Big excitement in the Moon Town universe, people – Jake Strider Hughes, the super genius behind the Watchmen and Walking Dead motion comics has applied his mad sick skillz to Moon Town. The clip above is a quick motion test he did a few months back. Very exciting… Very. Exciting!

PS – He also did a test  for my comic Cubicle Pigs. He does amazing things bringing comics to life!

Plato from Léonard Cohen on Vimeo. A meditation on 2D vs 3D, based, of course, on Plato’s assertion that the objects we see in this world are only reflections of some deeper reality beyond.

Lots of interesting ideas in this piece, but it takes a phenomenal amount of patience to sit through it. I think it could have been edited to great effect. Still, it’s really well done, so this is the last AnimWatch find of 2011. Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

Dreamworks’ “Gift of the Night Fury”. I haven’t watched it all the way through yet; Corporately-produced “holiday” specials these days being what they are, I’m not making it a priority. But I love How to Train Your Dragon, and the first few shots sure are pretty. So here ya go.

Man, I just don’t know what is going on… Alma is a really neat little film from 2009. I don’t know how I missed it.

For the first few seconds of this film, I thought it was stop motion, and I was wondering to myself why people don’t make films in CG to look like stop motion, because stop motion is more charming, and more honest and more artistic and blah blah blah. And then I realized, holy crap, this isn’t stop-mo – it’s CG!

I love the look of this film, and the storytelling is very strong. What a creepy tale… Rodrigo Blaas is an excellent director. And nice friends – Skywalker Sound!?

Heart from Jamie Caliri on Vimeo.

And in case you missed the first one, it’s called Dragon:

United Airlines, Dragon from Jamie Caliri on Vimeo.

And here’s a nice behind-the-scenes on the Dragon spot. (Crummy resolution, but nice backstage info, anyway).

Link courtesty of Kali Ciesemier. Thanks, Kali!

OK, so here’s where I lose ComicGeek Street Cred: I have never been able to get into Tintin. I know that clever people who speak loudly at comic book conventions are even now shaking their heads ruefully that I Just Don’t Get It, but I don’t. I liked the drawings, but the story didn’t draw me in. That said, I was intrigued to see what Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson could do with such a popular property. They took it on as a fully-animated feature film, and it’s getting ready to hit US theatres on DEC 21, 2011.

So far, I don’t know what to think. The early footage I saw left me with that Bad Zemeckis Uncanny Valley illness, but some of the footage looked human enough to be guy-in-a-suit. Which means they’re getting close.

I will say the vibe of the movie, at least from the trailers, appeals to me. It’s dark, the light is playing nicely around things, the character design seems consistent with the comic. And there’s a nice Indiana Jones / National Treasure story backbone to this thing which appeals to me greatly. Interestingly, I might be the opposite on the movie from where I was on the comic – where the story appeals to me but I’m not sure about the look. Hmm.

What do you think of what you see in the trailer?

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. Now, they’ve done a lot to this, added a bunch of stuff including, it appears, a love story. Yeesh. Not sure about the story on this one, though it’s from the team that brought us Despicable Me, which I liked.

But the lighting on this thing is fantastic, and I love the visual design. Really fun to look at. Add to the Must-See list?

I know this is not new from some of you. I’d meant to post about it earlier in the year, but then I forgot. This is a nice little film from The Animation Workshop, a Danish animation program I really need to keep an eye on. Like the French Gobelins, and the German Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg GMBH, Animation Workshop is delivering really nice, original student animated films. Digging through their thesis films is a treat. Definitely one to watch.

Pixar’s next film – Brave – looks fan-dang-tastic. Mulan in Scotland? Maybe. But also, Aye, Laddie, and wha’s no’ ta liek?

Hopefully, this will make up for the scars on my eyes from Cars 2.

I once worked with an ad agency who had a lot of promise. They admired my idols, StudioAKA. We talked a lot about their spot “The Big Win”, in which a simple Lotto ad was transformed into a work of Art. We were all in awe of how StudioAKA had done that, particularly in light of how unimaginative many clients initially are.

Without even knowing the details of how that spot transformed from the one to the other, based on my experience with imaginationless suits and visionaries, I can imagine one way the meeting might have taken place:

CLIENT: I want a spot popularizing the National Lottery. Maybe a guy with a bag running around town handing out money.

VISIONARY: Smiles.

CLIENT: Say what?

VISIONARY: He’s not handing out money. He’s handing out smiles.

CLIENT: Say what, again?

VISONARY: And it’s a doctor’s bag. He’s running around town, handing out smiles out of a doctor’s bag, because ultimately that is your product. You’re not selling money, or even the chance to win money. Not really. You’re selling the dream of money, that momentary rush before the numbers are called and you could still win.

He’s a doctor because he makes you feel better. All your problems could be over. You could afford a new house, one without a leaky roof. You could afford a new car, one without a failing transmission. You could go to your boss tomorrow and just be done. Your life could change completely, and all for the price of a one-dollar ticket.

And it’s not the money. Not for that fleeting moment, it’s not. It’s that feeling, that joy, that elation. They say money can’t buy happiness, but we know better, don’t we? Win the lottery. Strike it rich. Be happy. And that’s what you’re selling: Happiness.

CLIENT: Well… I see what you’re saying, but I still think we should focus on that bag of money. It’s the Lottery, after all…

VISIONARY: Give me a chance to mock this up. I think you’ll like it.

CLIENT: Well… if you really think so…

Aaaaand… scene.

Now, I should tell you, that is not quite the way it happened. In this case, both the agency and the client wanted StudioAKA to do something memorable, so there was latitude to develop this ad properly, and studio head Philip Hunt lists this spot as one of his favorites and well he should. These spots don’t always go this way.

But why shouldn’t they go this way more often?

What’s the lesson here, boys and girls? In my purely hypothetical example, the Visionary has to push the Client to see that more is possible. This has nothing to do with knowing where the Client might bend or break, and everything to do with what kind of company you want to be, what kind of artist you want to be. There are those who innovate, who push the envelope, and then there are the ones who simply do what they’re told. There are plenty of studios like that overseas and you can’t compete with them on cost. They’re cheap because they are simply factories.

No innovation. No pushing. The customer is always right.

Except, frequently, they’re not.

Yes, they pay the bills, and yes, they should get something that represents their product in the best light. They should get their moneysworth. But we, as artists, have a responsibility to show them what they might not have thought about yet. The dirty secret about clients is that frequently they don’t know what they want. They have to be shown that we can all do something better than what they’re asking. Something memorable. Only in so doing do they actually get their moneysworth.

The problem with the agency I worked with was that they only wanted to do what the client wanted. The client had come to the agency because they had seen my work and wanted my look and feel. Only, when I began doing designs for their spot, the agency began telling me that the client didn’t want those designs. They wanted the characters to look more like Pixar.

Now – when a client tells you that, and they have been drawn to you because they’ve seen your distinctly non-Pixar look, they’re either asking for something they don’t know how to put into words, or they’ve come to the wrong place. But the agency didn’t want to go back and discuss it with the client. They wanted to just stop the conversation. The client wants it thus, and that is that. The problem is, there are plenty of artists out there who will give you a Pixar-on-a-budget look. For a lot of artists, that’s all they can see. If you’re one of them, how do you distinguish your work? And in my opinion, if your client wants that look, those other artists and the client were made for each other.

It was the perfect place to stretch a little, show some range and some backbone. Try to be more like StudioAKA, or even – *gasp!* something new! – instead of Outsource House #247.

But the insidious thing is that it’s easier to just do what the clients want. Play it safe. Don’t rock the boat. And your portfolio will be full of nice, safe vanilla. Via con dios.

Finally, watch this clip:

That is a great scene from Mad Men, in which Creative Director Don Draper meets with timid potential clients from a bikini company who don’t want to show their bikini in their ads for their own bikinis. Don Draper has had enough of doing tame, timid creative. The client is asking for vanilla while trying to sell chili sauce. Maybe Don’s going over the top. Maybe he’s being a complete jerk.

But I would rather be like Don Draper than a groundhog afraid of his own shadow. At least Don Draper’s not vanilla.