pipeline I think as animators and artists and storytellers
um discover and ReDiscover their the the the um the traditional media you know and
mediums in terms of um you know using paint using um
brushes using pencil and that and and making sure that that becomes um you know part of I think the the
future the AI is going to um you know have some kind of a role to play it’s hard to know at this point
exactly what kind of a role and whether it’s something that’s going to be you
know positive or A negative or something that’s going to date easily or something that’s not going to you know really kind
of contribute towards human beings being able to express themselves and tell their stories in a really fulfilling way
um but I think those are some of the things uh that uh that really um really excite me I think audience is
becoming um more involved in the storytelling themselves that’s something that we’ve
been looking at over the last 10 years and are looking further into as we head into the next decade I think those are
all kind of interesting areas I don’t know whether you want to add to that or is this something that you think yeah I
mean I suppose just um also it’s interesting because animation is a medium rather than necessarily a genre
which is why it can kind of spam and actually I I have to correct myself it was hanging in them
she had done them she’d also do not denim persepolis which is also older
again which kind of was a nice Touchstone for the bright remember because it was tackling sort of a serious subject matter but I so I think
it’s an as as a medium it can be anything well I think what might be interesting is
given what inevitably will happen around Ai and it’s kind of happened with CGI when CGI came in we kind of got an
audience because we were not that in a way because we were doing 2D and hand-drawn stuff and I think perhaps
maybe like when photography came in people started to do expressionistic painting and abstract painting and no
longer okay well if you can do this with this technology what can we do with our hands and what can human beings do
that’s not that as well and so maybe there’ll be a nice thing where that film was actually handcrafted that film was
like you know it might be this interesting dialogue between like the different tools that you use and
ultimately it’s how people want to tell a story I mean when I talk to animators is they always say oh how do I get into
this I think the most important thing is to learn how to tell a story and we like telling a story through drawing other
people might like to tell a story by manipulating um you know a CGI character our
stop-motion puppet and we like to do the painting and drawing and I think people always appreciated I think a lot of the
times that really handcrafted stuff it’s kind of like the difference between Pottery and buying a Morgan in a
department store chain where you might buy a pot a you know teapot from somebody who knows
made it that’s handcrafted so maybe people would be craving that sort of thing and I think it doesn’t date as as
quickly you know I think people enjoy watching Bambi today or the Jungle Book just as much as they did when it first
came out and you can feel um the handcrafted nature of it and kids react to the drawing as well drawing
stuff because kids feel they can draw two because we do lots of workshops with kids and we put up our our stuff on
screen kids can look at it immediately and have a go at drawing our characters and I’m I’m kind of excited now because
even though in your intro we’re kind of drawn in an audience that’s even with the Star Wars because I just did my
first film was the Star Wars short and what I’m noticing online is it just came out last week actually as creatures
reach on Disney plus is that there’s all these fans who never knew about us or aren’t even used to our style of drawing
we’re getting like really inspired by like this is a whole new way to tell a Star Wars story which is interesting as
well so I’m open that will open up the audience a bit more to some of the stuff we’ve got in the past as well I mean
it’s interesting from a lawyer’s perspective I find myself constantly you
know with new challenges as technology you know is evolving um you know a few weeks ago uh you know
one of our clients was asked to do a body scan and this whole lot of legal
issues about you know how you can use that and what you can use it and historically and certainly the larger
budget films you know the voice of cast you know is is a big
um you know selling point and they are somewhat you know involved in the production process but you start to feel
that you know we’re not too far away from the time when you know you can simulate someone’s voice movements
become easy to simulate and the role of a live person is I don’t know hopefully
not going to become redundant um but definitely going to change and I
I mean I don’t know if you share that view or or not but I’m curious yeah I think that we are I mean what do
we look for in stories what do we we we’re looking to story time we have done for thousands of years we look to know
that what we’re going through somebody else has gone through before somebody else is reaching out to us from you know
maybe thousands of years ago or 100 years ago or or a contemporary filmmaker or a Storyteller to tell us that yes you
can get through this you somebody else has gotten through this before when you change that out that kind of
Storytelling involves Sacrifice from filmmakers and storytellers uh themselves that you have to kind of
reveal something of yourself to your audience in order for the story that you’re making to really connect and have
an impact I don’t know if a computer can do that if we do you know would you care
about a story that’s not cost somebody something you know everything that we do has a cost and that’s what we respond to
um and I don’t know if if if that can exist in in what we’re
talking about or performances that don’t involve an actor that has maybe had a ride with
somebody that morning and that affects how their performances I don’t know if something I mean we’re talking about levels of sophistication
humanity and empathy that we all instinctively respond to and when it’s
not there we reject it we all know the uncanny valley type of scenario that that we don’t know exactly what’s wrong
but we it feels like it doesn’t have a soul so I think that that’s you know you
know I think that’s probably where that particular Avenue will end up I think
that’s to me the heart of the issue I mean you know at the moment we’re in the middle of a strike with the The Writer’s
Guild of America and it feels like this could go on for some period of time and you know one of the things they’re
arguing about or put on the table with the issue of AI and is that going to you
know work in a way that’s going to make writers you know somewhat redundant I think you know whether it’s in animation
or anything else you can’t emulate human emotion in in the way that
it just comes naturally out of a live person so um hopefully uh in the years to come
we’ll all still continue to be relevant um I really appreciate the two of you
um taking the time to do this today I’m now after this I’m going to go online I’m going to check out your
um short film but I know our audience is going to be really thankful for the information you’ve shared with us so
thank you both very much question I know it’s getting late there so have a good evening thanks Craig thank you
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foreign
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thank you for being with us this evening Robert you describe yourself as a 3D
artist and multimedia designer and someone who believes that digital art is the most accessible modality of
expression um could you tell our audience a little bit how you first got involved in in
working in this space for sure for sure um so of course I did go to school for
art and I think that was my first uh you know foray to understanding that doing
design or doing any kind of digital creation could be a meaningful career uh because where I came from uh which is
Tallahassee Florida very small town which doesn’t have much of a high cap for a creative career so it should say
um that was kind of like my only option for how I saw that going and so that’s what I was doing that’s how I was
pre-exposed to that world and going to a music festival actually when I was like 20 years old uh that was the first time
that I saw a live audio visual experience played out to you know millions of people and of course it was
a fun and at the time I didn’t really have the depth of understanding as to why I had such compassion for Live
Events but of course it was realizing that through Audio Visual and digital experiences you could create uh just
simultaneous beautiful experience it’s literally the for me it’s the most important aspect of Fine Art which is to
create affect which is the affect is something that can only exist in One Moment In Time and so for me it was you
know digital art and blender was the most the most accessible way I had to express these ideas and so as soon as I
got back home from the music festival I did my research I was like well how can I create a 3D visual blender is the
first thing that popped up blender is free I’ll download it and from there it’s pretty much the rest is history and
of course being in school I was studying art history and stuff like that and so uh one thing that really stuck with me
is Marshall mcluhan’s uh the medium is the massage and I think these days the
massage or the medium could even be some of the smartphone and I know some artists that are creating work literally
from their smartphone and potentially making a living out of it and so I really I internalized that idea and I
kind of developed a new mantra the cold technology plus expression equals Freedom which basically sums up to say
that if I use the tools I have to express myself I will be able to find some form of Freedom whether that be
spiritually financially or Etc and you know kind of following that
has gotten my work into the MoMA so it’s it seemed to work out you know uh amazing I mean it’s interesting
because I when I look back you know 10 or 15 years ago
um you know the technology available for graphic design was you know time consuming uh not always actually that
you know instinctive and I think the software that’s available today is a lot more intuitive and I’ve also found that
on whatever it is there’s somehow a YouTube video that can teach you you know almost anything
um you know if people in our audience are interested in you know starting down that path you know what would you
recommend to them in terms of a good software to start with and and what else should they be doing to kind of start
down that path uh of course I would recommend blender it’s free open source software and uh
you can even do hand-drawn 2D animation in it and I love what you said about uh
uh the the ease of use in the user interface because uh a little bit in the
conversation that’s happened we’ve touched on the idea of having soul in the artwork that create and I feel like
only recently it’s gotten to the point where you could enter such a flow State because of the ease and the user
interface that you can actually enter or Flow State and inject Soul into your artwork uh but I’m always going to
recommend blender because it’s come so far it gets better every day and it’s free
I’m fantastic um I think we’re going to take a few minutes now just to kind of play uh the
clip of the light Bloom um negressions because I think talking about um you know one of your passions and why
you’re doing this work I think this is a great example of how to do that so Brandon let’s let’s play the clip
[Music] um truly uh amazing every time I see it
I just get blown away by what what you what you’ve been able to create
um when you talk about the clip you described it in the following way it’s an audio visual animation that
illustrates my interpretation of Life as a black man it is an active reflection
on how societal influence and discrimination often serves to antagonize the presentation and
reception of black artwork in an international crypto app uh Art Market
what was your inspiration you know for making this work and how how did it
involve and how did you find the audience to make it
accessible so that they could share in the experience that you were hoping to put forth
for sure um so this piece was really based on my own personal experiences growing up in
the South uh you know as a young black person who’s interested in Visionary artwork and psychedelic artwork
specifically I think you find yourself in a lot of situations where maybe paranoia or just uncomfortability or
potentially unsafe circumstances can emerge just from participating in these spaces um and you know this is when I was a
much younger person finding myself and exploring the world so to speak but um this piece is meant to reflect the idea
that even in my own place of solitude and which is my studio my mind uh there
still is that chance that everything can be taken away from me due to the circumstances that are out of my control and the society that I was born into so
I think this piece has come to represent almost a literal representation of the paranoia that I used to experience
during some of these experiences when I was younger but after creating that
piece it was an incredibly cathartic experience audience because I was almost to expel all these negative emotions in
a more tangible way in a despite digital process and I started recognizing after
that there’s an actual a lot of love and Trust within the community and spaces that I was finding myself in
um and so in the context of that piece being released I think there’s a lot going on uh during the pandemic a lot of protests
happening um and I thought that was an opportunity to make a definite statement on how I
felt about uh some of the issues that were surrounding our country at the time and I thought that using uh crypto art
or the nft platform known origin was the perfect opportunity for that um the piece did eventually sell uh you
know and uh you know so that means someone connected with the message but I think at the time a lot of the
constituents and a lot of the participants in the nft space are not really concerned with ideas like
diversity or inclusion or anything like that and so I just kind of want to make a definite rebukement to that that
statement you know and come out with a hard sense so once you created this how did you
reach your audience did you use social media are there platforms yeah
yeah as a modern artists are definitely using social media and um uh it just
started connecting with people you know you kind of just put it out there and see who catches it and I think that’s one of the beautiful Parts about digital
art or I mean any art can be uploaded and shared I think everyone should share their art for sure
um the last couple of months have obviously not been great particularly you know for the nft market
um especially you know given some of the collapse you know in in the crypto world I’m curious where you you know you see
the future nfts going and you know what are some of the other you know creative
directions you can see going forward that you know you can be using as a social tool you know to connect with an
audience especially where you know you’ve got an important social message to get across for sure uh I think the uh like you said
the nft was a beautiful and fun bubble um and I think we’ve seen many digital techno technological bubbles emerge
um but you know it’s essentially over and I think that the future use cases
involve uh just practical or practical uh ticketing for an event is a practical
use case of an image of an nft something that can be traded something that will
actually prescribe value outside of you know some social media bubble or something like that
um so that’s where I think it’s going to go and I think maybe um maybe also rewarding your audience
with certain gifts or digital trinkets or something like that but
you know all that to say it was a beautiful time and I was able to successfully change my life and move
from Tallahassee to New York and if I had advice to give to
artists that are still interested in doing nfts or getting started I would say that if you want to be the famous
popular then you should find in Egypt yeah well that that in itself I assume is is
not an easy uh thing to do I mean how did you get an agent I didn’t I got lucky and so I was there
way early before you know it was really easy to get involved in nfts at the time and the platform I was most successful
on right I think I had you know many many sales was super rare and at the time when I applied it was you know
fairly simple to get on there wasn’t a huge backlog there wasn’t a huge line and because I just kept my work consistent and kept releasing it I found
success on there and was able to create a name uh before you know before it got to corporate I guess you know what I
mean um in our last panel we were talking a
little bit about Ai and I’m curious you know from your perspective how do you
see AI fitting into you know into the work that you know you’re doing or going to be doing in the future
um I think like everything else or like all the digital modalities of expression that I’ve found uh it’s just a tool
um I’ll give an example that I’d use it to create a clothing texture for a 3D model that I wouldn’t be able to create
myself uh even recently I created a piece where I needed a bed of roses in
the style of an artist called kehinde Wiley who created the Obama portrait and uh I was able to type that in and put it
on a T-shirt and it’s it’s that kind of practical application while still using the human inspiration which I think is
going to be the most successful use of AI but I know marketing strategies can be fun and it’s fun to it knows code
really well so I use it for that as well I’m not particularly worried about AI taking truly creative jobs but I think
it’s going to take out a lot of the uh maybe the grunt work and maybe the the
the tedious tasks for sure
uh it’s Unique because one of the things that you know the writing skilled as concerned about is not only will you
know AI be used to potentially replace writers but there is a growing use of
you know AI as original um you know Source material
um although actually when you think about AI ultimately AI is
um is a collection it is something that originates from something that you know already
um exists so it’s going to be interesting I think from my point of view to see how this argument
um you know plays out yeah definitely I think I know what you’re talking about it’s like an
infinite sitcom almost and it’s running 24 7 and it’s like an amalgamation of Seinfeld and all those things and it’s
like all right this is interesting and I I’m just going to pray that the audience Will Keep Us Alive right
listen I’m still old school I’m still one of those people that actually enjoys the experience of going to the cinema
and you know sitting in the theater and being around a group of people and if
you’re lucky then to come out of that and go and have a cup of coffee or a drink and talk to the people and discuss
the content and that’s not true about every film but important films and I hope that we don’t lose that and even
though there’s obviously an ability to engage in conversation through social media there’s just something that can’t
be replaced by by real human live you know interaction right so I I hope that
happens Robert when you look forward over the next you know five or ten years
where do you do you see yourself uh you’re going to move into a more long-form content just I’m sure our
audience is curious to know um you know where where you think you’re heading or you’d like to be heading
I’m definitely uh you know I just got on with grx immersive so we’re going to be working together on doing some art
installations Tech activations and things like that and I’m definitely looking forward to doing some short film
and long form content um and you know my inspiration comes
from music festivals so hopefully I’ll be curating these large-scale visual experiences and uh that we can start
inspiring more young people to to get involved in the creative arts and interesting ways
I think it it’s very interesting to me generationally because I think when you look at what
um the youth audience is doing today um they will overspend to have a great
experience and and and for years I’ve been going to you know a number of music
festivals and one of my favorite music festivals is is Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park and in San Francisco and I
love it because for me it gives me an opportunity to hear all different kinds of of music from perhaps artists and
genres that I wouldn’t normally get to see and I enjoy the experience of being around 40 or 50 000 people and watching
them interact in a way which I find you know engaging and then on the other side
of the equation you talk about you know immersive experiences and what people are willing to do
um you know Madison Square Garden they’re building this uh uh thing called
the sphere in Las Vegas that’s supposed to open
um you know later this year and if you go online and look at it it’s around Dome
um that’s going to seat close to 20 000 people and half of the Dome is a single
screen in 16k um and and to sit and watch that
visually it’s it’s insane and I think
and it’s hard because the brain can’t actually processed or what you’re seeing you know is isn’t real but even that in
in the live concert space and bands like um you know Bono and you two who’ve
always been very heavy Visual and and Bono they’re going to open you know that that Stadium I’m excited to see because
I think that creates another level of experience to you know to the audience
so I I’m excited um about the years to come well again thank you so much for taking the time to
be with us um I really appreciate you you sharing your work and for everyone else I’d encourage you to
um take a look and go on to his site and look at some of the work because it’s truly
um mind-boggling so Robert thank you so much for joining us I appreciate it thank you so much Greg
pleasure um sadly we’re now out of time and so we have to end this incredibly informative
discussion I’d really like to thank all of our panelists for making the time today to share their knowledge with all
of us we’re truly lucky to get such great insight into you know what’s going
on in the animation and related Industries today although this is the last panel of discussion in our series
for 2023 I did want to let you know that you are all welcome to attend the March
on Washington film festival which will take place from September 28th to October 2nd later this year and you can
also feel free to submit work for consideration in the student in emerging filmmaker competition the regular
deadline I believe is May 26 and the late deadline is is June 23. if you
haven’t participated in our annual Film Festival before I would strongly encourage you to do so whether it’s in a
physical presence or a virtual presence because it is truly a unique and
engaging experience with Incredible content and discussions so finally I’d
like to thank you our audience for joining us we hope to see you at the festival and to participate in our panel
discussions next year and again thank you for our incredible panelists and
good night foreign
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